The strong-willed Margarethe Krupp has decided to take her complaint directly to the Kaiser. She’s aware that Wilhelm dislikes outspoken women, but in the face of the calamitous charges against her husband Fritz, who’s been declared incapacitated, she’s placed the family’s huge steelworks at Essen in the hands of a management team, and she needs the Kaiser’s approval. Marga intends to tell Wilhelm that she has made those decisions in order to avoid catastrophe for Germany itself. Given the central importance of the Krupp works to the Reich’s growing power, she feels confident the Kaiser will grant her an audience. After all, she tells herself huffily, we’ve spent a fortune hosting his damn hunting parties at Villa Hügel, not to mention the preposterous preparations when His Highness attends the Meppen weaponry site.
Still, Marga feels uneasy. In the past the Kaiser has treated her with civility, but never warmth. Nor does she much care for him. She finds him bombastic and self-absorbed, and has laughed with friends about his preening wardrobe of 200 uniforms—and the 12 valets needed to ensure that his ermine cape is fluffed to perfection and his chestful of medals properly aligned. Wilhelm’s love of ceremonial display has led one indiscreet friend to claim that the Kaiser prefers unveiling a monument to reading a book. Their merriment, Marga remembers, had alarmed her husband Fritz, and she’d made fun of his anxiety: “The Kaiser should be afraid of you!” she’d nearly shouted at him. “Let him turn out steel-armored battleships, if he’s so clever and powerful!”
Wilhelm does grant Marga an interview, but when she refers to His Highness “doubtless” having heard the rumors regarding Fritz’s “predilections,” the Kaiser bellows, “What rumors? What are you talking about, woman?!” (He has in fact not only heard the rumors, but personally counseled Krupp not to return to Capri—none of which is he about to acknowledge to Marga).
“Capri?” Marga tentatively offers. “The Italian newspapers and . . . Capri?”
“Yes, yes . . . Fritz’s amateur archeology . . . I know all about that . . . That yacht of his, the, the . . . what’s it called?”
“The Maya. He’s refitted it for expeditions to collect aquatic specimens.”
“Damned nonsense . . . dilettantism . . . shirking his duties to Kaiser and country.”
Contrary to her intentions, Marga reflexively defends her husband. “He enjoys it . . . it’s harmless enough.” Then she adds with a smirk, “He has discovered five new species of worms.” Despite herself, Marga laughs.
“What’s worms got to do with weaponry?”
“I don’t begrudge him his hobby, your Highness. It’s the other, er, hobby, that concerns me—concerns me for Germany.”
“Stop talking in riddles, Marga! My patience is limited.”
“Very well, Majesty. Someone clipped an article from the Neapolitan scandal sheet, Mattino, and sent it to me anonymously.”
“Yes, yes—so?”
“It describes what it calls the ‘immoral’ festivities that have been taking place on Capri. Other Italian newspapers have picked up the Mattino story. Those clippings as well were sent to me.”
“Immoral? What does any of this have to do with me?!”
“It has to do with Fritz and . . . and teenage boys . . . Not that the news surprised me.”
“What news?! Damn it, woman, I have three ministers waiting outside! Did you expect to spend the day?!”
“My apologies, Majesty. To come directly to the point: Fritz’s beautiful home on Capri . . . the renowned gardens . . . In recognition, the governing council of Capri has made him an honorary citizen and—”
“—damn it, Marga! You’ve got two minutes!”
She swallows hard: “Fritz is accused of impropriety with teenage boys. His special favorite is an eighteen-year-old barber named Adolfo Schiano. Should I go on?”
Wilhelm stops pacing. “Who accuses him?” His expression is solemn.
“Last week it was the Social Democratic Party paper, Vorwärts. It accuses Fritz of ‘corrupting youth.’ He’s said to exemplify capitalist culture at its grossest. The SPD calls for his arrest and trial under Paragraph 175 of the German penal code.”
“—the what?” Wilhelm loudly interrupts.
“Paragraph 175, Majesty . . . it criminalizes sexual intercourse between men. Fritz has initiated libel proceedings against the paper.”
The Kaiser scowls. “Socialist scum . . . Who gives a damn what Vorwärts thinks?!”
“I do, your Majesty. Fritz and I have not shared a bed for years.” She’s frightened at her own boldness.
“You think such matters interest me?! Have you lost your senses, madame?”
Marga is cowed but defiant. “There have been orgies, Your Highness. Fritz invited the Grand Duke of Hesse and Prince Aribert of Anhalt as his guests to—”
“—stop it! Stop it this minute!” Wilhelm thunders. “You’re a hysterical woman! Leave me at once!” He turns and marches off to an adjoining room.
That same day Kaiser Wilhelm orders the Berlin police to ransack the offices of Vorwärts, to break into the private lockers of Social Democratic members of the Reichstag, and to enter the homes of subscribers to seize copies of the issue containing the accusations against Fritz Krupp. He fails to intimidate the socialist editors of Vorwärts. They denounce the Kaiser in print for passing sentence before a pending trial has even commenced, thus placing the court in the invidious position either of contradicting the Kaiser or of creating the dreadful impression that his opinion has influenced its judgment. Soon after, to the Kaiser’s embarrassment, chief prosecutor Hugo Isenbiel announces that he’s dropping the libel case against the editors of Vorwärts—the implication is that Krupp is guilty as charged.
Undaunted, the Kaiser has Marga Krupp arrested on charges of maligning her blameless husband and soiling the good name of the house of Krupp. He further declares that she’s unbalanced—the result of meddling in political affairs and overtaxing her brain with too much reading—a conclusion the Kaiser reaches based on Krupp’s insistence that his wife’s “symptoms of illness” have been increasing of late. Wilhelm orders Marga carried by force to the lunatic asylum at Jena for “an extended rest.” Krupp assures the Kaiser that Marga “has agreed to submit herself willingly to a thorough treatment” for an undefined period of time, and he thanks Wilhelm “for the kind and gentle way in which Your Majesty has intervened on behalf of my person and my interests.”
But the intervention backfires. Krupp, it turns out, has made little effort to conceal his activities on Capri—or, for that matter, in Berlin. Commissioner Hans von Tresckow, head of the police unit that reports on the city’s homosexual scene, has learned, among much else, that Fritz Krupp regularly watches near-nude wrestling matches in one of Berlin’s theaters, and that he’s seen to it that the city’s fashionable Hotel Bristol, where he often stays, employs as waiters a number of young men he’s imported from Capri. Von Tresckow also discovers that from 1898 on, Krupp has spent several months a year in the Hotel Quisisana on Capri, spending lavishly on his favorites and holding “boisterous” parties.
After the Vorwärts article appears, the local authorities on the island appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate further; it has no trouble locating witnesses to confirm the industrialist’s “unclean” activities. King Victor Emmanuel III promptly orders Krupp banished from Italy, never to return. On November 22, 1902, the German News Agency announces—to widespread incredulity—that Fritz Krupp has unexpectedly died of a stroke. He has in fact taken the course followed by many homosexuals of the time when threatened with exposure or blackmail—he takes his own life.
The rightwing press immediately blames the SPD and Vorwärts for “hounding” the great industrialist to his death. Marga is abruptly declared entirely well and released from the Jena asylum. She refuses to attend her husband’s funeral at Essen. Given that the rumors about Krupp’s proclivities have not been disproved, the Kaiser’s entourage urges him not to attend either, but he does so nonetheless—bedecked in full battle gear. Arriving at Essen, he seeks assurances from several of Krupp’s associates that the munitions king was not homosexual. Anything to please the monarch: “Of course not, your Majesty! He had an exceptionally soft, gentle, sensitive nature—which is sometimes confused with homosexuality.” “Just as I thought!” the Kaiser thunders. “Vorwärts has hounded my exemplary friend to a needless death.”
Appeased, Wilhelm marches behind the closed casket to the cemetery and delivers the funeral oration, telling the assembled crowd that the Socialists—“men unworthy of the name of German”—have “murdered” Krupp, and he dismisses as groundless (though he knows better) the “false and ignominious” attacks that have been made on “this great German’s” honor. Have no fear, the Kaiser concludes—henceforth, he will “raise the shield of the German Emperor over the house and memory of Krupp.”
And he does, though the house of Krupp comes to regret his protection. Fritz Krupp’s teenage daughter Bertha inherits the company, but the Kaiser declares it unthinkable for a woman to be in charge of a firm so vital to the interests of the Reich. He personally chooses Gustav von Bohlen, a Prussian nobleman, as her husband and at their wedding awards him, by imperial proclamation, the surname Krupp. Marga is allowed to return to Villa Hügel, the family estate, but on condition she remain out of sight.