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6 D Chapter One d September 1914 Sweltering heat hovered over the German town of Potsdam on this late summer day when a black coach, pulled by four black horses, its curtains tightly drawn, came to a halt on the cobblestones in front of a modest villa with a little garden in front.The somber-looking vehicle ,with the silver imperial insignia on the doors,the coachman’s hat,and the saddle cloths of the four horses with their silver bridles, was all too well known in this most prominent Prussian garrison town. It was the private coach of her majesty, Empress Auguste Viktoria, spouse of Wilhelm II of Hohenzollern, Emperor of Germany, King of Prussia, the“Kaiser.” Helpedbyafootman,atall,black-clad,andblack-veiledladyemergedfromwithin.Wherever the imperial coach appeared during these days since the outbreak of war,people would stop in the street,turn around, sadly shake their heads,and whisper: Another one! Another one! The empress, a kind and sensitive soul, had decided that it was her duty to personally inform the families of those officers in the Imperial First Guard, the kaiser’s own regiment, that their son, husband, father, or brother had died a hero’s death for emperor and fatherland on the battlefield. She was, in fact, a messenger of death. On this fateful late summer day,AugusteViktoria walked alone through the small front yard,stepped into the villa,and was received by a curtsying maid.Seconds later,the twentythree -year-old lady of the house learned that her young and cheerful husband,his majesty’s First Lieutenant Baron Ernst von Hohenstein, had fallen, together with his white horse, in the battle at St. Quentin on August 29, 1914. The widowed baroness, Augusta Bertha Ottilie Helene, born in the Alsatian town of Colmar in 1891, was the fifth of seven children of Konrad and Helene von Brauchitsch, née von Korn-Rudelsdorf. Her father, General Konrad Louis Eduard von Brauchitsch, commander of the Alsatian garrison, which in those days was part of the German Reich, had followed in his illustrious forefathers’footsteps,choosing the traditional military career and, with apparent ease, climbed the ladder all the way to the top. The general had every reason to be proud of his family, which could authentically be traced back to Charlemagne.An adventurous ancestor from Russia by the name of Velislaus von Brocovice had made his way west.Around the turn of the millennium,the descendants of this noble dynasty were noted as robber knights and eventually became military leaders and statesmen.A considerable number of his relatives,Konrad not among them,still owned vast estates in the east of the German Reich. They even Closed The Candy sTore 7 My mother was a pretty little girl with cascades of chestnut-colored curls and the family ’s traditional light-blue eyes. Nobody would pay any attention to her complaints about frequent and nagging headaches, which later developed into migraine attacks that would haunt her for the rest of her life. She should pull herself together, the stern governess told her. Furthermore, in the expert opinion of tiny Frieda Hahn, there was no such thing as lamenting over not being able to do this or that; the stereotypical answer little Augusta Bertha Ottilie Helene received was “Quite simple! Just do it!” As was customary in aristocratic circles, children grew up in the care of nurses, governesses , and a variety of other more or less qualified servants. Until they were able to sit properly at the dining table, Siegfried, Hertha, Hildegard, Konrad, Augusta, Eberhard, and little Hellmut (who died at age two) took their meals separately and saw their parents only at bedtime. Children, so the general opinion ran, should rarely be seen and never heard. The general, lord and master of a large family, could have enjoyed many more years of active service, had it not been for a rather bizarre incident that ended his military career brutally, abruptly, and prematurely. During a traditional game hunt, an extremely nearsighted fellow hunter managed to mistake the imposing figure of the commander for that of a deer, firing a generous load of buckshot into his unfortunate victim’s head. By some stroke of luck this did not cause life-threatening injuries,yet entailed a disaster of monstrous dimensions. In spite of all efforts, the doctors were unable to remove all of the tiny pellets embedded within his noble scalp; the general discovered to his horror that he was unable to wear...

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