1848

In 1848 revolution swept across Europe, and Baden was one of its hottest fires. Herman Kiefer, still a medical student, was in the middle of it.

He was a delegate to the great popular assemblies at Offenburg in September 1847 and March 1848, and on 26 March 1848 he chaired the people's convention at Freiburg. The Saga credits him as a co-author of the "Struve motion," and quotes the demands he stood for: a free press, trial by jury, religious tolerance, the separation of church and state, and protection from arbitrary arrest.

Ideas that Americans took for granted could cost a German his career, his freedom or his life.

When the revolution flared again in 1849, the Saga says Kiefer was named one of a provisional government of three. He passed his state medical examination on 29 May 1849 — in the middle of the uprising — and went straight to war.