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Updated: May 7, 2025
Baron Schrader, to the effect that Baron Kotze was the author of the anonymous letters. I think that it was in the latter part of 1892 that the Prince and Princess of Saxe-Meiningen, having made up their minds to visit Greece and the Holy Land, invited Baron and Baroness Kotze to accompany them.
Thus it will be seen that at one swoop Mr. Kruger disposed of three reputable intermediaries whom he had used to great advantage at one time or another. 'Something for nothing, for Mr. Kruger! Whether Mr. Kotzé acted in haste or whether Sir Henry de Villiers' plea for more time was justified are questions which it is no longer necessary to discuss, not alone because Mr.
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.
The blotting pads used by Baron Kotze, both at the Union Club and elsewhere, were subjected to much the same microscopic examination as those of Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, and when at length a distinct degree of similarity was discovered to exist between the caligraphy of the anonymous letter writer and the impressions which figured on the blotting pads habitually used by Baron Kotze, Baron Schrader drew up a report on the subject, charging Baron Kotze with being the author of the letters, and presented it to the emperor.
While the general public was speculating as to the cause of this mysterious and startling disciplinary measure against a nobleman so well known and so prominent in every way as Baron von Kotze, the court gossips were rubbing their hands, chuckling with satisfaction, and congratulating themselves on the fact that success had at length crowned the efforts made to bring to book the author of the hundreds of anonymous letters that had been circulated in the great world of Berlin during the two preceding years.
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.
It was due entirely to this pressure that the kaiser, incensed beyond measure at the persistency and the malignity of these letters, took the extraordinary step of having Baron von Kotze arrested by the chief of his military household, General von Hahnke merely on the strength of his imperial order, dispensing with any legal warrant.
A few instances will suffice. One of the first witnesses called was Judge Ameshof, who with Chief-Justice Kotzé and Mr. Kock formed the Government Commission appointed to meet the deputation from the Reform Committee on January 1. Judge Ameshof was duly sworn, and was asked to identify a list of the members of the Reform Committee. He did so.
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.
The one in uniform was General Count von Hahnke, chief of the military household of the emperor, while the other, who was in civilian attire, was Baron von Kotze, master of ceremonies at the court of Berlin, one of the most well-to-do and jovial of bons vivants, and who up to that time had stood so high in the favor of the reigning family that his sovereign was accustomed to address him by his Christian name, and by the so familiar equivalent pronoun in German of "thou."
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