The Archives and Rare Books Library has added some new links on our website for Cincinnati German-American places and events.  Have you seen the Sausage Queen at Bockfest?  Have you danced the Chicken Dance at Oktoberfest?  If not, learn more about these German-influenced events in the Cincinnati area.  We’ve also updated other links on ARB’s website for research resources, exhibits, and websites related to our collections.  Take a look and see if there is anything that interests you.  For more information, contact the Archives and Rare Books Library staff directly at 513.556.1959 or archives@ucmail.uc.edu

Some of our regular blog followers may have noticed that both the Archives and Rare Books Library and the Winkler Center are active contributors to the OhioLINK Finding Aid Repository.  This repository was designed to help researchers find special collections, manuscripts, and archival material throughout the state of Ohio.  A total of 60 institutions are currently participating and the repository now holds more than 4000 finding aids.   Researchers can find 330 of the Archives and Rare Books Library’s finding aids on the site.  Although the repository is not yet comprehensive, it does allow researchers to find an important avenue to find collections within the state of Ohio.

What makes this repository unique among the services provided by OhioLINK is that an institution does not have to be a member of OhioLINK to submit their material.  Forty-four of the participants are OhioLINK institutions and the remainder includes public libraries, historical societies, museums, and even schools.  Contributors include large public institutions like Kent State University and the University of Akron, private colleges like Case Western University, community colleges such as Cincinnati State, museums including the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Akron Art Museum, public libraries like Akron-Summit County Public Library, historical societies like the Ohio Historical Society, and special libraries include the Center for the History of Psychology.  Within the finding aid repository researchers can find both large, highly publicized collections and small, more obscure collections in one place.  For example, did you know that the Ohio State University holds an extensive collection on burlesque and exotic dance?  Or you may be interested in knowing that the Marietta College Special Collections holds the papers of Rufus Putnam, founder of Marietta, Ohio and a Revolutionary War soldier.

The OhioLINK EAD Repository also participates in the Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) Project along with 13 other finding aid consortia and over 30 research institutions in the United States, UK, and France.  SNAC seeks to find connections between archival collections throughout the world.  A prototype of the project is now available on the SNAC website.

The OhioLINK EAD Task Force which created the guidelines and standards for the repository and continues to coordinate maintenance with OhioLINK along with providing training and outreach, recently completed their annual report for 2012.  The report highlights new developments, training and presentations offered, and plans for future enhancements.  The 2012 annual report is available here: EAD Task Force Annual Report. You can find past reports on the task force’s website.

Mary Louise Eich

College students are notoriously adventurous and University of Cincinnati students are not immune to the exploratory spirit.  In the Archives and Rare Books Library, we are in the unique situation to learn about and discover student adventures that may have otherwise been forgotten.  An example is the story of Mary Louise Eich and her friend and Delta Zeta sorority sister, Mary Nichols.   Last week, we received a donation of a book entitled, An Odyssey in the Life of Mary Louise Eichwritten by William Neal, the son of Mary Louise Eich.

Mary Nichols

The book tells the story of Mary Louise’s life and the trip she made with Nichols in the summer of 1936 to Nazi Germany.  Both Eich and Nichols spent a month working in Women’s Labor Service camps.  Upon their return they both wrote articles for the Cincinnati Post about their experiences.  Neal’s book provides transcriptions of the articles Eich and Nichols wrote for the Cincinnati Post and is a great addition to our library’s holdings on German-Americana and University of Cincinnati history.

Neal’s book provides few clues as to how Eich and Nichols were able to work in the Women’s Labor Service or Frauenarbeitsdienst.  Nichols does write in her November 4, 1936 article, though, that Eich received permission through the Institute of International Education and asked Nichols to accompany her.  By working in the Women’s Labor Service, Eich and Nichols could get an inside look into the lives of German people.  During the 1930s, Women’s Labor Camps were located outside urban areas and the women learned both domestic and agricultural skills.  The purpose of the camps included occupying the unemployed, providing community benefit from work, promoting the idea of a simple life, and educating young women.  Originally completely voluntary, in March of 1934, six months of service became compulsory for young German women before they could attend college.[i]    Nichols writes of her experience, “My four weeks stay here is both an adventure and an interest in the German slogan, ‘Kraft durch Freude’ (strength through joy).  As an American girl I would learn the purpose of work in a German lager.” (November 4, 1936).

Eich and Nichols were separated and sent to different camps.  Although this must have been difficult on them, it resulted in unique experiences for both young women.  Eich was first sent to Camp Molkenberg (Molkenberg, Germany).  She found the young women there incredibly political and Eich offended them by refusing to salute the Nazi flag.  She writes in her October 27^th article, “I was getting pretty tired of politics in camp.  The songs we sang, the books we read, everything was political.  In the little free time we had the girls talked seriously with me of politics.”  Eich was soon transferred to Königswalde in Neumark, where she had a more pleasant experience.  The camp leader was very informal, her cohorts were interested in learning American folk songs, and villagers asked about American politics.  Mary Nichols was placed in Camp Sablath at Christianstadt.  She, unlike Eich, did not have a firm grasp of the German language and struggled to communicate.  Nichols describes the difficult work endured at the camps and on the surrounding farms, a long bicycle trip to Sagan, and the variety of women she was able to meet in the camps including a women of both French and German descent from Geneva.

Eich’s articles go into more depth on political issues than Nichols.  She explains that on the surface, all the people seemed to support Hitler, but that as she got to know people better, she learned otherwise.  She writes, “There is a strong undercurrent of unrest in Berlin.  We were told that underground organizations are still working to overthrow the government.”  Yet, she also found some support for Hitler simply due to the improvement in economic conditions throughout the country.  She writes that some had the following attitude, ‘I used to have my liberty, but no bread.  Now I have bread, but no liberty.  I’d rather have the bread.’  (Nov. 10, 1936)

In the Fall of 1936, Mary Louise returned to school at UC for her senior year.  In 1938, she married William Leonard Neal with whom she had seven children.  She died in March of 1954 from tuberculosis.  Little is known of the life of Mary Nichols after her return from Germany, but maybe one of our readers can provide us some clues.  We do know she graduated from the University of Cincinnati in June of 1936 with a Bachelor’s degree in Household Administration.

An Odyssey in the Life of Mary Louise Eich provides a unique first-hand look at Nazi Germany and supplements other items in the Archives and Rare Books Library from American visitors to Germany during the 1930s and 1940s including the Carl Helmecke papers and the George E.  Armstrong photograph collection.  An Odyssey is currently being cataloged, but will be available in the Archives and Rare Books Library soon.

On Tuesday, November 20, the Archives & Rare Books Library will present the second in its series of lunchtime talks for this academic year.  The book to be presented is George Moerlein’s A Trip Around the World.  Moerlein, the son of Cincinnati beer baron Christian Moerlein, undertook a global journey in 1885 and chronicled his adventures the next year with the publication of this volume.

Printed and designed locally, and heavily illustrated, Moerlein’s travel account was published in both German and English, the better to use as a marketing tool for Cincinnati’s beer-drinking population.  In fact, the end paper of the volume was a color lithograph of the Moerlein Brewery on Elm Street in Over-the-Rhine, a copy of which now decorates the entrance in the Moerlein Lager House brewery and restaurant on Cincinnati’s river bank.

A Trip Around the World is a local example of the grand tours undertaken by young men and women of wealth during America’s Gilded Age.  At a time when the Moerlein brewing enterprise was one of the largest in the United States, the book spoke not only of the importance of the Moerlein business, but also of an attempt by  German-American brewers to increase their social stature.

Please join us on November 20 for a casual noon gathering to learn about this interesting book and the man who penned it.

The original collection has grown to include archival and manuscript material, newspapers, journals, photographs, almanacs, and even cookbooks, and provides information on Germans in both Cincinnati and throughout the Americas.  A recent large addition to the collection was the library and papers of Robert E. Cazden, an expert in the German-American book trade and a former professor at the University of Kentucky.

The German-Americana collection is useful for research in German-American literature, history, and even genealogy.  The collection includes the records of Cincinnati churches including the Third German Protestant Church, St. John’s Unitarian Church, and St. Paul’s German Evangelical Church.  In addition, the publications of the Der Deutsche Pionier-Verein are heavily used by both genealogists and scholars.  The Deutsche Pionier-Verein von Cincinnati was founded in 1868 with the goal of preserving and promoting the history of the German pioneers of Cincinnati.  The society published Der Deutsche Pionier from 1869 until 1887 which contains information on local history, church history, biographies of local German-Americans, essays on German culture, and poetry.

If you are interested in seeing if the German-American collection contains something related to your topic of research, the published material (books, journals, newspapers) are cataloged in UC’s online catalog UCLID.  Be sure to limit your search by location to Archives and Rare Books Library for the most accurate results.  The archival materials are listed on ARB’s website.  Finding aids are also available through the OhioLINK Finding Aid Repository.  If you’re unable to come to the Archives and Rare Books Library, take a look at our online exhibits or our blog posts, to see more images from this collection.

Undated photo from the Third German Protestant Church records