THE TEUTONIC TIDE
As the Irish wave of immigration receded the Teutonic wave rose and
brought the second great influx of foreigners to American shores. A
greater ethnic contrast could scarcely be imagined than that which was
now afforded by these two races, the phlegmatic, plodding German and
the vibrant Irish, a contrast in American life as a whole which was
soon represented in miniature on the vaudeville stage by popular
burlesque representations of both types. The one was the opposite of
the other in temperament, in habits, in personal ambitions. The German
sought the land, was content to be let alone, had no desire to command
others or to mix with them, but was determined to be reliable,
philosophically took things as they came, met opposition with
patience, clung doggedly to a few cherished convictions, and sought
passionately to possess a home and a family, to master some minute
mechanical or technical detail, and to take his leisure and his
amusements in his own customary way.
The reports of the Immigration Commissioner disclose the fact that
well over five and a third millions of Germans migrated to America
between 1823 and 1910. If to this enormous number were added those of
German blood who came from Austria and the German cantons of
Switzerland, from Luxemburg and the German settlements of Russia, it
would reach a grand total of well over seven million Germans who have
sought an ampler life in America. The Census of 1910 reports "that
there were 8,282,618 white persons in the United States having Germany
as their country of origin, comprising 2,501,181 who were born in
Germany, 3,911,847 born in the United States both of whose parents
were born in Germany, and 1,869,590 born in the United States and
having one parent born in the United States and the other in
Germany."[25]
The coming of the Germans may be divided into three quite distinct
migrations: the early, the middle, and the recent. The first period
includes all who came before the radical ferment which began to
agitate Europe after the Napoleonic wars. The Federal census of 1790
discloses 176,407 Germans living in America. But German writers
usually maintain that there were from 225,000 to 250,000 Germans in
the colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence. They had
been driven from the fatherland by religious persecution and economic
want. Every German state contributed to their number, but the bulk of
this migration came from the Palatinate, Württemberg, Baden, and
Alsace, and the German cantons of Switzerland. The majority were of
the peasant and artisan class who usually came over as redemptioners.
Yet there were not wanting among them many persons of means and of
learning.
Pennsylvania was the favorite distributing point for these German
hosts. Thence they pushed southward through the beautiful Shenandoah
Valley into Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, and northward into
New Jersey. Large numbers entered at Charleston and thence went to the
frontiers of South Carolina. The Mohawk Valley in New York and the
Berkshires of Massachusetts harbored many. But not all of them moved
inland. They were to be found scattered on the coast from Maine to
Georgia. Boston, New York City, Baltimore, New Bern, Wilmington,
Charleston, and Savannah, all counted Germans in their populations.
However strictly these German neighborhoods may have maintained the
customs of their native land, the people thoroughly identified
themselves with the patriot cause and supplied soldiers, leaders,
money, and enthusiasm to the cause of the Revolutionary War.
Benjamin Rush, the distinguished Philadelphia physician and publicist,
one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in 1789 a
description of the Germans of Pennsylvania which would apply generally
to all German settlements at that time and to many of subsequent date.
The Pennsylvania German farmer, he says, was distinguished above
everything else for his self-denying thrift, housing his horses and
cattle in commodious, warm barns, while he and his family lived in a
log hut until he was well able to afford a more comfortable house;
selling his "most profitable grain, which is wheat" and "eating that
which is less profitable but more nourishing, that is, rye or Indian
corn"; breeding the best of livestock so that "a German horse is known
in every part of the State" for his "extraordinary size or fat";
clearing his land thoroughly, not "as his English or Irish neighbors";
cultivating the most bountiful gardens and orchards; living frugally,
working constantly, fearing God and debt, and rearing large families.
"A German farm may be distinguished," concludes this writer, "from the
farms of other citizens by the superior size of their barns, the plain
but compact form of their houses, the height of their enclosures, the
extent of their orchards, the fertility of their fields, the
luxuriance of their meadows, and a general appearance of plenty and
neatness in everything that belongs to them."[26] Rush's praise of the
German mechanics is not less stinted. They were found in that day
mainly as "weavers, taylors, tanners, shoe-makers, comb-makers, smiths
of all kinds, butchers, paper makers, watchmakers, and sugar bakers."
Their first desire was "to become freeholders," and they almost
invariably succeeded. German merchants and bankers also prospered in
Philadelphia, Germantown, Lancaster, and other Pennsylvania towns.
One-third of the population of Pennsylvania, Rush says, was of German
origin, and for their convenience a German edition of the laws of the
State was printed.
After the Revolution, a number of the Hessian hirelings who had been
brought over by the British settled in America. They usually became
farmers, although some of the officers taught school. They joined the
German settlements, avoiding the English-speaking communities in the
United States because of the resentment shown towards them. Their
number is unknown. Frederick Kapp, a German writer, estimates that, of
the 29,875 sent over, 12,562 never returned--but he fails to tell us
how many of these remained because of Yankee bullets or bayonets.
The second period of German migration began about 1820 and lasted
through the Civil War. Before 1830 the number of immigrants fluctuated
between 200 and 2000 a year; in 1832 it exceeded 10,000; in 1834 it
was over 17,000; three years later it reached nearly 24,000; between
1845 and 1860 there arrived 1,250,000, and 200,000 came during the
Civil War.
There were several causes, working in close conjunction, that impelled
these thousands to leave Germany. Economic disturbances doubtless
turned the thoughts of the hungry and harassed to the land of plenty
across the sea. But a potent cause of the great migration of the
thirties and forties was the universal social and political discontent
which followed in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. The German people
were still divided into numberless small feudalities whose petty dukes
and princes clung tenaciously to their medieval prerogatives and
tyrannies. The contest against Napoleon had been waged by German
patriots not only to overcome a foreign foe but to break the tyrant at
home. The hope for constitutional government, for a representative
system and a liberal legislation in the German States rose mightily
after Waterloo. But the promises of princes made in days of stress
were soon forgotten, and the Congress of Vienna had established the
semblance of a German federation upon a unity of reactionary rulers,
not upon a constitutional, representative basis.
The reaction against this bitter disappointment was led by the eager
German youth, who, inspired by liberal ideals, now thirsted for
freedom of thought, of speech, and of action. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a
German patriot, organized everywhere _Turnvereine_, or gymnastic
clubs, as a tangible form of expressing this demand. Among the
students of the universities liberal patriotic clubs called
_Burschenschaften_ were organized, idealistic in their aims and
impractical in their propaganda, where "every man with his bonnet on
his head, a pot of beer in his hand, a pipe or seegar in his mouth,
and a song upon his lips, never doubting but that he and his
companions are training themselves to be the regenerators of Europe,"
vowed "the liberation of Germany." Alas for the enthusiasms of youth!
In 1817 the _Burschenschaften_ held a mass reunion at the Wartburg.
Their boyish antics were greatly exaggerated in the conservative
papers and the governments increased their vigilance. In 1819
Kotzebue, a reactionary publicist, was assassinated by a member of the
Jena _Burschenschaft_, and the retaliation of the government was
prompt and thoroughly Prussian--gagging of the press and of speech,
dissolution of all liberal organizations, espionage, the hounding of
all suspects. There seemed to remain only flight to liberal democratic
America. But the suppression of the clubs did not entirely put out
the fires of constitutional desires. These smoldered until the storms
of '48 fanned them into a fitful blaze. For a brief hour the German
Democrat had the feudal lords cowed. Frederick William, the "romantic"
Hohenzollern, promised a constitution to the threatening mob in
Berlin; the King of Saxony and the Grand Duke of Bavaria fled their
capitals; revolts occurred in Silesia, Posen, Hesse-Cassel, and
Nassau. Then struck the first great hour of modern Prussia, as, with
her heartless and disciplined soldiery, she restored one by one the
frightened dukes and princes to their prerogatives and repressed
relentlessly and with Junker rigor every liberal concession that had
crept into laws and institutions. Strangled liberalism could no longer
breathe in Germany, and thousands of her revolutionists fled to
America, bringing with them almost the last vestige of German
democratic leadership.
In the meantime, economic conditions in Germany remained
unsatisfactory and combined with political discontent to uproot a
population and transplant it to a new land. The desire to immigrate,
stimulated by the transportation companies, spread like a fever. Whole
villages sold out and, with their pastor or their physician at their
head, shipped for America. A British observer who visited the Rhine
country in 1846 commented on "the long files of carts that meet you
every mile, carrying the whole property of these poor wretches who are
about to cross the Atlantic on the faith of a lying prospectus." But
these people were neither "poor wretches" nor dupes. They had coin in
their pockets, and in their heads a more or less accurate knowledge of
the land of their desires. At this time the German bookshops were
teeming with little volumes giving, in the methodical Teutonic
fashion, conservative advice to prospective immigrants and rather
accurate descriptions of America, with statistical information and
abstracts of American laws. Many of the immigrants had further
detailed information from relatives and friends already prospering on
western farms or in rapidly growing towns. This was, therefore, far
from a pauper invasion. It included every class, even broken-down
members of the nobility. The majority were, naturally, peasants and
artisans, but there were multitudes of small merchants and farmers.
And the political refugees included many men of substantial property
and of notable intellectual attainments.[27]
Bremen was the favorite port of departure for these German emigrants
to America. Havre, Hamburg, and Antwerp were popular, and even London.
During the great rush every ship was overcrowded and none was over
sanitary. Steerage passengers were promiscuously crowded together and
furnished their own food; and the ship's crew, the captain, the agents
who negotiated the voyage, and the sharks who awaited their arrival in
America, all had a share in preying upon the inexperience of the
immigrants. Arrived in America, these Germans were not content to
settle, like dregs, in the cities on the seacoast. They were land
lovers, and westward they started at once, usually in companies,
sometimes as whole communities, by way of the Erie Canal and the Great
Lakes, and later by the new railway lines, into Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Iowa, where their
instinct for the soil taught them to select the most fertile spots.
Soon their log cabins and their ample barns and flourishing stock
bespoke their success.
The growing Western cities called to the skilled artisan, the small
tradesman, and the intellectuals. Cincinnati early became a German
center. In 1830 the Germans numbered five per cent of its population;
in 1840, twenty-three per cent; and in 1869, thirty-four per cent.
Milwaukee, "the German Athens," as it was once called, became the
distributing point of German immigration and influence in the
Northwest. Its _Gesangvereine_ and _Turnvereine_ became as famous as
its lager beer, and German was heard more frequently than English upon
its streets. St. Louis was the center of a German influence that
extended throughout the Missouri Valley. Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit,
Buffalo, and many of the minor towns in the Middle West received
substantial additions from this migration.
Unlike the Irish, the Germans brought with them a strange language,
and this proved a strong bond in that German solidarity which
maintained itself in spite of the influence of their new environment.
In the glow of their first enthusiasm many of the intellectuals
believed they could establish a German state in America. "The
foundations of a new and free Germany in the great North American
Republic shall be laid by us," wrote Follenius, the dreamer, who
desired to land enough Germans in "one of the American territories to
establish an essentially German state." In 1833 the Giessener
Gesellschaft, a company organized in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, grew
out of this suggestion and chose Arkansas as the site for its colony.
But unfavorable reports turned the immigrants to Missouri, where
settlements were made. These, however, never grew into a German state
but merged quite contentedly into the prosperous American population.
A second attempt, also from Hesse, had a tragic dénouement. A number
of German nobles formed a company called the Mainzer Adelsverein and
in 1842 sent two of their colleagues to Texas to seek out a site. The
place chosen was ill-suited for a colony, however, and the whole
enterprise from beginning to end was characterized by princely
incompetence. Thousands of immigrants, lured by the company's liberal
offers and glowing prospectus, soon found themselves in dire want;
many perished of disease and hunger; and the company ended in
ignominious disaster. The surviving colonists in Texas, however, when
they realized that they must depend upon their own efforts, succeeded
in finding work and eventually in establishing several flourishing
communities.
Finally, Wisconsin and Illinois were considered as possible sites for
a Germany in America. But this ambition never assumed a concrete form.
Everywhere the Americans, with their energy and organizing capacity,
had preceded the incoming Germans and retained the political
sovereignty of the American state.
But while they did not establish a German state, these immigrants did
cling to their customs wherever they settled in considerable numbers.
Especially did they retain their original social life, their
_Turnvereine_, their musical clubs, their sociable beer gardens, their
picnics and excursions, their churches and parochial schools. They
still celebrated their Christmas and other church festivals with
German cookery and _Kuchen_, and their weddings and christenings were
enlivened but rarely debauched with generous libations of lager beer
and wine. In the Middle West were whole regions where German was the
familiar language for two generations.
There were three strata to this second German migration. The earlier
courses were largely peasants and skilled artisans, those of the
decade of the Civil War were mostly of the working classes, and
between these came the "Forty-eighters." Upon them all, however,
peasant, artisan, merchant, and intellectual, their experiences in
their native land had made a deep impression. They all had a
background of political philosophy the nucleus of which was individual
liberty; they all had a violent distaste for the petty tyrannies and
espionages which contact with their own form of government had
produced; and in coming to America they all sought, besides farms and
jobs, political freedom. They therefore came in humility, bore in
patience the disappointments of the first rough contacts with pioneer
America and its nativism, and few, if any, cherished the hope of going
back to Germany. Though some of the intellectual idealists at first
had indefinite enthusiasms about a _Deutschtum_ in America, these
visions soon vanished. They expressed no love for the governments they
had left, however strong the cords of sentiment bound them to the
domestic and institutional customs of their childhood.
This was to a considerable degree an idealistic migration and as such
it had a lasting influence upon American life. The industry of these
people and their thrift, even to paring economy, have often been
extolled; but other nationalities have worked as hard and as
successfully and have spent as sparingly. The special contribution to
America which these Germans made lay in other qualities. Their artists
and musicians and actors planted the first seeds of æsthetic
appreciation in the raw West where the repertoire had previously been
limited to _Money Musk_, _The Arkansas Traveler_, and _Old Dog Tray_.
The liberal tendencies of German thought mellowed the austere
Puritanism of the prevalent theology. The respect which these people
had for intellectual attainments potently influenced the educational
system of America from the kindergarten to the newly founded state
universities. Their political convictions led them to espouse with
ardor the cause of the Union in the war upon slavery; and their sturdy
independence in partisan politics was no small factor in bringing
about civil service reform. They established German newspapers by the
hundreds and maintained many German schools and German colleges. They
freely indulged their love for German customs. But while their
sentimentalism was German, their realism was American. They considered
it an honor to become American citizens. Their leaders became American
leaders. Carl Schurz was not an isolated example. He was associated
with a host of able, careful, constructive Germans.
The greatest quarrels of these German immigrants with American ways
were over the so-called "Continental Sabbath" and the right to drink
beer when and where they pleased. "Only when his beer is in danger,"
wrote one of the leading Forty-eighters, "does the German-American
rouse himself and become a berserker." The great numbers of these men
in many cities and in some of the Western States enabled them to have
German taught in the public schools, though it is only fair to say
that the underlying motive was liberalism rather than Prussian
provincialism. Frederick Kapp, a distinguished interpreter of the
spirit of these Forty-eighters, expressed their conviction when he
said that those who cared to remain German should remain in Germany
and that those who came to America were under solemn obligations to
become Americans.
The descendants of these immigrants, the second and the third and
fourth generations, are now thoroughly absorbed into every phase of
American life. Their national idiosyncrasies have been modified and
subdued by the gentle but relentless persistence of the English
language and the robust vigor of American law and American political
institutions.
After 1870 a great change came over the German immigration. More and
more industrial workers, but fewer and fewer peasants, and very rarely
an intellectual or a man of substance, now appeared at Ellis Island
for admission to the United States.[28] The facilities for migrating
were vastly increased by the great transatlantic steamship companies.
The new Germans came in hordes even outnumbering the migrations of the
fifties. From 1870 to 1910 over three and a quarter millions arrived.
The highest point of the wave, however, was reached in 1882, when
250,630 German immigrants entered the United States. Thereafter the
number rapidly subsided; the lowest ebb, in 1898, brought only 17,111,
but from that time until the Great War the number of annual arrivals
fluctuated between 25,000 and 40,000.
The majority of those who came in the earlier part of this period made
their way to the Western lands. The Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa,
and the Far West, still offered alluring opportunities. But as these
lands were gradually taken, the later influx turned towards the
cities. Here the immigrants not only found employment in those trades
and occupations which the Germans for years had virtually monopolized,
but they also became factory workers in great numbers, and many of
them went into the mining regions.
It soon became apparent that the spirit of this latest migration was
very different from that of the earlier ones. "I do not believe,"
writes a well-informed and patriotic Lutheran pastor in 1917, "that
there is one among a thousand that has emigrated on account of
dissatisfaction with the German Government during the last forty-five
years." Humility on the part of these newcomers now gradually gave way
to arrogance. Instead of appearing eager to embrace their new
opportunities, they criticized everything they found in their new
home. The contemptuous hauteur and provincial egotism of the modern
Prussian, loathsome enough in the educated, were ridiculous in the
poor immigrants. Gradually this Prussian spirit increased. In 1883 it
could still be said of the three hundred German-American periodicals,
daily, weekly, and monthly, that in their tone they were thoroughly
American. But ten or fifteen years later changes were apparent. In
1895 there were some five hundred German periodicals published in
America, and many of the newer ones were rabidly Germanophile. The
editors and owners of the older publications were dying out, and new
hands were guiding the editorial pens. Often when there was no
American-born German available, an editor was imported fresh from
Germany. He came as a German from a new Germany--that Prussianized
Germany which unmasked itself in August, 1914, and which included in
its dream of power the unswerving and undivided loyalty of all Germans
who had migrated. The traditional American indifference and good
nature became a shield for the Machiavellian editors who now began to
write not for the benefit of America but for the benefit of Germany.
Political scandals, odious comparisons of American and German methods,
and adroit criticisms of American ways were the daily pabulum fed to
the German reader, who was left with the impression that everything in
the United States was wrong, while everything in Germany was right.
Before the United States entered the Great War, there was a most
remarkable unanimity of expression among these German publications;
afterwards, Congress found it necessary to enact rigorous laws against
them. As a result, many of them were suppressed, and many others
suspended publication.
German pastors, also, were not infrequently imported and brought with
them the virus of the new Prussianism. This they injected into their
congregations and especially into the children who attended their
catechetical instruction. German "exchange professors," in addition to
their university duties, usually made a pilgrimage of the cities where
the German influence was strong. The fostering of the German language
became no longer merely a means of culture or an appurtenance to
business but was insisted upon as a necessity to keep alive the German
spirit, _der Deutsche Geist_. German parents were warned, over and
over again, that once their children lost their language they would
soon lose every active interest in _Kultur_. The teaching of German in
the colleges and universities assumed, undisguised and unashamed, the
character of Prussian propaganda. The new immigrants from Germany were
carefully protected from the deteriorating effect of American
contacts, and, unlike the preceding generations of German immigrants,
they took very little part in politics. Those who arrived after 1900
refused, usually, to become naturalized.
The diabolical ingenuity of the German propaganda was subsequently
laid bare, and it is known today that nearly every German club,
church, school, and newspaper from about 1895 onward was being
secretly marshaled into a powerful Teutonic homogeneity of sentiment
and public opinion. The Kaiser boasted of his political influence
through the German vote. The German-American League, incorporated by
Congress, had its branches in many States. Millions of dollars were
spent by the Imperial German Government to corrupt the millions of
German birth in America. These disclosures, when they were ultimately
made, produced in the United States a sharp and profound reaction
against everything Teutonic. The former indifference completely
vanished and hyphen-hunting became a popular pastime. The charter of
the German-American League was revoked by Congress. City after city
took German from its school curriculum. Teutonic names of towns and
streets were erased--half a dozen Berlins vanished overnight--and in
their places appeared the names of French, British, and American
heroes.
But though the names might be erased, the German element remained. It
had become incorporated into the national bone and sinew, contributing
its thoroughness, stolidity, and solidity to the American stock. The
power of liberal political institutions in America has been revealed,
and thousands upon thousands of the sons and grandsons of German
immigrants crossed the seas in 1917 and 1918 to bear aloft the starry
standard upon the fields of Flanders against the arrogance and
brutality of the neo-Prussians.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 25: According to the Census of 1910 the nationality of the
total number of white persons of foreign stock in the United States is
distributed chiefly as follows:
Germany 8,282,618 or 25.7 per cent
Ireland 4,504,360 or 14.0 " "
Canada 2,754,615 or 8.6 " "
Russia 2,541,649 or 7.9 " "
England 2,322,442 or 7.2 " "
Italy 2,098,360 or 6.5 " "
Austria 2,001,559 or 6.2 " "
Furthermore, the significance of the foreign born element in the
population of the United States can be gathered from the fact that, in
1910, of the 91,972,266 inhabitants of the United States, no less than
13,515,836 or 14.6 per cent were born in some other country.]
[Footnote 26: _An Account of the Manners of the German Inhabitants of
Pennsylvania._]
[Footnote 27: J.G. Häcker, a well-informed and prosperous German who
took the journey by steerage in a sailing vessel in 1849, wrote an
instructive description of his experiences. Of his fellow passengers
he said: "Our company was very mixed. There were many young people:
clerks, artists, musicians, architects, miners, mechanics, men of
various professions, peasants, one man seventy-eight years old,
another very aged Bavarian farmer, several families of Jews, etc., and
a fair collection of children."]
[Footnote 28: There were three potent reasons for this migration:
financial stringency, overpopulation, and the growing rigor of the
military service. Over ten thousand processes a year were issued by
the German Government in 1872 and 1873 for evasion of military duty.
Germans who had become naturalized American citizens were arrested
when they returned to the Fatherland for a visit on the charge of
having evaded military service. A treaty between the two countries
finally adjusted this difficulty.]