LANCASTER, Pa. - Michael Werner, president of the Pennsylvania German Association, will deliver the annual Professor J. William Frey Memorial Pennsylvania German Lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 3 at 4:30 p.m. in Franklin & Marshall’s Stahr Auditorium on the first floor of Stager Hall.
Werner's talk, "The Future of Pennsylvania German Ethnicity in the 21st Century," is free and open to the public. Werner earned his master's and doctorate from the University of Mannheim in Germany with a focus on German dialectology, Palatine and Pennsylvania German dialects, language contact and minority languages. In 2003, he founded and became president of the "Deutsch-Pennsylanischer Arbeitskreis e.V" (Pennsylvania German Association), a network of interested scholars in Europe. Their website is www.pennsylvanien.de. He is also the founder of the Pennsylvania German and Palatine website "hiwwe-wie-driwwe.de," where people can find Pennsylvania German columns, a dialect forum, a Pennsylvania German web class, a Pennsylvania German radio program and even Pennsylvania German video files. Werner founded the Pennsylvania German and Palatine newspaper “Hiwwe wie Driwwe” ("Over here as over there"), the only publication that is completely written in the dialect; 2,400 copies per issue reach more than 5,000 readers, 80% of them living in Pennsylvania. More than100 Pennsylvania Authors have already contributed texts.
Werner speaks German, Palatine dialects, Pennsylvania German, English, French and Latin and lives Germany in with his wife and two daughters. The lecture will be the Dorothy Pozniko and C. Richard Beam ‘49 Lecture in memory of J. William Frey. The Beams established a fund in 1997 to support the presentation of an annual lecture pertaining to Pennsylvania German language, music, artistic and material culture, religion, folklore, history, or folk life. -30- |
