At Epiphany 1913 Straube celebrated his fortieth birthday and his tenth anniversary in Leipzig. He had finally seen his “Peters II” edition into print, even if as a mere torso of a much more ambitious original plan. The coming months were to bring important recitals in Breslau and Copenhagen, the latter opening onto a long and productive relationship with the Scandinavian countries and a warm association with Carl Nielsen. Johannes Straube, the father with whom he evidently had maintained only the most distant of relationships, would die on September 7, 1913, aged seventy. Karl and William surely were struck by the extraordinary coincidence that their father's death fell on the seventh anniversary of their mother's own, and that she likewise had succumbed at seventy.

Aside from what his father's decline and death may or may not have meant to him, Straube in 1913 largely enjoyed the calm before the storm—not only with respect to the domestic tempest that would arise from the Leisner liaison, but on other fronts as well, and in even more disturbing ways. The gears of impending change did not turn slowly or elegantly. The most glaring example, of course, was going to be the great European conflagration unleashed by the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the Austrian throne on June 28, 1914. The German Empire under Wilhelm II—allied with Austria-Hungary, maniacally concerned with its newcomer status on the stage of European and colonial power and possessed of expansionist aims—had pursued policies that alienated it from Russia to the east and France and Britain to the west. By August 3, 1914, the “encircled” Germans were at war on both fronts, now marching through a neutral Belgium to France and into Russia to score important initial victories, fanning the flames of domestic patriotism and visions of an emergent world power in middle Europe. Political mechanics and rhetorical flourishes aside, arguably the most dangerous aspect of the conflict at its outset was a widespread failure to grasp what a different sort of war this was going to be.