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Book Review Of Genealogical Gazetteer Of Galicia, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Book review of Genealogical Gazetteer of Galicia.

Review Of The Book Russia’S Retreat From Poland, 1920: From Permanent-Revolution To Peaceful Coexistence, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Book review of Russia’s retreat from Poland, 1920: From permanent-revolution to peaceful coexistence.

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 …

Book Review: An American Apprenticeship: The Letters Of Emil Frey 1860-1865, Shirley J. Burton

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

In the autumn of 1860, twenty-two-year-old Emil Frey left his native Switzerland for America, apparently under the shadow of an impending scandal, possibly a duel. He arrived in the U.S. at a time when the economy was in a deep slump, and finding himself unable to get work, Frey enlisted in the Union Army in July, 1861. Despite the brutalizing experiences of the war, which included a year and a half as a prisoner of the Confederates, young Frey's arduous American "apprenticeship," as editor Rappolt describes his sojourn, served him well. Returning to Switzerland after the war, he spent several …

Book Review: Historia De San Jeronimo Norte: Una Colonia Agricola-Ganadera De Inmigrantes Suizos En La Republica Argentina, Paul Neufeld Weaver

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

In the second half of the nineteenth century Argentina experienced a demographic explosion due to immigration which was unrivaled in the Western Hemisphere. Between 1857 and 1930, 3.5 million people immigrated to Argentina, almost all of them Europeans. Simultaneously, Argentina experienced a prolonged period of sustained economic growth, and by 1914 its Gross National Product surpassed that of many European countries.

Book Review: Klimageschichte Der Schweiz 1525-1860 (Vol. I), Bevolkerung, Klima Und Agrarmodernisierung 1525-1860 (Vol. Ii), Ernest Menolfi

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Although long ago many historians realized the significance of weather information and the great impact of climate on demographic, social, economic, or agricultural development, they have up to now mostly not been in a position to make more than an episodic and illustrative use of it, since the random data was scattered in innumerable diaries, parish registers, yield records, communal and municipal archives, private observation records and the like. Most of those entries, however, do not make sense as individual bits of information (e.g. the cherry blossom time, the beginning of the vintage in one particular year). Yet by systematically …

Book Review: Anthology Of Modern Swiss Literature, Ernest Menolfi

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

After the publications on Yiddish, Swedish, and Austrian literature, the Anthology of Modern Swiss Literature is the fourth volume in the above-mentioned series. According to the editor, the main purpose is "to bring to the notice of readers of English some examples of the writing of present-day authors from Switzerland; underlying this aim is the conviction that these authors have their own particular messages and style, offering writing which is of a lively and varied nature. Modern Swiss literature has a range and quality that should be capable of arousing a positive and enthusiastic response among students of literature." He …

Book Review: From Stambach To Berlin (Ontario) And The Descendents Of Rev. John W. Stoeckle/Steckle (1802/1879), Delbert Gratz

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

This work is an excellent account of a Bernese family who because of their Anabaptist faith was obliged to leave their Schwarzenburg home in 1748 and settle in the Palatinate. Since little better conditions existed there for non-state-church families, the next generation made the great move to Pennsylvania some 80 years later. After a few years in Pennsylvania they moved to the Berlin (since World War II called Kitchener) area which most of the family has called home for the past century and a half.

Book Review: Schweizer Statt Sklaven. Schweizerische Auswanderer In Dem Kaffee-Plantagen Von Sao Paulo (1852-1866), Sylva Brunner

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

In her doctoral dissertation B. Ziegler describes in great detail an interesting chapter of Swiss emigration history, the mid-nineteenth century movement of Swiss to Brazil. Although Swiss emigrants to countries overseas had mainly chosen as their destinations domains of the United States, Brazil emerged for a time as a close second.

Book Review: Bern, Kansas. Memories Of The First 100 Years, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

In text and pictures this nicely produced book presents "an account of some of the events that helped shape the Bern community during its first 100 years" (iv). On the basis of newspaper accounts, interviews, and pictorial treasures hidden in attics or scrapbooks, the author has summarized events in twelve chronologically arranged chapters that consist of vignettes and provide a mosaic-like overview. Except for chapter one featuring "Days of Pioneers (1842-1884)," each section covers a decade identified by some major event as, for instance, "The World War II Era (1940-1949)". General contexts are considered; the last chapter thus opens with …

Book Review: Notes In Brief

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Includes Notes in Brief for the following titles:

• Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire, 1450-1550
• A Castor Family in America, or: The Descendants of Hans Georg Gerster/John George Castor
• Schwester Gertrud Leupi, 1825-1904
• Fur Trade Letters of Francis Ermatinger, written to his brother Edward during his service with the Hudson Bay Company 1818-1853
• "Schweizerische Uberseeauswanderungen 1816- 1913. Ein quantitativer Ansatz
• "People of Choice: Decision Making in an Eighteenth Century Swiss-German Peasant Family"
• "'One's Own Hearth is Like Gold': A History of Helvetia, West Virginia"

Book Review: The History Of The Imperial Valley Swiss, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

"The most unlikely place in the world you might expect to find a Swiss colony is below sea level in a flat, hot, dry desert such as the Imperial Valley in Southern California," this book's editors rightly observe (v). The region, located a good 110 miles east of San Diego, is a large section of the Colorado desert and its center, the Salton Sea, lies 235 feet below sea level. The climate is hot and ranges from 130 degrees to 20 degrees. At flood stage the water of the Colorado River would pour into the region. "As the water dried, …

Book Review: Alma On The Mississippi 1848-1932, Ernest Menolfi

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

In 1848 two settlers from Switzerland, Victor Probst and John Waecker, on their way upstream from Galena, Illinois, arrived at a site then called Three Mile Bluff, on the Mississippi in Western Wisconsin. They decided to stay, and soon made a living by cutting firewood for the steamboats. In subsequent years other Swiss immigrants were to follow, principally from the Grisons and the Canton of Berne, but also from the native village of one of the first settlers, namely Biberist in the Canton of Solothurn. So the early census lists contain numerous familiar Swoss names like Berni, Ganz, Marti, Neukomm, …

Book Review: History Of Switzerland. The First Hundred Thousand Years: Before The Beginnings To The Days Of The Present, Lukas Burckhardt, Ernest Menolfi

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Includes two sections:

1. Homage to a fervent friend of Switzerland, J. Murray Luck

In my job as Swiss cultural attache in the United States I had the chance to get help and inspiration- from Americans who were in love with our country and who acted as our good will ambassadors. Quite sincerely aware of our own shortcomings, I had some difficulties in understanding their unswerving belief in our exemplary qualities. Finally, I had to admit that there must be a deeper reason behind this strange phenomenon. Maybe we really have, as a sober small state, a political mission in …

Book Review: Modern Swiss Literature, Ernest Menolfi

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

This collection of papers given at a London symposium in March 1984 is in several respects a supplementary companion to H. M. Waidson's Anthology of Modern Swiss Literature (1984). They have the same cover picture - showing the distribution of the four national languages in Switzerland - and together they convey a rather comprehensive idea of what current Swiss literature is. Whereas Waidson's display of the literary production of the last decades is to some extent a neutral view from a distance, this collection of essays adds some more Swiss points of view, mentions further authors, and is by nature …

Book Review: Land, Piety, Peoplehood: The Establishment Of Mennonite Communities In America, 1683-1790, Delbert L. Gratz

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Robert Walser Rediscovered: Stories, Fairy-Tale Plays, And Critical Responses, Marianne Burkhard

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Swiss author Robert Walser (1878-1956) was almost forgotten when he died on a Christmas day after having spent over 20 years in the asylum of Herisau refusing all invitations to continue writing. Yet at the beginning of the century he was well known for his poems (1909), his novels (Geschwister Tanner 1906; Der Gehiilfe 1907; Jakob von Gunten 1908), and his numerous short prose pieces published first in newspapers and magazines, then as collections (Fritz Kochers Aufsatze 1904; Kleine Dichtungen 1914; Poetenleben 1917; Die Rose 1925). In the 1960's and 1970's he was rediscovered in Switzerland and Germany; two editions …

Book Review: Konflikte Der Industrialisierung: Industrie, Raum Und Gesellschaft In Glarus Und Scranton 1840-1914, Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The process of the industrialization of a previously agrarian region is not easy to analyze and evaluate since it is made up of and touches upon qualitative as well as quantitative factors of a considerable variety and complexity. Jurg K. Siegenthaler in his monograph Konflikte der Industrialisierung attempts to provide such an analysis on the basis of a historical-comparative study of two distinct cases of 19th century industrialization, Glarus, a small mountain canton of Switzerland, and Scranton, a city in the Lackawanna valley of northeastern Pennsylvania. The issues raised are significant inasmuch as industrialization is still the prefered precept for …

Book Review: Conflict And Compromise In Multilingual Societies, Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Kenneth D. McRae, professor of political science at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, has spent much of his academic career studying Swiss multilingualism and multiculturalism. In the course of his endeavors he has become an expert on the topic, as is reflected in the books and articles he has published on it, best known among them Switzerland: Example of Cultural Coexistence (1964). Since Canada is itself a linguistically and culturally divided country, Dr. McRae's work on Switzerland assumed a wider significance, inasmuch as it lent itself as a basis for comparison and, perhaps, instruction, especially in his function as a research …

Book Review: The Essence Of Swissness: A Special Issue Of The Times Literary Supplement, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The Friday, December 7, 1984, issue of the London Times Literary Supplement was devoted in good part to works about Switzerland and its unique literary and historical traditions. It opens with a challenging essay by George Steiner who raises the question "What is Swiss?" "The Writer may speak against the grain," he cautions, "even when he bears close witness. Ten years are, as I have found, too short a time in which to get to know the palimpsest of Genevan society, let alone those of Switzerland." Yet he offers courageously and with much insight his "impressions as to the nature …

Book Review: Des Suisses Pas Comme Les Autres Et Au Bout De La Terre, Marianne Burkhard

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

For several months, five French-Swiss journalists travelled in other continents to meet and interview Swiss emigrants, to see how they lived and to explore their views on Switzerland and their emigration. Deliberately, the reporters chose countries far away from Europe, i.e. the United States, the Republic of South Africa, Singapore, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia. As their enterprise was not designed to be either scholarly or encyclopedic, the authors interweave impressions and information, historical facts and personal anecdotes. The result is a book that is fascinating to read as it offers vivid descriptions of places "au bout de la terre" and …

Book Review: One Small Lifetime, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

To do justice to this moving memoir is less than easy. It presents the story of two intertwined lives, that of Amalia Thurkauf-Braun who was born in the 1880s and that of her son Ernst Albert, born in 1907 at Liestal, the capital of Canton Basel-Land, in Switzerland. The lives of Ernst's father Emil Thurkauf, in contrast, and of Ernst 's three siblings come only occasionally into view from the perspective of Amalia Thurkauf's reports or of her son's autobiographical reminiscences. Both records are touching documents that tell of unusual endurance, of sincere faith, and of incredible capacity for work. …

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: 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. …

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.

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.