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Boganis In America: The American Adventures Of Karen Blixen's Father, Wilhelm Dinesen
Boganis In America: The American Adventures Of Karen Blixen's Father, Wilhelm Dinesen
The Bridge
Sick at heart and world-weary at the age of twenty-seven, Captain Wilhelm Dinesen (1845-95) turned his back on Europe and set sail for America. The year was 1872. Danish immigration was on the rise, and many immigrants dreamed of making their fortune in the land of opportunity. Dinesen had other reasons. His fortune was already secure, for he had been born to wealth and privilege. As a young man, however, he had gone to war, but war had led to defeat, and defeat to bloody civil war. How could he forget the horrors he had seen and experienced? What he …
Memoirs From A Journey In America 1872, Wilhelm Dinesen
Memoirs From A Journey In America 1872, Wilhelm Dinesen
The Bridge
It was in the late summer of 1872 when I traveled to America. I was sick of soul. I had participated in the Franco-Prussian War, had seen my hopes for redress of [ the Danish defeat of] 1864 shattered, and had then been a witness to the civil war in Paris. I was nauseated by both sides, had then lived in both Denmark and France, but I felt uncomfortable, restless, tired, worn out, weak. I doubted my own ability to achieve anything whatever, and then came some personal problems-and I gave up everything and went to America. What I thought …