Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Bunch, Mads. Isak Dinesen Reading Søren Kierkegaard: On Christianity, Seduction, Gender, And Repetition., Troy Wellington Smith

The Bridge

In the inter-and post-war periods, the Danish baroness Karen Blixen published, in English, several story collections and the autobiographical novel Out of Africa in the United States under the nom de plume Isak Dinesen. These same works appeared soon aft er under her legal name in her own Danish translations in Denmark. During the same period, works by Dinesen’s deceased countryman Søren Kierkegaard were being translated into English and published in the United States by Princeton University Press. No longer merely “world-famous in Denmark” (as the saying goes), Kierkegaard became a shibboleth for anxious intellectuals on both sides of the …

Benedicte Wrensted' S Indian Photographs, Lea Rosson Delong

The Bridge

Joanna Cohan Scherer resurrects the career of Benedicte Wrensted (1859-1949), a photographer who emigrated from Denmark in 1893 and set up her studio in Pocatello, Idaho, a town of about 4,500 population. Over the next seventeen years, Wrensted produced approximately one hundred seventy known photographs of Northern Shoshone, Bannock and Lemhi tribal members who lived on the nearby Fort Hall Indian Reservation, along with numerous pictures of the Euro-American citizens of Pocatello as well. Though several of Wrensted's photographs of the Sha-Ban (as the tribes refer to themselves) were well known and had been frequently published, it was not until …

Niklaus R. Schweizer, His Hawaiian Excellency, New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1987, $54.00. 267 Pp., David Beck

Swiss American Historical Society Review

As historical fiction, His Hawaiian Excellency cannot be judged wholly as history nor as fiction. The author himself faced different problems than a historian normally does in creating his work. Therefore, different questions must be asked, when judging the success of this work, than would be asked if it were a more standard historical piece. Most important among these are whether the work accurately represents the sources, and whether the author tells a good story. In addition, the author's purposes must be taken into account: are these successfully met? Schweizer sets out to "shed some light on a colorful and …

A Review Of Walter A. Maggiolo, Techniques Of Mediation. New York: Oceana Publications, 1985, Lukas F. Burckhardt

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Walter Maggiolo is an old friend of mine from my stay as a labor and cultural attache at the Swiss Embassy in Washington, D.C. Our mutual understanding for our ways of thinking is based on our 17 experience of many years in mediating collective labor conflicts between management and unions. Whereas he acted as a General Counsel of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in Washington, D.C., I was the permanent Secretary of the Conciliation Office (Einigungsamt) in Basel. Only by reading his book did I become fully conscious of the close similarities of our experiences, in spite of the …

Notes On Recent Publications, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Ruckert Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection. Vol. 1: Meissen Porcelain and 'Hausmalerai'. Washington, D.C.: Smithonian Istitution Press, 1979. 607 pp., 400 ills.

Fritz Marti, editor and translator, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge. Four Early Essays (1794-1796) of F.W.J. Schelling. Lweisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1980. 271 pp.

Urs Schwarz, The Eye Of The Hurricane: Switzerland In World War Two, Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

"Switzerland in World War II" has become a favorite object of investigation and subject of treatment by Swiss journalists, publicists, political scientists and historians. The flood of articles and monographs on every conceivable aspect of that topic has become so overwhelming as to make it almost impossible for one person to keep track of it, let alone read and digest it. And yet, according to Urs Schwarz, ther is a gap in this outpouring of hsitorical literature: There are no English language accounts on the role of neutral Switzerland in World War II. His Book The eye of the Hurricane …

Karl Luond, Schweizer In Amerika., Bruno Gujer

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

As a Swiss in America one is particularly sensitive about what is written in Switzerland about America and Swiss immigrants here. Karl Luond's Schweizer in Amerika is a welcome though flawed introduction to thegreat saga of Swiss immigration to this country. Welcome, because Luond covers the most important names and places, and gives insight into the great diversity among the men and women who attempted a new beginning across the Atlantic. One marvels at the achievement of a Gallatin, Ammann or Zwick, at the wealth of a Guggenheim or Frick, at the hardships of the pioneer settlers.

Emigration: New Beginning Or Premature End? A Book Review, Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Why were certain experiments of planned emigrati.0n crowned with success while others ended in dismal failure? What went wrong in one case and turned out well in the other? What were the factors that determined the outcome of such experiments? These and similar questions arise in reading and comparing two small books, published last year in Switzerland, that deal with the history of two different emigration ventures from Switzerland to the United States of America

Book Review: The Swiss American Historical Society 1927-1977, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

This history of a small ethnic-national association is not the usual anniversary publication, listing glorious achievements and displaying pictures of smiling officers or of happy gatherings. It presents instead a concise anatomy of the ups and downs, even near collapses, the organization faced during its first five decades.

Book Review: Les Derniers Puritains, Pionniers D'Amérique, 1851-1920., Lukas Burckhardt

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Théodore Bost was born in 1834 at Carouge near Genea, emigrated in 1851 to St. Paul, Minnesota, became a farmer in nearby Carver County, stayed in Minnesota until 1887 and then moved to Pomona near Los Angeles and died in California in 1920. His wife, Sophie née Bonjour from Neuchâtel, born in 1835, married him in 1858 and died in 1922. Both stood firmly in the protestant tradition. The Bost family, with its pastors, missionaries and even a pioneer in social work for handicapped children, shows how strongly the religions spirit of Geneva has influenced many lives of its citizens. …

Leo Schelbert And Hedwig Rappolt, Eds,: Alles Ist Ganz Anders Hier, Bruno Gujer

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

To emigrate to the United States today does not seem to be the great adventure anymore that it once was. The material inconveniences of the move are negligible, the problems of psychological adjustment trivial compared to the physical hardships and culture shocks endured by the immigrants in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

Book Review: The History Of Folsom, New Jersey 1845-1976. Bicentennial Edition., Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Gertrude M. Eckhardt, a member of our society, has produced a handsome volume on a small New Jersey community which her grandfather helped found back in the late 1840s. The community was then called New Germany and consisted of a few doxed German immigrants. They founded their Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1853 and went about earning a living out of the abundant forest lands of their neighborhood. Later in the century a small group of Italian immigrants joined the original group, bringing with them new flavors and new skills. The borough never grew into a big settlement but stayed a …

Book Review: Zwingli, Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

G. R. Potter, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History, University of Sheffield, has written what is probably the best one-volume biography of the great Swiss humanist and reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) in any language. This achievement was possible because Potter, at the height of a long and distinguished career, immersed himself in the mass of available materials and came up with a product that is scholarly and at the same time eminently readable. The scholarship is reflected in the numerous footnotes on every page as well as in the bibliography. Potter is at home in the libraries and archives of Zurich …

Book Review: The United States In Norwegian History, Max Silberschmidt Zurich

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

This book is significant for a number of reasons. It is not generally known that after Ireland Norway "is the European nation which has sent the largest percentage of its population to America." The number of emigrants is not impression as such because Norway is, in population today four million, a very small country. "Norwegian America," however, is a factor in Norway's history, of more weight and of greater importance than Swiss-America is Swiss history, for the simple reason that the United States was the land of emigration for Norwegians. Naturally enough, because it is, transatlantically speaking, its direct neighbor!

Book Review: Die Eigenart Der Zurcher Auswanderer Nach Amerika 1734-1744, Walter D. Kamphoefner

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

This book, a Swiss doctoral dissertation which owes much to the guidance of Prof. Leo Schelbert, is a model case-study of emigration in a restricted area and time-period. Taking the Canton Zurich during the decade of heaviest emigration in the 18th century, it attempts to reconstruct the social, economic, and religious milieu from which the emigrants came, and seeks to determine the characteristics which set them apart from those who remained behind.

Book Review: "Americans From Germany: A Study In Cultural Diversity", Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Robert H. Billigmeier, Americans from Germany : A Study in Cultural Diversity. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1974. 189 pp. $5.00.

Historians interested in immigration to the territory of the United States or in the ethnic dimension of American social history will welcome this synthesis of the story of immigrants from German-speaking lands. It describes "in both general and specific terms the complex social experience of one of America's most significant cultural and population components" (Preface).

Book Review: "Einführung In Die Schweizerische Auswanderungsgeschichte Der Neuzeit", Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Leo Schelbert, Einführung in die Schweizerische Auswanderungsgeschichte der Neuzeit. Zurich: Verlag Leemann, 1976. 443 pp. S. Fr. 50. Printed as Beiheft 16 of the Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Geschichte.

Leo Schelbert's "Introduction to the history of the Swiss emigration in modern times" is a massive work of more than 400 pages of relatively small print. The work is divided into four parts, titled "Theoretical Foundation," "Historical Survey," Selected Documents," and "Historiographical Introduction." Each of the four parts is almost self contained and covers the subject of Swiss emigration from a different angle. As a consequence there are certain repetitions and overlappings. …

Book Review: "A Guide To Foreign Genealogical Research", M. A. W.

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Maralyn A. Wellauer, A Guide to Foreign Genealogical Research. A Selected Bibliography of Printed Material with Addresses.

This is a reference guide for genealogists who want to extend a pedigree line beyond the Immigrant Ancestor without engaging the services of a professional genealogist.

Book Review: "Nathaniel Hawthorne Meets Swiss Immigrants: A Research Note"

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Walter L. Robbins , "Nathaniel Hawthorne Meets W Immigrants: A Research Note."

Randall Stewart reports in his work Nathaniel Hawthorne. A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), p . 42, that Hawthorne had undertaken during the "solitary years" 1825 to 1837 various journeys, in 1833 or 1834 possibly to Niagara and Detroit. He published his apparently firsthand descriptions in the New England Magazine Volume XI (December 1835), 398-409, which contains a report entitled "The Canal-Boat." In that sketch Hawthorne tells of his encounter with a Swiss immigrant group. It is quoted here after the following edition: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses …

Book Review: "The Postage Stamps Of Switzerland 1843-1862", H. K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Paul Mirabaud and Alex de Reuterskiold, The Postage Stamps o f Switzerland 1843-1862, Paris, 1899 . Reprint by Quarterman Publications, Inc., 5 South Union Street, Lawrence, Massachusetts 01843, 1975. $35.00.

Quarterman Publications provides the following description: "The Postage Stamps of Switzerland was originally published in 1899 in a limited edition of which only 150 copies were in English. Chapters on the various Cantonal issues, the transitional Hayone [sic: should be Rayons), and the seated Helvetias are among those Mirabaud, and his colleague Baron Alex de Reuterskiold, assembled from information obtained from the existing literature a well as the records and …

Book Review: "Ein Lesebuch, Choix De Textes, Raccolta Di Testi, Collecziun De Texts", Lukas Burckhardt

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Herausgegben vom Schweizerischen Bundesrat. Ein Lesebuch, Choix de textes, Raccolta di testi, Collecziun de texts. Schweizerische Bundeskanzlei, Bern, 1975, 684 Seiten, Fr. 25 .--.

The Swiss Federal Constitution of 1848 was totally amended in 1874. The Swiss government wanted to commemorate these two 28 basic dates in an appropriate way, by publishing a textbook which presents statements by politically and culturally active Swiss of all walks 0f life and beliefs in the past hundred years.

Banziger, Hans, Zwischen Protest Und Traditionsbewusstsein: Arbeiten Zum Werk Und Zur Gesellschaftlichen Stellun Max Frischs: Book Review, John Holley

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Lest the reader be frightened away by the author's promise to recount in the service of information those minor details which seldom find a place in "broad attempts at interpretation," it should be mentioned at the outset that this book has more to recommend it than such a pedantic statement of intent might lead one to believe. Indeed, Hans Banziger, appropriately for a peripatetic review of Frisch's work, takes us through a knowledgeable discussion of the major tenets that have long informed the thinking and writing of this most interesting, engaging, and thought provoking contemporary, reminding us of Frisch's abiding …

Piero Bianconi, Albero Genealogico (Cronaca Di Emigranti): Book Review, Lukas F. Burckhardt

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

"C'e piu distanza effettiva tra l'infanzia e la vechiaia di mia madre che tra lei bambina e gli uomini delle caverne" (There is more real distance between the childhood and the old age of my mother than between her as a little girl and man in the stone age), the author exclaims, as he observes from the new power dam, which has been constructed in his native Verzasca valley in the canton of Ticino, how a great part of the rural world of his ancestors is being submerged for ever. In such surroundings his mother had not been allowed by …

Plinio Martini, Nicht Anfang Und Nicht Ende: Book Review, Marianne Burkhard

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Martini's book provides the reader with an insight into the harsh life in one of the least known parts of Switzerland the Val Eavona in the upper Ticino. Far removed from the more luxuriant southern landscape around Lugano and Locarno this is a world of steep dangerous mountains and poor soil, of hard work and little recompense. For generations emigration has been a part of every family's life: the older sons were forced to seek their livelihood in distant countries, thus making room for the younger children and leavng behind mourning women-mothers , sisters, fiancees and even wives. All this …

Other Books Received

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

A collection of books received.

Book Review: Chabag: Schweizer Kolonie Am Schwarzen Meer, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The founding of hoogeneous, ethnically defined settlements represents perhaps the most colorful aspect of migration history. The colony Chabag, located in Bessarabia where the Dnjester river flows into the Black Sea, provides a find example of such a story, traced by H. Gander-Wolf as a labor of love. The settlement, founded in 1822 by the botanist and vine-grower Louis Vincent Tardent from Vevey in French-speaking Switzerland, lasted for five generations until the turbulence of World War Two forced the inhabitants to return to their homeland. Although this study is written by a descendant of the settlers, it is remarkably free …

Book Review: Amicable Agreement Versus Majority Rule: Conflict Resolution In Switzerland, Frank Tachau

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Writing a review of a book about Swiss politics for Swiss-American readers is not an easy task for a non-Swiss political scientist. Unfortunately, the Swiss political system has simply not been a very popular subject for investigation by American political scientists. Since Switzerland is the oldest and perhaps most successful multi-ethnic political system in Europe, if not the world, this lack of attention and popularity is very regrettable indeed, The appearance in English translation of this book by Jurg Steiner of the University of North Carolina (with teaching affiliations at the Universities of Zurich and Geneva as well) does a …

Bookreviews, George A. Codding Jr.

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Dear Dr. Burckhardt:

During the research for a new book on Swiss federalism, I had the occasion to renew my acquaintance with a book which has probably received far less attention among those interested in Switzerland than it perhaps should have. The book in question is William Gorhan Rice, Law Among States in Federacy: A Survey of Decisions of the Swiss Federal Tribunal in Intercantonal Controversies (Appleton, Wisconsin: C.C. Nelson Publishing Company, 1959), the writing of which was subsidized, according to the author, by the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society and the University of Wisconsin.

Book Review: Rapperswil Im 19. Jahrhundert, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The seven essays assembled in this book present excellent examples of the great value of local history for the professional historian. Eugen Halter, now a retired schoolteacher, had gathered a wealth of material that highlighted aspects of the 19th century economic and social history of the town of Rapperswil. Thus he offers in one chapter a sketch of the region's economic situation about 1850; in another he descries the stormy career of the liberal clergyman Felix Helbling (1802-1873). who had been greatly influenced by Ignaz Vital Troxler (1780-1866) and Heinrich Zschokke (1771-1848), two leaders of the liberal movement which after …

Book Review: Alte Und Neue Welt In Historischer Perspekitive: Sieben Studien Zum Amerikanischen Geschichts-Und Selbstverstandnis, Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

This small book contains seven essays by Dr. Guggisberg, Professor of History at the University of Basel and member of the Board of Advisors of the Swiss American Historical Society. Except for the first one, they were previously published in various learned journals, yearbooks, an Festschriften.