Ingeborg Carpenter

“I would like to propose special recognition at the 72. Deutscher Genealogentag for a woman who has done much to promote mutual understanding between American and German genealogists. Ingeborg Deppen Carpenter, longtime president of the Sacramento German Genealogy Society (SGGS), the second largest German-American genealogical organization in the United States (and now also president of the International German Genealogy Partnership), is deserving of special honor due to her untiring efforts to bring us together despite our many differences in language, history, and culture.

Ingeborg Carpenter was born in Frankfurt am Main, spent her earliest years in Rheine, Nordrhein-Westfalen, and emigrated to America in 1972. She was naturalized as an American citizen in 1988, and has written and spoken movingly about the emotions she felt in making that transition. It is an especially important message for Americans to hear, because those born in the United States to American-born parents seldom appreciate the complex feelings of today’s immigrants. But it is an essential understanding for us to have, if we in America are ever to fully grasp the enormity of the decision made by our German immigrant ancestors.

Ms. Carpenter is a certified teacher of German language and has researched in the area of social anthropology with a special interest in German social history and German genealogy. She is known for sharing with her audiences her many insights and understandings of how Germans in earlier times lived their everyday lives — in accordance with the rules of church, state, and tradition. Some of her lectures, such as “German Traditions Affecting Marriage and the Family,” are particularly helpful for encouraging Americans to move beyond the simple collection of vital statistics towards a deeper grasp of the factors influencing life-changing decisions made by their ancestors. Other efforts have been directed at fostering appreciation of the German language, including lectures or articles on deciphering the handwriting found in German church books. Yet other articles have explored the Grimm Brothers’ contribution not just of folk tales but also in publishing the Deutsches Wörterbuch, and have explained at length the significance of Der Sachenspiegel for its depictions of feudal law.

She has a special appreciation for German ancestors who worked on the land, as on her father’s side were Heuerleute in Mehringen near Emsbüren. As a result of this recognition, she has often lectured to Americans about the many categories of farms and farmers, and of how the lives of these ancestors varied widely according to the geography and culture of the different regions. Additionally, she has often lectured on German folk history, traditions, and even superstitions. Having lived for a time in her youth in the Hunsrück Mountains region, she once wrote a lengthy article on Johannes Bückler, also known as Schinderhannes — sometimes compared to England’s “Robin Hood.” And it will be no surprise to German audiences that she has shared with them (even with short videos that may be located on the internet) her reflections on her early upbringing in Germany, seen now through the prism of an emigrant.

Joining the SGGS in 2000-01, she was its Treasurer within four years and has held other positions of responsibility before assuming the presidency in 2014. For many years Ms. Carpenter served as a contributing writer and a copyreader for Der Blumenbaum, the quarterly journal of her society (and, as well, for the Sacramento Turn Verein). Her services as a translator began to be advertised in its pages within a year of her joining the society. For many years, she travelled annually to Germany with Shirley Riemer, for over 25 years the editor of this renowned publication— who then reported their discoveries to a truly national readership. She has brought all of this experience to bear upon her leadership of the IGGP. Always, her perspective has been that of the small partner organization, arguing that benefits to the partners must be tangible if any membership fee is to be charged them. Similarly, in noting that these many small organizations are often “sitting on genealogical gold mines” of books and information that have been overlooked in the age of the internet, she has argued that priority must be given to both encouraging membership of as many such groups as possible (including even German clubs) and to discovering the nature of the holdings of each, so that they may be widely shared. In this way, she has taken to heart the motto of the first IGGP conference in Minneapolis-St. Paul: Connections. She has written: “IGGP must be the hub where German genealogy information from the entire world is collected and disseminated.” On this final point I will rest my assertion that Ingeborg Carpenter is one of the foremost of genealogical “bridge builders” living today. I humbly and respectfully ask that she be granted special recognition of this role in Tapfheim, in 2020.

(Geehrt als „Verdiente Genealogin“ auf Vorschlag der Immigrant Genealogy Society, IGS, Burbank, USA)