European History Commons^™

Jonas Bronck Most Famous Among The First Danes In New York, Ebba Tang Frandsen

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Information for this article is excerpted from Carlo Christensen's book, De Forste Danske i New York, Nyt Nordisk Forlag - Arnold Busch - Kj!6benhavn, 1953. Carlo Christensen was for many years Cultural Attache with the Danish Embassy in Washington, D.C., a position in which he served with great distinction. Carlo Christensen states in the Forward that the book is the result of research carried on for 20 years in his spare time, and that there is still much material to be researched.

Book Review, Peter L. Petersen

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Located in downtown San Antonio, the Institute of Texan Cultures is a publicly-financed research and information center focusing on the diverse cultural heritage of Texas. More than a million visitors annually crowd its large exhibition hall - originally built as a part of HemisFair '68 - to view on-going displays and presentations on more than two dozen national, cultural, and racial groups who have contributed to Texas history. In addition to the exhibits, the Institute has an extensive publication program. The Danish Texans is the nineteenth work in its ethnic series on The Texians and The Texans. Written by John …

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The World Of Robert Storm Petersen, Allen E. Hye

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Thirty years after his death in March, 1949, Robert Storm Petersen is still regarded as Denmark's greatest humorist; in fact, he is enjoying an astonishing revival in Scandinavian popular culture. T-shirts, advertising campaigns, key chains - all bear his likeness or that of his loveable cartoon characters. Even a museum has been established (Pile Alle 2, 2000 Copenhagen F) to promote his memory and humor. Since its founding in the fall of 1977, the museum, under the direction of Jens Bing, has been sorting and cataloging books, paintings, memorabilia, including the humorist's extensive pipe collection, and the some 60,000 drawings …

Sketches From Our Family Life In The Early Nineties, Dagmar, The Eldest Of The Flock

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In the late Fall of 1890, Father went to the United States to get a job and to make a new home for us all. From Brooklyn the Reverend Anderson helped to send him on his way west, since he had been a farmer. At Chicago the Reverend Nielsen sent him to the Danish School and settlement at Elk Horn, Iowa, where he studied a little English and hired out on a farm, there to learn more English by practical experience.

Georg Strandvold: A Progress In Journalism, Olga Strandvold Opfell

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A bronze plaque that honors Georg Strandvold's memory hangs in Rebild's Blokhus, succinctly summing up the influence he had in his time on thousands of Danish Americans: Skirbent og redaktor i i Amerika i 57 ar. Trofast talsmand for Danmark.

That long career was also versatile. During those 57 years Georg Strandvold wrote for the best known Danish newspapers in the U.S. - Norden, Nordlyset, Den Danske Pioneer, Ugebladet, Dannevirke, Bien - and worked on two American dailies, the Racine Journal and the Grand Forks Herald. For 31 years he also sat on the editorial staff of Decorah-Posten, the largest …

Hands Across The Sea: Soren Qvist In Danish And American Literature, 1625-1947, Otto M. Sorensen

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Anno 1632. Severinus Jani Qvist, pastor in Weilbye and Homme in Aarhus Bishopric, was innocently beheaded and his innocence afterwards established, and this transpired in such a way that the footprints of divine providence, as the precious stones of history, can clearly be perceived.

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

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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.

"Schools For Life", Harold Petersen

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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 …

Thoughts At Sunrise, Olaf R. Juhl

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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 …

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

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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 …

One Of Many, Dagmar Potholm Petersen

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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."

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

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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.

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The Fixed Frame And The Live Show, Johannes Knudsen

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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

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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.

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The Wayfarer, Enok Mortensen, Nanna Mortensen, Translator

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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.

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Danes Worldwide Archives Contains Treasures Of Immigrant Life, Marion Marzolf

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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.

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Carl Hansen, Prairie Iconoclast, Donald K. Watkins

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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 …

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

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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 …

"Heinrich Tonnies", Egon P. Bodtker

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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

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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 $

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Table Of Contents

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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.