Showing 141-160 of 440 Entries
Author: Heike Bungert
“Gemütlichkeit” is a term mostly untranslated by contemporary U.S. American observers, although it is sometimes interpreted as “geniality.” It is a character trait that Germans and in particular German-Americans defined as specific to themselves. “Gemütlichkeit” can include any number of activities, generally revolving around having fun: relaxing, enjoying beer and (German) food, music, and dance…
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Author: Bethany Harding
George H. Walker was one of three prominent nineteenth-century founders of Milwaukee, along with Solomon Juneau and Byron Kilbourn. Born on October 22, 1811 in Lynchburg, Virginia, Walker first moved westward as a young teenager when he migrated to Gallatin, Illinois with his family. Then, in early 1834 he headed for Milwaukee and settled on…
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Author: Bethany Harding
George Wilbur Peck bridged major developments in the cultural and political maturation of Milwaukee and Wisconsin in the late nineteenth century. The oldest of three children, Peck was born in Henderson, New York on September 28, 1840. He moved with his family to Cold Spring, Wisconsin where he left school as a teenager to learn…
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Author: Karalee Surface
German Fest, one of many ethnic celebrations in Milwaukee, honors the city’s rich German cultural heritage. When then-Milwaukee mayor Henry Maier challenged the city’s local German groups to create a German gathering akin to other ethnic festivals being organized at the time, they responded by forming German Fest. Their primary goal was to promote German…
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Author: Viktorija Bilić
Milwaukee’s German-language press, much like the city’s German community in general, was characterized by its size and diversity. Half of Milwaukeeans claimed German ancestry in 1910, and the German language was omnipresent in the “German Athens” (Deutsch-Athen) during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many immigrants turned to the German-language press as a bridge between…
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Author: Alison Clark Efford
Milwaukee is the most German of major American cities, and Germans have constituted Milwaukee’s largest immigrant group. The city’s brewing industry, tradition of ethnic festivals, built environment, and history of working-class politics all display the influence of the German immigrants who arrived in especially large numbers during the half-century following 1850. As the number of…
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Author: Brigid Nannenhorn
Born Golda Mabowitz on May 3, 1898 in Kiev, the future Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, faced anti-Semitism from an early age. Indeed, in 1903 her family moved to Pinsk to escape the threat of Russian pogroms. Shortly thereafter, the family emigrated to Milwaukee. There, the family opened a grocery store, which Meir helped run…
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Author: John H. Schroeder
The game of golf is typically seen as a warm weather sport which thrives in sunbelt states, but it is also a vibrant and popular pastime in the Upper Midwest, including Wisconsin and Milwaukee. In 2016, there were over 600 private and public golf courses of different kinds in Wisconsin. In the five-county greater Milwaukee…
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Author: Monica Witkowski
Perhaps it is no surprise that in a city made famous by beer, Schlitz Brewing brought the circus to the streets of Milwaukee by sponsoring the first Great Circus Parade in 1963. As a fundraiser for the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, the Great Circus Parade featured animals, circus wagons, marching bands, wagons, clowns,…
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Author: Daryl Webb
The 1930s were a volatile decade in Milwaukee. The Great Depression that gripped United States had a dramatic impact on the city, throwing thousands of Milwaukeeans into poverty, creating tensions that sometimes turned violent, and producing an intense crime wave that shocked the city. The first signs of the Great Depression began with the crash…
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Author: John M. McCarthy
Founded at the end of World War II, the Greater Milwaukee Committee’s (GMC) roots lie in the creation of the 1948 Corporation, a group of businessmen initially led by Richard Herzfeld, president of the Boston Store, and Irwin Maier, president of the Milwaukee Journal. They were concerned by the physical and economic conditions of downtown…
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Author: Bill Reck
Greek immigrants began arriving in Milwaukee in the final decade of the nineteenth century, with the 1900 United States Census registering the first Greek-born Milwaukeeans. Arriving to a large extent from the Peloponnesus peninsula in the southwest of Greece, they left for America for a number of economic reasons, including poor soil and crop failures,…
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Author: Diana Belscamper
The Green Bay Packers, founded by Earl (Curly) Lambeau and George Calhoun, joined the American Professional Football Association (later the NFL) in 1921. One of the NFL’s most successful franchises, the Packers have won thirteen national championships, more than any other team in NFL history, and four Super Bowls (following the 1966, 1967, 1996, and…
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Author: Sherry Ahrentzen
The federal government developed Greendale in 1936 as part of the Resettlement Administration’s (RA) Greenbelt Towns Program. Some historians, such as Paul Conkin, consider the greenbelt communities built under this program to be one of the most innovative New Deal initiatives. Resettlement Administration head Rexford Guy Tugwell is credited with the idea for these towns.…
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Author: Matthew Costello
Harley-Davidson is an international motorcycle manufacturing company with production facilities, certified dealers, and a museum all within the city of Milwaukee. Located at 37th Street and Juneau Avenue, Harley-Davidson’s corporate headquarters is not too far from the site of the first Harley-Davidson shop. In 1901, William Harley and Arthur Davidson, coworkers at a bicycle factory,…
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Author: Karalee Surface
Opened in 2008, the Harley-Davidson Museum celebrates one of Milwaukee’s most famous businesses. Exhibits on the second floor chronicle the company’s rise from a two-person partnership to a multinational corporation, as well as its rich racing history. Displays on the ground floor emphasize the company’s influence on popular culture. The museum’s construction reflected a revitalization…
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Author: George Kelling
Harold Breier (1911-1998) was Milwaukee’s chief of police from 1964 to 1984, one of the longest tenures of chiefs of Milwaukee’s police department. He joined the department in 1940 at the age of twenty-nine. In 1943, after a brief stint in patrol, he became an acting detective and subsequently rose through the detective ranks until…
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Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Harold R. Christoffel (1912-1991) was the chief organizer and first president of United Automobile Workers’ (UAW) Local 248 (at the ALLIS-CHALMERS MANUFACTURING COMPANY), the largest UNION in the state at the time. He also helped introduce the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to Milwaukee and was the first union leader indicted and jailed during the…
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Author: William I. Tchakirides
Once a remote trading site along the Rubicon River inhabited by Potawatomi and Menominee peoples, Hartford has evolved over the past two centuries into a bustling center of industry, recreation, and civic engagement. The Town of Hartford was incorporated as the Town of Wright in 1846. The Village of Hartford incorporated in 1871 and became…
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Author: Karalee Surface
For the better part of the twentieth century, Heil was one of Milwaukee’s major industrial enterprises and contributed to the city’s growing reputation as the “machine shop of the world.” Like many Milwaukee firms, however, Heil relocated to America’s Sunbelt states following the economic turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s. Julius Heil, a German immigrant…
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