Gemeinschaft: Lessons from German Immigration and Integration

Summer Exhibit 2025 - June 1 to September 30

When German immigrants first arrived in Appleton and other communities across Northeastern Wisconsin, they faced horrible discrimination. Their meager connections to their former homes - their food, drink, religion, customs, even their names - were deemed to be utterly foreign by those already living here.

Yet within a few generations, what seemed so foreign became fundamental to who we are as communities. Today, those exact things - brats and beer, Lutheranism and Catholicism, and even German surnames - are threads woven into our social fabric and are what make our part of the state so wonderfully unique.

Gemeinschaft is the German word for “community.” But its meaning is much deeper than that. It refers to people who live and work closely, who have strong personal relationships and shared morals and values, and who put the needs of the community ahead of the desires of the individual.

This describes precisely what is best about our communities.

Gemeinschaft: Lessons from German Immigration and Integration comprises a series of exhibits, events, and special tours that will tell the story of this evolution, its impact on Hearthstone, and its wider significance. It will provide reminders of what we have learned together and apply those lessons to our communities today.

Tickets for special tours and events go on sale May 15. Gemeinschaft exhibits in the Lower Level will be included in every tour of Hearthstone.

Lewis Latimer: Self-Made Renaissance Man

Permanent Exhibit

An inventive genius who worked along side some of the most famous names in American history - Alexander Graham Bell, Hiram Maxim, Thomas Edison - before gaining his own fame as an inventor and educator, Lewis Latimer is the subject of a new permanent exhibit at Hearthstone.

The exhibit, initially a part of Hearthstone’s celebration of Black History Month and now on permanent display, covers Latimer’s life and his most important inventions. The exhibit features artifacts and video presentations covering Lewis Latimer but also his parents’ fight for freedom from slavery. Their struggle was a cause celebre, championed by giants of abolitionism including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, that outraged New England society ten years before the Dred Scott decision.

Lewis Latimer: Self-Made Renaissance Man exhibit is included in every tour of Hearthstone.