I've created a managed wrapper class for a c++ .dll i want to call from
a c-sharp project.  It works fine except that any static strings that
are created within any of the classes of my c++ .dll aren't getting
initialized...i.e. they are always empty!  The code looks something
like this (abridged):

//WrapperClass.cpp
public __gc class WrapperClass
{
  void myMethod()
  {
     UnmanagedClass cl();
     string str = cl.getString();
  }
}

//UnmanagedClass.h
class UnmanagedClass
{
  public:
     static string str;
}

//UnmanagedClass.cpp
public class UnmanagedClass()
{
  string UnmanagedClass::str("hello world");
  string getString()
  {
     return str;
  }

}

Basically the static member "str" is always empty...i.e. it never gets
assigned the "hello world" value.  This works fine when managed
extensions aren't involved.  Does anyone know what's going on.