One half of the collection relates to a cooperative project carried out by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the University of Bonn during the 1930s. The purpose of the project was to gather letters written by German immigrants in America to their friends and relatives still living in Germany. This section consists of typed transcriptions and occasional English translations. The other half of the collection does not relate to the Schleben project. It consists of original documents and copies of documents assembled from unknown sources that were written both to and from Germany.
Correspondence between Joseph Schafer of the State Historical Society and Joseph von Scheben, a doctoral student at the University of Bonn, describes the design and goal of the project. Scheben sent the Society carefully copied typewritten transcripts of original letters he was able to collect primarily in the Eifel district of Rhenish Prussia. In Wisconsin, English translations were made (probably by Schafer) for some of the most interesting letters and sent to various American newspapers for publication. The intent of this publication was to reestablish contacts between the descendants of those families. The Scheben letters date from the 1840s to 1933. The areas in the United States from which these letters originated varies, but the most common locations are Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. The Scheben letters have been rearranged alphabetically into two groups: family groups with some Wisconsin connection and family groups with no apparent Wisconsin connection.
While many of the letters are of low “intensity” historically, taken as a whole the collection reveals something of the attitude of the 19th century German immigrant, and relate to descriptions of the voyage to America, advice to emigrants, hardships, problems of settlement, location of employment, difficulties of adaptation, comparative observations of conditions in the new home and the old, prices, laws, taxes, agricultural methods, freedom, wages, economic opportunities for the common man, local history, manners and customs, inheritances, description of country, religious affairs, and the economic plight of German citizens after World War I. It is characteristic of almost all the letters that the subject of polities is hardly mentioned. There are one or two manuscript articles on German emigration to America, and some data on emigration from the Rhenish districts of Adenau and Merzig from approximately the 1830s to about 1870. Especially notable letters include several of Nicholas Huetter written from Kenosha, Wisconsin and dating from about 1859; one long 1886 letter of William Ihne from Medford, Wisconsin in regard to land speculation and business affairs; one about the Chicago fire of 1871; and a long letter descriptive of Milwaukee in 1846.
The remaining boxes are of uncertain provenance, but it is thought they were collected by the Historical Society at the same time as the Scheben project. This section consists of small groups of original manuscript material and copies. Like the Scheben papers, this section is arranged into Wisconsin and non-Wisconsin sections. However, many of these papers, even those with Wisconsin family connections, are not about Wisconsin, but about their relatives still in Germany.
Perhaps the most important group of papers are those of John Konrad Meidenbauer, a wealthy immigrant to New Berlin, Wisconsin, in 1848. These papers consist of original and transcribed correspondence of Meidenbauer with relatives abroad, copies of letters which he wrote for his neighbors, business papers, diaries, and a catalog of his library. On the whole, this material relates to the same subjects as the Scheben transcripts. Of special interest is a letter about spiritualism in Waukesha County in the 1850s; daily weather reports, 1868-1873; two letters of the Rev. John Zwolanek, 1867; an account of an overland trip to California in 1852; and a memorandum book. Most of the papers belong to the decade and a half following 1848. About Rudolph Quintus Schlitte of Iowa County there are letters (primarily to Wisconsin), legal documents, and diaries written in Wisconsin. A combination account and memorandum book in the German script was created by Karl Krumrey, who came to America as a “forty-eighter” and who settled in Sheboygan County. The journal begins in the early 1840s and contains autobiographical notes and explanatory information provided by John N. A. Lacher. Letters from Ernst W. Jaehnig are descriptive of an overland trip by ox team from Washington County, Wisconsin, to California in 1852. Among copies of three letters of Odoardo Gaebler of Milwaukee written in the late 1840's is one written from Vera Cruz, Mexico while Gabler was a soldier in the Mexican War. An additional small collection consists of letters, 1850-1880, written from Eisenach, Germany to Louis Martini of Springfield Corners, Dane County. These letters are personal in nature but valuable for the information contained concerning the European background of a German-American immigrant family. Also there is data on some early German settlers in the community of Brighton, Kenosha County; an address to Taylor County pioneers about organizing a German school [circa 1890]; and several photostats dated from the 1840's concerning the old Lutheran Church of Ozaukee County.
Among the papers without Wisconsin connections are seven letters written from California in 1866-1867 by Bernhard Goldschmidt, Jewish merchant; and copies of letters of the John Niccolas Fouhs family of Baton Rouge. There is also a speech by Louis V. Bennett on German influences in the far West and words for several Eifel district songs.
