Keith Kaye

Illustrated Diary of a Romantic Prussian Soldier: Heinrich Gimkiewicz Keith Kaye

Imagine receiving an email from your Great Grandfather whilst he was fighting, a nearly forgotten war, in a distant land! This is what the author (KWK) experienced, when his Great Grandfather's Franco-Prussian War Diary was being translated from the old German text. A unique document, in that for the first time in history, Jewish soldiers in the Prussian Army, were permitted to attend religious services. Unter Officier Heinrich Gimkiewicz describes the event that is corroborated in literature and art. This richly illustrated work translates the diary, describes its discovery and correlates it to broader aspects of the war, and especially to the position of Jewish soldiers in the Prussian Army. It gives an account of how the romantic Heinrich was lodged with a retired French Army Officer and his "beautiful daughter Louise" which was to have repercussions many years later, and then follows Heinrich to South Africa where he raised his family. The author (KWK) presents his own diary when, some 134 years later, he went to France and traveled in Heinrich's footsteps where he was amazed to find how little had changed.