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Hertha Blog Entry |
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February 21, 2025, 12:00:16 AM 2/21/25: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character from my anthro WWII storyline is Frau Hertha (last name never given). AKA "Unnamed Orphanage Worker," I decided to name her as she plays such a big role in Gunter Hesse's early life. She works in the orphanage where young Hesse grows up and is the closest thing he has to family since he's never adopted. There'll be more about her later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. Regarding her design, she's a white Alsatian. TUMBLR EDIT: This is how Frau Hertha is currently described in Gunter Hesse's profile, it needs to be modified now: Unnamed Orphanage Worker Elderly orphanage employee who grows close to young Gunter during his childhood as a ward of the state, following the death of his parents in a fire. She keeps him company when possible and offers encouragement that he'll be adopted someday. She's the one who introduces him to the old fairytales and legends that inspire his chivalrous worldview. Despite her assurances, no one ever adopts him, and he grows discouraged and disillusioned; around age sixteen, following her death, he leaves the orphanage and joins the army. I think I got one detail wrong there, regarding Frau Hertha's death; I seem to recall she dies while Hesse is away at war, and he asks for a brief leave to attend her funeral. But anyway. Frau Hertha's been in the background of Hesse's story for a long time, nameless yet important. Gunter Hesse is rescued, screaming at the top of his lungs, from under his dead mother's body; she's found lying in the bathtub with fire raging all around. Herr Hesse never even made it to the door before succumbing to the smoke and flames. Neighbors manage to bustle the squalling infant out of the inferno of his family home, and retreat to the street to watch as the place is consumed; a fire truck, pulled by horses, finally arrives to douse the flames and prevent the conflagration from destroying the homes around it. The Hesses are the only victims; they had recently moved to the city from the countryside, seeking better work opportunities to provide for their new son, so nobody knew them very well. Still, they were earnest and hardworking, pious, honest, and kind; and now, their son, barely more than a newborn, is an orphan. Baby Gunter is a miracle: Concerned by his bloodcurdling wails, the sooty, smudged neighbors anxiously check him over, yet find no blood, no burns--he's untouched by the fire, completely unharmed. Frau Hesse literally gave her life for his. Yet now he's all on his own. And...no one is willing to step forward to take him in. Despite their concern for his wellbeing, and their relief that he's all right, the neighbors balk at suggestions that any of them should bring the baby home with them, much less adopt; everyone gives their murmured excuses, the economy, the cost of an infant, their own children, everyone has their reason they simply can't care for him. The distinct undercurrent to all the excuses, however...is that they all feel Gunter is cursed, will do nothing but bring bad luck into their homes. The authorities arrive to take the baby, ask questions--is there any extended family to take him?--godparents, maybe, or family friends, or even just acquaintances?--yet everyone puts their heads down, mumbles their excuses, steps back to put distance between them. Nobody comes forward. Gunter is taken away just as his parents' bodies are. He's too young to attend their meager shared funeral (members of the church they attended help cover this so they're buried in consecrated ground, yet they insist they can't provide for an infant either) or even to realize he's alone in the world; the authorities process him, enter him in the system, and Gunter is handed over to an orphanage. The state is his father and mother now. Through his childhood into his mid-teens, the orphanage is all young Gunter knows of family. He grows up surrounded by other boys of various ages, yet never really befriends any. Shy, meek, and insecure--he wears spectacles as he's farsighted, and is rather small compared to his fellows--he dislikes the other boys' roughhousing and is easily bullied and made the butt of jokes. What he lacks in size or strength he makes up for in resourcefulness, learning quickly how to look out for himself as no one else will; he becomes an expert at escape and at finding all the best places to hide and be alone with his thoughts. He's a dreamy, introspective sort, and when not exploring the orphanage grounds getting lost in his imagination, he's busy reading as soon as he learns how, getting lost in books instead. He struggles in some school subjects, yet literature and history are not among them. He's endlessly mesmerized by the old fairytales and folktales, the stories of knights and heroes and maidens and monsters, trolls and giants and dragons and dwarves, Wotan and Donar and Frikka and Freyja. He grows to love the woods and fields and hills around the orphanage, the bloodsoaked soil from which his sort was born. This love for his homeland comes largely from one of the orphanage workers who deal with the boys on a daily basis. Frau Hertha is an elderly spinster; she adores children yet has never been blessed with being a mother, and so took a job that is the next best thing. She's good at it. While many orphanage workers are severe and cold if not downright cruel, she's stern but kind, and treats the boys with the respect she feels they've earned. To avoid burning out, she focuses on the children who fall through the cracks and are overlooked or forgotten, and this includes Gunter. Frau Hertha notices how the bubbly, outgoing toddler gradually but steadily grows quieter and more discouraged and withdrawn as prospective parent after prospective parent arrives to look over the children, focusing on him, all smiles and hope, only to move on once they learn his unfortunate history, and feels her heart breaking. By the time he's only five or six, Gunter has already lost most hope of leaving with any of the parents, of finally having a family of his own, of belonging with someone and being wanted; Frau Hertha seeks him out one day and finds him huddled away in a corner crying to himself. He rarely cries, certainly never in front of others, always puts on a stoic face, so she knows he must be hurting especially badly right now. Gunter's head pops up and he hurries to wipe his eyes and stop sniffling once he notices her. She's saddened that such a young child should feel the need to hide his pain from the world, but even more, she's saddened that he should feel so heartbroken at all. Once he realizes she's not there to rebuke or lecture him, when he learns she's concerned about him, his eyes well up again and his lip quivers. "Why doesn't anyone want me...?" he asks plaintively, and Frau Hertha feels a jab in her heart. She tries to explain that it's not his fault, he's a perfectly normal, lovely child, it's just the circumstances that are unfortunate. Gunter doesn't understand the nuance, all he thinks is that if no one will adopt him, it must be something wrong with him. And without knowing what it is, he can't fix it, and no one will ever want him. He's tried as hard as he can to earn the adults' attention, to make them want him, yet nothing's worked, so surely the problem is with him. He wonders if he's cursed...that's what the other boys have suggested. Frau Hertha tells him not to listen to them. He's not cursed, he's just in unlucky circumstances, life is hard for everyone right now. It's not his fault. He wants to know so much how he can fix this, fix himself, make others love him. Frau Hertha replies that that's not how it's done, you can earn love, you can't force it; yet she has no advice on how he can accomplish that, either--she doesn't know. "Is that why you have no family...?" Gunter asks; the question is so blunt it hits her like bricks, yet she knows he means no offense, he's just a little boy asking a valid question. She suddenly realizes how very alike the two of them are; no one has ever chosen or wanted them. She swallows the painful lump in her throat, ruffles his hair, and instead of answering, offers other advice. He may not have anyone coming to adopt him just yet. But it could still happen in the future. He simply has to stay strong till then. And he can find other things to focus on in the meantime. Knowing how fascinated he is by fairytales, where people who are good find their happy ending, just the way the world should be, she starts setting aside time every day to read him the old stories and legends, teaching him that other, deeper history of his homeland. In the absence of anything else to fill in the gaping void in Gunter's heart, the legends and folktales and old stories fill that space, and start subtly shaping who he is to become years from then. Frau Hertha--and Gunter--of course have no way to know exactly the effect this will have on his life's course. For Frau Hertha, it's a completely innocent pastime, filling his head with stories from the Grimms and Wagner and all, a distraction to keep the tears and loneliness at bay. For Gunter, maybe not at first but definitely as time goes on, it's more serious and ingrained in his very nature, and starts to take on a darker bent. This doesn't happen in a vacuum; Gunter grows older and although he handles his emotions better, still, Frau Hertha can tell it wears on him year after year he goes unadopted and passed over; none of the other boys spend their entire lives there, he's the only one. If he's not cursed, there must be some other explanation. Frau Hertha tries to keep the hope alive that there's someone out there for him, they just haven't found each other yet. He can do other things instead, make his life mean something in other ways. She doesn't know how, though. Into this space steps another party: a groundskeeper for the orphanage. He rebukes Frau Hertha for filling the boy's head with silly childish fairytales and false hopes. Yet his own suggestions don't entirely nullify Gunter's beloved stories; he says boys need to become men, and one way they can do that is by learning to fight. Men can prove their worth by defending their homeland, just like the knights and warriors of old did in the fairytales. Frau Hertha insists this isn't what she meant, and the groundskeeper, if asked, would insist that he isn't talking about fairytales. Yet this is how it shapes together in Gunter's personal worldview. As he enters his mid-teens--increasingly jaded and knowing for certain now that no one is coming to rescue him again--he focuses more instead on the idea that now, it's nearing his time to rescue someone else. Perhaps that someone is the Fatherland. The state has been Gunter's father all these years; well, maybe it's time for him to pay his father back. The Archduke of Austria is assassinated. Germany goes to war. Gunter is only sixteen, but he asks the groundskeeper, who he's been spending more time listening to than Frau Hertha nowadays, to pull some strings, ask anyone he knows for some favors. He's willing to lay down his life in service to the country if need be, it's only what the hero would do in the old stories, after all. Favors are asked, strings are pulled; Gunter is declared an independent adult. No longer will he wait futilely for a mother or father to choose him, that wait is over now. He departs the orphanage to enlist and attend a crash course of military training (note, I know I take LOTS of liberties with this), though he does wish Frau Hertha goodbye before he goes. Even with how drastically their paths parted toward the end, he still loves her as close to a mother as he can, and she loves him almost as a son. He doesn't cry when they embrace and say farewell, though his eyes are wet. Frau Hertha openly wipes the tears streaming from her eyes as he goes. The groundskeeper, his own attitude rather muted now that war is actually here, murmurs that it's for the best; boys have to become men, after all. Frau Hertha says nothing. She wipes her eyes again and wishes that Gunter's life had followed a different, more fortunate track. But it's no longer her say, he's moving on. Hesse finishes his training and heads off for the Western Front. He does well with military life; as the groundskeeper had said, it gives him purpose, and makes him physically stronger, to boot. He's no longer the shy little runt the bigger boys push around. He grows tall and puts on muscle and carries his own weight. He still keeps to himself, however...that solitary, standoffish part of his nature never changes. He knows he can never count on anyone coming to his rescue so he lives accordingly. Still...he harbors a faint hops that someday, someone will choose him...not a father or mother, that time is past, but maybe a mate, a lover, a wife. Just maybe. He decides to make the army his life. It's the closest thing he has to family, after all. Eventually a message reaches him of Frau Hertha's passing; she'd been quite elderly while he was a ward of the orphanage, so this is no surprise. She left her savings to him, which is a surprise; he's not well off by any means, he has the very modest savings his parents left him, and Frau Hertha wasn't very rich either but everything helps. He requests a brief leave to attend her funeral, as he didn't get to attend that of his parents. He's the only guest there, which confuses and angers him; all the boys Frau Hertha spent her life looking after, and no one but he bothers to pay respects? The cemetery keeper stands nearby; after the small service he asks Hesse, "Are you family?" Hesse hesitates only briefly before murmuring, "Ja...family." The other man offers condolences for his loss. The rest of the story unfolds. Hesse returns to the front, is wounded, is sent to hospital. A young woman named Inga visits him, he wonders if she's the one, yet she chooses one of the other soldiers--the same one who literally rescued Hesse from the battlefield after the rest of his unit was killed. She tells him to write to her, he promises, but he doesn't mean it, he expects her to go on with her new life while he goes on separately with his. Germany surrenders, the war is over. His beloved military cuts him loose and once again he's left on his own, drifting, purposeless. He leaves hospital, rents a tiny flat in the city, spends his days numbing his simmering anger and bitterness with morphine, the only thing that takes away the pain, if not the loneliness, for a little while. Until one day he's dragged out of his stupor by Inga, who has come looking for him, and literally rescues him from an overdose. Hesse never expected anyone to rescue him yet both of the Dobermanns do, so he owes them. They take him into their home, not believing him to be bad luck. He stays with them while recovering, helps raise their daughter (he quickly learns to find all the places she hides in when upset), tells her all the old stories Frau Hertha once told him. Adelina wonders if someday, someone will choose her. A new government arises and catches Hesse's attention; it speaks to all his anger and betrayal over his own country turning against him, gives him a scapegoat to blame, promises that this won't happen again, offers him a renewed purpose in line with the old one. Hesse joins their paramilitary--it welcomes him, it's family, he belongs--and again goes off to war. The cycle starts anew but the old stories are the same. The state is again the father. The pride Hesse once felt for his Fatherland returns...but is twisted around this time...darker...hateful. Something once beautiful and hopeful and life affirming becomes ugly and cynical and deadly. Hesse goose-steps willingly right into it. Frau Hertha, who only ever wanted him to feel loved, isn't around anymore to sadly wipe away her tears. [Frau Hertha 2025 [Friday, February 21, 2025, 12:00:16 AM]] |