speeches

Dear Madame Minister (Diezel),
Dear Mr. State Secretary (Diller),
Your Honor the Lord Mayor (Dörbaum),
Ladies and Gentlemen,

(Informal Opening: Allow me to direct my first remarks in English to my countrymen. It is an honor and also somewhat daunting to appear before so many members of the Roebling family as the representative of the United States of America on this occasion. The American guests today will learn this German sort of ceremony, called a Festakt, involves the risk of hearing the same bits of history repeated in several speeches. I am afraid I too will repeat some of what the other speakers say. But I want to start out today by telling the story of another American family whose roots, like those of the Roeblings, are in the great emigration from Germany.)

I am delighted to visit Mühlhausen and to participate in today’s events commemorating the city’s most famous son, Johann August Röbling. Speaking to you today as the American Consul General accredited to Thuringia is very rewarding for me in three respects. First, with your indulgence, I want to share a piece of my family history that links me to your city. Second, as a child of the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area I am pleased to recount and honor the contributions of Röbling and his descendants to my home region. And third, as an American diplomat I want to celebrate with you the 200 birthday of Johann August Roebling. Born in Mühlhausen and trained in Germany, Roebling became a famous engineer and a successful businessman. In this way he not only erected bridges over rivers, but also between Mühlhausen and Germany and the United States.

First, the personal story. Shortly after I learned of my assignment to come to Leipzig as Consul General for this three-state region, my sister presented me a document she had found in our grandmother’s house. I have it here with me. It reads at the top:

Mittelschule für Knaben zu Mühlhausen in Thüringen
Schulentlassungs-Zeugnis

(Middle School for Boys at Muehlhausen in Thuringia
School Completion Certificate)

and there follows the handwritten name Hermann Wolter. The document is dated September 5, 1900, when this Hermann Wolter was fourteen years old. Three years later he emigrated to the United States with an older brother. He was my great-grandfather – the father of my father’s mother.

I never knew him personally; he died before turning 60 from lung disease developed in his work. He had worked on the construction of the two tunnels – the Holland and the Lincoln – that run beneath the Hudson River from Manhattan Island, that is from New York City, to New Jersey. In those days protection against small particles for people doing such dusty work was not what it should have been. Later in life he was maintenance supervisor for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, responsible for those tunnels as well as the imposing George Washington Bridge.

I have subjected you to these obscure details to illustrate how delighted I was to learn my great-grandfather had come to school in Mühlhausen. You see, the family history had been garbled and we all thought he was from Stuttgart, but now I know that can’t be right. That he would attend school in Thuringia was a mystery, but a happy one because I knew I was coming here to represent my country – his adopted country.

I contacted city officials via the Internet web site and received a nice note from your city archivist, in which I learned that the Mittelschule für Knaben had progressed over the years to become the "Johann-August-Röbling-Schule." Röbling -- the great civil engineer and inventor whose last great achievement, the Brooklyn Bridge, remains an icon of the New York City area. Röbling’s work directing the construction of New York’s first great bridge and my great-grandfather’s much more modest contributions occurred two generations apart. Incidentally, much of the steel cable used in building the George Washington Bridge, for which my great grandfather was later maintenance chief, were produced by the Roebling Steel Company. So it is rewarding to me to know that the school Hermann Wolter once attended now bears the name of one of the greatest German-American builders of the sort of civil infrastructure to which my great-grandfather devoted his working life as well. I am looking forward to visiting the school right after this ceremony.

Now, I still have a mystery to solve. This "Zeugnis" says my great-grandfather was born in a place called Ziegenhain. If anyone knows of a Ziegenhain closer to here than the one in Jena, I would be grateful to learn of it.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Johann August Röbling and his family – as well as my own ancestors – were among the many German immigrants who built New York City into our nation’s greatest metropolis in the 19th Century and contributed to New Jersey’s status as an industrial leader.

These immigrants not only built bridges in their new home country, but also built bridges figuratively across the Atlantic. They brought their knowledge, skills, and customs to the new world. At the same time, they often remained in contact with their old home and wrote about their life in America. These were most often people who tried with innovation and energy to overcome the restrictive boundaries that hindered their far-reaching ideas.

Roebling – who was born here in Mühlhausen exactly 200 years ago – is a good example for this. After experiencing difficulties with the subjects of Latin and Theology in school, he simply withdrew and took private lessons with the then famous mathematician Dr. Unger in Erfurt. By 1823 Erfurt, too, had become too small for him and he went to Berlin to study engineering at the Royal Prussian Polytechnic Institute. There he got a hold on a treatise on suspension bridges. He was fascinated by this new kind of bridge construction and wrote his final thesis on it. Thus he had found a new field which should become a lifelong challenge for him.

But his enthusiasm for suspension bridges was soon curbed: His design of a chain suspension bridge across the Ruhr lost out to a traditional bridge building design in a competition. Yet for Roebling this setback was only motivation to search for new paths forward. In his case, the path led across the Atlantic. In May 1831 he emigrated to the United States with a group of roughly 40 friends and acquaintances from Mühlhausen, including his brother Carl.

At first Roebling was overwhelmed in the United States by the many new impressions, which he wrote down in his diary. A hundred years after its writing Roebling's diary was published as a book, and originals from that time are now traded at collector prices. (And, as you have seen, a new German edition is available here today thanks to the work of Ms. Iris Roebling.)

It is also known that Roebling took books by the boxful along to his new home and that he engaged in lengthy conversations with the captain of the ship on astronomy, meteorology, and philosophy. His wide interests already had become apparent during his studies in Berlin, as he not only studied bridge building, but also attended lectures by the philosopher Hegel. One of his boxes of books supposedly included a copy of Hegel’s newly published “Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences.”

After finally reaching the United States after an eleven week long passage, the group from Mühlhausen bought land in the western part of Pennsylvania and founded a settlement which initially got the hopeful name “Germania.” Later the name was changed to “Saxonburg.” Until this day the town carries this name, although “New Muehlhausen” would have been much more appropriate. Roebling turned to something new and became a farmer. He must have liked it for some time, because he wrote many reports and letters to the old country, in which he described life in the “promised land.” He even wrote a guide for potential emigrants. Apparently he the power of persuasion, because many of his compatriots from Thuringia emigrated to the United States as well, including his later wife Johanna Müller.

But the United States would not be the Land of Unlimited Opportunity if a man like Roebling could not soon discover new ways to apply his technical talents. He found them in canal construction. Waterways were the only possibility to transport goods in large quantities in the then “West” of the United States; railroads had not yet been built there. A problem lay in the fact that many commercial centers were not connected by rivers but were separated by mountains. This made it necessary to dig canals, and often the ships had to be towed over mountain ranges. Ropes made from hemp were used for this purpose, but they wore out quickly.

One person’s problem is another person’s opportunity. Roebling remembered reading about bridges where ropes made from wire were used for suspension. He started experimenting with the production of wire ropes behind his house in Saxonburg. In 1842, Roebling received the American patent on steel cables.

This was not only the end of Roebling’s interlude as a farmer, but the start of an extremely successful career as an engineer and businessman. Roebling understood how to develop ideas and to sell the results. He founded a factory next to his house in Saxonburg, and then due to space constraints moved it to Trenton, New Jersey. The company opened America’s first “company town” roughly 40 years after Roebling’s death. Best compared perhaps to a Kombinat in the East German experience, 4000 people lived and worked in the factory town, with factory-owned schools, stores, banks, hospitals and theaters. The town of Roebling, New Jersey celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2005 as an active community, although the steel mill now stands silent.

As he began to produce wire cable, Johann August Roebling was finally able to return to his great passion of building suspension bridges. He directed the construction of several aqueducts. Yet Roebling rose to national fame through his construction of a suspension bridge across the Niagara. It had a span width of 821 feet and a height of 245 feet over water level. His suspension bridge which connects Covington, Kentucky with Cincinnati, Ohio was even more impressive. With its span of 1056 feet, it was the longest bridge in the world at its opening in 1866. And it was one of the most stable, too. In 1937, the Ohio River flooded. Roebling’s suspension bridge was the only passable crossing along more than 800 miles of riverfront. This year, 2006, the 140th anniversary of the opening of the “Roebling Suspension Bridge,” is commemorated with a special exhibit in the “German-Americana” department of the library of the University of Cincinnati.

Roebling finally became world famous for his construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn’s development from outlying farm settlement to a thriving part of the city became possible only after Brooklyn was connected with Manhattan by a bridge. Roebling had already proposed a bridge numerous times, but without success. Only after the frigid winter of 1866 caused the suspension of ferry service between Brooklyn and Manhattan, and a local newspaper pointed out snidely that one could travel faster to Manhattan from Albany, roughly 150 miles away, than from Brooklyn, did Roebling receive the commission to build the bridge.

Shortly after he had completed all plans for the Brooklyn Bridge, Roebling suffered an accident at work on a pylon on the East River. As a result of his injuries he died on the 22nd of July, 1869. The bridge was eventually completed by his son Washington Roebling. President Chester Arthur, also a New Yorker, personally opened the bridge in 1883 at an event celebrated by 50,000 people.

John August Roebling lives on. As I already mentioned, there is the town Roebling in New Jersey. Brooklyn has a Roebling Street, a bar called the Roebling Carriage Room as well as a Roebling Tea Room. A New Jersey brewery brews a Roebling Bock beer, and Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge has made it into the vocabulary of American-English. For generations we have used the term “Brooklyn Bridge” in an expression that indicates someone else is being naïve. The saying goes: “If you believe that, then I’d like to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge for a good price.”

With Roebling we celebrate today a true bridge builder. Thanks to his engineering skills he overcame canyons and rivers. He brought new ideas from Europe to the United States and enriched the technical knowledge in his old home with his inventions and innovations. With his masterpiece he advanced the development of one of the World’s great cities, he expanded the American vocabulary, and he gave his name to the school my great-grandfather attended. And finally, Roebling brought us together today to strengthen the bridge between Mühlhausen, Thuringia, and the United States.

Thank you all very much for coming to this celebration in honor of the great German-American bridge builder Johann August Roebling.