Lisa Schultz was a plump, cheery little woman who reminded Hans of a mother hen. She loved cornflowers and sheep and, of course, food, as it was a common trait in their bloodline (from both sides of the family; his parents had met when he crashed into her while running towards a toppled food vendor's cart, although whether it was pastries or meat pies was debated). But on the other side of her sweetness, she was a fiery, passionate woman. Heaven help him if Hans got caught doing something wrong, because he'd be lucky if he could sit down for the next two weeks - and she didn't need to wait for his father to come home to belt him.
Some of the sting is gone from her fire now - actually, most of it, she's way on in her years - but Schultz can see the burning in her eyes when he pushes her wheelchair past a Gestapo patrol, or when Hitler's speech is on every radio station, and he hopes sincerely that she doesn't do something stupid and get herself executed - because at the rate things are going, she's not letting natural causes catch up with her anytime soon.
Karl can't say that he knew Rosa Langenscheidt very well, by the time he was born her mind was going downhill. She'd had enough grief, her husband had died just a few months before, and her brother and father had both killed themselves within a year of each other. She never quite came back, although she did her best with Karl and his older brother Oskar. She always had a smile when they came home, even on her worse days, and she never forgot about Oskar's football games nor Karl's spelling tournaments (he certainly wasn't very good at sports, the boy was built like a toothpick and had the constitution of a wet napkin), and, in return, the boys took the best care of her as two boys could. And while they were naturally devastated when she passed, it was a blessing in disguise that she died before she discovered Oskar's growing fame as Oskar Danzig, female impersonator. The pure shock of it would have killed her.
So Langenscheidt never knew his mother, except for Oskar's stories, and he hasn't amounted to much either, and he doesn't have any great plans or a girlfriend or anything of the like, but he's here, and somehow, he thinks she would be proud.
Wilhelm Klink came from a fine line of well-bred German aristocrats, and somehow his mother was the one exception.
Not that Heidi Klink was strange, of course, or bad, or anything like that, in fact she was just the opposite. Not until he turned fifteen and travelled to Munich with his friend did Wilhelm meet another mother who loved to wade in the creek with her children, and wrecked almost as many sets of clothes as her two boys. She loved to tell stories about pirates, and whenever his father was away they did the stupidest things together. Not that they didn't love his father, certainly he had his fine qualities, but if Wilhelm Klink ever saw his wife and two boys rolling around in the cow field and digging up worms and frogs and other nasty things, he may very well have had a heart attack.
Klink isn't sure how he didn't inherit any of his mother's adventurous spirit, that seems to have gone mostly to Wolfgang. But, then again, maybe he did, and it's just waiting until after the war, when adventure isn't punishable by firing squad.