In his book, Muschg demonstrates that Switzerland has missed crucial opportunities in recent decades, such as the commitment to Europe, and has furthermore reinterpreted its own European history around the revolutionary year of 1848. However, Muschg would not be Muschg if he did not illustrate this situation with literary, narrative means: through three characters, of which the founder Alfred Escher is the most powerful, the poet Gottfried Keller the most famous, and their antagonist, the lawyer Friedrich Locher, is the true discovery of the book. In the tension between these three, "republican culture" emerges (or declines). It is the stubbornly maintained point of reference for the Swiss Muschg. O my homeland! is a contentious book that tells the history of the federal state since its founding in 1848 in a very special way.