Paul was
more than a landed proprietor, he was a kind of professor holding
his unpretentious lecture in the open air or in the appropriately
decorated smoking-room of the Priesenmoor house, always surrounded
by a troop of eager and admiring listeners of various nationalities,
and mostly of high rank.
Of course, under these circumstances there was no lack of outward
marks of distinction. Two years before he had been promoted to a
first lieutenancy of the Landwehr. A row of foreign decorations
adorned his breast, and last year, when he was visited by the
Minister for Agriculture, accompanied by the Landrath, the Kronen
Order of the fourth class was added to the rest. Paul was on the
District Committee and County Council, and if he was not deputy of
the Landtag and member of the Reichstag, it was only because he
considered all parliamentary work a barren expenditure of time and
strength. He stood in high repute in the county, which was proved by
his election to be the president of the Society for the Cultivation
of Moors and Marshes, a society founded by his followers and
admirers, and which counted among its members some of the most
important landowners of the whole of Northern Germany.
These circumstances could not fail to react on Paul's character.
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