Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home

32. Surgeon Magnus Brucker

WESTERN THEATER 32. Surgeon Magnus Brucker Considering the fact that he was a doctor and a Forty-eighter, Magnus Brucker’s background was remarkably humble. When he was born in 1828, his father was listed as a day laborer, and his mother was illiterate. His hometown of Haslach, in Baden in southwest Germany, was the county seat, but it was relatively small (1,670 inhabitants), somewhat isolated, and almost exclusively Catholic.1 Scholarships probably helped Brucker complete his secondary education in Heidelberg and study medicine in Strasbourg. He must have been actively involved in the Revolution of 1848; after its failure, he fled via Italy to the United States in 1849.2 In the early 1850s Brucker opened a medical practice in Troy, Indiana, a village with a population of about 400 on the Ohio River. In November 1855 he married Elizabeth Meyers, who had emigrated from Bavaria with her parents. A daughter , Flora, was born in 1858, and a son, Karl, followed two years later. Before the war Brucker had acquired considerable social standing in the community but little wealth. In 1860 his assets were listed at $500, but he had already been elected to the town council, and in 1861 he became a member of the Indiana House of Representatives.3 More typical of a Forty-eighter than his social background were Brucker’s religious and political beliefs. He tended toward free thought, the word ‘‘God’’ never source note: Brucker’s German is grammatically and idiomatically correct, but his spelling is quite bad though not hopeless. He writes without frills in a factual, straightforward manner. We do not need to guess about his education: he finished preparatory school and graduated in medicine. After a dozen years in America, English interference is quite noticeable and of various kinds. There are German words for English phrases like ‘‘im besten Spirit.’’ Sometimes it is hard to decide whether he has coined a hybrid or misspelled an English word, like ‘‘marsh’’ for ‘‘march’’ (German: ‘‘Marsch’’); and since no similar German word exists, ‘‘Warf’’ is simply a misspelling . He uses ‘‘Railroad’’ (as well as ‘‘Eisenbahn’’), ‘‘attack,’’ ‘‘Cristmass,’’ ‘‘River,’’ ‘‘Riflepits,’’ ‘‘Charge,’’ ‘‘Shells,’’ and quite a few other English words when he either does not know the German equivalent or the English word comes to mind more quickly from the context—and it seems worth noting that he obviously was sure his German-born wife would understand. Not included here are the letters in the series from the years 1860 (one), 1861 (one), 1862 (twenty-three), 1863 (twenty-nine), 1864 (nineteen), and 1865 (three), as well as eleven from the years after 1865. 1. KB (rk.) Haslach; Beiträge zur Statistik (1855), 1:149. The originals of the Brucker letters are located in the Brucker Papers, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis. 2. Biographical Sketches (1861), 86–87; History of Warrick, Spencer, and Perry Counties (1885), 172–73. 3. MC 1860: Perry Co./Ind., Troy Twp., #933; MC 1870: Perry Co./Ind., Tell City Twp., #720; Biographical Directory of the Indiana General Assembly (1980), 43; Pension File, NatA. 252 Brucker appears in his letters, and he was a Freemason. Even before the war he was an active Republican; his county, Perry, was one of the few in southern Indiana that voted for Lincoln. A good half of the county’s population were of foreign birth or parentage , and 65 percent of these were German or Swiss.4 Brucker’s Republican views became more radical during the course of the war, as is shown in his letter of September 18, 1864, which also reveals that many of his neighbors sympathized with the Democrats or even the South. Brucker served as an assistant surgeon in the Union army, but not together with friends and neighbors as was usually the case. It is possible that a company of the 53rd Indiana Infantry was recruited from his neighborhood. But on March 21, 1862, he joined the 23rd Indiana Infantry, a regiment that had already been formed the previous July. In this unit Germans made up a small minority: only about a dozen of the over 100 officers had German names.5 Indianapolis, March 19th, 1862 Dear wife, As you already know, I was cheated out of my post as regimental surgeon, our regiment was disbanded and Colonel Mansfeld betrayed me in order to get a post for his son.6 I’ve been promised another post, but I haven’t received one yet. I would have come home, but...