Germans in the Making of Our Nation
10:00 a.m., Monday, Nov. 3, 2008
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

By the early years of the 20th century, some five million German speakers had come to the United States from central Europe. As the new nation grew, Germans not only brought much of the agricultural land of the central United States into production but also became a major segment of the skilled craftsmen and professionals in many American cities. A new flow of intellectual refugees fleeing Hitler in the 1930s noticeably enriched and modified American cultural and intellectual life. Today, more than one American in five claims to be partly or entirely of German descent.

Robert Frizzell is director of libraries at Northwest Missouri State University. After a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia and service in the U.S. Army, he obtained master’s degrees in European History and librarianship from the University of Illinois. He has published numerous book reviews and articles in half a dozen historical journals. His book, Independent Immigrants: A Settlement of Hanoverian Germans in Western Missouri, was published in October 2007 by the University of Missouri Press.