Count von Götzen was born into a comital family at their main residence, Scharfeneck Castle, back then in the Kingdom of Prussia.

In 1892, having been made an officer in the War academy, Götzen travelled to the Ottoman Empire with Major Walther von Diest [de].

The Tanganyikan coast proved relatively easy, but conquest of the inland areas of the colony - right up to the Belgian Congo - was more difficult as large parts were still unexplored.

His group travelled right through Rwanda, meeting the mwami (king) Kigeli IV Rwabugiri at his palace in Kageyo, and eventually reaching Lake Kivu, the western edge of the kingdom.

The Foreign Office, keen to avoid a colonial scandal, accepted Götzen's report, and he retired ostensibly on the grounds of ill health.

In early 1907 he was offered the minor post of a German envoy to Hamburg in which his duties would involve mostly accompanying the Kaiser through the city.

This lighter amount of work gave Götzen the opportunity to publish a book DEUTSCH-OSTAFRIKA IM AUFSTAND, 1905-1906.

In 1924 on instructions from Winston Churchill, salvage operations by the Royal Navy succeeded in refloating the ship and in 1927 she returned to service as the M.V.

[7] Comparing von Götzen's actions to the Herero and Nama genocide, Mark Levene writes: "Operating with many fewer Schutzgruppe, considerably less money and appreciably less self-aggrandisement, von Götzen achieved essentially the same results by an entirely more effective but much less spectacular strategy than that initially adopted by his South-West African counterpart: starvation.