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Life and times of Stein, or, Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic age (1878)
Life and times of Stein or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic age - 1878 Author:John Robert Seeley Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: that is when our hero, who was called in the family Karl, was in his 17th year, the mother succeeded in bringing about a family agreement according to which (1) ... more »the sons renounced in writing the inheritance of their father's property in favour of that one among them whom the parents should choose to marry and to continue the family; (2) the daughters were to renounce all rights of inheritance if they married into any family which was not German and knightly. This agreement was followed by the nomination, also at the instance of the mother, of Karl to the position of maintainer of the family (Stammhalter). The young Jacob, thus invidiously preferred by his mother, had for a time a difficult part to play. Esau, or the wild disinherited elder brother, could not easily put up with the loss of his birthright, but the fortunate supplanter showed both tact and firmness, and in the end the peace of the family was preserved. Before we bid farewell to the family circle in which Stein's boyhood was passed—for when the course of the narrative brings us again to the house at Nassau, it will be no longer the house of Stein's parents but his own—we may look at it through the eyes of a casual visitor who was there in 1772. This visitor was one who was to be brought in after life into such close association with Stein, that his name will reappear in this book oftener perhaps than any other except Stein's own and Napoleon's, and that of the King Frederick William III. In consideration of this I must ask the reader to allow me at this point to quit my main subject for a moment and begin another biography. Karl August,Baron von Hardenberg, was born at Essenrode ( Brunswick-Liineburg) in the year 1750, so that he was seven years older than our hero. He was of an old Hannoverian family, and his f...« less