In his book Beer, Brats and Baseball (Second Edition) author Jim Merkel writes about “The Streets with Two Names” in St. Louis, sharing how Frank Knapstein, a German immigrant had his own name on a block long street just south of Meramec in 1916. He was a contractor and he was building brick homes along the street. Then, World War I came, and suddenly everything German was bad, including street names. To be less offensive, Knapstein Place became Providence Place. Nativism and anti-German hysteria had taken hold on everything Merkel mounted… Read more Name Dropping →
The Missouri History Museum will open an exhibition from Germany, Utopia – Revisiting a German State in America on November 22, 2014, which tells the story of one of the largest and most organized German emigration societies in Missouri’s history. But like the Giessen Society itself, the Utopia exhibit is the story of so much more.
the waves forced their way into the steerage area and in the same instant, as I wanted to stand up, came such a wave as we had not yet seen, and drowned the whole…
Germans first began emigrating to Missouri in groups, and the Giessen Emigration Society was the largest such group ever organized in Germany to come here. Germans have played a huge role in St. Louis’ history, and will be featured in the STL250 event calendar.
After eight years they are bringing together their work and findings to create a world of discovery for people of all ages through video installations, texts, archives, footage, and photographs.
