Stories & Studies - Letters Home
	German settlers often communicated with family members still in Germany.  Their letters provide readers with a poignant look at the ups and downs of their new lives.
	Books
	News from the land of freedom  By Briefe aus Amerika A selection from the Bochum Immigrant Letter Collection (Ruhr University-Bochum) of approximately 350 letters written by Germans in America, 1820-1920.
	My farm on the Mississippi  By Heinrich Hauser Hauser, a journalist and novelist, who fled Germany in 1939, worked a farm in Perry County, Missouri, with his wife and son, in the years post World War II. He returned to Germany after 1948. Translation of Meine Farm am Mississippi (Berlin, 1950).
	German workers in Chicago  By Hartmut Keil and John B. Jentz Translations of letters, newspaper articles, poetry and fiction are used to illustrate the arrival and reception of working class immigrants from Germany in Chicago, their work and living conditions, neighborhood and social life, culture and literature. Covers from 1850 to World War I.
	Lives and letters of an immigrant family  By Kenneth Kronenberg Letters exchanged between two brothers (later uncle and nephew), one in the American Midwest, the other in Germany, during the mid-19th century. Anton Van Dreveldt and his family lived in St. Louis and the surrounding areas in Illinois and Missouri.
	Hold dear, as always  By Jette Bruns A collection of letters, 1836-1898, written by Henrietta Geisberg Bruns who accompanied her husband to the Westphalia settlement in central Missouri in 1836. Her writing reflects life, culture and events in rural Missouri, Jefferson City and St. Louis.
	I remember you, St. Louis  By Arthur Walter Proetz Most of this book first appeared as a series of articles in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Proetz, born in 1892, remembers growing up in a German-American family in South St. Louis during the 1890s and early 20th century.
	My dad’s St. Louis boyhood  By Marian Wenzel Robert Wenzel’s reminiscences about growing up in a German immigrant’s family during the early years of the 20th century. The story includes his memories of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition – the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Illustrated with family photographs and drawings by the author, Robert Wenzel’s daughter.
	Websites
	German Heritage Collections, Western Historical Manuscript Collection  Personal papers, organizational records, and other materials related to German immigration, and social life and customs, religious practices, family experiences, and other aspects of life in German-American communities in Missouri.
	Books on this list can be borrowed from your library.  St. Louis Public Library cardholders can use the Library's online catalog to find specific locations where these books can be found.

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