Carl and Grace: From the Bavarian Forest to Cabbage Hill

Carl Wolf and Grace Hecker lived in a changing world, one of acute dislocation, migration, factories, cities, assimilation, and world war. In 1872, Carl was born in a poor mountain village in the Bohemian Forest. After years working as a farm servant in Bavaria, in 1904 he emigrated to America. Grace Hecker was born in 1880 in a village in the Bavarian Forest. At the age of eight, after uprooting repeatedly, she emigrated with her family to America. In the ethnic enclave of Cabbage Hill, they found jobs and raised a family. Their story takes place against the backdrop of village life in the Bavarian Forest, the Bavarian community in Cabbage Hill, the Depression of the 1930s, and German-American tensions during two World Wars.