“I Go to Fight Mit Sigel!”: The Contribution of German Immigrant and German-American Soldiers in the American Civil War
7:00 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008
Cornell Auditorium in Plaster Hall
Admission: free

The focus will be on the Union cause in Missouri in the spring and summer of 1861 when some 90% of the Union soldiers mustered into service in Missouri were of German origin. Professor William Keel will follow the path of one such immigrant who was wounded at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and later became a patriotic figure at the state capitol in Jefferson City at the end of the 19th century, firing a ceremonial cannon with a squad of German Civil War veterans. He will also consider the impact the Battle of Chancellorsville had on the negative perception of German soldiers and how that may have impacted later assimilation into American society for German immigrants.

William Keel, chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas, has a Ph.D. in Germanic Linguistics from Indiana University. His primary teaching and research interests are in German dialectology, Germanic philology, the structure of Modern German, and German-American studies. He is internationally recognized as an expert on German settlement dialects (Sprachinseln) in the American Midwest and has lectured on that subject at several German universities and the Institut für deutsche Sprache in Mannheim. Since 1981, he has served as editor of the Yearbook of German-American Studies and, since 1986, as a member of the executive committee of the Society for German-American Studies.