The biography of Irma Rosenthan Frankenstein (1871-1966) by anthropologist Ellen FitzSimmons Steinberg
Several Years ago I came across the pamphlet size publication of “The Chronicle of the Befogged Dune Bugs” by Irma Rosenthal Frankenstein and with illustrations by Earl H. Reed Sr. This is a twenty-eight page story of a 1917 journey through the dunes around Tremont by Irma and several others from the Prairie Club including Civil War Captain Charles H. Robinson. The name Frankenstein had perked my interest as the social hall of Temple Sholom on Lake Shore Drive was named for this family and there had been an article in one of the Chicago papers that mentioned headstones bearing the name in one of the neighborhood Jewish cemeteries. I learned of Irma while reading through J. Roland Engel’s book “Sacred Sands” and when doing research for my novel “Toys in the Closet.” The Chronicle of the Befogged Dune Bugs is such a slim publication, printed for the Save the Dunes Council in 1958 as a fundraiser, that the bookstore from which I was ordering the copy online from Elwood, Indiana couldn’t find it on their shelves for six months. When Irma’s only publication did arrive at my Chicago apartment, overlooking Lakeshore Drive, it was only a matter of minutes before I had devoured the whole thing and was curious to know more about Irma. A Google search led me to a just published biography “Irma, A Chicago’s Woman’s Story” (University of Iowa Press, 2004) that had been written by anthropologist Ellen FitzSimmons Steinberg and soon this book was on its way to my mailbox. Within a few days I found the author of Irma’s biography and we’ve been friends ever since.
Ellen had literally stumbled onto Irma’s diaries that had found their way from New Buffalo to Southern Illinois, and into a couple of used bookstores where they had languished for 25 years. The shopkeeper told Ellen that the box of diaries that she began to preview after falling over the box that housed them, was of no one of importance. Little did he know, Irma’s words are one of the few first hand records of surviving the Chicago Fire! The prolific diary writer also had a hand in saving the Indiana Dunes as a national park. Although she described herself as an ordinary woman, she knew everyone that was anyone during her day. More importantly her ordinariness and written accounts of day to day routines is the kind of historical records most archives are starving to possess. Although Dune Bugswas her only publication, today thanks to Ellen’s discovery, Irma’s diaries are in the prestigious Chicago Jewish Archives, she is the namesake of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society’s Irma Rosenthal Frankenstein Distinguished Service Award, and has three publications using her diaries.
"Learning to Cook in 1898: A Chicago Culinary Memoir" by Ellen F. Steinberg and with recipe adaptations by Eleanor Hudera Hanson, drew largely from Irma Rosenthal Frankenstein's recipes. (Wayne State Univeristy Press, 2007)
After Ellen published the diaries came “Learning to Cook in 1898: A Chicago Culinary Memoir” (Wayne State University Press, 2007) and just last year “From the Jewish Heartland: Two Centuries of Midwest
Foodways” (University of Illinois Press, 2011). This last publication, Ellen FitzSimmons Steinberg wrote with her husband Jack H. Prost. Although Irma is not the sole focus of this latest book on Jewish cooking in the Midwest it does draw from her resources. Ellen addressed the 37th annual meeting of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society at the Broadmoor Country Club in Indianapolis in 2009 and also at a joint function of the IJHS and Save the Dunes Council at breakfast hosted at Temple Israel in Miller Beach. All the local publicity about Irma led to a call from a Michigan City lady who had bought stock from an abandoned storage locker and had retained post cards Irma’s medical doctor husband had posted to her in Chicago from where he was attending Medical School in Germany. We suspect there are more diaries and letters that survive waiting to be discovered and from Irma and members of her family that had connections to Miller Beach, Tremont, The Prairie Club, Michigan City Valparaiso (where she was often a guest of the Lowenstine family) and New Buffalo, Michigan.
What made Irma so delicious was her passion for writing, and also seeing to the publication of “Chronicles of the Befogged Dunebug” while recovering from a heart attack as an octogenarian in a Chicago hospital. While recuperating Irma secured the artistic services of her friend Earl Reed Sr to illustrate this publication and to help in the efforts to save the Indiana Dunes as a National Park. In time she would become the namesake of the IJHS distinguished service award because the story of her diaries being lost in used bookstores and others remaining lost, is the essence of the historical society’s mission, to collect, preserve and publish so that historical papers don’t get lost, abandoned and forgotten. That this Chicago lady helped save part of the Hoosier coast as a public land made her a popular candidate with our board of directors.
MusetteLewry 