The Freiburg Writers' Group

Suddenly a date in my calendar started to blink in red, announcing a scheduled Freiburg Writers' Group (FWG) meeting, and I hadn't even started my homework. Yes, our charming mistress of ceremonies had told us in June to write something about an item lost in the past and suddenly regained. Had she in mind Milton's paradise or Proust's madeleine?

In spring, I joined the FWG organized by Carl-Schurz-Haus. Already the first meeting impressed me. There were students and older English, German, and even Italian mother tongues eager to become writers in Shakespeare's idiom. 

Should I admit that my interests are different? Being a writer neither of novels nor poems but of prosaic blogs, I want to profit as much as possible on grammar and style. Nevertheless, I bow my head to the demand of my mistress. Here is my story about my item lost and regained.

Being late with my work, I decided to make a virtue of necessity and turned my homework into a blog.

Trying to avoid my children will have to dispose of the things I have accumulated in my life, I started reducing the number of my books and found one titled: Ein Musketier von Potsdam. I had read the book as a child and now sat down to reread it.

Hansgeorg Buchholtz writes about a legendary Lange Kerls (tall guys) who served the Soldier King and his son Frederick of Prussia. 

In this book, a simple soldier remembers the days when he was drilled for the pleasure of Frederick William, for whom his children - as he called his tall guys - were too precious to be abused in a war. 

But the musketeer also remembers when as a sergeant, he was crippled in one of the many battles that the Soldier King's son, the Great Frederick, fought for his personal glory.

Red Baron counts Frederick the Great among the greatest warmongers in history, together with Louis XIV, Napoleon, and Hitler. 

Still, Frederick was venerated as "the" German character who never gave up fighting at the time of my youth. Although his enemies were overwhelming, he kept the motto: Viel Feind', viel Ehr' (Many enemies, much honor).

As an adult, I read the book differently, seeing not so much the Prussian king but the simple people deeply rooted in their Protestant faith suffering as loyal subjects from the repercussions of Frederick's many wars. Although written in the Third Reich, it is quite an honest book. I decided to keep it.

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