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good morning everyone my name is caitlin yeager i'm the director of heritage programs for missouri humanities our mission is to enrich lives and strengthen communities by connecting missourians with the people places and ideas that shape our society thank you so much for joining us today for chapter one of explore missouri's german heritage an eight-part program series that delves into each chapter of the book of the same title by w arthur mirhoff the series will continue every second thursday of the month at 10 a.m from now through april the book is available for purchase i'll be posting the link to buy the book in the chat box on zoom and in the comments on a facebook live video they're 25 each and all proceeds will help us continue to bring free public programs such as these to missourians whether you're joining us through zoom or watching on facebook live we invite you to interact with us throughout the program if you're on facebook feel free to comment to let us know you're watching or to ask questions for us to consider if you're on zoom feel free to submit questions throughout the program using the chat feature or the q a feature and will try to answer as many as possible if you enjoy our program today and are interested in seeing more from missouri humanities please check us out on facebook or on our website for the most up-to-date information about our events we also have a membership program where benefits include free books discounted tickets to special programs and access to members only events to become a member visit mo humanities dot org and click memberships under the donate tab after our program today i'll be sending everyone an email with a link to our program survey i would really appreciate it if you could all take the time to let us know what you thought of the presentation these surveys are really important as we continue to bring public programming to missourians and work toward more thoughtful informed and civil society now without further ado i'd like to turn this over to my co-host for this eight part program uh the author of the publication dr arthur merha an introduction from me couldn't possibly do him justice so i will let him tell you a bit about his background what led him to work with us on many of our heritage programs and his writing of the book before we dive into some discussion with arthur and with all of you so arthur i will let you take it from here go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and your background um both with your career and with missouri humanities thank you very much caitlin it's a pleasure and it's an honor to be involved here with missouri humanities and working again with you um kaylin and i have been road warriors for missouri humanities for some time now working with communities throughout the state on cultural heritage uh interpretation so what my involvement with the german heritage corridor and with the explore missouri's german heritage uh publication i don't call it a book and you know i'll explain why in just uh a little bit but a little bit of background is that uh i started out as an educator my bachelor's degree is in um education actually bs and education from concordia college in nebraska taught in detroit in the center city for a while and then worked and went to st louis returned my my hometown of saint louis and obtained a master's degree in urban affairs from washington university in saint louis in the mid 70s and worked in planning design historic preservation for about a decade and then back in the mid 80s uh went to saint louis university where i obtained a doctorate in american studies some people call it american culture studies with an emphasis in these in material culture in what objects the built environment reveal about our culture so that's a little bit of my background i've written three books four if you count this one i'm i'm still hedging my bets on that but uh um one one bit of information when i graduated from st louis university i applied for a position in uh chubigan um in what was then west germany to teach american culture studies and i was one of the finalists and i was invited to guest lecture at the university of cuban about missouri well missouri life if you will and i focused upon uh the missouri what's now called the missouri german heritage corridor some people call it deutsche or the missouri rhineland so i've had an interest in this for a long time and so there's both a scholarly background and also an applied interest in place making and uh i've worked as a museum educator at the museum of voyager expansion which most of you know as the gateway arch but it's really more than that and then for 10 years i worked as the academic coordinator for the museum of art and archaeology at the university of missouri in colombia and that's kind of how i got involved in the missouri humanities german heritage corridor initiative but i'll save that for later and i've had i've had the pleasure of working as i mentioned with katelyn on cultural heritage workshops throughout the state of missouri so i think there's a real affinity between those workshops and what we're doing with the german heritage corridor initiative so let's just say i'm a friend of missouri humanities you definitely are a friend of us um so so you mentioned the german heritage corridor um and that's kind of where i want to start so i'm going to give a little bit of background um to this german heritage corridor that arthur brings up and how that led us to commissioning this book with missouri life um so our current executive executive director steve belko began as executive director in 2015 and he's the one that came up with this idea for um a massive program uh that would draw attention to um in simple terms draw attention to the rich german roots in missouri um and the big question was how to do it uh as as many people know um you know missouri isn't the most german state in the country but it is very german and it's widespread throughout the state it's not just one area one county but it's it's all over the state so um you know how do we how do we interpret or how do we uh commemorate the heritage of such a widespread group of people in the state um and steve's idea was to focus on kind of what i call a guinea pig area of the state um an area that would bring focus to the topic of german heritage and kind of set an example for how we can interpret it throughout the state and not just in this you know guinea pig area um so that guinea pig area became the german heritage corridor and the region that we chose was the missouri river valley um so the picture on your screen is a picture that steve took a very impressive picture in my opinion that steve took um in what we call the german heritage corridor uh back uh several years ago and this is um i don't exactly remember where in the corridor it is but i do know it's along highway 94. you can see the missouri river there in the background the beautiful you know countryside along the missouri river there's a vineyard over there to your left so it's really the most perfect example of the the natural environment the built environment the agriculture of the corridor area um but this picture is also a really great example of why um why germans came to missouri in the first place you know it was scenes like this uh that gottfried duden a german explorer and writer saw when he came to missouri or what was then you know the western states of north america uh when he wrote his book about his journey so he came here he saw that the missouri river valley was um was picturesque was beautiful was a great opportunity area and it happened to look very similar to the rhineland in germany um so this was a kind of a period of not kind of it was very much a period of political religious social upheaval in germany um and when godfrey dude returned and he wrote about this uh people were inspired to to start a new life uh there in the united states and more specifically in this area of what was then the western united states that reminded them of home um so this missouri river valley was kind of an inspiring area and and they came uh slowly at first you know early 18th late 1820s early 1830s um groups started to come over and then as the revolutions in germany continued uh into the 1840s especially the 1848 revolution that you hear about they came by the thousands massive immigrant groups would come here and start to settle the missouri river valley area and again they did settle throughout missouri it was not just the corridor area however the corridor area is heavily concentrated german settlements and continue to be very german towns to this day um so we came up with this idea like i said for a designated corridor um so the screen you see now uh is what has become the corridor so it begins in st louis city and follows the missouri river along 16 counties um north and south from the missouri river all the way to lafayette county in the west um the blue dots that you see represent um several of the of the german communities that were founded um in missouri along the corridor area and a few of the ones that are labeled are just some of the the major ones that that we tend to do some programming about you see herman on there obviously herman is something that is an area that people tend to think of when they think of german missouri because herman makes their priority to to really capitalize on their german cultural heritage but smaller places like piers dutzow that's now being one of the first german settlements in missouri um arrowrock another smaller community um that you know but has very deep german roots so a lot of these uh communities really uh you know really spend the time and the effort to make sure that they interpret and share this cultural heritage um and that's what we wanted to do we wanted to create something that connected these communities with a common goal and that is to commemorate to celebrate to explore and to educate about not only the history of germans in our state but also how their contributions uh helped our state grow and develop so that would be agriculture business industry um you know it's no no it's no uh mystery that german wine is a major industry uh in missouri especially in this corridor area um so like i said the corridor itself is a great little guinea pig area because it's heavily concentrated but now as you see the corridor in the context of the state of missouri is just a smaller portion but those dots that you see all throughout the state those are all other pockets of german communities german heritage in missouri so it really is widespread um it's not just this area but it has served as a nice starting point for us to gauge interest among the stakeholders in these communities and it was quite humanist unanimous that this was something big and important that we wanted to explore and to plan public programming around um so we started um like i said by gauging interest starting to build an audience that might be interested in these kinds of topics we began some branding initiatives you know creating that corridor um getting people to start using the language of the german heritage corridor you know i i know i work for missouri communities and i work with the german heritage corridor but i find myself saying um you know if i'm in if i'm in washington if i'm in augusta um you know i say things like you know i'm going through the corridor um i'm in the corridor you know so we want to create that language of people being in this area and knowing and saying that they are in the german heritage corridor um that kind of representation that kind of awareness is what we're looking for you even changed your name didn't you yes so my my uh my boss steve uh used to joke when i first came on because my maiden name is very irish um but i was engaged when he when i came on and he would joke when we had these public events about establishing the corridor that my stipulation for being hired was that i had to take on a german name and i happened to be engaged to someone with a german surname so uh so that was a fun little joke that he like to like to tell and unfortunately he's got to think of a new joke now but so we started with some branding like i said creating the corridor uh but also creating a logo that people um could recognize when they see it they know that we're talking about something very specific here and that is um on the screen our german heritage corridor logo um to explain it a bit it's very obvious in that that's the state of missouri uh that is the colors of the german flag and that swirl in the middle there represents the missouri river and how um representative of the missouri river how symbolic the missouri river is of this initiative it's really what connects all of these communities in the corridor um we drafted and passed legislation with the state of missouri so there is it is actually written into law that this is officially according to missouri law the german heritage corridor of missouri that was signed by governor jay nixon in 2016. so it is very much official that this exists which was a really big big boon for us to really start raising some awareness and some funding for programming um like i said we continued to raise awareness coordinating all these efforts that meant by the time we were drafting up our interpretive plan implementing public programming um creating this publication that we had a really good base audience to start with and then expand upon um so kind of where this leads us with uh with this publication is um you know how do we get to the point of wanting to write some sort of book some sort of publication to start us off because this book journey really began before a lot of other official activities started such as public programming such as creating an interpretive plan so um we first started a formed a project team to lead our efforts and help establish our goals with the end game being public programming exhibits digital public history projects oral histories and publications that would help us document explore and commemorate missouri's german heritage uh we then formed a larger scholar team and together these groups attended a series of meetings that helped us devise the components of an interpretive plan an interpretive plan for those of you that might not know kind of serves as your blueprint when you're when you're creating a big program or starting a big project so it basically told us um after the series of meetings and and the the man we hired to help us create this interpretive plan the end product was a document that told us um basically what we should do based on these conversations and how we should do it um it's essentially a 10-year plan that we actually began implementing in 2018 so we are a couple years into this 10-year plan we held a launch event in jefferson city um once the interpretive planning period started once that legislation was signed to help commemorate it and to explain you know what our goals were for this project and then of course what brings us today is the commissioning of this publication um this idea was once again one of steve's our our idea man um and he decided to go to missouri life to help us publish this book missouri life is a very well respected very well known um publication organization in missouri and we knew that they would have the audience and the expertise we needed to really get this book where it needed to be we started some preliminary research to establish the scope and a lot of those meetings that we had with the interpretive plan and grant writing um helped us better define the themes of the book and arthur's participation on that project team and in those meetings um is what solidified him as the author um he expanded on the ideas that surfaced in that process and um fast forward a couple years and here we are so um i'm gonna go ahead and and get some questions to arthur and have him help us start to understand this book um so this this program like i said is a series chapter one of the book is really kind of an introduction so this is our opportunity to talk a little bit about um what to expect as you read the book um kind of what were the foundations for the book and how we came up with the themes um as this book took shape so um again we want your questions and participation as we continue for the rest of this hour um so if you've got a question as they as as arthur is talking as i'm talking please feel free to submit those like i said you can use um the comments section on the facebook live video or if you're on zoom you can use the chat feature and the q a feature and i'll pose those questions as they are relevant to the conversation um and then we'll try and get any uh last lingering questions towards the end of the program maybe in the last 10 minutes or so um so with that said arthur i'm going to start with kind of a big question um and as i mentioned earlier we aren't the most german state in the country there are lots of other states that that claim to be extremely german um there's lots of other ethnicities and cultures that make up the population of missouri so why german heritage talk to us a little bit about why um it's important or why we chose to to do german heritage as a focus the image that you showed in with your slides where you showed the german heritage corridor in relation to the state of missouri i thought was very telling in a very powerful visual as you pointed out missouri doesn't necessarily have the most didn't have the most people of german descent um certainly issues of immigration of assimilation of you know ethnic conflict have been part of the german experience throughout the experience of missouri's germans in the you know the mid 19th century you could look back to german experiences in pennsylvania for example in the northeast earlier and you'll see similar phenomena but it's that image that you showed of the german heritage corridor and its relationship to the state of missouri that i think to me is one of the most compelling images and i think it also resonated with members of the german heritage corridor initiative symposia in the discussions missouri's germans in the 19th century were the sharp edge of the sphere if you look at that missouri was a slave state and germans german immigrants by and large were overwhelmingly anti-slavery and they were very clear that they did not want to give up feudal lords for plantation masters and uh and that was a big theme on this idea of fry heights or freedom um you know you don't come over here and give up what you fought for you know you lost if you will revolution it back in germany but here's your chance to achieve that kind of freedom to start over if you will and to then give that up was unacceptable and so they're in the middle of a slave state surrounded missouri has an area called little dixie which is where colombia missouri was located so missouri's germans were not just having to try and and deal with the usual issues involved with if you will assimilation or acculturation or becoming adapting to a new culture they were also in a sense forging a new culture against some fairly serious opposition and in particular the involvement of missouri's germans in the civil war effort in the union army effort uh became critical and so it was a key part of their identity and this conflict if you will certainly in the civil war but again we'll see it later in the first world war this tension between their germanness and uh what was happening in america i think made them a kind of crucible and if you will it was a refiner's fire and it made it it was perhaps even greater conflict than say being german in new york um granted you had a lot of the same issues but you're playing it out on a very different stage and i think that heightened tension anytime that your culture is called into question i think is a is a great way to try and understand your culture anybody who's traveled and tried to explain american culture to visitors or to not visitors you're the visit to other people realizes how difficult that is and how you really have to define what is special about being from missouri being from america um and i think that's what makes missouri's german heritage particularly interesting to me and i think it was kind of a focal point for the symposia of the german heritage corridor initiative as well yeah and i think you bring up some really good points there and that is um you know this idea of of you know this heritage that to me i feel like now that i know more about it it seems obvious that missouri is very german but you know i i i have to say that before i started working here and started working on this project i had no idea of the magnitude of the effects of german immigration to missouri um and i think it's because we see things at face value um you know i knew that herman was like a little german town in missouri i knew that german wine was a big deal um you know i so there were you know very obvious things that you see that should tell you something or make you maybe expand a little bit and see okay well if herman's german then what else is german you know if the german wine industry is such a big deal in missouri what other industries that were german-led were were a big deal in missouri um but then as you kind of look look deeper and you bring up um i think you may be brought up a little bit about um wartime uh and how this this role of germans kind of evolved when it came to ideas of conflict uh the role of germans in missouri during world war ii or not sorry not world war ii during the civil war um but then you see that evolve over time to world war one and world war ii where um you know a few generations earlier uh germans were um you know leading the charge to help fight against um against the confederacy they were big union supporters they fought for the union army um and then all of a sudden they were uh something to be cautious about the german culture was um was to be hidden um you know it was it was very difficult all of a sudden to be german um you know so this this change in just a matter of a couple generations is something else that i think um is very interesting and somewhat unique to to germanness in and not just in missouri but throughout the country and i'm interested in us exploring that more i know that's that's coming deeper into the book but uh but it's it's fascinating and i think that that's another reason why this topic is so important because uh you know i'm not the only person that that you know realizes that you know this german cultural heritage is way more important than i ever thought it was and i i you know i think that's why it's even more important for us to to continue to explore this so people can realize the effect of this people these people on on our state um and then that that kind of leads me to my next question and um you know there's there's lots of themes um throughout the book and uh you know you touch on material culture viticulture food traditions um but place clearly rises above them all as as very important and i know you have a background in um you know talking about place making and the importance of place so to talk about your decision to to focus on the idea of place um as you wrote this book i think you use the phrase cautious when hiding german heritage i thought that's a real understatement but uh that's enough that's another part of the story but obviously um without giving much away i'm interested in place and a focal point of my own academic research and the place making that i've done in community design historic preservation etc but it was actually a discussion i recall from the german heritage court initiated one of the symposia and uh it really revolved around place and basically in this collection of incredible scholars missouri's german heritage we're we're asking that question what's what really is this sense of place that we're always talking about so it it wasn't just my decision it wasn't just a theme that's unique to me although i certainly spent a lot of time and effort trying to understand it but it was that particular symposium discussion that really resonated because it seemed as though all of the previous discussions kind of came together into all right what is special about this this german heritage corridor and uh you know you pointed out enough there's certainly the aspects of german craftsmanship uh music etc lots lots of things lots of ways that one could go language obviously but i think what most people recalled was and again goes back to that spatial relationship that we saw is that there was something about that corridor that region that spatial area that seem to make it different from other parts of missouri missouri depends on where you're from and i also have done enough reading that other scholars who have studied missouri's german as their german our german heritage had pointed that out as well russell gerlach was a geographer at um was it i guess what it used to be southwest missouri state um i hope i'm getting that right but you'd written an excellent article comparing germans in the ozarks to if you will anglo-american culture and how much concern germans had for permanence for continuity for taking care of the land um compared to some of the more wasteful practices he saw there so it shows up in the scholarship as well as well as the conversation that we had among ourselves and because of my own interests as well places is all-encompassing it's multi-valence if you will it comes you can look at it from a lot of different advantages from a lot of different angles you know you can look at the sociology of place you look at architecture um landscape economics factors in so lots of different ways to to cross-section the idea of place but it seemed like a good organizing principle as well for this publication as a way to bring a lot of disparate elements together you know fairly short compact uh publication yeah yeah uh and i think too you know it was i don't want to say an obvious choice but you know the very idea of of the corridor is the fact that it's a place i mean the corridor itself is a regional effort and it's in its inspiration was the missouri river valley so and and the idea of place and place making would be you know capitalizing on why why we chose a place why a place deserves to be um preserved or interpreted or shared or explored um and that ended up being the the very foundation of establishing something like the german heritage corridor um so you know i think you're right on the money there and picking place as such a prominent theme um and we can we apologize in advance to people in concordia and in perry county that we didn't forget you were very much aware of that german heritage um it's just that um for a lot of reasons that the spatial aspect of the corridor uh became important but that's that's certainly not all of missouri's german heritage of course and that's something i try and make abundantly clear too and i actually work very closely with perry county and and doing um similar efforts to to document and uh and explore their german heritage um it's very unique down in perry county um you know there you know someone actually this this brings in a great uh question um kind of a two-part question um about where missouri's german immigrants or war missouri's german immigrants from certain regions in germany are from throughout the country and i think we find that um it's a little bit of both i mean you know a lot of times you find that uh you know places in missouri that were established as german communities were often named for the communities in germany or the areas in germany where they came from um there are several examples of that but i also know that uh in perry county um there's a couple extremely specific and and concentrated groups of german immigrants and german descendants that live there um two off the top of my head i know are boden germans and bavarian germans that are of two very prominent german groups that are represented in perry county um it's also fair to say that they didn't always play well together exactly yes very much so and a lot of that had to do with religion you know some you know a lot of times there was a catholic german group versus a lutheran german group or or otherwise um and and you know that's certainly telling of history not just in german history but uh many other immigrant groups that you know were very much categorized by the religions they practiced or the areas where they came the languages they spoke um you know and it's you know something that we need to make sure is that you know depending on where you came from if you came from a certain german immigrant group a lot of times you were coming from a distinct region in germany that had its own language so you know categorizing them all as german is something we do today but back then you they weren't called german they were called bavarian they were called baden or westphalian or hanoverian so swifts and austrians etc yeah looks looks bored but uh so we should i should apologize at the outset to historians uh for using an anachronism because german or german unification comes later you know 1870 1871 but as you pointed out these were regions these were little dukedoms uh um you know a town like west failure people kind of moved on moss and had help from family members or those who came first in making those kinds of connections and networks so uh it's a complex phenomenon that we have to generalize otherwise we can't talk at all and and kind of the second part of that question at least though related to that question is something that i'm going to definitely direct at you based on your expertise but liz brings up that germany has its own distinctive regions and regional cultures largely due to the fact like you said that unification and this idea of germany as one country came later on in the 19th century and for for hundreds if not thousands of years uh these were individual regions that kind of acted like their own countries and had their own like she said regional cultures um so arthur in your experience has missouri's german um communities have they been more influenced by a particular region or customs more than others any examples of very you know distinctly uh you know cultural icons or cultural practices that we find that are distinct to a certain region well certain my own background of lutheranism shows up in places like perry county or concordia the saxon lutheran immigration was a very important factor for for some communities you can go to a lot of communities like westphalia and the you know venerable catholic church is prominently displayed has pride of place in the landscape so many of the communities have strong catholic roots um in places like st louis for example you know the people in my own neighborhood there was zion lutheran church and then down the block was saint labor as catholic church and even though people call themselves german descent pretty clear on sunday morning where their loyalties really lay but there were also um i think especially in the cities in cities like st louis especially um free thinkers the uh if you will free radicals from the 1848 revolution people like uh carl schwartz um and so that's you know that's an important uh element as well you know to to assume they're all catholic or german that's again that's a mistake a gradation certainly but uh um there were elements you know the german jury was represented uh i mentioned the free thinkers which was an important movement so take your pick i mean they're all out there if you want to explore yes for sure and i i think again it kind of goes back to the question of um you know it depends like you said where where you came from um again perry county is another is again an example of a very specific regions in germany um that that settled there and to this day still maintain a lot of the traditions um of where the you know of the region in germany where their descendants came from or what where their ancestors came from um i think as you get into bigger areas like st louis it becomes a little bit more convoluted because you know st louis being such a major um you know place where people would come and then branch out you know it ended up being more of a melting pot of different um you know regional representation but um you know as you get into some of the smaller communities they were very much a product of the region where they came from in germany um so so another kind of important um something important to consider with this book is um you've used the term several times the you know the importance of remembering the past but when outlining and subsequently writing the book um how do you balance three really important things obviously past present and future so when writing a book such as this that is meant to remember the past um explore the opportunities the sites the the food the regions that we have now but also celebrate and um and look to the bright future of of german cultural heritage missouri how do you balance those three the past the present the future when writing a book like this we do it every day ourselves right so that's what was kind of the model but to begin with there's a wonderful poem by walt whitman he talks about singing my days singing the great achievements of the present but first to sound and ever sound to cry with the old soul the past the past the past the sleepers in the shadows for what is the present after all but a growth out of the past and as you were talking at the very beginning of sort of this surprise you sometimes feel it learning wow i didn't realize you know the roots here i think it's really trying to create what uh literary critic northrop frye called an expanded present that is to like you said balanced past present and the future so in a sense well i didn't try and write a history um if you want to see what the history looks like or here's another approach this is from this is probably the masterwork this is the charles van ravenways uh classic uh arts and architecture of german settlement in missouri and i studied this back in the mid 70s when i was kind of doing historical research and again in the 80s when i was working on my doctorate at st lewis university so there's a lot there already so what what could i do what could i bring to this whole um effort and the idea of trying to balance the uh our heritage what's what gets passed on is basically how i approached it uh what's worth passing on or where can we put our emphasis the genesis of the book quite frankly for me it was when i was working at the museum of art and archaeology as the academic coordinator a very important book came out by neil mcgregor who was the director of the british museum which is a really big place with a lot of artifacts that you know some people said you know should go back to egypt and greece but that's another story but what he tried to do was to write a history of the world or interpretation of the world in 100 objects from the museum that's a pretty formidable task but he did it so well that i began to think wow maybe there's some way to get a handle on missouri's enormous german heritage i can't replicate charles van ravenway's book um nor should i you know i'm that's not my area of expertise so just thinking about you know the sense of place how things fit together and then you know with each topic trying to look at where it came from but always starting with an artifact always starting with some some object just like mcgregor did looking at its roots and asking what is it what did it mean to the person who created it to a his or her audience and then finally a key question in museum studies what does it mean to us today so i think that's how i tried to uh to balance those different elements and if it doesn't help us in the future if it's not you know if it doesn't have survival value especially today maybe okay it's perhaps of antiquarian interest but i'm looking for things that can speak to us today speak to me today and that's you know finally my bottom line was does this interest me does this really resonate with me and if you know if not i couldn't make it resonate to anybody else so uh just trying to find those things that seemed unique seemed compelling had interesting stories or maybe the object itself was adventurous like the beautiful uh zither at uh you know in the washington dc and and uh and then talked to them i talked to the artifacts and they talked back and that's that's how it came out um so we have a couple questions one of them i don't mean to evade and this is sarah's question but um i don't want to get too much into the topics that we're going to explore later on in the book because she brings up a topic that i think you address pretty pretty well which is some german architecture in the corridor and throughout missouri and you give some pretty specific examples on one of them i can bring up just to pique people's interest is the pelster house barn in the house barn is an architectural style that is extremely rare to find these days um and i think the one that we have here in missouri which is the poster house farm is one of i think six it's less than a dozen that exists still in the united states so um so the topic of german architecture um is is something we'll talk about later on in the series so um sarah i hate to not answer your question but i also don't want to spend too much time talking about something that we will get into some detail with later um she definitely or she mentions that her home is of missouri german vernacular style and she's working on getting it on the register so uh so good luck with that um we've done the national register process ourselves uh it's daunting but uh i hope that hope it ends up being worth it for you um i i just want to add my uh support for for sarah good luck with that i worked on a national register nomination back in the mid 70s i know how daunting it can be but how exciting and as you as you read the publication hopefully that uh you'll see that i draw quite heavily upon some national register nominations and uh they're excellent sources of information and to talk about a german style maybe over generalizing again there were distinct regional styles and i think that the uh the house barn is interesting in that regard because it's used by a person of northern german descent but it's really more of a southern german vernacular tradition why um you'd have to ask the noted folklorist howard marshall who wrote a wonderful piece about it but yes the seeing those things in brick and mortar and wrought iron that that's an a real good way to get in touch with sense of place and with that spirit of german craftsmanship i'm going to put out a call here um if if you've got some questions you want us to answer um we've got about 10 minutes left before i'd like to start wrapping this up there are endless topics we could talk about i know that but um this is meant to be a bit of an intro to to the book and some of the overall themes as we um then again delve into each individual chapter over the next uh several months so next month we will start with chapter two uh and uh we'll delve into individual themes um but is there a quiz i should make a quiz that would be fun i don't have one there's a survey that can be a quiz that's certainly uh it's most important quiz of all is the surveys um so so next next year or next year next month um we are we're talking about chapter two which is called marking the spirit of the times and it uh talks about several um sites throughout missouri and i think it'll be a really cool chapter so um make sure to join us next month um and it's the second thursday of each month from now through april at 10 a.m so same time same place um but we have a few questions that are coming in so um could i just say one one thing before we address the questions the title of this intro chapter is roman uh which is a german term kind of a unique german form to a certain extent of the life formation novel and uh bildung was a term used by perhaps coined by the german educator wilhelm von humboldt and he was very interested in education reform and create opportunities for people to continue to develop their character both as individuals and as part of the community and part of the common good and what missouri humanities is doing and i'm not getting paid to say this i'm i'm saying it because that's why i participate is they take that tradition seriously that the building creating our own character are expanding ourselves and hopefully seeing relationships to the common good the common life um that's what these series this series is for and what missouri's humanities does so well so um anyway kudos on that and hopefully people appreciate the uh the opportunity yeah um just a quick this question has a very quick answer which is um the webinar is being recorded uh so someone asked if all sessions will be available to you later um yes so this is uh being recorded but it's also being broadcast live on facebook and uh if you want to view any of these sessions at a later date or share them with anybody who might be interested um you'll just have to go over to our facebook page and it'll be on our videos tab um and it's live and then we'll be uh stored and housed on our facebook page uh for the foreseeable future and so that will be with each uh each part of the series um bob asks uh arthur i'm not aware of this so uh maybe arthur and your and your vast knowledge you will um bob says that there is a german discussion group that meets quarterly and has for many years the casey mid-continent public library genealogy branch um i feel like i'm going to butcher this name so i apologize in advance um it's led by yvette blautova uh and among has many topics um research places in germany and folks in case where folks in casey had ancestors so any knowledge of that it sounds super cool um but i did not know that that existed so that's good to know what is the location again the casey midcontinent public library at the genealogy branch and what what city or town kc kansas city sorry kansas city yeah i'm um i'm not not aware of that uh i i won't i mean i certainly value kansas city but actually i don't travel that much these days well any heads up to anybody on that side of the state um you know feel free to let that up and check it out sounds like certainly a worthy uh group to get involved in if people are interested in expanding i do know that kansas city has a sister city i think theirs is hanover um if i remember correctly so uh you know lots of ways to get involved in german or german history on that side of the state um i think i've got time for one more question for you arthur oh are you aware of any similar german history groups meeting in st louis i know we have a german cultural society um there's a german culture center at umsl um there are several groups we have a german sister city a st louis stuttgart sister cities that does a lot of partnership programs with uh with stuttgart germany um but yes lots of opportunities that i know of in st louis and i just i happen to be from st louis so i i know some of those um but uh arthur you were going to say i was just going to recommend the deutsche bahrain um in hermann missouri and it's affiliated with her friends or auxiliary association for deutsche state historic site um and so i'd encourage comments it's mid mid state if you will and uh it's really the whole mission of georgetown state historic site is to focus on if you will 19th century um german life in missouri and they they publish an um have a publication called their mybaum which publishes some wonderful articles so there are opportunities for scholarly research as well as to affiliate yourself with people like like those you bob described in kansas city or you know you mentioned in saint louis we have a question someone asked uh christa uh we worked with dr anita malencrott who was active in augusta yes anita is a wonderful wonderful woman wonderful scholar um she we did work with her very closely um i was lucky to be there when shawn ross the state historical society's oral historian and i recorded her oral history which happened to be um just within a year of before she died so we were able to record her oral history and that is housed at the state historical society of missouri and she has a wonderful wonderful story amazing life the the ventures she has had um but in addition to that she um was considered the town historian in augusta she was a wealth of knowledge her family had been in the augusta area for for many many generations um so yes we had the privilege to work with her she was part of our um scholar team when we did our interpretive plan um yes she brought some she brought so much passion to missouri's german heritage and uh um you know i could i could tell that she just afraid that we're losing that heritage so um actually there's a section in the essay i did about uh zither about the uh germans german missouri german musical heritage which is a little homage to uh dr malencrott so yes we did and uh we're better for it yes absolutely she uh she's written um several books um she you know if you do a quick google search of her i'm sure you can find her um her uh her publications her work her oral history again um is housed in the state historical society um and is certainly worth a listen she the experiences like i said she's had are unparalleled and once in a lifetime um memories and experiences that she shared with us um so rest in peace anita uh we miss her very very much um she it was a huge huge loss when she died a few years ago um so uh so thank you for for bringing her up and uh letting us share a little bit about her um so uh i i don't see any new questions but i'm gonna um there was a question about what was her name again dr anita malloncroft yes i'll type that out i think that's what the quest question is yes what is her name again dr anita melancrott and i'll type that out for you all um so arthur as we kind of wrap up here um so i would say as we as we end our our kind of introductory uh chapter today and work uh for the next few weeks to put together chapter two and the subsequent chapters um what would you like people to know about the publication the process of writing it etc before we really get into the nitty-gritty of each chapter over the next several months uh what's my time frame uh one minute two minutes you're fine take a couple minutes it's all connected we shakespeare wrote we murdered to dissect we take um take things apart in order to get you know a handle on them but it's all connected and that's really the thrust of or the the emphasis of the publication itself and again um i continue to emphasize that um calling it my book is a misnomer i'm the screenwriter for a great play that's continuing to play itself out quite frankly and as if you look at the publication you'll see that uh wonderful examples from missouri life you know go and explore this or you know you need to try this this food here or um included my field notes if you will what we call dastaka book the daily journal um just to show you kind of what came to mind as i was exploring a particular topic i hope that people will also use it for their own type of book to write down what you think you know what does it mean to you it's going to mean something different i'm sure but anyway comparing and contrasting is what makes it interesting but from the biggest scale if you will the entire landscape of the german heritage corridor down to um cemeteries and festivals and museums i believe there's continuity there so we'll take each part separately and kind of it kind of works by scale if you will but uh you know the past is prologue that what you read later grows out of what came before so it's all connected does that help yes it does everything you say helps arthur so hr talk to my wife we love cheryl um so it is just now 11 o'clock i'm going to go ahead and wrap this up by inviting you all to make sure you join us for chapter 2 marking the spirit of the times and we'll talk about things like there's a lot of sites that are commemorative of german heritage in this chapter and there's target park german cultural society missouri civil war museum walden spring conservation area holocaust museum and learning center among many others so um we'll dive into that on october 8th thursday october 8th at 10 a.m um if you have already been registered for the series you are registered for each um each month so you won't have to re-register and you'll use the same zoom link that we sent you um for the rest of the series so we hope that you join us um please please please fill out our program survey that you'll receive via email here shortly um thank you so much everybody for for joining us today we hope you uh join us uh over the next several months and um it's like a field trip without leaving home exactly and that's perfect because we're not supposed to leave home so again thank you everybody and uh for those of you again i posted the um information to purchase the book in the webinar chat feature so you can scroll up and down and get that if you need to i also posted it in the comments on the facebook video so um if you need it after we exit zoom it'll be on facebook um so again thank you uh i hope everyone has a wonderful day and it looks like we're getting some cooler weather here in missouri over the next week so that's wonderful and i hope you all enjoy the nice weather that's coming up the next upcoming weekend and we will see you all next month arthur thank you thank you and we'll see you soon can i go home now you can go home now bye everybody