Objekt des Monats
Jedes Objekt in der Sammlung des Deutschen Auswandererhauses erzählt eine ganz persönliche Auswanderungs- oder Einwanderungsgeschichte. In dieser Rubrik stellen wir Ihnen jeden Monat ein anderes Objekt vor – eine Fotografie, ein Dokument oder ein persönliches Erinnerungsstück.
February 2016
New Nonprofit Pennsylvanian Calendar / For the Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1872, / Which is a leap year of 366 days. Lancaster (Printed and published by Johann Bär’s Sons)
Historical Context
German-language calendars have been of great importance to the largest temporary immigration group in the USA from the 18th to the 20th century. The groundbreaking publication is the ‘High-German American Calendar,’ which was printed in 1738 in Germantown near Philadelphia by Christoph Saur. This series appears for nearly 100 years and sometimes reaches print runs of 10,000 copies. Between 1739 and 1847, at least 39 such popular calendar series were printed, 34 of them alone in Pennsylvania, the center of German-language media production in North America.
Calendars and almanacs in the German language provide the immigrant farmers of the 18th century with useful information about day length, solar and lunar positions, record Sunday gospels, court and market days, and name street distances. While moral and religious instruction is another important component of the calendars in the 18th century, entertainment – legends, anecdotes, curiosities, jokes, songs, etc. – and popular medical advice literature increasingly take their place in the 19th century. Like German-language newspapers, the calendars lose their significance in the American book market only gradually with the end of mass emigration from the Empire since the 1890s, then abruptly with the First World War.
Short Biography
Edward Mazurkiewicz was born in 1940 in Reading, Pennsylvania. On his father’s side, his grandparents emigrated from Poland to America at the end of the 19th century; his mother’s ancestors come from Rheinland-Pfalz. Growing up in the USA, at the age of 26, the American officer followed in his ancestors’ footsteps and emigrated – but in the opposite direction. For Edward Mazurkiewicz, it is love that prompts him to leave his job in the Navy and move to Bremerhaven. After a career and family life shaped by migration between the ‘Old’ and ‘New World,’ he now lives with his wife in Bremerhaven.
Significance of the object
The calendars serve as a guide for immigrants in several respects. The practical information they provide may not even play the most important role. More important is probably that immigrants can hold something familiar in their hands amidst the unfamiliar surroundings: The new, foreign land can also be measured by familiar standards, comprehensible through known terms. This experience creates a felt continuity between old and new lives, which helps to preserve one’s identity and maintain it in the face of challenges abroad.
Do You Also Have …
… a story of emigration or immigration in your family that you would like to share with the German Emigration Center together with the related objects and documents for its collection? Then please contact Dr. Tanja Fittkau by phone at +49 471 / 90 22 0 – 0
or by e-mail at: t.fittkau@dah-bremerhaven.de