Klicktipp: Auswandern nach Amerika um 1910: Galt der „amerikanische Traum“ auch für Dienstmädchen? (Publikation im Open-Access)

Andrew S. Bergerson, Li Gerhalter and Thorsten Logge (Eds.): From Langenbrück to Kansas City. The Kiefer-Scholz Family, Hamburg 2021.

Kennen Sie schon Thekla Scholz? Sie arbeitete als Dienstmädchen und war 23 Jahre alt, als sie 1911 von Schlesien aus in die USA migrierte. Ihre Korrespondenzen sind die Grundlage einer neuen Open Access Publikation (Link).

Das Buch ist das Ergebnis einer transnational organisierten Lehrveranstaltung im Sommersemester 2020, an der die fünf Universitäten beteiligt waren: Missouri-Kansas City und Missouri-St. Louis (LV-Leiter: Andrew Bergerson), Wien (Li Gerhalter), Hamburg (Thorsten Logge) und Wroclawski (Joanna Wojdon).

Transatlantische Zusammenarbeit

Die Kapitel wurden von den Studierenden der verschiedenen Universitäten in international und interdisziplinär zusammengesetzen Arbeitsgruppen geschrieben. Sie behandeln folgende Themen:

  • Thekla E Scholz as a young German migrant women in the USA around 1910: What does the „American dream“ mean to whom?
  • Sustaining relationships via letters and postcards after migration in the 1920s
  • Maintaining and adapting German culture to post-WWI America: Language, music, and eating habits
  • The supply situation in Silesia after World War I: How world history can change the position of young migrant women within their personal environment
  • Migration and transatlantic catholicism: The Scholz sisters as actors in catholic traditions in the US – and as a missionary in Africa
  • A photo journal of Langenbrück (today Moszczanka) in 2020/2021

Kurzbeschreibung

In 1911, Thekla E. Scholz migrated at the age of 23 from her rural village in Upper Silesia to work as a maid in the United States. She and her husband Robert J. Kiefer, an itinerate cabinet maker and musician, settled in Kansas City after he served in the German Army during the First World War. Thanks to Thekla Scholz’s lifelong habit of preserving holy cards, letters, photographs, and postcards, scholars can study her migration and subsequent life in Missouri as well as the ongoing challenges faced by her family and friends in both countries.

In 2020, the Robert J. Kiefer and Thekla E. Scholz Collection became the primary focus of a collaborative international online research seminar and project involving four faculty members and more than thirty graduate students in art history, ethnography, history, and public history from the Universities of Hamburg, Vienna, Wroclaw, Missouri-Kansas City and -St. Louis. German Migration to Missouri 2.0 consists of student-authored microhistories focusing on this one German-American family. It offers rare glimpses into the experience of German-American migration and acculturation through the lens of a fascinating working-class woman.

Vorstellung von dem Projekt

Das Projekt wurde bei der Missouri Conference on History 2021 vorgestellt (Link). Titel des Panels war „The Kiefer-Scholz Family from Silesia to Kansas City, 1890 to the Present: a transatlantic collaborative, online, student research project“.

Chair war Donna Gabaccia aus Toronto, die Vortragenden waren Alexandra Eleonore Impris und Li Gerhalter aus Wien sowie Kathleen Foster und Andrew Stuart Bergerson aus Kansas City.