21 January 2013: Family

Unlike the main character of the book The Artificial Silk Girl, Augusta was not fleeing the police, but her own mother.  And this would not have been too outside the boundaries of reality.  As Augusta explains on Facebook:

Augusta reading at the public library
in the 1920s Berlin Project.

I was educated at home by a series of governesses and tutors. I had wanted to attend finishing school in Switzerland after visiting my best friend Sophie at Château Mont-Choisi in Lausanne. Mamma would have none of it, of course, as this would have meant that I would learn French. I would spend hours in Pappa's library, reading books on all subjects. When the last tutor left, he told my parents that I was well-read and very opinionated, which I took to be a compliment.

Augusta is therefore in a situation where she is obviously different than others in Berlin, but in many way, she is the same as well.  We are all products of our history, both individual and collective, which are concepts that I teach to students in my RL history classes.  Trying to establish the identity of a character in a dynamic immersive role play has really deepened my understanding of both.

Like the vast majority of characters participating in RP in the 1920s Berlin Project, Augusta would have experienced the Great War of 1914-1918, and had lasting impact made on her both on an individual level as well as on a societal level.  After establishing more clearly who Augusta was, I then had to figure out who her family had been as well.  All of these personalities are fictious, and were created as a result of discussions at various times in Berlin.  One thing about RP is that the depth of what is known as the "backstory" needs to be continually drawn out.

There is hardly a resident of Berlin in 1929 who could not recall at least one family member who had been lost in the Great War.  For Augusta, this was her older brother, Herzog Albert Josef Maria von Nassau, the only other sibling she had.  Albert was killed in France in 1917, at age 18.  She has some faint memories of him, having been only 10 years old at the time of his death.  But she remembers a protective older brother, who gave her the example of following his own inclinations.  Albert did wait until he was 18, but he also did go against the wishes of his parents and entered the military at a very young age.

This meant that Augusta's parents, who I decided were to have been very involved in her upbringing, would have had very strong views on how their daughter would be raised as a result, as noted in the Facebook quotation.  It would not have been uncommon for a daughter of a noble family to have been educated at home.  It also would have been quite possible that both parents could have had different aspirations for her.

An bottle of a wine from
Eltville in 1909, from the
Taubenberg vineyard above
Kloster Eberbach.

Her father, Herzog Wilhelm Augustus von Nassau, would have lost his obvious heir with Albert's death in the War.  However, it would have been possible for Augusta to become his heiress.  For that reason, she was quietly educated, and he was slowly introducing her to some of the intricacies of his role in society.  As will be discussed in future posts, Augusta is aware of many of the post-war restrictions placed on the nobility and was also beginning to learn about the commercial focus of the region:  the vineyards.

Augusta's mother, Herzogin Klara Maria von Nassau, was at the other end of the parental spectrum.  Instead of realizing that her daughter needed to acquire a much different set of skills to succeed in a very new world, Augusta's Mamma insisted on raising her as if the Great War had never happened.  Refusing to see that there would be more to Augusta's future than the traditional skills of society and gentility that she had relied upon, her Mamma was an unrelenting counter to the reality of Weimar society.  And it is not unrealistic to see her mother as being overly protective.  Therefore, Augusta was not allowed to attend boarding school.  The idea that her daughter would have been required to learn French, who were seen as the cause of all of life's personal and societal tragedy to so many Germans at that time, was therefore understandible.  This resentment of the French in general is reflected in the 1920s Berlin Project, although individual residents who have origins in France do participate in the RP.

So Augusta has a sense of her past as well as a sense of the future, which is not certain even for the landed aristocracy.  She is often chided by other residents in Berlin that "Mamma would not approve" of some of the things she does (like attending the Eldorado), however she is able to hold her own in most social situations because of her upbringing.  Augusta provides a reminder to the lower class residents of Berlin that there are distinct economic and political challenges faced by the upper classes, including the nobility... which will be discussed in a future post.