Background
Rudolf von Valentini was born in Crussow near Angermiinde on October 1, 1855, the son of a Prussian army officer and estate owner of ancient Hessian stock.
Rudolf von Valentini was born in Crussow near Angermiinde on October 1, 1855, the son of a Prussian army officer and estate owner of ancient Hessian stock.
After studying jurisprudence at Strassburg, Valentini briefly entered the Prussian judicial branch but then transferred to the civil administration; by 1888 he had reached the office of district magistrate (Landrat) at Hameln, and eleven years later became privy councillor in the kaiser's civil cabinet.
Valentini served as lord lieutenant at Frankfurt on the Oder from 1906 until 1908, when he was appointed Wilhelm II's chief of the civil cabinet: as such, Valentini for the next decade was to be closely associated with the monarch's so-called camarilla ("coterie"). The new civil cabinet chief was instrumental in 1909 in securing the appointment of Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg as chancellor, and quickly became Bethmann Hollweg's closest collaborator; both men decried the fleet policy directed against Britain and instead unsuccessfully sought to evade confrontations with London.
Valentini's first major action during the Great War was to bring about the dismissal of General Erich von Falkenhayn and his replacement with the duumvirate of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff in the fall of 1916. It was Valentini who convinced a panicked Wilhelm in August 1916 that Germany had no choice but to fight the war to the bitter end, that peace would mean the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, Belgium, occupied France, and the Reich's "colonial possessions" in the east. Indeed, Valentini as early as 1915 argued that a military decision could be reached only in the east. He opposed the resumption of unrestricted sub-marine warfare in January 1917 as a blatant attempt by the navy to cover up its erroneous fleet policy; he noted in his diary on January 9: "finis Germaniael"
In May 1917, Valentini, although as a staunch conservative opposed to parliamentarization of the Reich, firmly stood up against Hindenburg-Ludendorff's schemes to dismiss Bethmann Hollweg, informing the kaiser that such a step would be political folly. But in the end the military clique carried the day and Wilhelm sadly noted to Valentini: "I am supposed to dismiss that man who stands head and shoulders above all the others." Valentini, for his part, managed with the help of General Hans von Plessen to secure the candidacy of Georg Michaelis as chancellor.
With Bethmann Hollweg's dismissal, the military next trained its guns on Valentini. When Michaelis' successor, Count Georg von Hertling, appointed the liberal parliamentarian Friedrich von Payer as vice chancellor, the court was outraged and convinced that Valentini was the prime mover behind the apparent creeping parliamentarization. In January 1918, Hindenburg and Ludendorff joined the attack on Valentini. Still the kaiser refused to dismiss the civil cabinet chief. Crown Prince Wilhelm referred to Valentini as the "evil spirit of the monarchy," but again Wilhelm stood fast. Finally, Hindenburg and Ludendorff planted articles in the press to the effect that Valentini was a traitor because he had reputedly commented that the naval battle at the Skagerrak in May 1916 had precluded any separate peace with Britain. By January 15, 1918, the two generals as well as the crown prince confronted the kaiser with a cruel choice: either Valentini went or Hindenburg and Ludendorff would resign. Valentini yielded the next day rather than force such a brutal decision on the monarch, and a bitter Wilhelm informed the army's candidate as Valentini's replacement, Friedrich Wilhelm von Berg: "I have been asked to make you chief of the civil cabinet." It was the bitter truth; not the monarch but rather the two generals were the arbiters of the Hohenzollem Reich. Valentini died at Hameln on December 18, 1925.