AEMI

PAUL-HEINZ PAUSEBACK
to admit – to others or even to himself
– that in the Land of Plenty where others
used to make millions, he is unable to
earn a living or make a future for himself
and a good start for the rest of the
family?
The ‘Red-beard’ referred to in the
quotation at the start of this article is a
real prototype of the newly-rich visitor.
In Germany he became proverbial as the
‘rich uncle from America’ arriving, usually
in big cars and with suitcases full of
dollars. He was quite frequently found in
Germany up to the 1950s. We can read
that this figure later, in the 1960s and
1970s, was common too in Poland, eastand
south east Europe and still is in Turkey
(Topçu; Bota; Pham, 64, 76).
Now coming back home from Germany,
Alice Bota, daughter of a migrant
from Poland to Germany wrote, that
everybody who had escaped the poverty
in Poland in that times, had to be
a glorious winner when he came back
to visit relatives. Even if in Germany
nothing would remain except hard work
and isolation. But at home and in front
of the people who stayed they boasted
with their money and told stories of how
much bigger and better everything was in
the Reich that means Germany.
So in a letter from the year 1881 it
sounded like an excuse or an apology
when a young emigrant in the U.S.
wrote back to his parents in Husum in
North-Frisia:
If you were better off here, why should
I advise you against coming over? How
can father believe that his own son,
doesn’t tell him the truth … I still do
not earn more than one dollar a day.
Maybe I will go to Texas in the winter
to pick cotton. 11
109
We have heard about deriding the ones
who failed. If this young fellow really
went down south, the Afro-Americans
there may be still today tell his story
and laugh at that ‘crazy Dutchman’ who
tried to make money in the cotton fields.
The sources (newspapers, letters, and
official documents) show us people like
him and others, and we learn some
details about their trajectories. Not always
nice rich uncles returned from
overseas. Sometimes there also arrived
other types, like a Nanning Tönissen
for example. 12 He had been born on the
North-Frisian island Amrum. In 1867
he emigrated to the United States and
as an American citizen he came back
nearly every year where he married
twice. Nanning Tönissen was a very big
and extraordinary strong man and when
drunk, as he frequently was, he became
very quarrelsome and quickly engaged
in fights. Then the other inhabitants of
Amrum feared to meet him. But avoiding
him was not always so easy, because
the island apart from the beach and the
dunes rather small. This problem came
to an end in 1888 when Nanning was
expelled from Germany after his father
in law had made it known to the authorities
that he had mistreated his family. In
this regard the neighboring island Föhr
was luckier.
In the 1950s or 60s remigrants from
New York made known the then very
popular Manhattan cocktail at home.
At first this drink was limited to their
families and friends. But more and more
people began to like it, and now it is
present at nearly every festivity. During
the last years the Manhattan has somewhat
a comeback as New Manhattan in
New York. But it was on Föhr that it was