Table of Contents:
In the Studio of the Master Jesse Schull, last part Tips for Genealogists Upcoming Events Book Review: Atlas of Ethnic Diversity in WI	Lecture Report: J. Leary's From Dorfkappelle... Annual Meeting Report Board of Directors Profiles From the Director

One of our most treasured family memorabilia, is the picture of Franz Liszt seated at his desk in the Hofgärtnerei, his home in Weimar during the last seventeen years of his life, from 1869-1886. It is inscribed in his handwriting: "Frl. Sophie In freundlichster Erinnerung F. Liszt September '85 Weimar". Thereon hangs the following tale.

Fräulein Sophie, to whom Liszt inscribed that picture, was Sophie Charlotte Gaebler, third youngest in a family of eight of which my father's father was the eldest. Aunt Sophie, who died in 1954 at the age of ninety-one, was an important figure in my childhood. It would have been difficult to be unimpressed by her. A large woman with a rich mezzo soprano voice, she bore all the marks of what we used to call an artistic temperament. She could take offense at trifles, especially if they came from the mouth of her younger brother. Many were the times she came into the kitchen complaining bitterly of Uncle Arthur: "Just see how mean he is; he's so mean to me." She set herself up for his rapier thrusts, of course, with her effusive posturing. As is so often the case with such relationships, they were really very close certainly very proud of each other.

Many were the Sundays and holidays Aunt Sophie came to visit us in Watertown. She seldom stayed overnight, for in those days public transportation from Milwaukee was plentiful and inexpensive. The Milwaukee Road ran several trains a day, and there was an even more frequent and convenient schedule on the old TMER&L Co. inter urban line. Aunt Sophie had a terrible fear of missing the train; I can recall Sunday evenings when she would begin worrying at 7:30 about getting to the 9:30 train on time, even though our house was within ten minutes of the station.

Her departures, however, could not have been as dramatic as her arrivals. She would come down the steps from the train, stray wisps of her gray hair flying from under the edges of the auburn wig which matched what had once been the natural color of her hair. She was utterly unselfconscious about the transformation: "Is my hair on straight," she would ask? She always carried a large bag, out of which an astonishing assortment of small gifts, personal needs and sheet music would tumble at appropriate or inappropriate moments. Such tumbles were often occasioned by her forgetting to put the bag down before opening her arms to embrace each one of us in turn. Each meeting seemed a fresh reunion of long lost relatives.

And at least at the start of such a visit Aunt Sophie's conversation would literally bubble. Filled with accounts of teas and recitals and dinner parties, it was liberally sprinkled with references to a huge cast of characters she seemed to take for granted was familiar to everyone but which, in fact, quickly lost us in utter confusion. "You remember Miss Zimmermann," she would say; "you know, the one who wore that wonderful blue dress at Bertha Amstuetz's party last month." She seemed completely incapable of differentiating between Milwaukee and Watertown. It was all one big community inhabited by people all of whom spoke German and loved music.

She herself had grown up speaking German. Indeed my father, her nephew, spoke German at home and began speaking English regularly only when he entered public school. All that, of course, ended during the first World War, though I remember, when I was a pupil at Webster Elementary School in the 1920's, seeing in a closet in our fifth grade classroom the old textbooks which had been used for the German instruction formerly a part of the regular curriculum for all children in the fourth grade and up. Bilingual education is by no means so strange or so new an idea as some people now suppose it to be. In my childhood Watertown's linguistic character was still sufficiently mixed so that when I was born, so the story was told, Uncle Arthur asked my father: "Well, what are you going to teach him German, English or Watertownese ?" Whichever language Aunt Sophie spoke, her speech was always animated, full of enthusiasm, and gilded with what strikes our more tempered ears as the exaggerated dynamics of the Saxon tongue.

There was always music, of course. After a Sunday dinner, when the dishes had been washed and put away and everyone was finally settled comfortably in the living room, Aunt Sophie would be persuaded to go to the piano. There she would play a Chopin Etude, one of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, and perhaps accompany herself as she sang a song or two of Schubert's. In her later years she would sometimes stop in the middle of a piece when the music called for more than her arthritic fingers could manage; but I remember, too, my enchantment as a young child in listening to her when her powers were still unabated.

Many years later, near the end of her life, we took our oldest son, then two years old, to visit Aunt Sophie. She sat down at her piano and played the Brahms Lullaby. Our son stood absolutely entranced as his almost 90-year-old great-great aunt played this classic for him. It is a moment I shall never forget.

That moment occurred, of course, in the apartment where she lived all but the last months of her life during the years I remember. It was located on North Milwaukee Street, just off Wisconsin Avenue, over Christensen's fur store. There were, as I recall it, half a dozen or so studio apartments on three floors, all inhabited by members of Milwaukee's artistic community. There was Karl Priebe, the painter. And there were a sculptor and another painter whose names I do not recall. They were all people tolerant of one another's sometimes erratic schedules and of the sounds, sights and smells occasioned by their various professional preparations.

I wasn't in her apartment often. My mother tried always to avoid going there, especially if it involved eating. Aunt Sophie was a voracious and undiscriminating eater, and my mother's sensibilities were grossly unequal to the strain of a meal prepared by Aunt Sophie. So such visits were usually solo affairs involving only my father.

Aunt Sophie, like her great mentor, never married. But she had a gentleman friend, a well-known sculptor who at least in later years frequently shared her visits to Watertown. On one occasion when my father went to Aunt Sophie's for dinner, this gentleman was also on hand. As the evening wore on and my father made some indication that he must soon depart, this gentleman arose and took his leave. But my father tarried just long enough so that as he was descending the stairs this gentleman was on his way back up.

Professionally Aunt Sophie taught at the Wisconsin College of Music for many decades, and she was long in demand as a recitalist as well. She lived at the very heart of Milwaukee's musical life. But the determining experience of her life had been the few weeks she spent as a student of Franz Liszt in Weimar a Lisztianerin. In 1938 she celebrated her 75th birthday with a recital at the Wisconsin College of Music. The Milwaukee Journal did a feature story on the occasion, observing that "For more than half a century Miss Gaebler has been teaching music and giving recitals here, but those years cannot dim the one tremendous experience which has been hers. Sophie Gaebler, you must understand, was a pupil of the legendary Franz Liszt. To have studied with the greatest pianist of all time is the summum bonum of the piano playing profession; it is to have played Ophelia to Edwin Booth's Hamlet, to have sung the Miserere with Caruso . . . . That experience has meant almost everything to Sophie Gaebler."

We are fortunate still to have the letters which Aunt Sophie sent back home to her family, then living in LaCrosse, during the wonderful months she spent in Weimar. There is also a short piece she wrote later describing that experience. It is these that tell the story I will share with you.

But first I must say a word about Franz Liszt himself. It is difficult for us, more than a century after his death, to appreciate adequately the stature of this man in his own time. He died in 1886, just short of his 75th birthday. While that does not seem old by our expectations today, his life virtually spans the nineteenth century, linking the classical world of Mozart and Haydn with the early decades of our own century, with artists we ourselves remember hearing.

Liszt was born in western Hungary in 1811, the year of Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia. His piano teacher was Carl Czerny; for theory he was the pupil of Salieri, that rival of Mozart who played the narrator in the film Amadeus. As a child, so the story has it, Beethoven consecrated his brow with a kiss (Weihekuss); and he did indeed know Franz Schubert. In mid-century he was friend of Chopin and Berlioz, his daughter Cosima became Wagner's wife.

At the far end of his life his pupils included the Spanish composer and pianist Isaac Albeniz, who lived well into this century. There are a number of recordings made early in this century by several Liszt pupils, most notably Moritz Rosenthal. And, as Sacheverell Sitwell notes, "if they were not actually the pupils of Liszt, such men as Joachim, Cesar Franck, Smetana, Dvorak, Vincent D'Indy, Grieg and MacDowell owed the first publication of their music to his good offices and were the recipients of his advice and counsel."

Liszt's life thus constitutes a virtual compendium of 19th century European music. This was true in an even more profound sense than the simply historical; in his person he embodied the spirit of nineteenth century Romanticism in music as surely as Lord Byron did in poetry. It is no derogation of Byron's poetry to observe that his importance as a symbol of nineteenth century Romanticism was rooted as much in the events and the style of his life as in his writing. The same was true of Liszt. Liszt the man contributed as much as Liszt the musician to his unprecedented stature as a celebrity.

Continued in the next Newsletter

But this idyllic way of life was not to be. The Missouri roughnecks and eastern financial interests were impatient to have the tribes removed from the lead district. Rhetoric calculated to inflame passions against the tribes was dispensed with heavy doses of Indian hatred common to the Jacksonian era.

In 1827 the tensions escalated into the Winnebago War. Shull was made a captain in the hastily raised militia. His quick thinking helped avert a wider conflict that could have engulfed the Upper Midwest. His Winnebago wife and in-laws were sent ahead by Jesse to alert noncombatants to get out of the way. Jesse himself lead the bloodthirsty militia elements in wearying circles until his trusted allies could negotiate the handing over of token culprits by sly deal makers like Old One- eyed Decorah.

Shull was elevated to colonel and helped broker the Treaty of 1829 which brought about the cession of tribal lands south of the Wisconsin River. But it was with sadness that he helped educate the tribes about the true meaning of this transaction the banishment from traditional hunting and fishing areas. He pleaded with his tribal friends to exercise caution in their travels in the lead district he saw the opportunity for deadly conflict.

The Missouri claim jumpers, Kentucky cutthroats and their New England Yankee merchant masters lost no time in sullying Shull's reputation in the lead district. He was denounced as an Indian lover and labeled a foreigner never mind his family's century long struggle to honorably defend the American frontier.

These attacks on Shull were furthered by the advance of the so-called civilizing institutions. The circuit-riding clergy joined in the assaults on his character. These southern Baptists and Methodists were scandalized by Shull's common law marriage to a Winnebago woman. But their moral indignation reached a new level of frenzy when the first wife secured Jesse a second wife in the person of her favorite cousin, a half Winnebago, half Sac relative to Black Hawk.

These plural marriages were common among traders and generally insisted upon by the first wife as a way of distributing the work load at a busy trading post. Shull, not having participated in a Christian rite since his childhood baptism by a traveling German Reformed preacher at the site of old Fort Pitt, never gave his domestic arrangement a second thought.

Shull saw the war clouds gathering again in 1832. He knew that Black Hawk chafed at the ban from the Rock Island ancestral lands. He also knew that any new breach of the peace would give the land speculators the excuse they craved to justify wiping out all Indians in southern Wisconsin.

When Black Hawk crossed to the east side of the Mississippi Shull suspected that the old warrior was just tweaking the nose of the U.S. and would leave again after gaining symbolic honor on the field and bribe of supplies and increased annuities. Shull knew this was a serious miscalculation; the lead region thugs would not allow for honor or compromise.

Jesse rallied the homesteaders in his Lafayette County settlement to his approach: stay in the forts, let Black Hawk blow off steam and steal a few cattle until the federal army arrived to herd the Sac back to Iowa. Up in Dodgeville, Mineral Point, and Blue Mounds the land speculators thought different on that point and took the field in pursuit of Black Hawk.

Shull responded to the militia call again. He could tell immediately that he was being sidelined by those bent on the destruction of the tribes. But he did what he could to defuse the conflict. He rode to Black Hawk to advise him to make a beeline for Iowa. Unfortunately, the old warrior was delighting in the panic he had caused on the frontier and did not understand that the atrocities committed by renegade Pottawatomi, Kickapoo, and Winnebago would be blamed on the Sac.

Jesse left Black Hawk and reconciled himself to guiding the scattered villages of elders and children to the safety of the Indian agency at Portage. And to prove that no good deed goes unpunished, he discovered that his business establishments at Shullsburg had been burned to the ground by night riders¹. Already feeling like Job, he learned that both his wives had disappeared and were presumed to have perished in the ethnic cleansing that swept through the lead district².

With a broken heart, Shull rode out when he heard that the militia had discovered Black Hawk's trail and that a major battle was likely. Jesse and his loyalists caught up to Black Hawk at Wisconsin Heights. Black Hawk now knew that he was courting disaster and asked Jesse to guide a large group of women and children down the Wisconsin River. Black Hawk said he would take his warriors north to join the Chippewa.

Jesse carried out his part of the bargain. He brought hundreds of Sac safely to Iowa. But he soon heard that Black Hawk failed to turn north quick enough. The Sac were massacred at Bad Axe and the old warrior ended up in military prison.

Shull was pretty much pushed to the margins of politics in the aftermath of the Black Hawk War. The leaders of the Indian eradication effort exploited their hero status and soon controlled all territorial offices. It wasn't until after statehood in 1848 that Shull's contributions were recognized.

Jesse had to move to Green County to escape the political venom of his adversaries in Lafayette County and the condemnations from lead district pulpits. The physical safety of his part Indian sons and daughters was also on his mind. It was a good move for all concerned. Green County was drawing peaceful farmers from the East, not the trigger happy rabble in the mining area.

Many of the new homesteaders were from the same ethnic stock as Jesse. He entertained the children with stories in Deitsch and advised the parents about the rigors of Wisconsin life. Soon the major Swiss migrations came to Green County and they too valued his counsel.

Green County soon became a Free Soil/Abolitionist stronghold in opposition to the slaveholding element in the lead district. Jesse served as elder statesman to a new generation of Wisconsinites made up of waves of Norwegians, Germans, Danes, and Swedes. It wasn't long before those who vilified him earlier were exposed as copperheads and traitors to the Union.

Some will teach you that Jesse Shull lived to a ripe old age and was buried in Green County. Some will tell you that he went up north and spent his final years among the Munsee.

But the way I heard it, he felt the pull of the West when a Pennsylvania German family passing through asked if Oregon might be a good place to start a new life. I'll bet I know his answer:" Let's have a look out there once"

My high school German teacher taught me that German farmers always lived in villages and farmed widely dispersed fields. When I starting doing genealogical research, I read that same "fact" and incorporated it into my first published newspaper article. It turns out that I had fallen victim to a common malady that generalizations about "Germany" apply to my family's history. I have painfully learned that some of these "facts" do not uniformly apply across the same province, much less the whole German-speaking world.

Thus, in researching your family's history, you will need to find information about that particular portion of the German-speaking world where your family lived. Do not assume that marriages, inheritances and the like followed the same pattern throughout the German-speaking world. Also, never assume that these laws and customs never changed over time. The "Old World" was not as static as we are wont to believe. You need to dig deeper and determine what the particular conditions were in your ancestral district at the particular time you are researching.

Of course, getting down to the local level for a particular time-frame can add more complications, or, more properly said, richness, to your family history. When I finally located my father's main ancestral village in Northeast Bohemia, I learned that it lay on a linguistic boundary separating a German-speaking area from a Czech-speaking area. Although in history texts we read of the terrible animosity between the "Czechs" and the "Germans" in Bohemia, in reality there was frequent intermarriage between these "Germans" and "Czechs." I found names such as Langer, Marek, Huss and Jansa in "Czech" as well as "German" cemeteries. So was I "German" or "Czech?" A local Czech historian once told me that you cannot determine a family's ethnicity based on the surname. Rather, a person was "German" or "Czech" depending on whether they lived in a "German" or "Czech" village. In the case of intermarriage between a "German" and a "Czech," the families would be "German" or "Czech" depending on whose village they settled in. So my family history is not the history of a "German" family. Rather, it is the history of a family that lived in a cultural milieu containing elements of both Czech and German cultures. Simply assuming that I was "German" because my surname is a German word, turns out to be a gross simplification.

July 13 - August 5, 1999, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m.:
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will present a free public lecture series on German Immigrants to the United States (1848-present). There will be a special focus on the large number of Germans who came to Wisconsin.

To request an information brochure, call the Dept. of Continuing Studies (608/262-1156) or the Max Kade Institute (608/262-7546). For program details, contact Prof. Cora Lee Nollendorfs, Dept. of German (608/262-2192) or the MKI (608/262-7546).

September 17-18, 1999, Friday at MKI, Saturday at Pyle Center:
German Close to Home: Using authentic local materials in the language classroom. This workshop for Teachers of German is offered by the Max Kade Institute in cooperation with the Division of Continuing Studies, UW Madison. Fee: $60.00. For further information on this program, contact Mary Devitt at the MKI (608/262-7546). The workshop will be repeated April 7-8, 2000.

In 1942, University of Wisconsin rural sociologist George Hill published a map entitled "The People of Wisconsin According to Ethnic Stock". The map was just one component of a larger, ambitious endeavor called the Wisconsin Nationality Project that Hill and his research team had worked on for five years under the sponsorship of the Work Projects Administration. The goals of the project were to provide educators and government with a basic understanding of the history and customs of the state's population and to document the relationship between ethnic background and sociological phenomena. The project, interrupted by the war, was never finished, but the map was completed and published on its own. It showed the distribution of 25 ethnic groups in full color at minor civil division levels based on 1905 state census data and field work. It was the most comprehensive ethnic geography of Wisconsin to date and it remains a timeless geographical portrayal of who we were, in Wisconsin, following the most intense years of immigration and settlement.

Interest in Wisconsin's ethnic heritage has grown tremendously over the past few decades, as measured by the corpus of academic and non-academic literature and general public attention. Yet the geography of who we are has not kept pace. Until now. Kazimierz Zaniewski and Carol Rosen's recently published Atlas of Ethnic Diversity in Wisconsin offers us a contemporary and much needed geographic and demographic overview of the state's many ethnic groups. Zaniewski and Rosen are geographers who teach at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, respectively. Their book is perhaps the most inclusive ethnic geography on Wisconsin ever completed, and one of the most comprehensive ethnic studies of its kind of a single state.

Reminiscent of the Hill map, the book is a snapshot of who we are as we approach the millennium. Data from the 1990 U.S. Census of Population were used to develop a series of maps and graphs that display the distribution and socioeconomic characteristics of more than sixty ethnic groups. Data were collected at the census tract level, providing a very fine unit of analysis. A combination of graduated circle and choro-pleth mapping techniques illustrate geographic distributions across the state. Inset maps of the United States are included for comparison in the analysis of each group. There are also inset maps of Milwaukee County which reveal patterns that are lost in the larger map because of the relatively small size of the census tracts and the density of the population. Summary tables list the top nine counties for each group by total population and relative concentration. A colorful series of six graphics illustrate various socioeconomic characteristics for each group: place of residence, population composition, education attainment, nativity and year of entry to the U.S., household income, and employment by industry. A brief narrative for each ethnic group provides a general overview, short migration history, and interpretation of the demographic and spatial graphics.
In essence the atlas goes a long way toward completing the objectives set out in the Wisconsin Nationality Project. But any statistical analysis of "ethnicity" in America with the data we have at hand faces certain dilemmas. Even the concept of "ethnicity" is problematic. Studies have typically relied on nativity data from the decennial or state censuses. For example, Hill's map identified people as being of "ethnic stock" if they or their parents were born in another country. This is troublesome because nativity data does not necessarily reflect ethnicity. For instance, ethnic Poles in Wisconsin at the beginning of the century are often undercounted because the census recorded them as originating in one of the three countries that controlled Poland.

The Atlas of Ethnic Diversity in Wisconsin is based on data generated by the census' question concerning ancestry. But there are certain caveats endemic to this data as well. The 1980 census marked the first time that a general question on ancestry (ethnic identity) was asked in a decennial census. The question was based on self-identification and was open-ended: What is this person's ancestry or ethnic origin? In cases where respondents listed multiple ethnicities (e.g., German- Italian-Irish), the first two were recorded. Therefore, the aggregate totals for each ethnic group are not mutually exclusive. Zaniewski and Rosen avoid the problem of double counting in the cases of multiple ancestries by using only the first ancestry response. But more problematic is the fact that the question of ancestry in general is very much based on perception; it is about ethnic identity and not ethnicity per se. It is safe to assume that most people know whether they or their parents were born in another country; however, I would argue that a good share of the population today cannot provide an absolutely accurate breakdown of their ethnic composition. Posed with a question of ancestry it is common to hear Americans, especially those of European descent, describe themselves like an old family recipe: a little German, some Norwegian, a bit of Swedish, and a touch of Belgian. In the census this is recorded as German-Norwegian and in The Atlas of Ethnic Diversity in Wisconsin this identity becomes simply German. Further, there are any number of reasons that Americans today may cling to a certain ethnic identity even though it may be just a minor slice of their overall ethnic make up. Likewise, there are reasons that some would wish to shed their ethnic identity. In sum, the census' data on ancestry are problematic; yet, this is the best source for statistical data we have right now to serve as a proxy for ethnicity.

On Wednesday, April 28, James Leary, Director of the Folklore program at the UW and author of the recent book Wisconsin Folklore, presented a refreshing and interesting angle on German in Wisconsin.

Leary, who has been working on different aspects of German music in Wisconsin since the mid-1980's, has done a great deal of fieldwork in this area, and has compiled a wonderful set of information on German music in our state past and present. In doing his fieldwork, Leary has had many opportunities to talk to different people, as well as record some fine examples of German-American music. The author has produced or aided in multimedia projects dealing with this subject including books, audio tracks of the music, video clips, and a slide show.
Leary's talk focused on the presentation of portions from his work, giving an historical and contemporary perspective of how German- American music has developed. He showcased some of his books and played some audio and video tracks while telling the listeners how his informants reacted to his research and how his research developed into what it is today. His presentation culminated with a slide show that Leary has compiled over the duration of his fieldwork, showing many scenes familiar to Wisconsin Germans, but all too often not documented as German- Americana from this state. This presentation piqued the interest of the audience, providing fuel for a lively and animated discussion following the talk.

The Annual Meeting of the Friends of the Max Kade Institute was held at The Pyle Center on the University of Wisconsin campus on May 13, 1999.

Elected to the Board of Directors were Robert Bolz, Madison; Trudy Paradis, Cedarburg; Karyl Rommelfanger, Manitowoc. Hermann Viets, Milwaukee was re-elected for a second three-year term.

Following the meeting and dinner, Robert Teske, Director of the Milwaukee County Historical Society gave a presentation entitled, "German-American Collections of the Milwaukee County Historical Society: Unexplored Resources." Through the use of slides, Dr. Teske illustrated some of the collections held in the Historical Society, which include the records of many of Milwaukee's German-American businesses and societies, detailed records of the Socialist Party in Milwaukee, and papers of prominent and ordinary individuals , which all give insights into the German-American experience in Milwaukee and the surrounding area. He welcomed researchers to explore these fascinating and in some cases, little known, collections.

Starting in this issue, we will present a brief profile of each member of the Board of Directors.

Hon. Frank Zeidler was the mayor of Milwaukee from 1948-1960 and candidate of the Socialist Party for president of the United States in 1976. Throughout his career, Frank Zeidler has defined himself as a "Democratic Socialist" who has been active in national and international organizations such as the United States National Committee for UNESCO. From 1941-1948, he was the Director of Milwaukee Public Schools and the Chairperson of the Socialist Party from 1973-1984. As member of various state and regional committees, Frank Zeidler has also been an active charter member on the Board of Directors of the MKI. In addition, Frank Zeidler is the author of numerous articles. He is a popular lecturer and esteemed for his knowledge on local, national and international matters.

Robert (Bob) A. Luening is retired from the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he was on staff for over 19 years.was a dairy farmer in Waukesha County for 16 years, an adult agricultural instructor in Blair, WI for 2 years, and a county UW Co-op Extension agent in Racine County, WI for 6 years.&nbspLuening has written two farm management textbooks, is working on a third, and continues to keep active teaching and consulting.&nbspis also interested in genealogical matters.is a member of three genealogical organizations, a very committed treasurer on the Board of Directors of the MKI as well as the Executive Vice-President of the Luening Family Organization.addition, Bob Luening is a member of several Masonic organizations and the Madison West Kiwanis.&nbsp

Max David Gaebler graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School. He was ordained in 1944 by the First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1952, Max Gaebler became Minister of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin. His unprecedented 35 year ministry in Madison ended with his retirement in 1987. During all the years of his Madison ministry he was responsible for the Society's weekly radio program RELIGION FOR TODAY. Following his retirement, he spent fourteen months as Interim Minister of Unitarian congregations in Adelaide, South Australia, and Auckland, New Zealand. In 1993, he served for a year as Interim Minister of the Unitarian Church of Vancouver, B.C. During all these years he has been an active participant in the work of the International Association for Religious Freedom.
Over the years Max Gaebler has played an active part both in community and in denominational affairs. He has served as an officer of such organizations as the Dane County Social Planning Agency, the Madison Community Welfare Council, the Wisconsin Association for Mental Health and the MKI. Max Gaebler has been actively involved with the Friends of the MKI from the very beginning, having also served as President of the Friends.

Thomas D. Lidtke was an art educator in Wisconsin and South Australia from 1972-1982 and has been the Executive Director of the West Bend Art Museum since 1982. He has given numerous panel presentations and written and contributed to many publications such as Carl von Marr, American-German Artist, Carl von Marr: Life and Work, Alchemic Emporium etc.. Since 1996, Thomas Lidtke has been on the Advisory Committee of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, and he is currently a board member of the Wisconsin Federation of Museums. In addition, he is a very committed board member of the Friends of the MKI.

Fran Loeb Luebke holds a BA in Political Science and MA in History from the University of Iowa. Fran has served as Assistant Director of the Institute of World Affairs at the University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin and as a member of the Ethnic Heritage Committee of the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Commission. This spring she coordinated a national conference in conjunction with the inauguration of Nancy L. Zimpher as the sixth Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. She serves as Secretary of the Friends of the Max Kade Institute.
Her interest in German-American studies stems from a lifelong interest in family history. Fran Luebke recently self-published a book on the Loebs of Rheinhessen and she is working on a book on the Urban family of Hessen-Nassau.

Profiles of the following board members will be published in the fall Newsletter: Robert Bolz, Dennis Boyer, Edward Langer, Trudy Paradis, Karyl Rommelfanger, Hermann Viets.

After almost two years watching the MKI's financial state with some concern, I'm delighted toreport that the picture has started to look much brighter, thanks in large part to the greatly increased level of support we are enjoying from you, the Friends of the Max Kade Institute.

The Max Kade Institute's endowment has begun to grow slowly but significantly, thanks directly to your donations to our Endowment Fund, some large and many more small, as well as to those who have become lifetime members of the Friends. In the coming year, well over 10% of our income will be produced by endowment donations we've gotten in the last year. That has been, almost literally, a lifesaver.

Kerstin Kuentzel's genealogical work has been supported by the Friends for years. Now, we have her working halftime in the Institute. The support of the Friends in other areas helped make this step possible indirectly and, in the long term, we hope that part of her position will come directly from the Friends.

Your support helps in dozens of other ways. This Newsletter is, of course, funded by the Friends. Funding of our conferences (like last fall's Defining Tensions conference on Germans in Wisconsin) and our various workshops all starts with money from the Friends. This base is critical in getting additional support from the university and private foundations. In the past, we have been able to turn to the Friends for help buying computer equipment and in bringing out most of our book publications. In short, every aspect of the Institute is possible because of your generous help.
Of course, we are hardly out of the woods yet. We need to sustain the current levels of support for the next three to five years, especially in getting occasional larger donations. Still, the last year gives us reason for hope.

Thanks again,
Joseph Salmons, Director