DISTINGUISHED GERMANAMERICANS

This work brings together in a condensed format a broad selection of over 2300 prominent Americans whose ancestors were of Germanspeaking origin For the benefit of the reader each of these distinguished citizens has been categorized according to his or her contributions and placed into thirteen userfriendly directories namely Artistic Talents Sporting Personalities and Brewers Clergy Educators Scholars and Historians Engineers Inventors BridgeBuilders and Tinkerers Entertainment World High Finance and Big Business Government Medical Sciences World of Music Printing and Publishing World Natural Sciences and Men and Women at War A typical entry includes when available the full name birth and death dates and which generation of the family in America that individual represented Oftentimes the entries will include the stagename or the original spelling of the surname if the name had been changed in America Each table is preceded by text which attempts to place each occupational category into an historic context Selective profiles of representative individuals citing specific achievements in their respective fields are included as well In the introduction entitled Broadly Speaking Just Who Were the GermanAmericans the author examines the data from the thirteen directories in great detail For example there are tables dividing the immigrants into areas of origin and tables exploring dates of immigration The introduction also attempts to help the reader bridge the linguistic barriers created when reverting American names back to the original German To this end he has created seven basic rules of name recognition and has also provided a table listing the twentyfive most common German names and their American English equivalents The appendices include an abridged glossary of European localities an everyname index and three separate bibliographies Also included is an abridged list of contemporary GermanAmerican organizations operating both here and abroad