The Luck of the Weissensteiners (The Three Nations Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page A

mainly Slovak and the girls would have felt out of place trying to socialize with them. Benedikt warned them to stay away from the boys in the village. His daughters should try and find German husbands and he was concerned that the youth around here might persuade them otherwise. To meet fellow Germans they would have had to go into Bratislava, here in the rural areas there were only Slav peasants.
    Their brother , Gunther, was the youngest of the three children and at the age of fourteen he was already regarded as a weakling in his parent’s eyes, much better off at school than inefficiently wrestling with the heavy and physically demanding farm work that he was so clearly not cut out for. Gunther was intelligent and would probably make a much better living than his father one day; he was best advised to earn his money with his brain rather than with his two left hands and with the arrival of the Berlin relatives there was an opportunity for the boy to fulfil this dream without causing a labour shortage on the farm.
    Gunter was actually much stronger th an Benedikt gave him credit for but in the latter’s macho male ideas of a boy of his age, he would always fall short of expectations and without fail would be made aware of these disappointments. This permanent criticism had robbed the lad of all his confidence and without a chance of ever catching up with his father's demands, he had long stopped even trying. It had never been spoken about but it was clear that Gunter would neither inherit the farm nor even ever work on it later in his life. Benedikt had used him as little as possible as help, worrying that he would constantly have to check anything Gunter had done to ensure that no mistakes had been made. With the arrival of the Berlin boys the heat was definitely off him. Oskar’s sons, Ludwig and Bernhard, filled the role of farm hands effortlessly and far beyond Benedikt’s already high standards. The farmer loved to instruct the two physically strong boys in the farm work and to see finally the results of his coaching in the way he wished his own son could have done; the fact that the Berlin boys were much older did not matter. In his view, Gunter was a failure of the highest order, always had been and that shame would stay with his father forever.
    Benedikt also thought that Wilhelm was a bit of a weakling and probably not much use at the farm. His mother, Elizabeth, had suggested right away that he should maybe find work in a library or a bookshop as he was so fond of reading and with the help of some people at the German club, Wilhelm was soon set up at the bookshop and even managed slightly to supplement the farm income with his salary. Wilhelm was away from the farm for most of the day and was hardly ever even noticed. That suited Benedikt very well; Wilhelm was the only handsome son of his cousin and he did not want his daughters to get any wrong ideas. Wilhelm was not ever likely to run the farm either, so the less the girls saw of him the better.
    Despite their different backgrounds , the two Winkelmeier families bonded surprisingly well. Johanna was a very cold woman and not comfortable as the female leader of the clan but Elizabeth took on the role as the warm and giving heart of house and kitchen to whom the girls came with questions and their problems. For the first time in its history, the house started to have a friendly feel to it. Elizabeth hated shouting and arguing and she always tried to bring people back together rather than stirring things up like Johanna was used to doing.
    The attention starved Roswitha loved that there was a person on the farm that made time for her and seemed to like her without any conditions attached. The more introvert Maria on the other hand was just relieved that she no longer had to help her mother in the kitchen. Although Benedikt had ordered the two girls to learn everything that they could from the new domestic boss, Elizabeth was not interested in pressurizing