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Orte: Vienna; Berlin, Braunschweig, Buchelsdorf, Codlitz, Crossen an der Oder, Dresden, Gleiwitz, Kurhessen, Haan, Holzkirch, Langenbrück (Mostowice), Magdeburg, Munich, Neustadt in Schlesien (Prudnik), Saarburg, Westphalia and (Bad) Ziegenhals in Germany; Steyl in the Netherlands; Bern et al. in Switzerland; Seville in Spain; various places in Togo; Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Servickley in the USA; various places on the front in the First World War, including Metz and Verdun in France, etc. Quellentypen: Correspondence (family correspondence, couple correspondence, children's correspondence, correspondence with friends, correspondence from migration, correspondence with employers, war letters): 1,359 letters (letters and postcards); 51 official documents; 179 photographs; Other: 130 Catholic devotional objects, notes, newspaper clippings, documents from associations of German migrants in the USA, banknotes, etc. Zum Bestand: Author/Letter recipient: Thekla Elisabeth Kiefer (née Scholz), born 1888 in Langenbrück in Silesia in Germany, deceased 1975 in Kansas City in the US1
Author/Letter recipient: Robert Josef Kiefer, born 1886 in Buchelsdorf in Silesia in Germany, deceased 1935 in Kansas City in the US1
Donors: Bob K., Marjorie M.-H., and Lisa W. (Grandchildren of Thekla and Robert Kiefer), 2021
Thekla Elisabeth Kiefer (née Scholz) grew up with 9 siblings in a rural environment in Langenbrück (Mostowice) in Upper Silesia. Her mother ran a small farm, her father was a signalman on the railway.
Like each of her sisters, Thekla Scholz had to earn her living as a domestic servant since she was a young girl. She had her first job at the age of about 10 or 11 in the nearby small town of Neustadt in Schlesien (Prudnik). Farming or housework and factory work were the most common forms of employment for working women in Europe at that time - as in the United States. The young girls lived in other people’s households. Here they had a place to sleep and eat but they already had to work for a living. Two of the Scholz-sisters then became Catholic nuns. One of them worked in Berlin, the other in the Netherlands and even in Africa as a “missionary”.
The Scholz brothers trained for specialised professions. Three of them were brewers, one was a miller. The young men learnt their trades in various places throughout Germany. Thekla Kiefer’s older brother Franz Scholz (1878-1959) was the first to emigrate to Kansas City in 1907. The German-American breweries here were legendary. He was soon followed by the other two brothers, who were also qualified brewers.
In 1911 their sister Thekla Scholz also decided to make the big crossing. She was now 23 years old and had changed continent, but not profession: she continued to work as a maid. She always found work with German-speaking families.
Thekla Kiefer met her future husband Robert Josef Kiefer through her friend Thielchen (Ottilie) Reyhle (née Kiefer, born 1888) from Silesia. Thielchen Reyhle was a colleague and close friend of Thekla Scholz since their youth and Robert Kiefer’s sister.
The life stories of the Kiefer siblings were also characterised by great mobility. They (probably) grew up in Crossen an der Oder, 215 kilometres north-east of Breslau (Wrocław). Robert Kiefer worked as a carpenter and musician in Switzerland and in other places. During the First World War he was a soldier in the German army.
After the end of the war in late autumn 1918, he had to wait another three and a half years before he received permission to enter the USA in 1922 and was able to follow Thekla Scholz. Until then, their contact was limited to letters and postcards. They began this as early as 1915 and never met in person again in all those years. When they married, Thekla Scholz was 34 years old, Robert Kiefer 36. They settled in Kansas City and became the parents of three children.
Tielchen Reyhle was quite successful professionally in Germany after her time as a maid. She worked in a “sales office” for a construction company in Berlin. Office work was a particularly attractive profession for young working-class women at the time. Living in the metropolis of Berlin in particular was very fashionable at the time. Later, she also followed her friend and brother to the USA, where she also started a family.
Thanks to Thekla Kiefer's lifelong habit of preserving letters, photographs, postcards and pictures of saints, her youthful years and family contexts in Silesia are well documented, as are her migration, her later life in Missouri and that of her family and friends on both continents.
The written legacy of Thekla and Robert Kiefer in the Sammlung Frauennachlässe comprises a very large volume of correspondence. The numerous letters and postcards document in particular the migration history of the Scholz siblings. In total, there are 1,359 letters and postcards. These were written to Thekla Kiefer by her siblings, her mother Hedwig Scholz (née Müller), her (later) husband Robert Kiefer and her friends. There are also numerous letters that the other Scholz siblings wrote to each other.
In addition, 51 official documents have been preserved.
The 179 photographs are portraits, group and landscape photographs.
Thekla Scholz grew up and lived in a very devout Catholic environment. This context is documented in her legacy by 130 Catholic devotional objects. There are also some individual notes, newspaper cuttings, documents from associations of German immigrants in the USA, banknotes, etc.
In 2020, the Thekla E. Scholz and Robert J. Kiefer Collection became the primary focus of a collaborative international online research seminar and project. The project involved more than thirty (degree) students of history, public history, ethnography and art history and four lecturers from the universities of Hamburg, Vienna, Wrocław, Missouri-Kansas City and Missouri-St. Louis.
The results of this co-operative transatlantic project have been published in this publication: Andrew Stuart Bergerson, Li Gerhalter and Thorsten Logge (Eds.): From Langenbrück to Kansas City. The Kiefer-Scholz Family. German Migration to Missouri [2.0/2021], Hamburg 2021. The book consists of student-authored microhistories focusing on this one German-American family. It offers rare glimpses into the experience of German-American migration and acculturation through the lens of a fascinating working-class woman. The book is freely accessible via this link: https://dx.doi.org/10.25592/gmm-2-2021 |