Table of Contents:
Jesse Shull What is H-GAGCS? Spring Miniconference Lecture Notes Genealogical Research	Sources Book Review What is Planned Giving? From the Friends's       President

Jesse Shull must be credited as the forerunner of all things German in Wisconsin, be they Alsatian, Schweizer, Rheinländer, or Hessian. Quite an achievement for a quarter-Indian, Dutch backwoods boy.

Shull came out of those Pennsylvania Scholls at the headwaters of the Ohio River. Scrappy Dutch who had tangled in the frontier fighting in the French and Indian War and the Revolution. Practical, hardheaded Dutch like his grandfather who lost his first wife in the French and Indian War and promptly remarried a French/Shawnee woman.

Jesse grew up speaking Deitsch, French, Delaware, Shawnee and a bit of English. Indians often visited the family homestead. Travelers also brought colorful stories of the West to the Scholl's log house.

One such buckskin pilgrim told a wide-eyed young Jesse of a grand expedition led by a couple of fellows named Lewis and Clark. The lure of such adventure prompted the boy to build a raft and head down the Ohio to the Mississippi and on to St. Louis.

There young Jesse, rechristened Shull by semi-literate Kentuckians, hooked up with an old Schwarzwälder by the name of Reinert. It was a good match. The old man took Jesse on trapping and fur buying trips up the Missouri River and to the Big Horn Mountains and the Yellowstone country.

He was quite a mountain man when he arrived back in St. Louis a few years later. Still a boy in years, he was tough enough to be mustered into the Missouri territorial militia for the War of 1812. That band of ruffians and roughnecks rounded out Jesse's school of hard knocks education.

He came up the river with the Missouri rabble on their clumsy flatboats. He laid low during their whiskey drinking and shooting at shadows. He finally convinced their colonel that he would be of more service away from the mob. So he was placed with the scouting group, a ragtag squad of Mohicans, Narragansetts, and Shawnee.

He scouted the country from Rock Island to Chicago and Milwaukee, visiting the sites of those future cities when they were not much more than Pottawatomi fishing villages with a few traders' huts. He learned of the massive lake country to the north with its large bands of Chippewa and Menominee and Winnebago.

When he rejoined the militia at Prairie du Chien, he told the colonel that there were thousands, if not tens of thousands, of American-hating Indians to the north and west for the British to recruit. He told the tale of American treaty-breaking, liquor sales, and harassment.

Jesse was soon proven to be correct as the British brought a large Indian force to encircle the Americans. He had ample opportunity to review the lessons of

U.S. blunders in Indian policy with his fellow prisoners of war in the Prairie du Chien stockade. He fell into a small but dedicated group of backwoodsmen who wanted peaceful relations with the tribes.

Soon as Jesse was sprung and free of militia obligations he thought he would try to find his own place to build up a frontier business. He had heard about the lead region in southwest Wisconsin and how the Indians there had furs and lead to trade. The Hudson Bay Company was looking for sharp young men like him and quickly signed him on as their representative for the lead district.

He first set up a trading post in northwest Illinois and got to know just about all the Sac and Fox leaders, including fierce old Black Hawk. He and the old warrior exchanged laughing stories about foolish incidents in the recent war. But he sadly shook his head when the noble Sac refused to believe that there were millions of whites advancing as homesteaders toward the West.

Jesse concluded that he had to move further up into the lead district to get away from these homesteaders. A trading post in an area undergoing settlement provided too many opportunities for fiction between pioneers and Indians. So he moved up to present day Shullsburg and build a fort, a trading post, a tavern, and a house.

This is where the matter of Shull "firsts" comes to the fore. His was the first tavern to endure more than a year or two. As far as we know, he brewed the first beer in Wisconsin. And in 1819 he brought the first shipment of sauerkraut into Wisconsin —fifty barrels all the way up from St. Louis!

Soon he was producing the first Wisconsin sausage. They say his slogan for this product was "for besser or wurst". And it was not a sausage recognizable to German palates. It was in natural casings to be sure, but of varying mammal species beyond acceptance by today's consumers. Let's face it, skunk guts cause gagging by mere mention.

The sausage was beyond its Teutonic roots in one other significant respect: it bore more resemblance in mixture to the Indians' pemmican, what with a variety of nuts and dried berries thrown in with the meat. The blend reflected his bloodlines and his domestic arrangement; his Winnebago wife insisted that the fruits of prairie and forest go into the concoction.

Jesse's business grew and he settled into a prosperous existence as trader, innkeeper, and lead merchant. His advice was sought out by German-speaking pioneers from the eastern states and from Europe. Orphaned boys and runaways came to work for him.

He sent these Pennsylvania German youngsters —be they from the Keystone State or Ohio Buckeyes or Indiana Hoosiers— out onto the plains and into the north woods. His solid training gave them the same experience that he had lucked into with Old Man Reinert. He apprenticed them out to reliable mentors like Rochon, the French, and Potawatomi half breed, and Longenecker, the Swiss/Scotch-Irish/Huron with the Sioux wife. He soon had loyal sub-agents from Green Bay to Thunder Bay to the upper Missouri River.

Things went pretty well for Jesse. There was every reason to believe that he was destined to become a major political leader in the Wisconsin Territory. He was showing the way with peaceful relations with the tribes that involved gradual transition from their nomadic existence to settled agriculture and trade.

The rest of this article will be published in the next issue of the Newsletter.
Dennis Boyer is a local writer and the author of Giants in the Land:Folktales and Legends of Wisconsin, Driftless Spirits:Ghosts of Southwestern Wisconsin, and other books.

ANNOUNCING HGAGCS:
HNET LIST on German-American and German-Canadian Studies

Members of the German-speaking community often sigh and say that German is dying out in Wisconsin and in the rest of the country. There are fewer German newspapers than a decade ago and few schools that teach in German. The third and fourth generations don't even speak German at home. English is taking over. Is the picture so grim? If so, why is this change taking place? Those are exactly the topics that are to be discussed at the Spring Mini-Conference at the Max Kade Institute this year.

Both Steve Geiger and Phil Weber will be talking on existing German dialects in the Midwest. Phil's talk centers on speakers of an East Frisian dialect in Iowa and their attempts to preserve the language. Steve presents his fieldwork of a Darmstadt dialect of Hessian German which is still spoken in Sheboygan county in Wisconsin. He examines signs of language contact with English and other dialects of German.

Joe Salmons takes a wider look at about why there has been a shift away from German in the public and privates spheres. His theory attributes this shift to wider social and political changes that have been taking place in the U.S. in the last century. The changes are not specific to German-speaking communities, as other theories have claimed.

This year's mini-conference will give you a chance to see some of the new research going on at the Institute and in German dialect studies. It promises to be informative and of interest to anyone associated with German-speaking communities. Read the abstracts to find out more and come to the conference on March 27^th!

On Feb. 3, the Max Kade Institute was privileged to have a lecture by Professor Hartmut Keil from the Universität Leipzig and German Historical Institute, Washington. Best known to many in Europe and North America for his works on the German-American left and labor history, Keil has turned his attention to the complex relationship between African-Americans and German immigrants in a number of recent works.

This talk explored the intellectual background of opposition to slavery among German liberal and republican thinkers in the context of the Enlightenment and Europe's general Amerikabild. Keil sketched a "functioning intellectual network" connecting German and American enlightened circles and focusing on two key figures, Alexander von Humboldt and Ottilie Assing. On both continents, Alexander von Humboldt's views on slavery came to play a significant role. In a 1826 book on Cuba, Humboldt delivered scathing condemnations, such as this: "Without doubt, slavery is the greatest of all the evils which have afflicted mankind." In the US elections of 1856 and 1860, Republicans used those views to woo especially German-American voters and Humboldt corresponded with John Fremont.

Ottilie Assing grew up in circles connected directly to Humboldt's and became an important voice for liberal and feminist views. She became a journalist writing for two of Germany's most important papers, the Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser and the Allgemeine Zeitung. She came to the US in 1853 and settled in Hoboken , NJ, (home to a thriving community of liberal and radical Germans at that time) where she continued to write for both outlets — to the extent that for many German readers "her views became the standard interpretation at the height of the conflict over slavery and abolition from 1856 to 1865". She also met and developed an extremely close personal relationship with Frederick Douglass and introduced him to German writers and thinkers.

Keil documented carefully how Assing's reports to Germany made the case against the "slavocracy" as fundamentally incompatible with American notions of freedom. She also reported on the lives of African-Americans, debunking stereotypes and praising the "industrious workers and faithful allies" in free communities like Beaufort, SC, and the bravery and valor soldiers in Black regiments.

The talk made clear not only the intellectual underpinnings of German progressives' opposition to the "peculiar institution", but also the crosscurrents and mutual influences between European and American intellectual circles. African-American intellectual leaders like Douglass had impact on both groups through Assing. One of the most interesting conclusions was that the Black abolitionist community seems to have been influenced by the German-American radicals and liberals they were introduced to by Assing. Keil speculates that this might account for the generally favorable opinions that African-Americans held of German immigrants at the time.

Genealogical research in the Czech Republic is much easier since the fall of Communism. Requests for information are no longer viewed with suspicion, but rather as a way for the Czech government or private genealogical researchers to earn Western currency. At present, one can contract with a private researcher in the Czech Republic at a reasonable rate. I recommend hiring an independent researcher who is familiar with all the locations where relevant records may be found.

The Sudeten-German website includes postings by both German and American researchers. The address is:

I recommend you join the two major genealogical societies that deal with the Czech Republic. The Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International (P.O. Box 16225, St. Paul, MN 55116-0225) promotes the genealogy of all the ethnic groups that were present in Czechoslovakia in 1918. The German-Bohemian Heritage Society (P.O. Box 822, New Ulm, MN 56073-0822) deals only with German-Bohemians. Both publish relevant articles and allow members to post genealogical queries in their periodicals.

Finally, some Americans have started creating databases of Sudetengerman emigrants. For example, Jim Kleinschmidt, 2917 Muir Road, Madison, WI 53719, is compiling a data base of emigrants, both German and Czech, from Northeast Bohemia. His e-mail address is JimEd9483@aol.com

Many Wisconsinites might find the task of researching their Pennsylvania German heritage daunting. They may also find the terms Dutch and Deitsch confusing. Pennsylvania German is the proper ethnic and linguistic label applied to the German dialectspeaking immigrants who came to North America between 1683 and 1775. Pennsylvania Dutch is a term that arose out the corruption of Deitsch by English colonial authorities (it is an almost universally used selfidentifier term used by nonacademics in southeast Pennsylvania). Deitsch is the dialect term for the dialect and the people and is essentially a Pfälzer dialect with the spice of German as spoken in Alsace and northern Switzerland in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Pennsylvania German pioneers came to southern Wisconsin even before statehood via the northern route of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Some came via the southern route of Virginia, Kentucky and the Mississippi River. This latter group was not as consciously German and often adopted the folkways of ScotchIrish Appalachia. Except for small Anabaptist religious communities which came in more recent times, they did not retain their identity and mostly merged into broader Wisconsin German culture.

Both the Wisconsin State Historical Society and the Max Kade Institute maintain materials related to the Pennsylvania Germans. The State Historical Society has many excellent Pennsylvania German genealogical resources as do the regional resource centers of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons).

But for those who wish to delve deeper into this portion of ancestry or interest, a number of nonWisconsin resources can be mentioned:

PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN SOCIETY Since 1891 this group has done the primary work of promoting research and cultural preservation. They publish excellent annual volumes, a newsletter, and a quarterly journal (all included within the price of membership). PO Box 244, Kutztown, PA 19530, Fax (610)8949551.

CENTER FOR PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN STUDIES Located at Millersville State University, the center is directed by Prof. Emeritus C. Richard Beam (one of the preeminent scholars of the dialect). The center publishes a newsletter which focuses on dialect poetry, music, and literature and the individuals who produced it. 406 Spring Drive, Millersville, PA 17551, Fax (717)8728506.

PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN CULTURAL HERITAGE CENTER A combination museum, archive and living history demonstration site. Conducts a delightful Fall Heemet Fescht. On the campus of Kutztown State University in restored period buildings. c/o Kutztown State University, Kutztown, PA 19530, Fax (610)6831330.

FEREINICHT DEITSCHE FULK A network of informal Deitsch cultural groups, it serves as a major source of information and access to dialect events (banquets,"roasts", church services and meetings of fraternal Grundsau Lodges). Publishes a dialect newsletter, Da Ausauga. c/o Kenneth Kramer, 4911 Pine Grove Circle,Wescosville, PA 18106.

PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH HOBBIES AND MUSIC Conventional hobby shop with a Pennsylvania German twist. Retail onsite sales and catalog sales of dialect music tapes, dictionaries, language instructional material, folklore books, humor, "hex " signs , and more. Owner, Keith Brintzenhoff, is a dialect musician and vocalist and is available for performances. 157 W. Main, Kutztown, PA 19530,

Fax (610)6839060.

As many already know, the small Swiss-American town of New Glarus in south-central Wisconsin is an inviting place for a weekend day-trip, a hearty dinner in a chalet-style restaurant, or a colorful summer cultural festival. But as Steven D. Hoelscher tells us in his new book, Heritage on Stage: The Invention of Ethnic Place in America's Little Switzerland, the village has much more to offer than just a good schnitzel and the cozy ambiance of Old-world nostalgia.

Hoelscher, who teaches Geography at Louisiana State University, argues that New Glarus is a fascinating case study in the way Americans create ethnic identity. Writing as both a participant in the town's cultural life as well as a keen critic and observer, he offers an intimate portrait of the town and its people along with an insightful analysis of the broader context of the community's many ethnic festivals and traditions.

Founded some 150 years ago by a small group of immigrants from the Swiss canton Glarus, the town has since clung to its ethnic roots in its Swiss-inspired architecture, cuisine, and folk life. Its Heidi Festival, Schwingfest (Swiss wrestling), and annual summer performance of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell attract thousands of visitors annually, including many who come all the way from Switzerland. Indeed, as Hoelscher writes, the community's connection to its heritage has remained strong enough for to earn it a mention in a Swiss textbook on the United States as "more Swiss than Switzerland."

Now several generations removed from its original Swiss settlers, New Glarus gives rise to numerous questions about how contemporary Swiss-Americans go about defining themselves. Hoelscher asks, for example, just how the town's residents decide what is still to be considered "Swiss," how tourism and other economic factors might affect that definition, and how the town wishes to portray its Swiss heritage to visitors. Or, as Hoelscher puts it, "Why and how are ethnic places invented?'"

In addressing these questions, his investigations combine history with geography, and sociology with social history and performance studies. This interdisciplinary approach leads him to describe a complex process at work in New Glarus which he calls "conspicuous ethnic production." This Hoelscher defines as a deliberate manipulation of the past in the service of the present. In other words, the continual re-interpretation and re-invention of what it means to be Swiss, in light of geographic and cultural separation from the home country, along with the demands of historical and social change.

For Hoelscher, ethnicity and heritage in the New Glarus of the 1990's have become fluid and constructed, more a matter of individual choice for modern-day Swiss-Americans than of biological determination. "Instead of maintaining their ethnic organizations and group culture," he writes, "people of third and later generations are more concerned with maintaining a sense of ethnic identity and are discovering new ways of expressing that ethnicity in suitable ways that bear little or no social cost: taking part in festivals, eating ethnic foods, and visiting places and museums associated with one's ethnic past."

Such an interpretation of the community's history and ethnic festivals, he argues, is consistent with a larger national trend. He writes that "with increasing suburbanization and the destruction of traditional place-based communities, an ever greater demand exists for places conspicuously constructed to impart an ethnic identity — for invented ethnic places."

In addressing these larger cultural trends, Hoelscher gives his detailed study of the Swiss-American experience greater contextual footing, while also making it useful for examining broader questions of American ethnicity in general. Its originality and insight make Heritage on Stage a valuable contribution to academic study at the same time that it is a readable and interesting account of a small town with a deep pride in its past.

Dr. Erich Markel, long-time President of the Max Kade Foundation, died suddenly on January 4, at his home in New Jersey. Dr. Markel was born in 1920 in Siebenbürgen. He studied law in Vienna, Prague and Erlangen-Nürnberg, and at George Washington University. His research centered on comparative jurisprudence, international law, legal history and philosophy. He taught at George Washington University, Miami University and Valparaiso University. While in Washington, D.C., Dr. Markel served as advisor to the United States Dept. of Justice.

In 1959 Dr. Markel became the first President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Max Kade Foundation. During his forty years, the Foundation gave grants to scholars and universities in the U.S. and Europe to promote international understanding, including many significant grants to promote German Studies and German-American Studies. He received numerous honors for his philanthropic, legal and academic work, including the Cross of the Order of Merit, 1st Class, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit, and the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany, medals of merit from the both the Austrian and German Academies of Science, and honorary doctorates from Valparaiso University, University of Massachusetts, Middlebury College and Colorado College.

Dr. Markel worked on behalf of the Max Kade Foundation to establish the Max Kade Institute at UW-Madison in 1981. In the years since its establishment, he has generously supported the Institute's projects, and particularly its library.

Dr. Hans G. Hachman has been named President of the Max Kade Foundation, and will carry on the projects to which Dr. Markel had for so long committed his time and energy.

Planned giving is a phrase that has been around for a number of years, but what exactly does it mean? To start with, the topic of Planned Giving should be broken down into its two components.

What this really starts out with is "giving." It begins with your decision that the work being done by a particular organization is important to you and is something you wish to support. Without this key decision, all of the planning in the world will come to nothing.

It is only after you have decided that you want to make a gift that you should, for your own benefit and for the benefit of the charity, sit down and think about how you are making that gift.

There are tax consequences to every charitable gift and they largely hinge on what you use to make the gift and whether you are retaining any benefits from your giving. A planned gift can be as simple as deciding that it might be better for you to make a gift of IBM stock instead of writing a check.

For example, if you want to make a gift of $1,000 - you can always write a check and take a charitable deduction for that amount. But think for a moment about choosing to make a gift of a few shares of IBM stock (or a similar publicly traded company) in which you have a low cost basis.

By transferring the stock, you can make the same size gift that you intended to make, without declaring any capital gains tax. The combination of capital gains tax savings and the ability to deduct the current fair market value of the stock makes this a most attractive option for many individuals.

There also are other ways to make a "tax-advantaged" gift. Outright gifts do not just have to be cash, but can include publicly traded stock, closely held stock, real estate or even personal property. In each situation, there are some tax considerations that need to be examined, but being creative about how you support the Max Kade Institute is the essence of planned giving.

Planned giving also can mean deferred giving. The simplest deferred gift is a legacy, either made through a will or a simple trust. It is as easy as inserting a provision that says: "I hereby give, devise and bequeath to the University of Wisconsin Foundation for the benefit of the Max Kade Institute for German American Studies, the sum of $____________."

Gifts from estates can either be a specific dollar amount or a percentage of the estate. In many cases, gifts from estates are more sizable than annual gifts and can actually create permanent endowment funds, where the principal is held in perpetuity and annual distributions are made from the fund to carry on the work of the Institute.

There are even opportunities that allow you to set aside principal now, retain an income for yourself and/or others, save capital gains tax and still receive a charitable deduction now for a portion of your gift.

These are called life income plans and such plans include charitable remainder trusts, gift annuities and pooled income funds. All are available through the UW Foundation. We would be happy to discuss these plans and how they work with those wishing to support the Max Kade Institute.

There is no doubt that planned giving includes some tax planning and can be somewhat complicated. It starts, however, with simply wanting to support the work of a worthy organization, such as the Max Kade Institute. The next step is choosing to support it in a way that is smart for you and for the organization.

The UW Foundation would welcome the opportunity to assist those who wish to investigate the possibilities of planned giving. You may contact the Foundation at 263-4545 or write to: University of Wisconsin Foundation, Office of Planned Giving, PO Box 8860, Madison, WI 53708-8860. We would be happy to assist you and make certain that your gift is directed to the Max Kade Institute or any other area of campus that you choose.

In each issue of the MKI Newsletter we find a list of eleven Friends of the MKI and two ex-officio members, given the title Board of Directors.  What does this group do for the Friends and for the MKI?

The role of the Board is to implement the general policies of the Friends, which are to support and encourage the activities of the Institute by

1. forming a liaison between the Institute and the public;

2. helping the Institute generate better understanding of past, present and future German-American rela tions through the study of German-American immigrant history and culture;

3. helping the Institute to assist communities and individuals in their efforts to investigate and preserve their German heritage;

4. encouraging financial contributions, endowments and bequests for the benefit of the Institute;

5. encouraging the donation of historical and other relevant material to the collections of the Institute;

6. making distributions to organizations that qualify as tax exempt organizations under the Internal Revenue Code.

The term of office for the Board of Directors is three years, with the provision for one succeeding term, as spelled out in the by-laws.  Board members serve without any remuneration. Meetings of the Board are held quarterly, plus the annual meeting for the entire membership at which new Board members are elected by those present. Each board member bring various strengths and experiences to the Friends.  Together, the Board plays an important role in carrying out the tasks set forth in the policies listed above.   The Friends are growing, and our help is needed to provide the support to the Max Kade Institute and to further its broad and far-reaching projects.  To this end, we have established committees for outreach, fund raising, the Newsletter, and are developing a speakers bureau.

As of May 13, I will have served two consecutive terms and will regretfully leave the Board of Directors. But as I step down, I encourage you to consider stepping up your involvement in the Friends.  If you are interested in serving on the Board or one of its committees, please let us know. 

Edward W. Kuenzi, President