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TWENTY YEARS OF GERMAN-AMERICAN STUDIES
By DIETER CUNZ
In the third decade of the twentieth century the United States reversed
its century-old policy of unqualified welcome to all immigrants. The Immi-
gration Quota and National Origin Laws did not shut the doors entirely,
but they ended the history of immigration in the traditional American
sense of the word. Unrestricted admission to the United States belongs to
the past and has become a closed chapter of American history. Removed
from the electrically charged discussions of Congressional Committees, Labor
Relations Boards and Union officials the whole complex has now been left
to the historians. They seem to have taken a renewed interest in this
matter, and it is gratifying to note that during the last twenty years the
sector of German-American immigration history, too, has been tackled
with a vigor and intensity never known before.
German-American studies have benefited a great deal from the fact that
American immigration history in general has shown a new impetus. It was
most fortunate that some American historians of the highest caliber con-
tributed a number of broader studies which set the frame and provided
guidance for more specialized research. Among these general works we
mention Marcus L. Hansen's two books The Atlantic Migration and The
Immigrant in American History; Oscar Handlin's The Uprooted; and Carl
Wittke's We Who Built America.¹
Hansen's Atlantic Migration and
Handlin's Uprooted are more histories of European emigration (Hansen
particularly concerned with Western and Central Europe, Handlin with
more emphasis on Eastern Europe) than treatments of American immi-
gration. They were not so much interested in the fate of the new arrivals
here; they wanted to tell us why people left their old homes. Hansen's
collected essays, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger under the title The
Immigrant in American History, is of greater practical importance to the
immigration historian. His discussions of puritanism and democracy in
relation to immigration had a highly corrective effect; his suggestions in
"Immigration as a Field for Historical Research" will provide directions
for a whole generation of historians. Carl Wittke's We Who Built America
is today the most useful textbook on American immigration history. With
greatest skill, discipline and concentration on the essentials he presented
a subject which has an inherent tendency to overflow in all directions.
Although the author is the son of a German immigrant he succeeded in
striking a happy balance in the treatment of all nationalities. The saga of
the immigrant probably will have to be re-written every thirty years, since
new material is constantly added, and we can only hope that it always will
be done with the same competency and thoroughness as it was done twenty
years ago by Professor Wittke.
Turning to German-American studies in particular we shall have to
notice first of all a number of bibliographies which in recent years have to
1
Marcus Lee Hansen, The Atlantic Migration: A History of the Continuing Settlement of the United
States 1607-1860 and The Immigrant in American History (both Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University
Press, 1940). Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migration that Made the
American People (Boston, Little-Brown, 1951). Carl F. Wittke, We Who Built America: The Saga of
the Immigrant (New York, Prentice-Hall, 1939).
[9]
a great degree facilitated research in the field. No other immigrant group
has something like the Bibliography of German Culture in America to 1940
by Henry A. Pochmann and Arthur R. Schultz.² It is hardly possible to do
full justice to the devotion and patience with which the editors have
reviewed some 30,000 titles of books and articles and finally selected about
12,000 for publication. The objective of the book was not to produce a
complete bibliography but rather a useful, selective compilation. They tried
to incorporate all important titles which have some bearings on German
cultural influences in America, be it in literature, education, philosophy,
religion, the arts, sciences, sociology, economics, industry and other fields.
In the introduction we find an inventory of special libraries and archives
which preserve source material in the field of Americana-Germanica. It goes
without saying that within a few years the Pochmann-Schultz has become
one of the most important reference tools, for historians. We hope that a
second part, covering the years after 1940, will follow in the near future.
Of no less importance is Emil Meynen's Bibliographie des Deutschtums
der Kolonialzeitlichen Einwanderung in Nordamerika, 1683-1933.³
This
bibliography restricts itself to the colonial times and concentrates on the
writings about the German settlers in Pennsylvania, but gives also selected
bibliographies for the other old colonies. It was compiled by a German
scholar, who, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, spent three years
in the United States. It could not have been done with greater meticulous-
ness and thoroughness. The bewildering abundance of secondary source
material on the Pennsylvanian Germans baffles every historian. Emil
Meynen has collected almost 8,000 items, clearly arranged and easily trace-
able with the help of a good index. For every historian, genealogist and
sociologist Meynen's compilation is of highest value.
A few other bibliographies should be mentioned, more limited in range,
but therefore rather exhaustive and complete. A. E. Zucker's "Bibliogra-
phical Notes on the German Theater in the United States" is the indispen-
sible starting point for every germanist who wants to do work in this
rewarding field.
4
In the early forties the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation
in Philadelphia issued a few annotated bibliographies, at the time when the
Foundation began to promote research in German immigration history.
Thanks to the initiative of Professor A. E. Zucker a Union Catalogue of
Americana-Germanica was started and, as a side product, some bibliogra-
phies were published: Felix Reichmann, The Muhlenberg Family and
Christopher Sower Sr., and Anneliese M. Funke and Eugene E. Doll, The
Ephrata Cloisters.
5
Reichmann's bibliographies deal with the two most
prominent German families in eighteenth century Pennsylvania; the Sower
bibliography also lists all printed items (almost 200) that were produced
by the Sower presses between 1738 and 1758. Likewise the Funke-Doll
bibliography is important for the history of early American imprints. The
Ephrata cloisters were one of the most prolific religious printing houses in
colonial America. Thus, in addition to a list of writings about Ephrata, this
bibliography also enumerates the Ephrata products. It is a matter of great
regret that after such promising beginnings the Carl Schurz Foundation did
not continue this series of bibliographies.
2
Henry A. Pochmann and Arthur R. Schultz, Bibliography of German Culture in America to 1940
(Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1953).
3
Emil Meynen, Bibliographie des Deutschtums der Kolonialzeitlichen Einwanderung in Nordamerika,
1683-1933 (Leipzig, Otto Harrassowitz, 1937).
4
A. E. Zucker, "Bibliographical Notes on the German Theater in the United States," Monatshefte
für Deutschen Unterricht, XXXV (1943), 255-264.
5
Felix Reichmann, The Muhlenberg Family and Christopher Sower Sr. (both Philadelphia, Carl
Schurz Memorial Foundation, 1943). Anneliese M. Funke and Eugene E. Doll, The Ephrata Cloisters
(Philadelphia, Carl Schurz. Mem. Found., 1944).
[10]
The Foundation, however, deserves credit for having offered to German-
American scholars an outlet in which at least shorter articles in the field
can be published, The American-German Review, a bi-monthy, now in its
twenty-fifth year. It also merits our thanks for having continued and
carried through almost twenty years the annual bibliography on American-
German research which was started in 1936 by Henry A. Pochmann under
the auspices of the Modern Language Association. Initially called "Anglo-
German Bibliography" it was published in the Journal of English and
Germanic Philology from 1936 until 1941. Since 1942 the bibliography has,
under the heading "Americana-Germanica," regularly appeared in the
columns of the American-German Review. The last issues of these biblio-
graphies list between 200 and 300 titles of books and articles every year.
6
All this shows that in the last twenty-five years a great deal of biblio-
graphical spade work has been done. All the more striking is the realization
that within half a century nobody has attempted to write a comprehensive
history of the Germans in America. The only time this was done by a
professinonal scholar, was in the beginning of the century, when Professor
Albert B. Faust of Cornell University published The German Element in
the United States.
7
He assembled widely scattered material and compiled
it into a solid presentation of facts. A second edition added more factual
material and bibliographical titles, but failed to revise the body of the
original text. A new history of the Germans in America has been due for
some time and it would have to be done with a new and different approach.
We are considerably more fortunate with regard to a number of studies
which deal with a special segment or a limited period of German-American
history. One of the most provocative and most stimulating treatises came
from a well known British historian, John A. Hawgood, The Tragedy of
German-America.
8
The greater part of the book revolves around three
attempts during the nineteenth century at founding a "New Germany"
on American soil, in Missouri, Texas and Wisconsin. Comparatively suc-
cessful were such enterprises only in New Braunfels and Fredericksburg,
Texas. As a whole, all such experiments were short-lived and proved to be
grave disappointments to their sponsors. Perhaps the greatest merit of
Hawgood's book lies in his definition, more precise than anyone's, who dealt
with this subject before, of the term "the German-Americans." In the
1850's the German immigration curve rose to unprecedented heights. At
the same time a strong nativist party, the Knownothings, violently opposed
unlimited immigration. This very resistance induced the German immi-
grants to affirm the cultural characteristics of their own minority group.
They banded together, founded their own organizations, churches, schools,
newspapers, hospitals, banks and built a wall around their "Little Ger-
many." Prerequisite for such an existence in a self-chosen German-American
homeland abroad was an undiminished flow of German immigration. When
towards the end of the century the rising figures of South-Eastern-European
immigration began to eclipse the influx from German speaking countries,
6
The bibliography has been published regularly each year in the April issues of the American-
German
Review. The editors were A. E. Zucker for 1941-1942 and 1946-1947; Felix Reichmann for
1943; Dieter Cunz for 1944-1945 and 1948 to the present. The bibliographies include literary, historical
and genealogical entries, books and articles pertaining to German-American immigration history, to the
history of the German element in the United States and to intercultural relations of German speaking
countries and America in the widest sense. In 1944 the specifically literary items were separated from the
list and published as "Anglo-German Literary Bibliography" in various issues of the Journal of English
and German Philology. These bibliographies were edited from 1943-1955 by Lawrence M. Price, from
1956 to the present by John R. Frey.
7
Albert B. Faust, The German Element in the United States (2. vols., Boston, Houghton-Mifflin,
1909). A new, one-volume edition was published by the Steuben Society of America (New York, 1927).
The text is basically the same as in 1909.
8
John A. Hawgood, The Tragedy of German-America (New York, G. P. Putnam, 1941).
[11]
the days of the German-Americans were numbered. The anti-German
hysteria of World War I only precipitated a development which had started
in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The "era of the hyphen"—
according to Hawgood—lasted roughly from the Civil War to the First
World War. To be sure, it retarded the complete assimilation of the German
immigrants. Yet, it is debatable whether one should only deplore such a
ritardando, as Hawgood implied by calling it a "tragedy." Immigration
history should be evaluated as a give-and-take relationship. The German-
Americans in their slow transformation period transmitted to their non-
German neighbors many cultural values which in a rapid and forced assimi-
lation might have been lost. It is one of the shortcomings of Hawgood's
book that he treats the German-Americans as if they had been a homo-
geneous group. A greater discrimination according to social strata would
have proved interesting. Not all German immigrants survived the shock
of transportation in the same way. The upper classes, the more educated
strata, usually established contact with the civilization of the new country
much faster than the middle and lower classes. The latter felt more urgently
the need for a continuation of their old and accustomed institutions and
preserved German folklore more tenaciously than their educated com-
patriots. This minor shortcoming detracts only slighty from the value of
Hawgood's book. He was the first who with the cool hands of a surgeon
dissected the historical phenomenon "the German-American." His con-
clusions have been extremely fruitful and have been most helpful to many
of his fellow workers.
Hawgood's book carries the discussion as far as 1914. The political aspects
of the existence of the German-Americans were treated by another British
scholar, Clifton James Child in The German-Americans in Politics 1914-
1917.
9
Since for these three years the predominance of politics can hardly
be contested, Child's book is actually a continuation of Hawgood's study.
Supplementing Carl Wittke's German-Americans and the World War¹
0
it
gives a rather detailed and well documented history of the "National
German-American Alliance." Child shows that this organization, founded
in 1901, was purely American and had nothing to do with Pan-German
ideas inspired by Berlin. Subsidized not by the Imperial German govern-
ment but by American brewers, the Alliance in its first decade was wholly
preoccupied by the prohibition question, until in 1914 it moved into inter-
national politics. From then on, all the energies of this admirably organized
machinery were combined to influence American public opinion in favor of
the Central Powers and to counteract the propaganda of the Allies. In 1918
the Alliance was dissolved by Congress as a subversive organization.
The centennial celebrations of the revolution of 1848 revived the interest
in the political refugees who a century ago came to the United States from
the various German states. Two excellent books, appearing in short succes-
sion, permit us now to appraise the significance of the Forty-eighters better
than before, Carl Wittke's Refugees of Revolution and A. E. Zucker's The
Forty-eighters.
11
The German element in the United States before 1848 was
an amorphous mass on the defensive, badly in need of leadership. The
German exiles arriving in the critical decade preceding the Civil War
immediately made the German-Americans politically conscious, especially
9
Clifton J. Child, The German-Americans in Politics 1914-1917 (Madison. University of Wisconsin
Press, 1939).
10
Carl P. Wittke, German-Americana and the World War (Columbus, Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Society, 1936).
11
Carl Wittke, Refugees of Revolution, The German Forty-Eighters in America (Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952). A. E. Zucker, The Forty-Eighters, Political Refugees of the
German Revolution of 1848 (New York, Columbia University Press, 1952).
[12]
those in the big and medium sized cities. Indeed, their influence did not
stop within the "Little Germanies," for after 1856 the German vote became
a factor which party leaders had to take into account whenever they pre-
pared platforms or conducted campaigns. The left-wing exponents of the
Forty-eighters, the free-thinkers, the anti-clerics and other radicals, were
strong enough to challenge long-venerated traditions and tenets of American
Puritanism. Their ideology led them by necessity into the ranks of the
young Republican Party. Lincoln's most indefatigable campaigners came
from their ranks. Their influence was particularly strong in the Middle
West, where their arrival coincided with the growth of the big urban centers.
Here they could exert more political pressure than in the comparatively
stable communities of the Atlantic coast, and they thus left a distinct
mark on the early histories of such cities as Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee,
Davenport, New Ulm, and others. They were rugged individualists, stub-
born and uncompromising, and almost every one of them thought he had
the one and only receipe for regaining the paradise lost. Yet, they were as a
whole a homogeneous group which retained its collective identity almost
until the turn of the century. Never before or after had a comparatively
small group of immigrants exercised such direct and immediate impact on
the political, social, and intellectual history of the United States.
Carl Wittke's book is the first comprehensive and (so it seems to us)
definitive treatment of "the most powerful political and cultural leaven that
has ever affected the German group in America." He has succeeded
admirably in painting a collective portrait of this vociferous and often
belligerent group. The book, edited by A. E. Zucker, is a very well coordi-
nated symposium of eleven scholars who approach the subject from various
angles and with different methods. They deal with special and characteristic
topics, such as the part of the Forty-eighters in the Turner movement, their
radical leanings, their interest in the anti-slavery issue, their participation
in politics and in the Civil War. Extremely useful is the editor's contribu-
tion, a biographical dictionary of the Forty-eighters where we find pertinent
data on more than 300 members of this group.
As a useful appendix to these two books we welcome an evaluation of
the literary efforts of the Forty-eighters: Eitel Wolf Dobert, Deutsche
Demokraten in Amerika: Die Achtundvierziger und ihre Schriften.
12
The
author lists and discusses critically all prose publications of these refugees,
all their significant political writings, scientific papers, autobiographical and
historical works as well as their novels. The memoirs constitute the largest
group, followed by books which analyze, praise, or attack the United States.
The autobiographies were not infrequently written in self-defense, explain-
ing the disaster of the German revolution. Carl Schurz's memoirs tower
high over the rest of these books not only for their factual information but
also on account of their literary quality. The books about America are often
critical, sometimes even hostile, written out of disappointment with the
materialism, the corruption and intolerance which the new arrivals en-
countered; the institution of slavery particularly irritated the old liberals
who at home had fought for the rights of the individual. In their strictly
belletristic writings the Forty-eighters must be placed in the literary tradi-
tion of the "Young Germany." Their novels, plays, and poems very clearly
show the spirit of Heine, Laube, Gutzkow, Herwegh, and Freiligrath. Yet,
all of them were literary amateurs who at best had mastered the mechanics
of writing. Their lofty idealism, their good intentions were in no way
paralleled by their literary craftsmanship or their creative powers.
12
Eitel Wolf Dobert, Deutsche Demokraten in Amerika: Die Achtundvierziger und ihre Schriften
(Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958).
[13]
After these publications it is hard to see what else could be written on
the Forty-eighters except biographies on the most outstanding members of
the group. Almost thirty years ago the best known of these political
refugees, the model figure of successful Americanization, was treated in an
exemplary biography by Claude M. Fuess, Carl Schurz, Reformer.
13
In
recent years it was again Carl Wittke who added to our knowledge of the
German-American radicals with two books, Against the Current: The Life
of Karl Heinzen, and The Utopian Communist: A Biography of Wilhelm
Weitling.
14
The beginnings of Karl Heinzen (1809-1880) show the typical develop-
ment of a liberal-minded young German in the era of the restoration: his
hatred of Prussian militarism and bureaucracy, his quarrels and break with
the authorities, his flight to Western European countries and later emi-
gration to America. From this point on, however, he departed from the
traditional pattern of the German revolutionaries who either became so
thoroughly americanized that they retained only a mild interest in European
affairs (Charles Follen, Carl Schurz) or reconciled the revolutionary inclina-
tions of their younger years with the rising Prussian eagle and became ardent
followers of Bismarck (Friedrich Kapp, Wilhelm Rapp). Heinzen did
neither. He remained a German radical, with all his merits and short-
comings. For twenty-five years he edited his paper Der Pionier in Boston,
and since it was practically a one-man paper, we are able to gather a
rounded picture of his ideas. He was a most vehement advocate of women's
emancipation and of complete freedom of the press; he antagonized many
people through his radical abolitionist views. In foreign policy he attacked
isolationism and demanded that the United States should intervene in every
struggle for liberty anywhere in the world. His old revolutionary spirit did
not evaporate in the heated enthusiasm of the German-Americans over the
peace celebrations of 1871 and the founding of the Empire. He even refused
to set foot on German soil, which in his opinion was disgraced by the
Hohenzollern regime. Carl Wittke's biography, using a great deal of unpub-
lished material and drawing extensively on the files of the Pionier, shows
the tragic irony in the life of this man, who fought against isolationism in
foreign relations and who, as an individual, more and more receded into a
personal isolation which cut him off from any journalistic and political influ-
ence. He never overcame the difficulties of the English language, he never
reached anybody outside of the isolated German-American world. Even
more tragic was the fact that in a figurative sense he was unable to speak
the language of the people with whom he had to deal: the German-
Americans of the lower middle class, honest and sober people, who enjoyed
their Turner and singing societies and felt very ill at ease when this fanatics
raging German-American Savonarola scolded them for every innocent parade
or pageant at their festivals. The man who struggled so valiantly to better
the lot of the common man never found the right tone to talk to the very
social group whose conditions he wanted to improve. It led Heinzen into a
blind alley of bitterness and frustration. His idealism and uprightness
deserve highest praise; yet, his unbalanced temper and his undisciplined
tactlessness deprived him of any possibility of broader influence.
Among the German-Americans of the mid-nineteenth century there was
no lack of colorful figures. Wilhelm Weitling (1808-1871) is probably one
of the most remarkable Utopians ever to appear in this country. Carl
13
Claude M. Fuess, Carl Schurz, Reformer (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1932).
14
Carl Wittke, Against the Current: The Life of Karl Heinzen (Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
1945), and The Utopian Communist: A Biography of Wilhelm Weitling (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State
University Press, 1950).
[14]
Wittke pictures Weitling as the exponent of his class, the skilled craftsman
and artisan, who felt like a "displaced person" after the industrial revolu-
tion began to shake the social structure of Europe. His outcries were the
desperate protests of the petit bourgeois who does not want to become a
proletarian. Weitling saw himself as a Messiah of the suppressed masses of
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