Cleansing German American Culture

By William B. Fischer

Oregon Live, November 08, 2008

World War I war bond posters depicted Germans in ways similar to
today's hate-group caricatures of Arab faces.

'11/11 11:11' was the 9/11 of 90 years ago "9/11": the cultural icon
of our fearful, belligerent age. But 90 years ago Tuesday another
national struggle found its own numeric cultural icon: "11/11 11:11" -
- the date and time of the armistice that ended the First World War,
at eleven minutes past the eleventh hour on 11 November, 1918.
Whether or not we are now engaged in a "clash of civilizations," the
war that 9/11 has brought us has been exceptional. We have examined
our consciences and we have raised our consciousnesses.

Even right after 9/11 we were most careful not to declare our enemy
to be Islam itself, much less American Muslims and Arab Americans. We
studied their culture and religion, learned to distinguish Shia and
Sunni. Students rushed to take Arabic, and the government rushed to
fund Middle-Eastern language and area studies programs.

But 11/11 11:11 was different. Along with victory over Kaiser
Wilhelm's Germany, it symbolizes something that began no later than
1914: the linguistic extinction and cultural devastation of the
largest ethnic minority in American history, the German American
population.

Picture an ethnic group which was then larger in proportion to the
American population than is the Hispanic community now. But as WWI
approached, that group was identified, in the minds of many other
Americans, with an ominous and superbly skilled enemy that, like the
al-Qaida and Taliban of our time, showed evident disdain for human
lives.

Then came an attack on a symbol of modern technology and commerce: In
1915 a German submarine sank the ocean liner Lusitania. Nearly 1,200
people died, among them 124 Americans. (Only much later did the
inconvenient truth emerge that the liner was secretly carrying
armaments to Britain.)

After America declared war, the pretense of neutrality gave way to
outright vilification. The German enemy, even in official
pronouncements, was the "Hun." German faces in war-bond posters then
looked as monstrous as Arab faces do in today's hate-group
caricatures. The Enemy was perceived to have an anti-democratic, anti-
Western world view, and to speak a difficult, "gutteral" language. In
Collinsville, Ill., a German-born drifter was lynched for uttering
pro-German sentiments.

Before 11/11 11:11 it had been possible to obtain, right here in the
United States, a complete education, through the college level, with
German as the chief language of instruction. Suddenly, even the
teaching of German as a high-school foreign language was outlawed in
many areas. Churches were pressured to change the language of their
services from German to English. Streets with German names were
renamed. Sauerkraut became "victory cabbage." Even earlier, in 1915,
Theodore Roosevelt had declared that there was no room in America
for "hyphenated Americans." President Wilson echoed him.

Northeastern Nebraska, the home of my parents and grandparents, was
then, and still is, a heavily German American area. My grandfather
was a minister who had come to the U.S. as a youth. He was educated
here, in German-speaking institutions. He became a citizen, and was
often invited to lead singing of the national anthem at public
events. Even so, he was required to travel some distance to give an
oath of loyalty. A gang entered his church, removed religious books
printed in German, and burned them. Such outrages were common, not
isolated incidents.

Of course, that was far from genocide, ethnic cleansing or
internment. The harsher treatment of thousands of Japanese Americans
in 1941 was not solely a consequence of racism, but also of
demographics. Internment of the millions of German Americans during
WWI would have emptied major cities and large parts of many states.

It's not just that the war effort would have suffered; the entire
national economy would have been destroyed. How could the many German
Americans in public office, including many mayors and police, have
carried out their own internment? And what about all those German
American soldiers, including one named Eisenhower?

German culture was then far more deeply rooted and widely spread
outside its ethnic base than the Arab Muslim or even Hispanic
cultures are now, or Japanese culture was in 1941. The arts and the
educational institutions would have been devastated by internment of
German American citizens or even just of German nationals long
resident in America. German-born scientists and technologists were
everywhere. Major league baseball would have been crippled by the
loss of Babe Ruth and the many other German American players.

So, the people stayed. But their language and culture were
extirpated. In that one sense, the Japanese Americans during WWII may
have had it better.

This "ethnicity cleansing" of German Americans, as it might be
called, was also assisted suicide. When WWI came, German Americans,
like Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, tried to prove their
loyalty by obvious signs of Americanization. They served in the
military, with distinction. Pershing, the supreme American commander,
was a German American. Not a few became rabid Americanizers and
cultural vigilantes. Shortly before my father died, he added
something to the story about the vandalism of my grandfather's
church: "Your mother's brother was one of the leaders of the gang."

The less virulent version of group self-rejection was a readiness --
not unique to German Americans then -- to quietly embrace the many
advantages the "melting pot" offered. Since many German Americans
were native speakers of English, and white, a superficial
assimilation was easy. Within a generation the deeper assimilation
became almost total. Not at the end of the war against the Nazis, as
many people believe, but rather with 11/11 11:11.

Today there is ample political and financial support to help keep the
hyphens, for those groups who still have theirs. Throughout the world
there is earnest talk of reparations and homelands and native-
language place names. So should German Americans clamor for a
national apology, or even reparations? Bury my heart at Lake Wobegon?

Let's not be silly. There is no way to revive a language and ethnic
identity that have vanished almost without trace. Perhaps, then,
symbolic reparation? Restore old German street names, just as we
liberally relabel other streets as "King" and "Naito"? Not enough
guilt, not enough votes, not enough German American ethnic pride, to
get Portland's Lafayette Street changed back to Frankfurt, and
Pershing back to Frederick. Giving back to our local Bush Street its
original name of Bismarck Street might have a little more appeal.

German Americans? We're history. No, they're history, because I am
scarcely one myself, and my children are not in the least. I learned
German in high school, as a "foreign" language. Two of my daughters
started Japanese in kindergarten -- hey! it's a German word! -- in a
school system where German language programs have all but died out.
It troubles me when my language students call me "Herr Fischer."

Yet we can derive a scrap of typically optimistic American self-
reassurance from 11/11 11:11. As we continue to deal with 9/11, it is
not solely the experience of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor
that can remind us to avoid the mistakes of the past -- and also
reassure us that our country has indeed come a long way since 1941.
We have come further still since 1918, since 11/11 11:11, which we
have largely forgotten.

Gott segne Amerika. And He has. I wonder what the Arab American and
Muslim American communities will look like in 2091, 90 years after
9/11. Pretty American, probably. But not totally American, I hope. A
hyphen is a terrible thing to waste.

William B. Fischer is a professor of German in the Department of
Foreign Languages & Literatures at Portland State University:
fischerw@pdx.edu  


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