Missouri Germans Consortium

There’s something about a fresh New Year, and the opportunity to tackle new ideas and projects and take a fresh look at some old ones.  I believe it is a good thing that it comes in the middle (sort of) winter, giving us a chance to hunker down in a good book, or dig out those family pictures, or just pick up on some projects we were doing before the holidays came along.

Last fall the Sommer-Republik visited Missouri, and with the MO-Germans Consortium hosted a really great tour of the sites of some of the early German figures in Missouri’s history. We visited the site of Gottfried Duden’s farm that he purchased, and the farm of Jacob Haun where he lived in 1824 and 1825, where he wrote his famous “Report on a Journey to the Western States of North America” that brought so many to the United States. We also visited the farm of that famous freethinker and viticulturist, journalist and statesman, Friedrich Muench.  It was all an opportunity to experience the arrival of the Giessen Emigration Society in America in 1834, and to learn more about that fateful voyage and the lives of those 500 members.

For those of you in the St. Louis area, we thought you might be interested in the talk Dorris Keeven-Franke will be presenting at 11:00 am on Sunday, January 22, 2012 at the St. Louis Ethical Society on German Freethought Communities. The program is open to the public, and everyone welcome.