Writing the History of Germans in Milwaukee� (original) (raw)

�Deutsch-Athen Revisited: Writing the History of Germans in Milwaukee �

Dr. Anke Ortlepp

University of Cologne

Symposium on Milwaukee History: Current Understandings and Future Research

UW-Milwaukee, October 7-8, 2004

For most of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, German Americans formed the largest part of Milwaukee�s multiethnic population.[1] Germans lived all over the city, they were successful businessmen and -women, politicians and labor organizers; they shaped Milwaukee�s educational system; established endless numbers of clubs and voluntary associations; and left their footprints on the city�s cultural landscape. Surviving structures like the Pabst Theater, the Pfister Hotel, Turner Hall, or the Germania Building testify to the rich past of this ethnic group and the ongoing presence of people with German American ancestry in Milwaukee.

����������� Some aspects of the group�s history have attracted scholarly attention. Kathleen N. Conzen�s groundbreaking study of Milwaukee�s pre-Civil War development describes the size and origin of the German migration to the city, German American settlement patterns and participation in the frontier city�s economy, religious and political affiliations of the first immigrants, household size, job patterns, educational pioneers, German Vereinskultur, and the interaction of Germans with other ethnic groups in the city.[2]For the beginnings of the German presence in Milwaukee, it�s all there, except for an analysis of gender relations. Conzen draws our attention to one of the defining characteristics of the city�s German community: Mainly due to its size and its heterogeneity, it displayed a degree of stability and self-sufficiency that set it apart from other ethnic communities in the city (e.g. the Irish, Polish, Scandinavians) � and German communities elsewhere � while Germans, at the same time, frequently and habitually interacted with members of other ethnic groups.

����������� City histories like Bayrd Still�s Milwaukee: The History of a City also deal with German Americans.[3]Still takes us through the different stages of the city�s development from its foundation through the end of World War II, looking at politics, economics, demographics, the arts, etc. Dealing with a much larger time frame, he tries to provide us with a comprehensive history, that, due to its design, does not reach the level of intensity and detail that Conzen delivers. While the story of German American inhabitants of Milwaukee is woven into the fabric of the narrative, they simply appear as one of a number of local players. John Gurda�s_Milwaukee: The Making of a City_follows some of the same lines. Richly illustrated, the book portrays some aspects of German life in the city, due to its breadth, however, it must lack some of the detail that anyone interested in Milwaukee�s German Americana will expect.[4]

����������� German American involvement in political and labor movements is at the heart of a number of studies that focus on Milwaukee. Both have been researched fairly well. Marvin Wachmann has provided us with a study of the Social Democratic Party of Milwaukee that considers both German American leaders and the activities of the party�s German American base.[5]Robert Mikkelsen built on Wachmann�s work in his essay that compares German American and Polish American involvement in the party�s politics.[6]John Buenker and Marie Anne Laberge have provided us with insights into how German American socialist men and women thought about suffrage. Many clung to rather conservative gender ideals and only reluctantly � if at all � agreed to strategic alliances with suffragists to fight for women�s rights.[7]Socialists and German American politicians of other party affiliations form part of Victor Greene�s study of immigrant ethnic leadership.[8] Thomas Gavett has studied the history of Milwaukee�s trade union and labor movements which for most of the nineteenth century were dominated by Anglo-Americans and German Americans.[9] And Gerd Korman has investigated the place of different ethnic groups in processes of industrialization.[10]Some of these studies by now are a little dated, and we would benefit from a fresh perspective on the issues they address.

Very few studies, then, have focused exclusively on the German American community in Milwaukee and it has been mostly up to German-speaking scholars (from Germany) to engage in this task. A number of years ago, Bettina Goldberg targeted issues of education and religion. She provided us with a very instructive essay on the German-English Academy (Engelmann School) and the National German-American Teachers Seminary.[11] Outlining the special emphasis that liberal, freethinking Germans of the 1848er generation placed on education as a means to raise democratic citizens, Goldberg described the schools� curricula and activities and pointed to the influence German educational ideas had on the development of Milwaukee�s public school system. She expanded her approach to include issues of religion when she looked at parochial schools, in particular those that were maintained by German-speaking Catholic and Lutheran (Missouri Synod) parishes.[12]Her findings lead us to the nexus religious leaders established between language instruction and the survival of religious and cultural practices in the German community. They feared that the loss of German as a means of communication would go hand in hand with the disintegration of their congregations and their ethnic community. Goldberg shows that those who held on to German instructions in their parish schools for the longest time were the most likely to slow down processes of acculturation among their students.

Surprisingly few German American organizations have been studied in detail, although Vereinsmeierei was part of the cultural baggage German immigrants brought to Milwaukee. Among the hundreds of organizations that existed that existed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Turners have attracted the most attention. Ralf Wagner has looked at the history of Milwaukee�s Turner movement between 1850 and 1920 � sketching the origins and development of the city�s many gymnastic societies � and compared it with the Chicago Turners� activities. He showed that although many founding fathers of the Milwaukee Turner movement had come to the United States as refugees representing a radical political movement, the Turners became increasingly conservative and depoliticized over the course of the nineteenth century. Not before the beginning of the twentieth century, however, did they begin to loose their attraction for younger generations of German Americans who � beyond politics � preferred American team sports to traditional forms of gymnastic exercise.[13]Those Turners who held on to their radical heritage formed alliances with the Social Democratic Party as Horst Ueberhorst has demonstrated.[14]As close affiliates of the Turners, who shared their cultural and political roots, Ann Reagan has studied Milwaukee�s early German American singing and music societies. She introduces us to the activities and repertoires of a number of different choirs and artists devoting most of attention to the Musikverein, Milwaukee�s most prominent German American music society. [15]

The lack of a study on German American women�s organizations inspired my own work on voluntary associations as vehicles of gender and ethnic identity formation.[16]I investigated the broad spectrum of organizations that were established between 1844 and 1914. Starting with the first church affiliated groups, German American women of different regional, religious, political, and class backgrounds founded patriotic women�s organizations, charity clubs, school and kindergarten associations, labor unions, political associations, social clubs, singing and musical societies, mutual support groups, women�s lodges, and women�s auxiliaries of gymnastic societies, altogether over 300 Vereine. These fields of activity show the ways in which German-American women assessed their own capabilities and expressed themselves as members of their ethnic group. They sought such a variety of causes because female and ethnic identity could intersect in many different ways. Whereas some women organized for their own sake disregarding their ethnic affiliation and seeking cross-ethnic alliances instead, others found the inspiration to organize in their ethnicity which led them to work for their own group�s well-being. Either way, I argue, women helped to define the characteristics � gender roles, cultural attributes, practices, and values � which German Americans stood for. The varieties of women�s activism show in particular that, at least in Milwaukee, German-American ethnicity allowed for different constructions of femininity. Whereas parts of the community (e.g., the churches, the Turners) were in favor of seeing women in their traditional role as wives, mothers and supportive companions of their husbands, other groups in the community like the freethinkers or the socialists supported women�s activism that promoted the idea of complete equality between the sexes. Both approaches overlapped with the idea that women had a crucial function as cultural mediators who would pass on German-American cultural traditions to the next generation. Men and women claimed a stake in shaping women�s roles and continuously re-negotiated the relationship between the sexes. In that process, German-American women self-confidently retained old and claimed new territory for women�s activism.

Celebrations and festivals are the subject of Heike Bungert�s inquiry into the cultural history of Milwaukee�s German Americans.[17]Comparing the city to New York, San Francisco and San Antonio, she explores German American festive traditions and reads them as expressions of ethnic identity. Bungert describes a broad spectrum of different festival types: Turner, singer and sharpshooter contests, _Karnival_events and mask balls, Volksfeste, German Day parades, events celebrating German unification in 1871, Kriegerfeste and veteran reunions, music festivals and events celebrating famous German artists and culture heroes. She shows that festivals functioned as an important means for German Americans to both find and claim their place in American society. They served as an opportunity to get together with other Germans and to transcend everyday life in a place that was strange for many newcomers. Festivals connected people to their own memory and enabled them to display their cultural heritage. Bungert, moreover, demonstrates that in a German community as large and diverse as Milwaukee�s, festivals helped participants to overcome their class, political, gender, religious, and regional backgrounds if only for a couple of hours or days. Festivals also promoted communication with other ethnic groups most importantly Anglo-Americans. Anglo-Americans looked favourably on German American festive activities as expressions of communal spirit and cultural finesse � with the exception of temperance advocates and Sabbatarians who criticized alcohol consumption and violations of Sunday laws. Many participated in events and festivals sponsored by German American organizations. Bungert underlines that Germans Americans welcomed Anglo-American participation and often proudly displayed American national symbols next to cultural icons representing Germany as part of their festive routine.[18]Using both German and American frames of cultural reference German Americans through their festivals, she argues, created a distinctly German American identity.

Forms of cultural production are also the subject of Peter C. Merrill�s studies. In his collection of essays German American Urban Culture: Writers and Theaters in Early Milwaukee he explores Milwaukee�s German-language intellectual scene.[19]He introduces us to a broad range of writers and discusses their works including Wisconsin-written plays and operettas, prose, poetry, serial novels, and Feuilleton contributions. The German community�s creative potential also becomes apparent in his compilation of artists� biographies.[20]Many early artists who worked in Milwaukee had been trained in Germany. Educating and training following generations of artists they were instrumental in stipulating interest in German art and in establishing a vibrant local art scene. Beyond literary and artistic production, German Americans were also interested in architecturally shaping the space they inhabited. Steven Hoelscher, Timothy Bawden and Jeffrey Zimmermann have investigated how Germans Americans culturally marked Milwaukee landscapes and how succeeding generations of immigrants have used and re-used urban space.[21]

����������� All the studies we have are a great beginning. Much work remains to be done, however, work that would greatly profit from even more cooperation between scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. First of all, I think, we need a study that picks up where Conzen left off. Admittedly, this is a challenge. Conzen�s investigation into census materials, city directories and other social history materials becomes much more difficult and tedious with Milwaukee�s growth and the increasing size of its population. But the records are there and they are full of the kinds of information we would like to have for Milwaukee�s many different ethnic groups. And it would be wonderful to be able to draw on what she provided us with for the post-Civil War period and all the way up to World War I (and even after that). So far, for instance, our demographic knowledge about Milwaukee�s German American population is sketchy at best. We have the total number of immigrants and the percentages they formed among the city�s population.[22]We do, however, know little about the regional backgrounds of those who migrated after the 1860s, about household size, age, religious background, education, job training, property ownership and immigrant status (naturalization).

Any social history of Milwaukee�s German American population should try and go beyond the histories and genealogies of a few prominent families like the Pabsts, the Usingers, or the Schlitz families. By now, we have a pretty good idea of who those families were and how they created and participated in social, political and economic networks that often transcended ethnic boundaries. Most histories of Milwauikee tell their stories as part of the city�s social and business elite. We do, however, know were little about the thousands of families who did not make it into those city histories. What was their class background? Did family composition vary according to class background? Did it change during the process of migration? Are family size and composition different in different immigrant generations? What can we say about gender relations? Do male or female heads of household prevail in the German American community? What was the status of women and men in German American families? In what ways did prescribed ideals deviate from lived experience? These are just some of the questions that a German American family history should address.

Moreover, we need to investigate the place of German Americans in Milwaukee�s economy. Again, we do have a number of histories of well known businessmen or businesses that were woven into city histories like Bayrd Still�s.[23]The business histories of breweries like the Schlitz, Pabst or Miller enterprises, of tanning businesses, meat packers, sausage makers, dry goods merchants, and toy makers come to mind. How the majority of German Americans made their money, however, and the degree to which both German American women and men participated in the job market remain relatively obscure. Studies that deal with labor issues and the Socialist movement have touched on these subjects.[24] But whereas the story of Milwaukee�s development as one of the key Midwestern centers of trade and commerce has been told, it remains to be studied how the average German American entrepreneur and how German American working men and women fit into the narrative. My own investigation into German American women�s labor activism, for instance, has led me to assume that female gainful employment was much more common than has generally been acknowledged. German American women sought employment in fields that lay beyond the domestic arena, obviously considering work as a domestic servant as only one among a number of different job opportunities. Women of all age groups � and not only those who were preparing to get married � sought access to the labor market and competed with women of other ethnic groups. Their class background helped to determine women�s employment patterns: some women worked because they wanted to, others because they were their family�s only breadwinners. Some German American women were self-employed, most worked as employees, and some � like the groups of seamstresses that organized in 1886 � sought union membership to demand their rights as working women.[25]These women deserve more attention. Their history as German American working women may function as one point of departure for future research but ideally any investigation into women�s experience in the workplace and beyond should be a comparative effort and transcend ethnic boundaries.[26]

����������� Scholars investigating the German community�s past in Milwaukee have been interested in issues of religion. Lutherans and Catholics as well as the Freethinkers have been studied to some extent.[27] The German Jewish community, in contrast, has attracted only little attention. Even though it never equalled in size those of New York, Chicago or Cincinnati, German Jews established their presence in Milwaukee early on and became busy community builders. The first immigrants arrived during the late 1840s and soon after formed their first congregation, Temple Emanu-El. From small beginnings the community grew enough to be able to absorb several waves of immigration that brought in immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia after 1880.[28]Even though the broad outlines of this story are known, we are able to say only little about who the people were who built the community and why they had come to Milwaukee. People like Henry Stern, one of the most successful dry goods and grocery merchants of the early period, who came to Milwaukee from Bavaria in 1850 to start a peddling business which he later expanded into one of the biggest wholesale ventures in the city.[29] And we have just begun to understand how community was linked to charity as one of the defining elements of a (German Jewish) identity. It seems that in Milwaukee � as in many other Jewish communities across the country � the impulse to care for every member guided the community in establishing its structure, inventing and reinventing systems of philanthropic enterprise until the forms of charity themselves became the framework of community.[30]

����������� German Jewish women were at the heart of this philanthropic effort. They supported the poor through one of their numerous organizations like the True Sisters of Milwaukee, the Hebrew Widow�s and Orphan Association, the Society for Visiting the Sick (Chevra Bikur Cholim), the Ladies� Relief Sewing Society, and The Settlement. It was probably The Settlement, which was founded in 1900, that had the most lasting impact on the community. Modelled after settlement houses elsewhere � and most importantly Hull House in Chicago � it offered a broad and constantly expanding spectrum of services ranging from baths to language instruction. Myrtle Baer and Lizzie Kander, who has often been called the Jane Addams of Milwaukee, were the driving forces behind this enterprise.[31] Both were tireless advocates for the rights of the underprivileged who also understood their work as part of the effort to Americanize recent immigrants. At the same time, as social reformers, they promoted the professionalization of social work which for most of the nineteenth century had been a volunteer effort.[32]All four, Jewish women�s organizations, The Settlement, Myrtle Baer, and Lizzie Kander deserve more attention. Their histories have just begun to appear and would be a great topic for a research project.

My next point: We need more comparative studies. In the past, most scholars who have studied issues of ethnicity have focused on one ethnic group. Donald and Angela Pienkos have done work on the Polish community.[33]There are books about the Irish and the Italians.[34]Heike Bungert and I have concentrated on the German community.[35]With little to draw on, this approach has made sense in the past. Scholars needed to find and make accessible primary source materials and sketch the outlines of the history of different ethnic communities. Now that some of the foundations have been laid, I think, it is time to engage in comparisons. Comparisons will help us understand how ethnic groups interacted and how interconnected processes of identity formation were. The new immigration history has shown us that processes of acculturation were never one way streets. All groups involved in ethnic encounters were affected by them. Comparisons will help us better understand in what ways they were affected and how processes of cultural exchange worked. Admittedly, comparative projects can be challenging not least because language might be a problem in the study of immigrant cultures. Language problems, however, might be most easily overcome by cooperation among scholars.

����������� To access German American source materials can be as difficult as accessing materials that document the history of other ethnic communities. The problem of accessibility seems to be twofold: Finding the records can be one problem, working with them quite another. Archives like the State Historical Society and the Milwaukee County Historical Society have done a great job processing collections and classifying them as German American.[36]The State Historical Society, as one of the treasures of its holdings, owns the Fritz and Mathilde Anneke papers. The Annekes were refugees of the German revolution of 1848. Whereas Fritz moved to Chicago, Mathilde settled permanently in Milwaukee in the mid-1860s. An outspoken women�s rights activist, political radical, and educator � she headed the Milwaukee T�chter-Institut for almost twenty years � she became one of the few very visible German American women community leaders. Today we are lucky that the Annekes spent so much time apart: They wrote hundreds of letters to each other. These letters unveil a complicated but loving relationship of a German American couple and grant fascinating insights into the radical political spectrum of Milwaukee�s German American community. This community also speaks to us through the pages of Milwaukee�s German language newspapers that form part of the State Historical Society�s collection of periodicals. These newspapers, which cover a spectrum from socialist to conservative, are a rich source for anyone who wants to dig into the history of Milwaukee�s German American community.[37]The same could be said about the State Historical Society�s pamphlet collection which comprises materials related to well known organizations and events as well as materials that document the existence of obscure and short-lived organizational endeavors. The success of using this collection, however, depends on the researcher�s endurance which is sometimes tested by the lack of the pamphlets� subject classification.

The Milwaukee County Historical Society�s collection of German Americana is wonderful and for the most part easily accessible. It comprises the papers of a number of prominent individuals like educator Peter Engelmann and materials related to many of Milwaukee�s nineteenth-century German American organizations. The records include those of the Milwaukee Schulverein (and its women�s association), the Liedertafel, the Liederkranz, the Milwaukee Turnverein, and many others among which the Musikverein deserves a special mentioning. Not only does the Milwaukee County Historical Society hold the Musikverein�s records but also its collection of sheet music which has so far, unfortunately, gone largely unprocessed. To have it more readily available would be helpful because it is such a great source for historians of music and musicologists. Anyone interested in the history of the German American wings of the socialist and the labor movement will also find an abundance of materials in the Milwaukee County Historical Society, e.g. the records of clubs and branches that were affiliated with Milwaukee�s Social Democrats. Moreover the collection of German Americana is rich in photographic and print records. In some cases it offers �pristine� materials that hardly anyone has worked with.

This being said, however, some attention needs to be drawn to the difficulties any researcher encounters who investigates women�s or gender issues. For instance, there is no easily accessible collection of materials that documents the history of the female half of Milwaukee�s German American population. A subject search in most cataloges retrieves only little even though the records are there and they are abundant as I discovered during my own research on women�s associations. They are simply scattered, hidden in personal papers and organizational records, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. In my case, it took some digging, endurance and creative thinking to find the primary sources for a study that some people had told me I could not write because there was nothing there. But there was, material like the records of the women�s association of the Milwaukee Schulverein, the minutes of one of the many German speaking women�s clubs of the Social Democratic Party or the personal recollections of kindergarten teacher Anna Grelke. Some records I found at the offices of those organizations that still exist. At Turner Hall, for instance, Rose Marie Barber opened the treasure vaults of the women�s auxiliary for me that hold the minute books for more then a century of regular meetings. There was an abundance of other records that scholars should want to work with.[38]

����������� At times, the fact that most materials that document the history of the German community in Milwaukee were written in German might be a challenge. Added to that is the fact that most nineteenth-century materials were printed in Fraktur typeface or written in old German script. While reading _Fraktur_becomes a much easier task once the reader has understood a couple of rules � e.g. that the small letter �s� looks like a small �f� � old German script can be a nightmare even for German native speakers. The Max Kade Institut in Madison has done a terrific job offering classes that introduce students to old German script but being able to read nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century German American records remains a tough job.

����������� Transcription could be one answer. Heike Bungert and I have transcribed some of the records that we worked with, among them the minutes of all the women�s organizations that I was able to look at. Translation could be an alternative. It would be wonderful if more materials were transcribed or translated and even made available in print. Some are, like the edition of materials from the Fritz and Mathilde Anneke papers that Maria Wagner published quite a number of years ago.[39]Unfortunately, it has been out of print for a long time now and an English translation is on the wish list of numerous scholars. To make Anneke�s writings available to English-speaking readers would be a great project, one that would introduce them to a fascinating woman and grant her the attention that she deserves as one of the German American community�s most prolific writers, women�s rights activists and political radicals. Meta Berger, wife of Social Democrat Victor Berger and long time member of Milwaukee�s school board, has fared somewhat better. Her autobiography A Milwaukee Woman�s Life on the Left was published in 2001.[40]Read in conjunction with the collection of Berger family letters that state historian Michael Stevens published almost ten years ago, it offers a glimpse into the personal life of a woman whose life was shaped first by the political activism of her husband and later her own.[41]

����������� Given the long and diverse history of Germans in Milwaukee and the abundance of primary source materials that can be found in local and state archives, an edition that would make some of these materials available to a larger audience has long been overdue. It would be a great resource for scholars, teachers, and students. At the same time it would be a wonderful point of departure for anyone interested in one of the fascinating pieces of Milwaukee�s history puzzle: the German American community.

[1]����� Germans established themselves as Milwaukee�s largest group of immigrants around the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1850 they formed 36.4 % of the city�s population, in 1860 the number only slightly decreased to 35.3 %. In 1870 the number of inhabitants who had been born in Germany was at 32 % and in 1880 at 27 % respectively. Although these numbers declined during the following decades, going down to 17% in 1910, the percentage of people who had a German background, as members of the second or following generation of immigrants, remained impressive. In 1890 it stood at 68.8 %, in 1900 at 60.5 % and in 1910 German-Americans still formed more than half of Milwaukee�s population (53.5 %). Cf. Secretary of the Interior, Population of the United States, 1860 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1864) xxxii, 621; Department of the Interior, Census Office, Ninth Census, 1870. Population (Washington: GPO, 1872) 386-91; Department of the Interior, Census Office, Statistics of the Population of the United States, 1880 (Washington: GPO, 1882) 456, 534, 538-41; Department of the Interior, Census Office, Eleventh Census, 1890, Population, Volume I (Washington: GPO 1895) l; Department of the Interior, Census Office, Census Reports, Volume I,Twelfth Census, 1900. Population, Part I (Washington: GPO, 1901) clxxvii; Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census, 1910. Volume I, Population (Washington: GPO, 1913) 824, 826, 829.

[2] ���� Kathleen N. Conzen, Immigrant Milwaukee 1836-1860: Accommodation and Community in a Frontier City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).

[3] ���� Bayrd Still, Milwaukee : The History of a City (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1948). Older histories of Milwaukee that incorporate things German are: John G. Gregory, History of Milwaukee, Vol. 1-4 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1931) and William G. Bruce, History of Milwaukee City and County, 2 Vol. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1922). The oldest reliable German American source on the community�s history is: Rudolf H. Koss, Milwaukee (Milwaukee: Herold, 1871).

[4] ���� John Gurda, Milwaukee : The Making of a City (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999).

[5] ����� Marvin Wachmann, History of the Social-Democratic Party of Milwaukee , 1897-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1945). Milwaukee Social Democrats are also key figures in Elmer A. Beck�s Sewer Socialists: A History of the Socialist Party of Wisconsin , 1897-1940 (Fennimore: Westburg Associates, 1982).

[6] ����� Robert Lewis Mikkelsen, �Immigrants in Politics: Poles, Germans, and the Social Democratic Party of Milwaukee,� Labor Migration in the Atlantic Economies: The European and North American Working Classes During the Period of Industrialization, ed. Dirk Hoerder (Westport: Greenwood, 1985).

[7] ����� John D. Buenker, �The Politics of Mutual Frustration: Socialists and Suffragists in New York and Wisconsin,� Flawed Liberation: Socialism and Feminism, ed. Sally Miller (Westport: Greenwood, 1981) 114-144; Marie Anne Laberge, ��Working Together or Working Apart�: Socialist Women in the Wisconsin Suffrage Movement, 1910-1920,� Masters thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison 1986.

[8] ���� Victor Greene, American Immigrant Leaders 1800-1910: Marginality and Identity(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).

[9] ����� Thomas W. Gavett, Development of the Labor Movement in Milwaukee (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965).

[10] ��� Gerd Korman, Industrialization, Immigrants, and Americanizers: The View from Milwaukee 1866-1921 (Madison: State Historical Society, 1967).

[11] ��� Bettina Goldberg, �The German-English Academy, the German-American Teachers� Seminary, and the Public School System in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1851-1919,� German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917, ed. Henry Geitz, J�rgen Heideking, Jurgen Herbst (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 177-192.

[12] ��� Bettina Goldberg, ��Our Fathers Faith, our Children�s Language:� Cultural Change in Milwaukee�s German Evangelical Lutheran Parishes of the Missouri Synod, 1850-1930�, Papers Presented at the German-American Conference �Emigration and Settlement Patterns of German Communities in North� America in New Harmony Indiana, October 1989; Bettina Goldberg, �The German Language in Milwaukee�s Grade School, 1850-1920: The Case of the Catholic Schools,� Working Paper No. 17 (Berlin: John F. Kennedy-Institut, 1989).

[13] ��� RalfWagner, Zwischen Tradition und Fortschritt: Zur gesellschaftspolitischen und kulturellen Entwicklung der deutschamerikanischen Turnbewegung am Beispiel Milwaukees und Chicagos, 1850-1920 (M�nchen: drucken + binden, 1988).

[14] ��� HorstUeberhorst, Turner und Sozialdemokraten in Milwaukee: F�nf Jahrzehnte der Kooperation 1910-1960 (Bonn:H. Moos,1980).

[15] ��� Ann B. Reagan, �Art Music in Milwaukee in the Late Nineteenth Century 1850-1900�, Diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1980.

[16] ��� Anke Ortlepp, �Auf denn, Ihr Schwestern!� Deutschamerikanische Frauenvereine in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1844-1914(Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004); Anke Ortlepp, �German American Women�s Clubs: Constructing Women�s Roles and Ethnic Identity,� Amerikastudien/ American Studies 48.3 (2003): 425-442.

[17] ���� Heike Bungert, �Die Festkultur der Deutschamerikaner im Spannungsfeld zwischen deutscher und amerikanischer Identit�t, 1848-1925�, unpublished manuscript (Habilitationsschrift), University of Cologne, 2004. See also: Heike Bungert, ��Feast of Fools�: German-American Carnival as a Medium of Identity Formation, 1854-1914� Amerikastudien/ American Studies 48.3 (2003): 325-344.

[18] ��� German Americans also attended Anglo-American festivals to signal their appreciation of American culture.

[19] ���� Peter C. Merrill, German American Urban Culture: Writers and Theaters in Early Milwaukee (Madison: Max Kade Institute, 2000).

[20]��� Peter C. Merrill, German-American Artists in Early Milwaukee : A Biographical Dictionary (Madison: Max Kade Institute, 1998).

[21] ��� Steven Hoelscher, Timothy Bawden, Jeffrey Zimmermann, �Milwaukee�s German Renaissance Twice Told: Inventing and Recycling Landscape in America�s German Athens,� Wisconsin Land and Life: Geographic Portraits of the State, ed. Robert C. Ostergren and Thomas R. Vale (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997) 376-409.

[22] ��� Wilhelm Hense Jensen was among the first to draw on census records in his history of the Germans in Wisconsin: Wilhelm Hense-Jensen, Wisconsins Deutsch-Amerikaner bis zum Schlu� des 19. Jahrhunderts, 2 Vol. (Milwaukee: Deutsche Gesellschaft, 1902).

[23] ��� Still, Milwaukee.

[24] ��� Gavett, Labor Movement in Milwaukee; Laberge, ��Working Together or Working Apart��.

[25] ��� Ortlepp,�Auf denn, Ihr Schwestern!,� chpt. 8.

[26] ��� Any study should, moreover, compare its findings with the work that Christiane Harzig did on Chicago: Christiane Harzig, Familie, Arbeit und weibliche �ffentlichkeit in einer Einwanderungsstadt: Deutschamerikanerinnen in Chicago um die Jahrhundertwende (St. Katharinen: Scriptae Mercaturae, 1991).

[27] ��� Steven M. Avella, ed., Milwaukee Catholicism: Essays on Church and Community (Milwaukee: Knights of Columbus, 1991); James E. Grummer, �The Parish Life of German-Speaking Roman Catholics in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1840-1920,� Diss., University of Notre Dame 1988; Bettina Goldberg, �Radical German-American Freethinkers and the Socialist Labor Movement: The Freie Gemeinde in Milwaukee, Wisconsin�, German Workers� Culture in the United States 1850 �1920, ed. Hartmut Keil, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1988) 241-260.

[28] ��� Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, 150: A Look at the Milwaukee Jewish Community as it Celebrates its Sesquicentennial Anniversary(Milwaukee: Wisconsin Jewish Federation, 1993); Isaac Levitats, The Story of the Milwaukee Jewish Community(Milwaukee: Bureau of Jewish Education, 1954) 1-6; Louis J. Swichkow, �The Jewish Community of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 180-1870,� Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, 47 (Sept. 1957) 1, 35; Louis J. Swichkow and Lloyd P. Gartner, The History of the Jews of Milwaukee (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1963).

[29] ��� The History of the Life of Henry Stern, typewritten manuscript, Henry Stern Papers, Milwaukee Area Research Center (MARC) Milwaukee, 36.

[30] ��� Anke Ortlepp, ��Give to the Poor! Yourself You�ll Bless!� Jewish Charities in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1850-1914,� German-Jewish Identities in America: From the Civil War to the Present, ed. Christof Mauch und Joseph Salmons (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003) 21-39.

[31] ���� Myrtle Baer and Lizzie Kander have both made it into_Jewish Women in America: A Historical Encyclopedia_, ed. Paula E. Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore (London: Routledge, 1997). Their papers are part of the holdings of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Archives. Although Lizzie Kander has not been the focus of a biography, she retains a nationwide prominence as the author of the Settlement Cook Book: The Way to a Man�s Heart (Milwaukee: The Settlement, 1903) which has gone trough several new editions.

[32] ��� Ortlepp, �Jewish Charities.�

[33] ���� See their article on the Polish catholic community in Avella, MilwaukeeCatholicism. Of interest might also be In the Ideals of Women is the Strength of a Nation: A History of the Polish Women�s Alliance of America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003) and PNA: A Centennial History of the Polish National Alliance of the United States of North America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984) which include references to Milwaukee.

[34] ���� Martin Hintz has published small volumes on Milwaukee�s Irish and Italian communities in the Images of America series: Irish Milwaukee (Mount Pleasant: Arcadia, 2003); Italian Milwaukee (Mount Pleasant: Arcadia, 2004).

[35] ��� Bungert, �Festkultur der Deutschamerikaner;� Ortlepp, ��Auf denn, Ihr Schwestern!.��

[36] ��� I will focus on the holdings of these archives, although I am aware of the fact that some of Milwaukee�s other archives like the Public Library and the Urban Archives hold materials that scholars of German American history and ethnicity might be interested in.

[37] ��� Anyone using these newspapers will find Carl H. Knoche�s The German Immigrant Press in Milwaukee (New York: Arno Press, 1980) helpful.

[38] ��� Ideally, these should be transferred to an archive to facilitate access for scholars interested in Turner history.

[39] ��� MariaWagner, ed., Mathilde Franziska Anneke in Selbstzeugnissen und Dokumenten (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1980).

[40] ��� Meta Berger, A Milwaukee Woman�s Life on the Left (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001). The edition is based on Meta Berger�s partly handwritten manuscript which can be found in the Victor L. Berger Papers, 1862-1980 at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

[41] ��� Michael Stevens, ed., The Family Letters of Victor and Meta Berger 1894-1929 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1995).