In the evening of the 20th of November 1904, the whole of Germany held its breath.
Some because the Fifth Prince of Prussia apparently smelled like a sewer. Some because of the rumors swirling around Berlin politics.
And a lot because of one thing, which was the very first drawing of the Double Color Ball.
In a rented opera house in Berlin, under bright gas lamps, reporters from dozens of newspapers, staff from the Berlin Notary Office, and a crowd of curious onlookers had gathered to stare at a dwarf on a stage.
Not a circus dwarf, but a lottery dwarf, in a suit.
Karl von Jonarett, General Manager of the German Welfare Lottery Company, stood on a small riser so he could actually see over the table. In front of him were two glass drums. One large one filled with red balls, and a smaller one filled with blue balls.
The notary checked the seals. The reporters checked the notary. Karl checked everything twice… and then once more, just in case.
Then the drawing began.
The first red ball spun out and clacked into the tray, it was the number, (02).
Then came the rest: 09 – 14 – 17 – 18 – 31.
Finally, from the smaller drum, the blue ball came with force, and it was the number, (08).
Karl stepped forward, his formal black suit making him look like a very serious child.
"In the presence of the Berlin Notary Office and representatives of the press," he announced, voice clear, "these are the official results for the first drawing of the Double Color Ball."
He repeated the numbers slowly, then added, "Congratulations to all the lucky winners, and I wish good fortune to all future players."
He bowed slightly.
"Our staff will immediately begin verifying all purchased ticket numbers. We aim to complete initial verification before tomorrow afternoon. If there is a first-prize winner, the major newspapers will be notified at once."
The cameras clicked. Pens scratched. Excited murmurs spread through the hall.
Outside, the entire German lottery world—and half the country besides—waited on one question...
Would anyone actually win the five million mark jackpot?
Even after taxes, it was more money than most people could imagine. You would not just be "comfortable" rich.
No, you would be more like, dynasty-building rich.
Back in the company's temporary headquarters, the mood was electric.
Desks filled every corner of the rented building. Ink pots, ledgers, paper stacks, cigarette smoke, tired faces—this was the real engine behind the "overnight riches" fantasy.
Oskar, still in his beloved Prussian uniform and still refusing to change it, stood with Karl in front of a large ledger and a stack of early tally sheets.
Karl looked like a miniature businessman whose soul had finally found meaning.
"Your Highness," Karl said, eyes shining, "we did it. Preliminary reports show we sold over ten million tickets."
Each ticket cost two marks.
In Oskar's original world, that'd be roughly the price of a cheap hat, a pair of simple shoes, or a low-end meal in a European city—maybe somewhere around 15–20 euros in modern terms.
For a German worker in 1904, two marks wasn't nothing. But it wasn't impossible. It was "a treat," a little shard of hope you could squeeze into your budget if you wanted it badly enough.
And as it turned out, Germans wanted hope very badly.
Oskar let out a low whistle.
"Ten million balls… that's a lot of hope, my man," he said.
Karl grinned.
"We'll only know the true result once we finish checking the winners," he said, rubbing his hands, "but even with one first prize, our profit from this draw alone should still exceed two million marks."
To handle the avalanche of paper, the company had hired over two hundred clerks and statisticians on a temporary basis. There were no computers, no Wi-Fi, no calculators—just ink, ledgers, tired eyes, and rivers of coffee.
It was expensive and exhausting work, but compared to the profits on the table, it was nothing.
Oskar's mind was already racing ahead.
If there's two million in profit from this one… my share is around one-point-something million… three draws a week… weeks in a year…
He didn't bother doing exact math. His brain just filled in the answer:
Battleship, here we come.
And maybe, after that—a real modern-style gym? bike helmets for miners and fast-moving people? protein shakes? Safety and muscles, my man.
He snapped back to the present and cleared his throat.
"Right. Let's have our people speed up the tabulation," Oskar said. "Once we confirm a grand prize, notify the newspapers immediately. Second wave of promotion—maximum spam. We want the whole country to see we're real. That people really win."
Ten million tickets sold in the first draw was a triumph, but in Oskar's mind, the German market was much bigger.
With their edge in game design and advertising, Double Color Ball could become the default lottery of the Empire. The one everyone copied. The one everyone had to play.
Karl nodded quickly.
"Yes, Your Highness," he said. "I'll oversee the checking teams myself. There shall be no mistakes or delays."
He hurried off into the crowded office, barking instructions at clerks who towered over him but obeyed anyway, because the dwarf in charge was the only thing between them and chaotic disaster.
Oskar paced through the corridors, excitement buzzing in his veins.
He passed rooms overflowing with tickets and ink-stained clerks hunched over numbers, all of them unknowingly calculating the shape of Germany's new addiction.
Somewhere in that mountain of paper, there might be a ticket that turned a coal miner into a tycoon… or a farmer's wife into the richest woman in her district. Somewhere in that mountain of paper was also the first real step toward a ship of steel and guns flying the German flag—a ship that, if Oskar had his way, would never be sunk in some pointless, doomed war.
For now, though, he clenched his fist and grinned.
"First draw," he muttered. "First blood."
And then, because he was still Oskar, he went to the hallway, did ten pull-ups on a doorframe in full uniform, dropped down, and yelled at a passing clerk:
"Work hard, my man! Hope is counting on you!"
The clerk almost dropped the tickets in terror.
Early the next morning, Karl returned to Oskar's suite with dark circles under his eyes and a thick stack of papers clutched in both hands.
He looked like a raccoon in a suit.
"Your Highness," he croaked, voice hoarse but triumphant, "the results are in."
Oskar was in the middle of doing crunches on the carpet. He rolled backwards, sprang up in something that was almost a backflip, landed with his chest out like an action hero and said:
"Well, my man?"
Karl took a breath.
"One first prize," he said. "Eighteen second prizes. The rest spread across the lower tiers. Total prize payout this round: approximately twelve million marks."
He flipped to the next page.
"After taxes, expenses, printing, salaries, ad costs—everything…" His mouth finally curled into a tired grin. "Our net profit is two million one hundred twelve thousand marks."
For a heartbeat, the room was absolutely silent.
Then Oskar slammed his palm on the table so hard an ink bottle jumped and nearly suicided onto the carpet.
"YES, my man!" he barked. "Good start. Very good start."
Karl couldn't stop grinning. For his one million mark investment, his ten percent share of profits meant over 200,000 marks—from just one draw. Five rounds at that level and his initial money would be back with interest. Anything after that was pure miracle.
"Immediately send prize funds to the regional sales stations," Oskar said. "Winners must be able to redeem in their own cities. No delays, no excuses. If people hear that their neighbor really got paid… they will go mad for our balls."
He paused. "…Lottery balls. Yes."
"Understood, Your Highness," Karl said, politely ignoring the phrasing. "Also, our second round of ticket sales begins today. We prepared fifteen million tickets, but… I'm not sure that will be enough."
"It's too late to print more for this draw," Oskar said, scratching his head. "But for the next one, we prepare twenty million. If those sell out, we increase again."
As long as demand stayed hot, they would expand carefully, step by step, until they hit saturation. Then they could think about other countries.
Karl hurried off to oversee distribution and payout orders. While Oskar stayed behind, pacing the room, excitement burning like coal in his chest.
And while Berlin buzzed with ledgers and profit margins, life in the Ruhr went on as usual.
In the industrial west, steelworks roared, chimneys smoked, and coal mines ate men one shift at a time.
Near Düsseldorf, the end-of-shift whistle wailed at a shaft of the Königsgrube. Miners began to pour out of the black mouth of the pit, one after another, some crawled out of small holes, other's came from the larger shafts walking.
Their faces were smeared with coal dust. Eyes red from bad air and long hours. Bodies stiff from crouching underground, pushing carts and doing the hard labour of miners.
Germany's factories, railways, and battleships all fed on coal.
The lives of the men who pulled it out of the earth… were much cheaper.
One of the last to emerge was a broad-shouldered man in his thirties, slower than the rest, his movements heavy with exhaustion.
His name was Hans Albrecht.
His father had fought in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, marching with the North German troops against the French. He'd been a young conscript then, full of stories about marching to the sound of the Kaiser's speeches and the glory of the new German Empire.
He'd never finished those stories.
At the great Battle of Gravelotte, a shell fragment shattered his leg and buried shrapnel in his chest. He survived the war, but never fully recovered. Work became hard. Breathing became harder.
By the time Hans was ten, his father was dead.
His mother took laundry, sewed until her fingers bled, and still had to send Hans to the pit as soon as he was old enough to pass for a small man instead of a big boy. There were no pensions worth mentioning. The "glory" of victory had not paid the rent.
Now Hans was thirty-two. He'd spent nearly half his life in mines.
He made a decent miner's wage for the time—something like four or five marks on a good day—but between rent, coal for their own stove, bread, potatoes, medicine, and children who always seemed to be hungry or growing, there was never much left.
"Hans! Beer tonight?" one of the miners called as they trudged toward the changing rooms. "They say that new lottery had its first draw. Maybe one of us gets lucky, eh?"
Hans shook his head.
"No. Lina and the children are waiting," he said. "If I smell beer again, she might kill me."
The others laughed.
"Then drink water and lie about it, you coward!" another shouted. "If I win five million marks, I'll buy you a whole inn!"
They peeled off in the direction of the tavern.
Hans left them and walked toward the worker's district.
The streets of their neighborhood were narrow, lined with gray, soot-stained tenements. Laundry hung from windows; children played in the mud; a priest walked by, hat low, trying to pretend the shouting from a nearby bar wasn't happening.
Hans passed a corner shop he'd been to once or twice before. It had a new sign in the window, "WELFARE LOTTERY, DOUBLE COLOR BALL. First Prize: 5,000,000 Marks."
The glass was plastered with yesterday's papers, all screaming in big letters, "DOUBLE COLOR BALL GRAND PRIZE WON! FIRST FIVE MILLION MARK JACKPOT HIT!"
Seeing it, Hans stopped in his tracks, and his hand went to his jacket, feeling in the inner pocket.
And then, he pulled it out, a crumpled piece of paper, his precious ticket worth two marks. Nearly a day's food for the family, gone in a moment of madness.
Lina had scolded him when he'd come home with it.
"Two marks? Hans, have you lost your mind? The children need boots!"
He had shrugged when he bought the ticket, embarrassed by the whole thing, and told his wife, "If God wants us to get lucky, He needs something to work with. Maybe this is it." Afterward he had nearly forgotten about the ticket entirely, burying it among the ordinary concerns of work, rent, food, and keeping the children warm. Now, however, standing outside the lottery office and staring at the blue-and-red sign above the door, Hans Albrecht felt his heart beginning to pound. It's nothing, he told himself. The chance is like one in the stars. Yet even knowing that did little to stop the small and dangerous spark of hope growing in his chest. Most poor men did not even have numbers to hope on. They had wages, winter, rent, sickness, and whatever remained after the children had eaten. Hans drew in a breath, crushed his cap nervously between his hands, and pushed open the door.
The sales point was crowded enough that he almost turned around. Men and women stood near the counters buying tickets for the next drawing, some laughing about what they would do if they won, while others handed over small winning slips and walked away with enough money for a decent meal, a pair of boots, or perhaps a new winter coat. Hans immediately felt out of place among them. Coal dust stained his clothes and remained packed beneath his fingernails, the smell of the mine still clinging faintly to him, and every step of his heavy boots left a thin black mark across the floorboards. Nevertheless, he slowly made his way toward the counter, where a young woman with neatly pinned hair and clean, modest clothing looked up at him. "Excuse me," Hans said quietly, holding out the ticket. "Could you… check whether this has anything on it?"
The clerk blinked at the sight of the exhausted miner standing before her, but whatever surprise she felt disappeared behind a professional smile. "Of course, sir. May I see it?" Hans handed the ticket over and suddenly became painfully aware that his fingers were trembling. The young woman glanced down at the numbers, then toward the printed winning combination posted behind her. She looked back at the ticket. Then back at the list. Her expression changed. She removed the winning numbers from their clip, brought them closer, and began comparing them one by one while her lips moved silently. Hans watched her hands begin to tremble. "Oh… oh God," she whispered. "Head office told us the grand prize had been sold somewhere in this region, but I never thought…" She swallowed and looked up at him with an expression that frightened him more than reassured him. Hans did not look like anyone's idea of a millionaire. He looked like a man the mines had spent years chewing on and had simply failed to finish.
"Sir," the clerk said, her voice no longer quite steady, "please remain calm, but I must congratulate you." Hans frowned at her, clearly not understanding. When he asked what she meant, she took another breath and told him that he had won the first prize in the most recent Double Color Ball drawing. Five million marks before tax. For several seconds Hans simply stared. The words reached his ears but seemed incapable of entering the part of his mind that understood what they meant. "What?" he finally stammered. "No, that… that cannot be right. Please check again. Maybe it is second prize. Or maybe nothing. Are you sure?" By then the people nearby had begun listening, whispers spreading quickly across the room as someone asked whether she had said first prize and another repeated the number five million with open disbelief.
The clerk checked again, slower this time, deliberately comparing every number on Hans's ticket against the winning combination. When she finally looked up, a huge smile spread across her face. "It is correct," she said. "Six red numbers and the blue. Sir, today your life has changed." Hans suddenly felt both impossibly light and unbearably heavy. His mind did not go to mansions, servants, expensive clothes, or champagne. It went home. He saw Lina bent over the washtub until the skin on her hands cracked from soap and cold water. He saw his oldest boy, Max, trying to hide the holes in his shoes before going out to sell newspapers. He remembered little Emma coughing through winter while the coal stove struggled to keep frost from forming inside the windows, the landlord hinting again that the rent might rise, and the priest telling men like Hans that patience would eventually be rewarded in heaven. Five million marks. The number was so large it hardly felt like money at all.
Hans swayed slightly and whispered that he needed to sit. A chair appeared behind him almost immediately, pushed forward by several people at once, while the orderly little lottery office began dissolving into excitement. Someone rushed into the street shouting that the grand prize had been claimed, and within moments a boy was running toward the nearest tavern yelling that Hans from the Königsgrube had won the five million. Behind the counter, the clerk was already reaching for the telephone to notify the regional office. She explained that Hans would need to travel to Düsseldorf the following day to complete the official documentation, but assured him that the prize was real and that the company had already secured the money through the bank. Hans barely seemed to hear her. He was staring down at his hands, still dark with coal dust, slowly rubbing his thumb against his forefinger and watching the black powder move across the same rough skin that had been there yesterday. Nothing about his hands had changed. Nothing about his face had changed. He was still Hans Albrecht, still a miner, still covered in the dirt of the earth. Yet somewhere between entering that shop and sitting down in that chair, the entire world had tilted beneath him.
Several hours later in Berlin, a telegraph sheet landed on Karl's desk. He read it once, blinked, and immediately read it again before pushing back his chair and hurrying toward Oskar's office. "Your Highness," he announced as he entered, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice, "the grand prize has been verified. We have our winner. His name is Hans Albrecht, a coal miner from the Ruhr region near Düsseldorf. Married, had children, lived in workers' housing. His father died from wounds sustained after the Franco-Prussian War." Oskar looked up from behind his desk with his blond hair in complete disorder, his uniform still stubbornly on his body, and the red around his eyes making it obvious that sleep had once again lost a battle against whatever stupid idea had occupied him through the night.
"A coal miner?" Oskar asked.
"Yes," Karl replied, a grin beginning to creep across his face. "One of the poorer kinds of workers in Germany, and as of today, one of the richest private men in his district."
Oskar leaned slowly back in his chair as the significance of that settled over him. Then his tired face broke into a wide grin. "Our first miracle customer."
"And the greatest advertisement we could never have bought," Karl said.
He was right. Within days the story would spread through Germany with a speed no newspaper campaign could reproduce on its own. It would move through mines and factories, taverns and tenements, railway depots and market squares, passed from worker to worker until the details became almost legendary. A coal miner with dust in his lungs and barely anything in his pockets, a wife and children waiting at home, a father who had carried wounds from the last great war, had bought one ticket and awakened to discover that he possessed more money than an ordinary laborer could earn over thousands of years. Oskar could spend fortunes printing slogans about changing one's destiny and never create anything remotely as powerful as that story. Hans Albrecht was not an advertisement invented by some clever clerk in Berlin. He was proof that the impossible thing printed on every ticket could actually happen to a real man.
The Double Color Ball had created its first legend, and Oskar understood immediately what that meant. Somewhere across the German Empire, people who had laughed at the five-million-mark jackpot were going to hear about Hans and stop laughing quite so loudly. Workers would look at one another over mugs of beer and wonder why the winning ticket could not have belonged to them. Housewives would imagine rent paid forever. Shopkeepers would think about retirement. Clerks would picture houses, servants, and freedom from desks. Millions of people who had previously seen the jackpot as nothing more than a ridiculous number were now going to attach a face to it.
And once people could imagine the winner as someone like themselves, there was one question Oskar knew would begin spreading faster than any advertisement he could buy.
Why not me?