Missouri State Archives Conservator, Diane McKinney, with Ilse Hochhalter and her grandson, who is holding their family Christmas tree stand from 1898. The stand survived the bombing of Hamburg during WWII. Photo courtesy of Missouri Humanities.
An NEH Common Heritage grant enabled the Missouri Humanities Council to accelerate its emerging German Heritage Program with a pilot digitization project. The event was held in Hermann, in the heart of the recently designated German Heritage Corridor, a string of heavily German settlements along the Missouri River. The grant enabled the council to acquire the necessary digital equipment, preservation materials, and cataloguing software—items that would not normally fit into the annual budget—to make events like the pilot part of its regular programming.
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Participants brought a variety of family heirlooms and received digital copies of their items and materials to better preserve and share them with loved ones. They were then invited to record stories associated with the objects and images. Translators and material culture experts were on hand to help participants better understand the significance of their items. “We had someone come in with various certificates that they knew were important to their great-grandfather, but they had no idea what they were,” recalls project director Caitlin Yager.
Petra DeWitt assists a participant with identifying and translating his items. Photo courtesy of Missouri Humanities.
Cindy Browne of Deutschheim State Historic Site learns about Laurent Torno’s German shoemaking tools from the 1840s. Photo courtesy of Missouri Humanities.
A majority of the state’s population claims German ancestry. But many Missourians today do not recognize how this German heritage has shaped the state, in part due to the corrosive effects of the two world wars waged against Germany in the early twentieth century. The digitization event helped to restore that heritage in concrete ways. A 98-year-old participant brought in one of the most interesting items: a nineteenth-century aluminum Christmas tree stand that rotates and plays music when cranked. The stand had been given to her grandparents in Hamburg, miraculously survived the city’s bombing during World War II, and was brought to America. One-hundred percent of participants responding to an evaluation survey reported that they felt motivated to continue sharing their heritage and that they would recommend future digitization events to others.
Missouri Humanities will be able to replicate the program throughout the state and in other communities. In addition to the three German heritage digitization events planned for 2019 and a forthcoming digital exhibition created through the grant, the council will be able to use this model with its other four heritage programs.
