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20 D Chapter Four d FAther The tragic expression in Ulrich von Sell’s deep-set gray eyes was not only the result of the war. In the life of the thirty-five-year-old war veteran, grief and sorrow had begun early. His all too brief childhood ended on the day the sensitive eight-year old, small for his age, was sent to the Kadettenanstalt in Berlin-Lichterfelde, one of the renowned military academies reserved for the Prussian elite. His father, General Wilhelm von Sell, with the drooping moustache and slightly pinched, watery blue eyes, resembling a benign seal, had been successful in climbing almost to the top of the military ladder. His paternal grandfather, born only five years after the death of the Great Frederick, Prussia’s legendary ruler, had served his monarch as a General of the Infantry and later as Lord Chamberlain and cabinet member at the court of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who eventually rewarded the nobleman for his excellent services with the hereditary title of a baron. The family coat of arms proudly displayed two three-pointed crowns, one in the left upper and the other in the right lower corner, opposite each a staff with a coronet-adorned serpent coiled around it. Above this impressive crest was the baron’s crown, with its seven peaks.4 At the advanced age of forty, he surprised his friends by falling in love with Hedwig von Rosenstiel from Marienwalde, an estate of vast dimensions in West Prussia. Her father , Wilhelm von Rosenstiel, whose ancestors had, centuries before, come across the Baltic Sea from Sweden, saw himself faced with the awesome task of having to marry off three daughters who, in family circles, were named“the intelligent one,”“the kind one,”and“the beautiful one.” Hedwig was neither overly intelligent nor particularly kind, but her beauty was undisputed, Looming over her cheerful little husband with the bulbous nose that became redder as the years proceeded, she looked down on him with a slightly pitying and patronizing expression in her cool eyes. His proposal had been considered a great honor by her overjoyed parents, because the marriage would provide the eighteen-year-old maiden of Prussian gentry with the enviable title of a baroness. From this rather odd union would spring four handsome boys who,as soon as they had been taught to read and write by private tutors, as was customary in the circles of the elite, were shipped off to a military academy. The second son, Ulrich Adolf Wilhelm Günther, met with this cruel fate shortly after his eighth birthday. Tearful pleas to spare him fell on deaf ears. After all, how was a Prussian general supposed to finance the education of four sons in accordance with the status his rank and social position demanded? With the military academies tuition-free for the They even Closed The Candy sTore 21 offspring of aristocratic Prussian officers, who could afford to forego this unique chance, this supreme honor? Law and strict order prevailed within the high walls of the institution behind which the little boys disappeared. Sentiments, feelings of any kind, were considered a luxury and were to be left behind at the clothing depot, where the new cadets received their uniforms. “The foremost lesson you will learn is obedience!”—this sentence was drummed into the cadets’ears several times daily—“Only once you have learned to obey, can you give orders.” The whole atmosphere,the spirit of the new surroundings,was characterized by commands on one side and obedience on the other, amounting to brutal contempt for simple human dignity. Discipline, merciless drill, and blind obedience marked a cadet’s life from six in the morning until dark, with hardly a minute to relax. From the day of his arrival, Ulrich endured a living hell. The true meaning of utter helplessness became only too clear to the unhappy child who,despising physical violence, found himself the target of frequent vile and cruel attacks by big bullies. More than once, he would seriously consider suicide as the only way out of his misery. Twice a year, for Christmas and during the summer, the cadets were allowed to travel home. The first half of the vacation was needed to recuperate from the hardships of military life, after which the all too fast approaching date of return to the hated place cast its dark shadows over the remaining weeks. In his mother’s opinion, all these alleged hardships...

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