STUTTGART - Devouring juicy bratwursts and sauerkraut? Ja!
Downing full-flavored beer from the Old Country? Ja! Ja!
Dancing to the rhythmic oompah of a polka band? Ja! Ja! Ja!
Yes, indeed! Think of it as Oktoberfest in April. It’s the sixth annual German Heritage Festival, set for Saturday at the Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie in Stuttgart.
Any day it’s open, this is one of the largest and most interesting local museums in Arkansas. Saturday’s festivities add gemutlichkeit (that’s a German jawbreaker for “cozy good cheer”) focused on Stuttgart’s ethnic roots. Now the state’s rice-industry epicenter, the city was started by a flock of German Lutherans who arrived by railroad and wagon train from Ohio in 1879 and settled on land bought by The Rev. George Adam Buerkle.
“Our German heritage is important to Stuttgart,” says the museum’s archivist, Gena Seidenschwarz (a resplendently Teutonic surname meaning “black silk”).
“Until 1935, one service monthly at our Emanuel Lutheran Church was conducted in German,” she notes. “A weekly German-language newspaper was published here until 1925. And the largest number of immigrants to the United States have been of German descent” - an estimated 50 million, more than English, Irish or any other nationality.
Even a beer-and-bratwurst festival can’t ignore physical fitness these days, so Saturday’s first event will be a 5K run and walk stepping off at 9 a.m. Advance entry fee is $20, rising to $25 on Saturday.
There’s a $5 charge for the gaggle of children’s activities starting at 10 a.m., including face painting, sack races and a tug of war. That’s about when the brats will hit the grill courtesy of the local Rotary and Kiwanis clubs for the lunch ($10, kids $5) with kraut and German potato salad. Imported beers will include Bitburger and Warsteiner.
If wine is your beverage of choice, Dennis Wiederkehr from his family’s winery in Altus will be on hand for tastings. Decked out in lederhosen, those oh-so-Bavarian leather shorts, he’ll also be master of ceremonies for a grape stomp. The Wiederkehrs actually trace their heritage to Switzerland, but that’s close enough to qualify for a German fest.
Polka fun will run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with authentic oompah music (despite the suspiciously non-German name) by the Randy McDonald Band.
A dunking booth will offer a chance to work off excess energy by tossing three balls for $1 to make a splash. There’ll be a log toss as well and an exhibit of beer steins. For a more cerebral pursuit, a genealogy booth will proffer information on tracing family roots back to Germany or elsewhere on the planet.
Also on tap are guided tours of the 20,000-squarefoot museum, whose mix of 15,000 artifacts ranges from century-old toys and Sears Roebuck catalogs to antique farm gear and a mockup of Stuttgart’s century-ago Main Street.
A dazzler in the popular Waterfowl Wing is a green feather coat crafted by 1963 and 1967 women’s world champion duck caller RubyAbel from 450 mallard drake heads. This cloak could have been worn proudly by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German emperor.
Outdoors, not far from Saturday’s polka tent, are a half-dozen buildings that evoke Stuttgart’s past: the shop of the 1895 Freepress, the town’s first English-language newspaper; a firehouse with a hand-cranked fire truck; a rural school; a prairie house like those from the late 19th century; and a two-thirds scale replica of the settlement’s first church. As a reminder that the good old days weren’t always so good, there’s a vintage outhouse.
The Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie, 921 E. Fourth St., Stuttgart, is open free of charge 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays. Donations are welcome. Call (870) 673-7001 or visit grandprairiemuseum.org. A restaurant best bet in Stuttgart is Le Petite Cajun, 1919 S. Main St.
Jack Schnedler’s maternal grandmother, Mary Kirchoff, is believed to have been the first child born, on May 27, 1880, in the newly settled community of Stuttgart.
Weekend, Pages 40 on 04/18/2013