Fire and Steel, Volume 1 Read online

  It wasn’t really a surprise to Inga. Hans had often talked of this, and always it was with a consuming passion. Von Bismarck was no longer Chancellor of the German Empire—he was in his eighties now and rumored to be in failing health—but that did not lessen his stature one iota. But to put such a ponderous name on an infant seemed . . . was it too pretentious? Too pompous? She wasn’t sure. She just didn’t like it.

  “Well?” he prodded. “What do you think?”

  She jumped a little, realizing she had gotten lost in her thoughts. What was it he had asked? Ah, yes. A name for their son. She nodded, choosing her words very carefully. “I think Otto von Bismarck is a grand name. He was a great general.”

  “Ja, ja,” Hans blurted. “That and so much more.”

  How could she say what was troubling her? She wasn’t sure, but she had to try. “Hans?”

  “Yes?”

  “How old were you when your father went to France?”

  “In the Franco-Prussian War, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “The war began in 1870, so I would have been ten. Why?”

  “Do you remember much about the war?”

  “Ja, I do. I remember how handsome Father looked in his uniform, with gold braid on his shoulders and this enormously long saber at his waist. I thought that he was the grandest thing I had ever seen. Every day after he went off to war, my friends and my younger brother and sisters and I would play games. I was the oldest, so I was always von Bismarck. We made the youngest ones be the French.”

  “With a name like Otto von Bismarck, what if our son grows up wanting to be a soldier?”

  He gave her a blank look. Where had that come from?

  Seeing his reaction, she decided to change the subject again. “Do you think Germany will ever go to war again, Hans?”

  It worked. Inga knew her husband prided himself on his knowledge of history. Turning to fully face her, like a teacher preparing to address a struggling pupil, Hans reached out and took her hand. “Nein. Bismarck has made Germany strong. No one dares attack us now. I read in the paper just the other day that Kaiser Wilhelm is determined that Germany shall have its own navy so that the Fatherland can defend itself from the other naval powers like France, England, and Spain.”

  “And America.”

  “Nein,” he laughed. “America is not a naval power, mein Liebling.” The very thought of that made him laugh. “Never.”

  Totally oblivious to the fact that he had just made his wife feel foolish—a common habit of his—Hans suddenly guessed where she was going with this. “Are you thinking that perhaps our little Otto may have to go off to war as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps he will,” he mused. “But that may happen no matter what we name him. And if it does, then he shall serve his Fatherland well.” He gave her a pointed look. “And we will both be proud if he does, ja?”

  Inga took a quick breath. It was not her nature to stand up to Hans, especially when he was so sure that he was right, but this was important to her. And the fact that he refused to even consider her feelings irritated her. “But what if he chooses to be a career soldier instead of a dairyman? What then?”

  Incredulous, Hans just shook his head. “All because of a name?”

  “If the name makes no difference, why do you insist on calling him that?”

  But his mind was already racing ahead of her. “Besides, Bismarck was so much more than a great general. He is the father of the German nation. What if our son decided that was what he wanted to do with his life? Think of the social insurance programs Bismarck initiated—old-age pensions, accident insurance, state-provided medical care, and unemployment insurance. He has made Germany a model for other countries. He is not only the father of the German Empire, he is the father of the first government to care for its poor and needy.” He flashed her a smile. “I would even let my son leave the farm if he were to do something like that.”

  She sniffed, knowing that she had lost, but she was not yet quite ready to let it go. “When you called yourself von Bismarck when you were ten, was it because he was a great statesman?”

  Before he could answer, she slipped out of bed, went to him, and took the baby from his arms. “He will be waking soon, and hungry.” She sat down in the other rocking chair, smiling as the baby frowned at being disturbed. “He looks so much like you, Hans. I would like to name him after you.”

  That did what she had hoped. It totally took him aback. He had thought of that, of course, but the birth of this little boy was such a glorious thing in his sight that he felt the infant needed a name grand enough to inspire him to greatness. Hans was a very common name. He couldn’t think of anyone famous or great named Hans, other than Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish writer of fairy tales. There was hardly any glory in that.

  “Do you really think we should?”

  “Yes! I want him to look up at you and think, ‘I am named for my father. I want to grow up and be like my father.’”

  “Go on,” he laughed. “Boys don’t say things like that.” Then, after a moment—“Do they?”

  “Of course they do. I want him to. What if we called him Hans Otto Eckhardt. Then, when he’s older we could tell him that he was also named for Otto von Bismarck.”

  There was a soft grunt. It wasn’t a sound of surrender. Not yet.

  “Or,” she cut in before he could protest further, “we could call him Hans Otto von Bismarck Eckhardt if you like. But I fear other boys will make fun of him with a cumbersome name like that. But whatever else, I want to call him Hans.”

  He peered at her, his eyes hooded as he mulled the idea over in his mind. Then abruptly he got to his feet, looking up at the clock. “I think I will get dressed and go out and do the milking. It’s almost five.”

  “Does that mean yes?” she teased.

  To her surprise, he walked over, bent down, and kissed her on the forehead. “Danke schön,” he murmured. “Thank you for giving me a son. If you wish to name him after me, I will not object.”

  • • •

  The irony dawned on Inga only as the years passed. The morning after Little Hans had been born, she had stubbornly resisted her husband’s desire to name their son Otto von Bismarck Eckhardt because she dreaded the idea that it might inspire him to become a professional soldier. So they had finally compromised and called him Hans Otto.

  And yet, almost everything the father had done since then seemed to set his son’s feet on a path that would eventually take him out of the milking stalls. They tried for another son or even a little sister for Little Hans, but it never happened, so Little Hans got all of his father’s pride and affection. He was also shamelessly spoiled by his older sisters. It surprised Inga how easily her daughters accepted that Little Hans was somehow superior to them and held a more important place in the family.

  It quickly became evident that he was an unusual boy. His habit of eating like a little piglet every time he nursed soon had him rolling in baby fat. The village grocer’s wife called him “Thunder Boy,” which delighted his father to no end. But beneath the fat was a strong, muscular body, and, to everyone’s surprise, he started to walk at nine months. By the time he reached his first birthday he was running everywhere. Or perhaps more accurately, he was falling forward and his feet had to run to keep him from going down, but either way, the baby fat quickly melted away.

  On the other hand, Little Hans didn’t start talking until he was nearly two. That was not because he wasn’t intelligent. Just the opposite. He quickly learned to get people to do his bidding by pointing and uttering a series of grunts and growls. This so delighted his father that he started calling him Kleine Bär, Little Bear. Inga didn’t like it, but it quickly stuck, and before long even she started calling him Kleine Bär.

  The blond hair came in thick and long. The light blue eyes never darkened. His hands were huge like his father’s, and by the time he was six he could milk three cows, one after another, without stopping.
That was something his father had not been able to do until he was eight. “He’ll be milking the whole herd before he’s ten,” he would tell anyone who would listen.

  So what did his father do? He left the milking to the three older sisters and sent Hans to elementary school in Oberammergau. The girls attended the much smaller school in Graswang just long enough to learn to read and write, like their mother, and then they were brought home to help run the farm.

  But the school in Oberammergau had a real schoolmaster who had been trained in Munich. And they separated the students by age to give them more individual attention. It cost five marks per term. Inga protested. Despite how much she wanted a good education for her son, she felt that was well beyond their means. Hans refused to listen. “He is gifted, Inga. We both know that. How can he achieve his destiny if he is not educated?”

  She tried one last shot. “I thought his destiny was to inherit the farm when you and I are too old to carry on any longer.”

  “This is not a woman’s concern,” he snapped. Then, glaring at her, he turned away.

  • • •

  Little Hans started school in the fall of his sixth year. The following year his father bought him a bicycle so that he would not have to walk the two miles each way. He became the only child in the village to have his own bicycle.

  Somewhere around that same time, his father dropped the Little Bear nickname, considering it too childish, and began calling him Hans Otto. Inga was wise enough not to fight him on it, but she stubbornly refused to do so herself. As her son left babyhood and became a strapping young lad, she changed “Little Hans” to “Young Hans,” to distinguish him from his father, but she never once called him Hans Otto. Sadly, Young Hans liked the double name, and soon everyone was calling him that except Inga.

  Though she resented the money it took to keep Hans in school, Inga had to admit that he was thriving on his education. His appetite for learning was insatiable. He was forever asking questions, to the point that his sisters would sometimes beg their mother to make him shut up. On the other hand, the schoolmaster, Herr Holzer, encouraged the curiosity by giving Hans his copy of the weekly Munich newspaper after he was done with it. Hans devoured each copy, and soon the family conversation around the supper table changed significantly in nature. Young Hans was forever sharing fascinating tidbits of information he had gleaned from the papers.

  “Mama, do you know what a hamburger is?”

  “Nein. Someone from Hamburg?”

  “No, Mama, it is a new food. It was introduced in America at a great exhibition. It is chopped beef made into a patty and then fried. It is served between two slices of bread. Doesn’t that sound good, Mama?”

  “And why do they call it a hamburger?” Papa asked, a twinkle in his eye, thinking he might stump the boy.

  “Because it was invented by German immigrants from Hamburg, I think.”

  A few months later, he had just stuffed some fried eggs in his mouth when he turned to his father and blurted, “Papa? Guess what? In America they have made a new motor bicycle. They call it a hog.”

  “A hog?” his youngest sister said, wrinkling her nose. “You mean like a pig?”

  Irritated at the interruption, Hans quickly went on. “Yes. It doesn’t say why they call it that. Its real name is Harley-Davidson, after the names of its designers. But it says one of the engineers was from Germany. Why wouldn’t they put his name on it too?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” his father replied. “Perhaps the Americans do not wish to give anyone from Germany the credit.”

  January 25, 1904—Graswang Village

  Anything mechanical particularly fascinated Young Hans. One weekend morning a few weeks before Hans’s eighth birthday, Inga came downstairs to start the fire in the cooking stove. When she looked up to check the time, the cuckoo clock was gone from the wall. Puzzled, she asked her husband about it. He was as baffled as she was. The girls knew nothing either. Then they realized that Hans Otto was still in his room. That is where they found the clock, totally in pieces carefully spread out on the bed. Threatened with decades of punishment, a tearful Hans kept saying over and over, “I just wanted to see how it works, Papa. I can put it back together again.” It took two days of Hans sleeping on the floor so as not to “mess up” the parts, but when the clock appeared back on the wall, to everyone’s astonishment, it worked.

  On this particular day, with the afternoon sun already low over the horizon, Young Hans came bursting through the door waving the newspaper wildly over his head. His face was red with the cold, and he was puffing heavily. He stopped, bent over for a moment to catch his breath, and then looked up.

  “They flew, Mama! They flew through the air!”

  His father stuck his head out from the bedroom. “Who flew?”

  Hans Otto opened the paper and spread it out on the table. Everyone gathered around. “Some men named Wright. In America. They own a bicycle shop and built a machine with great wings made of cloth, with a petrol engine to pull it. And it flew through the air, Papa. Can you believe it? Men flying like birds.”

  His oldest sister snorted in disgust. “Cloth wings? You can’t believe everything you read in the newspaper, Hans Otto. Don’t be such a dummkopf.”

  He gave her a pitying look and then stabbed at the newsprint. “Look! There is a picture.”

  As they all leaned over to look, Hans turned to his father. “They flew 852 feet, Papa. They were in the air for almost a full minute.” His eyes were bright with excitement. “Can you believe it, Papa? Men flying through the air like birds.”

  “I still think it is a hoax,” his sister said.

  “Of course you would,” he said in disgust. “You have no imagination whatsoever.”

  The next day, Hans Otto had a quick bite of supper then disappeared, saying something about homework. But when Inga went up to see how he was doing, he wasn’t in his room.

  They found him in the barn, a kerosene lantern hanging from a nail above him. His father’s toolbox was to one side, with tools scattered all around it. But that was not what made his father swear as he pulled up short. “Hans Otto! What have you done?”

  Kind of a foolish question, Inga thought, as she gaped at what lay before them. The bicycle had been completely disassembled and laid out in neat semicircles around Young Hans.

  “I’m trying to figure out how to make a flying machine from my bicycle,” Hans explained.

  In this case, putting it back together was beyond him. That Saturday, Hans Senior and Hans Junior loaded the whole of it into their milk cart and drove into Oberammergau to the bicycle shop there. More money! Inga thought as she watched them drive away. And yet, there was this quiet pride as well. Hans was right. This was an unusual boy.

  The bicycle shop owner could hardly believe his eyes when they showed him what Young Hans had done. Then he started to laugh. In a moment, he was laughing so hard that tears came to his eyes. “What is so funny?” the older Hans snapped, not much amused.

  “I did the same thing when I was a boy,” he said. “And I got a whipping for it. Now I have my own bicycle shop.” Then he turned to Young Hans. “If it is all right with your parents, you can come here on Saturdays and I will teach you how to put your bicycle back together.”

  That night, with great solemnity, Hans Otto announced to his family that he had found his life’s occupation. Inga couldn’t help it. She laughed merrily. “What? To assemble bicycles?”

  “No, Mama. I’m going to be an engineer. And I am going to make a motor bicycle that is the best in the world. Better than the Harley-Davidson. And it’s going to have a German name on it. I’m going to call it the Eckhardt Cycle.”

  _______________

  Chapter Notes

  Passion Play

  The history of how the Passion Play came to be in Oberammergau is accurately portrayed here. It was last performed in 2010, when 102 performances were given over a period of five months. The production takes place in a covered outdoo
r theater that seats over 4,700 people. In all, about half a million people attended the play that year. The performances involved more than 2,000 performers, musicians, and stage technicians. Only those born in the village or those who have lived there at least twenty years can participate. It is considered a great honor to be chosen to play the role of Jesus.

  The stage itself is large enough to accommodate flocks of sheep and Roman soldiers riding on horses. The performance takes about five hours—three hours in the morning, then two more in the afternoon after a three-hour meal break. It will next be performed in 2020, and tickets are already available for reservation. That performance will celebrate 386 years that the villagers have been keeping their vow.

  In 1934, shortly after the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, a jubilee performance of the Passion Play was held, it being the 300th anniversary of its origins. The Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda saw it as a wonderful opportunity to propagandize and insisted that the official poster include the message Deutschland ruft dich! (Germany is calling you!). The official party line described it as “a peasant drama . . . inspired by the consecrating power of the soil.” Hitler attended one performance and wholeheartedly endorsed it as being one with the Greater Anti-Semitic Agenda of the Nazi regime. An attempt to have the script rewritten to bring it in line with Nazi ideology was rejected, however.

  It is generally agreed that up to that time, the play had strong anti-Semitic elements that blamed the Jews for the “murder” of Christ. Following World War II, numerous changes were made in the script, which softened the role the Jews played in Christ’s final days and put the blame for His actual death on the Romans.

  The only time the Passion Play has not been performed as scheduled was in 1940, one year after World War II began (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberammergau_Passion_Play#Nazi_exploitation).

  German Language Issues

  This first volume in the series centers on a German family living in Bavaria in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Clearly, they speak German and are culturally German. But the vast majority of my audience speaks primarily English, so I have made several adjustments for the convenience of the reader.