Michael Luick-Thrams

Aliza Michael Luick-Thrams (born 18 December 1962) is an American-born German-American historian, writer and educator. He is the founder and director of the TRACES for History and Culture (2001) and its German sister organization named Spuren e.V. (2011). 
 
==Early life==
===Background and Childhood===
Michael Luick-Thrams was born on 18 December 1962 at 8:06 in Mason City, Iowa. He was named after his great-grandfather George Michael Luick. In 1989, he altered his name to Aliza Michael Luick-Thrams.Youtube: Michael Luick-Thrams talks about his life (TRACESPUREN)
He spent his childhood on a family farm that belonged to the Thramses and then to the Luicks for 105 years, from 1897 to 2002. His ancestors hailed from the British Isles, the Netherlands, several Germanic regions and Denmark. They came to North America as of 1630.
From early childhood, Michael listened to stories that his maternal grandmother, Erma [Florence Falcon] Thrams, told him about the Yankee origins of their family and how they moved from the East Coast to the Midwest by flatboats down the Ohio River and then covered wagons out onto the Iowa prairie. Listening to those stories made Michael interested in how people find themselves in the places they are. He later described how he lacked a full sense of belonging and security and so wanted to understand how he fit into a larger context.
However, according to Michael his father did not approve of his interests and belittled his attempts to learn about family history. Bud Luick had a violent, unpredictable temper “that made every hour a landmine;” he often yelled at family members. Michael reported that made his childhood miserable and hard for him to focus on his passions. At that time, reading during bus rides to and from school, and watching children’s films from all around the world on Saturday mornings became a form of escapism for him, even as it awakened in him a desire to see the world.
===Early consciousness raising===
During high school, Michael read The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour, about how to grow your own food and animals. He claims that book made him interested in smaller technologies, as well as soil conservation, solar heating and alternative energy sources. He also became a member of the school debate team, where he delivered speeches about ecology in Iowa, one of which earned him an award. Also, at the age of 16 in 1979, he gave an interview about the end of petroleum to a local newspaper. Michael later said that in those days Iowans did not take his views seriously. The topics brought up in that interview became the basis of the book Rural Iowa that he wrote six years later.
Another interest that Michael reported to have was racial issues. His paternal great-grandfather was a member of Ku Klux Klan; however, his mother did not approve of racist slurs and as a teenager had black friends. Michael says this taught him tolerance despite one's skin color or religion, etc., but her "teaching" was by example and not direct admonition--as this story relates: "...Mom [had] two child-minding charges for a few summers. The spirited T[.] girls came from laboring stock. As they had lived in rural Northern California, they ticked differently than we local yokels. One day, sitting in the back seat of the big yellow bus [...] Debbie casually cursed '[N-word]' to which I replied, 'Debbie, those people are called "negroes"!'."
===Starting teaching career===
In the late 1970s, Michael inadvertently embarked on his future teaching career while still in high school, where he self-tasked instructing refugees from Vietnam and Laos who had fled their homelands to escape the grips of communist regimes. Deciding that the high school didn't provide adequate assistance in teaching English to these recently-arrived pupils, he took it upon himself to help them by discreetly removing discarded books from the janitor's closet and conducting weekly English lessons. Unfortunately for the project, his actions didn't go unnoticed: He was reprimanded by the school's principal for his unauthorized efforts.
Around the same time, President Jimmy Carter announced compulsory draft registration, which an increasingly politicized Michael--who was on a study tour of Europe during the announcement--concluded that he could not in good conscience comply with, and "go to Central America to abuse or kill campesinos who refuse to eat at McDonald's or shop at WalMart." During a Clear Lake High School civic-class debate about registration, he wore a black armband to protest US government foreign policy. The next day, many of his fellow students wore red armbands to protest his black one!
After completing high school, Michael aspired to be an exchange student in South Africa for a year. However, he held strong reservations about the country's Apartheid system, perceiving it as being characterized by the dominance of the white population over other racial groups. Despite his critical views, he saw the opportunity to learn valuable insights from the country's political situation, seeking to understand how societies could veer so drastically from harmonious coexistence and what factors contributed to this unsettling situation. However, Michael's plans to study in South Africa were thwarted due to the unstable, unsafe political climate underlined by disinvestment movements. As an alternative, he was offered the opportunity to study in England instead. For a year in 1981 and 1982, Michael resided in Skipton, North Yorkshire. , where he attended Ermysted's Grammar School
===First foreign travels===
During his year in England, Michael became part of a peace group in Bradford, with which he traveled to Leningrad in February 1982. Also, in the same year, Michael traveled to Northern Ireland, where he spent a week in the rural area of Ulster, where he watched smugglers carry guns and other contraband on boats across the lake from the Republic of Ireland. Later in the spring of that year, Michael traveled to Italy and Germany, where he met his German cousins in Esslingen. By the end of his exchange year, Michael said that he did not want to go to college because he desired to live a rebellious lifestyle, but his visiting mother convinced ("guilted") him to continue his education.
==Adulthood==
===Iowa State University campus activism===
Michael's educational journey led him to Iowa State University, where he pursued a deeper understanding of world history. His quest for a comprehensive global perspective led him to enroll in diverse courses, such as European history, as well as intensive semesters dedicated to African, Latin-American, Asian and Russian history.
At the age of 19, Michael openly embraced his identity as a gay man, becoming one of the few openly gay individuals in Iowa at that time, 1982. Rather than a trailblazer for gay activism in the region, his main focus extended to anti-war efforts and opposition against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Already then he advocated for environmental awareness and action.
In 1984, Michael ventured to Nicaragua, where he parttook in interviews with peasants residing under Sandinista rule. Immediately prior to that, he had traveled to Mexico to participate in a Spanish language camp. His interest in U.S. policies concerning El Salvador and Honduras drove him to actively engage with the sociopolitical landscape of the region.
===Attempt to emigrate===
During this period, an outgrowth of his being actively engaged in various anti-nuclear and peace movements, Michael hosted German peaceniks who had come to Iowa to speak widey about their opposition to the placing of US rockets in their country, seen by many Europeans as destabilizing and even pre-emptive in nature. His interactions with those activists fueled a growing desire to relocate to Germany and potentially settle there. In 1985, he made his initial attempt to move to Germany, benefiting from a favorable dollar-to-mark exchange rate, which allowed him to sustain himself financially for a period of three months without having to find an income.
Throughout these months, Michael embarked on a journey alongside a friend across Scandinavian countries using a Eurail pass. Subsequently, he embarked on a second trip to the Soviet Union, as a delegate in an American student peace group. Within the span of one month, he went to cities like Kyiv, Odesa, Moscow, Zagorsk, Novgorod, and Leningrad.
While in Germany, Michael tried to secure longterm employment as an English teacher in or near Stuttgart. However, despite his efforts, he did not receive any job offers, compelling him to return to his native Midwest; wanting to be "near but not too close" to his family, he chose to located in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, in the United States.
===Experiencing communal life===
In the Twin Cities, Michael lived for most of a school year by himself in an apartment in the Seward neighborhood of Southeast Minneapolis. From there, he discovered a commune called Omega House, and in the late spring of 1986 he moved there. Among the inhabitants of the commune were people of different ages and nationalities, with usually five to nine people living there. Michael writes that this was quite different from his blood-family life because in the commune everyone was able to talk about their feelings openly.
Omega House was founded in the sixties by a group of psychology students from the University of Minnesota, who were hippies. Their goal was to find a way to learn "to live better together." Michael was intrigued by the idea of openly discussing feelings and saw this as an opportunity to learn and grow personally, so he decided to move to the commune.
===Resuming advanced education===
After some time in the commune, Michael enrolled as a graduate student in Goddard College in Vermont. There students were allowed to choose the name of their degree and Michael’s choice was “cultural and political history.” He studied the Third Reich, specifically 11 Americans who either lived and worked in or extensively traveled there during Nazi rule or just after it ended, 1933-48. Some examples: The 11 subjects included a graduate student in Germany before the War started, who had gone to East Prussia to visit relatives; there were people with different contexts: diplomats, journalists, businesspeople, and a Quaker relief worker, Leonard Kenworthy, who lived a year in Nazi Germany in Berlin, helping Jews get the means to flee the growing danger to them.
At the same time, Michael worked as a concierge in a German restaurant, the Black Forest. One morning, he was shocked to open the newspaper and read that the Berlin wall had fallen--headlines and photos he at first suspected to be a hoax. Even after just a couple of hours, Michael knew that this historical event would shape not just his, but the whole world's future.
During his studies at Goddard College Michael had two advisers: Dan Chodorkoff and Steve Shapiro, who respectively were teaching cultural anthropology and pedagogy. As a backup degree, Michael also earned secondary-education-teacher certification English and history teacher.
===Teaching in Czechoslovakia and moving to Germany===
After graduating, Michael went to Czechoslovakia to teach English, pedagogy and history for two years at Ostravská Univerzita. However, Michael found it challenging to adapt to life in Czechoslovakia, and after just a few months decided to visit a friend in Nürnberg, Germany, as a "long-weekend escape." It was during this visit that Michael met Wolfgang, with whom he fell in love and who within months moved to Czechoslovakia to be with Michael. Subsequently, Michael made the life-changing decision to move to Germany to be with his German partner, as soon as a chance arose.
When Michael's two-year teaching assignment in Czechoslovakia concluded in 1993, he moved to Berlin to be with Wolfgang. Initially on a tourist visa that allowed a stay of three months, Michael sought a way to extend his stay in Germany. As a solution, he decided to enroll in a university to pursue a Ph.D., so applied to Humboldt University in Berlin. During his admission interview, the committee inquired about the topic for his dissertation. At that moment, Michael spontaneously, vividly remembered an encounter from ten years prior with Robert Berquist, a former staff member of the Quaker-run Scattergood School and--unbeknownst to Michael--of the erstwhile Scattergood Hostel. Berquist had briefly, fleetingly introduced Michael to the hostel's history while the two were standing in a lunch line at Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) in Whittier, Iowa, in summer 1982: Michael fully forgot the encounter for a decade. The hostel, situated near West Branch, Iowa, had been a transformed boarding school that had provided refuge, English language education and job opportunities to 185 refugees fleeing Hitler's Germany during World War II. Captivated by the hostel's compelling story once the interview reminded him of its existence, Michael decided to base his entire dissertation on the topic of WWII-era refugee integration.
===Immortalizing Scattergood Hostel===
When Michael contacted Robert, he provided Michael with some 45 addresses of former Scattergood refugees and staff to assist him in his work. Michael wrote letters to these people, and almost without exception they replied, along with articles, diary entries, and photographs. Meanwhile, Robert discovered about another 1000 pages of kitchen plans for meals, inter-office memos, press copy and, significantly, essays from English lessons of stories of refugees' journeys to the US, which, along with the other 1000 pages from the refugees, proved to be a "gold mine for a historian." 
During that time, Michael received twice a scholarship from the Berliner Senate , which he used to travel to the US and interview his sources. From the information he gathered, he wrote a dissertation and, more importantly to him, a book titled Out of Hitler’s Reach: The Scattergood Hostel for European Refugees 1939–43. To this day, it remains the only book on the topic and has even inspired a short film and several exhibits; it completely changed the author's life. The book delves into the lives, work, relationships among the refugees, and their integration into American society.
After obtaining his PhD from Humboldt University, Michael embarked on seven tours across Germany with a film team to interview 50 former prisoners of war at Camp Algona (Iowa). At that point, he was mainly interested in the experiences of German soldiers who sent refugees packing. Later, he created several books and exhibits, including Far from Hitler: The Scattergood Hostel for European Refugees, 1939-43 (2003, Iowa Jewish Historical Society's Caspe Gallery in Waukee, Iowa), focused on this topic.
Following advice from his father (after the two had concluded eight years of no contact), Michael also conducted interviews with 50 Iowa or other Midwest POWs and compared their experiences with those of the German POWs. For Michael, it has always been essential to view history from a sociological and anthropological perspective, rather than analyzing state history and politics in isolation from people's daily-life experiences. He was particularly curious about the atmosphere of these camps, where circumstances forced one-time "enemies" to live together, although "normally they should have been aiming their guns at each other." 
Michael's subsequent research centered on some 15,000 German civilians imprisoned in 60 camps scattered around the United States between 1941 and 1948, many of whom were already progressing towards earning citizenship. With all this information, he decided to start a repository.
===Launching TRACES Center and “BUS-eum”===
On September 11th 2001, Michael had an appointment to register TRACES Center of History and Culture as a non-profit organization with Iowa's Secretary of State, with the aim of preserving all these traces of quickly-fading histories, in a last-chance effort while witnesses still lived. By coincidence, on the morning of the appointed day, he, along with his relatives and friends, was shocked to hear the news about the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, an event that Michael immediately realized would have a huge, indelible and irreversible impact on the world.
Afterward, interviewees contributed myriad small objects, such as photos, diaries, letters, violins, decks of cards, and pipes, which now mostly belong to museums in Iowa as deposits. These objects had previously belonged to the TRACES Museum in Saint Paul, which closed in 2008.
As one of the consequences of the terror attack, the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs awarded an $8000 grant called the Spirit of America Award. After winning the award, Michael, volunteers and his first paid staff used the funds to create a slide show about American POWs in Nazi Germany. He later compiled these stories into a booklet titled Behind Barbed Wire: Midwest POWs in Nazi Germany.
Gradually, Michael and his supporters started to earn a more consistent and significant "seed money" profit, which allowed them to curate, then carry out several exhibits.
Michael recalls a moment when he was flying from Germany to the US and, looking out of the window, saw many school buses parked in a lot. That inspired him to come up with the idea of buying an old school bus and transforming it into a museum, which he called the "BUS-eum."
The physical aspect of TRACES' historical project involved the Center for History and Culture in Saint Paul, Minnesota, which operated for 37 months. Today, this focus continues through the "BUS-eums," mobile museums that traverse various regions of the US. As of now, this educational vehicle has been on the road for thousands of miles, been to all 12 of the Midwest states and was even a topic of an article made by the Chicago Tribune. The last tour (as of July 2023) was in the first half of 2023.
===Burr Oak Center===
As a short-lived experiment, TRACES' ecological side project centered around a proposed Burr Oak Center for Durable Culture, a home for "TRACES of Green," an educational and service project launched in 2008, upon discovery of the possible purchase of an organic family farm for sale after over 150 years of being in one family. The vision drew inspiration from the mixed history of European settlement around the world, but especially in the Midwest, to conceptualize and work towards more sustainable and livable futures.
In 2009, Michael, a core staff and the first of a revolving roster of volunteers moved to a big house with an oversized lot in Turin, Iowa, on which property the idea of the Burr Oak Center and thus TRACES of Green might take root. In pursuit of their vision, TRACES acquired two homes in Turin, transforming them into a community/training center. They also aspired to become custodians of a nearby agricultural property, to be known as "Burr Oak Farm." This farm would have served as a locally grown, organic truck farm, providing student-interns with hands-on learning opportunities. Togeher, the campus and farm would have served as a tangible manifestation of TRACES' intangible goals, serving as a meeting place where ideas take shape and a more humane and sustainable way of life might flourish. Unfortunately, the heirs of the nearby family farm chose to sell it to the county.
===Returning to Europe===
In 2011, upon the unexpected collapse of the Burr Oak Center project, Michael launched a significant and targeted third effort to immigrate to Germany, this time boarding in Newark, New Jersey a containership named Hanjin-Palermo, which would play a pivotal role in shaping his life ahead.
During the voyage, Michael had the opportunity to interact with several individuals, including Andy, who served as an assistant to the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, and Marie, an adventurous social worker with a passion for global travel. They connected on deep levels, shared their interests and spent evenings together watching Michael Moore's series and various movies, which Michael had purchased as DVDs back in Minnesota before setting off on an AmTrak train from Saint Paul to New York. He also took 16 bottles of wine.
However, the voyage was not without incidents that left an impact on Michael. He witnessed aboard a certain kind of discrimination, according to which the white passengers could eat from crystal stemware and fine porcelain in the captain's dining room [the entire piloting crew were Germans], whereas the Filipinos--according to Michael the hardest working of all, as the freight and mechanical workers--had to eat downstairs out of common pots, served in plasticware on plywood tables.
After having some motor problems in Antwerp, 16 days later the ship finally arrived in Bremerhaven, where an ex-boyfriend awaited Michael in a car. At that point, Michael's financial situation was precarious, as he had only 50 Euros in-hand. In search of stability and a fresh start, his ex drove him to Hessen to find a refuge in Villa Locomuna, a commune located in Kassel, where Michael spent some months finding a footing and rebuilding his life.
In Germany, Michael again searched for a job as a teacher. He recalls an incident when his New-York-bound train in Saint Paul had been delayed, and it was only due to this delay that he could receive a phone call from a Waldorf school near Stuttgart, offering him a teaching position. Michael spent a year working at the Waldorf school; however, he grew bitterly dissatisfied with its philosophy and chose not to renew his contract. Afterward, he taught at three private schools in Berlin, Frankfurt and Dresden, but did not enjoy the experiences, although he learned a great deal. Deciding to cease fulltime teaching in secondary education, he returned to Iowa to participate in the 2016 senatorial elections.
===US Senate campaign===
Despite not having high expectations for his campaign, Michael embarked on it with the primary goal of drawing public attention to the long-standing tenure of Chuck Grassley, who has held office since 1981, when Michael was only a high schooler. Additionally, he sought to raise awareness about pressing ecological issues, including global warming, soil and water pollution and sustainability.
Michael’s voter base consisted of folks supportive of grassroots politics wedded to social change. Those who signed the requisite petitions to earn him bona fide candidate status included: those attending the memorial service of a Des Moines activist; attendees of a Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus concert at a Unitarian-Universalist church, Iowa’s capital-city gay bars, and students at ISU, U of I, Coe and Cornell Colleges, etc.
Michael reported that he was "intentionally brushed aside and upstaged" by a Democratic Party candidate at one event and that the only consistent big-circulation print-media coverage was by the Cedar Rapids Gazette. He felt tired of constantly searching for potential allies; after complaining at the Des Moines Register office for not being mentioned in the media, despite the two main candidates' almost every move being recorded, he was told the following: “That’s different, they’re real—I mean, mainstream—candidates”. Subsequently, he and the Libertarian candidate picked on the sidewalks outside of the DMR offices--a fully legal, constitutionally-guaranteed right; despite that, 13 police officers descended on the two picketeers, in eight police vehicles, including a paddy wagon. Having made their point, the two protesters then drove to Sioux City, where they planned to disrupt the sole Iowa US-Senate debate that evening but decided spontaneously - while sitting in the auditorium - to abort their plans out of concern of possible physical danger.
In the end, Michael got 4441 votes, 0.29% of the total, and thus did not become a US Senator from Iowa.
===Move to Thüringen===
After the senatorial elections, Michael decided in 2017 to move together with a longtime friend, the university professor Jörg Seiler. After four years in Dresden, his new home was now in Thüringen's capital Erfurt, where he began teaching social-history-focused courses at the University of Erfurt, which he still does, parallel to directing Haus der Spuren, guest-lecturing at educational or cultural institutions, showing the BUS-eum and History Mobile, etc.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Michael got an e-bike, with which he had travelled as of July 2023 more than 6400 kilometers. On one of these bike trips, coming from the city of Mühlhausen back to Erfurt, Michael fell in love with the little, medieval town of Bad Langensalza. Michael recalls that the desire to move there was so high, that he and Jörg immediately bought a house there in October 2020.
==Haus der Spuren and Phyllis-Thrams-Luick Haus==
===Haus der Spuren===
The freshly-bought house was ideal for a museum; therefore, Haus der Spuren opened as the German version of TRACES. Michael set up a Workaway profile for the museum, through which many young people with different backgrounds and ethnicities could come together and develop themselves, while also having a lot of fun in the heart of Germany. In the first two years, Michael and Jörg had almost 60 “Workawayers” from all around the globe: Israel, Brazil, Albania, Georgia, the Philippines, Russia, Portugal etc. They also had seven people from the US, but for unclear reasons, five of them left the project earlier than planned; Michael still is unsure why he can't seem work well with some of his fellow compatriots.
Usual tasks of the “workawayers” vary a lot, but the following are the most common: panel design, research and social-media management. According to Michael, the relationship is like ones at medieval universities: the professor lives together with the students, thus teaching them not only just one subject, but many other things as well.
On Thursdays, mostly the foreign volunteers give a presentation about their home countries. The event is Global Salon LSZ and is only held in English, thus offering a language course to the locals, along with exposure to myriad aspects of life in other cultures.
===Opening Phyllis–Thrams–Luick Haus===
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Michael took a fifth of his mother’s inheritance and bought a house in Bad Langensalza, which had stood emtpy for a year and a half, in "needy" condition. He invited approximately 40 volunteers to work on the house, and they managed to complete the work within a week. Later, he used this house to host Ukrainian refugees. As of July 2023, 48 refugees have stayed there for various lengths of time, and four more in Haus der Spuren.
Category:1962 births
Category:People from Mason City, Iowa
Category:Historians
Category:Writers
Category:Educators