The Poles, the Prussians, and the Pomeranians had all by now disappeared from this land. They had been swallowed into a new race. Only the Poles were left, but they had been squeezed eastward. No one outside these regions would probably even know the name Prussia before many more years.

But all the world knew of Germany. Knew of it, and trembled.

He had a cousin, the leading shipbuilder in all of Danzig; his brother, one of the most respected financiers in Berlin; and an uncle, a merchant and importer, who sailed his cousin’s ships to the far reaches of the world’s ports. But Heinrich von Dortmann had always been content with the land itself.

His father and grandfather before him had wielded extensive holdings northeast of Berlin, and he had himself found all he needed to offer satisfaction in life at the family estate a hundred and forty kilometers from the great city. He had traveled widely in Europe but had never left the continent, was well read and spoke three European languages, was content to allow his brother to monitor his finances and assets, and was viewed among many in the family as something of an unambitious anomaly in the Dortmann lineage.

No one would have dared call him a simpleton, for, though soft-spoken, he was clearly a wise and knowledgeable man of undisputed character and integrity. And the millions of reichsmarks alongside his name on the ledgers of the Reichsbank would give credibility even to a fool.

Heinrich von Dortmann was certainly no fool. There was, however, a definite naïveté present in his carriage that uncle and brother alluded to with occasional hushed tones and significant glances. He was urbane enough, sophisticated when he wanted to be, the perfect gentlemanly Prussian country squire, with enough of a business head on his shoulders to have made a handsome profit for the family coffers even during the bleak years of the early thirties. He had been to the Universität and then spent time on the best farms in Europe, learning all he could to keep the estate competitive.

But he had such odd notions. He was given to making the most peculiar statements, usually about the metaphysics and spiritual dimension of the world, as he called it. His brother declared himself unable to make heads or tails of most of Heinrich’s religious hogwash. But he put up with it as one might a child’s foolishness because Heinrich, as the elder in their branch of the line, held a controlling, though silent, share in certain of the family’s affairs which it was in brother Otto’s best interest not to have looked into too closely.