The sun won’t rise for a few more hours, but Michael Leider Sr. knows that if he’s not up by 4 AM, he’s already late. He puts his crops into the wagon and starts his day.
“He was the second son,” Mark Leider, his great-grandson, a fourth-generation Luxembourger and current owner of Leider Greenhouses, explains. “First son got the farm. Second son got a suitcase, a hundred bucks, and a ticket to America.”
The physical distance, combined with assimilation and a generational detachment from formal institutions, has diluted Luxembourger culture over the decades, says Wester. Once bolstered by Roman Catholic parishes and social clubs (think singing societies and bowling leagues), Luxembourg American identity became less central to its descendants’ lives, so much so that many are not even aware of their ancestry, thinking instead that they’re German or Belgian.
Leider says this past spring was brutal because of the cold and rain. Even as the greenhouses have features that set the internal climate and simulate the time of day, some factors are outside human control. “When it’s nice, [our customers will] buy flowers like you cannot believe, but as soon as the rain comes in, the cars will stop. They won’t come in.” This affects the Leiders’ garden center, which accounts for 10 percent of the business, and their wholesale operations.
On a wall in Leider’s office hangs a black-and-white photo of his grandfather—Michael Martin Leider, a second-generation Luxembourger and former company head who passed away in 2001—meeting Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, in 1941. At the time, the grand duchess was in exile. Nazi Germany had recently invaded Luxembourg, violating its neutrality, and the royal family escaped just before, not eager to be slaughtered or kept on as puppets in a fascist regime.
