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The work of German Heritage in Letters depends on the help of contributors, archivists, citizen scholars, and other professionals. Here are a few snapshots of the people we have to thank for their help along the way. Our deepest thanks to our community of supporters! (See captions below.) |
On this page we are sharing our complete list of news items since German Heritage in Letters was launched in March 2019. Click a link below to read more about the story behind each news excerpt provided.
• Saarbrücken and Otterberg, July 14, 2021 • Sometimes, the citizen scholars who volunteer their time to German Heritage in Letters truly exceed our expectations and conduct their own research to shed light on the people and places mentioned in the letters they are studying. Two members of the … Read More
• Homburg and Saarbrücken, Saarland, June 22, 2021 • The German Heritage in Letters project depends on the assistance of citizen scholars, particularly the family historians who share the materials they’ve preserved with us and the transcribers who use our online interface to transcribe letters … Read More
• Washington, D.C., June 1, 2021 • We are excited to share the news that our genealogy book contest is back! Thanks to sponsorship from Wunderbar Together we are once again offering people who contribute their letter collections to German Heritage in Letters a chance to win a package of books … Read More
• Washington, May 18, 2021 • The German Historical Institute was honored to receive one of three “SLAM! Idea Showcase” prizes awarded by the National Genealogical Society to projects which are innovative models for family history research. The institute received the award for German Heritage in … Read More
• Washington, D.C., April 29, 2021 • On May 18, German Heritage in Letters will be one of the projects joining in the National Genealogical Society’s “SLAM! Idea Showcase,” an opportunity for libraries, archives, and other institutions to share how they are helping people learn about and share … Read More
• Washington, D.C., February 19, 2021 • Historian Uta Dorothea Sauer has spent the past year working on one of our largest collections—the Crede Family Papers, shared with German Heritage in Letters by the State Historical Society of Missouri. Originally, she began her affiliation with … Read More
• Washington, D.C., December 16, 2020 • Shortly after Jay Silverberg began researching his family history ten years ago, he learned there was a collection of letters written to his immigrant relatives stored at a university library only seventy miles from the town where he grew up. This … Read More
• Asheville, N.C., November 10, 2020 • This fall, with support from Wunderbar Together, the German Heritage in Letters project has benefited from the help of Dr. Stefan Israel as our transcription coordinator. He’s a co-founder of “Unlock Your History” (www.unlockyourhistory.com), a firm which … Read More
• Washington, October 15, 2020 • As part of our hunt for more collections of German-American letters, we’re excited to announce that we are starting a contest to collect more letters and we're offering a group of genealogy books as the prize! We look forward to learning about additional … Read More
• Philadelphia, September 16, 2020 • One goal of German Heritage in Letters’s digital orientation is to make primary sources available in new ways to citizen scholars and academic researchers. Another goal is to bring scattered sources together by taking advantage of the unique features of a … Read More
• Washington, September 1, 2020 • Project manager Atiba Pertilla will be sharing German Heritage in Letters in “From Family Research to Digital History,” an online Zoom presentation sponsored by the German Society of Pennsylvania on Thursday, October 15, 2020, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The … Read More
• Washington, August 19, 2020 • Our new Letter of the Month feature, which we're introducing today, highlights a particular letter from the collections that make up German Heritage in Letters. Our goal is both to share the individual family stories found in our letters and provide the … Read More
• Washington, August 11, 2020 • We have added another transcription challenge to our website: "Who Was Friedrich Wilhelm Hess?" In this challenge, we're inviting volunteer transcribers to help us transcribe letters sent to doctor and author Friedrich Wilhelm Hess by his family. In the 1850s, … Read More
• Washington, July 29, 2020 • This week we are excited to share a new exhibit based on one of our collections of historic correspondence. “Invitation to Indiana: John Weinhardt's Story” begins in 1923, when a fifteen-year-old then known as Hans Weinhardt, from the small town of Schwabach, in … Read More
• Washington, July 15, 2020 • We are incredibly pleased and honored to share that German Heritage in Letters has been chosen as one of the projects to receive support from Wunderbar Together USA 2020! We look forward to continuing our cooperation with families and institutions throughout the … Read More
• Washington, July 7, 2020 • Today we added a new section to the website: Transcription Challenges! This new feature will offer our volunteer transcribers the opportunity to work with particular sets of correspondence in the German Heritage in Letters collection. Each challenge will focus on a … Read More
• Bochum, June 16, 2020 • Our project relies on the contributions of experts from a variety of communities—from families who share their letters and their genealogical research with us to archivists and librarians at historical institutions who provide resources from their collections to … Read More
• Philadelphia, March 31, 2020 • Since fall 2019, our friends at the Joseph M. Horner Memorial Library of the German Society of Pennsylvania have been gathering almost weekly to puzzle through letters in our collections and transcribe them from Kurrentschrift using our Scripto platform. They’ve … Read More
• Washington, December 15, 2019 • The December 2019/January 2020 issue ofGerman Lifemagazine includes a feature by James M. Beidler, an expert in German-American genealogy, that shares the German Heritage in Letters project with readers. For a short preview of the article, click … Read More
• St. Louis, November 19, 2019 • We had a wonderful turnout for our St. Louis Digitization Day! Our event, held in cooperation with the St. Louis County Public Library and hosted by the St. Louis Genealogical Society, provided an opportunity for us to learn more about the important historic … Read More
• Washington, October 10, 2019 • As part of the German Historical Institute’s fourth annual digital history conference, “Digital Hermeneutics: From Research to Dissemination,” Ursula Lehmkuhl, professor of history at the University of Trier and co-director of Transatlantische Korrespondenzen: … Read More
• Washington, July 9, 2019 • Project manager Atiba Pertilla recently spoke with the blog TRAFO, which explores how scholars in the humanities and social sciences are investigating questions relating to transregional research. The interview, titled "German Heritage in Letters: Understanding … Read More
• Washington, July 7, 2019 • The letters shared with German Heritage in Letters include stories of both triumph and adversity. One way of examining these stories more closely is through our new "Snapshot" feature, which takes a look at a particular life through the lens of a long-running series … Read More
• Washington, June 20, 2019 • A new online exhibit on the German Heritage in Letters site provides an innovative look at the history of the German diaspora through the story of cousins Charles Haase and Leopold Haase. Originally from Anhalt, both men emigrated from Germany in early adulthood-- … Read More
• Sacramento, June 16, 2019 • The “German Heritage in Letters” project participated as an exhibitor at the International German Genealogical Partnership (IGGP) conference, held in Sacramento, California, from June 15 to June 16. The conference, which takes place every other year, is one of the … Read More
• Philadelphia, April 27, 2019 • In collaboration with the Joseph P. Horner Library of the German Society of Pennsylvania, this “Digitization Day” event invited members of the public in the Philadelphia area to bring historic correspondence for digitization and inclusion in the “German Heritage … Read More
• Madison, April 13, 2019 • The German Heritage in Letters project was shared in a conference panel on "Making Primary Documents Accessible" that was part of the 43rd Annual Society for German American Studies Symposium in Madison, Wisconsin. Visit our complete news archive
• Washington, April 9, 2019 • A new video produced by the German Heritage in Letters project explores the importance of our work to find, collect, and share the historic correspondence sent and received by German immigrants in the United States. The video tells the story of Charles Haase, who … Read More
• Washington, March 14, 2019 • The German Heritage in Letters project was previewed in an article by Washington correspondent Daniel Sturm published in the German newspaper Die Welt. To read the full article, click here. Visit our complete news archive
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Captions: top row of photographs, left to right: Kurrentschrift transcriber Katherine Schober explains the text of a historic letter at our St. Louis Digitization Day; John G. Weinhardt with the collection of family letters he has translated and shared with the project; Heike Friedman, program officer at the GHI Pacific Research Office, discussing German Heritage in Letters at the International German Genealogical Project conference in Sacramento; staff and participants in the Joseph M. Horner Library's transcription group.Bottom row of photographs, left to right: William Weinhardt shares a family photograph from the 1940s with his wife, Sandra; Horner Library archivist Maria Sturm examines a letter from the library's Klee Papers collection; citizen scholar Sonja Thiele, who in addition to being one of our most active volunteer transcribers is an avid rider. |