At the end of a fortnight, therefore, the military governor of Berlin, old Field Marshal Count Pape, declared to his majesty that he would do well to immediately set Baron Kotze at liberty, since there was no adequate ground for keeping him under arrest. The field marshal, however, suggested that in view of the seriousness of the charge that had been made against the baron, the only thing to do would be to hold a court-martial, permitting the baron meanwhile to reside "on parole" at Friedrichsfeld. The whole matter was thereupon turned over to General Prince Frederick of Hohenzollern, brother of the King of Roumania, commanding the metropolitan division of troops, to the reserve force of which Baron Kotze belonged.
Nine months after his arrest. Baron Kotze appeared before a court-martial, composed of a colonel, who acted as president, and eight other officers, and after a lengthy trial, during the course of which Baron Schrader acted not merely as witness against Kotze, but likewise as prosecutor, endeavoring to show analogy between the writing of the anonymous letters, and the caligraphy, not merely of Baron Kotze, but also of the baroness, the court-martial acquitted the prisoner, and the emperor not only signified his approval of the verdict, but a week later took the occasion of the Easter festivities to send to his former favorite Kotze, a huge floral piece in the shape of an Easter egg, bound with ribbons in the national colors.
William, however, refrained from intimating to Kotze his desire that he should resume his service at court as master of ceremonies, and this taken in conjunction with the fact that the procedure of the court-martial remained a secret, left a painful degree of suspicion resting upon the character of the unfortunate Baron Kotze. It is perfectly true that many of those members of the court, and of society, who had been most bitter in their denunciation of him, left cards at his residence, but the Hohenau clique still remained obdurate, and in spite of every possible intervention, persisted in regarding Baron Kotze as having been unable to clear himself completely. His most obdurate detractor remained Baron Schrader.
Kotze learning the part which Schrader had played in the entire affair, after having consulted with his friends, came to the conclusion that the injury done to him by his fellow master of ceremonies, was far too great to admit of its being expiated, or atoned for by a mere exchange of bullets on the duelling field, and he accordingly instituted criminal proceedings against him. The preliminaries to this sort of thing are exceedingly intricate and tedious in Germany, and the legal authorities having received the impression in one way or another that the public trial in connection with the scandal would be viewed with displeasure in high quarters, naturally placed every obstacle in Baron Kotze's way. Of course, having instituted legal proceedings against Schrader, he was debarred by the so-called code of honor from challenging Schrader, a circumstance of which the latter took advantage to insinuate that if Kotze had refrained from calling him to account on the field of honor, it was because he did not feel sufficiently sure of his ground.
This insinuation was taken up by Kotze's cousin, Captain Dietrich Kotze, who challenged Schrader and fought a duel with him, slightly wounding him. Kotze himself meanwhile challenged, and fought a duel with another of his persecutors, Baron Hugo Reischach, the chamberlain of Empress Frederick, and received a rather severe wound, which kept him in bed for several weeks.
As legal proceedings were pending, which were expected to eventually clear up the entire scandal, and show who was the author of the anonymous letters, it was generally assumed that Baron von Kotze could not be regarded as altogether cleared from the suspicion which rested upon him, until the case had come up for trial. Meanwhile poor Kotze remained under a cloud. Nearly nine months elapsed before the criminal authorities declared that there was no ground for a criminal suit against Schrader. Kotze thereupon endeavored to institute a civil suit, this requiring still more time, and when at length the matter came into court, Kotze was non-suited virtually without any hearing, on the ground that the statutes of limitation had disqualified him from any civil redress against Baron Schrader.
Kotze being thus frustrated in his efforts to obtain punishment for his foe and persecutor through the courts of law, came to the conclusion that there was no other means left him to vindicate his honor, but a challenge to fight a duel. His demand for satisfaction, however, was declined by Baron Schrader, on the ground that it was too late for Kotze to resort to arms, and that if he had stood in need of satisfaction of this kind, he should not have allowed so long a period to elapse before demanding it. The matter was referred to a so-called court of honor, which sustained the contention of Baron Schrader, and declared that inasmuch as Baron Kotze had by his dilatoriness placed himself beyond the power of exacting satisfaction from Baron Schrader for the indignities to which he had been subjected, he was no longer worthy to wear the uniform of a Prussian officer. This decision of the court of honor was ratified by Prince Frederick of Hohenzollern, the general commanding the division of Guards, to the reserve force of which Baron Kotze belonged, but it was annulled by the emperor, an action on the part of his majesty which led Prince Frederick to resign his command, and to withdraw for the time from the Court of Berlin.
The emperor thereupon entrusted the affair to another jury of honor at Hanover, which rendered a decision, blaming Baron Kotze for his dilatoriness in demanding satisfaction of Baron Schrader, but authorizing him to continue to wear the uniform, and to remain in the service of the emperor as an officer. This verdict was ratified by the emperor himself and on the strength thereof the long delayed duel took place between the two barons. In June, 1896, Baron Schrader was wounded in the abdomen by Baron Kotze, a wound to which he succumbed on the following day. That seemed to settle, in the minds of all, the innocence of Baron Kotze, for after spending the customary few months in nominal imprisonment for infraction of the civil laws, which prohibit the fighting of those very duels which are prescribed by the military code, he was invited to resume his service as master of the ceremonies at court, was treated once more with the utmost distinction by the emperor, while his wife spent several weeks in the autumn of that year as the guest of Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen, at the latter's country seat.
But who was the author of the anonymous letters?
That is a question with which I propose to deal in the following chapter, at the same time showing how this most sensational court scandal of the latter half of the nineteenth century led to the exodus from Berlin, and the desertion of its court by numerous royal personages and great nobles.