ROOTS & BRANCHES

Correspondence between average people is one of the backbones of social history, but it’s often the case that such letters are not preserved or stay in private hands and not available for researchers.

At least as far as “Second Wave” German immigrants are concerned, there’s a great movement afoot called “German Heritage in Letters,” which is a project of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.

The institute is an internationally recognized center for advanced study that serves as a transatlantic bridge connecting American and European scholars and seeks to make their research accessible  to decision-makers in the public and private sectors as well as to a general audience.

To help give some incentive for the sharing of collections, the letters project (under the sponsorship of Wunderbar Together USA 2020 (www.wunderbartogether.org), an initiative funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and supported by the Goethe-Institut to celebrate the ties between Germany and the United States) is holding a genealogy book contest.

Here’s where I have to give my conflict of interest statement: My Family Tree Historical Atlas of Germany is one of the prizes, along with “ubertranslator” Katherine Schober’s The Magic of German Church Records and Tips and Tricks of Deciphering German Handwriting.

People who are interested in sharing a collection of letters with the project, are asked to give some information about their collections and be entered to win the above books. Plus, the larger the collection, the more opportunities people will have to win.

To enter the book contest, you send an email to contest@germanletters.org with the following information: Your name; the number of letters in your collection; any relevant family/personal names in the letters; and any available information about the origin(s) and destination(s) of your collection.

According to Atiba Pertilla, a research associate with the institute, the number of letters in your collection will determine how many entries it receives. “We’ll draw three entries at random and each winner will receive signed copies of three books,” Pertilla said. There is a first-round deadline for entries on Oct. 31, with two more monthly drawings anticipated.

More information is available on the project’s website at the URL, https://germanletters.org/news/contest

The project is particularly interested in hearing from people who own collections of letters sent and received by German immigrants in the United States from 1800 to 1920.

The letters project team works in close cooperation with the Max Kade Institute of the University of Wisconsin and the Horner Library of the German Society of Pennsylvania, which are serving as repositories for physical letters donated to the collection, as well as the Leo Baeck Institute, and the Auswandererbriefe aus Nordamerika project in Germany.