Speaker(s):
Cora Lee Kluge
Location:
University of Wisconsin–Madison, Memorial Union
Description:
Flood control became a priority in the U.S. following the catastrophic floods of major rivers during the 1920s and 1930s; and American civil engineers, enthusiastic about work being done in Germany, promoted the construction of laboratories where river hydraulics could be studied. The most ambitious project was the construction of a 200-acre outdoor working model of the Mississippi River basin that replicated 15,000 miles of the river and its major tributaries, easily the largest hydraulic scale model ever made in this country. The original manpower was provided between 1943 and 1946 by German POWs held at Camp Clinton in Mississippi, a detention site established specifically to help build the Mississippi River Basin Model. This illustrated presentation tells the story of these prisoners-of-war and the role they played in solving problems of flood management in America.
Cora Lee Kluge is a Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Co-Director of the Max Kade Institute.
