The Names of John Gergen: Immigrant Identities in Early Twentieth-Century St. Louis by Benjamin Moore

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Names of John Gergen: Immigrant Identities in Early Twentieth-Century St. Louis by Benjamin Moore Andrew Klumpp Benjamin Moore, The Names of John Gergen: Immigrant Identities in Early Twentieth-Century St. Louis. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2021. xvi, 345 pp. $50.00 (hardcover). Most historians know the exhilarating moment of finding new sources in the archive; however, for Benjamin Moore that serendipitous moment occurred while poking through a dumpster. A trove of discarded schoolwork introduced Moore to John Gergen, a young Banat Swabian immigrant who lived in St. Louis in the early twentieth century. With a keen eye for detail, Moore persistently unraveled Gergen's life, building a dynamic portrait of a young man and his family from the thin records they left behind. Moore's meticulous research has resulted in a remarkable tale of immigration, loss, adoption, struggle, death, and ultimately, identity. Moore structures the book around the development and demise of Gergen's foster family in St. Louis. The character of Gergen's eventual home in St. Louis's Soulard neighborhood in the early twentieth century comes alive in the first chapter, and chapter two focuses on the economic and political factors that affected Gergen's immigration, including the death of his birth father and the scattering of his siblings. These chapters will be most engaging for those interested in broader questions of immigration, community development, and identity formation. With the rich context established, Moore explores how Gergen's identity shifted and developed after his arrival in the United States as a toddler. We follow John and his foster parents in moves from tenements in Soulard to more prosperous residential neighborhoods, a migration that was common for many upwardly mobile urban immigrants in the United States. The salvaged schoolwork that originally inspired Moore is examined in extensive detail, allowing Moore to present possible conclusions about Gergen's intellectual capabilities. At the end of his brief life—Gergen died at twenty-six—he still lived with his foster family, although the naturalization process had led him to return to his birth name of John Albeck, setting aside his foster [End Page 204] family's name in at least some areas of his life. After a thorough journey through Gergen's life, the narrative concludes with the forgetting and the slow attrition of Banat Swabian culture and lifeways as the first and second generations passed away—yet another prominent and important theme in many immigration histories. Even with all of these details, Moore faced the challenge of a limited archive, specifically a lack of primary sources left by Gergen and his relatives. Undaunted, Moore gave us a startingly human understanding of Gergen's life and experience. The book's most striking feature is Moore's fastidious research into his subject's life. Readers will finish the book knowing that Moore has chased every lead, explored every angle, and given his readers as much information as possible about John Gergen. Moore's own passion for the project is the underlying pulse that beats throughout the book. Moore is at his best when he is humanizing Gergen and his family. He has done the meticulous work of reconstructing a life. His skill in textual analysis is apparent in his close examination of Gergen's schoolwork; however, historians may find that the conclusions reached, at times, are so tied to analysis of a particular text that they lack important contextualization in the broader immigrant experience in the United States. Historians of immigration will see many connections to themes that have motivated immigration history for decades, but these connections are largely unexplored. The introduction rightly states that Gergen's life illustrates the complex process of immigrant identity formation and development; however, it also claims to respond to and directly challenge twentieth-century immigration history, which was "hampered by a conceptual framework that undervalued persisting ties to the place of origin" (19). Yet two decades into the twenty-first century, immigration historians do grapple with immigrant identity formation and relationships with countries of origins in more complex ways. Deeper engagement with more recent scholarship produced by prominent historians of European immigration (like Robert P. Swierenga) or by scholars of Asian and...