Little Berlin: Swiss Saints of the Logan Tenth Ward

Little Berlin: Swiss Saints of the Logan Tenth Ward

BY JESSIE L. EMBRY

IN 1939 MY GRANDPARENTS MOVED TO LOGAN, purchased a house on the corner of Seventh East and Ninth North, and became active members of the Logan Tenth Ward. Originally from Tennessee, they had moved west to seek better economic opportunities and to be near members of the LDS church. Although they planned to move to American Falls, Idaho, where land was opening up, when they reached North Ogden, my grandmother said, "This is far enough. Let's stay here." Nevertheless, they moved to Logan because they wanted to help my father and his brother and sisters attend college; they settled in the Logan Tenth Ward because a house was available.

My grandparents had no idea they were moving into an ethnic community. Even though most of the people in the ward were of Swiss descent, because they spoke German, residents of Logan referred to that area as Little Berlin and Ninth North as Sauerkraut Avenue. This paper, based largely on oral history interviews with the immigrants and their children, will examine why these Mormon Swiss converts settled in the northeast corner of Logan, their experiences in the Tenth Ward and the Logan German-speaking branch, their assimilation into the larger Mormon community, and their acceptance by that community, especially during World War I and World War II.

Despite limitations of memory and personal biases, oral history was the only way to approach the study of Logan's Little Berlin. The ward minutes reflect some of the Swiss influence in the area, but like most minutes they are very brief accounts of what happened in church meetings. In addition, many of the minutes of the German-speaking branch that met in Logan are missing. Unfortunately, most of the Swiss immigrants who came to Logan as adults between 1890 and 1940 had passed away by the time I started this study in 1987. As a result, I interviewed those who came as children and a second generation who were American born. Even these eighteen informants were in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. Willy Schmidt, a German from Berlin, came to the United States after World War I as a young married man in his early twenties. Martha Steiner Schwartz and her brother Otto Steiner came to Logan with their parents and brothers and sisters at ages nineteen and nine respectively, and Alfred Glauser came with members of his family at seventeen. My father, Bertis L. Embry; my aunt, Elsie Embry Bastian; Dorothy and Orson Cannon who lived in the ward while Orson attended Utah State Agricultural College; and Opel Forsberg who has lived in the Tenth Ward all of her life and who married a second-generation Swiss provided the non-German-speaking view of the ward. Although the other nine interviewees were born in the United States, their parents were from Switzerland. I knew of the people that I interviewed, but I was personally acquainted only with my relatives and the Gannons. I felt an instant kinship with the other people, though, because they knew my grandparents and father. While not a conclusive study of the Swiss immigrants, these interviews help to document the experiences of Mormon Swiss immigrants in Logan and to give some insight into the larger picture of Mormon immigrants to the Great Basin.

In many ways, the history of the United States is the history of immigrants. This is so, since except for the Native Americans, all of the residents or their ancestors came from other places. As one scholar has explained, "The United States is not a small, homogeneous country like Sweden or Norway, but a giant, turbulent society in which ethnicity remains a misunderstood aspect of American life."

How these groups blended into the American scene is an often debated issue in immigration history. Was America a melting pot where various cultures mixed together? Or were some immigrants discriminated against and given a lower citizen status? Did all immigrants—African slave, English industrial worker, German farmer, and Italian peasant—have the same experiences in the United States? Did that experience differ in the East and in the West? Historians who have studied each immigrant group have discovered that, despite common threads, the experiences of each group and even of each immigrant differed in many ways.

The Mormon immigrant picture also adds a unique aspect to the varied American scene. For a number of immigrants to the United States, moving to the New World provided an opportunity to escape problems. For some, economic reasons such as a farmer's need for more land or a craftsman's inability to keep up with the competition led them to a new land. For others, inability to worship as they pleased, disagreements with politics, or an attempt to escape a criminal past were reasons for coming. The motivations were as varied as the immigrants' personalities, but for all it was a chance to start over again. Although Mormon converts came to the United States and Utah for similar political and economic reasons, most came to join the larger community of Latter-day Saints. After missionaries baptized converts in England and on the Continent, leaders encouraged the new members to "gather to Zion" where they could be close to other Saints and the church leadership. As temples were built the church encouraged these new members to come "to the top of the mountains" where they could receive saving ordinances. Therefore, Utah's immigration pattern "followed an internal dynamic, ebbing and flowing more with changes in the church's situation and the missionary effort than with the economic and political cycles that determined the rate of most emigration."

Assimilation into the larger American culture also took place faster for Mormons than for other immigrants. One might argue, as Andrew Rolle has in his study of Italian immigrants, that it was easier to absorb immigrants in the West because of the difference between the urban East and the rural West. But other factors affected LDS society. Those already in Utah understood the desire of the newcomers to be in Zion and felt a religious obligation to accept and love their new brothers and sisters in the gospel. As Leonard Arrington and Davis Bitton have explained, even "if the reality fell short of the ideal, it seems fair to say the usual harsh lines between different nationalities and between old and new arrivals were softened by Mormon values and programs." The immigrants also felt a need to adapt their lifestyles. In marked contrast to Scandinavian and German Lutherans in other parts of the country where the old church customs, newspapers, and denominational schools in the mother tongue held the communities together for generations, the LDS converts felt that their new church was an American church and that becoming Mormons required them to become Americans. The immigrants tried to learn English rapidly so their associations could be expanded to include Mormon neighbors and ward members from all countries. Rather than taking three or more generations, many Mormons were largely assimilated in just one.® This assimilation process was very much the same whether the immigrants came to Utah during the 1850s or the 1950s.

Once the newcomers arrived in Mormon territory, missionaries, more than anything else, helped newcomers determined where they would settle. According to historian Douglas Alder, "To the Mormons in Europe the trusted Mormon missionaries were the strongest advertisement for the so-called gathering to Zion. Mormon elders in German-speaking Europe served not only as preachers but also as agents for the individual converts they baptized. They often provided a link between the new members and some specific town or employment in the Utah-Idaho area. Missionaries encouraged the Niederhauserns in 1898 and the Stettlers in 1902 to leave Switzerland and come to Cache Valley. When they and their children returned on missions to the old country, they encouraged their converts to settle in Logan. Ernst Stettler, a son, convinced Ernst and Emma Haltiner to emigrate from Switzerland and Fred Neiderhausern influenced Willy Schmidt to move from Berlin.

Often, after one member of a family moved, others who had joined the church also immigrated. Anna Steiner came to Logan in 1919 to marry a former missionary, Gottlieb Schwartz. The Steiner family followed the next year. Maria Glauser came in 1906 and married Hans (John) Stettler in 1908. Part of the Glauser family followed immediately, while some came after World War I and others during the late 1920s. Gottfried and Lena Jaggi moved to Logan from Salt Lake City to be near Lena's parents, the Stettlers, and to find better employment.

A number of factors strengthened the Swiss community in Logan. The Swiss people shared family ties, religious beliefs, and language. Many of them came from the Bern area, so they shared a common geographical and cultural background as well. The families drew even closer as they intermarried and settled in approximately the same area of town. The first arrivals moved to the Tenth Ward area because land was available there. Between North Logan, a small farming community, and the expanding Utah State Agricultural College, which provided employment opportunities for newcomers, lay an undeveloped area where homes could be built on large lots. There the immigrants could have gardens and cows to help meet their needs. The area developed slowly, so when other immigrants came they also settled there, near relatives and fellow countrymen.

The Logan Tenth Ward was influenced by the large concentration of Swiss. The first bishops, Karl C. Schaub, who served from 1917 to 1933, and Albert Webber, 1933 to 1946, were both German-speaking immigrants who could relate to the Swiss. Meetings and socials also reflected the European influence. Although the counsel of the First Presidency was that "all Saints of foreign birth who come here . . . should learn to speak English as soon as possible, adopt the manners and customs of the American people, fit themselves to become good and loyal citizens of this country, and by their good works show that they are true and faithful Latter-day Saints," completely eliminating the language and influence of the old country was impossible to do immediately. In Logan, official and unofficial church policies helped to ease the language difference. While the Tenth Ward held all of their meetings in English, quite often during the 1930s some of the music was in German. On January 21, 1934, the ward held a special sacrament meeting honoring the German-speaking people, including German songs and reports by former missionaries. On other occasions a Logan German choir and a Swiss Edelweiss quartet performed. Young men returning to Cache Valley from missions to Switzerland, Austria, and Germany spoke frequently in sacrament meetings. For a while Gottfried Stucki even taught a gospel doctrine class in German.

Fast and testimony meetings especially reflected the German influence. Bertis L. Embry, who was a member of the Tenth Ward after he returned from his mission to Germany, remembered most of the people spoke their Swiss dialect to each other, but they usually bore their testimonies in German: "Because they were much more at home in their language, . . . I can remember we would have almost as many testimonies borne in German as we did in English." Golden Stettler recalled, "Some of them would bear their testimonies in Swiss or German or broken, half-Swiss and half-German; they had a language all their own." No one translated, but some who did not speak the language, like Opel Forsberg, learned to recognize the difference between the Swiss and High German dialects and to understand a few words.

Throughout the church, wards provided both a social outlet for members and a chance for certain aspects of their European culture to persist. Activities included dances, movies, road shows, and plays similar to other wards, but the Tenth Ward also had some unique elements. Elsie Embry Bastian remembered, "I loved their dances at the ward because they always did polkas, and it was so much fun. They always had their own little music. They had their accordions . . . that the Swiss-German people played. They could really stir up that old rec hall there. " Sometimes the Swiss people wore costumes and provided yodeling programs. They served dinners which were not always Swiss but were excellent food.

A German-speaking branch also met in Logan. Participants were members of regular wards which they attended for Sunday school, sacrament, and auxiliary meetings. In addition, they attended the weekly sacrament meeting at the branch's own meetinghouse. Led by a president, counselors, and secretary, the services consisted of the sacrament, speakers, and music. Similar organizations were established throughout Utah wherever there was a large number of one foreign-language group. These organizations, auxiliaries to the regular wards according to William Mulder, "proved an effective instrument of adjustment in the mother tongue while at the same time the immigrant converts were learning to participate in the life and leadership of their respective wards. "

The German-speaking branch served a special purpose for the newcomers. Mulder noted that "the old language was a way to teach the gospel until he [the immigrant] learned English. " As Alma Huppi explained, "Going to the Tenth Ward, I couldn't understand anything because I didn't learn English until I got in the first grade. My parents spoke Swiss-German in the home all the time. Dad never really did learn to speak English. " The parents and the older children in such families needed the branch in part to worship in a place where they could understand the language. But the need barely lasted one generation. As the parents learned the language and became integrated with the rest of the ward and community, they attended the German speaking branch less often. Younger children often spoke only English and rarely went to the German meetings. But the branch provided support for those who wanted association with the Swiss-German culture, especially new German-speaking arrivals.

In addition to weekly sacrament meetings, the branch sponsored socials, including plays, dances, and yodeling programs. The biggest celebration was the New Year's Eve dance and dinner. Other socials included testimonials to raise money for departing missionaries. Golden Stettler remembered a farewell party held for him and Aaron Armacher: "They had us speak, and then they had refreshments and a dance. " Alfred Glauser recalled the wedding reception held for him and his Swiss-German wife from Bear Lake whom he had met through the branch.

The German-speaking immigrants also held conferences with other Swiss and Germans who lived in the Intermountain Area. Those in Logan often joined people from Montpelier, Idaho, meeting in Logan one year and in Montpelier the next. The conference included meetings and socials and, according to Walter Jaggi, "was a big thing for those German-speaking people. They talked about that for the whole year until they went the next time." Opel Forsberg remembered traveling with the choir to the conference. They camped in Emigration Canyon and then stayed overnight with families in Montpelier. In 1932, the Logan newspaper reported, 300 German-speaking people of Cache Valley and southern Idaho met in the Logan Tabernacle. Speakers included Rulon S. Wells of the church's First Council of Seventy, who had been a president of the German mission, and recently returned missionaries and German-speaking branch leaders. Fred Glauser, the choir leader for the Tenth Ward for thirty years and also the leader of the Logan German-speaking branch, directed a German choir, and there were other vocal and instrumental musical numbers.

Although for the most part the Swiss and German immigrants were well accepted in Logan, Little Berlin was not a term of endearment. Fred Deursch, Sr., who moved to the Tenth Ward during the 1930s recalled that the German-speaking people were "looked down on. . . . They were just more or less off by themselves." He felt that the people in Logan did not like the immigrants living separately. There was often competition between Little Berliners and other Logan residents such as the Westsiders. Little Berliners had a reputation of being rough. Lois Haltiner Moser, whose immigrant father ran a florist shop, recalled, "The boys from this area were always supposed to be very rowdy, and if there was ever any problem, the police came up looking for them."

Those living in Little Berlin had mixed reactions to both the name and reputation. In the Tenth Ward where so many Swiss immigrants lived there were few problems. The children attended elementary school together and had a support system of friends and relatives. When they went to junior high and high school, however, people sometimes made fun of them. Winnifred Amacher Johnson, whose parents were Swiss immigrants, said, "I didn't like [our] being called Little Berliners. I don't remember whether it was because it meant that we were German or because we were self-conscious about the fact that our parents spoke with an accent." She added, "Even now I hear some of the older people in Logan talk about the children from Little Berlin and how they weren't worth quite as much as the others because they came from humble parentage." Her sister, Leah Holmstead, reacted differently however: "They made fun of us, but it didn't really bother me one bit. I thought, 'Oh, Little Berlin!' I didn't even think of it as German ... I was Swiss. " Lois Moser agreed: "I didn't have any feelings one way or the other. ... It was a matter of growing up, whether it be Little Italy or Little Berlin or Chinatown. . . . We never associated Little Berlin with the Germans. We associated it . . . [with being] European." Alfred Glauser, who came from Switzerland when he was in his late teens, said Little Berlin was "just a title they gave us," and he didn't care that the Swiss were referred to as Germans. He explained, "We speak the same language except in daily conversation. ... A Swiss can always understand a German, but a German can't understand a Swiss in his lingo." Fred Deursch thought that the Swiss did not always appreciate being referred to as Germans, but they would not express that displeasure: "More or less all of the people here . . . were so converted [to the church] that they tried . . . to . . . take it on the chin, turn the other cheek. Nothing anybody could say or do would deter their testimonies." Martha Schwartz expressed her feelings about the people in Logan, especially in the Tenth Ward, this way: "They knew we came over here for the gospel's sake, and they didn't make fun of us."

Especially during World War I resentment toward Germanspeaking people surfaced. The Swiss in Little Berlin had had little or no association with Germans before they came to the United States, but because of their background they disliked Germans more than most Americans. Since they spoke German, however, they were immediately associated with the enemy in the eyes of most Utahns. During the war Americans thought in terms of absolute good and evil, and the Huns of Germany were seen as evil. In other parts of the United States "all German-American institutions, including German-language schools, churches, theaters, and newspapers . . . came under attack as overtly 'un-American' or 'pro-German.' " In Utah the state government ordered schools to discontinue teaching German, and the LDS church stopped the publication of the Beobachter, a German newspaper in Salt Lake City. The church also discontinued the German-speaking branch in Logan during the war.

The war helped in the "forcible assimilation of not only Germans but also the Swiss by eliminating all language and reference to the Old Country." Winnifred Johnson recalled that her brother Enoch Amacher "told Mother and Dad that he did not want them speaking German to him any more" because he was teased at school. As a result, Winnifred and her sister Leah did not learn the language. George Jaggi suggested that the designation Little Berlin started during World War I. He then explained the effect of the war on his uncle and his family living in the Provo area who, in order to "get away from that German and Swiss name" changed it from Jaggi to Christian, his aunt's maiden name.

Germans throughout the United States experienced fewer negative reactions during World War II because antiforeign sentiment focused mainly on the Japanese who had directly attacked American soil. Still, some resentment continued and may have stemmed from some Germans' support of Hitler in the 1930s. One writer in the Beobachter felt that '' Hitler and the whole German people follow the banner of liberty, morality, and virtue." Reinhold Stoof, who had edited the newspaper, wrote in response, "I love truly my fatherland . . . but you hate your fatherland, without knowing it, for you cry 'Heil' to a tyrant apparently appointed by destiny to kill the last spark of freedom in Germany." Stoof also wrote in a letter, "I saw with deepest regret that teachings coming from the dark sources in Germany found entrance in our valley, especially among the German LDS members."

Even some Swiss immigrants in Logan who had contact with Germany during the 1930s expressed some positive comments about Hitler. Winnifred Johnson recalled that a friend in high school, whose brother had been on a mission to Germany, went with her parents to pick him up and "came back with such glowing reports about Hitler and what he was accomplishing in Germany. ... At that time Hitler was still looked at quite favorably, I think, because he had done a great deal for the German economy, and he hadn't started . . . his program of aggression." Elmer Stettler, who like most missionaries to Germany during the 1930s was not political and only interested in sharing the gospel, recalled, "We liked Hitler." He and others even went so far as to try to tie Hitler and the LDS church together. While Hitler did allow Mormons to continue to meet and have missionaries, unlike the Jehovah's Witnesses who were banned, other stories about his relationship with the Mormon church have no basis in fact. The missionaries may have hoped the stories would facilitate access to the German people. Elmer Stettler expained, "We would just eat up articles where some of his new people were showing how the pioneers were organized into groups. We used it for material to disseminate the gospel." Walter Jaggi claimed he heard Hitler say, "If we want to become a great and a mighty people, we have to endure like the Mormon pioneers." He also stated that Hitler said the two most perfect organizations in the world were the German army and the Mormon church. Hitler "had a fast day [actually a day where everyone ate the same type of food and donated money] once a month to support the poor, so to speak, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of it went for military build-up." Jaggi recalled hearing that Hitler sent a representative to study the Mormons in Utah and organized groups similar to the church's, such as women and youth. He even said that the Hitler Youth had a slogan, "strength in recreation," which was the MIA slogan at the time.

But most of the Swiss and even the Germans did not support Hitler. George Jaggi said that his father "felt very good and glad to be an American citizen." He said, "The Swiss flag's a pretty flag, but the American flag is still the prettiest." Newspaper editorials also expressed this loyalty that German-Americans felt to their country. "The ties that bind the average German to the land of his birth seem stronger than those of most nationalities. In spite of their rugged characters, intellectual discipline and practical habits of industry, Germans are a sentimental, home-loving, emotional people who readily become a substantial and integral factor of any community in which they cast their lot." When a Chicago article said that a Nazi army of German- Americans was going to seize the U.S. government, a San Francisco newspaper said that was not true. If it happened, "enough loyal citizens by adoption would volunteer to handle the mischief-makers without calling on a single native born American." As Willy Schmidt explained when asked about World War II, "My feeling [then] was, 'I am an American citizen.' "

Some Utahns did not recognize that commitment and lashed out against German-speaking residents. Otto Steiner said the hatred was directed even toward the Swiss. The German-speaking "were the ones to blame for the war." "I'm sure there were some feelings," Alma Huppi added. "There can't help but be. Nobody said anything about it to me. I know that feelings could easily arise, especially if one of the boys from your area was killed." Walter Jaggi said, "I think that during the war there were a lot of people that were quite resentful of Germans, and Swiss were classified as Germans too." And, according to Winnifred Johnson, "I think the Swiss people did not appreciate being called Germans . . . especially during the war when the Germans and Americans were enemies, and the Swiss people were always neutral. I am sure that did not sit very well with the Swiss people, especiaUy knowing now how the German people felt about the Swiss people and the Swiss people feel about the German. "

There was enough resentment toward not only German-speaking people but all foreigners during World War II that the LDS church's First Presidency and Council of the Twelve decided on March 12, 1942, "for the duration of the war, or until further instructions from the First Presidency, that all meetings held in foreign languages, except the Mexican Branch in Salt Lake City, be discontinued." AU officers were released and all funds and church properties were to be deposited with the First Presidency. William W. Owens, the Cache Stake president, sent a letter on July 18, 1942, telling of the disbanding of the German-speaking branch in Logan and turning $39.10 over to the First Presidency. In response, the First Presidency informed him that "the check win be placed to the credit of the German organization of the Cache and Logan Stakes and will be available for suitable use hereafter."

People expressed mixed reactions to the closure of the Germanspeaking branch. Opel Forsberg recalled, "Somebody said that one of the people in a talk or a statement said something about Hitler was not all bad. And boy, that just set a fire right off. 'If you think he is so good, why did you leave? Why don't you go back?' There was a little friction there for a while, but it wasn't the people that were making the friction, it was politics." For many of the Swiss people closing the branch was a tragedy. Martha Schwartz said, "They took everything away from us. And that was quite a big disappointment because the German meetinghouse had been there for quite a long time before we came." She and others explained that the piano and organ and even the individual sacrament cups which a member had brought from Switzerland were given away. "We were very, very hurt that they did that," she said. "We just never quite got over the hurt. They shouldn't have done that to us because there were no spies. They were all good LDS people. But they got it in their heads there were spies here, so they had to stop all that German. "

Following the war, the foreign-speaking branches resumed operation. The Logan branch's building had been sold, and so the Germans met in LDS chapels and in the basement of the Logan Tabernacle. New immigrants from Germany found the meetings especially helpful as they learned the language, but because the demand for such meetings was not as great as in earlier times, the branch met only once a month. In 1963 the church closed it.

The Logan Tenth Ward also changed. Leah Holmstead and George Jaggi recalled that during the times they served as Relief Society president and bishop many of the old Swiss immigrants passed away. More people moved into the area, and in 1951 the Tenth Ward was split, creating the Nineteenth. Today mainly students live in the area; my grandparents' home has been replaced by apartments as have many of the others. Recent Logan residents would not know there ever was a Little Berlin in the community.

Still, for the first half of the nineteenth century these Swiss immigrants worked, worshipped, and played together in northern Utah. Their common language, religion, friendship, kinship, and Swiss heritage brought them closer together as did their shared activities in the Logan Tenth Ward and German-speaking branch. Despite jokes, they were generally well accepted by the rest of the Logan community, except for some tendency to look down on immigrants and their children and especially when the United States was at war with Germany. Although these Swiss immigrants resented being called Germans, they had come to Logan because of their belief in the LDS church and their testimonies helped them overlook any problems. Like other Mormon immigrants, they were basically assimilated into the larger American Mormon culture in less than a generation. While living together for a short time provided support, they did not plan to form an exclusive Swiss community. They wanted to be part of the main body of the church, and they worked toward that goal. Although some of the second generation married others of Swiss descent, their families did not continue speaking their native tongue and retained only a few oldcountry traditions.

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