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European Culture, Kindergarten
and Roebling's Brooklyn Bridge
Visitors to Thuringia admire bygone European
cultural centers like Weimar, home to Germany's best known poets Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. The City of Erfurt is where
Martin Luther's monastery is located and the Wartburg Fortress near Eisenach
is where Luther found shelter after being excommunicated. There are, of
course, many other personalities that have contributed to the making of
Thuringia. Many of those names are not common household terms, but their
influence on American history and culture are substantial, none-the-less.
Friedrich Froebel of Oberweißenbach founded
the first kindergarten in Marienthal (today Bad Liebenstein) in 1840. His
pedagogical theory and concept was introduced to America by Margarete Meyer,
the wife of Carl Schurz, when she formed a kindergarten in Watertown, Wisconsin
in 1855. An even earliear attempt was made by Caroline Louisa Frankenberg
in Columbus, Ohio in 1838.
The list of visionary American engineers would
not be complete without August Roebling. His emigration is documented in
his "Diary of My Journey from Muehlhausen in Thuringia via Bremen to the
United States in the Year 1831, Written for My Friends". Legend says that
a small suspension bridge that spanned the Pegnitz River in the Bavarian
town of Bamberg served him as a model for what would later be one of the
world's most famous bridges. His new technique called for wire cables to
be spanned from fixed pillars. This new form of engineering was soon put
to the test in the construction of a bridge that spanned the Monongahela
River near Pittsburgh, and later, into a project on the Ohio River in Cincinnat,
before his dream of linking the island of Manhattan and the borough of
Brooklyn began. Roebling did not live to see the completion of the Brooklyn
Bridge. He died in 1869.
The Thuringian ton of Rudolstadt was home to
the "Deutsche Auswandererzeitung", which from 1846 to 1871, happend to
be the leading magazine that supplied special information for prospective
emigrants. A previously published column entitled "Auswanderer -
ABC" was orginally released in 1853. Visitors may view the text in its
original German version, by going to the following site: www.routes.de
(see: Auswanderer ABC). Today, Rudolstadt houses an important archive for
researchers interested in genealogy studies.
Research and Travel offers:
Guided tours in Germany
Research services for your roots in Germany
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Johann Augustus Roebling, born 1806 in Mühlhausen/Thuringia,
died 1869 in New York.
Brooklyn Bridge
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