While serving as a pastor in Windsor, Ontario years ago, Dr. Karl Krueger, LTSP's newly appointed director of the Krauth Memorial Library, figured out that he could tell something about the heritage of the Lutheran Slovaks in his congregation by their sausage recipes.
The 250-member congregation Krueger served was made up of Slovaks with five distinct identities. One of the groups favored including a 5 percent mix of paprika in the traditional Christmas kielbasa. No thank you was the feeling of another group. The two groups fought about the outcome and settled the argument with a compromise – a 3 percent paprika limit.
Just a little story about an immigrant people in the human tapestry of North America? Perhaps. But for Krueger, whose forebears hail from the Polish districts of East Prussia, it well reflects an ongoing struggle of immigrant transformation to this day.
Enter his love of the Krauth Memorial Library with its collection that "well documents the history of the American Lutheran experience whether your ancestry is German, Scandinavian, Asian, Latino or African American," he says. "Most of our forebears came here speaking a language other than English. And adjusting to life in America was sometimes very difficult and painful," he says. Regardless of the ethnic group in question, quarrels and compromise were important moments in the process of building new communities in America. To use paprika or not? That's one of many questions.
Some people see a library as a repository of books, artifacts and records. Krueger views a library as a breathing entity, a focal point for life, full of anecdotes, stories and histories of individuals who transplanted their faith and their books in the new environment. The new library director succeeds the Rev. David Wartluft, who retired from the position at the end of 2002.
Shown here, Dr. Karl Krueger holds one of the Krauth Library's many treasures, Wasianski's Kancyonal Pruski, an old hymnal published in Konigsberg, East Prussia, and brought to the U.S. about 100 years ago by an immigrant family moving to Michigan. The hymnal, published in East Prussia between the years 1741 and 1933, "is a testament to the importance of faith in the life of immigrants and the desire to transplant that heritage in the new homeland." The hymnal is a gift to the seminary from August Braun. It belonged to his parents.
"American history, to quote Oscar Handlin, is really the history of immigration," Krueger says. "We've been a multicultural nation from the very beginning, and our story often reflects the challenge of acculturation and assimilation of different people." Middle eastern Muslims immigrating to America today know only too well the struggle other groups have endured to be part of the American tapestry. "Each group faced and faces different challenges in assimilation," Krueger says. "But there are many, many similarities."
Chances are if you are reading this story, you can thus reflect back on a journey your forebears took to America from some other place. And as they made their journey to American shores, their faith played a role in their migration.
Krueger's curiosity about his family roots and their faith perspective inspired his educational and career direction. He graduated from LTSP in 1980 with an M.Div. degree and became an assistant pastor at a bilingual (English/German) congregation – St. Paul Lutheran Church in Philadelphia's Olney section. Then it was off to the University of Michigan, where he earned two degrees – a Master of Arts in Russian and Eastern European Studies, and a Doctorate in History. In earning the first degree he concentrated on Polish History and culture and how the Reformation period influenced Polish regions. While earning the second degree he became fascinated by immigration patterns from Eastern Europe to the U.S. and the role of religion in that experience. At the same time he served Nativity Church (Slovak/English) in Windsor, which made about $4,000 selling kielbasa before the Christmas holidays each year. It was the only Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation in Canada because it was part of the ELCA's Slovak-Zion Synod.
After five years of serving in Canada, Krueger decided he wanted to come full circle. He came back to Philadelphia and studied library science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. And then it was on to the former Balch Institute, where he served as public services librarian for four years until 1999. The institute featured a library and museum dedicated to portraying the ethnic life and immigration history of America. (It eventually merged with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania .) In 1999, he joined the Krauth Library staff as assistant librarian.
Now that he is director of the library, Krueger says that every day he comes to work, "my dream hits the streets." Krauth is a setting for making the best use of Krueger's experience in studying the history of faith and falling in love with immigration history. In tracing the American Lutheran experience, the library fulfills a kind of nostalgic function as well as a teaching purpose, Krueger says. "The library documents the legacy and living heritage of people sitting in the pews of Lutheran churches," he says. "It also plays a key role in training future pastors. We help connect students to their futures by purchasing relevant materials for them to use in their course work – both print and electronic materials. These resources are an integral part of their learning experience." Inter-library cooperation makes it easier and cheaper to secure the resources students need. A great example of cooperation between libraries is the collaborative work of the Eastern Cluster of Lutheran Seminaries. The collaboration through technology puts the Gettysburg, Philadelphia, and Southern Seminaries libraries "under one roof." The collaboration eliminates needless duplication and expands the resources available to the students at the three schools.
Among the unusual materials in the Krauth Library's 200,000-plus volume collection are rare books from the Middle Ages through the Reformation and the intact complete library collection of colonial Lutheran Pastor Johann Schmidt. The library also possesses one of the most unusual collections of Reformation period coins and medals.
Will the advent and development of technology render physical libraries like Krauth obsolete anytime soon? "No," Krueger says. "For the next 100 years or so both electronic and print resources will be needed until the demand really shifts, until a person on the beach can read through electronic glasses rather than looking at the pages of a book."
Meanwhile, the greatest challenge the library faces these days is to come up with enough space to house all the resources of value for our patrons because crucial information is changing and being updated all the time, he notes.
In addition to acquiring the materials, and finding room in the library, librarians also face the challenge of "creating a path to the information people need," he says. It takes time, subject expertise, and an understanding of the technology that manipulates that data. But it has its rewards when the librarian can connect the patron with the appropriate materials. "We have always been valued for how we are able to classify information, organize material, and create order out of chaos."
In his spare time, Krueger turns to a hobby of model railroading. He's fashioned a 17 by 24-foot platform with a landscape of five fictional central Pennsylvania villages circa 1942. Trains and trolleys move through the towns, which have names like "Ogontz" and "Luzerne." "As a little boy I always liked big toys," he chuckles.
