Peaceful Daily Life
A peaceful everyday life.
June 5, 1874, was a monumental day for the American oil industry.
Bang!
“Huh?”
In Corsicana, a small farming town in Navarro County, Texas, a landowner drilling a well watched oil suddenly erupt ten meters into the air.
“It's oil!”
The Americans nearby could not contain their excitement at the unexpected strike. Yet a substantial portion of the land around this little town that was likely to hold oil already belonged to a foreigner.
“Who the hell is that guy?”
John D. Rockefeller, head of Standard Oil, learned of the fact only later and hired private detectives to dig into the foreigner's background. The result proved rather shocking.
“A Brit? And someone tied to the British royal family's property managers, at that?”
Even Rockefeller, the fearless robber baron, regarded the British Empire—the true master of this world—with caution. If the oil field belonged to the British, seizing it by force was out of the question.
I'll have to settle this for a sum the British can accept.
When Waldemar received word from his agent that Rockefeller had made contact, he ordered them to drag the negotiations out. Agreeing to a deal at this stage would bring no advantage. Instead he had them drill wells without restraint.
Before long, talk began to spread that the land around Corsicana in Navarro County, Texas, held enormous oil reserves. In truth, oil had been struck in more than two hundred of the wells Waldemar had ordered drilled. Rockefeller's people began to grow restless.
They could be pulling thousands of barrels a day?
The longer the talks stretched, the more wells appeared and the higher the value of Waldemar's holdings climbed. At last, unable to bear the delay any longer, Standard Oil offered an extraordinary price for the land and merger: five thousand newly issued shares.
The stake alone was worth five hundred thousand dollars. Measured against the value of Corsicana oil it might not have seemed extravagant, yet this was not mere cash—it was equity in the unlisted company destined to dominate the entire American oil industry.
Against Standard Oil's present thirty-five thousand shares, Waldemar's allotment would amount to 12.5 percent of the whole. From a control standpoint, even Rockefeller had reason to flinch at the figure.
After careful thought, Waldemar accepted the offer.
There might still be room to squeeze a little more, but closing quickly and collecting more dividends matters more.
Prolonging the talks only risked handing opportunities to Standard Oil's rivals, so Waldemar's agent moved with speed. On September 1, 1874, both sides finished due diligence and agreed to the exchange of shares. Unofficially, Waldemar became a man worth five hundred thousand dollars in stock. He was certain the true value of the company he now partly owned was several times higher.
The swift settlement soon paid a handsome dividend. On October 15, Standard Oil distributed three hundred fifty-eight thousand dollars among its shareholders; Waldemar's portion came to forty-four thousand seven hundred fifty dollars. Money begot money.
Waldemar rejoiced that America levied no federal income tax in this era. His British agent had shrewdly incorporated in a state without state taxes as well. Thus, despite reaping enormous American profits, Waldemar paid almost nothing in tax.
He awarded John Connor and Edward, who had labored for him in America throughout the past year, a bonus of four thousand seven hundred fifty dollars. Given that a British laborer's monthly wage converted to somewhere between twenty-seven and fifty-five dollars, the sum felt generous even to high earners.
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
“Not at all. I am the one who should thank you, Mr. Edward.”
Waldemar considered for a moment how best to employ the new income.
Too little to put into another full venture.
He decided to put the money to work once more. In truth, if he wanted real scale he might have bought something like the Rand gold fields in the Transvaal Republic, yet that was far too dangerous for him to touch.
Those mines were such a vast prize they would one day light the fuse of the Boer War; no young prince with a bit of capital had any business meddling there. Even success would only invite greedy Britain to snatch the prize away.
After mulling it over, Waldemar settled on a different scheme.
In this barbaric nineteenth century where people die the moment they fall ill, is there any business more profitable than medicine?
What he had in mind was Germany's future hit product: aspirin. In the original history, late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Germany had earned more than three hundred million marks a year from quinine and aspirin alone. There was no reason he could not do the same.
The raw material for aspirin is salicylic acid—the BHA extracted from willow or birch bark. That's as far as my knowledge goes. Can I actually make aspirin with only that?
He decided to leave the rest to experts. With professors willing to work for research funds, any missing pieces could be filled in.
The trouble is that I'm still a child; I can hardly appear myself.
Once again he borrowed the shelter of his mother's skirts.
“My beloved Baldi. What do you mean to do by borrowing my name?”
“I want to develop a medicine.”
“A medicine?”
“Yes. So that other mothers need never suffer the misfortune of losing a son as you did.”
Waldemar deliberately played the emotional card. Princess Victoria's eyes went round. A moment later she gathered him into her arms and wept openly.
“My beloved Baldi. You understand my heart.”
After a long cry she promised in a hoarse voice to aid the research, adding that she would supply more of her own fortune if funds ran short.
Mother is far too sentimental.
Of course she and Wilhelm, whose temperaments clashed, got along like cat and dog; yet for a child who suited her there was no gentler mother alive. Princess Victoria kept her word. When the shadow authority who freely commanded the Crown Prince's household set her mind to a task, every obstacle melted away. Using his mother's name, Waldemar secured the cooperation of leading German chemists.
Then the year turned to 1875. Word arrived from Professor Adolf von Baeyer, one of Germany's foremost chemists, that he had succeeded in synthesizing aspirin.
How can it be this fast?
Once Adolf von Baeyer knew the answer lay in salicylic acid, the work had not been especially difficult. Through his mother's intermediaries Waldemar negotiated with the professor and arranged to transfer the aspirin to Bayer Pharmaceuticals of Germany in return for ten percent of sales revenue. Bayer was grateful for what seemed a gift from heaven; Waldemar, who knew the drug's true original owner, only smiled a subtle smile.
Encouraged by the swift success, he decided to try developing a few more products.
Next is phenacetin.
In the original history Bayer had brought out this fever-reducing, pain-relieving drug. Its feedstock was aniline, a cheap by-product of coal tar. Like most nineteenth-century medicines it carried side-effects—kidney damage and anemia with prolonged use—yet the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks. A global success was all but guaranteed.
Once more he called on his great mother's influence.
“Research a medicine that uses aniline, a coal residue, as its raw material? If Your Highness believes there is promise, we shall attempt it.”
The chemists accepted the research funds with half belief and half doubt. In truth, aniline had already given rise to many medicines besides phenacetin: antipyrine, acetanilide, the first antibiotic Prontosil, sulfanilamide, the syphilis treatment Salvarsan, and others. Waldemar calculated that once German chemists turned their attention to aniline they might bring such compounds to market earlier than history had recorded.
Not all of it will become my money—but what of it?
Having spent every remaining free mark on the aniline research, Waldemar simply waited for the next Standard Oil dividend. Aspirin itself would still need time before it reached the market.
Money is the enemy.
For a while he became a model little prince and devoted himself to royal lessons. Court life, however, was never entirely peaceful.
“Baldi, when the proper time comes you ought to go to Grandmother for your education. Her Highness the Crown Princess knows nothing of proper schooling—what can you possibly learn under her skirts?”
His elder brother Wilhelm, met after a long interval, set about needling him. Wilhelm, who had always hungered for parental affection, thoroughly resented Waldemar for monopolizing the Crown Prince couple's love. Whenever the two met, Wilhelm picked a fight.
“I'm going to tell Mother every word you just said.”
Waldemar puffed out his cheeks like any small child. Faced with that childish tactic, Wilhelm—who insisted he was already a grown man—usually abandoned the quarrel.
“How infantile. It's because you grow up that way under Her Highness's skirts that Grandmother and Grandfather dislike you.”
Wilhelm cut the argument short before Waldemar could press further and withdrew almost at a run. From the nearby bushes came a smothered snicker. Waldemar knew the hidden listener without needing to look.
“Sophie, have you been hiding there listening to everything?”
“Mm-hm. Your squabbling was even more childish than I am.”
Waldemar stroked Princess Sophie's hair.
“Sophie. Do you like me better, or Brother Willy?”
“Obviously Brother Baldi.”
She answered without a heartbeat's hesitation. Waldemar felt a fleeting solemnity for Willy, who had failed to win his little sister's affection even with costly jewels and dresses.
No—Willy still has Charlotte.
Yet neither of them possessed the charm of bright, lively Princess Victoria, adorable Sophie, or the youngest, sweet little Margarete. The thought prompted him to ask after the others.
“What about Mossy—Margarete—and Moretta—Princess Victoria?”
“Big sister and little sister went to lessons.”
Waldemar stared at her in disbelief.
“Then what about you?”
“I came to see Brother Baldi.”
It was a thoroughly Sophie answer.
“Aren't you going to ask where Big Sister is?”
Princess Charlotte. Merely thinking of her made Waldemar's head ache. She was the queen of domestic discord, the source of half the family's storms—a Hohenzollern rebel who could fairly be called Wilhelm II's soulmate.
She had not been born wicked; the twisted side she displayed sprang from the terrible porphyria inherited from their parents. Waldemar had no wish to speak lightly of his eldest sister's pitiful fate, so he answered vaguely.
“She probably ran off from lessons the same way Sophie does.”
“Hmph. Do you think I do that every single time?”
Sophie pinched his cheek in mock annoyance.
“Ah, Sophie—I've just remembered something I need to say.”
“Hmm? Are you going to tell me how adorable Sophie is?”
Sophie was delightful in every way, yet growing up at Waldemar's side had inflated her self-regard a little too far. He decided to correct the misconception.
“No—it's that I can see Countess Hohenthal over there.”
“Ah! Brother, I was never here. Understood?”
The instant she heard that Mother's lady-in-waiting had appeared, Sophie seized her skirts and vanished like the wind. Waldemar found the noisy daily life of the court both entertaining and, in another way, poignant.
If we lose the war, even this little harmony will be finished.
He gazed in the direction his sister had fled and let complex feelings settle over him.