Swiss in Wisconsin
Swiss in Wisconsin

Author: Frederick Hale

Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society

Published: 2013-03-28

Total Pages: 78

ISBN-13: 087020551X

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As the Föhn blew the first breaths of spring into the Alps in March 1845, two Swiss men embarked on a circuitous voyage that took them from the impoverished canton of Glarus in eastern Switzerland to the hills of southern Wisconsin. Their mission: to select and purchase a tract of land to which the Swiss government could dispatch part of its excess population. With subscriptions from prospective emigrants totaling about $2,600, Nicholas Dürst and Fridolin Streiff ultimately purchased 1,280 acres of timber and prospective farmland in Green County—land fellow immigrants declared “beautiful beyond expectation,” offering “excellent timber, good soil, fine springs, and a stream filled with fish.” Thus began the colony at New Glarus, Wisconsin, perhaps the most distinctively Swiss settlement in the United States. A mere five years later, Wisconsin boasted 1,224 of the nation’s 13,358 Swiss immigrants. In this concise introduction to the state’s Swiss settlers, Frederick Hale traces the catalysts for Swiss emigration, their difficult journeys, and their adjustments to life on Wisconsin soil. Updates for this expanded edition include additional historic photographs and the selected writings of John Luchsinger, who settled at the Swiss colony at New Glarus, in 1856.

Swiss in Greater Milwaukee
Swiss in Greater Milwaukee

Author: Maralyn A. Wellauer-Lenius

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780738583778

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A few men and women, mostly from German-speaking cantons, pioneered this remarkable Swiss community in the mid-1830s. Thousands who followed in their footsteps participated actively in the development of a vibrant new city, branding it with a unique style of efficiency and progressivism. The immigrants and their progeny prospered and distinguished themselves in various fields of science, commerce, art, and industry. They helped launch Charlie Chaplin's career, produced coumarin used in flavorings and perfumes, wrote a popular guide for 19th-century immigrants, and helped shape the nation's banking industry. Among their finest were Milwaukee's first archbishop, a world-renowned surgeon, an elected governor, an influential radical "free-thinker," a kindergarten pioneer, a wine grower, a successful whiskey distiller, and a prolific architect.

Swissness Applied
Swissness Applied

Author: Loui MCINTOSH

Publisher:

Published: 2021-10-11

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9783038602446

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A unique and fascinating transcultural study on the role of imagery and appropriation in architecture and urban planning. Founded by Swiss settlers in 1845, New Glarus in Wisconsin evolved from being a dairy farming and cheese production village to a popular tourist destination. Following a grave economic downturn in the 1960s and 1970s, the community discovered embracing the image of its cultural heritage, particularly traditional architectural details, as a way of survival. Consequently, they began to change their commercial building façades to appear even more Swiss. Since 1999, the town has even regulated the production of new buildings via its building codes to preserve this particular aesthetic evoking the familiar traditional Swiss chalet style. Swissness Applied investigates the transformation of European immigrant towns in the United States, exemplified by New Glarus. It features the results of extensive fieldwork on buildings in the village as well as design projections based on the local building code and evaluates the outcomes through different representation techniques. Expert authors including Courntey Coffman, Kurt Forster, Whitney Moon, Philip Ursprung, and Jesús Vassallo contribute essays that pick up on aspects such as the role of cultural imagery and immigration history in architecture, and on Swissness as a cultural concept in particular.

New Glarus
New Glarus

Author: Kim D. Tschudy

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1467113034

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New Glarus was founded in 1845 by impoverished citizens of Glarus, Switzerland. Much of Europe was in the grips of a severe depression, food was in short supply, and jobs were equally scarce. In response to this crisis, the Swiss government formed the Swiss Emigration Society. The society offered passage to America for anyone who wanted to leave Switzerland. On April 16, 1845, a ship took 193 Swiss to the United States. Four months later, on August 16, these pioneers arrived in what would become New Glarus. The founding of this community might be one of the finest examples of the best of socialism. Each settler received 20 acres of land drawn through a lottery; land could not be exchanged for something better. The oxen teams needed to work the land were communally owned. The settlers looked out for the welfare of all, providing schooling, food, shelter, and health care.

Casper Jaggi
Casper Jaggi

Author: Jerry Apps

Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society

Published: 2008-03-07

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 0870203924

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Have you ever wondered why Swiss cheese has holes? You'll find out in this story about a Swiss cheese maker named Casper Jaggi. Casper Jaggi was only six years old when his father taught him how to make cheese in the Swiss Alps. In 1913, Jaggi left Switzerland in search of new opportunities in the United States. Like many other Swiss, he settled in Green County, Wisconsin, where the rolling hills dotted with grazing cows reminded him of home. Jaggi was one of the many European immigrants who helped establish Wisconsin's reputation for delicious cheese. The artisan cheese makers crafting award-winning cheeses today are continuing this rich tradition in America's Dairyland.

A Common Treasure
A Common Treasure

Author: Duane H. Freitag

Publisher:

Published: 2019-07

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 9781681113173

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Wisconsin's Swiss community of New Glarus is widely known today because of an enterprising brewery located there. Almost lost in that success story is the background saga of the community's beginning - a Wisconsin immigration story like no other. Now New Glarus native Duane H. Freitag reconstructs the dramatic first ten years of what was then a colony of eastern Switzerland's Canton of Glarus. The demanding labor, the heartbreak, and the achievements of that era are told with pathos and pride. The settlement, created to provide a common home and secure economic base for those who felt compelled to leave their alpine homeland, put down strong roots in those first ten years. It still flourishes today and its ties to the Old World remain strong. For the historian, this volume provides a comprehensive chronological account and mentions all of the early Swiss immigrants who built up the settlement, how they arrived in Wisconsin, and their impact on the community and the state. For the pleasure reader, the pioneer life of these Swiss immigrants unfolds in surprising ways.

Heritage on Stage
Heritage on Stage

Author: Steven D. Hoelscher

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13:

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The southwestern Wisconsin town of New Glarus--known internationally for its annual Wilhelm Tell festival, and for decades a favorite cultural destination of tourists and visitors to Wisconsin--comes vividly into focus in Steven D. Hoelscher's many-layered examination of the invention of ethnic place in "America's Little Switzerland." Drawing on sociology, social history, ethnic studies, performance studies, geography, and history, Hoelscher opens up a timely, richly informative and provocative discussion of the ways in which landscape, heritage, and the search for authenticity create identity in a unique ethnic American community. The questions Hoelscher raises about the politics of culture, the role of memory, and the willful manipulation of the past will fascinate historians, geographers, and scholars of stage performance and cultural studies, and are sure to stimulate and challenge all readers interested in Wisconsin history. Both a sensitive portrait of a living community's special identity and a probing exploration of the ways this identity is invented, presented for the public, and sustained, Heritage on Stage is a ground-breaking work and a significant contribution toward the understanding of our nation's perception of itself and its ethnicity.

Sauerkraut, Suspenders, and the Swiss
Sauerkraut, Suspenders, and the Swiss

Author: Duane H. Freitag

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1475907508

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From the first "Cheese Day" in 1874 to the "Great Limburger War" of 1935, author Duane H. Freitag peers into the nooks and crannies of the tumultuous political history of Green County, Wisconsin. In this previously untold story, Freitag pulls back the curtain to uncover how the Swiss immigrants who settled in southern Wisconsin influenced Green County politics from 1845 to 1945. Buffeted by wars, dairy industry economics, murders, epidemics, the temperance movement, and LaFollette progressivism, this immigrant group was heavily involved in each major election, asserting their political will in candidates and through the polls. In addition to exploring the politics of the region, Freitag also discusses what caused shifts in Wisconsin's political winds throughout this period by placing Green County elections against the larger context of political landscape of the United States as a whole. In doing so, he examines the history of America and demonstrates how Swiss immigrants and other Wisconsin cultural groups responded to the events that shaped the nation. From the abolition of slavery to prohibition, the Great Depression, and concerns about America's involvement in two world wars, Sauerkraut, Suspenders, and the Swiss demonstrates the remarkable story of Wisconsin-and American-politics.