Autonomy and Caprice

There is a famous quote by Lord Palmerston: “The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it.”
The ‘famous professor’ is thought to have been Ludwig Emmanuel Mondan (1777-1863) who was born in Hohenzollern-Hechingen. For a while he lived in Southern England, and advised the trustees of the Lyrian Institute of Archeology, however he returned to Hechingen in 1829, where he married an Italian Countess (Maria Balbina Rinaldi) and began his renowned research into pseudo-political mechanical models. He was so distressed when his beloved homeland was incorporated in Prussia in 1850, that he went mad and was incarcerated in the informal lunatic asylum run by the Concipio Fellowship not far from Grosselfingen. In 1855 he ran away and tried to drown himself in the river Starzel. However he was rescued by two peasants, and lived peacefully until the age of 85, cared for by his mistress, Zuiprian Constanza Perrelin. He wrote seventeen theses on Autonomy and Caprice, and six of these are in Professor Mundeign’s archive and are currently being transcribed and translated. Ludwig Emmanuel Mondan was of-course Professor Yorvick Mundeign’s Great-great-great Grandfather.
(Ilych Mundane, Mondan’s grandson,  was also one of Professor Mundeign’s famous ancestors)