German Visitors To Get Special UC Welcome During German-American Heritage Month

A group from Frankfurt, Germany will be among the guests attending the first of UC’s lecture series commemorating German-American Heritage Month. The 14 visitors will receive a formal welcome from Honorary German Consul Richard Schade, UC Professor of German Studies, as the lecture series gets underway at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5, in the reading room of the Archives and Rare Books Department, located on the eighth floor of Blegen Library.

The German visitors are from the Education Center, Diocese of Limburg, and among them are translators, students, educators and clergy. Don Heinrich Tolzmann, curator of the University of Cincinnati German-Americana Collection in University Libraries and director of UC’s German-American Studies Program, says he was contacted by the group after they found information on UC’s German-Americana Collection through a Web search. Tolzmann says he will be guiding the group on a tour of the city over the weekend, and has also arranged for tours of area churches.

The German tour group is in the United States from Oct. 1-16 and will visit Cincinnati and Washington, D.C. as they explore religion and politics in the U.S.

The lecture, “German-American Caricature in Cincinnati During the Progressive Era,” will be presented by Kevin Grace, head of Archives and Rare Books.

Grace says the lecture will take guests on a visual exploration of stereotypes of German life in Cincinnati, from the 1870s to World War I. “These images were used by media and in graphic arts as a way of pigeon-holing and dealing with immigrants and ethnic Germans,” Grace says. Grace adds that those stereotypes arose during times of social tension and competition for jobs and services, and touched politics, sports, social customs and war.

Additional UC lectures commemorating German-American Heritage Month will be held on Oct. 12, Oct. 19 and Oct. 26.