The Bauers are descended from a long line of financiers– from Renaissance era bankers, to investors, shippers, merchants. The Bauer ability to acquire wealth is legendary– as is the family’s apparent inability to get along. Questions of inheritance and worth have plagued them for generations. Brother fighting brother, grudges passed to children, parents killed under mysterious circumstances. All of it, the family insists, exaggerated. Yet family tensions about enforcing a clean inheritance persist, and sometime over several hundred years began a chain of Unbreakable Oaths which mandated that the Bauer fortune could never be passed into hands of any not bearing the Bauer name. The family's vaults were sealed to ensure this, opening only for the proper mix of Bauer bloodline and name. The magics of Oath and enchantment are carefully intertwined, and thus the fortunes of youngsters as yet unsworn must be collected in the presence of another Bauer whose oath has already been made.

The last Bauer patriarch only had two children– one son, one daughter– and he held his wife's passing as a grudge against his daughter until the day of his death. He refused to leave any of his inheritance to Anastasia, unwilling to allow the wealth to pass out of his name, offering her only a stipend to survive on. She would receive no more until she was wed, and a son born under the Bauer name. As such, Anastasia’s relationship with her father was… [i]tenuous[/i] at best. After a series of failed pregnancies and having delivered only her precious daughter, Gisela, the threat of destitution prompted Hauke’s parents to make a difficult decision. When at last their second daughter was born– a risky birth, unassisted, in the privacy of their own home– they named her Hauke Marcell Bauer, and pronounced her a son.

• 1864: Hauke is born in the wee hours of the morning on Christmas Day.
• 1873: The patriarch passes in his sleep. He leaves control of the family fortunes to his son, Lothar, who shares his father’s restrictive views on female inheritance. Lothar seizes upon the opportunity to increase the fortunes of his own brood of four sons, and determines that the bulk of the Bauer line’s inheritance should wait until young Hauke has a son of his own. To prevent Anastasia from spending it recklessly and ruining her own son’s future, of course.
• 1876: Hauke begins his schooling at Durmstrang Institute.
• 1877-1882: Embroiled in an academic environment, Hauke absolutely thrives. He excels in spellcraft, and even his rapidly worsening relationship with his hellion cousins cannot stop him immersing himself in a world of books and study. It does, however, make something of a mess for his family, as family functions frequently descend into bickering. Once or twice some hexes are thrown to accompany the insults. In time, Hauke’s family restrict their appearances only to Christmas dinners.
• 1882-1883: Hauke graduates from Durmstrang Institute with flying colors, and embarks upon a– disappointingly scientific– career in the study and development of new core magics. He demonstrates little interest in beginning a family of his own.
• 1885: Hauke publishes his first treatises on the core nature of magic, detailing theories about the limitations of human imagination, and what might be possible with the latent force which is magic if those limitations could be exceeded.
• 1886-1890: Hauke publishes two more works, delving ever deeper into theories on the mechanics of magic and exploring new spells he has constructed.
• 1891: Fed up with waiting, Uncle Lothar delivers an ultimatum to Hauke– that he will cease this endless dallying, find himself a wife, or Lothar’s own sons will inherit the entire family fortune and leave Hauke with nothing. With few alternatives, Hauke agrees.
• 1892: Cousin August, a lawyer from England, comes to stay with Hauke’s family for a short while. They have a cordial– if not familiar– relationship, and prior to departing August extends an invitation for Hauke to visit should he ever come to London.
1894: Under pressure to marry but, for obvious reasons, reluctant to put forward a good faith effort, Hauke applies to a position at Hogwarts and uses it as an opportunity to ‘pursue a wife’ far away from his family’s prying eyes. He travels to England to stay with his cousin August and spend the summer familiarizing himself with life there, before the school year begins.