Interesting ancestors

Talking to my mother just now, I learned that

• a) my great-grandmother's father used to talk regularly to the Kaiser, because he played the organ in the cathedral in Berlin, and whenever the emperor wanted to attend a service there, he had the organist come and go through the hymns that were going to be sung, and perhaps suggest an additional one; and
• b) my great-grandmother's brother, on the other hand, was a very progressive teacher, and got arrested by the Nazis in 1933 for some months, from which he never recovered. He sent his own children away, so they ended up in Dublin, Glasgow, Canada, and Australia, respectively. That great-granduncle even has his own Wikipedia entry, if only in German.