Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Young People’S Schools And Højskoler In The United States, J. Christian Bay

The Bridge

It can be said that an organized effort to preserve Danish language and culture has existed here in America since the beginning of the seventies. The immigrants considered it essential that they develop plans to strengthen and design general education for young adults. Among the immigrants who immediately joined the Church right from the beginning, there were few academics. However, because many knew about the højskole concept in Denmark, this concept became the foundation for their church-sheltered schools.

From The Farm To The Faculty: The Educational Odyssey Of Paulus Falck, Johan Windmuller

The Bridge

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, thousands of immigrants from Denmark settled in the American Midwest. Some of them brought with them educational concepts and religious convictions they hoped to pass on to future generations; to do so they created a variety of educational and religious institutions scattered across several Midwestern states. What follows is a study of Paulus Falck, who passed through several of these institutions.

The Kjems Family From Odder To Ashland, Magne Kjems

The Bridge

My father, Simon Nielsen Kjems, was born on the farm of Kjemsgaard on 23 July 1849.2 At the age of twenty, he entered Askov Folk School and was educated to be a teacher in private and folk schools (friskolen og hajskolen). In 1874, father became a teacher in the private school on Odder Mark, a short distance from the village of Odder. The pupils were both farm children and the children of master artisans in Odder. I do not know . whether father built the school himself, but I know that he came to own it, and when he married …

Impediments To The Cultivation Of The Folk School Spirit In A North American Context: The Case Of Grand View College, Dennis Bielfeldt

The Bridge

In the 1995-96 academic year Grand View College will

celebrate its first hundred years of life. In anticipation of

this milestone, suggestions have been made to designate

1994-95 the "Year of Grundtvig," and to formally observe

with the entire Grand View community the influence of

the great Dane upon the college and its educational philosophy.

What, after all, could be more fitting for a college

whose most recent Academic Mission Statement proudly

declares its founding "by Danish immigrants who sought

to give the educational vision and ideals of N.F.S.

Grundtvig an institutional presence?"

Anton Gravesen - Immigrant's Way, Anton Gravesen

The Bridge

Anton Gravesen (1870-1952) became a well-respected merchant in Tyler, Minnesota, and banker in Askov, Minnesota. This autobiographical excerpt, provided by his daughter, Dagmar Gravesen, first records his experiences as a young immigrant and then describes his fast rise as a successful businessman. It ends with his philosophical acceptance of his losses during the Great Depression. Gravesen was born on a small farm on the Jutland heath. The death of his mother when he was 10 made him selfreliant and industrious. He not only worked for his father but also hired out to neighbors and his uncles as a sheep and …

Goals And Objectives Of The Danish American Heritage Society

The Bridge

To promote an interest in Danish American contributions to American life.

To encourage research in the life and culture of Danish Americans. To serve as an agency for the publication of studies of Danish American contributions to American life.

To provide a means of communication and education for individuals interested in the activities of Danish Americans.

Johannes Knudsen As An Educator: A Conversation With Harry Jensen, Thorvald Hansen

The Bridge

In the fall of 1927 Johannes Knudsen began what was to be a lifelong teaching career. For the next eight years he was to teach at Grand View College and in the theological seminary there. He taught courses in Danish as well as in Scandinavian literature. In the Seminary his specialty was Church History. It was far from his first contact with Grand View. He had lived there as a youth, from 1912 until 1915, while his father was president of that institution. Later he attended the high school department there. In 1920, when his parents returned to Denmark, he …

Enok Mortensen And Askov, Hans Henningsen

The Bridge

The connection between Enok Mortensen and Askov Folk High School in Denmark came about accidentally, as it were, in the middle of the 1950s. The background was that rector Knud Hansen made some critical remarks, in an interview, about the United States and American foreign policy. This caused a great to-do in the press, so much so that the American ambassador decided to visit Askov Folk High School to judge for himself whether it were possible that Askov had "gone communist." Shortly thereafter Knud Hansen received an official invitation to spend three months in the United States. The visit, which …

Goals And Objectives Of The Danish American Heritage Society

The Bridge

To promote an interest in Danish American contributions to American life.

To encourage research in the life and culture of Danish Americans.

To serve as an agency for the publication of studies of Danish American contributions to American life.

To provide a means of communication and education for individuals interested in the activities of Danish Americans.

The Danish Dip, Edna H. Hong

The Bridge

My first reaction to our son's Danish school teacher was one of dismay, for I was still under the dismal domination of the American veneration of youthiness. Somehow the keen, kind blue eyes and the lean, lithe body of the grey-haired gentleman who rose at his elevated desk to greet me when I entered the school room, accompanied by my wretched, reluctant, rebellious, ready-to-bolt nine year old, did not tranquilize the depressing discovery that the teacher Theodore was to have his first year in a foreign school was an old man - at least sixty!