Why are German Americans so invisible?
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Anonymous
This. There used to be an insurance company called Germania Life in NYC. The company is still in business, and many of you probably have your dental insurance from them, but the name has been changed during WWI. Ditto for various Turn Vereins - the German social halls/athletic clubs - they were all gone then. Here is a bit of NYC German history https://www.brownstoner.com/history/walkabout-turn-turn-turn-verein/ |
Anonymous
What a great story! Thanks for sharing. |
Anonymous
The same goes for teaching German in schools https://blog.history.in.gov/when-indiana-banned-the-german-language-in-1919/ |
Anonymous
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“Why isn’t there a White History Month?” OP is essentially asking.
Germanic culture is everywhere, OP. Oktoberfest…. If you want to experience German influences head up to Lovettsville or Lancaster, PA around here. Or German Village in Columbus or something. |
Anonymous
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Interesting thread. I am second generation German American on my fathers side whose entire family was very German, his grandfathers were both brewmeisters who came to USA in the late 1800s and settled in NYC. Much of my family is still in New York Hudson Valley and one of my cousins is very active in a German dance and heritage group in Poughkeepsie called, of course, Germania. They have a club and an event grounds and are very active putting on an annual Oktoberfest etc.
Germans are the number one ethnic group in America, did you know that? In terms of numbers, they are. And yes they are in some ways more assimilated but that’s largely a result of being the dominant group. My father’s German American family, his parents Nazi sympathizers only first generation Americans felt themselves more American than their Italian and Jewish and other ethnic group neighbors in the south Bronx of the 1930s, 40s and beyond. Now I’m going to state some facts and stir some anger, I’m sure. We Germans are a very racist people as a whole. Our presence as the dominant ethnic group in the USA is explanatory for the USA’s long reluctance to enter WWII and our refusal to help so many Jews who tried to emigrate to America in the 30s and early 40s. See Ken Burns’ most recent documentary if you are unfamiliar with this history. See also Rachel Maddow’s recent podcast Ultra for some more American history about Congressional collusion with the Nazis to influence American citizens in the 30s and 40s. See also recent rise of ultra far right nationalist domestic terrors groups and the backlash against rising diversity in America. America’s German roots are pivotal to her pains - and some of her successes, too. I am proud to be German, but I am also very properly ashamed of much of my German heritage. A warring, authoritarian, fascistic culture that battles the urges ongoing. See current rise of far right nationalist extremism in . . . Germany. |
Anonymous
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The midwest town my relatives live in has a huge Oktoberfest and big German Christmas markets.
I think a lot of German clubs were disbanded during WWI and WWII. A lot of Germans changed their German surnames to English sounding ones. I think though that a lot of German immigrants fit in really well with the population of America at the time. German is a very close language to English, so they learned English. A lot of our traditions like the Christmas tree are really German ones |
Anonymous
| A few years ago my spouse and I were on vacation abroad and staying at a little bed and breakfast where a young German couple were also staying. Every time they saw us they laughed and pretending to be shooting guns. We took it in stride and played along but whispered to ourselves “talk about glass houses . . .” |
Anonymous
In case anyone did not understand PP’s reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund Now you know. |
Anonymous
| I grew up in western Pennsylvania with a large extended family that was run by my grandmother and her sisters, all with German roots (surname Vasbinder). We ate German foods, played German games, and had other German-influenced traditions around the holidays but none of it was EVER called out as German or labeled as German in any way. It wasn't until I was in my 30's that I even put it all together as being so heavily German-influenced. |
Anonymous
Clearly you have never been to Cincinnati, Ohio. Huge German population and presence. It is Munich's "sister city." |
Anonymous
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The Holocaust.
People react when Germans have pride or gather in large groups unless it’s Oktoberfest. |
Anonymous
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There were different waves of German immigration to the United States. The first waves started in the late 17th century to Pennsylvania and formed what we now call the Pennsylvania Dutch, although most were actually just plain Lutheran and assimilated quickly enough. There are some letters exchanged among the Quakers and even Ben Franklin exhibiting concern that Pennsylvania was being overrun by Germans! My father's family of my surname came in the 1690s with other family branches in the subsequent decades through the 1750s. None were strictly Anabaptist and we fought in the Revolutionary War for the colonialists. You still see strong German cultural influence in central Pennsylvania from this immigration wave 300 years ago even though few new emigrants joined the Pennsylvania Germans after the Revolutionary War.
Then, in starting in the 1830s and particularly in the 1840s, a massive tide of German immigrants swept across America. Unlike the 18th century Germans, these were not Anabaptists or low church Lutherans but a mixture of Catholic and Protestants, and from various parts of Germany. This tide was partially fueled by the revolutions of the 1840s. They came to both cities and countryside and most headed for the "frontier" of the time, the middle west, although large and flourishing communities settled in Baltimore. These Germans were more recognizably "generically German" than the earlier Germans, whose identities had initially been rooted in faith. The Germans were the most successful of the immigrant groups and, unlike the Irish of the same time, were widely recognized as being law abiding, orderly, hardworking, making their assimilation much easier and as such they suffered fairly minimal anti-immigration pushback (although not entirely exempt, there were a few localized anti-German riots). It helped that most were Protestants. The unification of Germany in the 1860s and the resulting economic growth of the new German state did slow down the tide of German emigration to America, but a strong German identity did continue, particularly among the 1840s immigration generation. Baltimore had German newspapers and German beer halls and German singing societies. But when WWI broke out, the German-speaking Americans knew where their loyalties lay and that was the psychological break with Germany and most of the German identities quickly faded away and newspapers and singing societies closed down. So successful was this retrenchment that by WWII, it never occurred to anyone to question the potential loyalty of someone like Eisenhower just because he had a German last name. An all-encompassing American identity had taken over and the middle 20th century saw a significant retrenchment from "ethnic" identities, which extended to other European immigration groups like the Italians and Polish. If you want to ask why the German American concept is now so invisible, it's because it was no longer needed and people were now too far removed from a mother country that also no longer existed in a meaningful sense. |
Anonymous
This. The entire Midwest is German and Minnesota is Norwegian. Like the whole culture of these places is German—bratwurst and beer, etc. |
Anonymous
Remember the Peanuts cartoon? That was set in the Midwest and they were all German. Lucy Van Pelt, Schroeder, Schultz, etc. |
Anonymous
| The Pennsylvania Dutch are not Dutch they are Deutsche = German. |