The Anniversary Address by Dr. Dieter Cunz
The Program of the Anniversary Observance
Baltimore, October 8, 1961
[9]
THE GERMANS IN MARYLAND:
A Story of Useful Citizens *
By DIETER CUNZ
"On the evening of January 5th, 1886, in answer to an invitation
issued by Messrs. Louis P. Hennighausen, Edward F. Leyh, Charles F.
Raddatz and Dr. W. S. Landsberg, a number of gentlemen met at the
rooms of the Maryland Historical Society, to consider the desirability
and feasibility of organizing a society for the purpose of collecting and
preserving the material for the history of the influence and part of
the Germans in the growth and development of the American Nation,
especially in the State of Maryland."
These are the opening words of the First Annual Report of the
Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland.
It is most appropriate that for its 75th anniversary the Society
assembles again in the rooms of the Maryland Historical Society. Our
meeting here should mean more than an appreciative and grateful
remembrance of the hospitality granted to the Society three quarters
of a century ago. It should underline the fact that the endeavors
of this Society are an integral part of the efforts of the Mary-
land Historical Society, even more than that: an integral part of
American historiography as a whole. Very little would be accom-
plished, if this Society were concerned with the German immigrants as
an isolated element. Its raison d'être is and should be to show how the
German immigrants and their children integrated themselves into the
organism of the American society—to show what they gave and what
they gave up. They gave their efforts, their skill, their Old-World
experiences; they gave what are often called "typical German virtues":
their dedication to work, their reliability and, last not least, their joy
of living, which enlivened the somewhat grey and drab picture of a
puritanical America with some spots of color. They also gave up
important things; consciously and unconsciously, they cut themselves
loose from the cultural bloodstream of their homeland; they gave up
some of their German attitudes, their feeling of belonging to the old
country even before they had taken roots in the new one,—gave up,
finally, their language, because the word "mother tongue" did not
mean any longer to the second generation what it had meant to the
immigrants. It is this polarity between giving and giving up, between
giving and taking that characterizes the relationship between the
German immigrants and the New World. Of course, it was an accident
that the first organized group of German immigrants to arrive in
America was a group of weavers from Krefeld, but even in the acci-
* Address delivered at the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Society for the History of
the Germans in Maryland in the Library of the Maryland Historical Society on October 8, 1961.
[11]
dental we may find some symbolic significance. They wove themselves
into the tapestry of American life. Theirs was the German thread,
just as there was an Irish, a Scandinavian, an English, a Polish, an
Italian, thin threads as long as they were alone, but woven together
they formed the colorful pattern of a strong fabric.
From the very beginning the founding fathers of the Society proved
that they were willing to "give up." English formed the common
ground on which all nationalities in this immigrant country could meet.
If the Society wanted to interpret the contributions of the German-
American element to their fellow Americans, they would have to do
so in English. Only if their proceedings and at least the greater part of
their publications were in English could they break through a con-
fining national parochialism and reach the minds of their fellow
citizens of different extraction.
So I think it is not without significance that at the first meeting
of the newly-born society it was resolved that the proceedings should
be recorded in English, a decision which evidently was not reached
easily, for the minutes tell us that it was preceded by "a prolonged
and exhaustive debate." And incidentally it gives me a personal
pleasure that in this first meeting a German from Ohio was elected
a "corresponding member" (even without a prolonged debate):
Heinrich Armin Rattermann of Cincinnati.
It was significant that the Society made its first public appearance
when in August 1886 the DeKalb monument was dedicated in Anna-
polis. In Germany DeKalb had been an anonymous nobody. It was
in America that he did the things that earned him a place in history.
As a general in the War of Independence he led the Maryland troops
in the battle of Camden and here gave his life for his new country.
Of course, DeKalb is an exceptional case, by no means typical of the
German immigrants as a whole. But this he had in common with
most of them: the training, the skill, the experience gained in the Old
World were placed at the service of the new homeland, and thereby
assumed a new and personal meaning to the one who gave them.
The founders of the Society were not historians by profession.
Louis Hennighausen was a lawyer; Heinrich Scheib and John Gottlieb
Morris were pastors; Edward Leyh was a journalist, William Landsberg
an insurance man, Lewis H. Steiner a librarian; John C. Hemmeter
and Julius Goebel were university professors. There were a good
number of well-known Baltimore business men: Christian Ax, William
and Ernst Knabe, Henry Hilken, Georg Gail, Ernst Hoen, Georg
Bauernschmidt, to mention only a few. Their interest in history was
a hobby, pursued in the evening, on weekends, during vacation time.
Some of the historical sketches and articles they wrote and published
are naive and amateurish, yet we should not pass over them too
lightly; almost all of them contain some information which is valuable
to the professional historian.
These "Sunday historians" were at their best when they tackled
a topic of clearly defined, limited scope. The most valuable of their
products is perhaps Louis Hennighausen's History of the German
Society of Maryland. For many years Hennighausen was the back-
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bone of the Society, untiring in his zeal to unearth historical material
that was pertinent to German immigration, indefatigable in his efforts
to compile his findings into articles and to present them to the public.
The History of the German Society of Maryland was the story of a
great humanitarian endeavor which began in the eighteenth century—
and it was this particular activity of an immigrant society that aroused
Hennighausen's interest. The society had in the early nineteenth cen-
tury attacked the barbaric redemption practices and had been the
prime instrument in the fight for their abolition. Towards the end of
the century the German Society again went into a battle, this time
against brutal practices on the oyster dredgers of the Chesapeake
Bay. Hennighausen himself was one of the lawyers who led the fight.
He fought particularly for a young and helpless German immigrant,
who had been cruelly mistreated on an oyster boat; but when the
legislature in Annapolis finally passed a law to protect the men on the
oyster boats, the fight had been won not only for the German immi-
grants, but for the Irish, Scotch, Swedish, Lithuanians, and all others
as well.
This is the story which Louis Hennighausen told in his book, one
of the first major publications of the "Society for the History of the
Germans in Maryland." And it is worth noticing that his book was
read, read aloud to the members of the Society, whenever Hennighausen
had finished a chapter. In our hectic, noisy and restless time, which
more and more capitulates to piped music and the cheap and shallow
entertainment inflicted upon us by the television stations, these
readings make a touching picture, taking us back to the years when
the streets of Baltimore were illuminated by the faint and timid light
of the gas lanterns and when the members of the German Historical
Society would gather once a month and listen for two hours to what
one of them had written during the preceding summer or in the first
year of his retirement. People worked more than "forty hours a
week"; although they had no time-saving gadgets and had to go to
their meeting places on foot or ride in a slow and bumpy streetcar,
they obviously had much more time and leisure than we have in our
"Age of Anxiety."
In the beginning of the twentieth century interest in the Society
(as in most other German-American organizations) declined. In the
difficult years of the first World War and its aftermath less than twenty
members assembled for the regular gatherings, but even then the
Society did not die. In 1929 another Report was issued, the first
publication after twenty-two years of silence. When in the thirties the
Society received a substantial legacy from the estate of Mr. Ferdinand
Meyer, it was quickly revitalized. However, I should hasten to point
out that money alone cannot revive an anaemic organization. What-
ever has been accomplished in the last twenty-five years could come
about only because there was a genuine, renewed interest among the
members. Publications came forth at regular intervals, and a concerted
effort was made to have a comprehensive History of the Germans in
Maryland written, a project which had been envisaged by the Society
ever since the turn of the century. After almost fifty years of hoping and
[13]
planning, after three or four unsuccessful and fragmentary attempts,
it finally became a reality when in 1948 the Princeton University Press,
with the support of the Society, published the book The Maryland
Germans. The old seal of the Society recommends a moderate speed:
"Ohne Hast, ohne Rast." With regard to this project stretching over
fifty years I certainly can attest that it was carried out "ohne Hast."
I consider it a privilege that I was entrusted with this task. You
will not expect me to evaluate my own work. I can only say what
I attempted to do, and even in this I shall only quote a few lines from
the Introduction to my book. I tried "to show why so many Germans
came to Maryland, how they settled and how they took root, why
they needed the country and why the country needed them, how their
individual and collective existence was blended into the history of
America." "It was," as I said, "the story of a special group under
special circumstances, yet we may not be unjustified in hoping that
from this special case some broader conclusions may be drawn for
immigration history in general."
Fifty years ago, when the Society celebrated its twenty-fifth anni-
versary, an eminent historian, Professor Albert B. Faust of Cornell
University, was invited to address the members. The title of his
lecture was "Undercurrents of German Influence in Maryland." He
described what the Germans had contributed in the terms of "blood,
brawn, brain and buoyancy." These somewhat forced alliterations do
not make things all too clear, so it may be helpful to add that he
meant: what the Germans had contributed in biological substance,
capability to do hard work, intellectual and educational efforts and
through their joy of living, their love for music and art. Faust had to
speak in very general terms. Very little was known at that time about
the history of the Germans in Maryland. Today, we have a more
specific knowledge, we see many things in wider perspectives and our
attention has focussed on different problems.
What, we may ask again, are some of the characteristic features of
the German immigrant who settled in Maryland?
I think the most positive statement we can make about him is
that he adapted himself to the needs of the country. We recall Goethe's
famous maxim: our noblest duty is to fulfill the demands of the day—
"die Forderung des Tages." The Maryland Germans, over two and
a half centuries, stand up well if we judge them by this standard.
There was the first prominent German, Augustin Herrman, who drew
a map of Maryland, very much needed in a colony still unsurveyed.
There was John Lederer, who explored the Alleghany mountain region,
into which no white man had penetrated—a great achievement in a
continent still unexplored. There were, above all, the early settlers in
Western Maryland, who tilled a soil still uncultivated. They, perhaps,
show most strikingly how the country and the immigrants supple-
mented each other. Into a land without people came people without
land. The old Calvert Colony between Potomac and Susquehanna
was at that time in an economic crisis: its economy hinged too
much and too exclusively on tobacco production and tobacco trade.
Maryland was the Tobacco Coast of the Bay. When in the middle of
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the eighteenth century German settlers began to cultivate the fertile
land around Frederick and Hagerstown, the grain crop became a factor
of ever increasing importance in the economic structure of Maryland.
The German immigrant contributed exactly what the country needed
in this particular historical moment.
And it was the production of grain, wheat and corn which accounts
for the rapid rise of one city on the Chesapeake Bay, the City of
Baltimore. The tobacco fields of the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries clung close to the Tidewater region of the Bay. The grain
crops of the Western Maryland Germans had to be traded through
an urban, commercial center. It was the economic impact of the
hinterland, settled by pioneer farmers whose names were Schley, Stoll,
Schmidt, Schweinhardt, Goetz, Roessler, Lehnich, that created the
necessity for a trading center in the northwestern corner of the Bay.
This was the main function of the city and the port of Baltimore
at the end of the eighteenth century. And who were the traders?
Here again we find the Germans: merchants, shipping agents, insurance
agents whose names were Zollicker, Stouffer, Schroeder, Brune, Ans-
pach, Mayer, Von Kapff. Around 1800 there began the long and
fruitful trade relationship between the two cities of Baltimore and
Bremen which grew closer with every decade of the nineteenth century.
The Bremen merchants who arrived in Baltimore at the end of
the eighteenth century did not have to start German life and German
institutions in the city. That had been done long ago. Zion Church
had been founded in 1755. Charles Frederick Wiesenthal, the physician,
was one of the most highly respected citizens during the revolutionary
era. The German Society had begun its work in 1783. Nicholas
Hasselbach had established the first print shop (German and English)
before 1770. Henry Dulheuer and Samuel Sower had published German
newspapers.
The German farmers in Western Maryland, although living in the
most peaceful relations with their neighbors of English and Irish
descent, were still a rather distinct and cohesive group. All sermons
in the Lutheran and Reformed churches of Frederick and Hagerstown
were held in German. John Gruber founded the famous Hagerstown
Almanack, which in its English edition is still published today. Mathias
Bartgis, the German printer in Frederick, operated a print shop and
published German papers in Western Maryland and Virginia.
We should not convey the impression that all these enterprises
were crowned with success. To be sure, the German edition of Gruber's
Almanack continued uninterruptedly for 121 years. But for most
other German newspapers it was an uphill fight and more often than
not they met defeat. Quite frequently, in fact, there was defeat from
the outset, as for John Frederick Amelung's attempt to produce beau-
tiful ornamental glass at a time when the country needed simple
window panes and medicine bottles. But mostly the defeats did not
break these pioneers; it just made them harder. They made a new
start and adjusted their ambitions to the demands of the day and of
the country.
While the German farmers in the Western counties began to lose
[15]
their German identity around 1830, the German element in Baltimore
received fresh blood through the immigration which began just around
that time. If we speak primarily in terms of statistics, German immi-
gration into the United States is predominantly a phenomenon of the
nineteenth century. Between 1830 and 1930 more than six million
Germans emigrated from Germany to the United States, and Baltimore
got a good share of them.
While in the eighteenth century people often came for religious
reasons, we now find quite often the political refugee among those
who arrived on the immigrant ships. The important part played by
the emigrating Forty-eighters is so well known that we do not have
to elaborate upon it. But the overwhelming majority of immigrants,
German or otherwise, came for economic reasons: skilled and unskilled
laborers, artisans and craftsmen, the butcher and baker, all those who
hoped that they would find their place in an expanding country and
an expanding society. They all were small people. The story of immi-
gration is the saga of the common man.
They did not always admit that they had come primarily because
they hoped to improve their economic status. Many of them made
a curious experience when they arrived. If the newcomer admitted
that he expected to earn more money in America, that here he would
get on his own feet earlier than at home, he often got the chilling reply:
"Don't think that in this country money grows on trees, you may
have to work harder here than at home." If, however, he said: "I
came because I love your democratic institutions, your form of govern-
ment, your religious tolerance," then everybody opened his arms:
"Brother, let me embrace you! Can I help you in any way? "
No matter what the real or pretended reason for their emigration
may have been, the various groups of German immigrants in Balti-
more developed their own institutions and their distinct social habits.
They founded their singing and gymnastic societies, carried on their
church activities in German, read their German newspapers, the
Correspondent and the Wecker and numerous others; they had their
charitable institutions and their banks and insurance companies, their
theatrical performances and literary circles; they celebrated together
and quarreled with each other in German, aware of their own German-
American identity and somewhat different from their neighbors, but
always respected and very seldom resented by these neighbors. They
preserved old customs and accepted new ones. By a very slow process
of acculturation and assimilation, without undue haste and stretching
over three or four generations, they became Americans. And only
because they were somewhat slow in becoming Americanized, they
were able to transmit to their fellow Americans certain values which
would have died in an all too rapid transition.
Around 1890 more than 32,000 Maryland residents were German-
born. In the City of Baltimore more than one fourth of the 360,000
white inhabitants belonged to the German-American sector of the
population, i. e., were either German-born or second generation German-
American. Like many other American cities, such as Philadelphia,
Cincinnati, Buffalo, St. Louis and numerous others, Baltimore had its
"Little Germany."
[16]
It was at this time that the "Society for the History of the
Germans in Maryland" was founded. The founding fathers must
have had some premonition that this flowering of German-American
activities was something transitory, that some day it would be history
and that then this history should be written. That is why they decided
"to gather, utilize, publish and preserve" material pertaining to the
history of the German element in the state.
The last third of the nineteenth century was the Golden Age of
the German-Americans. They, as Carl Schurz said in 1904, presented
"the living demonstration of the fact that a large population may be
devoted to the new fatherland for life and death, and yet preserve a
reverent love for the old."
Carl Schurz spoke of "life and death." In those happy five decades
between the Civil War and the First World War the German-Americans
could live for their new homeland. After 1914 they had to prove that
they were willing to die for it, that they were ready to fight for
it, even against the country to which they were still emotionally
attached, since it was the land of their ancestors. No other sizable
group in this country was ever confronted with such a painful decision.
They have often been severely criticized for what they did or failed
to do in the years of the First World War. But those who have never
felt the burden of such a trying test hardly have the right to sit in
judgment over the generation of the German-Americans of 1917. Once
the die was cast, once the diplomatic relations between the United
States and Germany were broken off, the course of the German-
Americans was clear. When they had to choose between the land of
their fathers and the land of their children, they left the past behind
and turned towards the future.
The German-Americans of 1930 were different from those of 1880.
The vast majority of them was second, third, fourth generation
American. Many of them had never seen Germany. They had a
friendly, but distant interest in Germany, and they kept alive the
folk traditions of their parents and grandparents in various clubs and
organizations. Whether native or immigrant, men with such names as
Schneidereith, Scholz, Stein, Dederer, Prior, Schuler, Dohme, Hofmann,
Steinmann, Kurtz, Becker, Franke, Evers, Mencken were respected as
substantial citizens. They dressed like the others, liked the same food,
spoke the same English; in fact, one of them, H. L. Mencken, spoke
a considerably better English than most of his countrymen. (He
himself would disagree here, since he claimed that he did not speak
English but American.) They all found their place in the social struc-
ture of the country. They all proved that they were ready to die for
and, what is equally important, capable of living a useful life in this
society. They were willing to live according to the "demands of the
day."
This is the story of the Germans in Maryland, and this is the story
which has been told in these seventy-five years by the "Society for
the History of the Germans in Maryland." It is the story of useful
citizens.
[17]
In the summer of 1948, when the manuscript of my study on
the Maryland Germans was already in the Princeton print shop,
I happened to re-read the novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, which
contains so much of the wisdom of the old Goethe. There I came
upon the following sentence: "It has often been said: 'Where I am
well, there is my homeland.' But, this comforting maxim were better
worded: 'Where I am useful, there is my homeland!' At home some-
one may be useless, and the fact will not be noticed at once. Abroad
in the world the useless person will soon be noticed. So, if I say:
'Try to be useful everywhere, to yourself and to others,' then this is
neither doctrine nor counsel, but the dictum of life itself."
I copied the passage quickly and rushed it to Princeton. And
I hope you will agree with me that it is an appropriate motto for
THE MARYLAND GERMANS
.
[ 18 ]
Joint Meeting of the
MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
AND THE
SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF THE GERMANS
IN MARYLAND
H. IRVINE KEYSER MEMORIAL
201 W. Monument Street, Baltimore 1, Maryland
October 8th, 1961
PROGRAM
Invocation........................... Rev. E. F. Engelbert
Welcome......................... Hon. George L. Radcliffe
Anniversary Remarks........................ A. E. Zucker
Address..................................... Dieter Cunz
MUSICAL PROGRAM
First Movement: Allegro
String Quartet, Op. 50, no. 6.................... Haydn
Old Black Joe.....................................Foster
Arranged for String Quartet by Pochon
Menuetto
String Quartet, No. 21, K.575................. .Mozart
Scherzo
String Quartet, Op. 41, No. 1................ Schumann
Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes. .......... Traditional
Arranged for String Quartet by Pochon
Finale
String Quartet, Op. 50, No. 6.................. Haydn
William Martin, First Violin
Cline Otey, Second Violin
Raymond Kinschner, Viola
Wallace Toroni, Cello
(Members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra)
The music is provided by courtesy of the Music
Performance Trust Fund and the Musical Union
of Baltimore City Local No. 40.
Refreshments in Main Gallery
75th ANNIVERSARY COMMITTEE
William Trammell Snyder, Chairman; Rev. Fritz O. Evers;
Otto H. Franke; F. W. Pramschufer, Sr.; C. W. Schneidereith
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