Posted by Steve on September 16, 2001 at 09:16:52:
In Reply to: Re: It is starting in Canada posted by Al Gordon on September 16, 2001 at 08:57:14:
Al:
Several years ago I researched my genealogy. I am 100% German extraction. My wife is mostly German with a touch of Irish. The Irish and the German, even of the same religion, did not like one another. In Cincinnati the Catholic cemetery from the time was on one side of the road a German cemetery and the other side was Irish. There were Irish parishes and German Parishes. And yet, they came to know one another and eventually accept each other and to inter-marry. Today there is not a trace of this felling left in Cincinnati.
Cincinnati also experienced much Anti-German hysteria during WW1. Cincinnati had a majority of its population as German immigrants. Streets were renamed and there was much violence against German groups. The following is a history of this time in America:
ANTI-GERMANISM GROWS VIOLENT
On the night of April 4, 1918, a year after the United States had declared war against Germany, a group of Maryville, Illinois, coal miners apprehended Robert Paul Prager, a co-worker whom they suspected of being a German spy. They marched him from his home in Collinsville, forced him to kiss the American flag and to sing patriotic songs in front of a gathering crowd, and questioned him about his activities as a German spy. Prager insisted on his innocence and on his loyalty to the United States. But the mob was not appeased, and they hanged him from a tree on the outskirts of town.
Prager's death was the culmination of a year ot harassment of German Americans. Theodore Ladenburger, a German Jew living in New York, wrote that "from the moment that the United States had declared war on Germany," he was made to feel like "a traitor to [his] adopted country." Moreover, he continued:
... in view of my record as a citizen I did expect from my neighbors and fellow citizens a fair estimate and appreciation of my honesty and trustworthiness. It had all vanished. Outstanding was the only fact, of which I was never ashamed-nor did I ever make a secret of it-that I had been born in Germany.
German Americans were intimidated into buying Liberty Bonds (sold by the U.S. Treasury to finance the war), imprisoned for making "disloyal" remarks, and forced to participate in flag-kissing ceremonies like the one that preceded Prager's lynching. Citizens from Florida to California were publicly flogged or tarred and feathered. Homes and schools were vandalized. Mennonites, who firmly opposed all wars, were especially persecuted; in 1917-18, more than 1,500 Mennonites fled the United States to settle in Canada.
Hysteria also threatened German cultural institutions. Attacks on German music included the banning of Beethoven in Pittsburgh and the arrest of Dr. Karl Muck, the German-born conductor of the Boston Symphony, on charges that he was a threat to the safety of the country. The same motive lay behind the removal or vandalism of statues of poets Johann Goethe and Friedrich Schiller and other German cultural giants. German-language classes were dropped from school curricula and German textbooks banned. Under a 1917 law, German-language newspapers had to supply English-language translations that were reviewed for approval by local postmasters. If the material was found to be unacceptable, mailing privileges were withdrawn.
Perhaps the most ridiculous example of the rush to "de-Germanize" America was the removal, in 1917, of the figure of the goddess Germania from the Germania Life Insurance Building in St. Paul, Minnesota. The building was renamed the Guardian Building. Likewise, streets, parks, schools, and even towns were re-christened: Germantown, Nebraska, for example became Garland and Berlin, Iowa, was renamed Lincoln. Restaurants served "liberty steak" in place of hamburgers and "liberty cabbage" for sauerkraut. In Massachusetts, a physician even renamed German measles "liberty measles.
What were some of the other effects of such widespread anti-German hysteria? The German-American National Alliance faltered in April 1918, the month of Robert Prager's death, and membership in German cultural and political organizations plummeted. Many German Americans stopped speaking German, even in the privacy of their homes. German aliens rushed to become American citizens, and hundreds of citizens of German descent changed their names. George Washington Ochs of Philadelphia petitioned to change his last name to Oakes, despite the patriotism clearly embodied in his first two names.
Exceptions to this wave of hasty assimilation included tight-knit groups of churchgoing Germans, who reacted, by clinging more firmly to their beliefs and customs and by isolating themselves further from their neighbors. After the armistice of November 11, 1918, church groups risked American hostility by doing relief work in Germany, where starvation threatened thousands of people. This work, which consisted mainly of raising money for food and clothing to be sent to Germany, stimulated a brief revival of ethnic consciousness. United by their concern for friends and relatives abroad, German Americans contributed heavily to relief programs.
But organizations such as the Steuben Society, founded in New York in 1919 and guided by aims of political unity similar to those pursued by prewar groups, never became really popular again. Even before the war broke out, German Americans had been assimilating apace, leaning English and seeking careers in the larger American society. Indeed, by the 20th century, sizable communities where only German was spoken were largely a thing of the past. But in the opinion of at least one historian, World War I did not simply hasten this assimilation, it virtually banished ethnic consciousness among German Americans so that the postwar generation suffered from a kind of "cultural amnesia": parents who were immigrants or first-generation Americans had-out of fear and humiliation-so denied their roots that their children grew up with no sense of their own German heritage.