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Front Cover

The Bridge

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Editorial Statement

The Bridge

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Carl Hansen, Prairie Iconoclast, Donald K. Watkins

The Bridge

In 1906 Ivar Kirkegaard, editor of the magazine Norden in Racine , Wisconsin, asked the writer Carl Hansen for personal information that might be included in a biographical sketch in the journal. Carl Hansen of Tyler, Minnesota, was forty-six at the time, and by his own count the author of some seventy sketches and short stories. In reply to Kirkegaard, Hansen revealed that in his student days in Copenhagen he has been caught up in the intellectual ferment of "the Modern Breakthrough," the assertive embrace by Scandinavian intellectuals of socially critical realism. "Det moderne gennembrud" had no single philosophical doctrine …

A Comparative Study Of Sophus Keith Winther And Carl Hansen, Rudolf J. Jensen

The Bridge

This short poem written by Carl Hansen expresses the essential conflicts of the Danish emigrant in the United States. In their relentless struggle to survive on the plains of the American midwest, two concerns dominated the consciousness of the emigrant. One was the continuous sense of doubt about the wisdom leaving the old country and the other was the necessarily unanswered question of whether the privations of their present life would be rewarded by the success of the following generations. The dreams and hopes of most Danish-American emigrants were in fact not fulfilled in accordance with their expectations. Neither the …

Danish American Political Behavior: The Case Of Iowa, 1887-1936, Stephen H. Rye

The Bridge

Although thousands of Danish immigrants settled in Iowa, often in communities which can readily be identified, there is some difficulty in isolating voting units which were composed largely of Danish Americans. For example, Fredsville, a settlement located west of Cedar Falls in Grundy County, became the home of a sizeable Danish community, but in the voting unit of Fairfield Township, census materials demonstrate that the non-Danish voters slightly outnumbered the Danes in the late nineteenth century. However, at least five Iowa townships can be identified as having a clear majority of voters who were Danish in background, and this study …

Thoughts At Sunrise, Olaf R. Juhl

The Bridge

Good Morning - and will the class please come to order.

Could it be that I choose this opening because I, as far back as I can remember, wanted to be a teacher? Somehow I never quite made it, although I believe that I could have if circumstances during a certain period of my youth had not had other designs for me. Let me add that any regrets I might have today are purely of a sentimental nature.

This morning we shall attempt to analyze the trials and tribulations, the mental problems and misgivings of an American, by adoption, in …

P.S. Vig And The Americanization Issue During World War I, Peter L. Petersen

The Bridge

World War I and the Americanization campaigns which accompanied it had a pr0found impact upon ethnic relations in the United States. Although German-Americans bore the brunt of rapidly emerging anti-foreign sentiments, no ethnic group was totally free of suspicion and public condemnation. In Iowa, Governor William Lloyd Harding defended his proclamation forbidding the public use of foreign languages by attacking the Danish element in the Hawkeye State's population. According to the Governor, who was speaking before a large crowd at Sac City on July 4, 1918, young Danes in Iowa were not getting a proper American upbringing. Pointing to the …

"Schools For Life", Harold Petersen

The Bridge

A man having read Schools For Life remarked, "It is a good book, but Enok still hasn't told us what a folk school is." I doubt that there is any living American today who knows better what a folk is than Enok Mortensen. If he has not defined what a folk school is through the pages of his book it is because- the folk school cannot be defined in such a way that it has- meaning to a person who does not know what the folk school is. It has to be experienced . It carries with it a spirit …

"Heinrich Tonnies", Egon P. Bodtker

The Bridge

Heinrich Tonnies has been known to Danish archivists and photo-historians primarily for his topographical views of Aalborg. His pictures made Aalborg the second most photographed city in Denmark in the 19th century. Alexander Alland has ensured Tonnies a place among recorders of social history by the exhibit in Aalborg he arranged in 1975. For this redirection of our attention we in D.A.H.S. and others are indeed thankful.

Membership Form

The Bridge

Please enrolI me as a member of the DANISH AMERICAN HERITAGE SOCIETY. GENERAL MEMBERSHIP (ind ividual or family) . $ 10.00

SUSTAINING MEMBERSHIP (individual or family) . $ 25 .00

I would like to support the Danish American Heritage Society with an additional contribution of $

Full Issue

The Bridge

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Editorial Statement

The Bridge

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Front Cover

The Bridge

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Table Of Contents

The Bridge

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Johannes V. Jensen's Discovery Of America, Inga Wiehl

The Bridge

Johannes V. Jensen, the most influential Danish writer of the century and Nobel prize winner, chose to live his life in Denmark; yet it is entirely conceivable that given two, he would have spent one in this country. He is rightly acclaimed among his contemporaries as the first Danish writer to have pointed the way westward. His writings show the influence of America and her people as well as of American writers, notably Walt Whitman.

Danes Worldwide Archives Contains Treasures Of Immigrant Life, Marion Marzolf

The Bridge

A typical four-room apartment in an average Danish neighborhood in Aalborg, Denmark, houses an extraordinary treasure for those interested in their Danish roots. It looks like an ordinary apartment from the outisde, but once the door is opened by Curator Inger Bladt, it is clear that housed here are the living memories of many of the 300,000 Danes who left their homeland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to seek work, land, fortune and fate in foreign countries, mainly the U.S.

Questioning Our Danish Heritage: The Evolution Of An Ethnic Identity, Otto N. Larsen

The Bridge

Here we are over one-hundred persons ranging in age from 9 to 90 gathered for the first Pacific Northwest Danish Cultural Conference. Given the title of my remarks, I had better start with a question: why are we here?

The general answer must be that we are here to re-kindle the experience of our heritage, to learn more about it, and to enjoy our common bond. It is often said that whenever Danes get together they have a good time, even if they are melancholy about it.

The Fixed Frame And The Live Show, Johannes Knudsen

The Bridge

Television has developed a trick of ending a story or a sequence by showing a fixed picture of the final frame, giving a rather vivid expression to the immediate or concluding situation. Sometimes this picture is amusing, even ludicrous, evoking a smile; sometimes a tear lingers on.

Homage To Hans Christian, Henrik Nordbrandt, Nadia Christensen, Translator

The Bridge

Now I understand all the statues you had to pose for how hard it's been to sit still, casting shadows

over the lawn, where children like those now clambering on your bronze must have played laughing, in a twitter of birds

while you, shut out from the game, tried desperately to resemble the picture of yourself that made you seem most harmless.

Simple Psychoanalysis, Henrik Nordbrandt, Nadia Christensen, Translator

The Bridge

Especially the ordinary things about the day make the day especially depressing. It's quite ordinary. Especially in autumn. The autumn afternoon

keeps even thoughts of suicide and dreams of distant exotic places from being taken seriously. Which doesn't mean they're fun.

One Of Many, Dagmar Potholm Petersen

The Bridge

On an early spring evening in the year of 1891 a young man stood leaning against the rai I of the steamship Tekla of the Danish Tingvalla Line, his dark hair blowing in the breeze and his blue eyes riveted on the scene before him. He was entirely oblivious to the commotion around him, even to the boisterous calls of his shipmates, "We're there - at last we're there - soon we'll be picking up gold from the streets and licking honey from the trees."

The Feilberg Letters: A Danish Family's Reflections On Canadian Prairie Life, Jorgen Dahlie

The Bridge

So wrote Aksel Sandemose, noted Danish-Norwegian writer and himself an immigrant to Canada in 1927. When he spoke of iron determination and perseverance, he might well have been describing the Ditlev and Julie Feilberg family, a small part of whose experiences in Canada are recounted in the excerpts which follow. Without making too extravagant a claim for the uniqueness of any one immigrant encounter with a new land, one is nonetheless forced to acknowledge that each individual or family brought with them their own special cultural and intellectual resources. A reading of the Feilberg letters reveals that this family had …

The Wayfarer, Enok Mortensen, Nanna Mortensen, Translator

The Bridge

He stood on the deck and shivered in the raw morning air. It was beginning to get light but the dawn was veiled in a heavy wet fog. There was no rain but the air itself seemed like one big mass of cold wetness. He couldn't see anything at all but he kept standing there, nevertheless.

Back Cover

The Bridge

The DANISH AMERICAN HERITAGE SOCIETY was established in 1977 in order to accomplish the following:

Preserve and promote interest in Danish American traditions.

Collect, evaluate, preserve, and display records (books, pictures, letters) as well as other artifacts pertaining to the life and culture of Danish Americans.

Encourage Danish American expression in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Promote research into the life and culture of Danish Americans and serve as an agency through which resulting studies might be shared and published.

Full Issue

The Bridge

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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. …

Contents

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

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Full Issue

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

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Notes From The Editor, Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

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The Swiss-American Family De Steiguer, J. E. De Steiguer

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The following pages present an overview of the 500-year history of the Swiss-American family de Steiguer. It is a story which depicts the gradual rise and abrupt decline of a family within one of the most exclusive aristocracies of 18th century Europe and their subsequent settlement in the frontier states of America.