Prof. Philip Otterness

300th Anniversary of First Mass Emigration from the Palatinate
June 12-13, 2009. The U.S. Consulate General, the Atlantic Academy and the Institute for Palatinate History jointly organized a two-day expert conference at the Atlantic Academy in Kaiserslautern on the 300th anniversary of the beginning of mass emigration from the Palatinate to America. American historians Prof. Philip Otterness, Warren Wilson College, Ashville, N.C., Prof. William Woys Weaver, Drexel University, Philadelphia, and Prof. Robert Reynolds, Kutztown University, shared their research on Palatine settlements in the Hudson Valley, the survival of Palatine cooking and eating traditions as a well as on the Palatines’ material culture, as expressed particularly in architecture and travelling and household items. The conference gave the experts, academics as well as local historians, a unique opportunity for sharing and gaining insights into little known aspects of emigration from the Palatinate to America, one of the major chapters of German-American history.