The Trans-Atlanticist

This episode is part of the ChicagoHamburg30 podcast series, celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the Chicago-Hamburg Sister-City partnership.

Chicago is always associated with the Mafia boss Al Capone. But what is the real history of organized crime in the city? When did it begin? What social and economic forces helped it grow? And how did machine politicians, in alliance with gangsters like Al Capone, shape the city?

In this episode, we dissect the connections between vice and politics in the city from its origins to the present with two expert guests: retired Chicago Police Officer and Professor of Criminology Robert Lombardo (Loyola University) and author and expert on Jewish gangs in Chicago Professor Joe Kraus (University of Scranton).

Topics include the origins of vice in the Levy District, the early connections between politicians and criminal activity, the Black Hand, Jewish gangs, Prohibition, and the evolution of the Italian Mafia from its early days as the Capone Syndicate through the emergence of the Outfit.

This episode is part of the ChicagoHamburg30 podcast series, celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the Chicago-Hamburg Sister-City Partnership.

No industry shaped Chicago more decisively than the meatpacking industry, and no book exposed the rapacious, exploitative and vicious character of the meatpacking industry more than Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906).

In this episode, we explore the origins and explosive growth of the meatpacking industry, the brutal working conditions on the bloody killing floors, the emergence of literature about Chicago in the early 1900s, the importance of Lithuanians in Chicago history, the life of Upton Sinclair, his urban realist and naturalist writing style, and his political ideas as seen in The Jungle.

Our expert guests are historian Dr. Dominic Pacyga, co-founder of Chicago's Packingtown Museum, and novelist Dr. Douglas Cowie, creator of the Literature of Chicago Course at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Visit the Packingtown Museum, voted the best small museum in Chicago. More information is available here: https://www.packingtownmuseum.org/

Many of the EU's 370 million eligible voters from 27 countries went to the voting booths between 6 and 9 June 2024 in order to cast their votes for the European Parliament.

In this episode, Andrew Sola and our resident EU expert Günter Danner discuss the EU Parliament, its powers, its role in the constellation of EU institutions, and its inner workings. Furthermore, they discuss the results of the election and their significance for France, Germany, and Europe as a whole.

This episode is part of the ChicagoHamburg30 podcast series, which celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Chicago-Hamburg Sister-City Partnership.

Happy Pride Month!

We celebrate with an episode about Queer Chicago featuring two historians of Queer History, Owen Keehnen and Timothy Stewart-Winter.

Topics include the following:

Check out Owen's Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/owenkeehnen/

This episode is part of the Amerikazentrum's ChicagoHamburg30 series, celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the Chicago-Hamburg Sister-City partnership.

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month! In this episode, we explore the rich and complex history of Jewish Chicago, from the 1850s to the present.

Topics include the following:

-the first Jewish settlers and politicians in Chicago

Throughout, you will learn about famous Jewish Chicagoans, such as Henry Greenebaum, Dankmar Adler, Edward Solomon, Hannah Shapiro, Joseph Schaffner, and Julius Rosenwald.

Our expert guests are Dr. Tobias Brinkmann (Penn State University) and Dr. Joe Kraus (University of Scranton).

This episode is part of the ChicagoHamburg30 podcast series, celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the Chicago-Hamburg Sister-City partnership.

In this episode, Dominic Pacyga (Emeritus Professor of History, Columbia College Chicago) and Tobias Brinkmann (Malvin and Lea Bank Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History, Penn State) discuss the immigration of Poles, Czechs, Ukrainians and Lithuanians to Chicago via the Hamburg-America Line.

Topics include the following:

If you are interested in learning more about Polish Chicago, check out Back Home: Polish Chicago at the Chicago History Museum through June 8, 2024. https://www.chicagohistory.org/

This episode is part of the ChicagoHamburg30 podcast series, celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the Chicago-Hamburg Sister-City partnership.

Learn more about the history and culture of Black Chicago with award-winning scholar Dr. Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at Northwestern University.

Topics include the difficulties in defining Black Chicago, which is neither a static nor homogenous concept; the two waves of the Great Migration of Black people from the rural South to the cities of the North in the early 1900s; the important differences between the concepts of the Black Ghetto and the Black Metropolis; and the history of important Black political figures in Chicago from Ida B. Wells and President Barack Obama to Mayors Harold Washington, Lori Lightfoot, and Brandon Johnson. Throughout, Pattillo highlights the resilience and complexity of Black Chicago.

In the final episode of 2023, Sola and Danner look ahead to 2024. They discuss three issues that will influence a number of elections in 2024: the immigration crisis, the war in Ukraine, and the macroeconomic situation.

They then use these issues as a lens to analyze five upcoming elections: the Russian presidential elections in March; the EU parliamentary elections in June; the east German state elections in Brandenburg, Thuringia, and Saxony in September; the expected parliamentary elections in the UK; and the mother of all presidential elections in the USA in November.

In our wrap-up of political developments in the EU in 2023, Sola and Danner discuss the results of the five big European elections this year in Italy, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. Are we seeing the entrenchment of the far-right across Europe? Or are centrist politicians regaining the advantage? The second topic is the European Council Summit that took place last week and that yielded some mixed results for Ukraine, due to the obstinance of Viktor Orban, PM of Hungary. Lastly, we evaluate the performance of the German coalition government, which had a rough and tumble 2023.

In the second of our two-episode series about Jane Addams, we continue telling the story of Hull House and Addams' impact on the development of the the city of Chicago. Addams was a keen advocate for worker's rights and helped mediate the labor unrest that had been shaking the city since the Haymarket Affair of 1886. We survey the long list of projects she supported from juvenile justice reform to children's music education and from housing reform to the building of playgrounds and libraries. We also meet her partners in her projects, including Ellen Gates Starr, Eleanor Sophia Smith, John Dewey, Lillian Wald, and Johnny the Greek.

The models of community improvement she created in Chicago began to spread around the US and the world as Addams herself began to set her sights on international issues, namely imperialism, militarization, and war. Her concerns about armed conflict led her to become Chair of the Woman's Peace Party and President of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. We also outline the criticism she endured as a result of her peace activism.

As her health began to fade, she maintained her interest in issues of racial justice and community involvement at Hull House.