Gold Elsie by E. Marlitt is a romance novel set in Thuringia about the German aristocracy.
Excerpt: Hans von Gnadewitz was to be found not only upon the boughs of the genealogical tree
in the hall of the new castle but suspended by a rope around his neck to a bough of one of the
actual trees in the forest. The beaten whipper-in expiated the deed upon the scaffold but that
could not bring the last of the Gnadewitzes to life again for he was dead -irrevocably dead
the physicians said and the long tale of robber-knights wild excesses hunting orgies and
horse-racing came to an end.
