Special

It was the first time Alfred actually saw Ludwig doing nothing useful at all.
It was a sunny morning in the late forties of the twentieth century and while around him everyone tried to rebuild Europe, the German represented nothing and actually no-one really knew why he was still alive after the country he was representing collapsed.
However, like Ludwig kept his brothers alive by the pure need to have the around it seemed to be like now his big brothers took care of him not vanishing.

Big brother Hesse was partly living under American protection, so when he heard that Ludwig came to stay therefor a couple of weeks, Alfred decided to keep an eye on both of them, so they wouldn't do something fishy.
The house was heavily destroyed, so most of the time Hesse was busy with repairing, while Ludwig mostly just slept after he got a loud and strict lecture when he tried to help.
Sometimes he limped through the living room, searching for this book or that picture, always whispering to himself, like an old man who didn't exactly know he was anymore.
When Alfred called him "Germany" he didn't react.

Then, that special day we are talking about, he found the book he was obviously looking for for a long time. Alfred saw a such a beaming smile on the others face ever again.
"Look." said Ludwig putting the book in his hands like a precious treasure full of gems and jewellery. „I should have done this...I forgot...Gilbert told me...but I didn't understand...". Fondly he stroked over the open pages while stammered, searching for the right words.
"Sorry." muttered Alfred. Seeing Ludwig like this, it was impossible for him to understand that this person was able to do such terrible things in the not-so-far past. You would think that people who do such things would look like monsters, not so confusingly normal.
"I don't understand German.- I can't read this."

„Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde." Ludwig read and his voice sounded like that of a child declaiming a poem.
"Act only on a maxime, which you would want to become an universal law." He tried to translate with the heavy German accent of his, then he added. "A law how everyone should act. Everyone should see their fellows human beings, the fellow countries and nations as well as themself as a purpose not a tool."
He smiled and you couldn't only see the honest belief in this but also the fondness for the man who wrote these words.
"He was Prussian." he said softly. "Gilbert read this to me when I was a child...back then, when I was just an ethnicity...like today."
Alfred couldn't really agree with the text. If every country in this world would act like him, spending more and more money for weapons, to scare away others, invading countries as desired...it would be a terrible world in his opinion.
It was a good thing that different countries were different. That France was French and England was English and Italy was Italian. He was pretty okay with being American, but that didn't mean that he actually wanted that everyone was and acted like him. Perhaps he was self-centered, but he wasn't that overly self-assertive, that he actually thought his way of acting should be the standard for everyone else.
Also...if the other countries would spend a humongous amount of money for weapons like him, who would buy the goods so that he could buy and make more weapons of the money?
However, he stayed quiet. It was good beginning that Ludwig was thinking about the coexistence with other countries. Alfred also had a pedagogical job to do in Europe. Ludwig was a man dedicated to act by following rules, so the best way, in Alfreds opinion, to "reprogram" Germany, was making him find rules that actually were neither self-destructive nor aggressive to the outside.
"Karl Marx actually wanted something very similar. And even the Dekalog..." Ludwig couldn't explain what Karl Marx and the Tanach had to say about his situation, since Hesse were calling them for lunch.

"I've got something special for you. This will make you guys big and strong."
"What the hell is this?!" exclaimed Alfred slightly scared looking on a big pale pink blob of "Food." Said Ludwig picking up his fork.
"Fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, herring salad and cheese of a miner's cow." Hesse chirped and nipped from his apple wine.
"He means goat's cheese." Ludwig explained between two bites obviously enjoying the meal.
"how does it taste?" asked Hesse with a broad expecting grin on his face.
Alfred tried not to look on his plate while eating and used the same trained expression, he had on his face when his big brother cooked something for him and wanted to know his opinion.
"Special."