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Family life

While at Cadet School in 1911, Rommel met and became engaged to 17-year-old Lucia (Lucie) Maria Mollin (1894–1971). While stationed in Weingarten in 1913, Rommel developed a relationship with Walburga Stemmer, which produced a daughter, Gertrud, born 8 December 1913. Because of elitism in the officer corps, Stemmer's working-class background made her unsuitable as an officer's wife, and Rommel felt honour-bound to uphold his previous commitment to Mollin. With Mollin's cooperation, he accepted financial responsibility for the child. Rommel and Mollin were married in November 1916 in Danzig. Rommel's marriage was a happy one, and he wrote his wife at least one letter every day while he was in the field.

After the end of the First World War, the couple settled initially in Stuttgart, and Stemmer and her child lived with them. Gertrud was referred to as Rommel's niece, a fiction that went unquestioned because of the enormous number of women widowed during the war. Walburga died suddenly in October 1928, and Gertrud remained a member of the household until Rommel's death in 1944. The incident with Walburga seemed to affect Rommel for the rest of his life: he would always keep women distant. A son, Manfred Rommel, was born on 24 December 1928, and later served as Mayor of Stuttgart from 1974 to 1996.