BOOK EXPLORES GERMAN, FRENCH INFLUENCES ON AREA

The influence of German and French immigrants on the region can be seen in our churches and houses, certainly, but also in our conservatism and even in our love of having a beer, says Dr. Michael Roark, who has edited a book on the subject.

The book has the unwieldy academic title "French and Germans in the Mississippi Valley: Landscape and Cultural Traditions." But Roark, a professor of geography and tourism at Southeast, says it contains information valuable both to scholars and laymen.

"There's not a lot available or written about influences in the Mississippi Valley," he says.

First published in 1988, the book has just been reissued by the Center for Regional History and Cultural Heritage at Southeast.

Roark compiled the book from papers presented at the national meeting of the Pioneer American Society held at Southeast in 1984.

One of the papers, written by Walter Kamphoefner of the University of Miami, delves into the homogeneity of the German immigration in Cape Girardeau County.

Kamphoefner found that immigrants from the German states of Hannover and Brunswick accounted for more than half the German immigrants living in the county in 1870. One-fourth of those could be traced to a single village, Schlewecke.

At that time, 10 percent of all the Brunswick immigrants in the U.S. were living in Cape Girardeau County.

The northern Germans who came to Cape Girardeau County brought their Lutheranism -- thus Hanover Lutheran Church -- while the southern Germans who wound up in Ste. Genevieve brought their Catholicism, Roark says. The Cape Girardeau Germans spoke a low German dialect similar to Dutch.

The influence of these German immigrants on Cape Girardeau County can be seen in other ways, including the style of our church buildings and the "salt box" houses still to be found.

They also transmitted social values and mores that still exist, Roark said. "Certainly the Germans are correlated to Republican Party affiliation, and they tend to be more conservative. That reflects Germany."

The social activity of beer drinking was another German custom that was transplanted to the county, Roark says, pointing out that the Anheuser Busch brewery got its start nearby in Wittenberg.

And our community bands go back to the brass bands found in every German community.

French immigrants had much more effect on Ste. Genevieve than on Cape Girardeau County, but Roark says their influence still can be seen here in the long "jalarie" porch of the historic Reynolds House on Main Street and the shotgun houses in the Red Star District.

The architecture of Old St. Vincent's Church is French Gothic. The church was built and designed by the French families of Cape Girardeau.

The mansard roof of the Cliff and Lynette Shirrell house next to the Mississippi River Bridge derives from the French Second Empire.

But Roark says the grandest French influence in Cape Girardeau is the Beaux Arts Academic Hall. The county courthouse in Jackson employs the same style.

Roark will sign copies of his book beginning at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10, at Barnes & Noble.