KAPITÄN KLEMENS KOSSUTH, RNC KAISERIN AUGUSTA LEITMOTIF
Klemens Kossuth's grandfather, a man of Hungarian origin, a minority in Rheinland, lived on Planet Stuttgart and worked as a butcher in a meat factory. He was underpaid and overexploited, so his life was hard. Going to the pub every night after work helped him forget that. Because of this he never brought his full wage home. But, drunk, he sometimes did bring violence. This prompted Klemens' father to run away from home for one last time after he had finished high school for cooks. He wondered around in search for work and accommodation, and was even forced to beg for money for a few weeks. One day, however, he stroke lucky. He knocked on the door of a confectionery in a Jewish quarter, owned by an old, childless Jewish widower. He employed Klemens' father more out of pity and out of the need to have someone to talk with during work, than for the expertise, but he quickly realized that his new apprentice already possessed good skill at making food, and was quick to adapt to the craft.
The old man died in a few years and, with no one else to leave his confectionery and his apartment above to, he left it to Klemens' father. Klemens' father moved in and continued the enterprise. While his benefactor was still alive, a young Sephardi woman from the neighbourhood, who was a regular customer, had caught his attention. She worked as an actress in the local theatre. He courted her while serving her sweets, and they fell in love. They married after Klemens' father had inherited the business and the place to live at. Klemens was born shortly after, in 773. However, there were complications with the childbirth, and although there were no consequences for Klemens, his mother was rendered unable to bare any more children. Thus Klemens would, alone, receive all the love his parents could spare him.
While he was little, he often played with the local Jewish boys. They had great respect for him despite him not being Jewish, because Klemens' father often gave them uneaten sweets for free at the end of the day. Most of their parents were poor, so they couldn't afford to buy them sweets every day. Nevertheless, when he started school, he didn't go with them. The local school had the reputation of being very basic, and as his parents had the money and wanted him to get the best education possible, they enrolled him into the school at the centre of the city. His school friends had very little respect for Jews, as Jews were different, and at first they didn't want to accept Klemens into their company. This, however, changed when they realized how well Klemens played football (he was a master goalkeeper), which he had practiced for long with his less posh, but more physically active neighbourgood friends. He became a valuable player, and the team which had him usually won. He was also a good student, as he felt privileged and grateful to be the only one from his quarter to go to a posh school. Because of this it would be logical that his local friends would become jealous, but Klemens was very modest about this, due to the influence of his father, and he was kind towards other Jews although he wasn't one. As he knew a bit more than all of his local friends, he was usually appointed as general when they played war.
As he grew older, he played less and focused on his career more, under the pressure of his parents. He had been learning to play the violin from his young age, suggested by his actress mother, which he loved passionately. When he graduated from a lyceum, he started the studies of Sociology in the city university. However, studying left him with little time to practice, and it wasn't what he had thought it would be, so he quit and focused on the violin fully. He had often been in charge of things when playing with his peers and he was captivated by music, so his dream was to become a conductor. When he was 24, he was employed as a violinist in the theatre where his mother worked, thanks to her connections. All appeared to be going well, until the new, Nomad-influenced regime, took power in Rheinland. One day, without any notice whatsoever, the theatre was simply closed because one of its plays mocked the authority. Klemens' mother was unemployed. In order to help his father finance the family, Klemens found a job in the musical band that played for the local bar. There he came under the influence of an opium smuggling gang that had ties with the LWB, and spent some time as their member, involved in the lucrative narcotic trade.
However, one day a plot of theirs was uncovered, and all the members parted and fled in various directions to avoid questioning and possible imprisonment. Klemens embarked on one of the last liners heading from Rheinland to Bretonia and, as he didn't have enough money to pay for the full ticket, he made it up by playing the violin for the ship orchestra and doing various utility duties, like wiping the floor and washing the dishes. When he arrived to New London, he managed to find work in various bars and brothels, but true orchestras considered him too lowly to play with them. That was how he spent the Nomad War of 800-801. When it was over, he opted not to return to Rheinland, as its economy was in ruins, but stayed in Bretonia. One day, after disembarking on Freeport 6 in Tau-29 from a liner, he stumbled upon an offer that he couldn't reject: a permanent role of a violinist in the local orchestra. There he met George Richard Hall, a Bretonian playboy living off of his elder brother's diligent work, who asked him to teach him how to play the violin. Klemens accepted, as Hall offered to teach him how to command a transport in return, which Klemens thought was very useful and potentially lucrative. Unexpectedly, he found commanding a ship his dream job, as it very much resembled that of a conductor. Every section of the ship was an instrument, and every crewman was a player: his duty was to turn the combination into harmony.
He snatched the opportunity and found employment in a private shipping company as freighter pilot, but he intended it only to be a stage in his career for experience gathering. Having gathered enough, he found a workplace in the rapidly recovering Republican Shipping, which he occupied after quitting his previous job. He captained a Train-class, and found Omega-3 and 7 his favourite systems, as he enjoyed the adventure and challenge of pirate encounters. Nevertheless, he was very kind to those who he had captured, whom he understood as he used to be on the other side of the too (the records of which were lost in the fallout of the Nomad War). He would treat them fairly until dropping them off at the nearest police station, which the law required him to do.
When Liberty invaded Rheinland in 814, he saw it as an opportunity. He enlisted and was entrusted with commanding an Uruz-class and delivering supplies to the frontline. As he excelled at this task, not so much at speed as at fending off ambushes, he was promoted after the war and given command of the Tegetthoff, an aging Bismarck-class. The Tegetthoff was supposed to be disassembled long ago, but the high command planned using her to train a promising captain before she would go on her final journey and be recycled. Having taken some tips about battleship command from George Richard Hall, now a Knight and an Admiral in the BAF, and his old acquaintance, in exchange for information about the Red Hessians, he quickly excelled. Despite captaining an obsolete ship, he managed to deserve a Silver Anti-Capital Ribbon after several victories over the Red Hessians. One of them, however, brought the Tegetthoff's service to an end. The power of her own cannons took her fire control out of function, which caused a chain reaction throughout the whole ship, causing many internal systems to fail. The Tegetthoff limped to Oder Shipyard for repairs, and Klemens was given a brand new ship to command, the Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia, an Elbe-class. He found it challenging to grasp the way many of its innovative gadgets worked, but he managed to get used to them before his ship was incorporated into the Schwerin Battlegroup, and ordered to perform preventive raids into Omicron Xi. The Maria Theresia was renamed to Kaiserin Augusta at the time, since her previous name didn't allow the new fleet tag to fit into the standard name plate. Klemens helped the Military win a few victories at the start of the Xi campaign, but because the Elbe-class is currently still rare and needed in all corners of Rheinland, the Kaiserin Augusta has been given back her status of quick-response ship, and is not part of the Schwerin Fleet any more. She is in the process of reacquiring her previous name.
Although he has abandoned the career of a musician, probably forever, Klemens can still be heard playing the violin in his quarters, during long voyages. Although already 49, he has never married and, as much as he knows, he has no children. Nevertheless, he has had numerous romances, but he never found what he was looking for in any of them, most of them lasting no longer than a few weeks. He strives to behave knightly and ethically, but more because he is convinced it makes him better than others, than out of pure altruism. The first time he saw his father after leaving to Bretonia was in a coffin, but his mother is still alive and managing the confectionery. She writes plays in her free time. It is unclear who will inherit the confectionery when she passes away.