SGAS News
Cincinnati, Ohio
May 2001
The Society for German-American Studies held its 25th Annual Symposium in Grand Rapids, Michigan on 3-6 May 2001 at the beautiful new downtown DeVos Center of Grand Valley State University. Dean Mary Seeger and her staff and Prof. Wilhelm Seeger arranged this excellent conference on German-American Studies.
The Gemütliches Beisammensein was, as usual, held on Thursday evening. The Honorable John Logie, Mayor of Grand Rapids
attended the reception. At this get-together members of SGAS meet old friends and make new acquaintances before the beginning of the conference.
On Friday morning Dean Mary Seeger of GVSU opened the conference and introduced the Honorable John Logie and Mayor Logie welcomed the group to Grand Rapids. He is a 4th generation German-American of Grand Rapids and he reminisced on old family history. Don Heinrich Tolzmann, President of the Society for German-American Studies also welcomed the members of SGAS and guests and introduced Dirk Schroeder. Dirk Schroeder, Director of EXPO 2000/Bremen and Bremerhaven, Germany gave the keynote address. His topic was Leitkultur and he proposed that Germany should use the United States model. The country should have a Leitkultur combined with ethnic cultures of inhabitants as for example, in the U.S.: the German-Americans combine an American Leitkultur with the culture of their German heritage.
Following the Keynote address SGAS members presented and heard papers on various topics in three concurrent sessions on Friday morning. After lunch on Friday at the Eberhard Center, the concurrent sessions continued. In the late afternoon members of the Society for Contemporary American Literature in German (SCALAG) read from their poetry and prose. The authors who read were Ingeborg Carsten-Miller, Peter Bickle, Edith Borchardt, Ursula Huelsbergen and Geertje Potash-Suhr. At a concurrent panel discussion the topic was: "Integrating German-American Studies into the University and College Curriculum." The panel included Charles T. Johnson, William D. Keel, La Vern J. Rippley, and Don Heinrich Tolzmann.
Friday evening a Cocktail Welcome Reception was held in the beautiful Meijer Regency Room of the DeVos Center. At the Awards Banquet, which followed the reception, SGAS member Lisa Kahn, best known for her poetry, received the SGAS Outstanding Achievement Award for her contributions to German-American literature. Ilse Hoffmann, National Secretary of the Steuben Society of America, was presented with the SGAS Special Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to German-American affairs in general and German-American Studies in particular. This includes her championing giving Steuben Society awards for students of German at various institutions, including West Point, and most recently having conceived of the idea of the German-American Forum.
Saturday morning sessions focused on history and politics. At lunchtime a trolley picked up the attendees of the conference and took them to the Schnitzelbank Restaurant where they had a wonderful German-American lunch and were entertained by members of the Edelweiss Club of Grand Rapids singing old sailors' songs. 
At the membership meeting following the lunch officers were elected for the next two-year term. Several round-table discussions were held Saturday afternoon on German-American studies, German-American heritage societies, and SGAS publications.
Among the many interesting presentations offered at this year's conference one could mention for example: "Mathias J. Alten (1871-1938): German Immigrant Painter in Grand Rapids" presented by James A. Straub of Grand Rapids. Since there are Mathias Alten paintings in the DeVos Center, a collection of Alten's works could be seen during the conference. The DeVos Center also has hundreds of paintings by other Michigan artists on display.
Jonathan R. White, GVSU presented "American Cuirassiers? : The Indirect Influence of Prussian Cavalry Doctrine on the U.S. Army." Andrea Mehrländer of the Checkpoint Charlie Foundation presented "Between Bremerhaven and Charleston, South Carolina: Ante-bellum German Emigration and Captain Heinrich Wieting (1847-1860)" in which she described the important role Capt. Wietling played in German-American immigration to South Carolina.
On Saturday Lisa Feurzeig of GVSU presented an analysis of the songbook Deutsche Lieder für Jung und Alt, and Wilhelm Seeger presented the history of "The German-Americans of Grand Rapids, Michigan." He showed many illustrations of the immigrant architecture. George F. Wieland of Farmington, Michigan presented a paper on the Swabians of Ann Arbor, which included a comparison of Swabian history of Ann Arbor with significant personality characteristics of Swabians of Germany according to a German survey. The last presentation of the conference was "Was ist eine Schnitzelbank?" by William D. Keel of the University of Kansas in which Keel traced the history of the well-known Schitzelbank song.
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