Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg’s father and older brothers join the Prussian army shortly before the battalions of Napoleon Bonaparte occupy the village of Wolfshagen and confiscate the house and the land of Steinweg family. Heinrich’s mother (with nine-year-old Heinrich and several other children) escapes to the mountains, where she is destined to die of malnutrition, cold and stress. Children bury their mother under a pile of rocks on the mountainside. Some time later, several of Heinrich’s siblings also die in the mountains.