following careful negotiation and calculation by the government over which side to back.) There were also briefer missions on behalf of the German Foreign Ministry to Bucharest and Constantinople. Kern was also able to engage in networking during his time working for the foreign ministry, becoming acquainted with Foreign Minister von Bülow, who later turned out to be a valuable political ally. After working for some weeks as a simultaneous interpreter among the prisoners of war being held at the processing facility at Döberitz, in August 1915 he took charge of setting up and then running an "archive" for the "Nachrichten-Offizier-Berlin" (NOB: loosely, "military intelligence service in Berlin"). Although described in some sources as an archive, the department he headed up also specialised in various other document related activities, involving coded messaging, helping to brief German intelligence operatives sent to work abroad and producing false identity papers for them. Between 1916 and 1918 he was in effect commuting on a slightly irregular basis between Berlin and the family home at Kronberg, at the end of the local railway line into Frankfurt, ten miles away. Given the stress and pressures of combining family duties with two demanding parallel careers in different parts of the country, his health - never robust - deteriorated: during several months directly following the war he largely absented himself from the public sphere, and was seriously ill during the winter of 1918/1919. During the war and directly after it Kern became an increasingly vocal and fervent advocate of an intensely nationalist-conservative position, grappling passionately with the "war guilt" question. Notably, he teamed up with Grand admiral von Tirpitz during 1918/19 to compose an autobiographical memoir on behalf of the latter. The access afforded to the private papers and insights of a "larger than life" figure who had known the emperor well, served in the imperial navy - mostly in the upper ranks - for more than half a century, and combined his naval service with ministerial office for nearly two decades, was an invaluable resource for Kern as an historian and as a constant participant on the fringes of politics. On a personal level the two remained firm friends until von Tirpitz died, in 1930. The Tirpitz memoire was viewed by critics as explosive because of the way, they thought, it carefully sought to put the role of the German military in an "appropriate" light. The book