| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Wohnen in der Wildnis: Siedlungsgestaltung und Identität deutscher Auswanderer in den USA (Living in the wilderness: Identity and settlement design of German immigrant groups in the U.S.). By Rainer Vollmar. (Berlin: Reimer, 1995. 238 pp. Cloth, DM 130, isbn 3-496-02554-9.) In German.

This handsome volume summarizes the establishment, history, and physical characteristics of more than thirty major and minor settlements founded by German-speaking immigrants in the United States during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Rainer Vollmar, a geographer, compares secular and religious communities to see how they expressed their respective philosophical views of the world in shaping the space in which they settled. He explores two questions: 1) the connection between the planning and execution of physical space and the social conceptualization of communal life; and 2) how spatial identity and territorial phenomena develop and express themselves in various social contexts. His two primary examples are Bethlehem in Pennsylvania and New Ulm in Minnesota, but he includes other well-known settlements such as Germantown and Amana, as well as lesser-known communities such as Vandalia in Illinois, Guttenberg in Iowa, and various sites in Missouri. Not every settlement of potential interest is treated. Communia in Iowa is missing, for example. But Vollmar makes no claims to have produced an exhaustive study of his topic. . . .

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