Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

her eyes, and suddenly the bird dropped like a stone.
"You see, that it was high time I returned to your care, my sober Prussian!"
Konrad knitted his brows. "I am trying to imagine Izabel and Marti as Theosophists. I
would have never guessed that they had connections to Blavatsky."
"I did not either. They visited me on the following evening to thank me for their ‘rescue’,
and we spent half the night talking about that. Izabel seemed rather disillusioned with
Blavatsky, most of whose magic seems to have been exposed as simple conjurer’s tricks.
Besides Marti has a different problem, I think he is a follower of Trotsky’s and the Marxists’. He
called himself an opportunist in his relation to the Theosophists who paid for their trip to Central
Asia."
Konrad agreed that this sounded more in line with his character. "But is he not
endangering himself by leaning so far left?"
"He never said anything like what I am telling you, this is entirely my conjecture. You see
why I did not want to talk about these things in public where everybody listens."
Towards noon it became sultry. The clouds in the northwest had piled into an enormous
white thunderhead. The sun "stung." A few thatched houses and low brick–farm buildings at
the edge of an extended park of mighty, old trees appeared.
Schloss Rheinsberg
The castle came into sight, an unpretentious two story Biedermeier building
flanked by two round towers, a rose garden between its horseshoe wings. A bridge spanned
the lake.
Konrad pointed at the buildings. "This is Rheinsberg. My favorite Landschloss. Here
King Friedrich Wilhelm I kept his young son Friedrich II under house arrest after the son had
tried to flee from his authoritarian father with a boyfriend. Katte. The young man, was executed
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