New articles on immigrant entrepreneurship published in the most recent Yearbook of German-American Studies
The GHI’s Immigrant Entrepreneurship project is well represented in the current Yearbook of German-American Studies(Volume 48 (2013)), published in 2015. Three articles in the yearbook resulted from a panel on immigrant entrepreneurship at the 2014 Society for German-American Studies Symposium in Milwaukee.
Uwe Spiekermann analyzed “Family Ties in Beer Business: August Krug, Joseph Schlitz and the Uihleins,” which will soon be published as two revised articles on the Immigrant Entrepreneurship website. The article analyzed the Jos. Schlitz-Brewing Company, world market leader from 1900 to 1902 and again in the early 1950s, as a result of the work of three different families, closely connected through regional origins, marriage, and kinship. Benjamin Schwantes (“Keeping it in the Family: The Schoellkopfs and Serial Entrepreneurship across Generations”) examined another fascinating German-American family history. In contrast to the proprietors of the Schlitz Brewery, Jacob Frederick Schoellkopf was engaged in a series of quite diverse entrepreneurial occupations managed by family members and close friends. “King Jacob” utilized transatlantic financial and social connections and his family network to become an important player in tanning, milling, power generation, and dye production in the second half of the nineteenth century. Atiba Pertilla, in his article on “German-American Banking Firms and American Development, 1860-1945: An Overview ,” offers a nuanced synthesis of the history of four leading German-American and German-Jewish banking firms: J. & W. Seligman & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Bros. He profoundly discusses both the Germaness and the Jewishness of these banking firms, which were important players in American and international business until recent years.
More details on the Society for German-American Studies and their annual Yearbook can be found on the society’s website.
