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60 D Chapter Fifteen d royAl SonS Several times a year,a sleek sports car would roar down our quiet street,coming to a screeching halt in front of the house.“Little Willy”would emerge from the car,without a chauffeur and usually unannounced, an event that caused my mother extreme anxiety. His Imperial Highness—casual, lanky, and totally carefree—loved surprises. He always turned up without his wife, a habit having something to do with Crown Princess Cäcilie being a very, very “poor lady.”For a while I wondered if her husband did not give her enough allowance,until it dawned on me that this poverty had nothing to do with a lack of finances. The crown prince, who never failed to ingratiate himself to us by extracting English drops from the deep pockets of his elegant English trench coat,addressed my father with the familiar“du.”He loved teasing my father for working so hard.His Highness used to inquire why he did not play tennis instead. Such tactless remarks, coming from someone who had neverperformedaday’sworkinhislife,rightfullyinfuriatedmyfather,who,throughhardlabor and financial expertise,had been able to considerably increase the Hohenzollern fortune. Moreover, the prince seemed to forget that, during those first crucial months after the kaiser’s abdication,it had been Ulrich von Sell whom his father had called for help,begging him to spend many nights at Cecilienhof Castle in Potsdam to protect the imperial family from Communist assassins. Adding insult to injury, Little Willy had nicknamed him General Leichenbitter,“General Undertaker,”referring to my father’s special weakness for funerals . The nickname stuck. My father’s obsession with burials may have had something to do with the sad fact that the bodies of two of his fallen brothers had no graves.Or could it have been some dark foreboding that he himself would not have one either? One of the imperial princes who never honored us with his presence was August Wilhelm , the fourth son of the kaiser and a constant source of irritation and anger for the old man in Doorn. He had decided to ignore his father’s stern warnings, usually conveyed to him by my unfortunate father, and paraded around the country in one of his brown uniforms , never missing a Nazi rally. It was no secret that his wife,Alexandra Viktoria, the former Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg, was a bit lax in her view of the sanctity of marriage, which ultimately led to the couple’s divorce. My mother had nicknamed her“the lollipop”—on which men had sucked. My father had no illusions about the Hohenzollerns’ attitude toward the new regime in general and that of“her majesty”in particular.In pursuit of the burning desire to see her They even Closed The Candy sTore 61 husband, with her at his side, on the throne again, she would do anything that brought her closer to her goal. If flattering Adolf Hitler and his gang was part of the game, she would gladly play it. Emperor by Hitler’s grace? My father shuddered. All he could do was try and prevent the worst, like barring August Wilhelm from appearing in Doorn for his father’s birthday in a storm trooper’s swastika-adorned outfit. Several times during the year, the kaiser’s fifth son, Oskar, came for tea. His wife Ina Marie had been born Countess Bassewitz, so their marriage was considered a morganatic one by the Hohenzollern statutes. While the outraged imperial father did not quite cut the family ties, he had barred the prince from a possible, although most unlikely, succession to the throne.“Oskars,”as they were referred to by my parents, detested the Nazis. My brother and I always looked forward to their visit because they never failed to bring us Swiss chocolate . Their appearance in the house was topped only by that of one other guest, the uncontested favorite among all imperial visitors,whose eagerly awaited arrival once a year was anticipated with almost the same eagerness as Christmas Eve, even in Anna’s expert opinion. The Princess Irene was the widow of the kaiser’s younger brother, Heinrich, who had died the same year we had moved to Dahlem. The princess came from the House of Hessen and bei Rhein, her sister Alexandra having married Nicholas, Russia’s last tsar.16 The first time the princess announced her forthcoming visit, my father decided that I—dressed in a brand-new white frock with...

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