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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
Europe, later as the audacious builder of a vast dream empire of workers
in the United States. He pushed aside all advocates of a slow and organic
evolution and hoped for a radical revolt against the inequities of the existing
order. While he kept aloof from all organized religion he maintained that
morality, ethics, and religion must be the fundamental basis of all social
reform. This explained the growing tension, quarrels and enmity between
Wilhelm Weitling and Karl Marx. For a short time Weitling had an
amazingly far-reaching influence among the German working class in
America. In 1850 he organized the first American Labor Congress. At the
same time he associated himself and his labor movement with a Utopian
colony: Communia, Iowa, which however soon collapsed because of mis-
management and inefficiency. His labor movement disintegrated when it
became more and more apparent that its members were looking primarily
for better jobs and financial prosperity, while its initiator was concerned
with principles, ethics, and responsibilities. Carl Wittke leads us with a
sure hand through Weitling's "system," gives us the gist of his theories
and his struggle for the organization of the working class, and integrates
all this into the general history of the American labor movement.
With some reservation and caution we mention a book on another radical
among the Forty-eighters: Karl Obermann's Joseph Weydemeyer, Pioneer
of American Socialism.
15
Joseph Weydemeyer (1818-1866), a journalist and
labor organizer, has the dubious distinction of being called "the first
Marxist in the United States" and is presented to us here as a man who
"espoused the ideas of scientific communism, the theory and practice of
the liberation of the working class." Weydemeyer's biographer assures us
that the hundred years "since the appearance of the Communist Manifesto
have proved beyond a doubt that in the final analysis the working class
in every country in the world can only triumph over its enemies if it adopts
Marxism as its theory and guidance to action." This sets the tune for the
life of Joseph Weydemeyer as well as for his biographer Karl Obermann.
Weydemeyer, a close cooperator of Karl Marx, an editor of various radical
German papers in the United States, tried to push the German immigrant
workers into stronger participation in political life and to formulate a
political strategy in the local and national elections according to their social
needs. The various stations of his life in America were New York, Mil-
waukee, Chicago, and St. Louis. The little book is the work of an amateur,
who at least has collected a good number of facts and documents which
otherwise would not have been so easily accessible. It is by no means a
critical biography.
The earlier wave of liberal German immigration, the refugees of the
1820ies and 1830ies, have been greatly neglected by American historians
We must be all the more grateful for the only book dealing with this period,
Frank Freidel's biography of Francis Lieber.
16
The last Lieber monograph
was written towards the end of the nineteenth century. A reassessment
was overdue. Freidel used extensively the vast amount of untapped Lieber
material preserved at the Henry Huntington Library and at the Johns
15
Karl Obermann. Joseph Weydemeyer, Pioneer of American Socialism (New York, International
Publishers, 1947).
16
Frank Freidel, Francis Lieber, Nineteenth-Century Liberal (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State Univer-
sity Press, 1947).
[15]
Hopkins University, as well as letters and documents spread over various
other libraries and archives. His book is the first comprehensive critical
Lieber biography. Francis Lieber, after years of wandering and adventures,
failures and frustration in Europe, came to America in 1825, when the
country needed a man of his peculiar intellectual gifts. As professor of
political science at the University of South Carolina he wrote some of the
works that established his fame. His greater opportunity came, when after
twenty years in the South, he was called to Columbia University. His
forceful personality left its mark on the intellectual history of the whole
country. He is generally considered the father of political science as an
academic field. His Encyclopedia Americana gave to thousands of Americans
the most important means of self-education, at a time when formal schooling
was still at a very low level. His two most outstanding works, Political
Ethics and Civil Liberty, which for the first time linked systematically
political theory with American reality were the political classics of his and
the following generation. Freidel has competently told the life of one of the
most useful citizens of his time, of a man who was somehow an intellectual
prism of the middle span of the nineteenth century.
After reviewing these excellent biographical studies of German-American
liberals and radicals, we feel all the more acutely the gaps in the list of
important names. The life of Lieber's contemporary Charles Follen should
be re-written. There is not a single scholarly study of one of the most
prominent Forty-eighters, Friedrich Hecker, certainly a very fascinating
figure. General Franz Sigel has a monument in New York, but in our
libraries there is no book that tells the story of his life. Six states have
counties named for a German immigrant who became famous in the
Revolutionary War, but the life of General Jean DeKalb has not been re-
written since Friedrich Kapp's preliminary account a hundred years ago.
A new biography on General F. W. von Steuben should be written by a
professional historian.
17
However, we do have a few other biographies dealing with prominent
German immigrants of the first half of the eighteenth century, among them
Walter C. Klein's Johann Conrad Beissel.
18
As a young man of thirty,
touched by religious mysticism, Beissel came to Pennsylvania, longing for
the backwoods as the best place for meditation and seclusion. Yet, he did
not find the life of peaceful inactivity he was looking for. Again and again
his followers invaded his backwood peace, dragged him back into com-
munity life and worshipped him as the founder and leader of his little
circle of "awakened souls." His theological system (if this is the right
word for it) was a rather chaotic mixture of the various species of inspira-
tionalism. The wish to tell about the unio mytica with God, the desire
to express the inexpressible experience, motivated Beissel and his disciples
to write religious poetry and even compose a quaint music for their hymns.
(In our days Beissel's baffling attempts as a composer, "too unusual, too
amazing and arbitrary," have been admirably described in Thomas Mann's
novel Doktor Faustus.
19
)
Most of these poetic effusions were printed on
the presses in Beissel's settlement near Lancaster, Pa., the Ephrata cloisters,
which became the most influential cultural center among the German
17
John M. Palmer's General von Steuben (New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1937) is a
military biography, written by a general, who had a good knowledge of military conditions, but failed to
place Steuben and his achievements into the contexts of American history.
18
Walter C. Klein, Johann Conrad Beissel, Mystic and Martinet, 1690-1768 (Philadelphia, Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1942).
19
Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus, American edition (A. Knopf, New York, 1948), pp. 63-68;
German edition (S. Fischer, Stockholm, 1948), pp. 104-111.
[16]
mystics in the colonies. Beissel's monastic order evoked a great deal of
friendly comments as well as hostile criticism. Felix Reichmann and Eugene
E. Doll have gathered and carefully edited more than sixty contemporary
sources (1730-1790) revolving around the Ephrata cloisters.
20
Comments
ranging from "exemplary" to "ridiculous," from "most just and most
imitable" to "exceedingly stupid and really incapable" demonstrate that
Ephrata was a controversial topic of the time. We see this strange adven-
ture of German sectarianism in America through the eyes of travelers,
clergymen, writers, and encyclopedists. Some famous names appear on the
list such as Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Christopher Sower, Henry Melchior
Muhlenberg and Benjamin Rush. Altogether we can say that in recent
years the orbit of Ephrata has not been neglected.
Conrad Weiser (1696-1760), another colorful figure among the Germans
in colonial times, was unlike Beissel a very civic-minded individual, one of
those immigrants who adapted themselves admirably to the needs and
necessities of the new country. In the decades before the French and Indian
War he was the most skillful negotiator in Indian affairs. Diplomatic
ability, plain common sense, and Christian humility account as much for
the amazing success of his work among the Indians as did his singular
familiarity with Indian dialects. To be sure, he never moved on the upper
level of politics. He never formulated policy, he only carried out; but his
advice was always considered by those who promulgated the directives of
action. The "good neighbor policy" which determined the relationship
between Pennsylvania and the Six Nations was more or less Conrad Weiser's
work. A book on Weiser had been due for a long time. It is a strange
coincidence that after such a long state of oblivion two large biographies
were published within a few years: Arthur D. Graeff's Conrad Weiser, Penn-
sylvania Peacemaker, and Paul A. W. Wallace, Conrad Weiser, Friend of
Colonist and Mohawk.
21
Both studies, although different in approach, are
very recommendable; both authors have carefully used and evaluated all
published and unpublished sources, among them the most personal: Weiser's
autobiography in the Rupp Collection of the Library of Congress. Graef
writes for a wider audience; he integrates folk tales, legends, and anecdotes.
Wallace's book was written more for the historically trained reader. With
these two biographies another gap in German-American historiography has
been closed.
Paul A. W. Wallace is also the author of The Muhlenbergs of Pennsyl-
vania.
22
Seven Muhlenbergs were distinguished enough to be included in
the very selective Dictionary of American Biography. No other German
immigrant family in the Middle Atlantic states has produced such an abun-
dance of prominent men. Very justifiably the author dwells at length on
the career of the immigrant ancestor, the patriarch of the family, the
organizer of the Lutheran church in the colonies: Henry Melchior Muhlen-
berg (1711-1787). The biographies of most of his descendants center
around the Lutheran church, yet their activities branched out into all
realms of public life, especially into the army, politics, and scholarly pur-
suits. It is to be regretted that the author ends his narrative in the first
decade of the nineteenth century; it would have been worthwhile to follow
up the family history further. Although this book is by no means exhaus-
20
Felix Reichmann and Eugene E. Doll, Ephrata, As Seen By Contemporaries (Allentown, Pa.,
Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, 1952).
21
Arthur D. Graeff, Conrad Weiser, Pennsylvania Peacemaker (Fogelsville, Pa., Pennsylvania German
Folklore Society, 1942). Paul A. W. Wallace, Conrad Weiser, Friend of Colonist and Mohawk (Phil-
adelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945).
22
Paul A. W. Wallace, The Muhlenbergs of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1950).
[17]
tive, it is a very readable story of one of the most public-minded families
in eighteenth century America.
The Pennsylvania Germans, long neglected and misinterpreted by
American historians, have in recent years experienced a strong revival of
interest among scholars, journalists, the public at large, even among
Broadway playwrights. Although the immigrant ancestors came over six
or seven generations ago, the Pennsylvania Germans have retained an
amazing cohesiveness. They themselves as well as their neighbors still feel
a strong awareness of difference, and strangely enough: in a country, which
otherwise insists so firmly on conformity, acclimatization, acculturation,
and melting pot receipes, the difference, the "oddness," the ethnocentricity,
the resistance to complete integration which the Pennsylvania Germans
have upheld so long has never been resented by their fellow countrymen.
To the average American "the Pennsylvania Dutch" belong to America
like a strange, but venerable quaint piece of colonial furniture. Two books
have recently enriched our knowledge of this group: The Pennsylvania
Dutch by Fredric Klees, and The Pennsylvania Germans by Ralph Wood.
23
The book edited by Professor Wood is a collection of studies of various
authorities in the field, dealing with the churches and sects of the Penn-
sylvania Germans, their dialect and literature, their attitude towards schools
and education, their achievements in farming, their place in American
history and other topics. Fredric Klees, a native and devoted Pennsylvania
Dutchman, gives a broad and comprehensive panorama of all aspects of
this peculiar ethnic and cultural phenomenon. He points out the features
that set the Pennsylvania Dutch off from their neighbors and presents the
Dutch country as "an island of Rhenish civilization in an English sea."
The different titles of these two books, describing exactly the same ethnic
group, have programmatic significance. They indicate that there are two
schools of thought. Wood uses "Pennsylvania German" simply because
the majority of research workers do the same; he is rather casual about it
and in the preface gives permission to the reader to substitute mentally
the term "Dutch" whenever he prefers. Not so Klees. He fires heavy
broadsides against the learned scholars of our wicked time, who flirt with
the word "Pennsylvania German"—"an uncouth name . . . unsanctioned
by time or use on man's tongue . . . comes unnaturally to men's lips . . .
has none of the connotations of the older term ... a new, naked, pedantic
compound . . . with the taint of the hyphen." So, Pennsylvania Dutch it is,
and no mental substitutions are allowed while reading his book. Whether
Dutch or German: both books make very enjoyable and instructive reading.
Actually both terms are in active usage today and not only among
those "with an eye to learning." The representative newspaper of the
group, read widely in the Middle Atlantic states, was published for many
years under the name The Pennsylvania Dutchman, while their most
vigorous publication society calls itself Pennsylvania German Folklore
Society.
24
We owe it particularly to this organization (established 1935)
that we have recently seen such a remarkable renaissance in the field of
Pennsylvania German studies. Aside from the Society for the History of
the Germans in Maryland it is today the only German-American Historical
23
Fredric Klees, The Pennsylvania Dutch (New York, Macmillan, 1951). Ralph Wood, The Penn-
sylvania Germans (Princeton, N. J., Princeton University Press, 1942).
24
The Pennsylvania Dutchman appeared for the first time on May 5, 1950. With the Winter
1957/58 issue its name was changed to Pennsylvania Folklife. It is now the official organ of the Penn-
sylvania Folklife Society, published in Kutztown, Pa., with a subscription list of not less than 2600
subscribers. The original journal as well as its successor contain a great deal of valuable material on
Pennsylvania German folklore.
[18]
Society coming forth with regular publications.
25
In order to keep this
survey within manageable proportions, we have excluded serial publications
and therefore shall not review the volumes of this series. We shall confine
ourselves to listing the titles, paying our respects to the sponsors and
especially to its meritorious editor, Professor Preston A. Barba. The pub-
lications of the Pennsylvania German Folklore Society can be found today
on the shelves of every major library and they contain an inestimable
treasure of material on Pennsylvania German folklore. No student of
Americana can afford to ignore them. Here the list of their titles:
Vol. 1 (1936). C. C. Ziegler, Drauss un Deheem (dialect poems); J. Downs, House of the
Miller, the Architecture, Arts and Crafts of the Pennsylvania Germans; the Pennsylvania
German Galleries; W. J. Hinke and J. B. Stoudt, German Immigrants from Zweibrücken
in the Palatinate, 1728-49.
Vol. 2 (1937). J. J. Stoudt, Consider the Lilies, How They Grow: An Interpretation of the
Symbolism of Pennsylvania German Art.
Vol. 3 (1938). John Birmelin, Gezwitscher (dialect verse); C. E. Beckel, Early Moravian
Marriage Customs in Bethlehem, Pa.; H. K. Landis, Conestoga Wagons and their Orna-
mental Ironing; A. L. Eyster, Notices by German Settlers in German Newspapers.
Vol. 4 (1939). C. P. Iobst, En Quart of Millich un en Halb Beint Raahm (dialect comedy);
German Protestants to Gov. Morris in 1754, and an anti-Franklin Broadside; Preston
and Eleanor Barba, Lewis Miller, Pennsylvania German Folk Artist.
Vol. 5 (1940). Heckewelder's Indian Names of Streams, Rivers, Places etc.; S. H. Ziegler,
The Ephrata Printing Press; E. M. Fogel, Of Months and Days; W. L. Connor, Folk
Culture of the Pennsylvania Germans: Its Value in Modern Education.
Vol. 6 (1941). G. E. Nitsche, Christmas Putz of the Pennsylvania Germans; C. H. Rominger,
Early Christmases in Bethlehem, Pa.; R. H. Meyers, The Moravian Christmas Putz;
H. H. Reichard, Christmas Poetry of the Pennsylvania Dutch; E. M. Voyel, Twelvetide.
Vol. 7 (1942). Articles (by the resp. curators) on the Bucks County Historical Society,
Schwenkfelder Historical Library, Pennsylvania State Museum, Berks Country His-
torical Society, Hershey Museum, Landis Valley Museum; H. K. and G. D. Landis,
Lancaster Rifles.
Vol. 8 (1943). A. D. Graeff, Conrad Weiser, Pennsylvania Peacemaker.
Vol. 9 (1944). F. E. Lichtenthaeler, Storm Blown Seed of Schoharie; H. K. and G. D. Landis,
Lancaster Rifle Accessories; A. F. Kemp, Pennsylvania German Versammlinge.
Vol. 10 (1945). G. M. Ludwig, Influence of the Pennsylvania Dutch in the Middle West;
D. H. Yoder, Emigrants from Württemberg: the Adolf Gerber Lists.
Vol. 11 (1946). A. D. Graeff, The Pennsylvania Germans in Ontario, Canada; H. K. Kauffman,
Coppersmithing in Pennsylvania; L. W. J. Seifert, Lexical Differences between four
Pennsylvania German Regions.
Vol. 12 (1947). L. A. Moll, Am Schwarze Baer; D. H. Yoder, Langguth's Pennsylvania
German Pioneers from the County of Wertheim.
Vol. 13 (1948). G. F. Reinert, Coverlets of the Pennsylvania Germans; A. F. Buffington,
Linguistic Variants in the Pennsylvania. German Dialect.
Vol. 14 (1949). F. E. Stoeffler, Mysticism in the German Devotional Literature of Colonial
Pennsylvania.
Vol. 15 (1950). R. W. Gilbert, Pennsylvania German Wills; Humorous Pennsylvania German
Tales.
Vol. 16 (1951). The Later Poems of John Birmelin; J. J. Stoudt, Pennsylvania German Folk-
lore: An Interpretation; F. Krebs, List of Immigrants to the American Colonies from
Zweibrücken, 1750-1771; E. Steinemann, List of Emigrants from the Canton of Schaf-
hausen, 1734-1752.
Vol. 17 (1952). F. Reichmann and E. E. Doll, Ephrata as Seen by Contemporaries.
Vol. 18 (1953). P. A. Barba, Pennsylvania German Tombstones: A Study in Folk Art.
Vol. 19 (1954). A. F. Buffington, Henry Meyer, An Early Pennsylvania German Poet; M. W.
Dundore, The Saga of the Pennsylvania Germans in Wisconsin.
25
For an account of the activities of similar societies in former years cf. Albert B. Faust, "German-
American Historical Societies: Their Achievements and Limitations," in Society for the History of the
Germans in Maryland, Reports, XXVIII (1953), 21-28; also Ernest J. Becker, "The Society for the
History of the Germans in Maryland: A Chronicle," ibid., 9-20.
[ 19 ]
Vol. 20 (1955). J. J. Stoudt, Pennsylvania German High Poetry, 1685-1830: An Anthology.
Vol. 21 (1956). C. H. Dornbusch and J. K. Heyl, Pennsylvania, German Barns.
Beginning with Vol. 7 each of the listed volumes also contained Arthur D.
Graeff's annual chronicle of Pennsylvania German Folklore. Every student
of German-American studies will hope that this well edited, excellent series
will continue in the future.
Among major studies which deal with one particular sector of Penn-
sylvania German life we mention Pennsylvania German Literature by Earl
F. Robacker.
26
It is not surprising that this is the first attempt of evalua-
tion of Pennsylvania German literature as a whole. The comparative
inarticulateness of a rural group, the fact that their language was more a
spoken than a written dialect, the defensive position of the German tongue
within English speaking surroundings, all this may account for the fact
that the Pennsylvania Germans have never produced a writer of great
caliber, of more than local significance. From its beginnings in the seven-
teenth century up to approximately the year 1800 this literature was
orientated primarily towards church and religion; the prevailing language
of this period was literary or High German. The sixty years after 1800
were a period of transition, characterized by the decline of Hight German
and the inability of the writers to handle competently either German or
English as a language of culture. The "Golden Age" of Pennsylvania
German literature is to be found in the four decades after the Civil War,
when the dialect emerged and blossomed as a literary medium in its own
rights and with the proud claim of genuine poetical substance. Beginning
with Harbaugh's Harfe this period has produced all the "classics" in this
field of dialect literature. With the beginning of the twentieth century the
school of deliberate exploitation came forth, represented particularly by the
popular writings of Helen R. Martin. While the "classical period" had its
own creative dignity, Pennsylvania German folklore later was degraded to
a literary accessory which proved to have a good market price and there-
fore was used again and again as stage background for mediocre entertain-
ment ware. Earl Robacker has carefully disentangled these different threads
of writings by and on the Pennsylvania Germans and has made a valuable
contribution to our knowledge of American folklore.
A great number of the above mentioned books deal with Germans in
Pennsylvania or with "the Pennsylvania Germans" in the specific "Dutch"
connotation of the word. However, there is nothing on our shelves, neither
of older vintage nor of recent publications, that treats the German element
in Pennsylvania as a whole. The Germans in Philadelphia, with their own
newspapers, churches, societies etc. during the nineteenth and the early
decades of the twentieth centuries are substantially different from the
"Pennsylvania Dutch" in Lancaster, Bucks, Berks, and York counties.
The same is true for the urbanized German groups in and around Pitts-
burgh, Williamsport, Allentown, Scranton, and many other cities. A history
of the Germans in Pennsylvania is still lacking. The same is true for the
history of the Germans in a number of Eastern and Midwestern states
where they played a significant role, such as New York, New Jersey,
Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, and others.
German immigration into Texas has been treated at least in some partial
studies in earlier years. Only the author's own The Maryland Germans
(which for the sake of completeness and with appropriately blushing
26
Earl F. Robacker, Pennsylvania German Literature, Changing Trends from 1683 to 1942 (Phil-
adelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1943).
[20]
modesty may be mentioned here) has, during the period under considera-
tion, tried to present a comprehensive history of German immigration and
settlements, of immigrant life, integration and Americanization of the
German element within the borders of one particular state.
27
In no other
state save Pennsylvania did the Germans play a more important part than
in Maryland. The author's task was facilitated by the fact that since
1886 the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland had collected
and published a good deal of historical material, which then could be supple-
mented by church records, files of German newspapers, diaries, and other
sources, private and official, in all parts of the state. We do not maintain
that the methods used here are the only possible avenue of approach, but
we think it would be desirable to have other sectional studies of this scope.
We know that a new history of the Virginia Germans is making good
progress and we hope that parallel monographs for other states will follow.
With every year that passes, fruitful material will vanish, German diaries
written by the great-grand parents will move from the attic into the trash
basket, and yellowing old newspaper files will crumble and disintegrate.
Everyone concerned with immigration history knows the great importance
of these old newspapers. Nothing else reveals more clearly the pulse of a
national minority. Nothing else reflects as impressively as its press the rise
and fall, the fears and hopes, the awareness of difference as well as the
acculturation of an immigrant group. Thus, the history of the German
language press in America must necessarily become a microcosm of the
history of the German-Americans as a whole. Carl Wittke has admirably
accomplished this task with his The German Language Press in America.
28
It is unnecessary to say that an historian as skillful as he avoids the danger
of chronicling the individual fortunes of the numerous German-American
papers (there were about 800 in the peak decade after 1890); yet a few
words should indicate how masterfully he acquits himself of the onerous
task of holding so many threads in his hands and weaving them together
into a broad carpet showing distinct patterns and designs.
The first German newspaper in America was published in Philadelphia
in 1732. Before the end of the century no less than thirty-eight German
papers appeared in Pennsylvania, not to mention a number of others in
adjacent states such as New York and Maryland. From the very first
issue on these papers give evidence of the double function of the German-
American (and any other immigrant) press: to strengthen the original
national consciousness and to interpret America to the newcomer. Over
the two centuries most German-American newspaper editors have been
keenly aware of this double mission. It is an interesting though unanswer-
able question as to how many of them knew deep in their hearts that in
the last analysis these two functions were irreconcilable and mutually
exclusive. To interpret America to the immigrant, to acquaint him with
its traditions and institutions, that is to "americanize" him—what other
consequences could it have than to cause the awareness of his German
identity to evaporate, possibly in the first, certainly in the second genera-
tion. This is the tragic conflict of the German-American press: the better
it fulfilled its mission, the quicker it shortened its history; the more it
justified its raison d'être, the more it removed the reason for its existence.
If and when the immigrant (partly with the help of his German paper)
had been acclimatized, assimilated, americanized, he would let his subscrip-
tion to his German paper expire and read an American journal.
27
Dieter Cunz, The Maryland Germans, A History (Princeton, N. J., Princeton University Press, 1948).
28
Carl Wittke, The German Language Press in America (Lexington, University of Kentucky Press,
1957).
[21]
Carl Wittke shows that the conditions during the period between 1730
and 1830 were not favorable to the development of a German language press.
The Pennsylvania German papers were in a peculiar predicament, on
account of repeated demands that they drop standard German in favor of
the Pennsylvania German dialect. Only after 1830, when new waves of
German immigrants reached the American shores did the number of German
publications show a considerable increase. Two of the most outstanding
papers (still in existence) were founded within one decade, the New Yorker
Staatszeitung (1834) and the Baltimore Correspondent (1841). The Cin-
cinnati Volksblatt (1836), issued continuously up to World War I, was the
first, and, for some time, the only daily in the entire field of German-
American journalism. The most astonishing and almost spectacular expan-
sion of the German press occurred in the decades after 1850. Carl Wittke
emphasizes the interrelationship between this growth and the arrival of the
Forty-eighters, among them a high percentage of men with political convic-
tions and journalistic experience. By the sheer force of their ever increasing
number the German immigrants demanded more, bigger, and better news-
papers in their own language. The Forty-eighters provided them with an
aggressive (often too aggressive), instructive, and guiding journalism which
aroused the Germans to an interest in the political issues of the time, in-
duced them to participate in the election campaigns and thereby accelerate
their Americanization. In the field of domestic politics it is not easy to
draw a clear-cut political profile of German-American journalism. There
wras no strict adherence to the one or the other faction. Party lines were
frequently transcended, as is illustrated by the criss-crossings of the most
distinguished German-American journalist, Carl Schurz. On some public
issues we find a remarkable consistency over a period of many decades.
Almost all German papers advocated sound money, civil service, and tariff
reform. Solidly they opposed woman's suffrage, since it would "result in a
disastrous deterioration of female virtues." Three successive generations
of German-American journalists battled manfully against any attempt to
promote the temperance or prohibition movement. During the years from
1850-1875 (Wittke calls this the "Hellenic Age in German-American Jour-
nalism") the editors vigorously took sides and fought eloquently for or
against certain public issues. Thereafter the editors became more interested
in advertisement space and circulation figures and gave only non-offensive,
colorless comments on current events. Even before the first World War the
curve of German-American journalism declined rapidly. The war then has-
tened this decline enormously. The total number of German publications
was 727 in 1890; 537 in 1914; 489 in 1917; 278 in 1920; and 172 in 1930.
Among all foreign language organs in the country the German press was
the most numerous, the most influential, the best edited, and the one on
the highest intellectual level. We now may add to this that it is the one
which has received the most thorough and most competent treatment.
An interesting attempt to appraise the significance of the German-
American press as a transmitter of German literature was made by Erich
P. Hofacker in his monograph German Literature as Reflected in the
German-Language Press of St. Louis.
29
The investigation is based upon
newspaper material published between 1835 and 1898. The conclusion can
only be that the literary level of the papers was distressingly low. If there
was interest in German literature, it emerged primarily in the form of simple
biographical sketches, amusing anecdotes, parodies, and literary gossip.
29
Erich P. Hofacker, German Literature as Reflected in the German-Language Press of St. Louis
Prior to 1898 (St. Louis, Washington University Studies, 1946).
[22]
Very seldom we find serious attempts to interpret the great works of
German literature to the German-American reader. They did a somewhat
better job in acquainting the Missouri Germans with contemporary German
literature and frequently reprinted the novels of living writers such as
Gustav Freytag, Wilhelm Raabe, Paul Heyse, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach,
and others. Altogether the literary fare was comparable to the Feuilleton
section of a small provincial German paper. The St. Louis German papers
were probably not much different from those in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and
other cities. Thus, Erich Hofacker's study, though regionally limited, may
be considered as an assessment of the literary qualities of the German-
American press as a whole.
Professor Hofacker discusses and appraises more than sixty years of
cultural activities of the German press in one particular state. Professor
C. Grant Loomis is concerned with only a few years of theatrical endeavors
in one city, yet, even such a limited study can be very interesting. For
his monograph on The German Theater in San Francisco 1861-64 he has
used primarily the files of the San Francisco Abendpost and has proven
convincingly that regular theatrical activities were carried on in San Fran-
cisco in a period several years earlier than previously accepted.
30
He gives
a survey of the repertoire, of the members of the companies, and of the
general theatrical climate of the German stage in the 1860's. This careful
and well documented study reminds us of a peculiar gap in the field of
German-American research. We have a surprising number of excellent
monographs on the German drama in various cities with a strong German
sector, such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago,
St. Louis, New Orleans,
31
yet, in spite of this helpful spade work there is
not a single comprehensive history of the German theater in the United
States, a work which (if ever written) should focus on the "German-
American era" (in Hawgood's meaning of the term), i.e. the decades
between the Civil War and the First World War. A great deal of material
has been collected, but the germanist-historian who could integrate it and
weave the various threads into a carpet has not yet appeared.
All books mentioned so far dealt with German-American immigrants and
their immediate descendants. However, we have become accustomed to
include into the term "German-American studies" works in the field of
intercultural relations. Their concern is not the German immigrant, but
the emigration and immigration of German ideas, the impact of German
culture upon the United States and vice versa. To be sure, quite fre-
quently the two fields overlap. Follen, Lieber, the Forty-eighters and others
were immigrants and transmitters of certain German ideologies. Yet, the
give-and-take relationship of two civilizations is carried on not only by
immigrants. Writers of the first half of the nineteenth century (Irving,
Cooper, Emerson, Bryant, Hawthorne, Fuller), all native Americans, opened
the gates and started what often has been called "the German craze."
The spectacular rise of German letters after 1770 and the American desire
for emancipation from British tutelage supplemented each other in creating
this state of receptiveness for the German spirit.
It seems like an insurmountable task to describe and evaluate the innu-
merable overt and covert ramifications of the influence of German ideas in
the United States. This has recently been done in an undertaking of almost
encyclopedic proportions, in Henry A. Pochmann's German Culture in
30
C. Grant Loomis, The German Theater in San Francisco 1861-1864 (Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1952).
31
See the above mentioned bibliography by A. E. Zucker, footnote 4.
[23]
America 1600-1900.
32
The author tries to disprove the long prevailing
misconception that the influence of Germany on the intellectual life of
America began as late as 1814, when the first American edition of Madame
de Staël's De l'Allemagne was published and when the New England intel-
lectuals began traveling to Germany. Pochmann presents convincingly the
interchange of ideas between Increase and Cotton Mather and the German
pietists in the early eighteenth century and points at the great number of
German books in the libraries in colonial New England. Towards the end
of the century the correspondence between the German historian Christoph
Daniel Ebeling and the American educator William Bentley was clearly a
relationship of intercultural crossfertilization which prepared the ground
for the intense interest in German literature and philosophy after 1820.
By 1800 there was already a well-defined tradition of interest in and
influence by the German spirit, extending over almost two centuries.
All this, however, remains a preface to the history of American-German
interplay. Only about one eighth of Pochmann's book is devoted to the
pre-1814 period, while the bulk of the investigation revolves around the
nineteenth century. This new era opened when the trail blazing generation
of Ticknor, Bancroft, Everett, Cogswell and others (attracted particularly
by the University of Göttingen) began the long lasting pilgrimage to
German intellectual centers. After their return many of them accepted
academic key positions in American colleges; this new information about
German letters and philosophy was disseminated by native Americans who
had seen and heard at first hand, and who spoke with authority and con-
viction. The two traditional rivals in the camp of the American intelli-
gentsia, the Anglophiles and the Gallophiles, soon discovered that they were
challenged by a third part, the Germanophiles. Dr. Pochmann pays a good
deal of attention to the transcendentalist writers, such as Ripley, Parker,
Clarke, Alcott and Brownson and devotes a long chapter to Ralph Waldo
Emerson. The books which Emerson wrote under the impact of Kantian
idealism became the most effective means of diffusion of German thought
in America during the first half of the nineteenth century.
While every transcendentalist with reputation and self-esteem at some
time during his career struggled with, conquered, and absorbed some of the
ideas of such praeceptores Germaniae as Leibniz, Kant, Herder, Goethe,
Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, a group of intellectuals in the West
concentrated their admiration and energies on the work of one German
philosopher, and subsequently were called "the St. Louis Hegelians." To
this group of young Western idealists Hegel's philosophy seemed the most
effective weapon to combat the steadily growing materialism and agnos-
ticism of the second half of the nineteenth century. Their special interest
in Hegel centered in his dictum that "the history of the world is the
unfolding of liberty." This youthful movement was propelled by an
unbounded enthusiasm and idealism. Out of it emerged such an impressive
achievement as the twenty-two volumes of the most distinguished phi-
losophical periodical produced in America during the nineteenth century,
the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Two of the leaders, Henry Conrad
Brokmeyer (a German immigrant) and William T. Harris (a native New
Englander) had enough endurance and missionary zest to undertake the
frightening task of translating Hegel's Logik into English.
Having characterized New England and St. Louis as the most significant
intellectual bridgeheads, Professor Pochmann describes various other rami-
32
Henry A. Pochmann (with the assistance of Arthur R. Schultz and others), German Culture in
America: Philosophical and Literary Influences 1600-1900 (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1957).
[24]
fications of the influence of the German spirit in the fields of philosophy
and education in general. He points out that the gradual adaptation of the
so-called "German" principals of university education (elective studies,
lecture methods, seminar, emphasis on scholarship, etc.) was initiated not
by the older schools of the East, but, as early as in the middle fifties, by
the University of Michigan and a decade later by Cornell University.
Germanists will be particularly interested in a section dealing with the
"Vogue of German Literature." There were only sporadic and short-lived
contacts during the eighteenth century. The real beginning of a German-
American rapport in the field of letters is marked by the two names Mme.
de Staël and Charles Follen. Translations of classical and romantic German
literature, essays and biographies on various German authors appeared on
the American literary scene in increasing numbers in the decades before
the Civil War. The Civil War decade, the dramatic hiatus between the
"Romantic" and "Genteel" eras, represents a certain turning point in
this development. Quantitatively the number of German items in the
statistics of translations held its own; the number of books imported from
Germany increased. The readings on the thermometer of quality, however,
dropped noticeably after 1860. "After 1860 there ceased to exist the fervor
and profound personal commitment that marked the enthusiasm of an
earlier generation." Formerly the stars had been Schiller, Goethe, Heine,
and Jean Paul. Now the regional and popular fiction moved more and more
into the foreground, operating on a far-flung range of quality and taste,
from the upper tier (Auerbach, Freytag, Reuter) to the Gartenlaube
school, represented by the indestructible and ubiquitous Luise Mühlbach
and others whose names Christian charity forbids us to mention. Never-
theless, at the end of the century, most educated Americans showed a
certain familiarity with the major works of the great German authors;
children's books from the Grimm's Märchen to Johanna Spyri's Heidi had
established themselves as unbeatable favorites; and the study of German
language and literature in American colleges was firmly secured.
Only briefly we can touch upon the section in which Professor Pochmann
tries to appraise what some of the most outstanding American writers of
the nineteenth century owed to German thought and letters. We only
enumerate some of the most important names such as Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Washington Irving, Margaret Fuller, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Longfellow,
Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Herman Melville. Often the author can
only assess what eariler scholars have found before him, but frequently he
has documented more fully than others what these American writers knew
(or belived to know), about German philosophers and critics such as Kant,
Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, and Schlegel.
Henry Pochmann's book represents the results of many years of pains-
taking research. Nobody could have described the complex story of
American receptiveness to the German spirit and its impact upon the philo-
sophical and literary trends in America more competently, more thoroughly,
more capably. Among the works on intercultural relations published during
the last decades we know no other study more important, more conse-
quential and more admirable.
This work practically supersedes anything else that during the last thirty
years has been published in this vein, such as John A. Walz's German
Influence in American Education, Stanley M. Vogel's German Literary
Influences on American Transcendentalists, or Pochmann's own St. Louis
Hegelianism and New England Transcendentalism, not to mention minor
[25]
studies.
33
It goes without saying that in this field of intercultural relations
a great deal of work can still be done. Pochmann gave a broad, panoramic
view; special investigations are still needed. Among the latter category we
should mention James Freeman Clarke, Apostle of German Culture to
America by John Wesley Thomas.
34
J. F. Clarke (1810-1888) belonged to
the group of transcendentalists and Unitarian ministers whose philosophy
and mentality were shaped in distinct contrast and opposition to the com-
mercial and materialistic atmosphere of their native Boston. The two
intellectual forces which formed his life were the humanism of Goethe
and the liberal German theology, particularly the religio-philosophical
writings of Daniel Friedrich Schleiermacher. J. W. Thomas' monograph is
the first comprehensive biography of Clarke, based largely on unpublished
manuscripts, letters and other primary sources.
It is quite a respectable row of books that over the last twenty years
has assembled on our shelf of Americana-Germanica. There is no doubt that
a new generation of scholars and writers has taken an intensive interest in
the history of German immigration. And not only the quantity of German-
American research has increased, also its tenor has changed. German-
American historiography saw its first flowering in the second half of the
nineteenth century, beginning with Franz Löher's Geschichte und Zustände
der Deutschen in Amerika (1847). Particularly in the period between
the Civil War and the first World War there was quite an upsurge of
publications on the Germans in the United States. German historical
societies were organized in several states (Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio,
Illinois, Missouri), serial publications were started, articles, monographs as
well as comprehensive histories were published. Most of these efforts were
carried on by enthusiastic, but untrained amateurs, such as Friedrich Kapp,
Rudolf Cronau, Anton Eickhoff, Gustav Körner, Heinrich Armin Ratter-
mann, Herrmann Schuricht, Louis Henninghausen, and countless others.
These men were Sunday historians. By profession they were journalists,
politicians, lawyers, insurance men, bookdealers, or ministers. Only a small
number of scholars went into this field of research: Hanno Deiler, Julius
Goebel, Marion D. Learned, Albert B. Faust, to mention a few. Whether
scholars or dilettants, they never overcame the trauma of the 1850's, when
the German-Americans (as all other immigrant groups) saw themselves
surrounded and threatened by the hostility of a nativistic, anti-foreign wave.
Among the German-Americans (and their history writers) it released a
mechanism of self-defense. The starting point for all these historiographical
endeavors was: we have to show to our fellow Americans that the Germans
have been here much longer than generally known and that they have
contributed to the substance and expanse, to the social, political, and moral
texture of this country. At the same time they wanted to give self-confi-
dence to their compatriots of German birth or descent: you don't have to
be ashamed of being German. If your name is Weyerhäuser, Luckenbach,
or Schmidt, that's as good as Saltonstall, Bradford, or Winslow.
Needless to say that such an historiography often overshot the mark.
Particularly the amateurs became veritable lawyers of defense or publicity
agents of true or alleged German-American virtues. Most of the scholars
did not do any better. The one who made the most constructive con-
tribution was Albert Bernhardt Faust with his German Element in the
33
John A. Walz, German Influence in American Education (Philadelphia, Carl Schurz Memorial
Foundation, 1936). Stanley M. Vogel, German Literary Influences on American Transcendentalists (New
Haven, Yale University Press, 1955). Henry A. Pochmann, St. Louis Hegelianism and New England
Transcendentalism (Philadelphia, Carl Schurz Mem. Foundation, 1948).
34
John Wesley Thomas, James Freeman Clarke, Apostle of German Culture to America (Boston,
John W. Luce, 1949).
[26]
United States (1909). His merits have never been contested. The first and
fundamental compendium of German-American immigration history it has
remained to this day the point of departure for all research in the field.
"A storehouse of indispensable facts," said the reviewer in the American
Historical Review in 1910.
35
Yet, even at that time there were other,
slightly critical voices. The Nation after giving due credit to Faust's
accomplishments continued: "The author writes from the pro-German
point of view and presents a favorable picture of the German influence in
the growth of American institutions, without always carefully analyzing
the complex ethnic process involved.... A constructive history of the
Germans in America will only be possible after the most thorough research
into special activities of the Germans in America has been made."
36
The
reviewer here touched the sensitive nerve of the undertaking, and this was
indeed the common deficiency of all these writings: the pro-German point
of view, the attitude of filiopiety and ancestor worship. "Their record is a
noble one, and should animate their descendants with the will to keep sacred
such names as . . .", said Faust in the preface to his work. Too much of
such Concord Day speeches and similar oratory went into German-American
historiography.
All this has changed. The present generation of writers in the field of
German-American studies has not hesitated to give the pro and the contra.
They may have lost some of the inspirational sweep of their predecessors,
but they have gained a more scholarly approach, a more sober, more
objective appraisal and thereby a greater impact on American histori-
ography in general. Claude Fuess shows in his biography that Carl Schurz
was not only an accumulation of ideals and virtues, but that he was quite
frequently overflowing with overconfidence, self-applause, and conceited-
ness and that with all his lofty aims he always kept an eye open for his
own future. The books on the Forty-eighters by Carl Wittke and A. E.
Zucker do not fail to point out that these liberals with all their admirable
idealism were not free of blemishes: their adolescent romantic illusions,
their boyish, antagonizing excesses in free-thinking and agnosticism, their
cantankerous, meddlesome, tactless reformism. Julius Goebel's old thesis
that Abraham Lincoln owed his election to the Forty-eighters is bluntly
refuted as a "legend." Carl Wittke extolls the merits of the German-
American press, but he does not gloss over its provincialism and its Vereins-
meierei. Walter Klein makes it clear that Johann Conrad Beissel was a
spiritual leader, but also a crackpot. John Hawgood and Clifton Child
give a very balanced presentation of a controversial period of German-
American history. To be sure, Hawgood maintains in general an attitude
of discreet indictment towards the resistance of the German-Americans to
a complete integration into the American tradition (and one may argue
whether he is perhaps not too censorious in this respect), but at the same
time he is fully aware of the peculiar psychological predicament of the
"hyphenated- or German-American." Child castigates the clumsy tactless-
ness of the leaders of the German-American Alliance as well as the resentful
intolerance and bigotry of the non-German populace in the average
American community around 1917. The new historians know that between
black and white there are many shades of grey. Their biographies give
portaits unretouched, showing the grandeur and beauty of a face as well
as its wrinkles and irregularities. This is not any more a gallery of "sacred
names." These histories are not written "from the pro-German point of
35
American Historical Review, XV (1910), 615-617.
36
The Nation, XC (April 7, 1910), 353-354.
[27]
view," as the reviewer early in the century characterized Faust's book.
A few years ago, a British historian writing in the English Historical
Review about one of the above mentioned monographs affirmed that this
is a "new generation of American scholars of German descent which
approaches the subject of the settlements of the Germans in the U. S. A. in
an entirely dispassionate spirit, giving praise where it is due, but being
equally ready to criticize shortcomings and narrowness of outlook."
37
The majority of the older books were written almost exclusively for the
educated readers in the "Little Germanies" of American towns and cities.
Rattermann, Eickhoff, Goebel, von Bosse, Cronau, and many others wrote
in German. Among the more recent studies there is hardly a German title;
German source material, if quoted verbatim, is usually translated. Needless
to say that this practice has made these books accessible to a greater
audience of laymen and other scholars.
It is our hope that in the years to come the bookshelf of Americana-
Germanica will grow and that the studies on German-American immigration
history will continue in this line of objective appraisal. They then will leave
a deeper mark on American historiography, they will be more readily
accepted by American historians and more widely read by the general
public.
37
English Historical Review, LXV (1951), no. 256, p. 152.
[28]
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