Prologue
In the mid-fall, 1777 as the leaves were turning brown and dropping from the trees- a depressed young man, Johann Wolfgang Odoerfer by name, trudged, with shoulders slumped, along a dark street in Ansbach, Germany. He was unsettled and confused, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he, like the autumn leaves, was dying a slow death.
As he stared ahead, pale from the weight of the day, he thought about the Margrave of Ansbach’s recruiters, who had tried that very day, almost forcibly, to recruit him to fight for the British in America.”You’re broke, Wolfgang. You have lost your family’s mill. You’ve let your family down. It’s the only way out. You’ve got to do it.” But his wife’s words also kept ringing in his ears, ” I can’t take care of the children by myself. You might get killed. When would you ever be back? Don’t do it, please!”
As Wolfgang appeared to be approaching the St. Johannis church, Wolfgang’s mother Anna, if alive, would have shouted “Hallaluela!”, as she saw him heading toward the church she had gotten him to reluctantly attend as a child. But his mother’s joy would have been short-lived, for without even a brief, sideways glance at the church, he doggedly made his way on down the cobble-stone street, and around the corner to his favorite hangout, the Black Forrest Pub.
As Wolfgang sat alone on the bar stool that knew him so well, he was stung by the awareness that, at age 30, he had reached the low point of his life. He shed a tear as he thought how smallpox had so brazenly killed his parents 13 years ago and how he had soon after married Maria Margareta. With his head in his hands he thought, “Too much responsibility, but it’s my fault that it has all come to this.”
As he drank his third beer, he couldn’t help thinking about his wife, his nine year old son Georg, and 11 year old daughter, Maria Magdalena. He hung his head, and closed his eyes. Even in his very tired, frustrated, and now slightly inebriated state, he knew that it was his drinking and his reckless bets, that had caused him to totally let them down. He had not known when to stop. “But it wasn’t just the drinking and gambling,” he almost said out loud. He knew he had that ever present temper.. a caged tiger, that slipped out when you least expected it. Luckily, when he blew up dramatically, he got over it quickly, but it still got him into a lot of trouble. “There seems to be no way, no matter how much I try, to control these albatrosses around my neck,” he thought.
It would be an understatement to say that Wolfgang was overwhelmed by his troubles. He had mortgaged and lost the precious family mill. As he was imagining what his father would say had he been alive, he found himself mumbling, “I’m sorry, father.” If he paid all of his debts, he knew he would have no money left to care for his precious family. On this particular night, slumped on the barstool, Wolfgang felt the emptiness that comes when the orbits of failure, fatigue, and drink suddenly mesh. And he didn’t know what to do. In his worst moments, thoughts of suicide sometimes quietly crept into his thinking. Tonight was no exception, and he didn’t treat the thoughts as unwanted visitors.
In his despair, he began thinking about how his father, Marcus, and his grandfather Hans, had handled the “bottom feeding” of their own lives. (See Appendix) Wolfgang had heard his father talk about his Guardian Angel– and had felt that the idea was silly– but the thought crept in that he could really use one just about now.
In less troubled times, Wolfgang– handsome, 5’10”, with dark hair and dark eyes–was a pleasant man, known for his sense of humor and consideration of others. But he did have some very serious flaws, and no one was more aware of them on this day than himself. And he had a decision to make, but didn’t feel he was in command of his life enough to make it.