Infanterists
Years of War

Years of War (1852-1871)

Part 3 takes place at the time of the Civil War in the USA, which separated the emigrant family. Their friends on the Rhine helped with the reconstruction. Then the unification wars begin in Germany.

Riots in New York
Years of War

Nativists and immigrants

[America, around 1850] Lorenz, the Forty-Eighter, had settled in well. He had met all members of his American family and was eager to learn about the country and its people. Moreover, he had found his personal happiness.

Fort Sumter
Years of War

North and South

[America, around 1860]  A large country had come into being, but it was not a homogeneous one. Harvey Bergmann, the political journalist, observed these developments with great concern.

Civil War, Richmond
Years of War

Secession War

[America, 1861-1865] After Lincoln’s election, South Carolina declared secession on December 20, 1860. Until February 1, 1861, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas followed.

Carpetbagger
Years of War

Defeated South

[America, 1865] America, 1865. In a bitterly fought Civil War, the Northern states were victorious in the end. The Union prevailed. After that, the South was ruled by the military, and war profiteers came in.

Mountain Men vineyard, 1865
Years of War

Reconstruction

[America, 1865] When the war broke out in the United States, the entire Bergmann family on the Rhine also feared for their relatives in America. Now Emil and Lena set out to helped with reconstruction.

Prussian-Austrian War
Years of War

Prussian-Austrian War

[America and Germany, 1866] In Germany, war was looming between the two great powers, the Kingdom of Prussia under Wilhelm I in Berlin and Franz Joseph’s Habsburg Empire of Austria in Vienna.

Cemetary
Years of War

Prussian-French War

[Europe and America, 1870/71] After his failure in Mexico, Emperor Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in France needed a success in his foreign policy. The much aggrandized Prussia and Bismarck annoyed him.