August, Hans and Adelaide Schiller

The second annual German-Americana lecture, scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 19, 3-4:30 p.m., in Annie Laws (407 Teachers/Dyer), will feature Frederic Krome, professor of history at UC Clermont College who will speak about his recent research on the unpublished memoirs of a World War I German soldier. “In Times of War: Hans Schiller’s Recovered Memoirs” will provide a fascinating window into the motivations and experiences of Hans Schiller during tumultuous times, without the extensive post war re-writing so common to what historians are starting to refer to as “Ego Documents.”

Enlisting in the German Army in the fall of 1914, Hans Schiller fought on the Eastern, Italian and Western fronts during the war, and with the Freikorps in the Baltic from 1919-21. Sometime in 1922, as he was recovering from Scarlet Fever, Hans Schiller collated his notes and wrote a memoir of his military service. The handwritten memoir was then placed in a box, where it lay as Schiller married, had a family, and in 1939 was recalled to active duty as an occupation administrator in Eastern Europe. In January 1945 he committed suicide and his manuscript, still in the box, came to his younger daughter, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s. It was re-discovered by Karin Wagner, Schiller’s granddaughter, shortly before her mother’s death.

Frederic Krome

Frederic Krome, (Ph.D. University of Cincinnati, 1992) taught at Northern Kentucky University (1992-98) before becoming the managing editor of the American Jewish Archives Journal at the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Since 2007 he has taught at the University of Cincinnati. His publications include The Jews of Cincinnati (with John Fine), The Jewish Hospital and Cincinnati Jews in Medicine (2015), and Fighting the Future War: An Anthology of Science Fiction War Stories, 1914-45 (2012), along with numerous articles and book reviews.

Organized by the Archives and Rare Books Library, the German-Americana Lecture is free and open to all, but reservations are requested to jennifer.mackiewicz@uc.edu or by phone at (513) 556-1394.

The German-Americana Lecture is generously supported by The Charlotte and Edward Unnewehr Fund for the German-Americana Collection made possible by the Marge and Charles J. Schott Foundation.