Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the all-in-one-event-calendar domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /mnt/web123/e1/98/584198/htdocs/www2/live/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114 Wolfgang Stüken – Seite 26 – Deutsch-Amerikanischer Freundeskreis Paderborn – Belleville e.V.

Paderborn-Belleville verbindet ein reger Jugendaustausch

Auf zur Jubiläumstour

Artikel und Foto erschienen auf www.paderborn.de
@ Jens Reinhardt, Presseamt, Stadt Paderborn

Paderborn (IP). Auf zur Jubiläumstour heißt es für 14 Paderborner Jugendliche am 3. Juli. Dann brechen sie in Richtung Amerika auf, um Paderborns Partnerstadt Belleville und im Anschluss daran Boston zu besuchen. Die Teilnehmer dieser internationalen Jugendbegegnung hatten der stellvertretende Bürgermeister Dietrich Honervogt, der Vorsitzende Bernd Broer und der Geschäftsführer Dr. Otmar Allendorf vom Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundeskreis im Rathaus verabschiedet. Die Gruppe, die Norman Hansmeyer vom Jugendamt der Stadt leitet, wird bis zum 26. Juli unterwegs sein. ‚Ich wünsche Euch tolle Erlebnisse, viel Spaß in den Gastfamilien und eine gute Reise‘, so Dietrich Honervogt.

Der Jugendaustausch zwischen Paderborn und Belleville besteht seit 1990. In diesem Jahr steht mit dem 20. Austausch ein besonderes Jubiläum an. Dafür laufen in Belleville auch schon Vorbereitungen. Am 6. Juli wird eine Feierstunde mit Bürgermeister Mark Eckert im Rathaus der 45.000 Einwohner zählenden Stadt stattfinden. Belleville liegt im Bundesstaat Illinois 26 km südöstlich von St. Louis (Missouri).

Der Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundeskreis (DAFK) unterstützt den Jugendaustausch von Beginn an. Im jährlichen Wechsel besuchen jeweils 14 Jugendliche (im Alter von 16 bis 18 Jahren) sowie zwei Betreuer aus Paderborn bzw. Belleville die Partnerstadt für jeweils drei Wochen. Fester Bestandteil im Austauschkonzept ist die Unterbringung der Jugendlichen in den Gastfamilien, um den Jugendlichen einen Einblick in die jeweils andere Lebenswelt zu ermöglichen.

Jugendgruppe im Rathaus

Am historischen Pfauenstuhl im Paderborner Rathaus wurden die Paderborner Jugendlichen nach Belleville verabschiedet. Der Stuhl stammt aus der Liborius-Kirche von St. Louis, Missouri, aus den USA.

Aus dem Mitteilungsblatt von Belleville Sister Cities Inc. Mai 2009

Well, maybe I don’t look forward to mowing the grass just having green grass.

At the April 15th Board Meeting, Melissa Shreve and Lacey Levin, represen- tatives of Lindenwood University, spoke of the university’s interest in starting an international student exchange program. Information has been forwarded to Paderborn.

By the time you receive your newsletter, Steve and Hilda Koluch will have returned from the 2009 Illinois State Sister City Convention held on April 17 & 18th in Schaumburg, IL. Steve and Hilda were our representatives this year and we are looking forward to their report.

The eighth Annual Art on the Square event will be held May 15th to 17th. We wish much success to Patty Gregory and the planning committee for another award winning year.

The next general meeting will be held Thursday, May 21st, at Fischer’s Restaurant. Please plan to attend and bring a guest if you wish.

Our annual Membership Appreciation Dinner will be held Thursday, June 18th, at St. Michael’s Parish Center in Paderborn, IL. Call Hilda Koluch for reservations. Come join us for a fun and exciting evening.

We are looking forward to the Youth Exchange this year as we welcome 14 students traveling from Pad- erborn to Belleville to share and experience life in United States and our city of Belleville. We hope all members will make the students feel welcome during their stay from July 3rd thru July 17th. The support of the summer exchange program and the 90 day program are important to the organization in strengthening our ties between Germany and the USA.

Norma Bergkoetter is making plans for the youth exchange alumni to attend a reunion with our visiting Paderborn students and hosts.

This year’s Sister Cities International Convention will be held in Belfast, Northern Ireland from July 29 thru August 1st. At this time, we have no plans to send a representative.

Ron Fritz President


 

News from Paderborn

Dear Friends in Belleville and Around:

Just now we are remembering our first visit to Belleville 20 years ago – from May 4th thru May 9th, 1989. A large group from Paderborn experienced the wonderful hospitality in our future sister city – as the picture at the Shrine shows.

At this time last year we all were very busy with preparations for our 20th anniversary, so in 2009 there will be less stressful weeks without such an event ahead. Nevertheless we have been working on various exchanges. Amanda Reichling and Jonathan Crawford will fly to Paderborn airport on July 1st and will stay here thru July 31st. Their hosts will be two students who were in Belleville for three months in 2008 — Maren Ruerup and Simon Potthast.

Norman Hansmeyer will take a youth group to Belleville from July 3rd thru July 17th. They are looking forward to their stay. We are grateful to those working on the program at your side and to the host families.

Three high school students from Paderborn will come to Belleville in August for a three-month stay, they’ll attend the high schools West and East. Here in Paderborn, the final interviews as to who will go will be finished soon.

In February, Doris and John Roach stayed in Paderborn. We had talks with Doris about the upcoming exchanges. Stammtisch president Willi Boekamp arranged a special “Stammtisch” for our Belleville friends. Also some of the policemen attended who were in Belleville last September.

On May 19th, we’ll have our traditional “Dogwood Fest.” Members and friends will be invited to explore a nature reserve in the county of Paderborn. Afterwards we’ll have an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner with delicatessen of asparagus that is grown in the region. We hope that many members will come.

We are sorry to report that our member Johannes Buschmeyer passed away on January 31st. He was 85. Many in the St. Libory area will remember him for his interest in the relations between the “low German prairie” and Paderborn county. In 1995, he arranged a meeting for Wally Braucks (St. Louis) and the delegation from Belleville to visit the place near Paderborn where Wally’s plane had been shot down in 1944.

Last not least we want to congratulate Mayor Eckert on his being re-elected as Mayor of Belleville. We know that he is a great supporter of the sister city relationship between Belleville and Paderborn.

Best wishes to everybody.

Bernd Broer
President

Dr. Otmar Allendorf
Secretary

Aus dem Mitteilungsblatt von Belleville Sister Cities Inc. Februar 2009

Grußworte der Präsidenten

President’s Message
It’s awfully cold lately but that didn’t stop members from attending our Christmas party at the Roemer Topf Restaurant on Dec. 18th in Mascoutah.

We had a nice crowd in spite of the weather and even had a couple of new members join us. Renate and her staff prepared a tasty dinner. Hilda and Theresa had a nice selection of attendance prizes and Doris arranged the entertainment. I think everyone had a great time.

2008 was an exciting year for Belleville Sister Cities and its membership with the many events that took place. Thanks to all that made this possible. We accomplished quite a lot with our students and an adult delegation visiting Paderborn, a police exchange in September, and our fundraisers – the Oktoberfest and Taste of Germany. But 2009 is a new year and we need to get busy. This summer in July, Belleville Sister Cities will host the Paderborn students and chaperones. A committee is already making plans for the student’s two week stay. Always keep in mind that we need everyone’s help to make our projects successful. Volunteers are welcome.

Congratulations are in order for the Deutsch-Amerikanischer Freundeskreis which received the Ambassa- dor’s Certificate of Appreciation by former US Ambassador William Timken, Jr. The award was given for its commitment to promoting relations between Germany and the US via means of the Paderborn-Belleville Sister City partnership. Secretary Dr. Otmar Allendorf traveled to Duesseldorf to receive the certificate on behalf of the DAFK.

We were sorry to hear of the passing of Ludwig Schmidt. He was a long time member of the DAFK and will be fondly remembered by many. Our sincerest condolences go to Bruni and Ludwig’s family.

The 2009 Illinois State Convention will be held in April in Schaumburg, IL. More information from the host committee of the conference will be coming out soon.

A membership annual dues notice was in the last newsletter. Please submit your dues now so that our new membership chairman, Herm Schoener does not need to send a reminder. Please check with Herm to confirm your current address, phone number and e-mail address so our roster will be up-to-date.

Our next general membership meeting is on Feb.19th at Fischer’s Restaurant with dinner at 5:30pm and meeting at 7:00pm. We look forward to seeing you there.

Ron Fritz
President

News from Paderborn
In January 2008 we began our part to the newsletter with: “This year has begun with increased turbulence on the American and International Money Market. Let’s hope that the situation will calm down….” We all know that this hasn’t been the case, even worse: a financial and economic crisis is affecting the whole world. Nevertheless, let’s hope that there will come better times…

Nearly everybody here watched TV when President Obama was inaugurated some days ago.

At present there is cold winter weather in your area, and even here in Paderborn we have had a January with much snow and temperatures below zero Celsius throughout the month that we haven’t experienced for a long time.

Our Thanksgiving “all you can eat dinner” was a great event; about 160 people attended. The chef had to cook 18 turkeys that were enjoyed by everybody. Again the desert buffet was wonderful. The members are asked to bring their favourite desserts. This year Kate Eckert, the Mayor’s daughter, who happened to attend since she was on a University course in Regensburg, had made two pumpkin pies, real American style. They were a hit!

At a January 14, 2009 reception at his residence in Duesseldorf, US-Consul General Matt Boyse honoured representatives from 23 sister-city partnerships, 16 German-American organizations, and 9 individuals in- volved in the bilateral relationship from across North Rhine-Westphalia. The event was an occasion to present Certificates of Appreciation signed by former Ambassador Timken and the Consul General, to in- tensify the cooperation between the Consulate and partner organizations, as well as foster communication and exchange between the organizations themselves and their leaders. This event also launched a series of workshops that will involve all institutions active in promoting German-American relations, to be held at regular intervals in order to support their activities and generate synergies.

Dr. Otmar Allendorf, Secretary of German-American Friendship Society Paderborn-Belleville, travelled to Duesseldorf to receive the document.

We think that this also is a recognition of the activities of Belleville Sister Cities. So both organizations can be proud of this “Certificate of Appreciation”.

On January 29th Dr. Peter Freese, a retired professor of American studies from Paderborn University and member of DAFK, gave a lecture on the American South. He presented a lot of historical facts and showed pictures of the places of historical interest. On our homepage www.dafk-paderborn.de we will publish a list of books he used for his talk (in English).

As we have heard from Doris Roach, she has contacted Belleville West and East High Schools to find host families interested in the three month-exchange, starting in August. We hope that she will be successful. In June we’ll welcome the students from Belleville who hosted last year.

Norman Hansmeyer has started to organize this year’s youth exchange in July. As every second year we will send about 14 young people in their summer break to visit Belleville and around. Last July 14 Belle- ville youths and their chaperons had a good time here..

Welcome to Paderborn.!

Best wishes for 2009 to our friends in Belleville and around.

Bernd Broer
President

Dr. Otmar Allendorf
Secretary

Der amerikanische Süden – The American South

Peter Freese:

Der amerikanische Süden – The American South

Begleitmaterial zum Vortrag

Das Mitglied des DAFK, Professor em. Dr.Dr. h.c. Peter Freese, Universität Paderborn, hielt am 29.1.2009 in den Räumen der VHS vor etwa 60 Zuhörern und Zuhörerinnen einen aufschlussreichen Vortrag über den „Amerikanischen Süden“.

Freese und Broer

Das Publikum

Professor Freese, daneben,
DAFK-Präsident Bernd Broer.
Angeregte Unterhaltung vor dem Vortrag.
Fotos: O. Allendorf

 

The American South

Prof. em. Dr. Dr. h. c. Peter Freese
University of Paderborn
February 2009

1: Defining ‘the South’

Introductory attempts at a geographical definition lead to various answers such as

·        the eleven states of the Confederacy

·        these states plus the ‘border states’ of Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri

·        the ‘modern’ definition which also includes Delaware, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and the District of Columbia

·        the definition used by the U.S. Census (16 states plus Washington, D.C.)

Considerations of the climate and the culture show that there are many climatic and cultural differences within what is loosely called ‘the South’:

[…] the almost tropical Deep South (low country, Gulf Coast) is not quite the same South as the smoky blue hills of Appalachia; tidewater Virginia is not the industrial piedmont; Savannah and Charleston resemble each other more than metropolitan Atlanta; and the Mississippi Delta, pine barrens, and rugged hills have not historically melded into a unit that locates Barry Hannah comfortably across the same literary backyard as Walker Percy. (Doris Betts, “Introduction” to Tonette Bond Inge, ed. Southern Women Writers: The New Generation , pp. 2f.)

‘The South,’ then, is less a precisely definable geographical area than a cultural region of the mind whose contours and characteristics have frequently shifted throughout the course of history.

The commodified image of ‘the South’ as propagated by the media and the tourism industry is somehow

·        situated between the French Quarter in New Orleans and Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, between Elvis Presley’s Graceland in Memphis and the Grand Ole Opryin Nashville, Tennessee;

·        contrastively evoked by D. W. Griffith’s enormously influential film Birth of a Nation(1915) glorifying the Ku Klux Klan and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) deploring the crime of slavery; or between Margaret Mitchell’s successfully filmed and frequently continued mega-bestseller Gone with the Wind (1936; film 1939) and Alex Haley’s genealogical novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family(1976) and its popular TV version (1977);

·        characterized by such commodities as catfish and collards, watermelons and mint juleps, hush puppies and chitterlings and by such famous brands as Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken, Uncle Ben’s Rice, Aunt Jemima Pancake Flour, Southern Comfort, and sundry kinds of famous Kentucky Bourbons;

·        endlessly sung and yodeled about in gospels and blues, hillbilly music, bluegrass rhythms, and rock’n roll; and

·        represented by such diametrically opposite figures as Thomas Jefferson, the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, and John C. Calhoun, the sectionalist champion of state rights and the doctrine of nullification.

Among the major – and contradictory – myths of the South are

·        the (positive) myth of the Old South – <Moonshine and Magnolia> – <The Lost Cause of the Confederacy>

·        the (negative) myth of <the Benighted South> (see H. L. Mencken’s famous essay “The Sahara of the Bozart” [= beaux art] of 1917)

·        the recent myth of <the New South> or <Sunbelt> (in 1969 Kevin Phillips coined the term; in 1976 Kirkpatrick Sale identified a “Southern Rim” of states that were gaining more political power with each postwar census; today the “Sunbelt” is taken to refer to the states or parts of states that lie south of the 37th degree latitude)

With all – conflicting – definitions, however, one has to keep in mind the famous exchange between Quentin Compson and his puzzled Canadian roommate at Harvard in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!

“We don’t live among defeated grandfathers and freed slaves […] and bullets in the dining room table and such, to be always reminding us to never forget. What is it? something you live and breathe in like air? a kind of vacuum filled with wraithlike and indomitable anger and pride and glory at and in happenings that occurred and ceased fifty years ago? a kind of entailed birthright of father and son and father and son of never forgiving General Sherman, so that forever more as long as your children’s children produce children you won’t be anything but a descendent of a long line of colonels killed in Pickett’s charge at Manassas?”

“Gettysburg. You can’t understand it. You would have to be born there.”

(William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! The Corrected Text , p. 289)

2: The Old South

Brief visits to

·        Jamestown (the foundation myth of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas)

·        Charleston (first theater in the US, Beth Elohim Synagogue, bombardment of Fort Sumter)

·        Shirley Plantation (founded in 1613; oldest family-owned business – tobacco – seehttp://www.shirleyplantation.com/timeline.html
for a Shirley timeline, and

http://www.historypoint.org/education/teaching
/history_backyard/tobacco_slavery_virginia_colonies.asp

for information about “Tobacco and Slavery in the Virginia Colony”

·        Middleton Place (founded in 1741 – rice – seehttp://www.middletonplace.org/default.
asp?name=site&catID=4524&parentID=4510
)

·        Boon Hall (founded in 1743 – slave quarters)

·        indigo as a third important (labor-intensive) crop besides tobacco and rice and, later, cotton

(as to literature of the Old South see, e.g., Ben Forkner and Patrick Samway, S.J., eds. Stories of the Old South. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986)

3: The Deep South

·        Jackson, Mississippi

·        the Civil Rights Movement – Jim Crow Laws – Plessy v Ferguson – Brown v Board of Education of Topeka – racism still extant: see the quarrel about a “white only” tree in the yard of the high school in Jena, Louisiana, which, in 2007!, led to nationwide controversies and public outrage (see, e.g., http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action
=1&t=1&islist=false&id=12353776&m=12357717
)

·        a suitable film: Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning (1988)

·        Frank Yerby’s short story “The Homecoming” (1946)*

·        Joan Williams’ short story “Spring Is Now” (1968)*

·        Kudzu (pueraria lobata)

·        Oxford, Mississippi – “Ole Miss” – Rowan Oak – William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County (see, e.g., “Faulkner on the Net“ (http://cypress.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html,
a veritable treasure trove of information)

·        William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” (1930)*

·        Poverty – a central document: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) with texts by James Agee and photographs by Walker Evans

·        Harper LeeTo Kill a Mockingbird (1960) – Monroeville, Alabama

·        The “lynching bee” – Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit” – Lilian Smith’s novel Strange Fruit (1941) – James Baldwin’s story “Going to Meet the Man” (1965) – Erskine Caldwell’s story “Saturday Afternoon” (1936)*

·        The Bible Belt – religious fundamentalism – Southern Baptists – Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953)*

4: The Cajun South

·        New Orleans – the French Quarter – the Garden District – Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1947; Elia Kazan’s film 1951) – Anne RiceInterview with the Vampire (1976) – Truman CapoteOther Voices, Other Rooms (1948) – St. Louis No. 1 – Marie Laveau

·        The Bayous – The Great Expulsion (1755) of the Acadians > Cajuns –– food – music – Kate Chopin’s short story “Désirée’s Baby” (1893)* – her novel The Awakening (1899)

·        Oak Alley

·        Houmas House

·        Nottoway/White Castle

·        Oakley Plantation – John James AudubonBirds of America

US-Generalkonsul überreicht Ehrenurkunde an DAFK am 14. Januar 2009

Der amerikanische Generalkonsul in Düsseldorf, Matthew G. Boyse, überreichte am 14.1.2009 ein „Certificate of Appreciation“ an den Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundeskreis Paderborn-Belleville e.V.

Der Geschäftsführer Dr. Otmar Allendorf nahm das Dokument für den Freundeskreis mit großer Freude entgegen.

US- Botschafter William R. Timken jr. hatte die Urkunden vor seiner Rückkehr in die USA im November als eine seiner letzten Amtshandlungen unterzeichnet.

Mit der Auszeichnung soll der jahrelange Einsatz des Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundeskreises für die Pflege der freundschaftlichen Beziehungen mit den USA über die Partnerschaft mit der Stadt Belleville/Illinois gewürdigt werden.

Allendorf und Boyse

Ehrenurkunde

In Düsseldorf mit
Generalkonsul Boyse
Certificate of Appreciation
by US Ambassodor Timken
for DAFK Paderborn

Auszug aus der Homepage des Generalkonsulats:

           http://duesseldorf.usconsulate.gov

Der Wert von Netzwerken:

Generalkonsul ehrt Vertreter von Deutsch-Amerikanischen Gesellschaften und Städtepartnerschaften in NRW am 14. Januar 2009.

Bei einem Empfang am 14. Januar in seiner Residenz ehrte Generalkonsul Matt Boyse Vertreter von 23 Städtepartnerschaften, 16 deutsch-amerikanischen Vereinigungen sowie 9 verdiente Persönlichkeiten, die sich für die beiderseitigen Beziehungen engagieren.

Die Gäste aus allen Teilen von Nordrhein-Westfalen erhielten Urkunden, die vom vormaligen Botschafter William Timken und Generalkonsul Boyse unterzeichnet waren.

Der Empfang diente auch dazu, die Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem Konsulat und den Partnerinstitutionen zu intensiveren sowie den Austausch zwischen den Organisationen selbst und ihren Mitgliedern zu fördern. Die Veranstaltung war Auftakt einer Reihe von Seminaren, die regelmäßig durchgeführt werden sollen, damit sich alle deutsch-amerikanischen Organisationen besser gegenseitig unterstützen und Synergien schaffen können.