He demanded compensation in an aggressive saber-rattling fashion, sent a warship to the scene and whipped up nationalist sentiment inside Germany.

[1] The son of a banker from Wurttemberg, Robert Kiderlen, and Baroness Marie von Waechter, he was born in Stuttgart.

Kiderlen-Waechter fought as a volunteer in the Franco-German War (1870–1871) and then studied at different universities and retained throughout his subsequent career a good deal of the jovial manner of a German student (burschikos).

He was minister in the free city of Hamburg in 1894 and was a diplomat stationed in Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, Paris and Constantinople.

Kiderlen-Waechter conducted negotiations in 1911 during the Agadir Crisis and was severely criticised both at home and abroad for his provocative attitude in the Panther incident, which had triggered it.

His personal papers are held in the Manuscripts and Archives division of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University.