Hermann would look down from the battlements and have vi-
sions of Roman chariots and of plumed warriors galloping in the
valley. “You must come and see Veldenstein Castle,” his sister
Olga would tell people in later years. “Then you will understand
him better.”
When he was five, his father had given him a Hussar’s
uniform. And when his father’s military friends came to stay at
the castle, Hermann would play with their caps and swords in
his bedroom at night. He saw himself in sword and buckler,
jousting, crusading, triumphing always triumphing in the
end.
He was a robust child who suffered only tonsillitis and
scarlet fever. As a young man he developed arthritis, but this
would vanish never to return after his groin injury. The
education begun in his parental home was continued at Furth in
; his collected papers included reports from Furth Private
Boys’ School dated March and July , . It was a Catholic
school (he was born and confirmed, in , as a Protestant),
but it was the closest to the castle. He did not take easily to for-
mal education, became something of a malingerer, and men-
tioned later that he was taught by a private governess after
leaving Furth. Packed off to boarding school at Ansbach in ,
he stood it for three distasteful years, then absconded back to
Veldenstein. School’s only lasting legacy was an abiding dislike of
intellectual pursuits, which inspired his scathing witticism,
“When I hear the word culture I reach for my Browning!”
Years later a psychiatrist would note that he played no
team sports and preferred singles matches in tennis, and that he
preferred too the lonelier masculine pursuits like mountaineer-
ing. In his youth he was known to lord it over the farmhands’
sons, and became their natural ringleader.
A change came over him when his father entered him at