Austria
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Karl Schulmeister- Napoleon’s Dog
Karl Schulmeister is shrouded in mystery like most spies. He claimed he was descended from Hungarian nobility, but he was born a clergyman’s son in Alsace. He doesn’t really arrive in the historical record until he began as an agent in the service of Austria. He was a smuggler, and apparently a good one and had all kinds of contacts on the French side of the lines. It was 1804 and war was brewing between France and Austria. One of his contacts, General Anne-Jean-Marie-Rene Savary, was aide-de-camp to Napoleon and recruited him to work for Napoleon. A spy was born. Schulmeister excelled as a spy and in 1805 was presented…
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The Great War, Cause and Effect
On this, the 102nd anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War, I thought I would offer a quick synopsis of the political climate and so forth that led to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife the Duchess Sophia, and the ensuing declaration of war. I also wanted to add a few details as to the aftermath, when the guns finally fell silent over four years later. Following a series of deaths in his family, including his son Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889 in a double murder/suicide, and the execution of his brother Maximillian in Mexico after his failed attempts at establishing a monarchy with Napoleon…
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Magic Beans- The History of Coffee
Java. Cup of Joe. My reason for living. These are all euphemisms for that most delicious of things- a cup of coffee. But how did coffee become the popular pick me up it is today? There is a legend that coffee was first discovered by an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi around 850. While out with his flock, he noticed that his goats were eating red cherry-like berries off a plant and afterward they were always frolicking and full of energy. Kaldi tried the fruit and had a similar reaction. A local monk observed Kaldi and his goats, and took some of the fruit back to his monastery and shared…
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Carlos II- The Bewitched King
When Carlos was born on November 6, 1661 there was universal rejoicing in Spain that there was a legitimate male heir. What they did not realize that Carlos had grave health issues. The child was not expected to live long. Along with mandibular prognathism, a.k.a. the Hapsburg lip (his lower jaw being larger than his upper) which made him unable to chew food properly, his oversized tongue left him prone to drooling and he didn’t learn to speak until he was four years old. Although he was treated like an infant, Carlos survived. He was breast fed by a series of wet nurses until he was six, however, some reports…
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Nuremberg’s Secret Vault
Walter W. Horn was exactly the kind of man the Nazis wanted to recruit- good looking, educated, athletic and descended from five generations of Germans. However, Walter Horn wanted no part of them. As a professor of art history at the University of Heidelberg, he watched the rise of the Nazis with horror. As a historian, he was being called upon to declare the superiority of the German race. He hedged. Academics at that time were being forced into a special branch of the SS to dedicate themselves to proving German superiority. Horn was on their list to press gang next. In 1934, he took the chance and attempted to…
