Benjamin Moore - The names of John Gergen : immigrant identities in early twentieth-century St. Louis

Copyright 2021 by The Curators of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65211
Printed and bound in the United States of America
All rights reserved. First printing, 2021.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Moore, Benjamin, 1961- author.
Title: The names of John Gergen : immigrant identities in early twentieth-century St. Louis / Benjamin Moore.
Description: Columbia : University of Missouri Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020025720 (print) | LCCN 2020025721 (ebook) | ISBN 9780826222275 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780826274533 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Gergen, John, 1908-1935. | Swabian Americans--Missouri--Saint Louis--Biography. | Immigrants--Missouri--Saint Louis--History--20th century. | Saint Louis (Mo.)--Emigration and immigration--History--20th century. | Banat--Emigration and immigration--History--20th century. | Soulard (Saint Louis, Mo.)--History. | Soulard (Saint Louis, Mo.)--Biography.
Classification: LCC F475.S78 M66 2021 (print) | LCC F475.S78 (ebook) | DDC 304.809778/66--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025720
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025721

This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.

Typefaces: Cardo

In 2000 I moved to a house just outside of the urban neighborhood of Soulard in south St. Louis. The same year, I was tenured as an associate professor of English at Fontbonne University. Though I did not fully understand it at the time, it was a happy confluence of circumstances that would result, two decades later, in this book. Buying a house near Soulard exposed me to a slice of St. Louiss history that I would otherwise have never explored. And being tenured gave me the freedom and opportunity to depart from my academic home in eighteenth-century English literature and begin carving out new areas of research and writing that focus on migration, memory, and identity.

It was therefore a fortunate day, in August 2004, when I found John Gergens schoolwork in a dumpster behind a boarded-up house at 916 Allen Avenue in Soulard. Written in the school year of 191718, the schoolwork opened up a host of questions that bore upon the nature of identity, especially immigrant identity, in the early twentieth century. As I learned more about John Gergen, the questions multiplied and complicated one another. What did it mean to be a nine-year-old orphan whose father had died and whose mother had abandoned him? What did it mean to be a German-speaking immigrant from southern Hungary? What did it mean to be a third grader in a German-language parochial school in Soulard when the Great War raged in Europe? What did it mean to have multiple names that changed according to family and nation? Above all, what did it mean to have been forgotten or almost forgotten?

The stories of John Gergen and his kin shed light on the many thousands of forgotten immigrants who populated the urban centers of the Midwest in the early twentieth century. They also illuminate the larger experience of personhood in an industrial economy, where competing institutions ranging from the schools to labor unions shaped the identities of people striving to participate in that economy. In the lives of John Gergen and his kin, we see that identities repeatedly shifted, as people negotiated and renegotiated the differences between where they came from and where they were going. We see the way that immigrants became enmeshed in the warp and weft of earning and spending. We see how geographical movement itselffrom Hungary to Soulard and from Soulard to the south St. Louis residential subdivisionsgenerated new identities, even as the old ones persisted. We see the power of social institutions to define and redefine identities, according people multiple identities that over time undermined any notion of identitys permanence. Perhaps most important, we see that ordinary peoplethe nobodies whose labor produces the wealth and leisure of otherswere very likely to be forgotten, by their families as well as by history.

The recovery of the schoolwork from a dumpster is therefore an accident that runs counter to the usual order. Through neglect, the schoolwork was preserved in the recesses of an abandoned house at 916 Allen Avenue, left behind when the Gergens moved. By chance, eighty-five years later, it fell into the hands of someone with the time, resources, and inclination to find out what it meant. It survived the ephemerality that was intended both for the text and for the person who wrote it. John Gergen has thereby come to represent those countless working-class immigrants who are more or less invisible in the historical record. They, too, had thoughts, feelings, abilities, shortcomings, and desires. About John Gergen, we know little enough. About the great majority of these immigrants, we know almost nothing.

Today, when immigration and identity are again prominent in our national conversations, the names of John Gergen remain salient. They remind us that identity is complex and that no one is the same person all of the time. They also remind us of the folly of seeking to control the changes that characterize identity, especially the identity of immigrants. To believe that one is either foreign or American is reductive at best. To insist that being American excludes other experiences of identity is not only inhumane but also foolish, at odds with nearly every lesson that John Gergen and his kin have to offer.

One of the pleasures of researching and writing this book has been meeting dozens of people who have been eager to assist. The faults in it remain entirely my own. I am deeply grateful to Eric Sandweiss, who offered incisive comments that helped to make this a better book. His own scholarship has been an important source of pleasure and knowledge for me. I am likewise grateful to an anonymous reader whose insights and suggestions were similarly helpful. I owe many debts to the editorial staff at the University of Missouri Pressespecially to Mary S. Conley, who provided guidance and many important suggestions throughout the publishing process, and to Annette Wenda, whose perceptiveness and editorial acumen were essential to bringing this book into print.

Many thanks to my colleagues at Fontbonne Universityincluding Jack Luzkow, Heather Norton, Kristen Norwood, Lisa Oliverio, and Kasi Williamsonwho have been curious about and supportive of this project. Sabbatical leave in 2005 and 2017 provided time to advance the project. Corinne Wohlford Mason, whose work I have long admired, commented expertly and helpfully on a recent draft. Melissa Eichhorn assisted with scanning, and Brady Shuman located seemingly unfindable books through interlibrary loan.

Laura Kromjk at Tomori Pl College in Budapest provided insight and encouragement at key moments in the research and writing. She also translated the passages from the Hungarian and provided expert advice on the German translations and texts. Amanda Hunyar of the St. Louis Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center, Renee Jones of the St. Louis Public Library, and Lauren Sallwasser of the Missouri Historical Society helped to uncover primary sources, including photographs. I also owe debts to staff at the St. Louis County Library, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the Office of Archives and Records of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, and St. John the Baptist Parish in St. Louis.

Special thanks go to members of John Gergens extended family who assisted with this projectnotably Marty Rossman, Gloria Stuckmeyer, and the late Anna Cattaneo. I will never forget their kindness.