On May 26, 1828, a teenager was found wandering a public square in what is now Nuremberg, Germany. He wore tattered clothing and clutched an envelope containing two letters. The first was addressed to the captain of a local cavalry regiment asking him to take the young lad into his charge, apparently written by an anonymous poor laborer who found and raised the abandoned boy but who could no longer keep him. A second letter, dated 1812 and unsigned but apparently written by his mother, stated that the boy’s father was no longer alive, that she could not take care of him, and he was being sent to join the military…

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