German and Polish Students Study Immigration and Ethnicity in the Upper Midwest.

A week ago, a group of sixteen students from the American Studies Institutes of the University of Leipzig, Germany, and of the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland visited Wisconsin. Led by Professor Hartmut Keil, the group was on a two-week study tour of the Upper Midwest to learn about immigration and internal migration past and present, and issues of ethnicity in rural and urban America. At UW-Madison, the group attended a workshop on Language & Immigration and the following day visited one of Wisconsin’s many small rural communities that were settled in the 1850s primarily by German immigrants: Hustisford in Dodge County. Members of the Hustisford Historical Society graciously showed us their town, the historical museum Founder John Hustis’ old house), and the Lutheran church. Evidence of Hustisford German-American history was everywhere: in names, stories, signs, buildings, and the personal inscription in an old family bible that Prof. Keil translated. Read more about the Immigration and Ethnicity Study Tour on the group’s blog.

Wilhelm Tell in New Glarus – Last Performance in German?

Every September for 72 years, the community of New Glarus, WI has performed Wilhelm Tell, Friedrich Schiller's play about Swiss independence. The play is presented on a natural outdoor stage in two versions: in English and in the original German. Now the Wisconsin State Journal reports that, due to dwindeling audience numbers, this year might be the last year the play is staged in German. Furthermore, the English show has been shortened from three to two hours. If you want to experience (maybe for the last time) a unique example of traditional German-language American community theatre come to the Wilhelm Tell Grounds on September 5 at 10am, and also join the weekend-long Wilhelm Tell Festival. More information is available at wilhelmtell.org.

German Word Blocks

Recently I visited the WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) Historical Institute, which is located in the Salem Landmark Church in northwest Milwaukee. The institute is in the process of restoring this beautiful church. In the basement there are displayed a number of artifacts and documents related to WELS history, most of which were donated by individuals, congregations, and schools from the Milwaukee area. In a display devoted to early parochial schools, I was fascinated to see a collection of about 32 wooden blocks, each measuring about 10" x 10" x 10". On each face there was a German word or pair of words in Fraktur (and also punctuation marks), which were applied with black paint and (probably) stencils. The material is light plywood and each block is numbered. The blocks were stored in a folding cabinet about 5 feet tall. Two pictures of these blocks and the cabinet are given below:





The gentleman who gave me the tour through the collection said the blocks likely came from a WELS school in downtown Milwaukee. Their function was evidently to give children practice in composing German sentences. I have scoured the Internet for references to similar teaching aids and have not found anything comparable, which suggests that these blocks might have been the brainchild of one enterprising German teacher (with some good carpentry skills). I would be excited to hear whether any of our readers have seen or heard of anything similar!

Mark L.

Dirndl for Barbie

It was to happen sooner or later…. Just in time for the Munich Oktoberfest, Barbie – the most American of all dolls – will add a Dirndl to her vast collection of outfits. Designed by Munich designer Lola Paltinger the stylish Bavarian dress will be unveiled at the Oktoberfest and other events.
This means Barbie has come full circle. Barbie was inspired by the Bild-Lilli doll, who was presented as a young, attractive woman, dressed in fashionable clothes and having her own career, and who was modeled after the heroine of a popular 1950s comic strip in Bild magazine. At that time, Ruth Handler, American mother and wife of a Martell toy company co-founder, was looking for a doll for her daughter that was not an infant. On a trip to Europe, she saw Bild-Lilli, brought several of the dolls to America, made some design changes, and convinced her husband to manufacture her new Barbie. And the rest is history…
For more on the story go to Germany.info, which is also the source of the picture used here. (© picture-alliance/dpa)

Historic American Newspapers in Languages Other Than English?

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/) is a new digital project initiated by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. The Web site provides descriptive information about all American newspapers published from 1690 to the present day, including those in languages other than English, such as Albanian, Arabic, Cherokee, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Norwegian, Thai, and many more. Information on a specific newspaper includes title, place of publication, publisher, dates of publication, frequency, succeeding titles, and a summary of available holdings, in original format or microfilm, at various institutions.

Digital images of select newspaper pages can also be viewed online. At this point in the project, only pages from English-language papers published from 1880 to 1992 from the following states are available: California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.

We at the MKI would of course like to be able to search, retrieve, and view pages from German-language newspapers, and hope they might be included in the scope of the project as it continues. No doubt researchers would like to see pages from newspapers published in all the other languages as well, which would help to create a richer picture of American history.

A search of the site shows that only Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, and Vermont had no German-language newspapers, while Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Wyoming only had ones published in Prisoner of War camps. Consulting the impressive three-volume The German Language Press of the Americas by Karl Arndt and May Olson (München: Verlag Dokumentation, 3^rd edition, 1976), shows just a few differences, particularly for Nevada, where there were apparently four extremely short-lived German-language papers. It may be that no copies survived, and thus none of the libraries reporting to the online project had any records for them.

Chronicling America is an important project, and we look forward to checking in on its progress in the future.

Language Matters for Wisconsin

We are excited that the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies has received an Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment grant for the project "Language Matters for Wisconsin." MKI, together with Thomas Purnell (Linguistics), Eric Raimy (English), and Joe Salmons (Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures) will work with community partners across Wisconsin to hold public forums addressing local and regional language-related issues and concerns. We are also producing language maps, developing community-linked Web sites, and producing a general-interest book exploring languages and dialects across the state. This project builds on the highly successful Wisconsin Englishes Project . Stay tuned!

Impressions from Max Kade Institute Banquet and Conference

The capstone events of the Max Kade Institute's 25th anniversary year were a huge success. Over a hundred people attended the banquet on April 1 where German Ambassador Dr. Klaus Scharioth (here with MKI Director Cora Lee Kluge) was our guest of honor and spoke to the audience about "Why the German-American Relationship Matters."

Professor Emeritus Jost Hermand of the UW-German Department gave the keynote address: "Forced out of Hitler's Reich: Five Eminent Madisonians."

On April 2 and 3, the conference "Excursions in German-American Studies," drew a large audience of students, faculty, Friends of the MKI, and many other people interested in the diverse and thought-provoking presentations. We all came away with new insights, thoughts, and an awareness of how broad the field of German-American Studies is, and how many angles remain to be explored. Here is Louis Pitschmann, Director of Libraries at the University of Alabama, presenting to a rapt audience on "Advancing German-American Studies in the Digital Age."

Fachwerkhäuser of Dodge County and Annual Meeting of MKI Friends, May 2

Join us on Saturday, May 2, for an exciting day as we explore the German heritage of Dodge County, WI. We will take a bus tour of German Fachwerkhäuser (half-timbered houses) of Watertown and Lebanon with historian Lyle Lidholm, hold our annual meeting at the Beaver Dam Community Library, visit a special exhibit at the Williams Free Library and Museum in Beaver Dam, and have a traditional dinner at Feil's Supper Club in Randolph. All the details are on the MKI Web site.

German in Wisconsin

If you're not able to attend the MKI 25th Anniversary banquet this evening, you might want to tune in to NPR's All Things Considered, which is running a great story on German in Wisconsin, with a focus on Hustisford. Joe Salmons is one of the featured experts. You can access the story online here.

Mark

International Confernece: Excursions in German-American Studies

Please join us for the Capstone Event of the Max Kade Institute's

25th Anniversary Celebration
April 2-3, Memorial Union, UW-Madison Campus

April 2, 2009, 9–12 a.m.: “America and Her Immigrants: Ethnicity, Policy, Ideas.”
1. Walter Kamphoefner (Texas A&M University): “Elvis and Other Germans: Some Reflections and Modest Proposals on the Study of German- American Ethnicity.”
2. Daniel J. Tichenor (University of Oregon): “German Americans and the U.S. Immigrant Experience: Historical and Contemporary Significance.”
3. Hartmut Keil (University of Leipzig): “The Americanization of Francis Lieber: Liberal Ideals and the Realities of the Slave South.”

April 2, 2009, 3–5 p.m.: “German-American Language and Literature.”
1. Daniel Nützel (University of Regensburg): “German Dialects on Different Paths to Extinction: The Examples of Haysville, IN and New Ulm, MN.”
2. Lorie A. Vanchena (University of Kansas): “Taking Stock: The Disappearance of German-American Literature.”

April 3, 2009, 9–12 a.m.: “Creating the American Myth.”
1. Hugh Ridley (University College Dublin): “Sealsfield’s ‘Prärie am Jacinto’: The Half-Unfolded Spring of German and American Literature.”
2. Steven D. Hoelscher (University of Texas at Austin): “Performing the American Myth by Speaking German: Changing Meanings of Ethnic Identity Between the Wars.”
3. Kathleen Neils Conzen (University of Chicago): “Democracy and Diversity: German Theorizing in Tocqueville’s America.”

April 3, 2009, 2–5 p.m.:“Learning From Each Other.”
1. Uwe Luebken (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich): “Explorations into the History of Floods and Flood Control in the United States and Germany.”
2. Louis A. Pitschmann (University of Alabama): “Advancing German-American Studies in the Digital Age: Opportunities for Collaboration.”
3. Members of the University of Wisconsin Faculty: Panel Discussion.

The conference has been generously supported by the Federal Republic of Germany, Consulate General Chicago; the Max Kade Foundation; the UW Anonymous Fund; the Friends of the Max Kade Institute; the UW Department of German; and the UW Center for German and European Studies.

Shrove Tuesday in Pennsylvania

Hello!

As you may know, today is Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday), the eve of the Lenten Season. Known as Karneval in Cologne, Fasching in Bavaria, and Fasnet in southwestern Germany and parts of Switzerland, traces of the tradition have come to Pennsylvania via the German-speaking progenitors of the Pennsylvania Dutch (about whom we will talk in week 4). The word for "donut" in PA Dutch is "Fasnacht", from "Fastnacht" (< 'eve of the fasting season'). At this time it was traditional for people to use up some food items (lard, sugar, etc.) they would be forgoing during Lent, hence the practice of making donuts. "Fasnacht" has entered regional Pennsylvania English (somewhat like "bismarck", from the Bismarck Hotel in Chicago, I believe). At left is a photo I received from Joshua Brown, a graduate student in German Linguistics at Penn State University. Although State College, PA, is located outside of the traditional Dutch Country, that hasn't stopped the Dunkin Donuts there from capitalizing on their day in the sun!

You can also access an article on fasnachts from the Morning Call in Allentown, PA, here.

Enjoy, Mark (Louden)

MKI Online Course on the German-American Experience

Over the years many of our Friends from outside of Madison and Wisconsin have complained that they were unable to attend MKI lectures and classes. Now is your chance! Together with the Wisconsin Alumni Association, we are offering a six-week online course on the German-American Experience. The course provides you with archived video and audio, interviews, slides and the expertise of six UW-Madison faculty and staff. To enhance your experience even more, the course includes a supplemental reader, other publications and an online class message board for comments and questions.

The cost is $139 per person, with a special rate of $119 for WAA and UW OLLI members, and members of the Friends of the Max Kade Institute. It's not too late to become a Friend of the MKI! Join the Friends! To register for the course now click here: Online: The German-American Experience Registration deadline is Monday, February 9, 2009.

Weekly Topics and Instructors
1. The German Immigration Experience, Cora Lee Kluge,Professor of German and Director of the Max Kade
2. German-American Print Culture, Kevin Kurdylo,Librarian and Archivist for the Max Kade Institute
3. Languages of German-Americans, Joe Salmons,Professor of German and Director of the UW Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures
4. Pennsylvania Dutch: An American Language with German Roots, Mark Louden, Professor of German and former director of the Max Kade Institute
5. Dutchman Bands and Dialect Songs: German Folk Music in the Upper Midwest, Jim Leary, Professor of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies and Director of the UW Folklore Program
6. German American Cookbooks and Food Traditions, Antje Petty,Associate Director, Max Kade Institute.

The Diaries of Panorama Painter Friedrich Wilhelm Heine

One of the MKI’s current projects is a collaboration with the Milwaukee County Historical Society and the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend to transcribe into modern German script and eventually translate into English the diaries of German-Milwaukeean panorama painter Friedrich Wilhelm Heine. From 1879 until his death in 1921, Heine kept a most meticulous daily diary in which he recorded every aspect of his life. The diary is written in miniscule old German script that is unintelligible even to most native German speakers today. Therefore we are delighted to have received a major grant from the Milwaukee Bradley Foundation that recognizes the tremendous importance of Heine’s writings and supports the hiring of a team of transcription experts for the first phase of the project.

Heine was already a well-known artist in Dresden, Germany when he came to Milwaukee in the summer of 1885. He had been recruited by Chicago businessman William Wehner to help establish the “American Panorama Company.” In the second half of the nineteenth century, ‘panoramas’ or ‘cycloramas’ were the newest wave of art and entertainment. Huge circular buildings dominated the skyline of most major European and American cities. They exhibited 360-degree paintings that frequently covered close to 15,000 square feet of canvas, depicting mostly battle scenes, other historic or religious events, and landscapes. Sometimes called the “IMAXes of the nineteenth century,” these giant installations fell out of favor with the advent of the motion picture. Canvasses were dismantled and destroyed and the art form was largely forgotten. Scholars around the world now eagerly await Heine’s words in an accessible format to learn more about the world of panorama, the German-American art scene, the life of a German immigrant, and so much more. Members of the Friends of MKI will also find more information on the project and a detailed report on the International Panorama Symposium - that we held on November 1 at the Museum in West Bend - in the summer and winter 2008 issues of the MKI Friends newsletter.

Richard Zeitlin, 1945-2008

Richard Zeitlin, longtime Director of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, passed away last week. For many people interested in the history of German immigration to Wisconsin, Richard Zeitlin’s book “Germans in Wisconsin” provided a first and concise introduction. At the MKI, we worked and consulted with Richard Zeitlin on a number of projects over the years. We were always grateful that he so freely shared his incredible knowledge of military history, Civil War history, and more specifically the history of German-Americans in the military. Many of us fondly remember the fascinating presentation he gave on "German-Americans in the Civil War" at our 2003 annual meeting.

“Swiss Center of North America” opens in New Glarus, Wisconsin

On December 6, the Swiss Center of North America in New Glarus, Wisconsin will celebrate its grand opening. You are invited to join the festivities on 507 Durst Road between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. The idea of a Swiss cultural center grew out of the realization that descendants of Swiss immigrants have artifacts, books, papers, collections and other items they would like to see preserved and used to help tell the story of the Swiss in North America. However, unlike other ethnic groups, no national depository archive, library museum or center existed to portray the Swiss migration to North America. In 1999, New Glarus was chosen to become home of the Swiss Center of North America amidst enthusiastic local support as well as strong support from the State of Wisconsin, corporations like Nestle and Novartis, and the government of Switzerland.

MKI Director Cora Lee Kluge receives "Bundesverdienstkreuz"

We are delighted to announce that MKI Director Cora Lee Kluge was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Order of Merit) by the Federal Republic of Germany ― the highest such honor bestowed to a foreigner by the German government ― for her work in furthering German-American understanding and friendship and her contributions to the fields of German-American Studies and German language and literature education. The award was presented by German Consul General Wolfgang Drautz in a special ceremony on November 24 at the Memorial Union in Madison.

Spring 2009 Course on the German Immigration Experience

Prof. Cora Lee Kluge at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will once again teach a course that surveys the immigration experience of Europeans from German-speaking lands. The guiding questions of the course will include: Who were these immigrants and why did they come to America? Why did Wisconsin become a particularly strong area of German settlement? What kind of life and what problems and disappointments did German immigrants encounter? Historical, sociological, linguistic, and cultural aspects will be considered, in order both to gain insight into the greatest movement of peoples in modern times and to view the development of the United States from a unique perspective. The course requires no knowledge of German.

We know of a similar course offered by Johannes Strohschänk and William Thiel at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. We'd like to hear if other such courses are being offered in other locations!

Good old immigrants of 'yesteryear' who didn't learn English

A newly published study done by Miranda Wilkerson (a recent UW-Madison Ph.D. in German who does second language acquisition) and former MKI Director and Professor of German, Joe Salmons, has gained national and international attention for questioning the myth that all early immigrants immediately learned English. Their article "Good old immigrants of yesteryear' who didn't learn English" appears in vol. 83, pp. 259-283, of American Speech. The following is an excerpt from an article in the Madison Capitol Times (10/18/2008):

Joseph Salmons has always been struck by a frequent argument in letters to the editor, national debates and in just plain old conversations: "My great, great grandparents came to America and quickly learned English to survive. Why can't today's immigrants do the same?" With "English-only" movements cropping up and debate growing about how quickly new Spanish-speaking immigrants should learn English, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of German decided the issue was important enough to look more deeply into the past.
Focusing on German immigrants was a logical choice, Salmons said, since they represented the biggest immigration wave to Wisconsin in the mid-1800s, "and they really fit this classic view of the 'good old immigrants' of the 19th century." In many of the original German settlements in the mid-1800s from southeastern Wisconsin to Lake Winnebago and the Fox Valley, the researchers found that German remained the primary language of commerce, education and religion well into the early 20th century. Some second- and even third-generation German immigrants who were born in Wisconsin still spoke only German as adults. "These folks were committed Americans," said Salmons. "They participated in politics, in the economy, and were leaders in their churches and their schools. They just happened not to conduct much of their life in English."
"This finding provides striking counterevidence to the claim that early immigrants learned English quickly." [The authors] also found, surprisingly, that people in contact with the Germans learned to speak German as well. In Ozaukee County, for instance, there was evidence that Irish families who lived scattered among Germans could speak German.
According to Salmons, the study suggests that conventional wisdom may actually have it backwards -- while early immigrants didn't necessarily need English to succeed and responded slowly, modern immigrants recognize it as a ticket to success and are learning English in faster than was done in the olden days.

The Lusitania Effect

Join us on Thursday, October 23rd, at the Memorial Union (Tripp Commons) in Madison for the first in a series of events celebrating the MKI's 25th anniversary. A guest lecture will be held by Professor Emeritus of German, Frank Trommler, University of Pennsylvania, followed by a reception. The title of Professor Trommlers talk is:

The Lusitania Effect: German Propaganda and German Identity in World War I

Next to the Titanic no other sinking of a ship has preoccupied so many journalists and historians than that of the British ocean liner Lusitania which was torpedoed by a German submarine in 1915. The assault – which took the lives of 128 Americans – caused a rapid deterioration of American-German relations long before Wilson's declaration of war against the German Reich in 1917. It curtailed German propaganda for American neutrality and generated a new attitude of suspicion against German Americans which ballooned into an anti-German hysteria. Trommler discusses this development first in the context of other violent incidents that led to American military engagement in the 20 th century and then explores the deeper roots of the fast spreading confrontation with the German Americans, the largest ethnic group in the U.S. He analyzes the role of culture in the identity struggle of a nation of diverse interests, ethnicities and belief systems and defines the intensity of the fight against German culture – which surprised even critics of Germany – as part of the mobilization for war. Examining the anti-German campaign in light of the struggle for national unity, Trommler points to a larger contest in which American elites, most prominently John Dewey and Randolphe Bourne, used this confrontation for defining the specifics of an American mission, American culture, and the uses of the war.

In Memorium: Kurt Schaldach

Kurt Schaldach passed away on April 14, 2008 in Napa, California, at the age of 95. In 1978 Kurt, a German painter living in Milwaukee, was commissioned by the Memorial Union of the University of Wisconsin in Madison both to design and paint the murals in the Stiftskeller and to perform the first ever restoration of the Rathskeller murals, which were painted in the 1920s. Living in one of the guest rooms, he spent most of two months painting and restoring the German murals. For more information on the Union's murals, see: "When Wine and Beer Fight" (the topic of one of Kurt's paintings).

Germans take notice of German in the U.S. Part II - Die Welt op Platt

Speakers of German immigrated to places all over the world. The same holds true for those who came from the Northern German regions and spoke “Plattdeutsch” or Low German. For three years now, the Northern German TV broadcaster NDR has been running a successful series called “Die Welt op Platt” (The World in Low German). Two reporters, Julia Westlake and Yared Dibaba, travel the world to record speakers of the many variants of Low German, some of them heritage speakers generations removed from the original immigrant. They traveled from Siberia to Namibia, from Brazil to China, and to many other places. In the United States they visited New York, Nebraska, Kansas, Seattle, and Iowa. Rumor has it that they soon will record Pommersch speakers in Marathon County, Wisconsin. It is interesting to note that Yared Dibaba himself is an immigrant from Ethiopia, who grew up learning “Platt” in a German village. Thus the series shows language and immigration in full circle.

Image: "Die Welt op Platt" in New York (from http://www3.ndr.de/)

MKI's 25th Anniversary Year!

It's a big year for us at the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies--October will be our 25th anniversary. We will kick off our celebration with a lecture and reception in October and will conclude our festivities with a major international symposium on German-American Studies in April 2009. Please have a look at the PDF of our Spring 2008 MKI Friends Newsletter and read about MKI’s founding in the cover story by Cora Lee Kluge, MKI Director!
http://csumc.wisc.edu/mki/Newsletter/MKISpring08.pdf

Germans take notice of German in the U.S. Part I - Texas German

Over the last couple of years, interest in things German-American has grown in Germany. People are curious about of what became of those German emigrants and their descendants. They are intrigued that German customs can still be found all over America and are fascinated by the fact that German dialects are still spoken in some parts of the U.S. Yesterday, for example, the German magazine Der Spiegel ran a two-part article on Texas German in its online edition: “Kuriose Sprachinsel – Man spricht Texas-Deutsch.” (A curious linguistic enclave – Texas German spoken here). The article describes the work of the Texas German Dialect Project (TGDP), an umbrella organization for carrying out research in representative Texas German speech communities in central Texas. Housed at the University of Texas-Austin, and currently led by Associate Professor of Germanic Linguistics Hans Boas, the project strives to preserve the Texas German dialect, to gather basic research information about the language variety, and to use the material collected in research projects for the improvement of educational programs about language and culture. Since Texas German—like so many other heritage languages—has not been passed on to younger generations for the last decades, the number of native Texas German speakers is shrinking drastically, and it is estimated that the dialect will become extinct by 2040.
Here are some Texas German examples as presented by Der Spiegel to its German audience, showing the strong English influence on the dialect.

Montag habe ich abgenommen - Monday I took off
mitaus - without
Wir sind nach den war nach Comfort gemoved - We moved to Comfort after the war
Die Eichkatz sitzt auf meine tools - The squirrel sits on my tools
Ich war kalt auf der porch - I was cold on the porch
The bread is all - The bread is all gone

In late February already, Germans were entertained with “Polka in Texas,” a one-hour show on WDR Weltweit, a broadcast by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk TV.

Image1: Prof. Boas speaking with Texas Germans (from http://www.spiegel.de/); Image2: Texas-German polka player (from http://www.wdr.de/)

Forty-Eighter Monument Dedicated in Davenport

On March 30, 2008 a 24,000-pound monument honoring a group of German immigrants known as the "Forty-Eighters" was erected near the banks of the Mississippi. The story behind this massive monument begins almost 160 years ago in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

In 1848, the Northern-German duchy of Schleswig was a fiefdom of Denmark, while its neighbor, the duchy of Holstein was part of the German Confederation. When in March 1848, the king of Denmark tried to bind the two duchies closer to his Kingdom, German patriots from both provinces started an uprising against the Danish crown. Unsuccessful in their struggle, many of those Schleswig-Holsteiners immigrated to the United States, a great many of them settling in Scott County, Iowa.

In 1872, these former freedom fighters organized a veterans' society known as Der Davenporter Verein der Kampfgenossen der Schleswig-Holsteinischen Freiheitskriege von 1848, 1849 und 1850 (The Davenport Society of Veterans of the Schleswig-Holstein Wars of Independence of 1848, 1849 and 1850). Their members were the pillars of the Davenport community, and in March 1898, a stone monument commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Forty-Eighters' fight for freedom in their homeland was dedicated in Davenport’s Washington Square Park. Twelve hundred people attended the dedication ceremony. In his speech, Emil Geisler commemorated the struggle of the Forty-Eighters in their native homeland and their accomplishments in their adopted home of Iowa. He closed with the words:

"May Germania and Columbia like a pair of sisters, distinguished among the civilized nations of the world, always be united in their efforts for the welfare of their children and the distribution of the blessings of the civilization among all nations. And may the United States of America, now our blessed home, ever enjoy the blessings of peace and prosperity; and may it forever be the land of the free and the home of the brave, and its glorious banner forever wave!"

Less than two decades later, however, when anti-German sentiments during World War I were running high, the commemorative stone disappeared from Washington Square. Another ninety years later there is a renewed awareness of the accomplishments of the German Forty-Eighters and their contributions to American society, leading to the placement on March 30, 2008 of a new commemorative stone in Davenport on almost the very spot where the old one sat. More information, including historical photos and pictures from the ceremony, can be found on the Web Site of Dr. Joachim Reppmann.

Deciphering the Past

Anyone researching their German-speaking ancestors has likely come across the “Old German Script” in church records, handwritten letters, or diaries. As if learning the German language wasn’t enough of a barrier, now there’s another code to break! The sharp, angled lines of the alte deutsche Schriften (“old German scripts”) can be confusing (the curvier Sütterlin version is only slightly easier to decipher), but once you get the hang of it, it can be an interesting puzzle. There are several good sites on the Internet with information on the history of these scripts (for example, see HERE and HERE) and some, such as THIS one, supply guides for decoding the letters.

The script was, of course, being taught in German-language schools in the United States. The Max Kade Institute has several primers in its collection, published in America during the 19th century, that include lessons for learning this handwriting method. We also have several collections of letters and a few diaries written in the old script.

Here’s an image of a cross-written letter from the archives of the Max Kade Institute—observe how the page was turned sideways and the writing continued, likely in an effort to save on postage as well as paper. Click on the image for a larger version and test your skills—see if you can make out “Mein liebes Mathildchen” as the greeting!
By 1941 (and by Hitler’s decree) the script was no longer being taught in German schools. Not many people who were taught the script in their youth are still around today—however, members of the Sütterlin-Schreibstube in the Förderverein Altenzentrum [Center for the Aged Support Association] in Ansgar (Hamburg, Germany) offer transliteration services from the old German script into Latin (Roman) script. More information on this service can be found here: http://www.suetterlinstube-hamburg.de/
The service provides intellectual stimulation for the members and helps make the diaries, letters, and other documents of our ancestors accessible.

We here at the Max Kade Institute are constantly wondering: How much American history is hidden in documents written by German-speaking immigrants? More researchers with skills in transcribing these scripts are needed!