In 1903, a young concert violinist named Jeremy Webb one day goes from accomplished adagios with the Cleveland Orchestra to having a complete breakdown on stage. If he hadn't poured a glass of water down the throat of a tuba, maybe he wouldn't have been sent to a health resort in Badenweiler, Germany. But it's in that serene place that Jeremy meets Clara Mulpas, whom he tries his hardest to seduce.

"Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians, Bavarians, and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France-all without destroying itself in the process? In...

By the autumn of 1918 Germany was on the verge of starvation - the result of four years of war and blockade. Sailors led a revolt in Wilhelmshaven on 29 October 1918, followed by the Kiel mutiny in the first days of November cascading eventually to Germany's capitulation and the Kaiser's abdication. The Hohelzollern family's rule had come to an end. Royalty historian John Van der Kiste, the author of the recent best-selling 'Prussian Princesses' here...