And thus things fell apart everywhere. But at least in the Stechlin area itself they hoped to keep matters under control and to swing all votes to Dubslav. For this purpose it was decided that all should get together in the village inn; Thursday at seven was set as the time.
The Stechlin inn lay on the square formed by the intersection of the chestnut-lined road from Wutz with the actual village road, and was the most imposing of its four corner houses. In front stood a few age- old linden trees. Three, four feeding troughs were pushed close to the building’s walls, but off towards the left where the corner shop and the inn’s pub-room were located. Towards the right lay the large assembly room in which Dubslav was today to be acclaimed – if not for the world then at least for Rheinsberg-Wutz, and if not for Rheinsberg-Wutz, at least for Stechlin and its surroundings. The aforementioned main assembly room was a long hall with five windows that had seen many a schottische, something its appearance today by no means attempted to deny. Not only were all the polished sconces still in place, but the prodigious double bass, which would have been far too much trouble to be removed every time, also peeked over the railing of the music loft, its long neck set at an angle.
Beneath this loft, across the room, stood a longish table covered with a table cloth, intended for the committee. On benches to the right and left sat about twenty party deputies, whose duty it was to carry out the decisions of the committee. These party representatives were for the most part well-to-do Stechlin farmers, intermingled with official and half official personages from the neighborhood, foresters, rangers and foremen at the various glass and tar works. Also joining them were a peat inspector, an official from the surveyor’s office, a tax official and finally an unsuccessful merchant, now an agent running the post office. Of course, rural postman Brose was in attendance, along with the entire constabulary, made up of foot patrolman Uncke and constable Pyterke of the mounted police. Pyterke only half belonged to the district, something that had long been a point of contention, but he particularly enjoyed appearing at assemblies like this nonetheless. Nothing was more pleasurable for him, in fact, than to observe his comrade and official colleague Uncke on occasions of this sort, and in the process to fully realize his own tremendous but actually quite justified superiority over the latter as a handsome fellow and former cuirassier-guard. Uncke was to him the absolute epitome of the comical and if his bronzed-reddish countenance in and of itself amused him to begin with, far, far more did his dyed shoe-brush side whiskers, and above all the way he tended to roll his eyes as he followed negotiations. Pyterke was right; Uncke really was a comical figure. His expression constantly said, “It all depends on me.” At the same time he was a truly good-natured man who never wrote down more than was necessary in the line of duty and also only rarely broke things up.
The hall had three doors opening to the vestibule. At the middle door stood the two gendarmes who straightened to attention as the chairman of the committee rose from his seat at the stroke of seven and declared the meeting open.
The aforementioned chairman was, of course, Chief Forester Katzler, who today, instead of merely a black and white ribbon, had pinned on the actual Iron Cross he had won at St. Marie-aux-Chênes. Next to him sat Superintendent Koseleger and Pastor Lorenzen. On the narrow side of the table to the left was Krippenstapel, on the right, Mayor Kluckhuhn, the latter also wearing a medal, the Düppel Medal, even though he had only served in the reserve at Düppel. He enjoyed joking about it and said, while revealing his enviable teeth, “Yes sir, boys. That’s how it goes. At Alsen I was, but at Düppel I wasn’t. And so now I’ve got the Düppel medal.”
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