Talk at New Ulm, MN—Charismatic 1848ers

Although Germany will always remain our cherished Vaterland, America has been our beloved “Motherland” since 1992. Since that time, we’ve made twenty-three transatlantic trips “commuting” between our German home in Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and our American home in Northfield, Minnesota. In the spirit of German-American friendship, we invite you to enjoy an entertaining and informative sixty-minute video of our talk at Minnesota’s New Ulm Public Library, about 1848ers from Europe in America.

Many of us have dreamed of finding a treasure chest filled with riches. For Dr. Joachim “Yogi” Reppmann (Flensburg, Germany/Northfield, Minnesota), that dream came true. The chest he discovered contained a treasure far more valuable to the immigration historian than precious metals or gems. It held riches of a different kind: yellowed historical documents with red wax seals bearing witness to the yearnings of 1848ers Christian Müller and Hans Reimer Claussen.

Together with his colleague Scott Christiansen (Iowa City), Reppmann has studied these remarkable 160-year-old documents, which have yielded deep insights into the intellectual vitality and resoluteness of an amazing group of immigrants known as the “Forty-eighters.” This immigrant group consisted of a relatively small number of democratic revolutionaries who emigrated from Europe in the late 1840s and early 1850s after fighting unsuccessfully with both pen and sword for liberty, democracy, and national unity.

New York’s Steuben Society recently honored Dr. Reppmann (of Germany’s Stoltenberg Institute for German-American Forty-eighter Studies) for his research on the 1848 movement’s democratic impact in Germany and America. Please, enjoy: ‘Forty-eighters and Friends’