REMARRIAGE. 337 



leisure to occupy myself with scientific and such social 

 problems as I had particularly at heart. 



My domestic life underwent a complete trans- 

 formation through my second marriage, which took 

 place on the 13 th of July 1869, with Antonie Siemens, 

 a distant relative, the only child of the meritorious, 

 and in agricultural technology well-known, professor 

 Carl Siemens in Hohenheim near Stuttgart. I have 

 often jokingly said in after-dinner speeches and the 

 like, that this marriage with a Suabian lady should 

 be looked upon as a political act, as the Main line 

 was bound to be bridged, and this could best be 

 done by as many alliances of affection as possible 

 being concluded between North and South, which must 

 then of themselves soon be followed by political ones. 

 Whether my patriotism was not considerably influenced 

 by the amiable qualities of the fair Suabian herself, 

 who has again brought warm sunshine into my some- 

 what gloomy and laborious life, I shall not here more 

 closely enquire. 



When on the 30 th of July 1870 the news arrived 

 by telegraph in Charlottenburg that the Emperor 

 Napoleon had crossed the German frontier at Saarbrtick 

 and the fateful war between Germany and France had 

 actually begun, my wife presented me with a little 

 daughter, to be followed two years later by a son. 

 I gave our daughter the name Hertha, in pursuance 

 of a vow to give her this name, if the German war- 

 ship so called, which the French fleet were chasing 

 in all waters, escaped capture. My four elder children 



22 



