Customer Reviews

Fields of Peace: A Pennsylvania German Album

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This book offers a glimpse into the world of the Amish which has basically remained unchanged. It is a world uncomplicated by todays technological advances. It is a world that I respect and admire. The photographs in this book brought me closer to the amish people and captured the beauty of the people and the land. George Tice is a master of photography.

My mother's family are Pennsylvania Dutch from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Her ancestors immigrated to William Penn's religious haven from the Palatinate (Rhine Pfalz area or the upper Rhine) some time well before the Revolutionary War. Thus, they are Germans -- "Deitsch" or "Deutsch" in their own German dialect, but "Dutch" to the English among which they settled in Pennsylvania - and hence, Pennsylvania "Dutch".

I give this background for two reasons. One is that it explains why this book, FIELDS OF PEACE: A PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN ALBUM, is special to me. The other is to help dispel the confusion between Pennsylvania "Dutch" and Pennsylvania "Germans". Another personal aside: My son had to do a genealogy project for school; his teacher knew that his grandmother was Pennsylvania Dutch; so she deducted points from my son's grade when he identified his grandmother and her parents as German. Yes, going back two to three centuries these folks are of German extraction, but even they commonly refer to themselves as Dutch.

After their German heritage, the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of the Pennsylvania Dutch is their common Anabaptist religious background. For some of them, their "Anabaptism" has led them to do without various trappings of conventional modern life (most noticeably, electricity and gasoline-powered vehicles). These idiosyncratic and anachronistic practices, along with the fact that many still make their livings off of picturesque Pennsylvania farms, have made the Pennsylvania Dutch quaint curiosities to much of the rest of the country.

Hence, there is a minor market niche for books on the Pennsylvania Dutch. Well, if a library could have only one book on the Pennsylvania Dutch, this very well might be the one to have. I don't know of a better one, even though FIELDS OF PEACE is essentially forty years old (this 1998 edition adds very little that is new to the contents of the original 1970 edition).

With the exception of the Foreword (which is almost "New Age" and overly sentimental), the text, by Millen Brand, ranges from so-so to quite good. Especially fine is his overview history of the Pennsylvania Dutch and catalog of some of the principle sects or divisions (in matters of religious doctrine, the Pennsylvania Dutch are surprisingly fractious) - Amish, Mennonites, Church of the Brethren (or Dunkards), Schwenkfelders, Moravians.

But what makes the book special are the photographs by George Tice. There are about 125 of them, all platinum/palladium, thus black-and-white with wonderfully nuanced shades of silver and gray. Barns and farmhouses, windmills, horse-drawn buggies, mule-drawn plows, water pumps, cornstalks and haystacks, covered bridges, kids on bicycles, straw hats, prayer caps, church meeting houses, one-room schoolhouses, and outhouses. Most were taken in Lancaster County. Cumulatively, they capture a simplicity and serenity that is quite unusual in these United States. In his Afterword, George Tice writes that he wanted his photographs "to be timeless, like Edward S. Curtis' monumental work on the American Indians." I may be prejudiced, but I believe Tice succeeded.

I'm very fond of platinum/palladium prints. While looking for examples of platinum/palladium printing, I came upon Tice's works. Some of the images in this collection are breathtakingly beautiful. I could spend hours staring at the fields, fences and back roads as captured in these photographs.

Millen Brand's essay describes the history and traditions of the inhabitants---mostly Amish and Mennonites. The description is overwhelmingly positive, except for one instance at the end of the book where Brand writes:

"I had thoughts as I drove away. I was first grateful to Benjamin and his wife for the quiet and peace of the Sunday afternoon and for their acceptance of me in letting me, a stranger, visit. But this closer acquaintance with an Amish family gave me new thoughts I had not anticipated. I felt a lack. I felt in these men and women a touch of naivete, a limited something, even a limiting something.

These good and innocent people live in a world of possible atomic destruction. Their challenge is mainly disaffiliation and withdrawal. Such withdrawal, good or well-intentioned as it is, leads to a subtle cooperation. They pay taxes even if they refuse benefits of social insurance (God has established governments.) Battery lights are used on the backs of buggies at night (electricity required by law). I had seen them twinkling along the roads. They use roadside telephones. Admirable as the Amish alienation is, even healthful, it is also less than a complete answer in a troubled world. There is a possible emptiness to the murmuring and beautiful landscapes."

Gorgeous pictures of gentle people. Beautifully printed. It's what I pick up when life's got me down, along with music by Steph Hayes.