AMERICA

                             AMERICA

I am an American,

My Father was an atom of dust,

My Mother a straw in the wind

To his supreme majesty.

Then came the dream,

The dream of America.

In the light of the liberty torch

The atom of dust became a man

And the straw in the wind became a woman

For the first time.

See, said my Father, pointing to a flag that fluttered there,

That flag of Stars and Stripes is yours,

Live for it, die for it,

And under the stars of my new home I swore to do so,

And every drop of blood within me

Shall keep that vow!

     (Quote)

     Our European history has influenced us who have lived all our lives in America, more than we seem to realize.

     I was raised by my Grandfather Joseph and his second wife Elizabeth.  They and their German influence have left a great impact on my life, an impact I had not realized for many long years.  Grandpa was born in Wisconsin of parents who had migrated from central Europe.  His father had been a farmer and wooden shoe maker.  He and some of his neighbors combined the cattle that they owned and drove them as a single herd into Vienna, to sell them in the market place there.

     I do not know just when Johanne and Mary Ann left Austria.

Their oldest daughter had been born in Austria circa 1847-1850, about the time of the 1848 revolutions in that area.  She was their only child born in Austria, her younger siblings were born in Canada or Wisconsin.

    
Grandma had been born in Germany near the Rhine River in wine country.  They lived in a small hamlet near a small track of land on which they raised grapes.  The grapes were harvested and pressed, their juice used to make  wine for the market.  Afterward the grape skins were covered with water and pressed again.  This juice was used to make wine for their own family use.  The first wine was never used by the family, but saved exclusively for sale.  Wine buyers would come around and taste a sample from each vat before buying any of the wine.

     In 1870 the Franco-Prussian War broke out.  Grandma was about three years old.  She remembered German soldiers passing through their region on their way to fight the French.  She remembered a soldier taking her on his lap and telling her that he had a little girl like her back home.

     One evening a group of soldiers on a forced march came to their home demanding to be fed, saying they would sleep in their barn that night.  Their commander ordered her father to wake them up at a certain time the next morning.  Her father felt so sorry for their plight that he wanted to let them rest so he didn't wake anyone up at the designated time.  When their leader awoke he castigated him, telling him that he could have him charged with treason for disobeying orders.  He would be lenient and not press charges, but told her father to never, ever disobey any officer again.

     Grandma came to America with her parents when she was twelve years old.  She and Grandpa both spoke German.  Because they came from different regions they spoke different dialects, but they understood each other and other German speakers.

     My father-in-law, Fred, was born in April, 1874, in Poland, which was under German rule at that time.  When the Franco-Prussian War had broken out in 1870, some Polish people decided that with Germany at war with France, it was a good time to throw off the German control of their own country.  The German soldiers crushed the Polish uprising.  As a result the German authorities increased their vigilance in the area.  Sometime later in 1874, Fred was discovered, crying and hungry, alone in his home.  His mother was never seen or heard from again.  Neighbors had seen soldiers in the area, but because of the political situation, no one dared to search for her or ask any questions about her disappearance.  Fred was eleven years old when he came to America with an aunt and her family.

     All this family history had been so much trivia to me.  I paid no attention to, or cared why, so many people struggled and anguished to leave their home land and go to a strange land hoping for a new life.  But within the last year or so I have become more aware of the larger history of these European countries, and why our ancestors fled from them.

     Ever since the break up of the Roman Empire there has been fighting--if not active fighting then at least an uneasy jockeying for power, and the powerful tried to keep their position by the subjection of the masses, threatening their every effort to better themselves, their families and even their lives.

     Central Europe became the meeting place for many civilizations, cultures and faiths.  With the split of Christianity between East and West, it became the dividing area between them.  Migrant Slavic tribes overran this area, converted to many different diverging offshoots of Christianity, each attempting to exclusively impose their belief on others.  The Ottoman Turks spread into Europe adding to this disparaging mixture.  The leaders left the masses in peace as long as they paid exorbitant taxes, giving as much as a third of all their land produced.  Young boys were taken from their homes, trained in military dicsipline and brain-washed into forgetting their parents and their religion.  Peasants kept their old traditions and Christianity alive.

     When the Ottoman Turks declined, three other powerful empires arose--Austrio-Hungary, Germany and Russia.  These  new leaders kept their power and wealth, like the older ones, by rejecting the Christian tenets of universal love and compassion for each individual, usurping their God-given rights.