MANNING — Flavors of Germany were everywhere Sunday in Manning, as completion of the decade-long project to bring an authentic hausbarn to Iowa was marked.

On an afternoon when the New and Old Worlds were mentioned by speakers, that the authentic accent of German natives could be over-heard by visitors, and on which German beer and food could be savored, the Manning hausbarn in Heritage Park was officially dedicated.

An untold number of workers helped raise the hausbarn in southeast Manning and hundreds gave donations. The hausbarn is well on its way to being a great tourist site for the heavily German-settled Manning, as many speakers said, and as attested by cars parked in the lot with plates from Illinois, Wisconsin and Colorado.
Heinz Olk, who helped lay brick at the site and representing the German-American Society of Omaha, Neb., said that "this is going to be a monument, not just for Manning, but also Iowa and Nebraska."

The most precise date yet for the hausbarn was provided on Sunday, with it now marked as a 1660 creation. The hausbarn hails from the Schleswig-Holstein portion of northern Germany and was brought over by boat to Manning in 1996, with subsequent work bringing it to a completed state earlier this year.

The crowd reportedly numbered 1,000, and emcee Ruth Ohde told the Daily Times Herald after the event that she was ecstatic with the turnout, figuring about 300 to 500 people would have visited.

Olk said it was a pleasure to work on the project, and the turnout reminded him that people in the Midwest still prize their German heritage.

Mike Murwin of the Iowa Department of Tourism said that the Manning hausbarn is important as a way to honor the "patchwork quilt" of settlers who populated Iowa in the 19th century. He mentioned how the German heritage prized here was matched throughout the state by other immigrant groups like the Dutch in Orange City and Pella and the Norwegian concentration near Decorah.
"We think this is magnificent, and we are extremely proud of you all," Murwin said.

The day began with a raising of four flags and singing of the associated anthems of the United States, Germany, Iowa and Schleswig-Holstein.

Alvin Hansen raises the Schleswig-Holstein flag

Two German visitors most raptly held the crowd during the one-hour ceremony.

Both Dr. Carl Johannsen, a curator in a Kiel, Germany museum, and Claus Hachmann, the German who donated the hausbarn to the project, gave well-received speeches.

It was Johannsen who oversaw the dismantling of the hausbarn in Germany for its trip overseas, and his students labeled each piece for proper reassembling here.
Johannsen drew smiles as he began by twisting a wind-up music box that played the "Happy Birthday" song. On a more serious note, he said, "I am impressed with your building here on this place."

Carl Johannsen

He said it took "courage and energy" to draft the plan and then transfer the barn over to Manning. Such barns — a pairing of house for the residents alongside a barn containing animals, tool and grain storage — Johannsen said are a case "where form follows function."
Hausbarns date to about 800 B.C. and are present "throughout the whole of middle-Europe," he said.
With a 1660-year vintage, Johannsen said, "This building was erected when the Thirty Years War was ended," about the time that a lot of immigration began to the New World, and more than a full century before the Declaration of Independence.
"May it build bridges before the people in the New and Old Worlds," Johannsen said.

With a beaming smile, Hachmann began by saying that "I am so happy to be here again in my old farmhouse."

Claus Hachmann

Hachmann gave a history lesson on the importance that the United States has assumed worldwide. He said the people of America had the courage to take on Hitler in World War II and, at great cost, drive out the evil ruler. The post-war Mar-shall Plan — delivering goods to the decimated West German nation — and the Berlin Airlift, he said, gave him a good impression of America.
Throw in the regard the then-10-to 13-year-old Hachmann had for John F. Kennedy, and as well for Martin Luther King Jr. and movie icons like James Dean and John Wayne. "I learned very early that all good things come from America," he said.
It was the freedom of the American culture that most fascinated him, Hachmann said, so he was extremely pleased to know that his family's hausbarn would find roots in Iowa.
"I knew what I could do — giving you this old house, as a thanksgiving to America," Hachmann said.
He had visited Iowa twice, and by 1991 heard of the Manning request to undertake the hausbarn project. Hachmann said the craftsmen did a great job reconstructing the hausbarn, complete with thatched roof, "so now my American dream and your American dream came true."
"This 340-year-old house will now be a bridge between our homelands," Hachmann concluded.

Following Ohde's mention of the exhaustive list of those who worked on the project, Heritage Barn Foundation chairman Ken Puck of Manning deadpanned that he "had the easy job. I just had to crack the whip." Actually, he said, the group was composed of a bunch of earnest workers, so everything proceeded well.

Puck spoke of future developments that await the Hausbarn/Heritage Park. He mentioned a gift shop and restaurant as possibilities to be added, and invited the attendees to a reception with food and refreshments served east of the hausbarn in the shaded pinetree area.

Then for the next several hours, visitors went forward with the admonition of the honorary consul of the state of Iowa to Germany, who said that the goal on Sunday was to "enjoy the happier aspects of German heritage."