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Swiss American News Notes

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

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John Casparis And Edmund W. Vaz, Swiss Family, Society And Youth Culture. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979., Bruno Gujer

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

This little monograph of around one hundred pages attempts to "show, for a comparative sociology of youth, that youth cultures are a systemic property of urban industrial society, and that no 'special' circumstances need to be invoked in order to explain their emergence and persistence." In the first two chapters, the authors briefly survey the salient features of modern Swiss society and the social world of Swiss youth. The study then focuses almost exclusively upon teenagers who upon leaving school enter an apprenticeship (51.3 percent of that age group in 1970). These young people, although more integrated into the working …

Don Yoder, "Palatine, Hessian, Dutchman: Three Images Of The German In America," Ebbes Fer Alle - Ebber Ebbes Fer Dich. Something For Everyone - Something For You. The Pennsylvania German Society, 14 (1980), 107-29, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

In this densely documented, lucidly structured, and learned article Don Yoder, Professor of Folklore and Religion at the University of Pennsylvania, explores eighteenth century roots of stereotypes for German- speaking immigrants and their descendants, regardless of their national origin . He traces the evolving meaning of the three terms ' Palatine', 'Hessian ', and ' Dutchman' in their historical context . As always, Professor Yoder transcends any myopic, America centered view and sees the emergence of the stereotypes in their broader Atlantic context . The at times in tense relationships between English and Palatine princely families and denominational groups, for …

Cliff Petersen's Collection Of U.S. Patent Models, Bret Farnum

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

In your genealogical studies, have you ever come across a journal, diary, or other written material that discusses a relative's attempt to receive a patent for some new and novel invention? Do you know for a fact that one of the people you are researching was involved in the "Spirit of Invention" that surged through the world, specifically the United States, during the 19th century? Or, just on a lark, maybe a subject of yours patented something and you don't even know it. If any of these possibilities are even remotely feasible, I can help provide you with some more …

Review: Don Yoder, Pennsylvania German Immigrants & Palatine Church Visitations, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

"This book has not one hero, but a multitude of heroes," comments Don Yoder in his foreword to Pennsylvania Immigrants. "The sources portray them with all their human shortcomings and all their faith and hope" 37 (p. x). This compact edition of previously published but dispersed lists combines the labors of European scholars with Don Yoder's expertise who not only translated and rearranged the material, but augmented it with. a wealth of American data. His edition contains five contributions with information on some 3,100 immigrants mainly to colonial Pennsylvania. It includes Elizabeth P. Bentley's index of names (pp. 341-391) …

Review: Erdmann Schmocker And Berchtold Weber, Altes Bern, Neues Bern, Ein Stadtbild Im Wandel Der Zeit. Bern: Benteli Verlag, 1979., Samuel Laeuchli

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The transformation of history takes place constantly. Language changes. Political structures replace each other. Man grows through the stages of his life. When we look back we recognize the extent of the changes, the path we had to come and "the forms we walked through" in the words of Gottfried Benn. One paradigm of transformation can be found in architecture, and two Swiss author, Erdmann Schmocker and Berchtold Weber, have created a beautiful book to demonstrate such a process in the case of the Swiss city of Bern. They show us how it grew from a medieval town to the …

Editorial Statement

The Bridge

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Table Of Contents

The Bridge

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The Bridge

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The Bridge

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Deepest Roots - Finest Fruits, Johannes Knudsen

The Bridge

Roots and fruits have an affinity in the natural order of things. It cannot be denied, of course, that the technical skills of our day can create marvels in sterile isolation or hot-house splendor, almost without roots. Nor must it be ignored that quickly growing plants with frail surface contacts to water and nutrients can grow luscious fruits. I would rather eat a strawberry than an acorn. Thus it shall not be contended that finest fruits require deepest roots. But let not the logic of cause and effect stifle a theme. Roots and fruits are valuable and related factors of …

Danish Immigrant Materials: The Archives At Grand View College, Thorvald Hansen

The Bridge

Will Rogers, who claimed partial Indian ancestry, used to like to point out that his ancestors met the Mayflower at the dock. Be that as it may, it is certain that the dock was not crowded. The fact is, as John F. Kennedy once wrote, that this is a nation of immigrants. The vast majority of us are descendants of immigrants. Therefore, the history of this country, particularly at the grassroots level, is a story enacted by the immigrant.

Danish Settlement In Fresno County, California: An Example Of Acculturation To A Foreign Environment. 1880-1920, Marianne T. Stecher

The Bridge

Danish settlers were first attracted to Fresno County, California, in the late 1870's. By 1920, at the close of the era of Danish immigration, 1,839 Danes, 1 % of the entire Danish population of the United States, lived in Fresno County. The idea of Mediterranean crops thriving on twenty acres of fertile soil was tempting to aspiring farmers. The possibility of confining farm work to such a small land area seemed more preferable than one-hundred and sixty acres of spreading wheat fields in the midwestern prairie. A prospering fruit farm or a vineyard in sunny California was a dream of …

My Brother Is Born, Holger O. Nielsen, Harald R. Jensen, Translator

The Bridge

The day was February 14, 1889, and dusk had just fallen. As one looked over the western Nebraska prairie, the whole world was a huge blanket of glittering snow. The bright beams from the full moon fell upon the white snow, almost making day out of the night. Even the harsh Nebraska landscape was now white and soft, as gentle as a fairyland.

Scandinavian American Archives, J. R. Christianson

The Bridge

The problem of locating and preserving Danish American historical materials has been in the spotlight in recent years. It has been discussed frequently in The Bridge and the Newsletter of the Danish American Heritage Society. In cooperation with Grand View College, the society launched a major project, the Danish Immigrant Archival Listing (DIAL), under Thorvald Hansen's leadership in 1979. That project aims to locate all Danish American historical materials presently deposited in archives and elsewhere throughout the United States, Canada and Denmark.

Four Poems On Death By Nis Petersen, Otto M. Sorensen

The Bridge

Very litte of Nis Petersen's poetry has been translated into English, and yet he is regarded as one of Denmark's finest poets in this century. In the following I offer readers of The Bridge translations and interpretations of four poems that deal with death, a subject that concerned Petersen over a considerable period of time. The reader should be cautioned, however, not to deem the poems typical of the poet. Death is one of many themes that run through his work. I have reproduced the originals here from the poet's Samlede Digte. ed. Hans Brix, Gyldendal, 1951 .

Reminiscences From A Long Life, Ane Helena Paulsen

The Bridge

My maiden name was Ane Helene Nielsen and I was born in Yestergaard, Lendum Sogn close to Frederickshavn on January 22, 1866. My father's name was Ole Christian Nielsen, Kirkerod, Skaerum Sogn. He died early of tuberculosis. I can scarcely remember him. My mother's name was Mariane Jensen. She was the daughter of Jens Nielsen, Sondergaard, Lendum Sogn, and his wife Johanne Marie Larsdatter of Vang, S4,ndergaard, Tirslev Sogn.

The Danish Colonization Society Of 1879, Frederick Hale

The Bridge

The Danish Colonization Society of 1879 (Den danske Kolonisations-Forening af 1879) is one of several organizations which historians have generally ignored. An analysis of it, however, could illuminate further a number of matters pertinent to the general theme of Scandinavian emigration. Essentially, it was an association that intended to assist economically deprived Danes in securing a collective home overseas as well as passage to it at the least possible expense. The Society was short-lived, apparently disbanding a little more than a year after coming into being. Moreover, the only direct evidence of its activity is its truncated biweekly newspaper, Udvandrings-Tidende …

The Partridge, Martin A. Hansen, Inga Wiehl, Translator

The Bridge

"Martin A. Hansen is considered one of the best and most influential Danish writers of the century. Despite his premature death in 1955 at the age of forty-six, he left a rich artistic legacy of novels, short stories, and travel descriptions as well as essays and books dealing with historical, cultural and philosophical themes.

'The Partridge' ('Agerhonen') is the title story of a collection of twelve short stories, all of which emphasize artistic expression as self-revelation. It is the means whereby the artist transforms the world and makes it new. The twelve stories are divided into three parts, childhood, adolescence …

Book Review, Ejnar Farstrup

The Bridge

This well-written and fully documented description of the merging of four Lutheran church bodies springing from German, Swedish, Finnish and Danish ethnic backgrounds is not "popular reading." It is however a description, much needed, of a process in which the heritage of each group is recognized and accepted for what it is in its own right, but also with a keen awareness of the subtle changes wrought by the impact of living in an environment vastly different from the conditions previously known to the original immigrants.

Front Cover

The Bridge

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Front Matter

The Bridge

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Table Of Contents

The Bridge

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Editorial Statement

The Bridge

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The Immigrant's Challenge To Dahs, Otto G. Hoiberg

The Bridge

During the half century preceding World War I, 300,000 Danish immigrants came to America, according to an estimate by Kristian Hvidt. Why did they come? Among many reasons, the Homestead Act of 1862 certainly stands out prominently. To the small-acreage farmers and the hired men in Danish agriculture, 160 acres of free, fertile land looked mighty inviting. Enthusiasm for migration was also generated by the glowing "Garden of Eden" advertising campaign conducted by America's railroads - a worthy prototype for today's Madison Avenue. Further, there were the so-called " America Letters" , received from relatives and friends already across the …

Rasmus Sorensen And Danish Emigration, 1847-1863, Frederick Hale

The Bridge

Probably no individual played a more seminal role in the limited Danish emigration to North America before and during the Civil War than Rasmus Sorensen. From the late 1840s until the early 1860s this author, educator, politician, and social reformer led three groups of his countrymen to Wisconsin and, through numerous booklets, speeches, and letters encouraged others to settle elsewhere in the United States and Canada. Yet Sorensen has generally been little more than a supernumerary in the historiography of this transatlantic migration. Its pioneering historian, Peter Sorensen Vig, devoted twelve pages to him in his mammoth compendium, a dozen …

The Danish-Language Press In America, Marion Marzolf

The Bridge

By the time Sophus F. Neble, a journeyman printer from Stubbekobing, Denmark, emigrated in 1883 to seek his fortune in the farmlands of the American Midwest, there was already a rudimentary Danish press tradition in the United States. But at that point in his life, Neble little cared or even knew much about it. He had thrown over his years of apprenticeship in the printing trade for a dream of becoming a successful American dairy farmer in order to win the hand of the young woman he loved.

Hans Christian Andersen's Life And Works: A Danish-American Perspective, Inga Kromann-Kelly

The Bridge

What meaning can Hans Christian Andersen's life and works, spanning almost the entire 19th century, have for the Danish-American of the twentieth and future centuries? What follows is the perspective of only one Danish-American; others may hold quite different views based on their familiarity and experiences with this internationally known and much revered figure. My intent is not to provide a definitive answer to the above question, but rather to stimulate thought on the subject.

Danes And Danish On The Great Plains: Some Sociolinguistic Aspects, Donald K. Watkins

The Bridge

The number of Scandinavians in the upper Midwest in 1850 was insignificant compared to the tens of thousands who arrived annually after the Civil War; but the early settlements, primarily in northern Illinois and eastern Wisconsin, typically served as way stations for the Scandinavians who came later, staying near the Great Lakes for shorter or longer periods of time before moving westward where more favorable conditions beckoned. It is in this connection one finds the nominal beginnings of a Danish presence in the prairie states, the region of the country most favored by the somewhat more than three hundred thousand …

Art? Among Danes In America?, Aase Bak

The Bridge

The Danish American Heritage Society has as one of its objectives to "encourage Danish American expression in the arts, humanities, and social sciences." It is to be hoped that the Danish American Heritage Society will have more luck in its endeavors to promote the arts than did another organization with somewhat similar aims. I refer here to Dansk Folkesamfund (Danish People's Society) and the abortive attempt to launch an art committee under its auspices in 1897.