The Max Kade Institute is fortunate to have in its collection a cache of nearly two hundred letters, dating from 1846 to the early 1900s, written to Jakob 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.
Jakob Sternberger came from a prominent family in Kaaden, Bohemia, and had been a student at the Charles University in Prague, where he had been involved in the revolutionary movement spreading across the German states. Fleeing political persecution after 1848, Jakob eventually settled in Wisconsin in the United States.
He purchased a farm in Portage, WI, where in 1851 he tried to establish the nucleus of an ideal world by founding "Marienstern," 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 Jakob Sternberger voluntarily enlisted in the Northern army, where he began to literally fight for his ideals in the American Civil War.
The Sternberger project, by Kristen L. Reifsnyder, MKI Newsletter, Winter 2003, pp. 3, 14--15 (PDF)
Portrait, Franziska Sternberger
School document, Jakob Sternberger, Kaaden, 1839
Jakob Sternberger's Reisepass, Böhmen, 1840 [Transcription]
From Jakob Sternberger's first letter home to family and friends, pp. 6-7, 1850
[Transcription of entire letter, Nov. 1850]
Joseph Mathison to Jakob Sternberger, Madison, WI, 1860 [Transcription]
Todesanzeige for Karl Sternberger, 1891
Civil War veteran's pension, Franziska Sternberger, widow of Jakob Sternberger, 1892
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