1 - A Novel's Suffering Hero: A Youth in Berlin (1867–1889)

Summary

IN 1867 ALFRED NOBEL PATENTED DYNAMITE, Joseph Lister introduced his phenol antiseptic, Johann Strauß composed the Blue Danube Waltz, Ibsen published Peer Gynt, Henri Fantin-Latour painted Manet's portrait. Livingstone explored the Congo, Tsar Alexander II sold Alaska to the United States, Garibaldi launched his second campaign to wrest Rome from the French. Emperor Maximilian died before a republican firing squad in Mexico City. The Austrian ruler, Franz Josef I, ascended the throne of Hungary to establish the Dual Monarchy. The Southern rebellion quelled, the government of the United States turned its attention to subjugating the Plains Indians. In English exile Marx completed the first part of Capital. Having made war on Denmark for Schlweswig- Holstein and on Austria to consolidate Prussia's autonomy, Bismarck assumed the office of chancellor of the North German Confederation's twenty-two states, and his liege, King Wilhelm I, became their royal president. Under Bismarck's leadership Berlin stood at the ready to reclaim the prestige it enjoyed a century earlier when Friedrich II confounded the Continental powers to become “the Great.” The invasion of France was in the offing.

An unlikely beneficiary of resurgent Prussia was a Jewish émigré who dealt by royal appointment in military regalia. Emanuel Eisner had been born forty years earlier in the Bohemian town Husinec, son of Hermann and Therese, née Gans. The family soon moved to Studenec in southern Moravia, where Hermann Eisner kept a tavern. Therese died in 1832, and upon his father's death young Emanuel learned the tanning trade before he and his brother Ignaz were taken in by relatives in Berlin and apprenticed in business. Together they opened shops in the early 1860s on Berlin's regal avenue Unter den Linden and in Danzig's bustling Kohlenmarkt, from which they supplied the Russian Imperial court with the insignia, buttons, braid, epaulets, ribbons, and medals that festooned the officers’ splendid uniforms. On 5 October 1863 thirty-six-year-old Emanuel, widowed with two sons, wed Hedwig Levenstein, daughter of the deceased Jewish merchant Levin Jontoff Levenstein. Two years later the brothers went their separate ways in business. Emanuel relocated his shop and residence to Friedrichstraße and added to his clientele the Prussian emperor and king, the duke of Braunschweig, and the prince of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.