General Von Berenberg

General Von Berenberg is the commander of the 79th Light Infantry Division, a senior officer whose movements connect the regiment’s deployment from France to Romania with the castle gathering where Reiter encounters the Baroness Von Zumpe again. His public role is defined by command and inspection; a hidden view of him praying in private complicates that authority by suggesting a weight of conscience he does not discuss openly.

Command and Military Posting

In the account of Hans Reiter’s 1939 conscription, Von Berenberg is identified as commander of the 79th Light Infantry Division, which included the 310th, 311th, and 312th regiments and formed part of the 10th Infantry Corps. The 310th, commanded by Colonel Von Berenberg, comprised three battalions; Reiter served first as an assistant machine-gun operator in the 3rd Battalion and was later assigned to an assault company. The narration thus distinguishes the colonel’s regimental command from his senior authority over the division.

After the division moved east through Germany and Hungary, it was posted to Romania. Its organization changed: it no longer belonged to the 10th Corps but to the newly formed 49th Corps, which at that point consisted of a single division. The headquarters were in Bucharest. Von Berenberg, now the 79th Division’s commander, visited troops with General Kruger to inspect their preparation. The narrative presents him as a figure of institutional oversight whose authority reaches from the headquarters to Reiter’s battalion in the Carpathians.

The Castle Gathering

Von Berenberg arrives at the castle with Herman Hoensch, a writer of the Reich, and two officers from the 79th’s general staff. The Romanian general Eugen Entrescu arrives separately with Paul Popescu and the Baroness Von Zumpe. Reiter, assigned to guard duty, recognizes the baroness, whom he had known as a boy while serving her family. The encounter places Von Berenberg’s military party inside a gathering that mixes German and Romanian officers, a state writer, a scholar, and a member of the aristocracy.

After a light meal, the guests tour the grounds. Von Berenberg initially supports the expedition but soon becomes tired and withdraws, leaving Entrescu to lead the others. At the baroness’s request, Reiter is allowed to remain with her group: she argues that he had served her family before serving the Reich, and Von Berenberg grants the request. His decision briefly accommodates the baroness’s personal claim within the chain of military command, allowing Reiter to accompany the party even though he remains a soldier on duty.

The tour leads to a crypt beneath the castle. The SS officer opens its iron gate, and most of the visitors descend, while Reiter remains at the entrance as ordered. Reiter falls asleep and dreams that the party below is laughing, that Hoensch recites a poem and spits blood, and that the group has agreed to eat the baroness. When the visitors return, they appear divided: some are pale, as if they have seen something momentous, while others wear half-smiles. The account does not disclose what took place in the crypt, and Von Berenberg’s own reaction is not singled out there.

Death and the Limits of Command

At dinner, the company discusses death, and the contrasting opinions reveal how little common ground the gathering’s members share beneath their formal rank. Hoensch calls death an illusion under construction; the SS officer describes it as necessary for regulating life; Popescu considers it a passage whose destination is uncertain. Entrescu stresses movement, while the baroness calls death boring. Von Berenberg and the two general staff officers decline to give an opinion. His silence is a concrete feature of the exchange, not an explanation of what he believes.

The Peephole and Private Conscience

Later, Reiter and Wilke explore a hidden passage in the castle, using narrow peepholes to look into rooms along the way. In one room, the SS officer is awake and writing by candlelight. At another opening, they see Von Berenberg alone beside his bed, kneeling in prayer. A candle flickers in the room, and the general’s face appears contorted. Reiter understands the posture as an expression of conscience bearing a great weight; the narration explicitly leaves open what that burden concerns, rejecting the soldiers’ lives, his family, and his own life as its certain object.

This concealed glimpse forms the sharpest contrast in Von Berenberg’s brief appearance. In public, he is a commander who inspects readiness, authorizes Reiter’s assignment to the baroness’s party, and initially promotes the castle expedition. In private, he is seen not issuing orders but praying, with an inward distress that the observers cannot explain. The narrative grants the reader an image of vulnerability without supplying a confession or resolving its cause, so his authority and his unexplained conscience remain side by side.