for New York, with their route going by way of Cologne, Antwerp, Liverpool or Hamburg and Bremen. The rest of the emigrants – 54 persons – left Mittelstrimmig between 1829 and 1890 bound for North or South America. The parts of South America that some went to were the areas around Porto Alegre, Santa Cruz do Sul and San José. These communities can still be found today in Novo Hamburgo (called Neu Hamburg in German), São Leopoldo and Rio Grande. Thirty-one newspapers and more than 150 clubs were founded by the colonists. The cost of the voyage was 22,015 Thaler, 221 Silbergroschen and 46 Pfennigs; for all emigrants from Mittelstrimmig, Altstrimmig, Liesenich, Grenderich and Senheim, the cost was covered by their respective municipalities. Mittelstrimmig had to pay 5,578 Thaler of this amount. For the 1852 travel costs alone, 308 Morgen (roughly 9.8 ha) of forest had to be felled, among other things. First World War To the people in the Hunsrück, the war's imminence was something that was unknown. Only in mid July 1914 did it become apparent that a military conflict of some kind lay just ahead. On 6 August, Kaiser Wilhelm II issued a decree. A few days later, soldiers from Mittelstrimmig were leaving their homeland. With Germany's defeat, the people in Mittelstrimmig saw the world that they had known fall apart. Not only was the monarchy gone, but the toll in blood had been quite high. Nine men from Mittelstrimmig had fallen “for Empire and Emperor”. When soldiers withdrew from the villages, they left behind weapons and ammunition. Civilians took these and used them for hunting. With the German soldiers gone, the villages on the Strimmiger Berg were occupied by the Americans, who were billeted in barns, stables, barrooms at inns and schools. Once Germany had been divided into occupation zones by the victorious powers, the Americans withdrew and the Rhineland, and along with it the Strimmiger Berg, once again fell under French rule. In the early 1920s, many young men left the Strimmiger Berg to go to Cologne, where money could be earned in factories and coalpits. However, once the French and Belgians occupied the Ruhr area in 1923, they came back home. As was so throughout Germany, make-work measures were undertaken. Several roads were built on the Strimmiger Berg by means of the Ruhr impost. Owing to inflation, a 21-year-old worker earned up to 35,000