{"id":110340,"date":"2017-10-07T11:45:01","date_gmt":"2017-10-07T15:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=110340"},"modified":"2017-10-26T09:07:11","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T13:07:11","slug":"look-what-we-found-jakub-kazeckis-german-pin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2017\/10\/07\/look-what-we-found-jakub-kazeckis-german-pin\/","title":{"rendered":"Look What We Found: Jakub Kazecki’s 1905 Bates German Club medal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Assistant Professor of German Jakub Kazecki plucks a tiny bronze medal from a shelf in his Roger Williams Hall office. The medal, says the Polish-born scholar, is a symbolic “connection between the German and the American\u201d \u2014 and between Bates students and the wider world.<\/p>\n

In July 2016, a Virginia woman,\u00a0Cecilia Mittmann, wrote Kazecki saying she’d found a medal at an estate sale in Alexandria. Might the Bates scholar have information about it?<\/p>\n

Kazecki, an expert in 20th-century German literature (especially about World War I), dug through back issues of The Bates Student<\/em> at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. He learned that the original Bates German Club, founded Oct. 12, 1905, produced these medals for its 16 members.<\/p>\n

The inscription on one side of the medal reads, “Deutscher Verein zu Bates, 1905<\/em>” (German Club of Bates), while the other presents a coat of arms adapted from the German empire, in which an eagle holds two symbols: one representing Bates, the other, an American flag.<\/p>\n

Students founded the original Deutscher Verein<\/em> \u201cto give its members an opportunity to become better acquainted with German life and customs.\u201d At its first meeting, on Jan. 18, 1906, the club initiated its charter members (men only) and elected officers. Professor of German Arthur Leonard was the club\u2019s inaugural faculty adviser.<\/p>\n

\"171005_Jakub_Kazezcki_0062\"<\/a>

One side of a 1905 Bates German Club medal depicts the coat of arms adapted from that of the German empire, in which an eagle holds two symbols: one representing Bates, the other, an American flag. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

A story in The Bates Student<\/em> describes a March 1, 1906, meeting at the Wood Street home of Leonard and his wife, who would accompany the students on the piano. Club business preceded socializing and refreshments, such as apples and popcorn balls. \u201cGerman games were played, German songs were sung, and refreshments eaten in the German way,” the story said.<\/p>\n

At later meetings, the club had guest speakers, such as German-born Alexander Maerze, Class of 1903, who in November 1906 regaled students for a full two hours with tales of crossing the ocean as a fourth-class steerage passenger.<\/p>\n

When Kazecki shared what he had learned, Mittmann decided to donate the medal to the Bates German department. And for that Kazecki\u2019s most grateful.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe medal,\u201d says Kazecki, \u201cis a material piece that kind of anchors this Bates experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents stay here for four years and explore the world,\u201d says Kazecki, who also researches images of German-Polish relationships in literature, film, and visual arts, as well as laughter and comedy in different media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey graduate and start their lives. But there are pieces of material culture that they have produced here that actually bring them back to Bates, and create a Bates identity.\u201c<\/p>\n

\"171005_Jakub_Kazezcki_0079\"<\/a>

Assistant Professor of German Jakub Kazecki holds a medal given to members of the Bates German Club. On this side of the medal an inscription reads, “Deutscher Verein Zu Bates” \u2014 German Club of Bates. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Kazecki likes to imagine how German Club students from the early 20th century looked at their medal often in the years after graduating and remembered the delightful meetings.<\/p>\n

The medal also provides Kazecki\u2019s own study and work at Bates with a little bit of institutional history. \u201cI build my identity being here at Bates based on those pieces that I collect and gather in the office, as we all do,\u201d says Kazecki, who advises today\u2019s German Club. \u201cAnd I think that is why it\u2019s important to me. It\u2019s part of my life now, and part of my own Bates identity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cStudents graduate and start their lives.” But there are material things that will “bring them back to Bates and create a Bates identity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":110341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14,224],"tags":[9757,11321,6164],"class_list":["post-110340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","category-society-culture","tag-jakub-kazecki","tag-look-what-we-found","tag-muskie-archives-and-special-collections-library"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110340"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110548,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110340\/revisions\/110548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}