Door County Folk Festival
Marvin Mohele
Granite City, IL (St Louis Area)
(Discussion Leader)
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Marvin Moehle was born in Granite City, IL (old Macedonian Immigrant settlement). As a young kid, he began to record Immigrants, walking from house to house collecting folk songs, dances and customs from the early Immigrants.

Marvin started collecting folk costumes in the early 1980's. To date, he has collected costumes from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, China, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia and Turkmenistan. While the majority of his collection is from Macedonia and Bulgaria, he also has costumes of minority groups living in the Balkans including: Aroumanian, Roma, Vlachs, Albanians in Macedonia, Turks in Bulgaria, Pomaks, Torbeshi, etc.

He has several hundred costumes and artifacts. One artifact includes the large outside cross, from the first Macedono-Bulgarian Orthodox church in America. He also has collected books and document archives, record collection including old ethnic 78rpms. His book collection includes rare books published and printed in Granite City, IL in the Bulgarian language.

Marvin’s vision is to eventually open a small private Ethnographic museum.