June 11 — Embrace your German essence with Norbert Krapf at the Stammtisch
Pulitzer Prize nominee Norbert Krapf reads the story of his German ancestors in Jasper at that masterpiece of Teutonic architecture, the Athenaeum. Join him at the Stammtisch, the elevated table where serious German men discuss elevated topics.
When: Wednesday June 11, 7:30 PM
Where: Athenaeum, 401 E. Michigan St., Indy, Max Kade Room
A Stammtisch used to be the riased table in any small German town’s pub reserved for the village elite, a place where weighty men would gather to discuss weighty topics. You can join Norbert Krapf as he reads his prose memoir of how his German ancestors who settled in Jasper 150 years ago still shape life today. It’s a free reading, but you should go for the full Germanic experience by joining the Indiana German Heritage Society for a special dinner at 6:30. Call 317.636.4169 for details.
The Ripest Moments: A Southern Indiana Childhood
–by Norbert Krapf
Indiana Historical Society Press
$15.95 cloth, ISBN 978-0-87195-262-2
175 pp., 5 X 7, 74 b/w illustrations
late April, 2008
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In the 1840s and 1850s, thousands of German families left Europe for a new life in America. Hundreds of these immigrants eventually settled in the Dubois County community of Jasper, Indiana, the county seat.
Surrounding the town were dense hardwood forests that provided the raw materials for craftsmen to begin the furniture-making firms for which the area became well known. Two of the German families that put down roots in the Jasper area, the Schmitts and the Krapfs, produced a son who today remembers those days of close ties to family and the land.
The Ripest Moments: A Southern Indiana Childhood is a prose memoir by noted Indiana poet and essayist Norbert Krapf of his childhood and growing up in Jasper. In the book Krapf, who was born in 1943 and whose poetry has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, recalls his rural, small-town upbringing in the German-Catholic community and unearths the distinctive place and culture in which he lived. As Krapf observes, “Behind this book and my collections of poetry is a conviction that an awareness of individual and collective origins can enlighten, nourish, guide, and sustain us and those who come after us.”
Krapf’s childhood memoir is divided into 42 short chapters, organized loosely around chronology, but also according to clusters of rural activities and customs. For example, some of the chapters are titled “The Music of the Grandfathers,” “Summers on the Farm,” “Sundays at the Lake,” “The Labor Day Boxes,” “The Garden and the Strawberry Patch,” “The Parish Picnic,” “Boy Scout Activities,” “Sunday Morning Baseball,” “The Little St. Joseph’s Church,” “The Woods Behind the House,” “Popcorn, Hickory Nuts, and Walnuts,” “Holiday Hunt,” “Hauling Hay,” and “Invitation to a Family Picnic.”
Former U.S. Poet Laureate William Jay Smith has said, “Not since Theodore Roethke has any poet handled so successfully the subject of youth and adolescence.”
