Giesbert Hoffmann was considered the best tutor you could get. In influential circles, his name was mentioned in secret. His pedagogy was held in the highest esteem in the suburban mansions of the rich. Especially when a teenager got out of control and demanded firm guidance. Especially when the daughter of the house was about to mess up her A-levels and only drastic measures could avert the situation.

The thinking in these circles was decidedly conservative. They cultivated authoritarian manners that had proven successful for generations. Here, the man still was the master of the house, who was in charge and knew how to lead his own with a firm hand. His will was the measure of all things. His word was law. His principle was to demand and encourage, praise and punish.

Hoffmann fitted perfectly into this world. He was one of the few educators who still upheld the old values. He helped a desperate mother to get her wayward teenager back on the right track. He was the extended arm of a businessman who simply didn’t have enough time to take care of his daughter’s upbringing himself. He was appreciated by ambitious parents and feared by lazy daughters.

If there was one thing Hoffmann hated, it was the erosion of old values. Teenagers who had never been educated and were already taking the pill at 14. Party girls who hopped from guy to guy for nothing but fun and pleasure. Young women with nothing on their minds who thought they were irresistible. Cocky women who proudly celebrated their life of luxury to which they themselves had not contributed the slightest bit.

Hoffmann was convinced that a society needed structure and order. It demanded a top and a bottom. People who determine, order, command and those who obey. Hoffmann saw the world as Jean Jaques Rousserau had already described it: „Flowers are refined through cultivation and people through education.“ An insight that opened up to him in a very special way when he got to know the old rural castle and became part of a close-knit community that had very specific ideas about the society of tomorrow.

And he should play a very significant role in shaping this world. Not just as a tutor. But above all as a pedagogue, as an educator, as a disciplinarian who was to raise a new generation of women who would have the same virtues as in the old days. And using the same methods that had always worked: demanding and encouraging, praising and punishing.

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