A German in a Foreign Land

Over three hundred years, the story of the family of Stefan Fritz begins its trek with a land grant from Maria Theresa for Germans to settle in the Banat area of Hungary. Through joys and hardships the family grows and members of the family settle in Vienna and Berlin. The family witnesses the revolutions in 1848, the Great War, and World War II. As musicians they meet Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert. During The Great War one member is an officer on the Italian Front and another an enlisted soldier on the Western Front. In World War II members of the family enlist and are conscripted in an SS Division under Heinrich Himmler. After the war most of the family is destroyed by the genocide of ethnic German in Central Europe by the Russians and Tito. One member survives and escapes to Berlin.