Souvenir Program 

Old Heidelberg Club

Picnic

August 6, 1939

Minneapolis, MN

This 9" x 6" 32-page pamphlet (plus paper covers) documents the elaborate picnic the Old Heidelberg Club hosted on Sunday, August 6th, 1939.

The German population of Minnesota was large and it had suffered greatly from prejudicial treatment during The First World War.  The Old Heidelberg Club sought to regain some measure of respectability for Germans in Minnesota.  They offered a place for Germans and German-Americans to express their love of their homeland.  They had the models of the Swedish and Norwegian American in Minnesota.

Unfortunately, history was not on their side. 

The date of the picnic was the month before Germany invaded Poland, starting WWII.   With its "Germans only" criteria for membership and glorification of the German homeland, the Old Heidelberg Club all but disappeared, making it difficult to find records of it today.

The program introduces the main speaker, Philip LaFollette, former Governor of Wisconsin.  It also prints its criteria for membership in the club and its purpose.

Throughout the Program are ads for local businesses.  A Harley Davidson Motorcycle distributer placed an attractive ad on the back cover. Unfortunately it begins with the now all-too-familiar WWII phrase associated with the worst of German ambitions: "Uber Alles! The Greatest Sport on Wheels Harley-Davidson Motorcycles."

This Program documents German-American nostalgia for the Homeland between two terrible wars pitting the United States against Germany.  The fun events described in the Program--the scheduled races, the food, the songs and other entertaining events appear not to have been enough to subdue a resurgence of negative feeling toward Germans that re-emerged in WWII.  Members of The Old Heidelberg Club had to wait for New Ulm, MN to take up the cause after the dust settled from WWII.

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