"You cannot imagine what it is like in America."

The United States. The land of unimagined opportunities. A place of longing for many Germans for decades. This book describes why people from the Bavarian Forest emigrated to the United States from 1841 to 1931. Diverse documents from German and American archives, historical records, and maps, assembled over many years, are augmented by a wealth of authentic, fascinating letters, photographs, and diary entries from the emigrating families.



Vivid conversations and meetings with present-day descendants bring the story full circle!



You will experience

· the hard life in the Bavarian Forest villages

· the hopeful letters from America

· the attempts of the authorities to thwart emigration plans

· the arduous and often painful preparations for the trip

· the adventure-filled, transatlantic crossing 'tween deck

· the critical examinations on Ellis Island and

· the difficult new beginning in the New World



This book forms the basis of the exhibits in the "Born in Schiefweg" Emigration Museum in the Bavarian Forest. It also found its way into the permanent exhibition of the German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven, Germany.



Friedemann Fegert

was born in 1946 in Pforzheim, Germany. He earned his Diplom in German philology and geography and his Ph.D. in geography from the University of Heidelberg. Dr. Fegert taught German, Literature, and Geography at the Carl-Engler High School in Karlsruhe for over 30 years and was the school's advisor for information technology. His research interests include communication technology and media pedagogy, museum pedagogy, and pedagogy in the areas of German literature and geography. Dr. Fegert has published numerous research articles on the historical and geographical aspects of settlement in the Bavarian Forest. He worked on projects in the Finsterau/Bavarian Forest Open-air Museum, the traveling exhibition "Goodbye Bayern – Grüß Gott America" of the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte (House of Bavarian History), and the German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven, Germany. For the Born in Schiefweg Museum, he described for the first time the processes that characterized emigration from Bavaria to North America and developed interactive displays to enhance the visitor experience. He contributed two exhibits to the 16th Landshut Literature Days: one on emigration from the Bavarian Forest to America and one on the life of poet Emerenz Meier in Chicago. Recently, Dr. Fegert published a culturally and historically important book about resist block printing and indigo dyeing in Bavaria. By analyzing historical documents, photographs, and cloth patterns, the author chronicles the 375-year Fromholzer dynasty of blueprint artisans. To preserve the knowledge about this art form, Dr. Fegert recorded numerous conversations with 93-year-old Josef Fromholzer, the only living master of this craft in Southern Germany. In addition, the book describes the fates of six of Fromholzer's ancestors who emigrated to the United States. On a related project, Dr. Fegert created a comprehensive exhibit called "The Blue Marvel" for the Lower Bavarian Agriculture Museum. This exhibit is also displayed in the Augsburg Textile and Industry Museum.

Contact the author: Fegert.Karlsruhe(at)t-online.de



Karin (Wegener) Knisely

was born in Abington, PA in 1958, daughter of American-born father, Adolph, whose parents had emigrated from northern Germany in the 1920s, and German-born mother, Elfriede, who emigrated from northern Bavaria in 1953. Karin grew up speaking both German and English at home and was a member of the bilingual-congregation at Tabor Lutheran Church in Philadelphia. Her parents' and grandmother's German-speaking friends preserved their cultural heritage through get-togethers and membership in German social clubs such as the Vereinigung Erzgebirge. Karin earned a B.S. in Biology from Bucknell University and an M.S. in Zoology from the University of New Hampshire. In 1981 she received a DAAD fellowship to study at the Universität Konstanz, married compatriot Dr. Charles Knisely in 1983, and moved to Karlsruhe, where they became friends with their upstairs neighbors, the Fegert family. The translation of this book began in 2002, when the Kniselys lived in Hilchenbach, Germany for six months during Charles' sabbatical. Karin would like to dedicate the translation of this book to her parents and grandparents, for passing down their cultural heritage, and to her husband and children, Katrina, Carleton, and Brian, for keeping the connection to Germany alive and well for another generation.