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Information
Name/Nickname: Josef Diamant; The Jack Of Diamonds; Clever Jew (Gunter Hesse only)
Gender: Cisgender male
Birthdate/Age/Sign: NA; thirties/forties; Gemini
Orientation: Heteroromantic heterosexual
Relationship Status: Single; engaged (Frieda Orchudesch); casually involved (Margarethe Dannecker; Berit Brenner); involved (Inga von Dobermann)
Race/Ethnicity/Nationality: Caucasian; Germanic descent/Ashkenazi Jew; German
Class: Middle
Religion: Orthodox Jewish (lapsed)
Profession: Jeweler/goldsmith/shop owner; during the war--document forger, prison camp laborer, founder/leader of the resistance Diamond Network, spy/saboteur; after the war--resumes his jewelry work
Birthplace/Residence: Frankfurt, Germany; Germany (deceased after Ultima Thule)
Personality/Characteristics
[Coming soon.]
Appearance
Diamant is an unknown/mongrel breed with dropped V-shaped ears and short fur. He's of tall height; with a fit/athletic body type; has dark brown eyes; and has tan fur and black hair.
Diamant has a scar on his right hand (the back of the hand through the palm), and a camp prisoner ID number tattooed inside his left forearm. He typically wears trousers with suspenders, long-sleeve button-up shirts (often with the sleeves unbuttoned and partly rolled up), a cap similar to a newsboy cap, and if out in public, a jacket or long coat with the collar up to partly hide his face. He occasionally wears disguises, such as a stolen SS uniform, when he needs to interact with others. He's righthanded, but due to the injury and nerve damage to his right hand, he's learned how to use his left hand. He usually carries a revolver which he uses to intimidate others with Russian roulette. He has a chameleonic ability to blend into the background and go unnoticed.
Family & Relationships
Inga von Dobermann (Ally/Lover/Partner)
Wife of Junker Louis Dobermann; after revealing herself to be Jewish, she's introduced to the Diamond Network by Tobias Schäfer and Katharina von Thiel. Diamant convinces her to fully open the Dobermann estate to usage by the Network (they'd been using it without the Dobermanns' knowledge, previously). Dobermann discovers the plot when Inga kills an intruding Nazi in self-defense, and requests Diamant to take her to safety; Diamant helps fake her death. Inga develops feelings for him despite remaining loyal to her husband, and Diamant feels the same. In the Alpine Fortress, Dobermann asks Diamant to look after Inga.
Adelina von Dobermann (Ally/Ward/Informal Adopted Daughter)
Daughter of Louis and Inga Dobermann. Diamant introduces himself to her while disguised as an SS officer; her description of him to Lt. Gunter Hesse unwittingly tips him off to Diamant's presence on the Dobermann estate. Given his role in breaking up her family, Diamant feels protective of her, and keeps an eye on her from afar; Addy is initially resentful when she learns of this, as she's been groomed by Hesse to despise Jews, and also blames Diamant for breaking up her family. Her feelings change when Diamant reintroduces Inga, whom Addy had assumed dead. Addy eventually turns to Diamant as a surrogate parent.
Stephen Gerhardt (Ally/Informal Son-In-Law)
A Jewish-American Allied soldier who goes undercover in the Wehrmacht to observe the Dobermann estate and try to determine Louis Dobermann's true alliances. He struggles to earn Diamant's trust after getting in touch with the Diamond Network; this is further complicated after he and Adelina Dobermann develop feelings for each other. He juggles this with trying to keep the trust of Lt. Gunter Hesse and Louis Dobermann as well.
Margarethe Dannecker (Ally/Casual Lover)
Stepdaughter of former camp commandant Ernst Dannecker. She agreed to aid Diamant in killing Dannecker and escaping the camp so she herself could escape her stepfather's abuse. The two were very briefly involved but decided to remain friends only. Along with Diamant, Lukas Mettbach, and Arno Spiegel, she forms the core of the Network. Despite her petite size and childish looks, she's skilled with her stepfather's SS sword, which she took as a trophy.
Frieda Orchudesch (Fiancée)
A young upper-class woman whose family Diamant makes jewelry for just before the war. The two share a brief romance and become engaged, yet she and her father are taken away to the camps and killed before she and Diamant can marry. Diamant uses the ID documents they planned to use to leave the country to begin his side business of forging IDs for other Jews.
Herr Orchudesch (Father-In-Law To Be)
An upper-class businessman who hires Diamant to make a ring for his daughter Frieda; Frieda and Diamant grow close, and despite their difference in social status, Herr Orchudesch gives his blessing for them to marry. Before they can, however, the Orchudesches are arrested; Frieda is killed upon arriving at a camp, while Herr Orchudesch dies during his train journey to another camp. Diamant uses their ID documents to practice forging IDs for other Jews to escape.
Berit Brenner (Casual Lover)
Daughter of Dietrich Brenner, gamekeeper on the Heidenreich estate; Diamant seduces and recruits her to aid the Diamond Network by allowing passage through estate lands. Despite Diamant insisting their relationship was brief and casual only, she's still attracted to him, and intensely jealous of any other women in his company, whether he's been involved with them or not; Gret Dannecker is a frequent target of her ire. It's hinted that she may be emotionally unstable.
History
[Coming soon.]
Diamant In Heaven
[Coming soon.]
Trivia
*Although he works with his hands as a skilled manual laborer, Diamant is considered middle class as he comes from a long line of trade craftsmen, owns his own shop, and also handles all the white-collar paperwork himself.
*He's from a long line of skilled jewelers and goldsmiths (thus his family name) based out of Frankfurt. Although they once enjoyed quite a bit of prestige, the Diamant family falls on hard times and ends up relegated to the Frankfurt ghetto; eventually, Josef Diamant is the only one left, and considers himself the last of his line as he doesn't marry or plan to have children, especially after his fiancée, Frieda Orchudesch, is killed in an extermination camp.
*Despite (or perhaps because of) his repeated brutalization at the hands of former camp commandant Ernst Dannecker, he gradually starts to emulate some of Dannecker's behavior and mannerisms, including wearing an SS disguise, carrying a revolver, and intimidating others with Russian roulette; his actions grow more morally ambiguous as the story goes on. He even sits, walks, and smiles like Dannecker.
*Although he's an Orthodox Jew, he's always been rather loose at following custom, and after his imprisonment almost completely abandons his faith; he still generally believes in God and occasionally prays, but doesn't follow any other customs.
*He and Gunter Hesse share a complicated admiration/hate relationship. They absolutely despise each other, often to the point of blind, senseless rage; yet they also grudgingly admire and respect each other's tenacity and intelligence. Diamant often taunts Hesse, underestimating his abilities, while Hesse often hyperfixates on Diamant to the exclusion of all else, overestimating his influence. Whereas he refers to most others as little more than vermin, Hesse refers to Diamant more than once as "clever Jew."
*He has a similarly complicated relationship with Isaak Schindel, the kapo of the labor camp in which he's temporarily imprisoned. Both are prisoners and are labeled as Jewish criminals by the SS; yet the working-class Schindel has higher status than Diamant in the camp (Diamant is considered "uppity"), and frequently targets him for discipline as Diamant has difficulty obeying camp rules (behavior which can get everyone, including Schindel, in trouble). Dannecker's humiliation of the two only worsens matters. After the war, they both realize they feel ashamed about the way they treated each other.
*He's skilled at teaching himself new talents through observation, practice, and making use of his existing jeweler's skills. For example, he teaches himself how to forge ID documents by studying existing IDs, and he uses his jewelry and goldsmithing tools to create disguised explosive devices.
*He's ambidextrous, though not from birth; after Dannecker permanently damages the nerves in his right hand by stabbing him with a jeweler's file, he teaches himself to use his left hand.
*He can come across as rather promiscuous at times, engaging in various casual relationships. The only women he's ever had genuine feelings for are Frieda Orchudesch and Inga von Dobermann.
*He's a master craftsman, having served as an apprentice and a journeyman to his father. On a visit to Frankfurt, Frieda manages to track down the ring he designed and made as his final project as a journeyman, for sale in a secondhand shop.
*The SS-themed ring he designs (made from the gold teeth of murdered prisoners) and makes for Gret Dannecker, at Commandant Dannecker's request (in reality, part of his and Gret's ruse to kill Dannecker and escape the camp), goes missing (stolen by a camp guard and sold to a dealer) before making another appearance later in the story, as part of General Immerwahr's collection; Immerwahr gifts it to Gunter Hesse, who uses it to propose to Sophie Sommer. After Sophie commits suicide, the Unnamed Busboy takes the ring from her person and sells it to a secondhand shop, where it's melted down and recycled. I did not intend this, but considering the way Diamant's ring repeatedly changes hands and seems to bring bad luck wherever it goes, it could be considered kind of a garbled allusion to Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen.
*He's one of the last Jewish shopkeepers to remain in his neighborhood after the Nazi persecutions begin. After his arrest by the SS, his jewelry shop has the windows smashed, is ransacked, set afire, and the name "J. DIAMANT, DER JUWELIER" is defaced to read "J. DIAMANT, DER JUDE." The SS deliberately leaves the gutted shop standing as a warning; it's finally demolished after the war, and Diamant establishes a new shop in the mountain town.
*He designs and commissions a sculptor to make the monument that stands over Louis and Inga von Dobermann's graves. It depicts von Dobermann (with a cross) and Inga (with a Star of David) standing side by side holding hands, gazing at each other.
*He insists that, upon his own death, his body be cremated (in defiance of Orthodox Jewish custom) and the ashes scattered, as he doesn't want his grave to become a pilgrimage site for admirers of the Diamond Network. Adelina von Dobermann honors his request.
*[Coming soon.]
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