The first German immigrants founded their own community- Germantown,
Pennsylvania-setting a pattern for the millions of Germans who followed. Until
the 20th century , German Americans preserved their language and culture by
settling with others who shared a German heritage. The map of the United States
is dotted with German names where the immigrants put down roots: New Braunfels,
Texas; New Brunswick, New Jersey; New Berlin, Wisconsin; Rhinebeck, New York;
Bismarck, North Dakota.
Similarly, Germans who settled in major cities congregated in their own
neighborhoods. Shop signs and the spoken language remained German in the
Kleindeutschlands (little Germanies) of New York, Chicago, Cincinnati,
Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Baltimore until well into the 20th century. In 1914,
Cincinnati had four daily German newspapers, four hospitals staffed by
German-speaking doctors and nurses, and more than 70 churches where the services
were in German.
Preservation of the German language was the key to maintaining the cultural
traditions that united the German American communities. Not only were the church
services in German, but so were the public schools of such cities as Cincinnati,
Milwaukee, and St. Louis. At the beginning of World War I, more than 500 German-
language newspapers were being published in the United States.
Within the tightly knit German American neighborhoods and communities, family
ties were the strongest bonds. In 1883, Fackel, the Sunday edition of the Chicagoan
Arbeiter-Zeitung, asserted that "the man is the head of the
family, its protector, its representative outside the home; the woman is the
soul of the family, its guardian angel, its inner compass. " Mathilde
Anneke, who emigrated to Milwaukee in the 1850s, was an active member of the
women's rights movement, publisher of the Deutsche Frauen- Zeitung (German
Wives' News)- and was an exception. Most German American women accepted their
traditional roles, expressed as Kirche, Kinder, Kiiche {church, children,
kitchen).
To some German Americans, maintaining their heritage was a religious duty .The
Mennonites who first arrived in 1683 opposed the taking of oaths and resorting
to violence of any kind. The men wore black clothing and hats; the women covered
their heads in public and wore long, plain dresses. Because buttons were
luxuries of the rich in 17th-centurv Germany, the Mennonites did not use them.
Avoiding what they saw as corrupting influences of the modern world, they
preferred to live in their own communities, which spread from Pennsylvania to
Nebraska and Kansas. Today some Mennonites have adapted to modern ways, but the
most conservative group, the Amish, still do not use electricity, automobiles,
or motorized farm equipment. The Hutterites, a similar group, also maintain the
German language and traditional customs in their communities.
Of course, the vast majority of German Americans were not Mennonites. Lutherans,
members of the Reformed church, Methodists, Ro- man Catholics, and Jews were
among the millions who arrived over the past three centuries. Until the 20th
century, however, most of them still clung to their German American identity
.
The Missouri Synod (governing council) of the Lutheran church, for example, was
founded in 1847 by German Lutherans who had left Saxony. Similarly, the German
Methodist church was a separate branch of the American Methodist Episcopal
church unti11924.
German American Catholics made up about one-third of all American Catholics in
the 1890s. Their preference for German- speaking priests created conflict with
the bishops of the American Catholic church, most of whom were Irish. When
German American priests in several cities petitioned the church hierarchy in
Rome for equal treatment, an Irish American bishop in Louisville declared,
"If these German prelates are allowed special legislation as Germans... we
will be looked upon as a German church in an English- speaking country ."
The controversy eventually died down with the creation of separate parishes for
German Americans as well as for Poles, Italians, and other non-English-speaking
Catholics.
After 1830, Jews from the various states of Germany began to arrive in large
numbers. They soon formed their own congregations separate from those founded
earlier by the descendants of Spanish Jews. German-trained rabbis such as Isaac
M. Wise from Bohemia introduced the ideas of Reform Judaism to the United
States. Nineteenth-century German American Jews tended to participate in the
social and intellectual life of the larger German American community .They were
typically as proud of their German cultural heritage as of their Jewish
religious identity .Toward the end of the 19th century , they used their
national heritage to distinguish themselves from less prosperous Russian Jewish
immigrants whom they considered socially inferior .
Wherever they settled, German Americans organized their own as societies and
clubs. One of the earliest, the Sons of Hermann, was founded in New York in 1840
to foster German customs and language and to aid financially needy members. By
the turn of the century it had branches in many other cities. (Hermann, the
organization's namesake, was a Germanic folk hero whose men defeated three Roman
legions at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in the year A.D. 9.) There were many
other German American mutual aid societies, which provided life insurance,
medical care, and jobless benefits for members.
Countless social clubs, called Vereine (the singular is Verein), were formed in
communities large and small. As Carl Entenmann told the Historical Association
of Los Angeles in 1929, "We have a saying that when three Germans meet they
start a Society ." Some Vereine were associations of people from the same
state in Germany, such as the Schwaben Verein. They organized social and
cultural activities and sometimes took part in politics.
Other Vereine met for a specific purpose, such as the Turnvereine or gymnastic
clubs, called turner societies in English. Part of a physical-culture movement
founded in 1811 in Germany, the Tumvereine sought to promote health through
exercise and gymnastics. The movement also had a socialist bent. The first
American Turverein was established by Friedrich Hecker, one of the "
'48ers" who had played an important role in the failed revolutions in
Germany. Spreading to virtually every large German American community in the
1850s, the Turverein movement also carried out military drills. In the Civil War
they formed militias to fight on the Union side.
Equally popular were Gesangvereine and Siingerbund, German singing societies.
Choral singing was a beloved tradition of long standing in Germany. The first
American Gesangverein, founded in Philadelphia in 1835, was soon followed by
others in Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Charleston. The
Gesangvereine organized Siingerfests {singing festivals), often in May and
October, which featured a mix of German folk songs and classical music.
Many Vereine met in neighborhood German beer halls, which were not the same as
what we now call bars. The spirit in the beer halls was marked by gemutlichkeit,
or "good fellowship." Families came there to enjoy the food, song, and
socializing. Orchestras played German music, and the walls were decorated with
paintings of scenes in Germany. Many kinds of German wurst {sausage), schnitzel
{veal cutlet), and sauerkraut were on the menu. In summer, the crowd moved
outdoors to an en- closed garden.
By the beginning of the 20th century, most German Americans felt that their
place in U.S. society was secure. The German-American Alliance, founded in 1901,
claimed 3 million members by 1916. It encouraged the continued use of German in
public schools, opposed limits on new immigration, and fought against the
movement to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States.
However, the outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914 brought an abrupt change
in German American life. In August, Germany sent troops across the neutral
nation of Belgium to attack France. Britain entered the war on France's
side.
Some German Americans defended Germany's war policy, but most merely urged the
United States not to get involved in the war. Other Americans generally agreed,
but U.S. banks made loans to England and France, allowing them to buy billions
of dollars' worth of war materiel from U.S. companies.
In 1915 a German submarine sank the British ocean liner Lusitania, causing the
deaths of more than 1,000 civilian passengers, including 128 Americans. When the
United States protested vigorously, the German government promised to modify its
policy of unrestricted submarine attacks on merchant ships.
The U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson, ran for reelection in 1916 with the slogan
"He kept us out of war." But after Wilson's victory the German
government resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. Furthermore, it was revealed
that Germany had attempted to persuade Mexico to attack the United States if it
entered the war. Ultimately, on April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on
Germany.
Throughout the United States, all German Americans now came under suspicion of
disloyalty. During the years 1917 and 1918 many German Americans were jailed for
speaking out or writing in opposition to American involvement in the war. German
businesses and homes were vandalized, and "patriotic" mobs sometimes
attacked German American citizens. Robert Prager, an outspoken immigrant from
Dresden, was lynched in Illinois in 1918.
The home-front battle against all things Germanic went to ridiculous lengths.
Symphony orchestras were banned from playing German music, and German books were
publicly burned, even in such bastions of German American life as Cincinnati.
Streets, towns, and even foods were given new, non- German names. The
frankfurter became the hot dog, sauerkraut became liberty cabbage, and German
shepherd dogs were now called Alsatians.
After the war, anti-German prejudice continued. The use of the German language
in schools and churches sharply declined. Many German American clubs disbanded,
and newspapers ceased publication. Never again would the German American
community be as strong and vital as before 1917. Herbert Hoover, who in 1929
became the first U.S. President of German descent, did not publicize his
roots.
In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. The Deutschamerikanische
Volksbund (German American People's League) was formed in 1936 to support Hitler's Nazi government. The Bund, as it was called, attracted attention with
public rallies at which the Nazi swastika was displayed. However, its membership
never exceeded 25,000 people, and most German Americans were unsympathetic to Hitler's Nazi doctrine.
During World War II, German Americans did not encounter the accusations of
disloyalty they had faced earlier. In fact, the commander-in-chief of the Allied
military forces that defeated Nazi Germany was Dwight David Eisenhower, another
German American.
* These are excerpts from the book 'The German American Family Album' by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler