  Count Paul Yorck von Wartenburg was born in Berlin on March 1, 1835. His grandfather was the famous Field Marshal Hans David Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg. (The Field Marshal's courageous signing of the Convention of Tauroggen, originally unauthorized by the king and thus in effect treasonous, started the Prussian War of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813. It made the Field Marshal Yorck a national hero.) Paul Yorck's father, Ludwig David Yorck von Wartenburg, managed the family's estate at Klein-Oels in Silesia (near Breslau, today Wrokław) where Paul Yorck grew up. Paul Yorck's parents were well-connected to a number of literary, philosophical, and artistic circles in Berlin and elsewhere. They were acquainted with Friedrich Schleiermacher, Ludwig Tieck, Bettina von Arnim, Alexander von Humboldt, Karl August Varnhagen, Johann Gustav Droysen, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Ernst von Wildenbruch, to name but a few. The family Yorck von Wartenburg belonged to the dominant elite in Prussia and the German Empire. Yorck's life-long enthusiasm for history and historical reality must be seen against this biographical background. 