The nephew was a poor horseman with a habit of falling off on staff rides and, worse, a follower of Christian Science with a side interest in anthroposophism and other cults. For this unbecoming weakness in a Prussian officer he was considered “soft”; what is more, he painted, played the cello, carried Goethe’s Faust in his pocket, and had begun a translation of Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
