Tag #129776 - Interview #89857 (Mira Tudor)

My maternal grandmother was born in 1850 and she saw King Carol I [1] entering Bucharest from a window. I don’t know where that house was or the way the procession went, but she was 16 at the time and she remembered everything very well. It was unforgettable. There were very few Jews in Ramnicu Valcea – about 10-15 families. But Grandma was very patriotic: ‘What do we need a German king for?! Why didn’t they pick one from our noblemen?’ Dear old her, after having worked in so many aristocratic houses, she could instantly give you three of four men who were suitable to be kings. This is her description of King Carol I: ‘A penniless bastard! He had leather patches at the ells and knees!’ As you can imagine, it was a cavalry outfit, it wasn’t actually patched. We, the granddaughters, tried to explain this to her when we grew up: ‘Grandma, this is how the outfit was supposed to look like!’ – ‘Shut up! Who else had patches at the ells?! And he became king and he did this and that…’ When the king had the Peles Castle erected [Ed. note: The Peles Castle, located in Sinaia, was the summer residence of the Romanian kings. It is the combined result of the taste of King Carol I (1866-1914) and of the skills of architects Johannes Schultz and Karel Liman, as well as of the decorators J. D. Heymann from Hamburg, August Bembe from Mainz and Berhard Ludwig from Vienna. The construction works began in 1873.], Grandma was furious: ‘That’s our money, our work! That bloody German!