Archive

Jürgen Overhoff (Münster) in cooperation with Simon Richter (University of Pennsylvania)

Ein ehemaliger Student und Absolvent der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität (WWU) Münster, der amerikanische Jesuiten-Priester Prof. Dr. Leo O'Donovan (86), wird bei der Amtseinführung von Joe Biden zum neuen US-Präsidenten am 20. Januar eine zentrale Rolle spielen...

All times, eras and cultures have witnessed the rare occurrence of highly talented and extremely gifted children who displayed their genius at a very early age. Yet, it was in eighteenth-century Germany that the term 'Wunderkind' (literally "wonder child") first came into use to denote child prodigy...

The Transnational in the History of Education

ed. by Eckhardt Fuchs und Eugenia Roldán Vera

Babel of the Atlantic

ed. by Bethany Wiggin

Alldeutsche in den USA - Die New Yorker Ortsgruppe im frühen 20. Jahrhundert

by Markus Bierkoch

Benjamin Franklin and the Germans: A transatlantic encounter in the Age of Enlightenment
by Jürgen Overhoff

April 12, 2019 @ 7 p.m.
Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium

The TransAtlantic Reconsidered

eds. Charlotte A. Lerg, Susanne Lachenicht, and Michael Kimmage

The Immigrant Scene: Ethnic Amusements in New York, 1880–1920

by Sabine Haenni

Die Schutzmacht: Die Amerikaner in Berlin 1945-1994

by Stefanie Eisenhuth

1968 - Memories and Legacies of a Global Revolt, von Philipp Gassert und Martin Klimke

Schulbücher und Schulbuchverlage in den Besatzungszonen Deutschlands 1945-1949, von Gisela Teistler

Eine buch- und verlagsgeschichtliche Bestandsaufnahme und Analyse mit Bibliografie der erschienenen Schulbücher, Lehrpläne und pädagogischen Zeitschriften...

On 17 May 2018, Thorsten Carstensen, Ph.D., visited the Center for German-American Educational History and gave a lecture on "Learning from John Ford: History, Time, and Geography in the Novels of Peter Handke" in our lecture series "Public History, Popular History or Historical Edutainment - Representations of German and American History in Theatre, Cinema and Television"...

GIs in Germany - The Social, Economic, Cultural, and Political History of the American Military Presence, eb. by Thomas W. Maulucci, Jr and Detlef Junker

The fifteen essays in this volume offer a comprehensive look at the role of American military forces in Germany. The American military forces in the Federal Republic of Germany after WWII played an important role not just in the NATO military alliance but also in German-American relations as a whole. Around twenty-two-million US servicemen and their dependants have been stationed in Germany since WWII, and their presence has contributed to one of the few successful American attempts at democratic nation building in the twentieth century...

William Penn: Früchte der Einsamkeit. Reflexionen und Maximen über die Kunst der Lebensführung, ed. by Jürgen Overhoff

Penn, der weltkluge Visionär: Maximen für ein glückliches Leben

In kühnen, bilderreichen und eingängigen Wendungen verhandelt er zeitlose Themen wie Freundschaft, Ehe, Erziehung, Regeln für das gute Gespräch, Witz und ein gelingendes Dasein. Die Wiederentdeckung eines Klassikers...

The lecture series explores how popular forms of drama have been—and can be—used as powerful tools for teaching the complicated and entangled histories of Germany and the United States. German and American Educators, historians, and theater professionals will discuss an array of German and American productions that depict and teach histories that include the American Revolution, chattel slavery, the Holocaust, and postwar Germany...

William Penn: Früchte der Einsamkeit. Reflexionen und Maximen über die Kunst der Lebensführung, ed. by Jürgen Overhoff

Penn, der weltkluge Visionär: Maximen für ein glückliches Leben

In kühnen, bilderreichen und eingängigen Wendungen verhandelt er zeitlose Themen wie Freundschaft, Ehe, Erziehung, Regeln für das gute Gespräch, Witz und ein gelingendes Dasein. Die Wiederentdeckung eines Klassikers...

The Society for German-American Studies (SGAS) will hold its 42nd Annual Symposium in Indianapolis, Indiana, 19–21 April 2018. The theme of the program is: "World War I and Its Repercussions for German America: A Centennial Assessment". Professor Dr. Jürgen Overhoff and Nicholas Johnson will take part with the following paper presentations...

American Revolutions - A Continental History, 1750-1804 by Alan Taylor

The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the nation its democratic framework. Alan Taylor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history. The American Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain’s colonies, fueled by local conditions and resistant to control. Emerging from the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, the revolution pivoted on western expansion as well as seaboard resistance to British taxes. When war erupted, Patriot crowds harassed Loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance with their cause. The war exploded in set battles like Saratoga and Yorktown and spread through continuing frontier violence...

The Center for German American Educational History will host a early scholars conference for doctoral students in May 2018. It is a cooperation with doctoral students of the HU Berlin.

The Transatlantic Kindergarten – Education and Women's Movements in Germany and the United States von Ann Taylor Allen

The kindergarten—as institution, as educational philosophy, and as social reform movement—is certainly among the most important contributions of Germany to the world. At first, however, Germany proved an inhospitable environment for this new institution, which was founded by the educator and philosopher Friedrich Fröbel around 1840. After the failure of the 1848 Revolutions, several German governments banned the kindergarten, alleging that it was a hotbed of subversion. German revolutionaries who were forced into exile introduced the kindergarten to America...

Education for Empire: American Schools, Race, and the Paths of Good Citizenship by Clif Stratton

Education for Empire brings together topics in American history often treated separately: schools, race, immigration, and empire building. During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, American imperial ambitions abroad expanded as the country's public school system grew. How did this imperialism affect public education? School officials, teachers, and textbook authors used public education to place children, both native and foreign-born, on multiple uneven paths to citizenship.

William Dieterle und die deutschsprachige Emigration in Hollywood: Antifaschistische Filmarbeit bei Warner Bros. Pictures, 1930-1940 von Larissa Schütze

Nach einer erfolgreichen Karriere im Kulturbetrieb der Weimarer Republik akzeptierte der deutsche Regisseur William Dieterle im Jahre 1930 ein Vertragsangebot der US-Filmgesellschaft Warner Bros. Pictures. Dort gelang ihm der Aufbau eines Netzwerkes deutschsprachiger Künstler, dem Persönlichkeiten wie Max Reinhardt und Fritz Kortner angehörten. Es entstanden außergewöhnliche Filme, die zum Kampf gegen den Nationalsozialismus und zur Repräsentation eines "anderen Deutschland" in der Emigration beitrugen.

Click here for more information about the new online access journal On Education. Journal for Research and Debate. The first issue Civic Education after Trump will be released in March 2018.

Public History: A Textbook of Practice
von Thomas Cauvin

Public History: A Textbook of Practice is a guide to the many challenges historians face while teaching, learning, and practicing public history. Historians can play a dynamic and essential role in contributing to public understanding of the past, and those who work in historic preservation, in museums and archives, in government agencies, as consultants, as oral historians, or who manage crowdsourcing projects need very specific skills...

The Second Generation: Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians
Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, and James J. Sheehan (Eds.)

Herzog Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach: Das Tagebuch der Reise durch Nord-Amerika in den Jahren 1825 und 1826

by Walter Hinderer (Ed.)

Das hier zum ersten Mal vollständig vorliegende umfangreiche Reisetagebuch von Herzog Bernhard, dem vielseitig begabten zweiten Sohn (1792-1862) von Carl August, stellt zweifelsohne eine der perspektivenreichsten, anschaulichsten und ebenso genauen wie spannenden Darstellungen von Nordamerika in den ersten Dekaden des 19. Jahrhunderts dar...

Reise ohne Wiederkehr? Leben im Exil 1933-1945

von Corinna R. Unger

Die Nationalsozialisten zwangen mehrere Hunderttausend Menschen zur Flucht ins Exil. Die meisten mussten ihre Heimat verlassen, weil ihr Leben bedroht war. Andere wählten diesen Weg, weil sie sich nicht mit der NS-Herrschaft arrangieren wollten. Der Entschluss bedeutete häufig, sich von Verwandten und Freunden zu trennen und fast alles zurückzulassen. Die Bedingungen der Ausreise waren kompliziert und die Wartezeit zehrte an den Nerven, während die finanzielle Situation immer schwieriger wurde...

Click here to here the audio podcast episode of the SWR 2 radio channel about Wilhelm von Humboldt celebrating his 250th birthday on June 22, 2017...

The Design of the University German, American, and “World Class”

von Heinz-Dieter Meyer

What is the reason for the American university’s global preeminence? How did the American university succeed where the development of the German university, from which it took so much, stalled? In this closely-argued book, Meyer suggests that the key to the American university’s success is its institutional design of self-government...

Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law

von James Q. Whitman (2017)

Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler's American Model, James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime. Contrary to those who have insisted that there was no meaningful connection between American and German racial repression, Whitman demonstrates that the Nazis took a real, sustained, significant, and revealing interest in American race policies...

Nordamerika aus süddeutscher Perspektive
Die Neue Welt in der gelehrten Kommunikation des 18. Jahrhunderts

von Rainald Becker (2012)

Gab es süddeutsche Amerika-Bilder? Rainald Becker nimmt die (Nord-)Amerika-Wahrnehmungen im Süddeutschland des "langen" 18. Jahrhunderts von 1648 bis 1776 in den Blick. Obwohl hier keine koloniale Basis bestand, spielten sie für das zeitgenössische Bewusstsein eine dominante Rolle. Insbesondere die Kommunikationsmilieus der gelehrten Kultur – Jesuiten und Pietisten, reichsstädtische Eliten und Beamte im Fürstenstaat – befassten sich mit Amerika und verliehen der Neuen Welt eigene Konturen: als Zufluchtsort der Heilsgeschichte, als Szenarium weltpolitischer Konfliktdynamiken oder wissenschaftlicher Umwälzungen.

Der Autor plädiert für eine regionalisierte Betrachtungsweise globalgeschichtlicher Interaktions-, Transfer- und Aneignungsprozesse. Jenseits des Exotentopos im Humanismus, lange vor den Freiheitsutopien der Aufklärung erschließt er so den differenzierten Umgang mit der Neuen Welt im süddeutschen Barock: Westernisierung und Nordamerikanisierung – diese beiden schon im 18. Jahrhundert einsetzenden Grundtendenzen erfassten auch süddeutsche Lebenswelten und brachten im meerfernen backcountry der Atlantischen Welt originelle Deutungsansätze hervor.

Die Arbeit wurde von der Forschungsstiftung Bayerische Geschichte mit dem Heinrich-von-Leveling-Preis für hervorragende Leistungen auf dem Gebiet der Landeshistoriographie ausgezeichnet.

In the summer term of 2017, the Center offers two courses on German-American Educational History...

In the winter term of 2017/18, the Center offers three courses on German-American Educational History...

Schadenfreude, A Love Story - Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations...

by Rebecca Schuman

Sometimes Love Gets Lost in Translation - You know that feeling you get watching the elevator doors slam shut just before your toxic coworker can step in? Or seeing a parking ticket on a Hummer? There’s a word for this mix of malice and joy, and the Germans (of course) invented it. It’s Schadenfreude, deriving pleasure from others’ misfortune. Misfortune happens to be a specialty of Slate columnist Rebecca Schuman—and this is great news for the Germans. For Rebecca adores the Vaterland with the kind of single-minded passion its Volk usually reserve for beer, soccer, and being right all the time...

Fremdes Land Amerika

by Ingo Zamperoni

„Die Auseinandersetzung mit den Vereinigten Staaten zieht sich wie ein roter Faden durch mein Leben ‒ was zu einer jugendlich-naiven Begeisterung für dieses Land führte. Es sollte einige Jahre dauern, bis mein romantisiertes Bild der USA einer realistischeren Betrachtung wich.“

New Perspectives on German-American Educational History. Topics, Trends, Fields of Research

by Jürgen Overhoff und Anne Overbeck (Hgg.)

"The history of education has always been an international enterprise. Within that field, the analysis of the remarkable influences of the educational systems of Germany and the United States of America on one another have played a particularly prominent role

"The history of education has always been an international enterprise. Within that field, the analysis of the remarkable influences of the educational systems of Germany and the United States of America on one another have played a particularly prominent role and have shaped the modern and distinctively Western understanding of education to a considerable degree..." (Link)

Alexander Lawrence Ames is a doctoral candidate in American history and museum studies at the University of Delaware, USA.

Click here for more information...

Carl Schurz: Lebenserinnerungen

mit einem Essay von Uwe Timm
von Daniel Göske (Hg.)

Eine beispiellose Karriere im 19. Jahrhundert: Das bewegte Leben des deutsch-amerikanischen Politikers Carl Schurz. Es ist ein denkbar abenteuerliches Leben, von dem Carl Schurz in seiner Autobiographie berichtet...

Festkultur und Gedächtnis

von Heike Bungert

Deutsche Migranten in den USA feierten viel und gern. In den verschiedenen Festen konstruierten sie eine deutschamerikanische Ethnizität und ein eigenständiges ethnisches Gedächtnis. Die Studie erstellt anhand umfangreicher Archivalien und Zeitungen aus den USA und Deutschland die bislang vollständigste Übersicht über die großen deutsch-amerikanischen Feste – von Sänger-, Turn-, Schützen-, Volks- und Arbeiterfesten über Schiller-Feiern zu regionalen Jubiläen und Deutschen Tagen.

Europeans Engaging the Atlantic: Knowledge and Trade, 1500-1800

von Susanne Lachenicht (Hg.)

Was wussten die Menschen in Europa in der Zeit zwischen 1500 und 1800 über die »fernen Welten« jenseits des Atlantiks? Und wie suchten sie, sich dieses Wissen zunutze zu machen? In der internationalen Forschung zur atlantischen Geschichte haben in den vergangenen Jahren Wissenswelten und Wirtschaftsbeziehungen auch jenseits der Anrainerstaaten dieses Ozeans an Interesse gewonnen. Der Band stellt ausgewählte Arbeiten zu diesen Themen vor; sie werfen ein neues Licht auf die Entstehung und Vernetzung von Märkten und Menschen in der Zeit nach 1492, die man heute oft als Phase der Globalisierung versteht.

The "Call for Papers" of our conference Katholische Aufklärung in Europa und Nordamerika is online now! Applications for panel lectures are invited until 10 December. For more information visit the conference homepage.

In der Arbeitsstelle für Deutsch-Amerikanische Bildungsgeschichte ist zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt eine halbe Stelle (50%) als Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin/Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (w/m) zu besetzen. Hier zur vollständigen Ausschreibung.

This seminar on German-American Educational History is offered in winter 2016/17. (Link)

The Transatlantic World of Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg in the Eighteenth Century

Hermann Wellenreuther, Thomas Müller-Bahlke, A. Gregg Roeber (Eds.)

Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg (1711-1787), born in Einbeck, Lower Saxony, and sent as Lutheran pastor by Gotthilf August Francke, Director of the Hallesche Stiftungen, in 1742 to Pennsylvania, is considered the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in the United States. The essays presented in The Transatlantic World of Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg in the Eighteenth Century analyze the world and achievements of the German pastor.

Transatlantischer Föderalismus: Zur politischen Sprache des Föderalismus im Zeitalter der Revolutionen, 1787-1848

by Juri Auderset, Universität Fribourg

During the era of revolutions, the notion of federalism was renegotiated based on the experience of revolutionary upheaval. In a comparative study of historical transfer, the author shows the ways that the semantics of federalism circulated in transatlantic intellectual networks to be invoked and transformed in relation to conflicts in North America, Germany, France, and Switzerland.

On 20 May 2016, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung dedicated to an article on our exhibit on Westfalian migration to the US...

Mission Sitting Bull: Die Geschichte der katholischen Sioux

Mit diesem Buch betritt Manuel Menrath Neuland und bearbeitet ein bisher fast unbeachtetes Kapitel in der Geschichte der europäischen Eroberung Nordamerikas: die Bekehrung der Sioux. Der Autor nimmt seine Leser mit in die Zeit des »Wilden Westens« und an die Orte eines Geschehens, an das sich die Nachfahren der damaligen Indianer vielfach nur mit Trauer und Bitterkeit erinnern.

This summer, two students from the University of Muenster embarked on a research trip to Indiana. For six weeks, Marius Dirksmeier and Maria Drahmann will bet digging through the holdings of the University Archives of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and talk to professors and other experts about their research projects.

The recent edition of the "Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts" (40/1) has published a conference report on out panel at the 47th meeting of the American Society for Eightennth-Century Studies. Link

An Historical Introduction to American Education

Gerald L. Gutek’s classic volume on the history of American education has been thoroughly revised and updated to provide a twenty-first-century perspective on the development of American educational institutions. Like earlier editions, the well-researched Third Edition employs a topical approach to examine the evolution of key institutions like the common school and the high school, as well as significant movements like progressive education, racial desegregation, and multiculturalism. Primary source readings enhance and reinforce chapter content and feature new writings from Benjamin Rush, Horace Mann, Maria Montessori, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Dewey, and Jane Addams.

The Pursuit of Happiness – 200 Years of Westfalian Migration to the USA

“Life is better here than in Germany”, wrote Peter Horn in 1830 who had emigrated from Germany to Pennsylvania in a letter to his parents. Prosperity, liberty, adventure - those were the hopes that motivated about 300.000 people from Westphalia in the 19. and 20. century to start a new life in the US.

The Center for German American Educational History has been on the road agaon. This time the destination was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the Annual Conference of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Under the title "Catholic Enlightenment, Missionary Work and Education in 18th Century Germany and America" Prof. Dr. Overhoff (convenor and panel chair), Dr. Felicity Jensz and Andreas Oberdorf from Münster presented their newest research.

“Life is better here than in Germany”, wrote Peter Horn in 1830 who had emigrated from Germany to Pennsylvania in a letter to his parents. Prosperity, liberty, adventure - those were the hopes that motivated about 300.000 people from Westphalia in the 19. and 20. century to start a new life in the US. The exhibit “Vom Streben nach Glück - 200 Jahre Auswanderung aus Westfalen nach Amerika” opened on Sunday, April 11th, at the Brickworks Museum in Lage. It sheds light on the reasons to emigrate, follows the migrants on their way across the ocean and tells their life’s stories. More than 100 artifacts tell about the emigrants daily life. Postcards and photographs are put on display as well as personal items and symbols of their economic success.

„Auf denn, Ihr Schwestern!“ Deutschamerikanische Frauenvereine in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1844–1914

Während des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts engagierten sich in Milwaukee ansässige Deutschamerikanerinnen in einer Vielzahl von Vereinen und Organisationen. Sie gründeten Wohltätigkeitsvereine, Schul- und Kindergartenvereine, Gewerkschaftsgruppen, politische Clubs, gesellige Vereinigungen, gegenseitige Unterstützungsvereine, Logen, kirchliche Frauengruppen und an Turnvereine angeschlossene Frauenvereine.

Democratic Education

Who should have the authority to shape the education of citizens in a democracy? This is the central question posed by Amy Gutmann in the first book-length study of the democratic theory of education. The author tackles a wide range of issues, from the democratic case against book banning to the role of teachers' unions in education, as well as the vexed questions of public support for private schools and affirmative action in college admissions.

We Are What We Drink: The Temperance Battle in Minnesota

In We Are What We Drink, Sabine N. Meyer eschews the generalities of other temperance histories to provide a close-grained story about the connections between alcohol consumption and identity in the upper Midwest. Meyer examines the ever-shifting ways that ethnicity, gender, class, religion, and place interacted with each other during the long temperance battle in Minnesota. Her deconstruction of Irish and German ethnic positioning with respect to temperance activism provides a rare interethnic history of the movement. At the same time, she shows how women engaged in temperance work as a way to form public identities and reforges the largely neglected, yet vital link between female temperance and suffrage activism.

We are happy to announce that Andreas Oberdorf - research fellow at the Center for German-American Education History - has been awarded a PhD scholarship offered by the Gerda Henkel Foundation for his research on "Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin (1770-1840): Transatlantic Educational Reforms Between the Poles of Enlightenment and Catholic Piety in Münster and Pennsylvania".

Towards the end of the year, we took a trip to Dortmund. After touring both the Gartenstadt in the Southern part of the city and the city's Nordstadt, known for its diversity and workers' history, we also visited the Christmas market and the famous Christmas tree - the tallest in Europe. Whose abudance of decoration and light reminded us of the US quite a bit. We now want to wish our partners, colleagues and students: Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

Following the successful completion of the jointly organized lecture series on German American Education History conducted at the University of Münster in the summer semester of 2015, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Overhoff (department head) met his American colleagues Prof. Dr. Frank Trommler, Prof. Dr. Simon Richter and Prof. Dr. Bethany Wiggin in Philadelphia between October, 5-12 to discuss future joint projects.

After the CGAEH's trip to Indianapolis in March 2015 we were now very pleased to welcome Ray Haberski, IUPUI-Professor for History and American Studies, in Münster and to further discuss the manifold possibilities of exchange and cooperation.

In March 2015, the Center for Professor Overhoff and his team at the German-American Educational History spent 10 days in the US. Philadelphia, Indianapolis and South Bend were the most important stops of this journey.

Andreas Oberdorf has been awarded a two-week research fellowship at the Joseph Horner Memorial Library by the German Historical Institute and the German Society of Pennsylvania.