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April / May 2007
Gallery: “The Museum of 100 Days”
Kassel’s documenta Arts Festival
By Emily Grosvenor
The confluence of art and politics is seldom as exciting as at the documenta, a summer-long arts festival that has taken place in Kassel roughly every five years since 1955. Now in its
twelfth incarnation, the “Museum of 100 Days,” lasting from June 16 to September 23, 2007, will likely confirm the documenta as the most important contemporary art event in the world.
With the first documenta, German artists sent a signal to the world that they were prepared to reclaim the country’s modern masters and reaffirm a German arts community independent of
Nazi aesthetics. Ever since, the documenta has captured contemporary art’s ability to shock, provoke, inspire, explain, and intrigue.
The original documenta began small – as a side program of the Federal Garden Exhibition (Bundesgartenschau) of 1955. Curator Arnold Bode, a Kassel art professor and designer, sought to
show the very artists that the Nazis had persecuted as “degenerate” two decades before. Converting the rubble of the building known as the Fridericianum to a space that would eventually host one hundred thirty
thousand visitors, Bode exhibited seminal works such as Kneidende, a 1911 sculpture by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, and others that stood both for the enormous contribution made by German artists to the expressionist
movement and the immense talent lost under Hitler. Bode also displayed works by modern masters alongside younger German artists in an attempt to “document” the development of German art throughout the first half
of the twentieth century.
Ten successive festivals, following in increments of four, and then five years, cemented the documenta as an art exhibition that both chronicles the state of the world’s contemporary
art and points in the direction that art will take. Subsequent documentas spread out geographically into the Orangerie and the Palais Bellvue and saw the introduction of influences and works first from the
United States, and then from Africa and East Asia. The scope of the festival expanded to include architecture, performance, and media art just as it helped establish careers of artists such as Alberto
Giacometti, Mario Marini, and Joseph Beuys. At each festival, visitors from around the globe clustered in the small central German city to witness artists pushing boundaries. These obvious expressions of
democracy in what was then a still young West Germany were made even more poignant by Kassel’s proximity – within spitting distance – of the then East German border…
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Down the Castle Road with Katie Jane
by Skip Kaltenheuser
Invigorate your travels along this famed route with guidance from Mark Twain and a child’ fresh perspective.
Choose your companions carefully when traveling Germany’s Castle Road – someone who still has a child’s sense of wonder, yes, and someone who knows the territory. I picked
daughter Katie Jane, then ten, still readily giving Dad’s advice the guise of wisdom. Never having crossed a moat to darken a castle’s door, she was keen to do so. We rounded out our trio with Mark Twain, an
internationally known wiseacre but he knows life’s rivers well, particularly those in the valleys we would explore. Those valleys generated writings including A Tramp Abroad, and a celebrated book about a raft carrying a small boy and an escaped slave.
The Castle Road, loosely defined, routes between Mannheim, Heidelberg, Eberbach, Bad Wimpfen, Heilbronn, Schwäbisch Hall, Langenburg, Rothenburg, Ansbach, Nuremberg, Bayreuth, and
Kulmbach. If you extend the route to Prague, it is about 975 km, sporting seventy or so fortresses, ruins, and castles. This includes large swaths of wine country and, filling a need from what sometimes seems to
be endemic hypochondria, plenty of spas.
Growing who knows where, throughout the kingdoms that were cobbled into modern Germany in 1871, are all my ancestral roots. They may reach back to fur fashion amid cave decor and bowing
to trees. Now Katie grew curious about her roots in the Old Country.
Knowing Twain’s fondness for Heidelberg, we began our sojourn there, a mere forty-minute drive from where we landed in Frankfurt, but a world apart in one of the country’s most
beautiful river valleys, carved out by the Neckar River.
Twain was more accustomed to traveling to Europe via steam ship. He did so with his bride in the spring of 1878, sailing on the Holsatia from New York to Hamburg. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was not firing the American imagination. Twain sought to crack the writer’s block that plagued him, exhausted after starting a half dozen books. He also schemed to follow the huge success of Innocents
Abroad with a new travelogue, A Tramp Abroad.
Planning only a day in Heidelberg, Twain lingered the entire summer, mostly in a grand hotel on Konigstuhl (Huckleberry) mountain, overlooking the valley – a stone’s throw from the
spectacular ruins of Heidelberg Castle. Initially built up in the late 1400s from an eighth-century palace of Charlemagne, the castle was sacked during the vicious Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and
Protestants, rebuilt and then sacked in earnest by the French in 1689. No doubt Twain, who loved to nip the French, admires the frequent local sneer that no one makes beautiful ruins like the French.
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Off Into the World: The German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven
By Amy S. Eckert
Walk in the footsteps of America’s immigrant ancestors as they left their home for the promise of a new life in a foreign land.
Several dozen people crowd the wharf in Bremerhaven. Their dress is similar—heavy, dark skirts for the women and girls, coarse cotton jackets for the men and boys, clean, if perhaps a
little threadbare—but their voices betray diverse origins. Here a Polish family speculates on shipboard living conditions; there a German family speaks excitedly about job opportunities in the United States; and
over there a Jewish family mourns the holidays that will be spent without the company of the family they’re leaving behind. It’s difficult to make out their words. Each voice blends into the cacophony of the
wharf. In the background, the steamship “Lahn” bobs in the harbor, awaiting its cargo of emigrants.
The scene on this Bremerhaven wharf isn’t real, but it feels that way. And that’s just what the staff at the Deutsches Auswandererhaus intended. The German Emigration Center bills
itself as an Erlebnismuseum, or experiential museum, using authentic models and reproductions to elicit an emotional reaction as well as a more thorough understanding of history.
Approximately 7.2 million men, women and children sailed from Bremerhaven between 1830 and 1974, making the city the largest port of emigration in Germany. 4.1 million Germans and 3.1
million Eastern Europeans left their homeland through this city for new ports in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and beyond.
The German Emigration Center marks the location of this historic departure point with Europe’s largest emigration-themed museum, which opened in 2005. Set on Bremerhaven’s New Harbor, a
site integral in the processing and transporting of millions of emigrants, the center’s architecture reflects the aspirations of those emigrants. The building’s central larch-wood frame brings to mind the hull
of a wooden ship. White, soaring, concrete wings evoke an image of ship’s sails. The Weser River snakes behind the building, leading to the North Sea. And in keeping with the international theme of the museum,
all exhibits, captions and audio stations feature both German- and English-language explanations.
The emigration experience begins for modern travelers as soon as they purchase their museum tickets. Each guest is handed a small Boarding Pass—a paper envelope with a plastic iCard
tucked inside. The envelope identifies by name one of fifteen actual emigrants who departed through Bremerhaven a century ago. The iCard doubles as both an entrance ticket and an electronic key that, when placed
before scanners located throughout the museum, reveal additional historical and biographical information: audio and video displays, supplementary historical data, or information related to the individual
featured on the Boarding Pass.
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Postbus Panoramas in Swiss Mountain Country
by Tom Bross
The hairpin turns and alpine scenery are equally breathtaking on a daytrip aboard the famed yellow Swiss Postbus.
Forget about straight-ahead roads and direct point-to-point distances while traveling in mountainous central Switzerland. On that kind of rugged topography, numerous hairpin turns
swoop through narrow valleys, and lakeside curves keep you right in the midst of spectacular alpine scenery. Adding almost impossibly cute villages to this kind of day-trip rambling makes the experience complete.
Relying upon Postbus transportation for such a journey has been a national habit for the past one hundred one years. However, the service began even farther back in time. In 1849, mail
delivery throughout the recently formed Swiss Confederation was expedited by putting a network of horse-drawn stagecoaches (and more than one thousand snow-season sleighs) to work. Ultimately, two thousand five
hundred twenty-three horses – in teams of five – were pulling the loads. The brand-new federal railroad companies soon took over the busiest and longest lines, while Swiss Post kept the shorter routes in
mountainous areas.
Then came motorization, ceremoniously inaugurated on June 1, 1906. Three tall-windowed, four-cylinder vehicles, Swiss-manufactured by Berna, Martini, & Saurer, brightly painted
“mail-box yellow” and outfitted with carbide headlights, began regularly scheduled trips, heading northwest from capital-city Bern to the little Schweizer Mittelland family-vacation town of Detligen by
way of comparably tiny Wohlen and Murzelen – overall an eight-mile journey, augmented by a Bern-Papiermühle link.
Beneath heavy sacks of mail lashed onto the roof of their omnibus, a dozen or so passengers sitting on hard wooden benches paid modest fares to take the hour-and-a-quarter commute.
Solid rubber tires rolling on mostly unpaved gravel country roads assured them of a bumpedy-bump ride at a then-speedy ten to twelve miles per hour.
Merely seven years after 1906’s startup, one million eight hundred thousand citizens and tourists were journeying aboard more than two thousand yellow Postbuses that carried them over
undulating landscapes, through farm-country valleys, larch and pine forests, and idyllic lake districts. By 1919, a year following the end of World War I, hundreds of military trucks had been converted for
goods-and-people conveyance over routes including the famous six thousand five hundred seventy-eight feet-high Simplon Pass in Switzerland’s southerly Valais canton…
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Call of the Sea – Ostfriesland
by Tido Holtkamp
The beauty of East Frisia combines with wonderful biking and all things water-related to make a memorable visit.
When the West Germans experienced the “German Miracle” during the 1950s and were beginning to feel their oats, they turned on the East Frisians (whom they deemed as less
sophisticated) and made fun of them. Several books of “East Frisian Jokes” (Ostfriesenwitze) appeared on the market. The East Frisians took all this attention in stride and decided to turn their “backwardness”
into a blessing – they developed their land into a first-class vacation destination.
Recently Mark Kahler, an American travel writer, visited his grandfather’s birthplace in East Frisia (Ostfriesland), a place he had never heard of. Amazed at what he discovered, he
wrote a glowing travelogue. He called East Frisia an enchanting place with low prices and great hospitality, where Americans immediately attract attention because most local families have at least one relative
in America. He also pointed out that Canadians are especially welcome because the local people remember that, as occupation troops, the Canadians behaved exceptionally well.
How did the world ever hear of Ostfriesland? In 1903, the Irish author Erskine Childers published his book The Riddle of the Sands, the world’s first modern spy novel. An English
sailor sails the East Frisian Islands and discovers that the German army is secretly training for a landing in England. The book shook up England. During the summer of 1921, Billy Mitchell tried to convince
America that airplanes could sink battleships. So, before the government brass and the press, his bombers sank the battleship “SMS Ostfriesland” in twenty-one minutes, a major ship of the German Imperial
Navy and a war prize. The sinking shook up America. And singer Lale Andersen, who made “Lili Marlen” famous, was an East Frisian girl. The song touched the whole world and she lies buried on the island of
Langeoog.
What makes East Frisia so attractive today? Since there is no industry to speak of, the air has purity unknown in the rest of Germany, and the wind brings fresh ocean air all the time.
On the islands and along the shore, the salt water adds a pungency that makes for healthy breathing. Many doctors prescribe a Kur (dose) of Hochseeklima (high seas climate) and a stay on Norderney or Borkum for
patients with nasty colds.
Then there are the bikes. East Frisia is one of the few truly flat places in Germany, and thus bicycling is a pleasure – no hills. About thirty years ago, all the communities in the
area got together and decided to build a network of bicycle paths. They selected a great number of dirt roads, installed a foundation and added asphalt or stone on top. Since they represented an
under-industrialized region, they got the German government to subsidize the work…
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VROOM – Thrills at the Nürburgring
by Leah Larkin
Buckle up and hang on for the ride of your life around this legendary automotive track.
Racecar driver Wolfgang Kaufmann was taking no chances. It was one of those dreary, dismal German days with rain showers off and on. The track of Germany’s legendary Nordschleife
(north loop) at the Nürburgring was dangerously slippery. And, he had three journalists as passengers in his Škoda Octavia RS as he sped around the corners, reaching top speeds of a mere 210 kilometers (130
miles) per hour. A snail’s pace for a professional whose top speed was 309 kilometers (191.5 miles) per hour in 2001 in a 996 “Gembella” turbocharged Porsche.
Nonetheless, it was an exciting ride. This course, said to be the world’s most dangerous racecourse and named the “Green Hell” by Jackie Stewart, is loaded with tricky, twisty curves –
some seventy-three. Kaufmann knew the names of all: Schwalbenschwanz, Klostertal, Schwedenkreuz, and so on. He has been over the course hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. He knew each bend better than a
mailman knows his route – when to downshift, when to take the curve high, when to veer to the left. As he approached each curve, he would recite his strategy to his passengers who were mesmerized by his skill.
At one wide curve, he had to slow down. A tow truck was loading a vehicle that had crashed.
The Nürburgring, located in Germany’s Eifel region of green hills and forests 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Cologne, stretches through a wooded landscape under the medieval
Nürburg castle. Its history dates back to 1927. Today some two hundred events and one hundred races are held at the track each year, including a rock festival, a twenty-four-hour race, a Truck Grand Prix, an
Oldtimer Grand Prix, plus Formula One. Watching the races is a thrill. However, for the ultimate adventure, you can drive the course yourself. One lap on the Nordschleife costs just sixteen euros and is open to
any and all vehicles, from motorcycles to motor homes, sports cars to SUVs. Even passenger buses have a go at it.
Back in the 1980s when I lived in Germany and the dollar was strong, I bought a Porsche 944, a Jahreswagen, a slightly used car that had been driven by a Porsche executive, from the
factory in Zuffenhausen. I joined the Porsche Club of America Germany region and enjoyed many fun-filled driving events. A highlight was driving the Nordschleife. I took no chances with my new “baby” and drove
the perilous circuit at a cautious speed. My husband, however, pushed the car to his limits, spun out of control, did a “one hundred eighty” and came within centimeters of crashing into a guard rail and
seriously wounding my treasure. Had he not been so lucky, that may have been the end of our marriage…
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The Pearl of Altmark – Tangermünde
by Jörg M. Unger
This once prosperous home of North German-style brick building still charms visitors.
Imagine you are a stork, returning to Germany after having spent the cold winter months in Africa. You fly over the vast fields, lush meadows, and marshy grounds of Saxony-Anhalt
and follow the course of the river Elbe, whose banks are still flooded with melted ice and snow from the Erzgebirge (ore mountains). After discerning the point where the river Tanger flows into the Elbe, you
circle around the watchtower of an old fortress and finally land on your nest on Eulenturm (owl tower) to take a rest and look around the place, inspecting to see if anything has changed around your home in
Tangermünde.
The place developed from a small settlement of merchants and fishermen under the protection of the fortress, which was first mentioned in a document of 1009 as part of the
Teutonic defense system against the Slavs, who lived beyond the ford on the east side of the river Elbe. In the early thirteenth century, the settlement grew into a flourishing town. Trade guilds and
corporations were founded, and in 1368, Tangermünde was mentioned as a member of the Hanseatic League. In 1373, Emperor Karl IV purchased the Mark Brandenburg to connect this region with Bohemia. He had the
fortress rebuilt and made it his second capital city, as he loved staying in his new residence. However, his castle was destroyed by Swedish troops in 1640 and the present Baroque building, which has housed a
hotel since the summer of 2000, was built by the Prussian architects of King Friedrich I. Around the year 1400, Tangermünde had become one of the richest towns on the river Elbe and could afford a magnificent
town hall with a seventy-eight-foot-tall, elaborately decorated front, built in the 1430s.
The town’s prosperity lasted until 1617, when a huge fire destroyed about two-thirds of the place. Grete Minde, a young woman, was soon found guilty of that disaster and after
severe tortures, she confessed arson and was burned at the stake. The German writer, Theodor Fontane, used that historical event as the literary basis for his novella Grete Minde that was published in
1880. In 1883, however, the historian and lawyer, Ludolf Parisius, studied the old court records and discovered that the case was a judicial murder and the young woman died innocent.
After that disaster, Tangermünde had to suffer through the Thirty Years’ War (1618 to 1648), when it became the headquarters of different army commanders and was looted by the
troops of General Fuchs, the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf, and the counts Tilly, Wallenstein, and Pappenheim. When the war was over, only two hundred twenty-eight of the once six hundred twenty-three houses
remained habitable. The damages were not completely repaired when two fires again destroyed parts of the town in 1676 and 1678, and to make matters worse, the plague of 1682 claimed the lives of more than one
thousand inhabitants. Though Tangermünde did not recover from these times for nearly two centuries and could not again prosper to the magnitude of its former heyday, the medieval architecture of its old town
survived – even the seven-year-long foreign rule of Napoleon’s troops from 1806 to 1813…
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Germany Goes Green
by Courtney Tenz
From windmills to solar panels, the German commitment to renewable energy sources becomes a model for the world.
A few blocks from my home in Cologne, at the corner of a dead-end street, sits an apartment block designed for the future. From the outside, the long five-story building does not appear
much different from the others in this quiet, residential neighborhood. The façade is painted pink and steel-railed balconies adorn the individual apartments. Its residents are young families and elderly
pensioners alike.
However, with funding from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, a recent renovation to the structure made these apartments models for green living. From the street, passersby
cannot see the solar collectors on the roof that provide hot water to the residents, nor will they notice the solar panels that help offset the residents’ power demands. Likewise, they cannot see the plants
growing on the roof to absorb the sun’s rays and help reduce the summertime cooling costs. It does not stick out like a sore thumb, this model of environmentally-friendly construction. And despite its uniqueness
in this neighborhood, it is not the only building of its kind in Cologne.
Only a few kilometers to the north, in the relatively new suburban neighborhood of Blumenberg, a small community constructed in the late 1980s has become a showcase for
ecologically sound design. The wooden exteriors of these single-family homes are complemented by the green roof atop the front porch’s overhang; the tips of solar water heaters jut out of the angled roofs. The
housing designs, unusual for this part of Germany, offer a tremendous contrast to the new white stucco eight- and nine-story multi-family apartment buildings in nearby Chorweiler.
“When our house was built about fifteen years ago, there was talk of the whole community being constructed to blend in with the natural environment,” Jan Rohn, a resident of one of
these eco-homes says. “They abandoned that idea after only about twenty houses, but buses filled with tourists still stop by, everyone getting out to snap pictures of the houses, hoping to get a look of the
green life.”
In Nippes, there is evidence that this movement to establish eco-communities has not died – only relocated. After an old industrial park was rezoned to allow for more residential
construction, a design group proposed a car-free subdivision consisting of single-family townhouses and apartment buildings that will eventually house four hundred families. Instead of streets, there will be a
parking garage at the outskirts and grassy courtyards for residents to enjoy. The houses and apartments are designed with energy efficiency in mind; some include solar panels for offsetting basic energy needs.
Though the construction is not yet complete, the homes have sold quickly.
For recent visitors to Germany, these examples of eco-friendly living should come as no surprise. Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago, has said he took his idea for implementing a
green roof initiative in his hometown from a trip to Germany. A walk through the Bavarian countryside reveals pig farms with solar panels lining the roofs and one of the world’s largest solar power plants.
Windmills churn atop mountains, in the Baltic Sea, and have begun to sprout up near the coal-burning power plants outside of Aachen…
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Robert Koch and the Discovery of the Tuberculosis Bacterium
by Robert A. Selig
One hundred twenty-five years ago, on 24 March 1882, thirty-eight-year-old Dr. Robert Koch announced to the Physiological Society of Berlin and to the world one of the greatest
breakthroughs in modern medical history. After years of research, Koch had discovered, isolated, and grown the tubercle bacillus, which he believed (erroneously at the time) to be the cause of all human and
animal tuberculosis. Koch's research established for the first time that the Mycobacterium tuberculosis caused this often-fatal infectious disease. Often called consumption since it wasted its victims with a
bloody cough and prolonged fevers, it is one of the oldest known human diseases, having been found in six-thousand-year-old pre-historic humans and in the spines of Egyptian mummies as old as 3000 BC. A true
scourge of mankind, it was responsible for one in four deaths in England in 1815, and, as late as 1918, caused one in six deaths in France. Koch's discovery nourished the hope that eventually a cure might be
found as well.
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch was born on 11 December 1843, four years after Dr. Johann Lukas Schönlein (1793 to 1864), a Professor of Medicine at the University of Berlin, had given
tuberculosis it modern name. Koch, the third of thirteen children of a mining official in Clausthal (today's Clausthal-Zellerfeld) in the Harz Mountains, was a precocious child who, so the story goes, greatly
surprised his parents when he informed them at the age of five that he had taught himself how to read with the help of the newspapers lying about in his home. Following the Abitur at the local Gymnasium, Koch
enrolled at the University of Göttingen in the fall of 1862 to study physics but switched to medicine after the first semester. Two of his teachers at Göttingen had an enormous influence on the epoch-making
research, which would lead Koch to the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1905. One of them was anatomist and histologist Friedrich Gustav Jacob Henle (1809 to 1885), who, in 1840, had already postulated in his paper
“On Miasmas and Contagions and on the Miasmatic-Contagious Diseases” that infectious diseases were caused by living, and parasitic, organisms. The other was Friedrich Wöhler (1800 to 1882), who had been the
first chemist (in 1828) to synthesize an organic compound (urea) from an inorganic substance. Half a century later, Koch would bring their ideas to fruition. Koch received his MD on 16 January 1866, passed his
state examination on 12 March, and, spent the next six months in Berlin working with the famous chemist Dr. Rudolf Virchow. That same year Koch also married Emmy Fraats, who had born him his only child, a girl
named Gertrud, the previous year. (Within three months of his divorce in 1893, Koch married Hedwig Freiberg.) Following a series of minor appointments and military service during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870
to 1871, Koch was appointed District Medical Officer in Wollstein in the Prussian province of Posen (today's Wolstyn in Poland) where he worked from 1872 to 1879…
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LANGUAGE:
In Search of Pennsylvania’s German Minorities
by Gert Niers
They set the beginning for the immigration of German-speaking groups to America: religious minorities persecuted by the secular authorities of their homeland. The visitor who comes to
Lancaster County in Pennsylvania today will first of all notice the Amish because of their horse buggies and their old-fashioned dress code.
The history of these people dates back to the tumultuous times of religious reformation in Germany. Apart from the well-known reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546), there were other
critics who propagated a reform of the Catholic Church. Among them were Johannes (Jean) Calvin (1509-1564) and Ulrich (Huldrych) Zwingli (1484-1531) and – connected with them – the Dunkard Church. The religious
community of the Mennonites has its origin in this movement. During the seventeenth century, it also included those groups that referred to themselves as the “Swiss Brethren” and adopted the Dordrecht Confession
of Faith (1632) of the Dutch, or rather North German Mennonites, without observing this confession too strictly.
The followers of the much stricter Swiss leader Jakob Ammann (hence the name “Amish”), who demanded a humble way of life and designed a series of complicated rules for the observation
of this lifestyle, broke away. From 1693 on, there were two separate factions of Mennonites in the region of Switzerland, Alsace, and South Germany.
Most of the Amish came to America in the eighteenth century. The first of them settled in Lancaster County between 1720 and 1730. Approximately twenty-five thousand Amish are living in
this county today. Meanwhile, there are Amish settlements in more than twenty states of the United States and Canada. The total number of Amish comes to about two hundred twenty-five thousand…
Auf deutschen Spuren in Pennsylvanien
Von Gert Niers
Sie setzten den Anfang für die deutschsprachige Gruppeneinwanderung nach Amerika: religiöse Minderheiten, die wegen ihres Glaubens von der weltlichen Obrigkeit des Heimatlands verfolgt
wurden. Besucht man heute den Landkreis Lancaster in Pennsylvanien, fallen vor allem die Amischen auf wegen ihrer Pferdewagen und altertümlichen Kleidung.
Ihre Geschichte reicht zurück in die bewegte deutsche Reformationszeit. Außer dem bekannten Reformator Martin Luther (1483-1546) gab es andere Kritiker, die sich für eine Reform der
katholischen Kirche einsetzten. Zu ihnen gehören Johannes (Jean) Calvin (1509-1564) und Ulrich (Huldrych) Zwingli (1484-1531) und das mit ihnen verbundene Wiedertäufertum. Aus dieser Bewegung ging die
Religionsgemeinschaft der Mennoniten hervor. Zu ihnen gehörten im 17. Jahrhundert auch jene Gemeinden, die sich als “Schweizer Brüder” bezeichneten. Sie nahmen das Dordrechter Bekenntnis (1632) der
niederländischen bzw. norddeutschen Mennoniten an, befolgten es aber weniger streng.
Von ihnen spalteten sich die Anhänger des weit strengeren Schweizer Ältesten Jakob Ammann (daher der Name “Amisch” bzw. “Amish”) ab, der einen demütigen Lebenswandel forderte und eine
Reihe von komplizierten Vorschriften zur Einhaltung dieses Lebensstils entwarf. Ab 1693 gab es somit im schweizerischen, elsässischen und süddeutschen Raum zwei getrennte Richtungen der Mennoniten.
Die meisten Amischen kamen im 18. Jahrhundert nach Amerika. Zwischen 1720 und 1730 ließen sich die ersten im Landkreis Lancaster nieder. Ihre dortige Zahl wird heute auf rund 25,000
geschätzt. Inzwischen gibt es amische Siedlungen in mehr als zwanzig US-Staaten und auch in Kanada. Die Gesamtzahl der Amischen beträgt etwa 225,000…
At Home:
Crazy About Cauliflower
by Sharon Hudgins
Many Americans think of cauliflower as a white, bland-tasting vegetable served overcooked and mushy at school cafeterias. Others have eaten it only crunchy-raw on those
vegetable-and-dip platters favored by dieters. However, in German cuisine, Blumenkohl – or "flowering cabbage" – is a well respected ingredient in a number of dishes, from soups and salads to pickles,
sauces, purées, and casseroles.
Germans eat their Blumenkohl raw, boiled, baked, steamed, microwaved, or deep-fried. Sometimes cauliflower is cooked whole; for other recipes the big head of cauliflower is
broken into "florets" or "flowerets," smaller pieces about 1-1/2 inches to 2 inches long, like little flowers with a short stem on the bottom and a blossom on top. A simple, old-fashioned
dish still found on some German Gasthaus menus is a whole head of cooked cauliflower smothered in béchamel-cheese sauce and garnished with thin slices of ham on top. Comfort food at its finest!
Cauliflower comes in many colors – including green, yellow-green, orange, pink, and purple – but white is the most common type found in regular grocery stores. Whole heads of
cauliflower usually range in size from two to three pounds. Before using the cauliflower, raw or cooked, you should pull off the green outer leaves, cut off the tough stem, and wash the cauliflower under cold
running water. I have an old Swiss cookbook that advises you to "Place the cauliflower in salt water for about one hour to draw out and kill any slugs or worms." That was probably good advice for
cauliflowers harvested from grandmother's garden. However, such treatment is not necessary for today's commercially grown plants that have been treated with pesticides, organic or otherwise.
Cauliflower is easy to cook and has a delicate, somewhat nutty flavor if you don't overcook it. I prefer to steam cauliflower (whole or in pieces) on a steamer rack over boiling
water in a large, tightly covered pot. Steaming is a simple technique that preserves much of the cauliflower's nutrients and flavors. Florets take only ten minutes to steam (timed after the water comes to a
boil). Whole small heads (two to two-and-a-half pounds take about fifteen to twenty minutes, whereas larger heads (three or more pounds) require twenty to thirty minutes in the steamer pot.
"Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education," quipped Mark Twain. And, if you'll pardon my mentioning it, a head of white cauliflower does look somewhat
like a human brain (college-educated or not). However, don't let that image turn you off to the delights of eating cauliflower cooked in these two classic German dishes, Cauliflower-Leek Cream Soup and Baked
Cauliflower Casserole…
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Family Research:
Subscription Database Now Includes German Records
by James M. Beidler
During the last few years, as Ancestry.com solidified itself as the leading seller of subscription databases for genealogy, its benefits to researchers looking for American roots
was self-evident.
That is because it turned looking at the United States Census – arguably the most valuable single set of records for genealogists – from a
"go-to-a-library-and-crank-your-arm-off-at-a-microfilm-reader" affair to quick-and-often-easy desktop convenience.
With indexing and images of the actual records, Ancestry became a "must buy" for many researchers, from novice to expert.
However, when it came to international records, Ancestry's only critical mass of non-American records was from the United Kingdom, which satisfied folks from the British Isles –
but what about the millions of Americans with German roots?
After a "teaser" announcement a few months ago, the Hamburg passenger departure lists from 1850 to 1934 are now available online as part of the Ancestry.com immigration
collection of for-pay databases. For most of the time period covered by the lists, Hamburg was the second-most popular port of departure for emigrants leaving Europe (Bremen was the most popular; unfortunately,
few of its records have survived). The Hamburg lists include records of more than five million people who sailed from the German port of Hamburg and give details such as names, birth dates and places, date of
departure, port of arrival, ship type and name, even accommodations on board the ship.
So far, only the years 1890 to 1913 have been indexed on the Ancestry site. Digital images of the lists from all years are available, however, so if you know a time period, you
can go directly to the images.
The downside of this, however, is that the records are written in a difficult-to-read German cursive script. Ancestry has a "handwriting help" tool on the site, but it
is not that good. A better guide can be found on the Omniglot website at www.omniglot.com/writing/german.htm.
However, this is not Ancestry's only news of significance to German researchers. The launch of the passenger lists coincided with the launch of "Ancestry.de," a
German-language sister site to Ancestry.com. Ancestry.de is the first foreign language sister site for Ancestry, whose corporate parent is now known as The Generations Network. In addition to the United Kingdom
site (called "Ancestry.co.uk"), there is "Ancestry.ca" in Canada and "Ancestry.com.au" in Australia
In addition to the Hamburg passenger lists – which currently can be accessed as part of a regular Ancestry.com subscription – there are also some tax lists and other records on
the ".de" site. Ancestry expects to expand its offerings in months to come. Ancestry's website allows the user to search the Hamburg lists by using dropdown lists for gender, marital status, and
relationship. As Dick Eastman of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter recently pointed out, "The problem for many of us is that these dropdowns are all in German."…
For more, subscribe today!
CALENDAR:
March
Long Island, NY
March 31: GTV Die Gemütlichen Enzianer’s Annual Bavarian Bauernball at the Polish American Hall in Port Washington. Call 516-599-0789.
April
Indianapolis, IN
First Wednesday and Saturday of the month: Docent-led Athenaeum tours at 401 East Michigan Street. Call 317-630-4569 (ext. 1).
Oregon, OH
April 6: Teutonia Männerchor and Damenchor’s “Good Friday Fish Fry” at the Oak Shade Grove Hall, 3624 Seaman Road. Call 419-691-4116.
Washington, DC
April 18 – June 29: Exhibition – Gute Aussichten: Young German Photographers 2006/2007 at the Göthe-Institut Washington. Call 202-289-1200 (ext. 106) or visit www.guteaussichten.org .
Oregon, OH
April 21: Frühlingszeit Konzert (Spring concert) by the Teutonia Männerchor and Damenchor at the Oak Shade Grove Hall, 3624 Seaman Road. Call 419-472-9721.
San Antonio, TX
April 25-27: Fiesta Gartenfest. Call 210-222-1521.
May
Indianapolis, IN
First Wednesday and Saturday of the month: Docent-led Athenaeum tours at 401 East Michigan Street. Call 317-630-4569 (ext. 1).
Tulsa, OK
May 4-6: Germanfest at the German American Society – 2301 E. 15th Street. Call 918-744-6997 or visit www.gastulsa.org .
Brenham, TX
May 11-12: 117th Brenham Maifest at Fireman’s Part. Call 979-830-5393, email info@maifest.org , or visit www.maifest.org .
Leavenworth, WA
May 11-13: Maifest. Call 509-548-5807 or visit www.leavenworth.org .
San Antonio, TX
May 18: Maifest (5:00 p.m. – midnight). Call 210-222-1521.
San Antonio, TX
May 19-20: Staats Sängerfest, Beethoven Damenchor at La Villita Assembly Hall. Call 210-222-1521.
Danbury, NH
May 25-27: 4th Annual “Best of the Wurst” at the Alphorn Bistro at Inn at Danbury. Call 1-866-DANBURY or visit www.innatdanbury.com .
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