Josef Osterman was a watchmaker and the father of Jon Osterman.
Biography[]
Josef Osterman was born in Germany. He grew up in a country crippled by World War I, and already tainted by antisemitic feelings. Despite this, he fell in love with Inge, a Jewish-German woman, and going against his family’s wishes, he chose to marry her. Josef found a job as a watchmaker, and distinguished himself as a fine artisan; he and Inge were happy, and they had a son in 1929, Jonathan, who he raised to follow his footsteps as a watchmaker.
While their family was a happy oasis, the world around them was becoming crueler and harsher, especially for Jews, and when Adolf Hitler became the new chancellor, it became clear that staying in Germany would have been terribly dangerous for both Inge and Jon. Josef decided to take his family away from his country until they still had time, and in 1939 he hid his son in a box for market goods, and tried to leave Germany on a wagon. Just before passing the border, though, the Ostermans were stopped by a couple of soldiers, who wanted to inspect the wagon. To protect her son and to give her husband time to act, Inge ran away. One of the soldiers ran after her, so Josef had the opportunity to attack and disarm the other one, killing him in the struggle; he ran after his wife immediately after, but the other soldier had already reached and killed Inge. Josef couldn’t do anything else but kill the other soldier, come back to the wagon and make his escape with Jon, promising in his heart that he would have ensured his son the best life he could. The two survivors took the first ship leaving for America, and they arrived in New York City, where Josef found his serenity again when he started working as a watchmaker again, finally finding something he could fix and control.
Josef and Jon lived together during the entire span of World War II, and Jon helped his father in his shop, learning everything he could about watches, being fascinated just like Josef by their perfect mechanism and their complexity. In 1945, though, everything changed. Josef watched in horror as the United States military dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the world with an unprecedented carnage. More than this, he realized that if nuclear science was real, then also Albert Einstein‘s theories about time and its relativity were correct. In such a world, where time wasn’t something real anymore, being a watchmaker would have soon become an outdated profession, a relic from the past, and he didn’t want his son to lose his time on that anymore. He rushed into Jon’s room, and he threw away the watch he was repairing, prompting him to study nuclear physics instead, and to become a scientist, a man of the future. Jon obeyed his father, attended Princeton University thanks to Josef’s savings, and became an atomic physicist. Josef believed that his son was meant to be a great man in the world of the future, but all his hopes crumbled in 1959, when Milton Glass, his son’s boss in the research facility he was working in, informed him that Jon had died in a lab accident. All was lost, until Jon resurfaced, with a new body, new powers, a new comprehension of time and space. Josef had always known that his son would have become a great man, a man of the future, he just didn’t realize how right he was at the time.
Personality[]
Josef Osterman was a brilliant man, deep and meditative, who loved his job as it gives him the idea that something in the world can always be fixed, that there’s something always under control. An artisan at heart, he’s also inclined to philosophical reflections, and he tended to see in things more meaning than most people do, usually being right about it. Loving and caring, Josef lived for his son, and did anything in his power to make sure he’ll live the life his beloved wife dreamt for him.