JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander today announced a program exploring the history of the Giessen Emigration Society. The program will be held at the Missouri State Archives, a division of his office, on Thursday, October 15, 2015, at 7 p.m. Dorris Keeven-Franke, contributing author, historian and executive director of the Missouri Germans Consortium will speak about her book, Utopia: Revisiting a German State in America.
In 1834, two university students from Giessen, Germany, Friedrich Muench and Paul Follenius, immigrated to America, along with 500 followers from the Giessen Emigration Society, to create a model democratic German state in Missouri. In 2009, an international team of historians, archivists and writers visited Missouri in search of what remained of the society’s “utopia.” The findings became the basis of the traveling exhibition Utopia – Revisiting a German State in America, and the accompanying book by the same name. The exhibition traveled from Giessen to Bremen Germany, then Washington, D.C. and ended at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis in the spring of 2015.
Join us as Dorris Keeven-Franke tells the amazing story of these early immigrants and the challenges they faced.
The Missouri State Archives is the official repository for state documents of permanent historic value, and is located at 600 West Main Street in Jefferson City. All programs at the Archives are free of charge and open to the public, with seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.
For more information on this and other programming at the Archives, contact Emily Luker, (573) 526-5296 or emily.luker@sos.mo.gov.
