Embellished with a gilded iguana and a bouquet of fruits topped with a pineapple, an ostentatious piece of queer history was sold on April 24 for €300,000 ($350,000) at the Berlin branch of Germany's Lempertz auction house. The just over 116-centimeter-tall porcelain vase is thought to have been made as a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last emperor of Germany, to his friend Prince Philipp of Eulenburg-Hertefeld.
Little known about today, the relationship between the Kaiser and the prince was at the center of a scandal, the so-called Eulenburg Affair, that German historian Norman Domeier, says shook all of Europe to the core and transformed public opinion on the monarchy.
Wilhelm II ascended to the German throne in 1888. As Kaiser, Wilhelm had a reputation as a feckless, insecure and erratic leader obsessed with his own press coverage, who developed increasingly authoritarian tendencies.
