After three great years as DANK National’s webmaster, it is come time for me to make my exit.  I am proud of what I was able to create for DANK over the last several years and as a result this decision wasn’t made lightly. There are exciting things I am after and new challenges for me to take on.

When I took on the DANK National website, it was a place for people to learn about DANK as an organization.  My challenge was to make it into a place for people to connect with and grow their German heritage, which I feel was successfully accomplished.  After two complete redesigns, I am leaving DANK with a very complete and useful website that I hope can last for many years.  The website has gone from a basic site, to what I believe is one the greatest ethnic organization websites on the web.

While I depart from working on the website, I will be continuing with the German-American Journal, and I will still be very present in the German American community in exciting new ways.  I am ready to find the next beginning where I can grow and explore the evolving German American culture.

I don’t know what the future of DANK looks like, but I hope that as the new leadership settles in, they can continue to see the value in the website as it is and that they continue to grow the site to satisfy the needs of the membership and German-American community.  As with most changes in leadership, DANK will be taking new directions and I wish them the best.

The email address website@dank.org will be going to the new webmaster, so if you have been using that address to contact me directly you can now reach me at stephen@germanpulse.com.

And with that, it is time for me to step away and hand the site over to the next generation.  It has been a pleasure serving DANK and I hope to be able to connect with many of you again as I take on the next adventure.

Until we meet again…
Stephen Fuchs

Renae Pappas
Regional Hosting Coordinator
AFS-USA
2356 University Ave. West, Suite 424
St. Paul, MN 55114
rpappas@afs.org
ph: (651) 328-2908
toll free: (800) 876-2377 ext. 2908
fax: (651) 305-3753

Click on the link below to find the PDF file of the List of
German Exchange Students

On December 23 of last year, the DANK National Board held a special board meeting to elect Robert Miske of the Milwaukee chapter as National Treasurer.  The position became vacant by the resignation of Maria Thompson, who resigned because of personal reasons.  We sincerely thank Maria for dutifully exercising the position of National Treasurer in the last 3 1/2 years, while bringing her professional financial expertise to our organization.  Many positive changes were accomplished during her tenure and she left some big shoes to fill.  We are extremely thankful for Bob Miske to step up in volunteering for the position at this time.

Bob brings with him a wealth of expertise, serving DANK on National and Regional levels for many years as Parliamentarian, coordinating our National Conventions for the last several decades and serving many terms as Treasurer for the Milwaukee chapter.  Ms. Thompson worked with Bob over a one month period to assure a smooth transition and to make this as seamless as possible.  We truly appreciate the professionalism that both individuals exhibited during the changeover.

After that, I got to write letters to people who had made significant donations to the German American Day fund or the German American Journal. To do so I got to go into the data base and look up people’s addresses. I like navigating the database, it feels so official.

Amelia had given me a couple of copies of the German American Journal and I was really pleased at how well my articles looked. I thank Stephen Fuchs for all his help with the gorgeous layout. He totally brought my words to life and made my articles look adorable!

Then I got the honor of preparing the journals for delivery to Gene’s and The Brauhaus, which is always an exciting walk to go on. After that I got to prepare the envelopes that hold the German American Journal to send to our Associate Members.

Being my last hurrah at DANK, Amelia took me out to lunch at this place called Selmarie. I got a southwest chopped salad for lunch and Amelia and I split a piece of banana truffle cake that was out. of. this. world. I am pretty sure I felt my taste buds smiling as I took each bite of this yummy cake, however, I am not sure how big I will be smiling when I am working my butt off at the gym later to compensate for my indulgence.

I also got a DANK pin and an official certificate for my completion of my internship today. It is so official that it even has a gold seal on it. I am going to frame this certificate because I like that kind of thing.

Yesterday Amelia and I went down to city hall for the Christmas party that Maria Pappas hosted. There were Christmas decorated from countries all over the world. I think my favorite tree of all was the African American tree. At the top of their tree was a very large black Santa, it was super cool.

My internship at DANK has taught me a lot. I look forward to continuing my internship but working more on the journal, but from home. That’s right, telecommuting.

After all the envelopes were stuffed, I got to vacuum the office. It was very dusty in the office from the bits of paper flying all around from the dues slips.

The vacuum at DANK is a very special piece of American history in my eyes. The vacuum is from the 1970’s I believe. I deducted this based on the avocado color of it. My grandmother’s kitchen is completely decorated in this avocado color and I remember her telling me that the last time she decorated it was in the 1970’s, complete with a shag carpet – in the kitchen. The official name of the vacuum is the Sears Kenmore Magic Cord Canister Vacuum; a picture is attached of this beauty. For being an older machine, this vacuum has some major sucking power, in a good way. The cord is retractable.

The only issue that I occasionally have when I use the vacuum is how I have to drag the part with the bag around after me. I occasionally find myself calling to the bag canister like it is a puppy, asking it to follow me. I say, “Come on! Over here! This way!” After doing so I realize that trying to convince an inanimate object to follow me must make me look like a fool and I scan the room to see if anyone has overheard me talking to the vacuum. Luckily, the vacuum is loud enough that no one scowls at me for talking to the vacuum.

Besides vacuuming, I recently had to update the by-laws in the by-law booklets. To do so, Amelia gave me these little slips to make copies of . I had to make sure that the slips printed properly onto stickers. Once this was all set, I got to sit down with the big pile of by-law booklets and peel the stickers, placing the corrections made to the proper article.

Sure, it may not be the most exciting task, but I realize that the work I do for DANK may seem tedious and at times mundane, but to the organization it means a lot. I believe that this is common at most companies, that interns help grease the cogs that make the machine that is the company operate smoothly. Without interns to assist with smaller, more detailed tasks, most companies would be very busy and not as focused. By having an intern available, they can act like a personal assistant and make the company thrive with the little things they can do to help.

During the membership retainer, a piece of paper from every member is printed on this big, old-fashioned (at least to my generation) printer. Each little slip has to be torn into threes, as there are three statements per sheet of paper. After DANK’s approximately four thousand members have been torn their own independent slip from the master list, they need to be stuffed into envelopes.

Accompanying the member retainer is also a return address envelope and a letter form President, Bill Fuchs explaining the benefits of being a member of DANK. All of these must be stuffed by hand, and an intern, like myself is the perfect person to do so. I am not bitter about this task in anyway because I know that the work I am doing, although a little mundane, means a lot to the organization because a group is only as strong as its member’s participation. With the work that I am doing, I am helping to ensure that DANK is an organization that will continue to be a working organization,  bringing together people who have an interest in German culture and heritage and preserving and celebrating it for years to come.

With that said, I may cringe at the paper cuts, but I know that it is for the greater good of DANK and I look forward to continuing this task and constantly re-hydrating my hands.

I got to deliver the German-American Journal to some local businesses – Gene’s and the Chicago Brauhaus.  I really like doing the delivery. When I go to Gene’s I really enjoy the smell that wafts through the air of this sausage shop and deli market. Peering in the windows to Gene’s I see that they carry lots of stuff, including fresh produce, smoked fish,  frozen foods, and they have a big cheese department.  The deli stuff looks phenomenal and I can’t help but smile when I pass the windows and see sausages hanging and fresh bread being pulled out of the bakery oven.

The Chicago Brauhaus smells like delectable home cooked cuisine. Last time I was there I checked out the menu and they have lots of traditional German cuisine such as Bavarian pretzels with mustard, veal bratwurst and a choice of warm or cold potato salad.

During this time of year I really enjoy this walk and seeing all the trees change colors down this narrow street that makes up the Lincoln Square neighborhood.

Since DANK is interested in developing a stronger youth network, I am also to take the German American Journal and drop it off in the German department at UIC to share with the college-aged community. I think this is a fantastic idea since a student membership is the cheapest one at a rate of only $10 a year.

As an intern at DANK, I feel like I could learn a little more about German culture and language. I realize that interning at DANK and having no sense of the German culture or heritage is a little out of the ordinary, I just want to express more of an interest in the things I am participating in. I already speak Spanish and French and now would like to get a little more acquainted with the German language. I decided this week that I should know at least a touch of German. I went online and found a free 12-step German language introduction that I plan on starting to study to help me understand a little more and communicate better. This weeks lesson will be on Grüße und Nettigkeiten: German Greetings and Courtesies. I really look forward to kicking off the basics of vocabulary and diving right in, head first, into this personal project. I hope you have a good week and danke schön for reading!

The day I began my internship, I was nervous. Only travelling to the location one time before for my interview, I had an idea of how far away the location was yet was unsure of the travel times at this time in the day, especially since the CTA is as reliable as a weatherman.  My internship at the German American National Congress (DANK) is located at 4740 N Western, around Lawrence Avenue, about seven miles away from the University of Illinois-Chicago where I go to school and am majoring in English.  I looked on the CTA’s trip planner and saw that it would take me approximately an hour to get to DANK taking the blue line to the brown line and exiting at Western.

On my first day I arrived on time, was also dressed professionally and was excited to make a good impression from the second I walked in the door. The office manager and internship coordinator, Amelia Cotter, greeted me and brought me in to the president’s office to have me fill out some paperwork and explain to me the full ins-and-outs of the internship at DANK. After the briefing I was given a list of tasks that would be my responsibility and how I was to fulfill them.

Amelia had given me the task of coming up with some ideas of articles I can write for the German American Journal’s holiday edition since there were no book reviews that needed to be written.  I came up with a couple of ideas for articles that would be targeted toward our readers. The first article would be a German-American gift giving guide and the second is a holiday recipe.  Amelia liked them and told me to get started right away, I was so excited to do these that it wasn’t a problem at all.

The first article took me about a week to compile but it was a lot of fun to research. I had to be conscious of the fact that since it is a national publication, that all the gifts in the gift giving guide were available online and had reasonable shipping charges. I compiled a guide of six items that were very fun and festive (including photographs and captions) for the article, all items were thirty dollars or less, since DANK also has younger, college-aged members, it had to be affordable.

The second article took about a week to write as well.  I found many recipes in my research, but most were going to be costly since it is a holiday tradition in Germany to cook a goose for Christmas. I certainly did not know where to buy a goose in the city of Chicago or even how a goose cooked properly was supposed to taste. I asked the other intern, Sarah, what she enjoys to eat during the holidays. Sarah is an intern working at the DANK office for the next month while she visits from Germany. She recommended a recipe for a beverage that is called Glühwein, a mulled red wine served warm. I made the Glühwein at home and recorded it with my digital camcorder. I am in no way a sommelier, but it definitely tasted like Christmas to me.

I suggested to Amelia that I could add to the DANK YouTube channel since they are trying to reach out and get younger members into the organization. She liked the idea and recently told me that it is all in the works.

Since my writing contributions had been finished for the journal, I was assigned some smaller assignments as well as doing some basic office tasks such as delivering the journal, dropping deposits off at the bank, going to the post office, vacuuming, etc.

For some of the other smaller projects, Sarah (another German-American intern) and I got to work together to set up a press release template for the twenty-seven chapters and also write a letter for gift memberships. A small project that I had to work on solo was to take the events that the twenty-seven chapters were having and organize them in a very particular way so that it could be submitted to German American Life Magazine’s event section calendar.

So far, I really enjoy my internship with DANK. I like the setting of the office, the people I work with and get very excited to participate in events and projects the organization hosts.  I look forward to the future projects and networking with not only more members, but more of DANK’s board of directors.

With the success of our booth at GermanFest, we have sold out our entire stock of the DANK 50th Anniversary HB Totes.  They were a hot item at the fest! Hopefully everyone that wanted one got it while they were available.

Besides the presentation of the Gründungsbrief (founding letter) and the celebration dinner, the evening was showered with the traditional and entertaining dances from “D’Pittsburgher Alpen Schuhplattler und Trachtenverein.”  Also included was audience participation which included the chickendance amongst several others.  Below are some pictures from the wonderful evening.

Best wishes,
President Bill

Schuhplatter in motion

Schuhplatters are dancing

Schuhplattlers are platsching

National President Bill Fuchs and VP Erich Wittman (left & right) present founding letter to chapter President Ernst Young

New chapter board with chapter banner presented by the Bruderhof community of Farmington, PA

National VP Wittman and chapter President Young participating as guest Schuhplattlers

Uniontown VP and Region 3 President Chris Decker with National Pres. Fuchs doing the Chickendance

Group picture of the Pittsburgh Schuhplatter Verein