Friday, May 30, 2008

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/)

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

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