We are currently working on a number of original research
projects. Below are descriptions of several active projects.
German Dialects in
North America | The
German Experience with the Land in Wisconsin |
German-language literature
in America since 1830 | MKI
Public Programming Project: Radical Immigrants, American Citizens:
Exploring the Jacob Sternberger Letters | German-American
Imprints | Frautschi
Family Letters Virtual Archive
German Dialects
in North America
Project team
University of Wisconsin, Madison: Joseph Salmons,
Mark Louden, Steve Geiger and Thor Templin
Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim:
Peter Wagener
Scholars have donated to the MKI several of the largest and
most important collections of recordings of German dialects
spoken across North America. These thousands of hours of records,
reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes date from the mid-1940s on
to the present day and cover the broadest spectrum of dialects,
from Swiss German to Pomeranian Low German as spoken in Wisconsin,
Texas, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Oklahoma and elsewhere. In selected
communities we are currently recording the youngest and last
fluent speakers as well as some semi-speakers, creating a
real-time sound corpus covering over one half century. Many
of our oldest recordings have not yet been digitized, so that
we cannot be sure, but we expect to find speakers born in
the 1850s and perhaps the 1840s, while the youngest speakers
of these dialects were typically born in the 1940s and 1950s.
This gives us, then, a century of data in terms of birthdates
of speakers.
We are working now to preserve these recordings through digitization.
At the same time, we are using them to better understand how
these languages and dialects have evolved over decades and
centuries in North America.
Our main goals at present are:
The German Experience
with the Land in Wisconsin
Max Kade Institute, University of Wisconsin Historisches
Seminar, Anglo-Amerikanische Abteilung, Universität zu Köln
The idea. An international and interdisciplinary
team of scholars and students has begun to use the German-American
experience in Wisconsin to explore the historical relationship
between people and the land. German immigrants have significantly
shaped this state; many of the strongest images and the most
enduring stereotypes of Wisconsin come from Germans and their
association with the land. Beyond the stereotypes connected
with German-American farmers throughout the Midwest, for example,
German-Americans often regard themselves as particularly good
stewards and environmentally aware protectors of the land.
A number of studies published by leading historians, geographers,
anthropologists and others from the 1930s through the 1990s
(such as George Hill, Kathleen Conzen, and Sonya Salamon)
have laid foundations for this project. Our project builds
on this base in several ways. First, it is comparative along
two axes: We are investigating several communities from different
parts of the German-speaking Rhineland which have in turn
settled in different parts of eastern/southern Wisconsin.
Second, our work is diachronic, tracing cultural patterns
from pre-immigration times through settlement in Wisconsin
and then several decades beyond. Third, because our team includes
faculty, students and community scholars with a wide range
of backgrounds (American and European history, historical
and cultural geography, German Studies, Education, even Linguistics),
we can integrate and synthesize across a broad range of social
science and humanistic approaches and data.
What we have done so far. We begin by noting that we
have come farther in this first year than expected, for several
reasons. On the practical end, the selection of communities
for study moved faster than anticipated. Western Dane County
(the Cross Plains area) and the Johnsburg area (east of Lake
Winnebago, known locally as "the Holyland") proved to have
the necessary resources and fit our other desiderata. Helmut
Schmahl (Universität Mainz) had just
completed his dissertation on Rhine-Hessian immigration to
Sheboygan County, providing a third community. Far more importantly,
we have been able to build a broad set of contacts in communities
and establish an expanding circle of scholars working on similar
projects in Wisconsin. We had originally planned to choose
a Dodge County community for study, but then quickly discovered
that Kevin Neuberger (Lawyers Title Insurance Corporation)
had spent years building exactly the kind of background we
planned for a Rhenish community in Reeseville. Kevin has become
a core member of the research team and has contributed tremendously
to our progress. More recently, Johannes Strohschänk
(University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) and William Thiel (attorney
from Eau Claire and author of several books on German immigrants
in Wisconsin) have joined, bringing their work in east central
Wisconsin and their experience teaching a course on this subject
at UWEC. Some weeks ago, Brian Koenig (K&A Consulting) joined
the team. Brian has done extensive study of a Columbia County
community and work in its ancestor community in Germany.
Now let us turn now to brief summaries of what the Cologne
and Wisconsin partners have done so far.
Cologne
1. Identification of emigrants
who settled in the Wisconsin study communities. Before any
other research could begin the individuals and families who
settled in the three Wisconsin study communities had to be
identified (date and place of birth, kinship) and their places
of origin in Germany located. Three areas in the Rhineland
crystallized as places of origin. Most of the Germans who
settled in Cross Plains (Dane County) came from villages in
the Kölner Bucht, the area immediately
west of Cologne. Settlers in Reeseville and Lowell (Dodge
County) had previously lived in the Westerwald
community of Rengsdorf (just north
of Neuwied) and surrounding villages.
Those Germans who formed the settlement in the Holyland of
Fond du Lac County came from a number of villages which today
belong to the town of Kelberg in the
central part of the Eifel region.
2. Living conditions of farmers
in German study communities. Our next step was to reconstruct
the emigrants' lives as farmers in the Rhineland study communities.
Katastral (land registry office) records
gave information on land holdings and showed how much property
families and individuals held before emigration. They also
allowed us to draw conclusions about how the land holdings
were used: as farmland, meadow, pasture, fallow land or forest.
Regional differences in land use became clear. Using land
for the grazing of cattle and to grow wood was much more common
in the Eifel and Westerwald
than in the Kölner Bucht. Tax records
showed which crops farmers planted and whether and how much
livestock they owned. Due to differences in climate and soil
conditions, different crops were given preference in all three
different study communities. Whereas oats and barley, for
instance, were staple crops in the Westerwald,
farmers in the Kölner Bucht were also
successful planting rye, wheat and a variety of legumes.
3. Community structure. Apart from
reconstructing the material basis of the emigrants' lives
in our study communities, we attempted to address a number
of broader questions about community organization. Comparing
our study communities, we investigated differences and similarities
in community structure (mainly drawing on town/village council
and government records). We looked at religion as an element
of community structure. We also tried to inquire into patterns
of dependency within the communities, looking at land sales
(who was selling land to whom and for what reasons) and patterns
of inheritance. We have begun to ask questions about gender
roles, e.g., gender division of labor on the farm, marriage
patterns, number of males and females living in the communities,
etc.
4. Motives for emigration. Motives
for emigration are often difficult to pin down. Drawing on
personal records and any available primary and secondary sources
we tried to answer the question why the emigrants decided
to leave their homes for the United States. Personal reasons
such as indebtedness and a desire to avoid the draft seem
to have played as much a role as more general causes such
as economic depressions and crop failures.
Wisconsin
1. Census records. Once we determined
the boundaries of the study areas in the Cross Plains and
Holyland communities we compiled information from the U.S.
Census Agricultural Schedules on the farms in those areas,
for the years 1860, 1870 and 1880. The information was input
into a computer database, and the farms included in the census
were marked on plat maps. We are now in the process of analyzing
this data. We have also examined the U.S. Population Census
records from the same years and looked up place of origin
and age of the heads of household who were farming in the
area. This provided us an indication of the ethnic makeup
of the study community, and often helped us identify the individuals
in the qualitative sources we looked at next, by indicating
their approximate date of birth. We will return to the Population
Census in the near future for further information relevant
to farming practices, such as size of household, and age,
gender and kinship relations of household members.
2. Qualitative sources. We then
turned to church records, county histories, family histories,
19th century newspaper articles and obituaries. A main focus
at the beginning was establishing the precise areas within
Germany from which the settlers came. We also collected data
on the community structure, local politics, interactions between
various ethnic groups, gender relations, inheritance practices,
and, most importantly, land-use patterns. For each Wisconsin
study area we have gathered information on the entire community,
not just on the Rhenish immigrants. This allows us to view
the Rhenish settlers, their particular agricultural methods,
living standards, and cultural practices, against the backdrop
of the wider community.
In September 2000, we held a workshop of the Madison and Cologne
team members, along with the new members of the research group,
where preliminary results were presented and discussed in
detail. As a direct result of that workshop, a volume on Wisconsin
German Land and Life is now underway. That book will contain
a set of essays building on the workshop results and contextualizing
German immigration to Wisconsin.
German-language literature in America
since 1830
Project team
Cora Lee Nollendorfs, German, UW
Brent Peterson, German, Ripon College
Louis A. Pitschmann, Dean of the Library School, University
of Alabama
Joseph Salmons, Director, Max Kade Institute, UW
Goal
After about 1830, millions of German-speaking immigrants arrived
in this country, a migration which has significantly shaped
contemporary American life and culture. This population was
relatively literate and, in the century after this migration,
a wide range of literature was produced across the United
States in German for this audience, especially in the Midwest,
Great Plains, and Texas. The Max Kade Institute for German-American
Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has recently
begun a long-term project to preserve and make accessible
such German-language literature written in the United States,
with an eye toward collecting as much as possible from a broad
range of sources.
We are building an extensive electronic collection of such
primary texts, with microfilm copies for preservation purposes,
to make these largely obscure and usually endangered works
available to future generations of scholars. As a part of
this project, we have just begun to publish some works on
the World Wide Web and that will continue. We will also produce
selected works of high quality and/or broad interest on CD-Rom,
and possibly also as books. Beyond the initial three-year
project, we aim to build a smaller, sustainable project to
seek out and acquire additional works while engaging students,
faculty and visiting scholars in the study of this literature.
Project outline
Thanks to an outside seed grant this past year, we have been
able to buy needed equipment and to hire an undergraduate
German major to prepare sample texts. She scanned in several
19th century texts and has "trained" our Optical Character
Recognition (OCR) software to handle Fraktur,
the font in which most such works were printed. In addition
to a few small texts, we have concentrated efforts on two
longer works. A play, For Mayor Godfrey Buehler by Milwaukee's
Julius Gugler (written in German, despite the title) has been
scanned, and been put into modern type using OCR software.
It is now a normal word-processing file, searchable and formattable.
A collection of works by Midwestern poet Caspar Butz has been
scanned, but not yet subjected to OCR. These texts are now
going up on our website.
With a routine established for scanning texts and putting
them into searchable form, the next step in the project will
be to establish how we will handle the works of particular
authors. As soon as funding permits, we will select one or
two dramatists, poets, prose authors and perhaps a children's
author and compile all of that author's work, together with
a biographical sketch and notes for areas of possible future
research. Beyond coverage of genres, these authors will be
chosen to reflect the full chronological span of German-language
literary activity, from the 1830s into the late 20th century.
(We will leave aside the significantly different contemporary
German-American literary scene, which has far more tenuous
roots in 19th-early 20th century immigration.)
After this, a full-scale survey of archives and libraries
will begin, with the intent of copying everything we find.
Works will then be sorted chronologically according to genre
and perhaps place of origin (an important consideration in
many cases). Materials will be gathered by first surveying
existing scholarship (as well as Pool's Index, the American
Catalogue, etc.), tracing identified authors and working through
the leading journals and newspapers from cities with large
German populations.
Planned organization for web, CDs, books
I. Drama
II. Poetry
III. Prose
A. Short fiction
B. Novels
IV. Children's literature
Each volume will include a substantial introductory essay
and an index.
MKI Public Programming
Project:
Radical Immigrants, American Citizens: Exploring the Jacob
Sternberger Letters
The Max Kade Institute together with the Wisconsin Academy
of Sciences, Arts and Letters is working on a project to engage
both scholars and a broader public in an exploration of historical,
social, political, geographical and personal aspects of migration,
using the "Sternberger Collection." This important cache of
immigrant letters and other documents has only recently been
acquired by the MKI and it directly and uniquely documents
a period of particular significance for both Europe and the
American Upper Midwest -- from failed revolutions in Europe
through massive immigration to the U.S. and on to the forging
of the modern Midwest.
Jacob (von) Sternberger was born in 1822 in Kaaden,
Bohemia, into a prominent, aristocratic, Catholic family.
As a young university student in Prague, he was confronted
with social and political ideas that led him to reject his
aristocratic and religious upbringing and motivated him to
join student groups, which were striving to "end the oppression
by nobility and church and establish equal rights for all
citizens" (quoted from a letter by Karl Leiste [Wolfenbüttel,
3.April 1849], who with Jacob Sternberger was a member of
the student group "Saager Kreis").
Like many of his contemporaries, he was influenced by the
example of the French and American revolutions.
After the failed revolution of 1848/49, when Sternberger realized
that the end of aristocratic and church rule was not going
to be achieved in Germany or the Austrian Empire in the near
future, he sought to live and implement his ideals in America,
immigrating to Wisconsin in 1850. He purchased a farm in Portage,
WI, where he tried to establish the nucleus of an ideal world
by founding "Marienstern" in 1851,
a communitarian society in which, among other things, all
property belonged to everyone, every member had an equal voice
in decision making and women were regarded as equals in every
respect. In 1861 Jacob Sternberger voluntarily enlisted in
the Northern army, now literally fighting for his ideals in
the American Civil War.
The Sternberger collection includes about 300 letters dating
from 1846 to the early 1900s, written to Jacob Sternberger
by family and friends from various places in the Austrian-Hungarian
Empire and German states and other places in Central Europe,
as well as in North America. The collection also includes
about 100 other documents, ranging from Bohemian high school
report cards from the 1830s to banking accounts at German
banks in Wisconsin from the late 19th century.
We will use the Sternberger documents as a springboard for
bringing history to the public, connecting local, regional
and international history through a number of different venues:
public lectures with follow-up discussions; an interactive
website and searchable on-line archive, traveling exhibits
and a teacher guide with accompanying teacher training sessions.
German-American
Imprints
The Max Kade Institute will be seeking grant money to catalog
and selectively microfilm German-language imprints produced
in the United States from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries.
The Institute's library includes extremely rare collections,
ranging from German-American children's literature to cookbooks,
literary works and religious texts. The German-language book
trade is a large and integral part of the print culture of
the United States, in particular in the Midwest, where Germans
were by far the largest immigrant group, and often a majority
of the population in significant areas. Analysis of the values,
cultural, historical, and political understanding contained
and reflected in German-language books published in the Midwest
provides an important piece of the Midwestern immigrant experience.
However, the dire condition of many of the volumes, as determined
through brittleness testing, makes their use problematic and
their conservation and preservation an immediate necessity.
Successful funding of this project will enable the Institute
to microfilm 1,000 endangered books and make accessible in
the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) database 2,000 German-language
imprints. Cataloging the imprints in OCLC will create worldwide
access to a valuable collection, while microfilming will allow
broad dissemination of the most significant of these works.
The Max Kade Institute's German-American imprints and other
key materials have been cataloged in an in-house database,
and are available on the web as a searchable database at http://wiscinfo.doit.wisc.edu/mkilibrary/mkicat.htm.
MKI Collaboration with SLIS - Creating
a Digital Library Collection
Former School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) professor
Marija Dalbello has completed an innovative project that allowed
her students to learn about the challenges of creating a digital
special collection, and the opportunities that such a virtual
archive can afford. Using digital media is a means to disseminate
high-quality reproductions of items that are unique and physically
delicate, such as handwritten immigrant letters. These can
then be a resource for users in any school, library, or home
in the world that has access to the Internet.
Former MKI Librarian Annie Reinhardt was involved in selecting
and preparing the archival materials to be digitized from
the MKI special collections for this project. Letters of the
Frautschi Family, Swiss immigrants who settled in Wisconsin,
and Christian Frautschi's diaries, make up the corpus of this
collection. Descriptions of farm life, crops, family life
and religion fill pages of the letters, written by family
members spanning the decades between the 1850s to the turn
of the 20th century. These materials were donated to the Institute
in 1992 by Lowell Frautschi, with hopes that they would be
a useful resource for future study. These hopes are indeed
being realized.
The letters and one of the diaries, describing a trip to Europe
in 1905, have been transcribed from the German script into
Roman type and translated into English. The task of the SLIS
students involved building a searchable digital archive of
the letters: They created electronic versions and archival-quality
digital images of the letters, produced hypertext versions,
and made them all available on the Internet. The use of Standard
Generalized Markup Language (SGML) tagging allows for searching,
using the same standards as other digital libraries on the
Internet.
The project's web site can be visited at: http://CSUMC.wisc.edu/FLVA/FLVAhomed.html
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