TCHCC to Host Barbara Ortwein Book Signing

The Texas Czech Heritage & Cultural Center in La Grange will host a presentation and book signing of A Summer in Spillville in 1893 on Friday, Oct. 6, at 2 p.m. in the Hanslik Hall. TCHCC welcomes author Barbara Ortwein of Germany to Texas during her short tour.

“Her novel brings to light the life of a famous Czech composer with a large family. The book is also appropriate for the teenage reader. We are pleased to have her present A Summer in Spillville in 1893 to you as you will also be introduced to some Czech words and customs” says Retta Chandler, TCHCC President.

In Ortwein’s novel, she introduces us to the composer Antonín Dvořák. He was already famous throughout Europe in 1892 when he accepted a very well-paid position at the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City. Relocation from Prague, then the Czech Republic, to New York City with his family, was required. However, by the following year, 1893, homesickness for his Bohemian homeland led him and his family off on an adventurous trip to the small, rural Iowa town of Spillville for several months. This was an area where many of his countrymen had settled because of the similarities to their Bohemian countryside. The experiences of the composer and his family in this “Wild West” not only allowed him to find a little Bohemia in America, but also an America of diverse influences, to which Bohemian immigrants also had made their contributions. It is hardly surprising that this journey echoes through countless musical works of the composer due to the special inspiration that he found in Spillville and its surroundings.

Barbara Ortwein, a former music teacher herself, moved from Germany to her current home in Prague, CZ where she was surrounded with Antonín’s greatness. This inspired her to visit this place in Iowa and experience what Antonin did when he was there; the early morning walks along the banks of the Turkey River, sitting quietly and listening to the songs of the birds that inhabited the area, writing the musical score they sang to him over a hundred years before.

Ortwein wrote this story, the life of the composer Antonín Dvořák, as told through the eyes of Antonín’s beloved young daughter. Barbara introduces this talented musician, Antonín Dvořák, as one who provided outstanding service to the intercultural exchange between Europe and North America. His contribution of a unique blending of European and American elements in music is legendary. Needless to say, the small town of Spillville, in northeastern Iowa, played a special role in assuring the success of this fusion, as the author clarifies in a manner both informative and entertaining with this novel; A Summer in Spillville in 1893.

TCHCC is located at 250 W. Fairgrounds Road in La Grange. Visit czechtexas.org.