Peter Winter

Peter Harald Winter was the privileged son of Harald Winter, a German industrialist, and Veronica Winter née Rensselaer, an American socialite. Peter was the elder of two brothers; the younger was Paul. Harald employed a nanny from Scotland to tend the boys. The Winters had no daughters.

Youth
While Peter and Paul were visiting their grandmother with their parents in the summer of 1910, they went sailing in a small boat with no adults. A storm came up; Peter was washed overboard and Paul dove in to the water to save him. Both were actually saved by Fritz Esser, the seventeen-year-old son of a local peasant. Later that summer, the boys' uncle, Glenn Rensselaer, arrived at grandmother's home with a British friend Alan Piper.

When World War I started, Peter volunteered for the German Navy Airship Division.