The Nature Friends in the USA: A Historical Sketch

The Nature Friends of America: A Historical Sketch
by Klaus-Dieter Gross (Regensburg, Germany)
The International Organization
The Nature Friends were founded in 1895 as a labor organization in Vienna (Austria). Their
intentions were a) to improve the health conditions among the working classes and to foster
cooperative activities; and b) to empower workers also beyond their immediate work places
for the class struggle between capitalists and proletariat. These aims have also defined the
Nature Friends of America ever since, with shifting emphases, as either focused on leisure
time activities (in what was to become the California section of the club), or with a focus on
political action realized through cultural and sports activities (in the Eastern and Midwestern
locals which did not survive McCarthyism).
The Viennese idea was compulsive. In 1905 it had already reached Zurich (Switzerland) and
Munich (Germany). Five years later German and Austrian emigrants took it across the
Atlantic. They shared the promises of the American Dream but brought European concepts of
culture and nature with them. Der Naturfreund, the international members´ magazine,
reported on September 18, 1910, that a New York group had come into being. Its members
saw themselves as pioneers whose eminent task it was to open their co-workers´ eyes for the
beauty of their new land and to lead them into a socially and culturally improved future, in a
country with a culture of plenty, but also of wastefulness; which was fresh, but also raw;
where promises of social advancement were subverted by desperate living conditions; and in
which nature was unimaginably bountiful, but in whose hectic money-making nobody really
cared. The president of the new club was Adolf Tanzer, and mail was to be set to Alexander
Wiederseder, 124 Ferst Place, Brooklyn, N.-Y.
In 1912, a San Francisco branch came into being. In a text written for the international 75th
anniversary, in 1970 Fred Zahn proudly reminded his readers that Adolf Veil was the last
living person to have attended the Vienna founding; later an immigrant to California, he was
still active among them. While the First World War was raging, national Nature Friends
organizations were spreading all over Europe (including Britain), and even to far-away places
such as Australia and South America.
California
The Eastern and the Western sections were to develop somewhat differently. In spite of a few
attempts at spreading out, the number of Californian clubs remained three: After San
Francisco in 1912, Los Angeles came in 1920, and Oakland in 1921. Typically, to the present
day they are praised for their “European atmosphere,” that “[o]ur beer is cold and the smiles
warm,“ and that the Muir Woods club house, e.g., is “A pub in the woods,“ also tagged “Pfiff!
: Beer + Hiking = Naturfreunde.“ Popular festivals like Octoberfests and traditions such as
Schuhplatteln (a Bavarian- or Austrian-type dance form) and the Maibaum (a May pole) still
characterize their internet presence.
When celebrating 50 Years The Nature Friends Branch Oakland, Erich Fink summed up the
history shared by all Californian branches: “All members in the 1920´s spoke German. All
meetings were conducted in German. Until the early 1930´s, membership in a union was
also required before becoming a Nature Friend. This aspect of our organization has nearly
disappeared.” Early on, the Nature Friends were “usually of a political persuasion a bit to
the left.“ On the McCarthyite prosecution in the East he took a more conservative stand:
“Unfortunately, due perhaps to the irresponsibility of a few political fanatics, those branches
have disappeared as Nature Friends since the end of World War II.” In 1971 (as well as
today, one may add) the organization “represents a wider cross section of the population“
and is “mainly engaged in social family type recreational activities.“ Only in Southern
California, Fink reports, the German element is less prominent:
Our Los Angeles club is not as large in membership as the two clubs in Northern
California. Our membership has been hovering around 100 in the past few years while
Oakland has over 200 and San Francisco nearly 500. There are also only a handful of
old-timers left who built up the club and the origin of our membership is much more
diverse in ethnic background and nationality.
The Nature Friends, in a way, are similar to the Sierra Club:
In the Alpine countries today the club is active in all aspects of the ecological and
naturalist-political movement similar to the activities of the Sierra Club in the U.S. The
difference between the Sierra Club and the Nature Friends in Europe is that the Nature
Friends own and maintain nearly a thousand clubhouses and mountain homes where
members are involved in a variety of social and cultural activities.
To today´s Californian Nature Friends politics is of minor relevance:
The club is of a non-political nature, although the members´ declaration of love of
nature involves some commitment to the environmental cause. Our club´s parent club in
Europe, just like the Sierra Club here, is actively involved in the political ecological
movement on all levels.
Here in California our members have more of an inclination to be participants and
friendly users of the pleasures of nature: hiking, skiing, mountaineering and outdoor
recreational activities.
In retrospect trans-continental differences may look sharper than contemporaries saw them.
Internal migration was important, as in the case of Conrad und Anna Rettenbacher, who,
coming from Philadelphia, had joined the San Francisco group on January 15, 1932. When
three years later they died in the California mountains, their grave was marked “Die
Naturfreunde, Inc. San Francisco.“ Even after dissolution in the East, contacts remained
intact, like when J.L. Behmer, from Schwenksville, Pennsylvania (and for twenty years
president of the New York local) represented California at the meeting of the Nature
Friends International in 1975.
At present the Californian clubs boast five “Homes” at spectacular natural retreats: The
Heidelmann Lodge, the Tourist Club San Francisco Home, the Oakland Nature Friends
Lodge, the Sierra Madre Clubhouse and the San Jacinto Cabin. They have vowed to meet
maximum ecological standards and pride themselves in preserving the German traditions of
their forebears.
The East and Midwest
It is remarkable how prominent American texts and references were in the early Naturfreund,
reflecting how proud the editors in Vienna were of their daughter clubs across the ocean. Yet
unlike for California, data on Eastern groups vary according to sources, and the slowness of
trans-Atlantic communication may be responsible for some inconsistencies. One compilation
of founding reports in Der Naturfreund reads like this:
1910 New York
1913 Philadelphia
San Francisco
Los Angeles
Seattle
1917 St. Paul, Missouri
1919 Newark
1921 Oakland
1925 Chicago
1926 Milwaukee
1927 Detroit, Mich.
Paterson, N.J.
Locals such as St. Paul or Detroit do not seem to have survived long. For Los Angeles we find
a discrepancy between first meetings and a formal incorporation in the 1920s. Soon distances
made it practical to split groups into a Western (“Gau West”) and an Eastern/Midwestern
section (“Gau Ost”). For the East, the American members´ magazine Der Tourist: Zeitschrift
für den Gau der Nordost- und den Gau der West-Staaten Amerika´s names ten clubs
registered with the New York headquarters in 1931:
-
New York City
Syracuse, N.Y.
Paterson, N.J.
Rochester, N.Y.
Jersey City, N.J.
Newark. N.J.
-
Philadelphia, PA
Allentown, PA
-
Detroit, Mich.
Milwaukee, Wisc.
Chicago, Ill.
A seemingly unlimitted supply of free land provided the clubs with the chance to acquire
camps and houses at a speed unimaginable in densely populated Europe. In the 1910s and
1920s Der Naturfreund lists them as
1913 San Francisco (Muir Woods)
1916 New York (a bathhouse)
1917 New York (a farmhouse)
San Francisco (Swiss style chalet)
1918 New York (camp ground near Peekskill)
1921 New York (Midvale)
Oakland (Sierra Madre)
1928 Chicago (near Lake Michigan)
Philadelphia (Boyerstown)
For 1929 an international survey of Nature Friends Homes mentions six active vacation and
recreation centers:
-
Camp Midvale, N.J. (run by the New York chapter)
Muir Woods (San Francisco)
High Peak, Catskill Mountains (New York)
Redwood Peack [!] (Oakland)
Landistore, PA (Philadelphia)
Stade Indiana (Chicago).
Chicago, a relative late-comer in the Midwest, is a most interesting case. One source states
that in the 1920s it already had a city home, yet there are not details. Unique visual
documentation is the building of their Home in “Starved Rock“ state park: 32 photos taken
between 1925 und 1927 by Walter Wieland, an immigrant who later returned to Germany.
The 1926 calendar of the German national club showed Chicago members hiking in the very
area. That way it acquainted more than 100.000 German club members with the American
efforts, and certainly publications like these did their best to give emigrants with a Nature
Friends background the impression that they would be welcome in the USA. Before, during,
and after World War I Der Naturfreund published addresses, promoted contacts and invited
newcomers to join their overseas comrades.
American membership in the second half of the 1920s exceeded 1000, and was 1200 in 1936.
The organization was big enough to create a lively community across the nation, but too small
to have any kind of mass effect. Several reasons may account for that: First, most of their
publications were in German. Then, no party or group supported the clubs, whose political
intention was to bridge rather than increase political differences. Thirdly, the organization was
active mainly in big cities, where commercial distractions were strong. And finally, in
particular the Depression polarized the organization. Some locals now preferred a generally
humanistic approach, with politics as just one field of activities; others (like Philadelphia and
Chicago) called for more active opposition to capitalism. There certainly were conflicts
between the Californian branch and the Eastern/Midwestern groups. On July 9, 1940, 85
delegates from fifteen locals conferred in the Rocky Mountains, and things looked well again.
But the real crisis was still to come.
New York
In New York City members met at the New York Labor Temple, on 84th Street. The Temple
was a meeting place for many working class organizations, among them trade unions,
insurance co-operatives, and educational institutions. Along with workers´ glee clubs and
sports organizations—many of them with a German background—the Nature Friends were
listed as the “Naturfreunde Touristen-Verein“ in the category of “Vergnügungs-Vereine“
(leisure groups). The New-Yorker Volkszeitung, the leading paper of the German-speaking
working class, regularly invited the Manhattan local to the Temple every fourth Thursday of
each month, and their New Jersey comrades to the Newark Labor Lyceum every Wednesday.
The Volkszeitung´s fiftieth anniversary issue of 1928 exemplarily gives proof of the wide
range of the German working class culture of the day. Nature Friend Walter R. Boelke
presents his club under the headline “Die ´Naturfreunde´ bilden ein Glied der
Arbeiterbewegung“ (“The Nature Friends constitute one branch of the workers´ movement“).
He sets out from an intensive description of the beauty of nature, contrasting it with
capitalistic realities; then he sums up the history of the organization, its intentions as an
educational and health-improvement institution, its pacifist and ecological aims; and finally
he elaborates on Nature Friends Homes as a vision of what a society based on solidarity and
independence may achieve.
Boelke´s New York group had long tried its hands at acquiring a home in the country. As
early as in 1916 it owned a bathhouse on the Hudson River. In 1917, during World War I,
anti-German farmers seem to have burnt the building down. One year later the group bought a
large area of land near Peekskill. And in 1921 Camp Midvale was established as what was to
become the main facility of the New York branch and for many others in the region.
In spite of its many activities the club´s success remained restricted to its original clientele. In
Der Tourist (October 1, 1923: 5-6), for example, the texts for adults are almost exclusively in
German. For the Junior sections there is a two-language option (factually all texts are in
English), including a report, “Our Midvale,” on a youth group visiting the Wanaque camp.
McCarthyism
In 1933, the Nazis illegalized any organization that possibly opposed their regime. Many a
German Nature Friend joined the resistance movements. Luckily, before the Nazis took over
in Austria in 1934, the Viennese central office had moved to politically neutral Switzerland.
Gradually, fascist expansion over Europe destroyed most Nature Friends organizations. By
1942 only two national bodies—Switzerland and the USA—were active.
Once the war was over, in a prominent message in a German paper Georg Schmidt, president
of the New York branch, emphasized the efforts of the American Nature Friends in the fight
against fascism, praised the resistance activities of the German members, announced support
for the rebuilding of the clubs, and called for the American occupation forces to legalize the
organization as soon as possible (Frankfurter Rundschau, October 3, 1945: 1).
While the European clubs were being revived, forces unleashed by radical anticommunism
were about to destroy the American Nature Friends. Historian Howard Zinn decribes the
contexts in which the club was now seen by right-wing zealots:
Truman's executive order on loyalty in 1947 required the Department of Justice to
draw up a list of organizations it decided were “totalitarian, fascist, communist or
subversive . . . or as seeking to alter the form of government of the United States
by unconstitutional means.” Not only membership in, but also “sympathetic
association” with, any organization on the Attorney General's list would be
considered in determining disloyalty. By 1954, there were hundreds of groups on
this list, including, besides the Communist party and the Ku Klux Klan, the Chopin
Cultural Center, the Cervantes Fraternal Society, the Committee for the Negro in
the Arts, the Committee for the Protection of the Bill of Rights, the League of
American Writers, the Nature Friends of America, People's Drama, the Washington
Bookshop Association, and the Yugoslav Seaman's Club.
This is the Attorney General´s statement:
NATURE FRIENDS OF AMERICA
Cited as a subversive and Communist organization since 1935. (Attorney General
Tom Clark, letters to Loyalty Review Board, released December 4, 1947, and
September 21, 1948.)
In spite of the fact that they were no party organization, that their focus was on leisure-time
activities, and that no concrete accusations were made, this was fatal.
Camp Midvale may serve as one example. A New Jersey Federal Writers project of the 1930s
had sympathetically described the camp as “run on a non-profit basis by the Nature Friends'
Society, a labor organization, and is modeled after the numerous country resorts conducted by
trade unions in Germany up until several years ago. The camp has many rustic bungalows,
tennis courts, and a 400-foot open swimming pool. Frequented by trade unionists of all
nationalities from nearby industrial towns of Paterson and Passaic, it is especially popular
with Americans of German origin.”
In 1948, then, the New York Times reported:
A fiery cross, made of saplings covered with gasoline-soaked burlap, was hoisted
tonight up the metal flagpole on the grounds of the Nature Friends Camp, a summer
holiday resort for whites and Negroes at Stonetown near here, by some unidentified
persons who left a crude message threatening Communists. (“Fiery Cross in Jersey,”
New York Times August 14, 1948: 14).
Also an individual Nature Friend made it into mainstream media (New York Times, June 17,
1956: 176; TIME Magazine, June 25, 1956). Kendrick M. Cole, who had worked for the
drug administration in New York City, had attended a Nature Friends meeting and lost his
job. As by then McCarthyism was on the vane, in 1956 a majority of Supreme Court judges
ruled that decision to be unconstitutional (Supreme Court 351 U.S. 536 [1956]).
The crisis outside California is reflected in membership numbers. In 1943, Emil Birkert
writes, membership across the nation had been around 1700, with ten Nature Friends
Homes.When Walter Wieland came back to Chicago in 1952, he found his old club reduced
to a “withering rest.“ In 1956, just after McCarthyism, a report for the Nature Friends
International sees membership cut by half:
Year
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
America-East
855
633
---------
America-West
682
685
715
703
686
695
So for decades, the California branch alone has stood for the Nature Friends of America.
Gerald Schügerl, a European Nature Friends historian, found that in order to survive,
endangered clubs in the East were renamed or joined less controversial organizations. The
Syracuse club was now ´Forky's Pond Outdoor Club,´ Chicago called itself ´Midwest
Campers,´ Milwaukee changed into ´Friends of Nature,´ and New York became the
´Metropolitan Recreation Association.´ The latter, and what is left of the old Camp Midvale,
provides hope that research may unearth remains of the Nature Friends idea also elsewhere.
So let me end on a personal note: I have been a Nature Friend for forty years, and an
Americanist for more than a quarter-century. At one point I wondered how I could link
both. I was not an easy task, but incidentally reward came, not only through a positive
reception of the research outline, but (even more) when in the summer of 2008 a fun trip
took me and my hybrid car from New York to Maine and the Canadian border and down to
West Virginia and to the Piedmont of North Carolina. Passing through New Jersey on the
way, I took a detour to find out on location about the Camp Midvale I had read about. And
there still they were, the old Nature Friends logos, and the old pool, and people conscious of
their own Nature Friends´ pasts!
So this is a promise I made to myself then: I will again hike up to High Point, and enjoy the
view of old Midvale, the Wanaque reservoir, and the Manhattan skyline on the horizon.
From up there the old Nature Friends greeting “Berg frei” once more evoked its original
meaning: That freedom does not just “live in the mountains,” but that it is a vision of nature
enjoyed with a wider and political aim in mind—a universal one based on the values of
solidarity, equality, and ecological responsibility.
Klaus-Dieter Gross, "´Berg frei´ jenseits des Atlantiks? Die Nature Friends of America," Internationale
wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 42.1 (März 2006): 60-87.
contact:
Dr. Klaus-Dieter Gross
Eichendorffstr. 3a
D-93051 Regensburg
E-Mail [email protected]
Appendix:
1. Document I: Founding NY:
New-York. Seit dem 18. September 1910 besitzt unser Verein die erste Ortsgruppe in Amerika. Was
noch vor einem Jahre als schlechter Witz gegolten hätte, ist heute zur Wahrheit geworden. Jenseits
des großen Weltmeeres, im Lande, wo der Dollar das Alpha und Omega des menschlichen Trachtens
und Hastens ist, weht unser Banner, grüßt unser Abzeichen. In einem Lande wie Amerika, das
überaus reich an Naturschönheiten, gelten diese Schönheiten nichts, werden nicht gesucht und nicht
geschätzt, weil das Naturempfinden nicht in klingende Münze umzuprägen ist, weil die kostbare
goldbringende Zeit damit vergeudet würde. Und wie an anderen Orten sind es wieder die Arbeiter,
die mitten im Trubel des Erwerbes sich Ideale in der Brust bewahrt haben, sich zusammenscharen,
um auch in der Neuen Welt das Auge zu ergötzen an den Schönheiten der Natur. Das kleine Häuflein
der amerikanischen „Naturfreunde“ wird ein Häuflein sein von Pionieren, deren schöne Aufgabe es
ist, ihren Klassen- und Gesinnungsgenossen die Augen zu öffnen, sie sehen zu lernen. Zu werben und
zu schaffen wird es genug geben für unsere Ortsgruppe New-York, so schreibt der Proponent in
seinem vom 24. September datierten Schreiben: „Leider befinden wir uns - wenn wir von den
bewohnten Stätten absehen - in einem verwahrlosten, verwilderten Lande, wo in den Gebirgen
wenige geregelte Wege zu finden sind. Unsere Aufgabe wird es einst sein, diese Wege zu
bezeichnen.“ Bei der gründenden Versammlung am 18. September wurden in die Leitung der
Ortsgruppe berufen: Adolf Tanzer, Obmann; Max Riedl, Kassier; Alexander Wiederseder,
Schriftführer; Heinr. Weiland, N. Bechtold, J. Richter und Bruno Richter, Ausschußmitglieder.
Zuschriften erbeten an Alexander Wiederseder, 124 Ferst Place, Brooklyn, N.-Y.1
2. Document II: Statement of Purpose, New-Yorker Volkszeitung
– im Sinne gleichzeitig eines Grußworts und einer Werbemaßnahme – ausführlich vor. Er
beginnt die historische Begründung des Verbands mit einer durchaus intensiven
Naturbeschreibung:
Wenden wir einmal den Blick, und durchwandern wir im Geiste die Anfänge unserer
Bewegung und ihrer ideologischen Entwicklung. Es war in den neunziger Jahren des vorigen
Jahrhunderts, da einige Wiener Arbeiter sich gelegentlich an den Sonntagen trafen und hinaus,
in ihre nächste Umgebung, die herrliche Bergwelt, zogen, wo unter blauem Himmel, in
göttlicher Ruhe auf den Matten und an den Bergeshängen Myriaden duftender Blumen in
verschwenderischer Pracht blühten, wo die Sonne zärtlich den heranbrechenden Tag und die
Tautropfen an den Halmen küsste, so dass sie in den wunderbarsten Regenbogenfarben
erstrahlten, funkelten und glitzerten; wo der scheidende Tag ein mattes Rot auf die
schneebedeckten Kämme wirft, wo der Firn und der Gletscher donnerte, und wo der Schnee die
Natur in ein schweigendes Märchenland verzauberte. In dieser freien Bergwelt fanden jene
Arbeiter Freude, Zufriedenheit und Glück. Von hier aus brachten sie frische Kraft und jungen
Mut in die Stadt, in ihre dumpfen Werkstätten zurück. Ihre Freude und ihre Liebe zu den
herrlichen Schätzen der Natur war so gross und so rein, dass sie diese Freude nicht allein
geniessen konnten [...]. Diese Gruppe, die sich ausschliesslich aus Arbei tern, bewussten
1
Der Naturfreund, 16. Jg. (1910), H. 10: 250.
Sozialisten und weitblickendem Marxisten zusammensetzte, hatte im Anfang schwere
Kämpfe zu überstehen. [...] Die damalige junge Organisation liess sich jedoch nicht be irren
und schritt zielklar ihren Weg fürbass. In wenigen Jahren war aus dem kleinen Verein ein
beachtenswerter Zweig der Arbeiterbewegung geworden. Ortsgruppen bildeten sich in allen
Teilen der Welt. Wo immer deutsche Naturfreunde hinkamen, vereinigten sie sich mit
Gleichgesinnten und wirkten für die Ideen, die sie aus der alten Heimat mitgebracht hatten.
Auch hier in Amerika hat dieser Geist einen nahrhaften Boden gefunden. Schon viele Jahre
vor dem Kriege bildeten sich Abteilungen in New York, Philadelphi a, San Francisco und Los
Angeles, die nach Beendigung des wahnwitzigen Völkermordens wieder Zuwachs an jungen
Kräften und stürmischen Bahnbrechern erhielten und stetig erhalten, so dass für die
kommenden Jahre mit einem enormen Aufschwung der amerikanische n NaturfreundeBewegung zu rechnen ist.
Eine deutlichere politische Verortung folgt – wobei, wie auch sonst im Text, ausdrücklich
Distanz zu Parteien gehalten wird; diese seien notwendig und wichtig, aber die Naturfreunde
hätten trotz ähnlicher Grundorientierung eigene und typische Aufgaben:
Wir Naturfreunde sind eine Wander- und Kulturorganisation. Wir sind, wie bereits festgestellt
wurde, bewusst proletarisch und sozialistisch. Gleich den politischen Arbeiter -Parteien und
den sozialistischen Gewerkschaften gilt unser Kampf der Befreiung der Proletariats vom Joch
der kapitalistischen Ausbeutung und der Errichtung einer kommunistischen
Gesellschaftsordnung, welche allen werktätigen Menschen den gerechten Lohn ihrer Arbeit
garantiert. Bis zu diesem Ziel ist jedoch noch ein weiter Weg und wir brauchen, um die
kommenden, entscheidenden Schlachten schlagen zu können, körperlich frische und geistig klare
Menschen, Wir Naturfreunde sind zu der Erkenntnis gelangt, dass wir uns dieses geistige
Rüstzeug draussen in der Natur, auf unseren Wanderungen, holen können; denn wir haben
unserm Wandern eine fest umrissene Richtlinie gegeben, nämlich Erziehungsarbeit am
Menschen zu leisten. Unsere Erziehungsarbeit hat den Zweck, Menschen heranzubilden, die sich
bewusst einsetzen für das Werden der neuen Gesellschaft. In unserem Wandern liegt somit ein
Bekenntnis au einer neuen Lebensauffassung, einem neuen Gemeinschaftsgedanken und -sinn.
Daraus folgt der besondere Status der Naturfreundehäuser:
Den höchsten Ausdruck proletarischen Gemeinschaftsgeistes und innerer Verbundenheit aber
erblicken die Naturfreunde in der Errichtung einer eigenen Hütte, in der der ausgemergelte,
lichthungrige Arbeiter seine Sonn- und Feiertage billig und angenehm verleben kann. Eine
Naturfreundehütte ist das lokale Ziel einer jeden Ortsgruppe und fast alle grösseren Gruppen
blicken heute mit stolzer Genugtuung auf das Werk ihrer Hände Arbeit; denn das ist die Aufgabe:
Durch eigene Kraft! Wer einmal im Kreise dieser jungen und sich jung erhaltenden M enschen
geschafft hat, der wird die Freude verstehen können, die aus den Augen lacht, wenn das Werk
langsam aber sicher seiner Vollendung entgegengeht, Er wird fühlen, mit welchem Ernst, mit
welchem Eifer diese Menschen, ob Bursche oder Mädchen, Mann oder Frau, für das Werden einer
neuen Menschheit ringen. Hier in Amerika besitzen die Ortsgruppen New York, San Francisco,
Oakland und Los Angeles bereits solche selbsterbauten Heime, und sie haben es verstanden, sich
die schönsten Plätzchen zu sichern. Auch in Philadelphia, Chicago und Milwaukee sind bereits die
Grundsteine für die kommenden Naturfreundehäuser gelegt. 2
3. Options for research:
Erschwert wird die historische Analyse durch die unzureichende Quellenlage. So fehlen ganze
Regionen amerikanischer Naturfreunde-Geschichte mangels Dokumentation. Da betrifft sogar
New York und den Mittelwesten, deren Arbeitergeschichte sonst gut erforscht sind. Verfügbar
wären im Wesentlichen die Quellen der noch heute existierenden kalifornischen Ortsgruppen,
die wohl umfassenden, aber nicht systematisch bearbeiteten Unterlagen an der Tamiment
Library der New York University und bislang nicht publizierte Teile des dortigen „Oral
history of the American Left“-Projekts. Zum Verständnis konkreter Vereinsaktivitäten
2
Labor Newspaper Preservation Project 142.
hilfreich sein sollte die gezielte Auswertung gerade der deutschsprachigen Arbeiterpresse –
New-Yorker Volkszeitung, Chicagoer Arbeiterzeitung (nach ihrer Wiedergründung 1931) usw.
–, in der Vereinsnachrichten und Berichte publiziert werden.