Vehicle registration plate, Illinois, 1963
Rita Bendler is born in 1957 as the only child of Ursula and Günter Matschke in Berlin. Her parents travel a lot and enjoy it. However, the developments in Germany increasingly trouble them. The demand for her father Günter, a toolmaker, is poor. In 1961, the construction of the Berlin Wall begins, dividing their hometown. In 1962, they decide to emigrate to the USA. A sister of mother Ursula had successfully done this several years earlier and promises support. The Matschke family travels from Bremerhaven to New York in 1962 on the ship ‘Bremen’, and then continues by train to Chicago. For four-year-old Rita, everything is exciting; she quickly adapts in America and makes new friends in kindergarten. Mother Ursula, however, finds it difficult to get a job at first since she speaks little English. The job as a saleswoman that she eventually accepts does not fulfill her. Therefore, she gets involved with the German club ‘Berliner Bären’ in her free time. She edits the club’s newspaper, organizes festivals and events, and meets new acquaintances – yet she feels uncomfortable in America. When her father gets lung cancer in Germany, the family returns in 1966. For nine-year-old Rita, this is a significant decision: she has to leave her friends in Chicago and struggles to adapt in the small village near Braunschweig where her parents move with her. After school, she studies art history in Göttingen, where she meets her husband Thilo, who also lived in the USA for a while. Today, Rita and her husband travel ‘between worlds’ – heartfelt connections pull the couple back to the USA every six months. The car license plate from Illinois is an everyday object from 1963. It belonged to the family’s first own car in the USA, a blue VW Beetle, which Rita’s parents were proud of, and it serves as a childhood memory of a country to which she still feels connected today.
Notation, 1965
The ‘Berliner Bären’ are a German association in Chicago, similar to many that have existed and still exist in the USA. The heyday of this association, run by German immigrants, was undoubtedly the 19th century. These associations provide newcomers with a social network – serving as a job market, marriage broker, and information hub, as well as a retreat from the American workforce. German is not only spoken in the association – they also cherish German songs. The singing clubs, established after the model of their homeland, soon spread throughout America. By the mid-19th century, there are so many that in the 1850s, two umbrella organizations are created: in the West, the ‘North American Singing Federation,’ and in the East, the ‘General German Singing Federation of North America.’ Their main task is to organize the ‘Sängerfeste,’ multi-day competitions with a festive character that take place at initially annual, later irregular intervals in various cities across the country. Both classical choral music and folk songs, dances, and marches are performed.
