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Today's Featured Biography
Field-Marshal Count Von Moltke
 Suddenly, but quietly and painlessly, on the evening of April 24, 1891, passed away one of the most remarkable men of the present century. Hellmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke was born, October 26, 1800, at Parshim, in Mecklenburg, where his father, previously a captain in the Prussian army, had retired, impoverished in circumstances, to an estate which he inherited. When little Hellmuth was three years old, his father, Baron Moltke, settled at the free town of Lubeck, the once famous head of the Hanseatic League. Here, in 1806, on the retreat from the disastrous battle of Jena, Marshal Bluecher, who like Von Moltke was of Mecklenburg origin, sought refuge with his shattered troops; and little Moltke was a witness of the sack and plunder of the town by the troops of Napoleon, his father's house being one of those that suffered most severely. It is said that the incidents of this event made a lasting impression upon the mind of the boy. At the age of nine, with his elder brother Fritz, young Hellmuth was placed under the care of Pastor Knickbein, at Hohenfelde, near Horst, a scholarly man of a kindly and genial disposition, for whom he always retained a deep regard. His sense of indebtedness appears in the inscription which he wrote on the title-page when forwarding to him a copy of his first work, his "Letters from Turkey;" "To my dear teacher and fatherly friend to whom I owe so much, I send this, my first work, as a slight testimony of respect."
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