Foreign Secretary

On 17 January 1906, he was appointed Secretary of State, succeeding the late Oswald von Richthofen. He served until October 1907, when he was succeeded by Wilhelm von Schoen.^[2] Shortly before the start of his term of office, the Algeciras Conference took place on 16 January 1906, at which the solution to the First Moroccan Crisis was decided. When, contrary to the original agreements, Franco-Spanish naval actions took place off Morocco at the end of 1906, he declared in the Reichstag in Berlin on 7 December 1906 that the Reich government saw no reason to intervene because of the naval actions. On the same day, the French National Assembly passed the Algeciras Act.

As foreign minister, he also signed the so-called Optant Agreement with his Danish colleague Johan Henrik von Hegermann-Lindencrone on 11 January 1907. He eliminated the tensions that had existed in the North Schleswig border region since the German-Danish War of 1864. The agreement gave a small group of Danes in North Schleswig the option to choose between German and Danish citizenship.^[3]

Ambassador in Vienna

After his term as Foreign Secretary, he was appointed Ambassador to Vienna, and served until his death there in 1916. on 13 December 1913, he discussed a war against France and Russia with representatives of the Triple Alliance (the German Empire, Austro-Hungary, Italy). He and the Austro-Hungarian Chief of Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, took the view that the situation of the Triple Alliance in Europe would deteriorate. On the other side would be the Triple Entente, between the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, who joined forces.