NEW GLARUS – Duane H. Freitag, a retired newspaper reporter and editor, recently published “A Common Treasure,” a book on the early history of New Glarus.
Freitag, a 1963 graduate of New Glarus High School and a U.S. Army veteran, earned his journalism degree from UW-Madison in 1967 before starting his career at the Wisconsin State Journal. He joined the Milwaukee Journal in 1973 and worked as a reporter and editor until retiring from the Journal Sentinel in 2000.
His latest book focuses on 1845 to 1855, the first decade of the Swiss settlement. New Glarus was a colony of Switzerland throughout that time, until it was sold in 1855. Freitag’s book draws on old letters, emigration and immigration documents and land records to detail the chronological development of New Glarus.
The book is the second published by Freitag. He previously wrote about New Glarus’ political history from 1845 to 1945 in a book titled “Sauerkraut, Suspenders, and the Swiss.”
