The Liebau Diary is a journal written by Reinhold Liebau describing his trip from Leulitz, Germany to Wisconsin and back  to Germany in the year 1887 for the purpose of buying a family farm. His family remained in Germany during his journey to America. Before his return travel to Germany, he bought a farm near Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin in the town of Hallie. After he and his family emigrated to America, they worked this farm for a number of years before moving to Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

The diary was re-discovered in 1992 in the home of Helen and Wally Loken while the contents of their home was being prepared for auction. Helen was the granddaughter of Reinhold Liebau. Wally worked for many days with the auctioneer's staff in preparation, since there were many articles left from his and Helen's days of involvement in flea markets. The auctioneer wisely recognized that the diary was a part of the family's history and should not be sold. He turned it over to Steve Loken, their son, and Steve's wife Jean.

The Diary contains 302 pages and is written in a 19th century German script which is no longer in use. Jean Loken was very interested in the diary and began transcribing the old German script into the modern German alphabet. Jean's familiarity with the German language proved useful in facilitating this task.

Jean's mother, Ingrid Middleton, learned of the Diary and offered to work on translating Jean's diary transcription into English. Ingrid had emigrated from Germany to America  when she was three years old, and being raised in a German family, was still fluent in German. Ingrid managed to work on the translation in her spare time over several years during a time when she was also very busy caring for a husband whose health was failing. In December, 2005, the final installment of the translation was presented to Jean and Steve as a Christmas present. All of us who read this diary must certainly think about the many hours that both Ingrid and Jean have spent on this project so that we may now enjoy it. Thanks to both of you.

It seems that sometimes the German folks from these generations would be called by their middle name, dropping the first name. For example, Reinhold Liebau's full name is Paul Reinhold Liebau. When you look at the captions on the photos, the first name is dropped if it is known that the person went by their middle name. But on the family tree page, the full name is given.

When you read the diary you will find that Reinhold Liebau gives many details about the cost of things and compares values in German marks to American dollars.  In the translation, Mg. means German mark, or perhaps gold mark, since we believe Germany was on the gold standard then. Also p. denotes penny, and we think there were 100 p. in a Mg. at the time the diary was written. Four Mg. is approximately one U.S. dollar. When he writes of money using decimal numbers, remember that in Germany the comma is used in place of the decimal point, so that 10,5 Mg. is the same as 10.5 Mg.

Below are links to the items relating to the diary::
 

1. A picture of the original diary.
    

2. Samples of several diary pages in the original German script.
   
   Title Page, Page 1, Page 2, Page 3.
    

3. Pages 1 -  3 of the original diary transcribed into modern German (PDF format).
    

4. Photos of Reinhold Liebau and his family in Germany and after emigrating to the United States.
   
   Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3, Photo 4, Photo 5.
    

5. A family tree of Reinhold Liebau's descendants.
    

6. The translated diary itself (in PDF format).