Michael Cai

On the night of November 1901, Charles Hexamer, president of Pennsylvania’s

The Mechanisms German Society, held a behind German-American large “all-German bazaar.”

Assimilation Before it commenced, he began with a speech framing the celebration as a “comingtogether of the Germans of the city … dedicated to brotherly love and beneficence.”1 Indeed, during the late 19th to early 20th century, German-American culture was pervasive in society. But by the late 1900s, German-Americans maintained a remarkably low-profile cultural standing, with only 20% considering themselves German.2 Within less than a century, a once prolific ethnic group had virtually dissipated into nothing. The current literature on assimilation indicates that such a profound cleansing would emerge from the desire to adopt a more Americanized culture, and that external pressures would only drive the community farther away. To an extent, this model was initially accurate. During early WWI, the public’s attacks on German identity sparked heightened cultural expression and anti-patriotism. However, the effects of government intervention after U.S. involvement in the war contradicted this notion of assimilation. To promote a unified, “American” culture, the government used top-down force to override the group’s natural reactions. It then intensified suppression over fundamental aspects of German culture, forcing communities to assimilate even more. What ensued was a decline in the group’s oncelively ethnic identity. While the public’s anti-German movement sparked cultural backlash from German-Americans, the government’s crusade against the ethnicity ultimately fueled their dramatic Americanization by suppressing such resistance and other fundamental means of cultural expression, thereby triggering a sharp decline in ethnic prevalence.

A Kultural Blow:

Michael Cai

The current literature on guided assimilation indicates that successful methods embrace a mingling between immigrant and American culture.

1 Russell A. Kazal, Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 17. 2 Steven L. Schlossman, “Is There an American Tradition of Bilingual Education? German in the Public Elementary Schools, 1840-1919,” American Journal of Education 91, no. 2 (February 1983): 155, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/1085040; Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 1. 11

It primarily maintains that Americanization succeeds when immigrant groups are encouraged to genuinely love both their native home and adopted country. This mindset would prompt them to combine the two cultures and assimilate in the process.3 Conversely, because the process of assimilation rests chiefly on ethnic groups’ willingness to adopt American culture, the literature holds that if society antagonizes that ethnicity, it would discourage them from adopting the culture of the people who effectively alienized them.4 As one Russian newspaper wrote in 1919,

Many Americanization Committees only exist on paper. They make much noise, get themselves in newspapers, but do not do much good. They mostly laugh at the poor foreigners. If Americans want to help the immigrants, they must meet them with love. The immigrant is by no means stupid. He feels the patronizing attitude the American [Americanizers] adopts towards him, and therefore never opens his soul.5

Studies have also cited that past immigrants generally embraced liberal Americanizers who promoted the mixing of cultures and rejected those forcefully pressuring Americanization.6 As such, it would be reasonable to consider tolerant methods of Americanization as the superior mode of guided assimilation.

In contrast to this strategy, the public engaged in an anti-German movement as a response to German threats early in WWI. For instance, attacks fueled anti-spy hysteria among the people, prompting them to

3 June Granatir Alexander, Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2004), 10, http://books.google.com/ books?vid=ISBN9781592137800. 4 Many studies have referenced this idea. See, for example, Nathan Glazer, “Is Assimilation Dead?,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530 (November 1993): 122, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/1047681; Otto Hieronymi, “Identity, Integration and Assimilation: Factors of Success and Failure of Migration,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 24, no. 4 (January 1, 2005): 138, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdi095; Edward George Hartmann, The Movement to Americanize the Immigrant (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1948), 23. 5 Alex Nowrasteh, “The Failure of the Americanization Movement,” Cato Institute, last modified December 18, 2014, https://www.cato.org/blog/ failure-americanization-movement. 6 John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 18601925 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 253-254.

brand German-Americans as potential traitors through cartoons and propaganda. This hysteria mostly originated from domestic threats, including German professor Eric Muenter, who in 1915 attempted a Senate bombing, and emigrant workers, whom Germany encouraged to stop producing Ally goods.7 In response to these threats, one cartoon depicted strong ties between German espionage and Kultur (the traditional language and culture of Germans and German-Americans) by portraying the German-American population as a minefield of spies and dubbing the situation as “the new intensive Kultur” (Appendix A). Other attacks on German identity explicitly branded German immigrants as spies and terrorists. A cartoon titled “His Shelter” in The Chicago Daily News was a manifestation of the previously mentioned paranoia against German emigrant workers. It portrayed them as spies who used citizenship as a disguise while they sabotaged American industry (Appendix B). Beside domestic attacks, the 1915 German sinking of a passenger steamer called the Lusitania also incited vilifying cartoons. One cartoon from The New York Herald depicted a German-American providing “inside information” to Germany in light of the Lusitania’s sinking (Appendix C). Indeed, events such as these had sparked an overreaction from the American populace that evolved into outright spyhysteria against the German-American population.

The public’s reaction to wartime attacks was not limited to spy-hysteria, as society also began associating German identity with uncivilized barbarism. In fact, after the sinking of the Lusitania, most Americans began to identify Kultur with brutality, a sentiment which was again especially pronounced in cartoons.8 On May 22, 1915, The Literary Digest published a cartoon in which an attacking submarine representing Kultur was juxtaposed to its supposed victim, a ship resembling the Lusitania labeled “Civilization” (Appendix D). German Kultur was thus associated with a type of barbarism that “sank” civilization and the principles it stood for.9 In another cartoon, The Columbus Dispatch went as far as to pressure citizens to sever all connections to German heritage

7 Melissa D. Burrage, The Karl Muck Scandal: Classical Music and Xenophobia in World War I America (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2019), 350, https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9781592137800. 8 Katja Wüstenbecker, “German-Americans during World War I,” Immigrant Entrepreneurship: 1720 to the Present, last modified September 19, 2014, https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/german-americans- during-world-war-i/. 9 Frank Trommler, “The Lusitania Effect: America’s Mobilization against Germany in World War I,” German Studies Review 32, no. 2 (May 2009): 250, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40574799. 13

(Appendix E). This cartoon depicted “The Mother Country” as wearing a pickelhaube, a German war helmet with a protruding ornament mounted on top. Since the pickelhaube was commonly used to associate Germany with ferocity, the newspaper effectively likened ties to Germany with ties to barbarism.10 German violence during the war additionally served as inspiration for Thomas Dixon Jr.’s silent film, The Fall of a Nation, in which foreign soldiers and immigrant traitors attacked the U.S. Not only did the film’s slides mention the invaders’ “looting of New York,” “rape of its women,” and “murder of its men,” but it also brought attention to their “strong Germanic names.”11 Once again, through visual propaganda, German identity had been associated with brutality.

In addition to visual means of promoting anti-German hysteria, the public also employed rhetorical tactics to vilify the German-American population for wartime attacks. For instance, in the aftermath of the Lusitania’s sinking, newspaper headlines inflamed existing antagonism. In 1915, New York’s The Evening Telegram highlighted the sadistic nature of the German New Yorkers in the headline, “Germans Make Merry Over Sea Disaster: Teutons [a derogatory term for Germans] gather in favorite restaurant where toasts are drunk to commander of submarine which sunk the Lusitania—German ‘Kultur’ is lauded.”12 Around 1915 to 1916, the term “hun” also emerged as a rhetorical tactic to disparage Germans and German-Americans.13 In 1916 The New York Times used the term in reaction to wartime catastrophes, publishing an article titled, “Tells of Leaving L-19 Crew to Die: ‘Remembered what the Huns have done,’ says British skipper, explaining his act.”14 This anti-German hysteria became so widespread that prominent citizens gave speeches vilifying German-Americans as “hyphens,” a diminishingterm used for immigrants. In October 1915, former president Theodore Roosevelt even stated:

10 Peter Doyle, The First World War in 100 Objects (Stroud, England: History Press, 2014), 35-36. 11 Peter Conolly-Smith, “Casting Teutonic Types from the Nineteenth Century to World War I: German Ethnic Stereotypes in Print, on Stage, and Screen,” Columbia Journal of American Studies 9 (Fall 2009): 66, http://www.columbia. edu/cu/cjas/conolly-smith-1.html. 12 “Germans Make Merry over Sea Disaster,” The Evening Telegram (New York, NY), May 8, 1915, https://www.loc.gov/resource/2004540423/1915-05-08/ed-1/. 13 Harold D. Lasswell, “Atrocity Propaganda, 1914-1919. James Morgan Read,” The Journal of Modern History 14, no. 4 (December 1942): 17, https://doi. org/10.1086/236676. 14 “Tells of Leaving L-19 Crew to Die,” The New York Times (New York, NY), February 5, 1916, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1916/02/05/ issue.html.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism … The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country… He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.15

Though Roosevelt extended the discrimination to all “hyphenated Americans,” he nonetheless further fanned the flames of the wartime anti-German hysteria.

In response, German-Americans heightened their already strong cultural presence as an initial form of backlash against these nativist sentiments. By the early 20th century, the ethnicity already had a prominent cultural standing. Having resided on American soil before the country’s founding and immigrated in large waves during the 1800s, they had already grown to be the largest ethnic population by the turn of the 20th century.16 The population’s numbers translated into many other facets of cultural prevalence. By 1850, for instance, Gemütlichkeit, or “sociability,” festivals and German picnics attracted tens of thousands of GermanAmericans.17 Some schools in cities such as Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee even offered German as a primary language of instruction.18 The group’s pervasiveness also extended to the press; in fact, by the end of the 19th century, 4 out of 5 foreign language newspapers were written in German, and by 1890, the United States saw over 1,000

15 Nancy Mae Antrim, Seeking Identity: Language in Society (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021), 88-89, https://books.google.com/ books?vid=ISBN9781592137800. 16 Don Heinrich Tolzmann, “German-American Studies: History and Development,” Monatshefte 80, no. 3 (Fall 1988): 279, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/30161608; Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, “Table 4. World Region and Country or Area of Birth of the Foreign-Born Population, With Geographic Detail Shown in Decennial Census Publications of 1930 or Earlier: 1850 to 1930 and 1960 to 2000.,” table, February 2006, https://www.census.gov/content/dam/ Census/library/working-papers/2006/demo/POP-twps0081.pdf. 17 Heike Bungert, “The Singing Festivals of German Americans, 1849–1914,” American Music 34, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 149, https://doi.org/10.5406/ americanmusic.34.2.0141. 18 Schlossman, “Is There,” 155-156. 15

German newspapers.19 By the beginning of the first World War, the GermanAmerican community was already a prevalent force within society.

During the 1915-1917 period, German-Americans expressed an even stronger, pro-German public identity to combat the pressures of abandoning their heritage. During this time, German newspapers began pushing back against discriminatory attacks.20 The Süd California Deutsche Zeitung published articles promoting culture and heritage organizations “to awaken and strengthen the sense of unity among the people of German origin in America with a view … to check nativistic encroachments.”21 In a similar vein, the Illinois Staats-Zeitung published a piece called “We Protest,” in which it combated the dissemination of anti-German material from the American press:

Some newspapers continue to publish articles with the object of inciting hatred against the German-Americans … The German language press has … warned against hysteries and against, what is worse, frame-ups of which there have been a good number … it has warned the German officials in this country not to allow themselves to be, as some of them unfortunately were, misguided by such frame-ups.22

German-Americans also held speeches denouncing the pressure to abandon Kultur, such as the following address given by second-generation immigrant George Seibel in 1916:

During the past two years a new disease has made its appearance in the United States, a malignant malady which no one had ever suspected before. It originated in

19 Barbara Burnaby and Thomas Ricento, Language and Politics in the United States and Canada: Myths and Realities (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), 222, https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9781592137800. 20 James M. Bergquist, “German Communities in American Cities: An Interpretation of the Nineteenth-Century Experience,” Journal of American Ethnic History 4, no. 1 (Fall 1984): 12, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27500350; Frederick C. Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty: German-Americans and World War I (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), 285. 21 “National German Alliance and its Purposes,” Süd California Deutsche Zeitung (San Diego, CA), July 21, 1916, https://cdnc.ucr. edu/?a=d&d=SCDZ19160721.2.6. 22 “We Protest. (From ‘Illinois Staats-Zeitung’.),” Süd California Deutsche Zeitung (San Diego, CA), August 3, 1917, https://cdnc.ucr. edu/?a=d&d=SCDZ19170803.

something that seems to be harmless enough—a mere mark of punctuation … If you are a German-American… the hyphen is as dreadful as the brand of Cain … but [German-Americans] know that the hyphen is a mark of union, not of separation … Still as a rock of granite will they stand, amid the storm of calumny and defamation, to save our country from a new British Conquest.23

Besides employing counter-rhetoric, Germans also flocked to organizations such as the National German-American Alliance (NGAA), whose intentions were openly to “preserve German culture in America” and resist “forces of assimilation.”24 The fact that membership growth peaked around 19161917, with numbers essentially doubling in two years, indicated that wartime discrimination pushed German-Americans to engage in a pattern of proGerman defiance against Americanizing pressures.25

Wanting to further resist the societal pressure to Americanize during the early war era, German-Americans also reinforced this sense of Kultur within their private lives. To accomplish this, in 1917 more GermanAmericans began giving distinctively German names to children, as measured in GNI (German Name Index), which determines the “Germanness” of a name by comparing its frequency among German populations as opposed to the rest of society. Specifically, the GNI of German-American children’s names grew by about 4-5% more than that of a pre-war control study.26 Similarly, more members of the ethnicity became devoted German Methodists during the war to further the extent of Kultur within their personal belief systems. In fact, members peaked in early 1917 at 60,000-70,000 across 740 congregations.27 Personal letters expressed an even more combative sentiment, as expressed in a letter from Eugen Haas to his uncle on October 1915:

23 George Seibel, “The Hyphen in American History,” speech, August 31, 1916, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/ t9x06gh7t&view=1up&seq=1&skin=2021. 24 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 98; Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 130; Charles T. Johnson, Culture at Twilight: The National German-American Alliance, 19011918 (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 1999), 3. 25 Johnson, Culture at Twilight, 15.; Andreas Hübner, “A People of ‘Patriotic Hearts’: German-Americans, U.S. Neutrality, and the Building of an Inclusive Coalition in New Orleans, 1915,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 60, no. 3 (Summer 2019): 268, https://www. jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26864714. 26 Fouka, “Backlash: The Unintended,” 39. 27 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 40. 17

This is a time when we have to say farewell to all pleasures … all strength has to be gathered together … to contribute so that the German oak is not smashed. And it will go on existing; for it draws its strength from the home ground and, thank God, does not depend on outside help. With things German everything is strong, brazen, made of iron and genuine … We do not talk with protests and assurances, with empty words, but here the German fist preserves its right and crushes the lying and deceiving brood of vipers.28

Indeed, the backlash signified not only a heightened sense of cultural identity within the personal life, but also an increased expression of hostility towards Americanization as well.

After the U.S. joined the war in 1917, the government intensified efforts to quash these platforms of cultural resistance, fueling Americanization within the German-American community. The government especially censored dissent in the press, forcing a homogeneous sense of patriotism within German communities. The Espionage Act of 1917 enabled the Postmaster General to remove from circulation any newspaper which threatened the war effort, combating the spread of cultural newspapers that advocated for a unified German identity.29 For instance, under the act federal agents arrested high-ranking staff of the German newspaper Tageblatt, crippling the company and limiting its voice in a rapidly Americanizing population.30 Later, the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 forced foreign language newspapers to be approved by the Post Office. The resulting financial and technical obstacles that came with these mandates led to a 47% decline in German-American presses by the end of the war.31 The 1918 Sedition Act gave Post Offices the similar right to intercept deliveries of radical “nonmailable material”; the government considered many German-American newspapers as radical, and thus they comprised a sizable portion of the 320 newspapers lost by 1920.32 On the other hand, other ethnic groups’ newspapers suffered minimal

28 Eugen Haas, “Eugen Haas to Eugen Klee, October 7, 1915,” 1915, in Eugen and Emma Klee Letters, 1, PDF. 29 Ragnhild Fiebig-von Hase and Ursula Lehmkuhl, Enemy Images in American History (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1997), 199, http://books.google.com/ books?vid=ISBN9781592137800. 30 Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 188. 31 Robert Justin Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America from 1870 to 1976 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 109. 32 Fiebig-von Hase and Lehmkuhl, Enemy Images, 199.

effects. The Irish press, for instance, lost minor magazines and about 80% fewer newspapers than the German press.33 Rather, the government had particularly targeted and removed platforms of German expression.

The government also brought about the dissolution of German cultural organizations in response to their popularity as vessels for resistance. In 1918, the Senate threatened to repeal the charter of the now infamous NGAA, pressuring the association to accept the inevitable and disband. With it dissolved one of the most influential platforms of German cultural expression and preservation.34 Charles Hexamer even stressed its importance in this regard: “It has been plainly proved that only a united and powerful Germanism strengthened from within, such as is presented in the National German-American Alliance, can attain the many objects whose accomplishment is our ideal and most honorable task.”35 To avoid further government persecution and public harassment, other German organizations had little option other than to similarly reincarnate themselves as entirely new, Americanized organizations. For instance, Wisconsin’s Deutscher club and Chicago’s Germania Club, fearing the worst, became the Wisconsin Club in 1917 and Lincoln Club in 1918, respectively.36 Cultural platforms were not all dissolved willingly, however. A federal committee headed by Senator William King revoked state charters for some German cultural organizations and stripped the legal foundation away from others, forcing them to wither away. Consequently, between 1917 and 1918, cultural platforms like the Connecticut German bicycle club and shooting club had entirely dissolved.37 In the end, the government had prompted the dissolution of countless platforms for German resistance and expression.

Motivated by general anti-pacifist sentiments, the government even countered German-American resistance to war efforts by persecuting individual dissenters, thereby replacing any cultural distinction with an

33 Horace C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War: 1917-1918 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986), 95. 34 Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 182. 35 Bill to Repeal the Act Entitled “An Act to Incorporate the National German-American Alliance”: Hearings on S. 3529 Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, 65th Cong., 2d Sess. (1918). https:// curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/immigration-to-the-united-states-1789-1930/ catalog/39-990067876840203941. 36 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 270; Melvin G. Holli, “German-American Ethnic Identity from 1890 Onward: The Chicago Case,” The Great Lakes Review 11, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 8, https://doi.org/10.2307/20172720. 37 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 269-270.

Americanized sense of patriotism. For instance, the American Protective League (APL), established by the Department of Justice, intensified their treatment of German-Americans, illegally searching through their mail and arresting individuals to limit resistance.38 When recounting a community meeting in April 1917, the German Elk City News-Democrat described the hysteria as something “all but one of the speakers … were against.”39 The APL’s Philadelphia chapter nevertheless targeted more than 18,000 people in 1917 and 1918, most of whom were arrested for unpatriotic or defamatory speech. Eventually, according to a 1918 APL newsletter, “there was little or no disturbance and few attempts to resist the authority of the League,” indicating that the APL had quashed German-American resistance.40 Furthermore, on July 1917, GermanAmericans held an anti-draft rally in Minnesota, but in response, the governor suspended officials who partook in the gathering. He also initiated a “resistance-suppressing brainwashing program,” consisting of a rally during which German-Americans were forced to exhibit patriotic loyalty.41 German Mennonites and other German religious groups who adhered to pacifism were additionally imprisoned; some were even targeted by the military and forced to kiss flags.42 In turn, 1917 saw an intense decline in German Mennonites: some terminated parochial schools and over 1,500 emigrated to Canada, leaving behind a less defiant and less culturally distinctive German-American population.43

In addition to overriding German-Americans’ cultural backlash, the government also Americanized fundamental elements of German culture by strengthening America’s nativist environment. The large-scale restriction of foreign languages within daily life, for instance, forced the German-American community to Americanize through speech. To promote linguistic assimilation, Iowa passed the Babel proclamation in 1918 which banned any public use of foreign language, and some states required children to recite a “Watch Your Speech Pledge:”

“I love the United States of America. I love my country’s language. I promise: 1) that I will not dishonor my country’s speech by leaving off the last syllables of words;

38 Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 175. 39 Elk City News-Democrat (Elk City, OK), April 12, 1917, sec. 1, PDF. 40 Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 45, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335491.001.0001; Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 175. 41 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 239. 42 Fiebig-von Hase and Lehmkuhl, Enemy Images, 202-203. 43 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 289.

2) that I will say a good American “yes” and “no” in place of … a foreign “ya” or “yeh” or “nope;” 3) that I will do my best to improve American speech by avoiding loud harsh tones, by enunciating distinctly and speaking pleasantly, clearly and sincerely; 4) that I will try to make my country’s language beautiful for the many boys and girls of foreign nations who come here to live; 5) that I will learn to articulate correctly one word a day for one year.”44

These anti-foreign language attitudes were especially stern when concerning German. Steeleville, Illinois, for instance, passed an ordinance prohibiting the use of German at all times, with any violation resulting in arrest.45 South Dakota followed suit, forbidding any public use of German except in emergencies.46 Consequently, out of sixteen major foreign language-speaking ethnicities, the number of secondgeneration German speakers grew the least by 1920 (Appendix F), leading to the gradual Americanization of German-American posterity.

Government restrictions over foreign languages were equally prevalent in education, which helped to further assimilate the German-American youth. The Smith-Towner Act of 1918 prohibited states from benefiting from federal funds “unless [the state] enacted and enforced laws requiring that the chief language of instruction in all schools, public and private, be English.” The act prompted monolingual environments in the fifteen states that met its demands, some of which restricted all foreign language education before a certain grade, while others—such as Colorado, Indiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, and South Dakota— particularly banned the teaching of German in its entirety.47 Indeed, many states emphasized the restriction of German. For instance, the governor of Montana, stating “there shall be no temporizing with treason in Montana,” prohibited German instruction in any educational facility and the distribution or use of any German textbook, an action which was later imitated in Louisiana.48 Nebraska and other state councils of defense

44 Stephen J. Frese, “Divided by a Common Language: The Babel Proclamation and Its Influence in Iowa History,” The History Teacher 39, no. 1 (November 1, 2005): 1, https://doi.org/10.2307/30036745; Dennis E. Baron, The EnglishOnly Question: An Official Language for Americans? (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 155. 45 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 16. 46 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 252. 47 Amanda K. Kibler, “Speaking Like a ‘Good American’: National Identity and the Legacy of German-Language Education,” Teachers College Record 110, no. 6 (2008), https://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentId=14725. 48 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 252. 21

even banned the teaching of German in Lutheran schools. Lutheran churches described this decision as “detrimental to the future of the Lutheran Church in this country.”49 By the early 1920s the number of students studying German had already declined from 24.4% to less than 1%; meanwhile, instruction of other languages experienced little if any drop among schools (Appendix G). Government restriction had once again incited linguistic assimilation.

German names were even anglicized in the wake of this governmentperpetuated hysteria. Many of these changes emerged as the war progressed and the government began to intensify its defamation of German-Americans, stressing particularly the duty to avoid or sabotage German-American “traitors.” This environment was exhibited through propaganda, such as posters that inflamed the existing spy-paranoia (Appendix H), and speeches, such as a 1918 speech by the former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, in which he claimed that German-Americans “bite and squeal and scratch” more than any other animal.50 While earlywar newspaper rhetoric mirrored this situation, the more authoritative government propaganda actually inspired individuals to take action. The frenzy sparked rumors of supposed spies, and citizens began organizing boycotts of German stores.51 As a result, a spokesman for GermanAmerican salesmen commented that, “[sauerkraut] consumption had decreased about 75 per cent … there has been a peculiar prejudice against it; to such an extent … we thought of changing the name.”52 German product names were thus anglicized due to the government’s movement against Kultur: sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage” and hamburgers became “liberty sandwiches.”53 The Kaiser-Huhn grocery store of St. Louis, Missouri, renamed itself the Pioneer Grocery

49 The Lutheran Witness, Volume 37 (Cleveland, OH), 1918, https://www.google. com/books/edition/The_Lutheran_Witness/LyEsAQAAMAAJ. 50 James W. Gerard, “Loyalty,” speech, 1917, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ED475784.pdf. 51 Liesl K. Miller, “The Great War: Ethnic Conflict for Chicago’s GermanAmericans,” OAH Magazine of History 2, no. 4 (Fall 1987): 50, https://www. jstor.org/stable/25162568. 52 “Sauerkraut May Be ‘Liberty Cabbage,’” The New York Times (New York, NY), April 25, 1918, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1918/04/25/96864971.html?pageNumber=10. 53 Daniel J. Leab, “Screen Images of the ‘Other’ in Wilhelmine Germany & the United States, 1890-1918,” Film History 9, no. 1 (1997): 55, https://www.jstor. org/stable/3815291.

Company after people began throwing stones at its drivers.54 This trend even extended to surnames; in 1917 The Washington Herald stated, “scenting peril to their business interests from having Teutonic names, several persons of German birth or ancestry have applied … to change their names.”55 Eventually, names such as Müller and Schmidt were Americanized into Miller and Smith.56

Government antagonism even influenced classical music, forcing German communities to restrict a significant medium of cultural pride. German classical music was considered a cultural staple at the turn of the century. In fact, composer Robert Schumann stated:

When the German speaks of symphonies [it represents] his joy, his pride. As Italy has its Naples, France its Revolution, England its Navy, etc., so the Germans have their Beethoven symphonies. The German forgets in his Beethoven that he has no school of painting; with Beethoven he imagines that he has reversed the fortunes of the battles that he lost to Napoleon; he even dares to place him on the same level with Shakespeare.”57

However, after German conductor Karl Muck of the Boston Symphony forgot to play the Star Spangled Banner before his performance, Governor Warfield of Maryland helped agitate a rally against people of German descent, proclaiming, “I would gladly lead the mob to prevent the insult to … the birthplace of the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’”58 In response the Metropolitan Opera in November 1917 canceled their German repertoire to “contain nothing

54 Chris Richardson, “With Liberty and Justice for All?: The Suppression of the German-American Culture During World War I,” Missouri Historical Review 90, no. 1 (October 1995): 86, https://digital.shsmo.org/digital/collection/mhr/ id/47762. 55 “Many German Names Changed Since War,” The Washington Herald (Washington, D.C., WA), May 13, 1917, https://www.loc.gov/resource/ sn83045433/1917-05-13/ed-1/. 56 Robert E. Bartholomew and Anja Reumschüssel, American Intolerance: Our Dark History of Demonizing Immigrants (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2018), 120-121. 57 Celia Applegate, “What Is German Music? Reflections on the Role of Art in the Creation of the Nation,” German Studies Review 15 (1992): 1, https://doi. org/10.2307/1430638. 58 Bartholomew and Reumschüssel, American Intolerance, 132-133.

to cause the least offense to the most patriotic American.”59 Heavy restrictions were placed on classical German pieces, with almost a third of the entire repertoire being eliminated.60 For the same reason, in 1918 the Metropolitan Opera reluctantly banned all works of cultural figureheads like Wagner and other German composers.61 That same year, the city of Pittsburgh outlawed Beethoven’s music in its entirety, and as a result of these actions, German operas greatly fell in prominence (Appendix I).62 Therefore, by agitating hysteria and directly enforcing restrictions, the government once again reduced a cultural staple of the German-American community.

The classical oeuvre was not the only victim of musical persecution, as the government’s anti-German environment also brought about the decline of more common cultural pieces. German singing societies, for instance, were primary communicators of folk songs, but as officials continued to intensify anti-German rhetoric, these societies saw less traction, translating to a decline in songs that defined the culture’s distinctiveness.63 The Houston Sängerbund stated that during the 1917-1918 era, “not only the world war, but also the various state legislators … have added to our discomforts … our total membership stands at 454 as against 622 for the previous year.”64 The state of California later issued a 1918 ban prohibiting the teaching of German songs in textbooks, so the dissemination of these cultural hallmarks also declined during the war.65 Even contemporary music abandoned German traits. According to musicologist Charles Hamm, before the war contemporary songs “resemble[d] Ländler, with beer and garden oom-pah-pah accompaniments.”66 But as the government’s Committee on Public Information used propaganda to incite a movement

59 “Halt German Opera at Metropolitan,” The New York Times (New York, NY), November 2, 1917, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1917/11/02/102374059.html?pageNumber=13. 60 J. E. Vacha, “When Wagner Was Verboten: The Campaign Against German Music in World War I,” New York History 64, no. 2 (April 1983): 174-175, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23173920. 61 Burrage, The Karl, 367. 62 Erik Kirschbaum and Herbert W. Stupp, Burning Beethoven: The Eradication of German Culture in the United States during World War I (New York, NY: Berlinica, 2015), 132. 63 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 19; Burrage, The Karl, 115. 64 Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 199; Theodore G. Gish, The History of the Houston Sängerbund (Houston, TX: The Institute of Texas-German Studies, 1990), 9, https://www.houstonsaengerbund.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ Houston_Saengerbund_History.pdf. 65 Kirschbaum and Stupp, Burning Beethoven, 133. 66 Charles Hamm, “Irving Berlin’s Early Songs as Biographical Documents,” The Musical Quarterly 77, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 12, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/742426.

of anxiety within the music industry, musicians abandoned German styles for more patriotic music.67 German-American composer Ted Snyder, for instance, who composed culturally-influenced songs like Herman, Let’s Dance that Beautiful Waltz (1910) and Oh, How That German Could Love (1910), would instead publish patriotic pieces like Teddy (1919) (Appendix J) and Let’s All Be Americans Now (1917).68 This shift in the music industry characterized the general decline of common German pieces in society, and on a larger scale, the decline of German-American culture as a whole.

In the aftermath of such an extensive crusade of suppression, GermanAmericans saw a significant decline in cultural prominence. For instance, throughout the post-war era, the German-American population’s use of language experienced dramatic Americanization. By the end of the war in 1918, most Philadelphian German-Americans avoided speaking German in public. As Minna Werner, daughter of Tageblatt editor-in-chief Louis Werner, recalled, “the use of German on the streets dropped off very considerably.”69 In fact, out of several other ethnicities between 1910 and 1940, the percent decrease of total native language speakers was the largest for German-Americans (Appendix K). Though 9 million people spoke German in the U.S. during the early 1900s, by the mid 20th century, out of all descendants under 18, only 50,000 were native speakers. In fact, the number of German speakers under 18 declined around 98% from 1920.70 Moreover, ever since German students declined from 24.4% of foreign-language students to 0.6% between 1915 and 1922, they have never comprised more than 3.3% of enrollments, which again points to the dramatic Americanization of younger, post-war generations.71

This government-incited hysteria also led to a precipitous decline in German religion after the war. Many government officials openly

67 Barbara L. Tischler, An American Music: The Search for an American Musical Identity (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986), 70. 68 Jane Mathieu, “Let’s All Be Americans Now: Patriotism, Assimilation and Uplift in American Popular Song of World War I,” Journal of Music Research Online, September 19, 2019, 2-3, PDF. 69 Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 192. 70 The Census Bureau, Age of the Foreign-Born Population, by Mother Tongue and Sex, for the United States, by Regions: 1960-Con., table, 1966, PDF; The Census Bureau, Mother Tongue of the Foreign White Stock by Nativity and Parentage, for the United States: 1920 and 1910., table, 1922, PDF; Kibler, “Speaking Like.” 71 Bernd Hüppauf and Andreas Gardt, Globalization and the Future of German (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004), 282, https://doi. org/10.1515/9783110197297. 25

promoted resentment towards German religious groups. In 1918, Iowa Senator Lafayette Young proclaimed, “We have more trouble with preachers who preach in German than with anybody else. They are public enemies whether they intend it or not.”72 The Governor of Idaho agreed, deeming the group a “menace.”73 Though the resulting boycotts had little notable influence during the war itself, effects began revealing themselves in the aftermath. The impact on German Catholic parishes was visible by 1930, with memberships dropping by 17% due to a steady wartime decline.74 Participation in German Lutheran churches was worse, dropping 20% between 1920 and 1930 alone.75 In response, churches began Americanizing the already declining German Lutheran church system by using English in order to, as the Lutherischer Herold put it in 1929, “retain young members of the congregation.”76 The German Methodist Church faced similar issues, as it dropped 52 congregations by 1919. In 1924, it responded by merging with the main body of the Methodist Church, and by the dawn of the second World War, it ceased to exist.77

German organizations also suffered a drastic decline after the war. Within 20 years after the crusade against foreign press organizations, the GazetteDemocrat, Philadelphia’s largest German-language daily newspaper, saw readership fall by 20%.78 The Tageblatt also continued to suffer after the war from the government raid it experienced, with prints dropping from 17,500 to about 3,000 between 1920 and 1930, ultimately 7.3% of what it had been before the war.79 Lingering effects from the government’s anti-German defamation also resulted in a decline in sports organizations called Turnverein.80 A writer for the newsletter American Turner Topics

72 “Curb German Press, Demand Of Governors,” New York Tribune (New York, NY), April 5, 1918, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/dlc_allen_ ver01/data/sn83030214/00206532257/1918040501/0074.pdf. 73 “Governors to Wage War on Disloyalty,” Newport News, Virginia (VA), April 5, 1918, https://www.newspapers.com/image/189536029/. 74 Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 206-207. 75 Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 209. 76 Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 209. 77 Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 291. 78 Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 200-201. 79 Alexander Waldenrath, “The German Language Newspress in Pennsylvania During World War I,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 42, no. 1 (January 1975): 28, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27772255; Karl J. Arndt and May E. Olson, The German Language Press of the Americas: German-American Press Research from the American Revolution to the Bicentennial (München, DE: K.G. Saur, 1980), 575. 80 Annette R. Hofmann, “The American Turners: Their Past and Present,” Revista Brasileira De Ciências Do Esporte 37, no. 2 (April 2015): 123, https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.rbce.2014.11.020.

even claimed Turnervein to be “tied to the apron-strings of a paternalistic government” and that “[we were unable] to live our own lives according to our own intellect and according to our own conscience.”81 After the war, membership dropped from over 68,000 to less than 16,000. In 1927, they changed their slogan to “Turnerism is Americanism” to garner a better image and switched their language of choice from German to English to appeal to a broader audience.82 As such, not only did Turnverein dwindle in number, but they had also Americanized themselves in the process.

It is important to note that while the mid-20th century decline in GermanAmerican immigration may have contributed to this phenomenon, it was not the primary factor. Italian immigration, for instance, also dwindled in the early-to-mid 1900s, mirroring that of German-Americans (See Appendix L). However, by 1940, the number of native Italian speakers rose, unlike the number of native German speakers (Appendix K).

Immigration also seemed to have a minuscule effect on the IrishAmerican population, whose immigration rates were even more similar to German-American ones (Appendix L). While German religious bodies were dissolved or absorbed by American churches, Italian and Irish churches remained distinct. In 1930 Italian churches even regarded Irish ones as socially inferior, indicating a strong sense of cultural identity among the two groups.83 Around the Great Depression, many Italian-Americans also moved into the food industry, resulting in more authentic Italian restaurants throughout the mid-1900s as well as the expansion of Little Italy.84 Meanwhile Irish entertainers kickstarted broadcasting shows interspersed with references to Irish culture. One example was the satirical The Fred Allen Show (1939), which featured an Irishman named Ajax Cassidy as a recurring character who even appeared in advertisements (Appendix M). This stark contrast between the cultural prevalence of German-Americans and that of other ethnic groups indicates that the former’s cultural decline was less of an immigration issue, but rather one sparked by hysteria.

81 “The American Turners After 90 Years,” American Turner Topics (Pittsburgh, PA), December 1937, 2, https://indianamemory.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/ collection/TurnerTopic/id/145. 82 Annette R. Hofmann, “Lady ‘Turners’ in the United States: German American Identity, Gender Concerns, and ‘Turnerism,’” Journal of Sport History 27, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 385, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43609776. 83 Caroline Farrar Ware, Greenwich Village, 1920-1930: A Comment on American Civilization in the Post-war Years (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 317-318. 84 Vincenza Scarpaci, “Ambiente Italiano: Origins and Growth of Baltimore’s Little Italy,” Italian Americana 25, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 104, https://www.jstor. org/stable/41330582. 27

So in the end, the precipitous post-war decline in German-American culture mainly stemmed from the government’s suppressive tactics. They quashed expressions of resistance and suppressed remaining hallmarks of German-American culture, effects that the public’s unorganized earlywar discrimination failed to achieve. The ultimate effect of the U.S.’s cultural crusade serves as a stark contrast to the current scholarship on Americanization, which oftentimes portrays forced assimilation as a counterproductive strategy. In fact, the ramifications of the government’s anti-German movement extend beyond the early-to-mid 20th century. Although some traces of German culture, like Oktoberfest, remain in America today, signs of the previously vibrant culture have been largely subdued. Many even fail to recognize that people of German descent still comprise the largest ethnic group in America.85 The current state of the German-American population serves as a cautionary reminder that with the proper environment and enough government intervention, a prominent, lively ethnic group can be rendered into what Charles Hexamer eventually described in 1918 as “nothing but an unknown quantity in the great racial scramble of this land.”86

85 Wayne C. Thompson, Nordic, Central, and Southeastern Europe 2012, 12th ed. (Lanham, MD: Stryker-Post Publications, 2012), 196, http://books.google. com/books?vid=ISBN9781610488914. 86 Bill to Repeal the Act Entitled “An Act to Incorporate the National German-American Alliance”: Hearings on S. 3529 Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, 65th Cong., 2d Sess. (1918). https:// curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/immigration-to-the-united-states-1789-1930/ catalog/39-990067876840203941.

Appendix A: The New York Herald, November 12, 1915: “The New Intensive Kultur.” Source: Rogers, W. A. The New Intensive Kultur. 1915. Illustration. https://www.loc.gov/item/2010717739/.

Appendix B: Chicago Daily News, 1915: “His Shelter.” Source: Luebke, Frederick C. Bonds of Loyalty: German-Americans and World War I. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974.

Appendix C: The New York Herald, May 8, 1915: “Vell, Ve Varned ‘Em!” Source: Luebke, Frederick C. Bonds of Loyalty: German-Americans and World War I. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974.

Appendix D: The Literary Digest, May 22, 1915: “As the World Sees It.”

Source: “America’s Response to Germany’s Challenge.” The Literary Digest, May 22, 1915. https://www. google.com/books/edition/The_ Literary_Digest/ahI8AQAAMAAJ.

Appendix E: Columbus Dispatch, 1915: “Half-Way Americans Not Wanted.” Source: Luebke, Frederick C. Bonds of Loyalty: German-Americans and World War I. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974.

Appendix F: The Percent Growth of Native-Language Speakers among 16 Ethnic Groups’ Second Generations Source: The Census Bureau. Mother Tongue of the Foreign White Stock by Nativity and Parentage, for the United States: 1920 and 1910. Table. 1922. PDF.

Appendix G: Percent of Public School Enrollments for Spanish, French, German, and Latin in 1914-1915 and 1921-1922. Source: Snyder, Thomas D., ed. “120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait.” National Center for Education Statistics. Last modified January 1993. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf.

Appendix H: “Don’t talk, the web is spun for you with invisible threads, keep out of it, help to destroy it—spies are listening” Source: Don’t talk, the web is spun for you with invisible threads, keep out of it, help to destroy it--spies are listening. Illustration. 2017. https://www.loc.gov/ resource/ppmsca.53575/.

Appendix I: Percent of Operas in Italian, French, and German during 1916 and 1917-1918 (N.B. the percent of German operas during 1917-1918 is unknown; the largest possible percent is given). Source: Vacha, J. E. “When Wagner Was Verboten: The Campaign Against German Music in World War I.” New York History 64, no. 2 (April 1983): 17188. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23173920.

Appendix J: Teddy: A Song Version of the Famous Motion Picture of the Same Name. Source: Teddy. A Song Version of the Famous Motion Picture of the Same Name. 1919. Illustration. https://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/ collection/008/119.

Appendix K: Change in Native Speaker Population for Several Ethnicities between 1910 and 1940. Source: Mother Tongue of the Foreign White Stock by Nativity and Parentage, for the United States: 1920 and 1910. Table. 1922. PDF; Nativity and Parentage of the Total White Population, 1940, and of the Foreignborn White, 1930, by Mother Tongue and Sex, for the United States, Urban and Rural. Table. 1943. PDF.

Appendix L: Immigration to the U.S. from Germany, Ireland and Italy. Source: “Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status by Region and Selected Country of Last Residence: Fiscal Years 1820 to 2019.” Table. March 30, 2021. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigrationstatistics/yearbook/2019/yearbook_immigration_statistics_2019.pdf.

Appendix M: The Fred Allen Show’s Advertisement for Ford Cars. Source: LIFE Magazine. Ford’s out Front in Allen’s Alley. April 19, 1948. Illustration. https://books.google.com/ books?id=bEEEAAAAMBAJ.

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