The MWS project database provides an overview of current and completed projects at the institutes of the MWS and aims to make information on these accessible to everyone. It enables a search by subject area and subject. It is based on the selection of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) adapted by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek as the German specialised library for the field of history. It is also possible to search by country (states existing today) and major epochs. The database includes dissertation and habilitation projects that were funded, for example, as part of a scholarship, as well as the institute's own and third-party-funded collaborative projects.
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The project database aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the thematic breadth and diversity of research at the institutes and research groups of the MWS. Information on current research foci of the institutes can be found on the respective institute websites.
DHI Washington
German Restaurants in San Francsico, 1890-1941
Projektbeginn: 2013
Projektende: 2014
Themengebiet:
Geschichte allgemein
Ort:
Amerika
Zeit: 1890-1941
Epoche:
Neuzeit
In my project, I examine the cultural and social role of food among immigrants from Germany to the San Francisco Bay area during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based on the hypothesis that food represents a phenomenon in which immigrants construct their ethnicity – understood as a highly dynamic, ever-changing process –, my study focuses on German restaurants. Places like the Bismarck Cafe, the Heidelberg Inn, and Schroeder's served as trans-local spaces of cultural encounters, in which ethnicity emerged in the processes of preparing, marketing, and consuming food labeled and perceived as German. I will trace the development of these ethnic restaurants through a period of a high German presence in the Bay Area (1890-1917), a period when the German community submerged in the wake of 1917 and beer gardens and restaurants suffered from Prohibition (1920-1933), up to the Second World War (1941).