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The first decades of the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM), which dates back to 1851, are documented in the MPM Library and the Wisconsin Historical Society’s archives mainly in German and often in a now-defunct traditional German script called Sütterlin, or Deutsche Schrift. The founding members of the institution were almost all German-born and maintained contacts with the German-speaking areas of Europe through extensive scholarly correspondence as well as occasional trips to the Old Country to obtain specimens and interact with like-minded colleagues. While the history of the MPM in the early twentieth century is well documented (it was officially chartered in 1882) the same is not true for the first 30 years of its existence. This chapter focuses on the hidden history represented by the correspondence of several important founding members of the MPM: its first director, Carl (Charles) Dörflinger; Adolph Meinecke, charged with overseeing the design and construction of the first museum building; William Frankfurth, whose early antiquarian research in southern Tirol has recently been acknowledged in a museum exhibition in Bolzano, and Carl Thal, first official MPM librarian.

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“Lieber Freund!” Nineteenth-Century Correspondence Networks and the Early History of the Milwaukee Public Museum

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年

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  • Bettina Arnold

摘要

The first decades of the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM), which dates back to 1851, are documented in the MPM Library and the Wisconsin Historical Society’s archives mainly in German and often in a now-defunct traditional German script called Sütterlin, or Deutsche Schrift. The founding members of the institution were almost all German-born and maintained contacts with the German-speaking areas of Europe through extensive scholarly correspondence as well as occasional trips to the Old Country to obtain specimens and interact with like-minded colleagues. While the history of the MPM in the early twentieth century is well documented (it was officially chartered in 1882) the same is not true for the first 30 years of its existence. This chapter focuses on the hidden history represented by the correspondence of several important founding members of the MPM: its first director, Carl (Charles) Dörflinger; Adolph Meinecke, charged with overseeing the design and construction of the first museum building; William Frankfurth, whose early antiquarian research in southern Tirol has recently been acknowledged in a museum exhibition in Bolzano, and Carl Thal, first official MPM librarian.