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43 D Chapter Ten d the godFAther Having mastered the art of writing, I finally found myself in the position to do what I had planned for years, to inform my father’s employer, my little brother’s imperial godfather in faraway Holland, about me. So far he had ignored my existence, directing valuable gifts for Christmas and birthdays exclusively to his godson,who on account of his pudgy cheeks was never called by one of his impressive five first names, but“Dicker”which, in plain language, meant “Fatso.” Determined to rectify this situation, I tore a page from my school writing pad,asked my mother for an envelope,and proceeded to compose a letter to Germany’s last monarch,which I dared not entrust to the mail,but boldly handed to my father for personal delivery the next time he went to Doorn. In 1933, even though my father was still conservative in his political thinking, he was dead set against the Hohenzollern clan’s ambitions to regain access to the throne. But deep in his heart, he felt compassion for the lonely old man in his self-chosen exile, who, after his plunge into obscurity,continued to live in a make-believe world in a make-believe court atmosphere. My father felt a strong duty to protect his master not only from the disastrous influences of those in his entourage, headed by an ambitious wife, but also from himself. After the kaiser’s devoted wife,the EmpressAugusteViktoria,died in 1921,the old man was so distraught that his friends feared for his life. They arranged a visit to Doorn by the widowed Princess Hermine of Schoenaich-Carolath,née Princess Reuss.Wilhelm fell into their trap; only nineteen months after his wife’s demise, he married the princess, twenty-eight years his junior, and insisted she be called “her majesty.” Too late, the bridegroom discovered that Hermine was quarrelsome, scheming, and downright malicious. She would leave no stone unturned, including approaching the Nazis, to ascend the throne of Germany.11 As I became older, I overheard remarks not meant for my ears, which caused me to wonder if the bond between the two men was really just incidental. Illicit alliances had always been part of life at the courts, certainly not excluding the Hohenzollerns, where the mistresses and their illegitimate offspring received settlements of estates and titles. Not even Wilhelm I, the kaiser’s revered grandfather, had exactly been a pillar of virtue. Neither had the kaiser himself. It was among my father’s duties to take care of the various financial obligations, including alimony payments to an undisclosed number of out-of-wedlock descendants from as far back as the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. My maternal grandmother bore a striking resemblance to Queen Victoria, her light-blue eyes a trademark of the Hohenzollerns. ParT one 44 Daily life in Doorn resembled that of a ruling court,of miniature proportions.The kaiser continued to bestow medals of merit to deserving underlings.There were even courtiers and sinister intrigues, fortunately not dangerous enough anymore to cause a world crisis, but instead remained tempests in a teapot. If it had not been for the 1919 law doing away with aristocratic titles, the ex-sovereign would probably have issued new patents of nobility . Unlike in Austria, where even the “von” was stricken from a noble name, the change in Germany had not been so drastic,simply declaring a title as part of one’s name.This meant that my father was not to be called Baron Ulrich von Sell anymore, but Ulrich Baron von Sell. It was that simple, and nobody was too offended. Among His Majesty’s favorite hobbies in exile was one that did not exactly meet with the undivided joy of his guests.He had gotten into the habit of felling trees by the hundreds. Their trunks, after being stacked in a corner of the park, were sawed by hand and chopped by axe into logs of firewood. All this was only partially accomplished by the kaiser himself , so his guests were invited to chip in. All male visitors were to report to the shed early in the morning and were put to work regardless of age, profession, or rank, most of them aghast at such a proposition. Nobody was exempt, not even princes, counts, barons, statesmen , physicians, or scientists. The only known exception was my father, who for once in his life had...

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