One of my Characters, Sir Jasper Beck was modelled on this man. He was accused of being a traitor in WWI. (Wrongly accused IMO).He was a German national who moved to England as a young man. He became a self made millionaire in the Steel Industry and even Lord Mayor of Sheffield.
As the Royal Family were hurriedly changing their German names to Windsor they needed a fall guy to make themselves look 'hard' on Germans. He wasn’t of noble blood and expendable, so they accused him of being a traitor and took away his knighthood for trading with the Germans in 1913. This was a year before the war started and quite frankly, everyone was trading with them back then anyhow. He died not long after all this happened to him, poor man.
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