It's no mystery the effect immigrants had on Pittsburgh's cultural and economic landscape.

The influence of Andrew Carnegie immediately comes to mind, and one certainly can't ignore the Irish-Catholic roots of the Rooney family and their gridiron contributions. This is Pittsburgh. The cultural influences of football are every bit as significant as steel.

When old meets new, a natural process called acculturation (or assimilation) takes place. Bits of the native culture blend and influence the newer, host culture. In her new book, Monika Kugemann takes an alternative look at acculturation and, specifically, the history of Pittsburgh as it was shaped by German immigrants between 1843 and 1873.

The local media are Kugemann's lens for interpreting how German theater and music helped immigrants preserve pieces of their heritage. Entertainment reviews in two local newspapers, the German Freiheits-Freund and the Pittsburgh Gazette (now the Post-Gazette), help illustrate the blending of old and new in an intricate system of "meaning layering."

Kugemann's interest in German-Pittsburgh history began when she was a master's degree student at Point Park University. She was captivated by the undeniable role German culture had once played in shaping Pittsburgh's history.

This culture, which included an array of beer festivals, concerts, picnics, acrobatics shows and theater performances, was vividly reflected in Pittsburgh and understandably framed with a distinctly German flavor in publications such as Freiheits-Freund.

Conversely, in the Pittsburgh Gazette, local reporters not familiar with the German traditions framed these artifacts in a far different manner.

"I became interested in the motivations of those organizing German cultural events at the time," Kugemann writes. "Was it nostalgia, stubbornness, a genuine love for German art and culture which induced these men and women to foster German culture? ... I began to understand that this interpretation might be the key to the self-concept of Germans living in Pittsburgh at the time."

"Between Cultures" eventually became Kugemann's dissertation at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany. This edition, a bilingual revision of that dissertation, still contains some academic residue such as research questions and methodology, but that framework is necessary when one considers some of the book's important sub-themes, such as identity, cultural pluralism and hegemony, which are effectively (and clearly) applied.

Often "crossover" books such as this tend to preserve too much of the esoteric language of the ivory tower. Lovers of Pittsburgh history will find interesting historical gems in "Between Cultures" such as an abundance of charts, tables and prices (from that era) that capture the essence of the cultural merging.

Kugemann's work brings to light the necessity of realizing the significance that abstract notions such as identity or hegemony play in constructing culture, something we too frequently take for granted.