Philadelphia's Germans : from colonial settlers to enemy aliens 2021030996, 9781793651792, 9781793651815, 9781793651808, 1793651795, 1793651817

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Notes
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Author Notes
Notes
Chapter 1: Finding a Place in a New World (1682–1865)
With the Union Army
Notes
Chapter 2: A More Distant War—and Closer Peace (1866–1871)
The Franco-Prussian War
Notes
Chapter 3: Welcoming More Germans (1871–1881)
Philadelphia and Beyond
Citizens, Voters, and Candidates
Beer, Music, and “Jolly Germans”
Temperance and the Sabbath
Judging the Germans
Notes
Chapter 4: Liquor, Labor, and Politics (1882–1890)
Serving Needy Germans
Relocating and Adjusting
Politics and Labor
Temperance and Personal Liberty
New Initiatives, Old Images, New Self-Images
Notes
Chapter 5: German and Philadelphian (1891–1900)
Scenes of Daily Life
German Day
Language and Assimilation
Religion and the Germans
Becoming American; Remaining German
Power and Politics
Organizing Deutscher Michel
German Hospitality
Other Losses
Cholera and Immigration Restriction
Foreign Affairs and Political Loyalty
Hardy People—Good Citizens
Under a Scholarly Lens
At the End of the Nineteenth Century
Notes
Chapter 6: Germans in Tongue; Americans in Heart and Soul (1901–1916)
German Day: Ethnicity as a Commodity
War Comes to Europe
German and American
Notes
Chapter 7: The War against Enemy Aliens (1917–1918)
The Coming of War
Spies and Saboteurs
Restriction, Registration, and Internment
Confiscating Wealth and Property
The Palmer Postscript
Notes
Chapter 8: America’s First “Culture War”
The National German American Alliance
Foreign Voices
The Pastorius Monument
Notes
Chapter 9: Indemnities and Restoration
Notes
Epilogue
Appendix
Bibliography
Newspapers
Government Documents
Periodical Reference Works
Books
Articles
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

Philadelphia’s Germans

Philadelphia’s Germans From Colonial Settlers to Enemy Aliens

Richard N. Juliani

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2021 by Richard N. Juliani. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Juliani, Richard N., author. Title: Philadelphia’s Germans : from colonial settlers to enemy aliens / by Richard N. Juliani. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021030996 | ISBN 9781793651792 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793651815 (paperback) | ISBN 9781793651808 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: German Americans—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia—History—19th century. | German Americans—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia—History—20th century. | Germans—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia—History—19th century. | Germans— Pennsylvania—Philadelphia—History—20th century. | Immigrants—Pennsylvania— Philadelphia—History—19th century. | Immigrants—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia— History—20th century. | German Americans—Ethnic identity. | Philadelphia (Pa.)—History. Classification: LCC F158.9.G3 J85 2021 | DDC 305.83/10748—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030996 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Conceptualizing the German American Experience

1

1 Finding a Place in a New World (1682–1865)

5

2 A More Distant War—and Closer Peace (1866–1871)

25

3 Welcoming More Germans (1871–1881)

39

4 Liquor, Labor, and Politics (1882–1890)

63

5 German and Philadelphian (1891–1900)

101

6 Germans in Tongue; Americans in Heart and Soul (1901–1916)

157

7 The War against Enemy Aliens (1917–1918)

193

8 America’s First “Culture War”

237

9 Indemnities and Restoration

273

Epilogue: A Search for Meaning

281

Appendix: Studying the German American Experience—A Brief Biographical Essay

291

Bibliography 303 Index 311 About the Author

327 v

List of Illustrations

Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 3.1 Figure 4.1 Figure 5.1 Figure 5.2 Figure 5.3 Figure 5.4 Figure 5.5 Figure 5.6 Figure 6.1 Figure 6.2 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 8.1 Figure E.1

General John F. Ballier Brigadier General Henry Bohlen Colonel Francis Mahler Philadelphia Schuetzen Verein Reverend Adolph Spaeth U.S. Congressman Frederick Halterman Cannstatter Volksfest Verein at Washington Park (1897) Charles H. Reisser Godfrey Keebler Editorial Cartoon: Philadelphia Saengerfest (1897) Festive Turners March Advertisement—Wanamaker’s German Day Advertisement—Wanamaker’s German Day Charles J. Hexamer A German American Alliance Warning Sign—Forbidding Enemy Aliens How All of Us Feel—To Hell with the Kaiser Corporal Frank William Reinhart

vii

18 19 20 59 90 112 120 124 129 134 142 166 168 195 196 211 249 286

Preface

It is often instructive to know how any particular work came to be written. In the present case, it may have begun with a widely respected Philadelphian of German descent who, despite being the head of one of the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world, remained quite mindful of the difficulties that his family had endured a half century earlier. At a board meeting of a research center for the study of ethnic life in America, he mentioned that German Americans had been treated very badly during that time. His remark not only came as a surprise to others in the room but would not leave the memory of at least one of them. More than thirty years later, as I began research on how the Great War of 1914–1918 affected Philadelphia, the more that I read about those times, the strvonger my recall of his words became. My own parents, despite my mother having lived in America for over thirty-five years and my father for twenty years, became “enemy aliens,” required to carry identification cards and report annually to an office of the Justice Department in the early 1940s. I was only vaguely aware of it at the time, before becoming more so in later years, as I learned how difficult the lives of the foreign-born had sometimes been in ways that most other Americans knew little or nothing about. Although neither of my parents was ever interned as Japanese Americans and their families and some Germans and Italians were during World War II, I became concerned that such treatment ever happened. It is especially ironic that the sons of those families were highly decorated members of the armed forces of the United States during that war. Many of them never survived the struggle against America’s real enemies or returned from the battlefields to rejoin their own families. As the plight of German Americans in what was intended to be a brief reflection on local history evolved into the present study, while previous writers had examined much of this experience, I became convinced that we needed ix

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to become even more fully reacquainted with it. Recent events have made many Americans wary of people from other parts of the world who as visitors, resident aliens, or even citizens seem to be “different” in some sense. Such fears evoke great parallels with earlier episodes of our history. Especially after the United States entered the war in April 1917, some Germans were believed to pose a threat to America. But the German American population as a whole, which included some of the oldest families in the nation, did not; and their sons who fought and died as American soldiers in the Great War of 1914– 1918 did not. It is these people that this work seeks to have us remember. T. S. Eliot once observed that “a people without a history is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern of timeless moments.” But in seeking what constitutes that “pattern of timeless moments,” we must decide what are the right elements and how they relate to each other. Marc Bloch, a great historian of an earlier era argued that “in the last analysis it is human consciousness which is the subject matter of history. The interrelations, confusions, and infections of human consciousness are, for history, reality itself.” But while a proposed study might include the right issues, historical research may be blocked by the unavailability of data. But historians tend to find a body of information and then ask what questions do these data answer. In contrast, sociologists, who study populations of still-living subjects, can frame questions that they deem to be worth raising, ask what kinds of data are needed to answer those questions, and then devise a methodology that generates those data.1 Since the time of Max Weber, sociologists have recognized that their research must be soaked in history. By the same token, good history is facilitated by the use of sociology to organize data. With the erasure of boundaries between history and sociology, fresh perspectives provide space for such new fields as Peter Burke calls “historical anthropology.” In seeking to recreate the past, the present study often relies upon a rich, but risky, resource—press coverage of events—as a prism through which they were refracted—but with a critical, rather than a blind, acceptance. As Bloch warned long ago, the newspaper as a source can put research on a sometimes treacherous course. While we might wish that newspapers would be nothing less than faithfully accurate cameras that capture and reveal history, they frequently, by their choice of what news to cover, placement of published articles, and use of language, become more like projectors that construct and cast the news of events. And if so, as newspapers, by their substance and tone become part of the narrative, it becomes necessary for caution to replace naïveté. But whatever its liabilities, the newspaper as a means of communication in the modern era has become a part of the process of history. It is with this understanding and in this spirit that we use this medium in a manner which even Bloch would have approved.2

Preface

xi

Whether as history or sociology, critical reflection remains a dangerous undertaking. For those who would ignore or deny what might be learned from it, their consciousness of past and present is limited or distorted. For those who celebrate a “heritage,” which offers a mythic, but comforting reconstruction while fleeing from actual events, their nostalgia can never rise above being anything more than a distraction for a public that has lost faith in the future. As we examine our cultural history, especially when it becomes uncomfortable, it is good to remember such cautions. It is within this spirit that the present work was conceived and conducted. NOTES 1. Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1992), 89. 2. Peter Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

Acknowledgments

I would be seriously remiss if I failed to acknowledge the advice, criticism, and encouragement that have been graciously and generously provided by a number of friends and colleagues over the time during which this study was being written. Daniel E. Hebding paused his busy teaching schedule and Albert Brancato interrupted his work with the German government to offer very early feedback of a preliminary version of this manuscript. Subsequently, James Niessen offered his criticism of a later version. Joseph Casino, who has attended the annual Cannstatter Harvest Festival every year since the early 1960s, was also well qualified to comment on the research and writing. Along the way, Spencer Di Scala has frequently responded to the intellectual and emotional angst of the author. I also need to thank Rachel Schaller for her indispensible advice and support on the preparation of this manuscript and Jutta Seibert for being an unfailing source on matters related to German culture and language. Similarly, Michael G. Ehrenreich and Charles Ladner, old and dear friends, have both long and proudly shared their more personal insights and experiences from within the group being studied. I especially wish to acknowledge the influence of the late Jim Bergquist, a colleague who taught me much about the German experience in Pennsylvania and should have been the author of a book like this one. I also wish to express my sincere appreciation to Eric Kuntzman as an editor who supported this work from its initial proposal, and Mikayla Mislak, as a production supervisor who gave meticulous attention to its final details at Lexington Books. And of course, none of my work escapes the invaluable response of my most trusted reader, critic and patient wife, Sandra P. Juliani, whose contributions can never be fully or adequately measured. I suspect that there have been other scholars and friends who have helped to facilitate my work, but who have been momentarily forgotten. To all of them I am most grateful.

xiii

Introduction Conceptualizing the German American Experience

The historian often discovers that a “conceptual model” is necessary to organize a myriad of details into a more efficient understanding of some particular subject matter. It is certainly true with the long story of the Germans as an immigrant group within the context of America as a society. The present research rests upon such an analytical scheme. It proposes six major dimensions of immigrant life and adjustment: (1) intentions (why did they leave their homeland; why did they come to any particular destination; and what did they expect to find at that destination); (2) images (how were they seen by Americans already here; how did it affect their adjustment to America); (3) identity (how did they see themselves; how did they see other immigrants from their own homeland; and how did they see other Americans); (4) interactions (what kinds of contact did they have with each other; what encounters did they have with other peoples; and what happened over time in these relationships); (5) cultural patterns and institutions (what did they bring with them from their homeland; what is left of what they brought; what did they build for themselves in adjusting to their destination; and what did they leave in impact on their new setting); and (6) the structural context of their new society (what material opportunities were available to them; what restraints were imposed on where and how they could live, work, and participate in their new locations; what were the economic and political boundaries of their settlement and adjustment). While relevant to any immigrant group, our intention is to apply this scheme, at least part of it, to the Germans who came to Philadelphia. In regard to the legacy of earlier scholars who have already explored the subject, the aim is simply “to expand the canvas.” To put the matter in even simpler terms, what is it that we seek to know better about the German American experience? 1

2

Introduction

In using this paradigm as a heuristic device, it becomes apparent that the six dimensions which have been introduced are variables that challenge the researcher. For example, the intentions of Germans as emigrants may have been an urgent aspect of their lives, but remain relatively inaccessible as data. How are we to know the “interior life” of Germans in the eighteenth century? Meanwhile, as one concern fades from relevance, virtually disappearing as a visible aspect of the narrative, another focus, such as the interactions of Germans with their Anglo-American neighbors, becomes a more important part of their experience. Thus, in the chapters that follow, it cannot be expected that each factor carries equal weight but rather varies in relevance and salience within a kaleidoscopic framework. It is similarly important to note that Germans, like other immigrant populations, existed in two parallel environments. The opportunities and limitations, the more “objective” material conditions, in which they found themselves provided the first dimension of their existential world. But the more subjective perceptions and judgments of others around them, providing for what a modified version of what W. I. Thomas called the “definition of the situation,” was no less real.1 And at times, this social psychological milieu of a constructed reality springing from the minds of others might even be more important in determining their lives. And while churches and synagogues, particularly in messages delivered from their pulpits, and legislative bodies by their enactments, and other government agencies by policies and implementation, as well as more private opinions expressed by citizens, also contributed their views, no institution more frequently and visibly described and assessed German character and behavior than the major newspapers of great cities. And by doing so, such portrayals in news coverage, editorials, feature articles, photographs, and even cartoons emerged as a principal instrument in “framing” the reality of German American life in urban America.2 In seeking to re-create the past, the present study often relies upon a rich, but risky, resource—press coverage of people and events—as a prism through which they were refracted—but with a critical, rather than a blind, acceptance. As Marc Bloch warned long ago, the newspaper as a source can put research on a sometimes treacherous course. But while we can see the newspaper as a liability, we can just as easily see it as an opportunity. Therefore, it cannot be quickly dismissed, but must be regarded as an important voice of its time. And while we might wish that newspapers would be nothing less than faithfully accurate cameras that capture and reveal history, we must remain aware that by their choice of what to cover, along with their placement of published articles and use of language become more like projectors that construct and cast the news of events. And if so, as newspapers by their substance and tone become part of the narrative, it becomes necessary

Introduction

3

for caution to replace naïveté. But whatever its limitations, the newspaper as a means of communication in the modern era has become a part of the process of history. It is with this understanding that we use this medium, especially when “cross-examined,” as Bloch advised, and in a manner of which he would have approved.3 The present narrative of German experience traces the journey of people who arrived in a virtual “dead heat” with the Anglo settlers of William Penn’s colonial experiment. But their adjustment and much of their future would be rooted in their reasons for leaving their homeland. They had fled a repressive state and restrictive society with the belief that they would find more promising opportunities and freedoms in America. They had not come seeking to control a new society, but to build their own self-contained community in a relatively isolated setting in which they would transplant their traditional customs and institutions. In this manner, they hoped to maintain continuity with their past along with the integrity of their present life. Instead, they faced, like new arrivals from other parts of Europe, a demand to become assimilated. But rather than quietly becoming American, they would declare a more complicated identity as they settled into the routines of life in Philadelphia. Assimilation was not a passive process that merely happened to them as immigrants, but one in which they became active agents in their adjustment to a new society. Seeking to maintain ties with their original culture, and at times to assert its superiority, they pushed back against what was being imposed by the “host society” and pursued their own course of becoming German Americans. Their elaborate and well-organized institutions enabled them to become a force that had to be reckoned with in local and national politics; and often expressing their presence by exuberant public celebrations, they challenged Anglo hegemony. But they also placed themselves in a position of vulnerability that would eventually become exposed under the duress of the Great War. While most German Americans followed an exemplary course of loyalty and service in military and civilian roles, the circumspect expression of heritage by others would invoke broader suspicions. And despite once being marked as a “model minority,” preferred as newcomers to other immigrant groups, German Americans were redefined by less tolerant political and cultural expectations, as a nation, galvanized by wartime exigencies, recast them as hyphenated “aliens” who threatened safety and security. Our account ends with the events of that moment not because German Americans ceased to exist, but because they had reached a decisive terminus as a foreign population of immigrant origins. And to pursue them any further as an ethnic group in subsequent years, as valuable as that might be, not only goes beyond the scope of the present undertaking but would require another book of similar length.

4

Introduction

AUTHOR NOTES The use of both “Schützen” and “Schuetzen” in this study reflects how these words appeared in sources at the time of the events being described. “Schützen” referred to the members of a local rifle club and “Schützen Verein” to their club, while “Schuetzen Park” was the spelling used for the local site where their activities took place. It is consistent with newspaper usage of the past and archival practices of the present. NOTES 1. For the original formulation of “the definition of the situation,” see W. I. Thomas, The Unadjusted Girl (Boston: Little, Brown, 1923). 2. In the case of Philadelphia, The Inquirer, founded in 1829, provided coverage of German life since the early nineteenth century. At one point, it would claim to have the second largest circulation among all morning papers in the nation. The Evening Ledger, a relative late comer, greatly expanded available information, after it first appeared as an evening newspaper in September 1914. Retitled as The Evening Public Ledger in December 1917, it would remain independent in reportorial and editorial staff from The Public Ledger, a morning daily paper, published since 1836, although both belonged to the Public Ledger Corporation. Although the city had numerous other newspapers, we have relied, for reasons of accessibility, mainly on The Inquirer for information for early years, but also The Evening Ledger/Evening Public Ledger after its founding. 3. For Marc Bloch’s indispensable critique of the sources of historical evidence, see The Historian’s Craft (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1992). For pertinent comment on newspapers in World War I, see pp. 89–91.

Chapter 1

Finding a Place in a New World (1682–1865)

From its earliest days, America has been challenged by the problem of peacefully integrating its diverse population. During colonial days, the confrontation of foreign settlers with indigenous peoples initiated a need to find a solution to social and political matters that remained to be fully resolved. The importing of African slaves established similarly formidable and enduring consequences. And beyond these “original sins,” while many newcomers came from the British Isles, vast numbers of immigrants further complicated matters in later years. It is not an incidental aspect of the struggle to become a cohesive society that the motto “E pluribus unum” emerged during the years of nation building. The challenge of finding national unity, order, and security would often erupt in regrettable chapters of the American past. In the case of German Americans, it was part of the much longer and broader experience that began with their early history. For German settlers in colonial Pennsylvania, their first task was to find a place in which they could stake their claim within the spatial and cultural boundaries of a new society. In their pursuit of that objective, Germans would achieve great success. When William Penn arrived in October 1682, some 3,000 Swedes, Dutch, Finns, and English had already settled on the banks of the Delaware River. An early author could declare: “The diversity of people, religions, nations and languages here is prodigious”; with Germans, Swedes, or Dutch comprising half of that population by 1750. Pennsylvania had “indisputably carried off the palm” as the most diversified colony by the time of the War for American Independence. George Washington would write: “Pennsylvania is a large state, and from the policy of its founder, and especially from the great celebrity of Philadelphia, has become the general receptacle of foreigners from all countries and of all descriptions.” But as early as 1726, with many settlers from the Palatine, James Logan, Penn’s Irish Quaker associate, noted: “We 5

6

Chapter 1

shall soon have a German colony.” The eminent architect, Jean Nicholas Louis Durand reportedly informed the Duke of Choiseul, France’s foreign minister, that “Germans, weary of subordination to England and unwilling to serve under English officers, openly declared that Pennsylvania would one day be called Little Germany.” And Benjamin Franklin, providing the bestknown objection, would ask, “Why should the Palatinate boors be allowed to swarm into our settlements, and, by herding together, establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvanian, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglicizing them?” But Franklin’s hostility failed to discourage German arrivals, who would lay claim to a special place, accompanied by a particular tension with the English, within the Pennsylvania colony.1 German Quakers and Mennonites, with Francis Daniel Pastorius, a member of a prominent Lutheran family of Franconia, as their agent and organizer, seeking to avoid religious persecution in their homeland, who arrived in 1683, only a year after Penn, represented the second founding of Pennsylvania. Having obtained a parcel of land in a northwestern corner of what would later become the city of Philadelphia, their farms, gradually spreading into the countryside, provided much of the food needed by the more concentrated English settlement on the Delaware. With gratuitous hyperbole, they were described as “an extremely industrious type” who produced various goods as their community became a center of early manufacturing.2 While Germans would be recognized as the first colonials to condemn slavery, their call to mobilize against the British in August 1775, nearly a year before the Continental Congress severed ties with England, deserves similar attention. Their leaders, along with the boards of Lutheran and German Reformed Churches, had prepared a pamphlet addressed mainly to their own members, but also directed to co-religionists with Tory sympathies in New York and North Carolina, describing the events at Lexington and Bunker Hill as well as the actions of delegates meeting in Philadelphia. It reported that Pennsylvania’s Germans had already formed militias and rifle corps, while others unable to join them would serve by whatever means they could. With this plea for a united effort, a local contingent, meeting at a Lutheran school house at Fifth and Cherry Streets, began drilling in late March of 1776. Two months later, after warfare had begun, the Continental Congress accepted the offer of service from a regiment of German volunteers, raised in Pennsylvania and Maryland. In his account of the ensuing conflict, Joseph G. Rosengarten described the German role in the rebellion: In the pages of that excellent and useful journal, Der Deutsche Pionier, the organ of the society established under that name to preserve everything that relates to

Finding a Place in a New World (1682–1865)

7

the history of the German settlers in this country, are found many records of the Germans who served the cause of American liberty, both in the Revolutionary war and in that of the Rebellion. . . . The records of the Continental army show that in almost every regiment, there were Germans, and in those of Pennsylvania, whole regiments, battalions, and companies organized, officered, and filled with Germans, who did good service for their country.3

The actions of Germans during the War for Independence would be “scarcely mentioned in our histories and not generally known even to their own descendants of to-day.” Under the rubric of “what history usually fails to tell,” revisionists would later claim that “too often our people are made to appear in a secondary role, following the lead of New Englanders, when they were actually in the front ranks.” But such observations, using a coded language in which “New Englanders” referred to a dominant majority, veiled an underlying tension with Anglo-Americans as persuasive speakers and scholars recounted what Germans did for the “great cause of liberty . . . that tried men’s souls.”4 After America gained independence, Germans often displayed a dual allegiance. In October 1825, as their homeland began its own passage toward nationhood, Philadelphia’s Germans honored Charles Augustus, the Duke of Saxe Weimar, an early advocate of German unity, by a banquet, whose guests included President John Quincy Adams, which also marked the 143rd anniversary of William Penn’s arrival in Pennsylvania. Seven years later, in September 1832, community leaders summoned Germans to Commissioners Hall on North Third Street in Northern Liberties to form a union and find measures “to assist the patriots of Europe in establishing the freedom of the Press in Germany.” The same notice invited all who cherished the welfare of Germany or the principles of American liberty to attend the meeting. But while politics brought them together, Germans did not ignore their cultural heritage. In June 1840, they celebrated the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press by a grand parade and musical concert at Independence Hall, and a lecture by Daniel M. Keim, a prominent lawyer, businessman and scholar, on German contributions to the art of printing, at a banquet in Gray’s Ferry. But occasional newspaper items also claimed that Philadelphia’s Germans were joining another movement sweeping the nation by forming temperance societies in the early 1840s, a curious initiative in view of later events.5 As Germans sought to find their way in a new setting, with other Americans attempting to place them into an appropriate social location, language emerged as a civic issue. In May 1830, newspapers in Philadelphia editorially disputed the proper place of German in public education. The Philadelphia Gazette maintained that the great number of German-speaking pupils among

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the 300,000 school-age children in the state made it unfeasible to teach them in their ancestral language. The Inquirer noted that while many Germans held their past with “true veneration,” they were, nevertheless, as citizens of Pennsylvania who cherished its interests and identified themselves with its policy, no different than French or Irish residents, but with the more basic matter being the taxation and financing of public education. The debate over language, even with the increasing assimilation of Germans, would remain a troublesome matter in future years.6 In June 1837, parts of Northern Liberties could be described as so thickly settled with Germans that an onlooker might believe himself to be in the “fartherland (sic) of marvels, metaphysics and music.” Not only were signs on stores written in German, but buyers and sellers, along with market people and wagoners, were German, while “an infinitude of little urchins in the streets discourse in this dialect.” In places of public entertainment, the language was used to discuss national affairs and politics as well as for small talk. Instructive lectures were given on week day and orthodox sermons on Sundays. While some of the most eloquent preachers were German, their mental fire was doused by the absence of Americans to hear them. Numerous clubs and associations, as well as a newspaper, which probably enjoyed abundant patronage, could be found. The rich, full, and strong musical bands of the German Guards, with a military presence in appearance and discipline, were expected to soon be able to perform as well as their counterparts in Europe. And a German theater, composed of amateur actors, had recently opened. The Germans of Philadelphia as a whole were “industrious, sober, intelligent, and willing observers of the laws of the state and land,” who represented an early “model minority.” With the size of their population, their prowess in economic and political affairs, and the growing strength of their institutions, they were hardly a minority; yet the future would find them greatly challenged.7 By the 1840s, political gatherings, accompanied by a musical band or choral group, often gained the attention of many Germans. In early November 1842, an estimated 12,000–15,000 marchers, behind a “German Battalion” of artillerymen, Jäger riflemen and other units, escorted former vice president Richard M. Johnson along the old Germantown Road in a grand public event that brought the local settlement to the rest of Philadelphia. But a few days later, German efforts to welcome Robert Tyler, the son of President John Tyler, when he visited John C. Montgomery, recently appointed as city postmaster, became a more modest, almost private, affair. After an impromptu concert by a band and singers, Germans, disappointed that the younger Tyler could not extend his stay, listened as he thanked them for supporting his father as president of the nation.8 The “German Battalion” that had accompanied Johnson on his visit to Philadelphia were volunteers, first organized in 1836 under Bavarian-born

Finding a Place in a New World (1682–1865)

9

Captain (later Major) Frederick Dithmar, a well-known brewer of porter, ale and lager, whose business was located on North Third Street in the heart of the German district. Beyond marching in patriotic celebrations or serving as an honor guard at funerals of deceased members of various military units, the “German Battalion” embraced more serious duty during the brief but violent riots in Southwark District in July 1844. In his report to the Governor of Pennsylvania, Major General Robert Patterson cited Dithmar and his German guardsmen for their efforts against the mob that had been confronted at St. Philip Neri and along Green Street between South Third and South Fifth Streets. In a letter to a local newspaper, “an actor on the scene” bestowed even greater praise on the German volunteers and American cavalry who charged under surrounding fire down Green Street and broke the resistance of the rioters.9 With public order restored, the “German Battalion” resumed more customary duties at parades and funerals. But whether quelling disturbance or participating in more peaceful ceremonies, Philadelphia’s Germans had to allay fears of other citizens, fueled by rumors and newspaper reports, that some German states had been sending criminals and paupers to America. In late 1844, Georg Friedrich List, the influential economist who had immigrated to Reading, Pennsylvania, become an American citizen, and worked as a journalist, before returning to Germany as the U.S. Consul at Leipzig, claimed that the smaller governments of Saxony were preparing to empty jails and workhouses by exporting inmates. List, who would be compared to Marx as an economist and praised as an early contributor to European unity, strongly objected that such action was against international law and inimical to America as a market for German manufacture. He noted that towns and boroughs in Germany had used public funds to finance passage by which they could rid themselves of less desirable residents. But if such policies were being carried out, German Americans would also have an occasional impact on politics in Germany. Buried in news from Berlin, a dispatch reported that an inflammatory message from Philadelphia, posted on the walls of a church, had urged the local parliament to depose the reigning sovereign and establish a republic. The petitioners, whose political appetite could not be fully satisfied in an American city, had apparently not forgotten their homeland.10 Despite the failure of the revolutionary movement of 1848, Philadelphia’s Germans, honoring refugees, exiles and other cultural heroes, maintained their support for republican politics. In October, they feted the “distinguished patriot” Friedrich Hecker, at the City Hotel on North Third Street, above Market Street. Received with great enthusiasm over several days, Hecker, probably the most prominent German revolutionist of his time, would become one of the founders of the new Republican Party and a strong supporter of Abraham Lincoln in America. By 1849, German efforts included

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soliciting material aid for countrymen who sought refuge in Switzerland. While Germans had long endorsed European republicanism, Philadelphia held one of its largest “monster meetings” in August, as Louis Kossuth’s doomed campaign to gain independence for Hungary entered its final days. Forced to flee to America, he soon found himself pursued by solicitous supporters. In 1851, when Philadelphia Germans sought to honor him, Kossuth declined their invitation. Although their alternative proposal of a torch-light reception, with all citizens invited to participate, was similarly refused, such intentions showed a staunch commitment to democratic values.11 While preoccupied with current politics, Philadelphia’s Germans held fast to their memories of the past. In late summer 1858, they prepared to honor Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who had helped to train the Continental Army at Valley Forge in 1778, but had not yet gained recognition by any monument or public event. Plans called for Morton McMichael, publisher of the North American and United States Gazette, and other prominent citizens as principal speakers for the occasion, along with entertainment by German bands and musical societies. In early September, a huge parade, led by the mounted Harmony Brass Band, followed by eleven divisions of other musical units and patriotic societies, formed on Ridge Street above Vine, and marched past crowded sidewalks to Center City, and finally to Lemon Hill in Fairmount Park. From a German garbed in a clown costume amusing spectators to the assembled members of the German American Beneficial Association, closing their long line, marchers captured the spirit of the day, as families filled omnibuses on their way to the park. Over the next two days, orations in both English and German, singing performances, gymnastics demonstrations, and rifle contests engaged the public. For serious men in black suits, wearing brown Kossuth hats and handsome rosettes who heeded solemn orations and revelers who found greater depth in beer kegs and impromptu performances, the event was deemed to have been “the greatest German jubilee ever witnessed in Philadelphia.” The final tally of 12,000 attendees, $2,600 in receipts, and a net profit of $1,742, contributed to the $10,000 cost of the monument expected to come from all cities, as local Germans acquitted themselves well, at least in a financial sense, by the occasion.12 While the von Steuben Festival reclaimed a neglected hero, Philadelphia Germans, coming together in far greater number than on any previous occasion, had drawn as much attention to themselves as to their patriot. They had marched behind German and American banners. They had taken their places in the parade alongside of “Americans.” They had spoken and sung in German. They had honored one of their own who, like themselves, came from Germany to serve America. But by embracing being American without letting go of being German, their historical observance strengthened cohesion and reconstructed identity. And as Philadelphia celebrated von Steuben, its

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Germans were collectively finding themselves. They had acted as German Americans. In November 1859, Philadelphia’s Germans recalled an even more distant aspect of their aspect heritage with the centennial of the birth of the poet, playwright, historian and philosopher, Friedrich Schiller. Seeking funds to purchase his birthplace and dedicate a monument in Germany, a procession over city streets, greeted by a volley of 100 cannons, reached the Academy of Music where marchers piled their torches into a burning heap. In the German district, illuminated transparencies in front of music halls and newspaper offices projected vivid images of William Tell and other heroes of Schiller compositions. On the next night, a German orchestra and nine singing societies with over 200 voices performed, before Gustavus Remak, a native of Prussian Poland, now a prominent local lawyer, delivered an oration. But the principal address would be given in English by William H. Furness, the translator of Schiller’s epic poem “Das Lied von der Glocke” (“The Song of the Bell”). After Wagner’s overture to “Lohengrin” and a poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath, renowned as a revolutionist and poet, a statue of Schiller was unveiled, with a musical tribute by the Maennerchor Society. Meanwhile, “Kabale und Liebe,” a five-act drama by Schiller was presented at the German Stadt Theatre on Callowhill Streets. On the next day, students from German schools offered their own program at Mechanics Hall at North Third and Green Streets. But the less fortunate were not forgotten, with one-third of the proceeds from the Academy of Music event being turned over to the Society for the Relief of Poor and Destitute Germans. A letter from President James Buchanan saluted the proceedings. And The Inquirer declared “Among all the cities where the anniversary of Schiller’s centennial birth-day was celebrated yesterday, the Germans of Philadelphia, we venture to say, have done most to honor the name of their best poet.”13 Such celebrations conveyed much about the position of Germans in Philadelphia and indeed in America. While establishing themselves in a more or less self-contained enclave, they had increasingly found opportunities to express their collective presence on ceremonial occasions. And by fueling their solidarity as Germans, such moments served as a precursor to even grander occasions that beckoned in the future. Yet, as they stepped onto the path of becoming German Americans, their assimilation would be greatly illuminated by what they still cherished of their earlier origins in a homeland from which they had departed, but had not fully forgotten or abandoned. Meanwhile, for other Philadelphians, newspaper coverage promoted a wider awareness of an urban village inhabited by Germans as it became a more salient facet of the local scene. But Germans would soon find an even more convincing way of validating their new allegiance as Americans in the struggle to preserve the Union.

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WITH THE UNION ARMY With the outbreak of the Civil War, Philadelphia’s Germans, after nearly two centuries of peaceful endeavors, would emphatically affirm their presence in the crucible of the battlefield. In April 1861, only five days after Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, Germans, enlisting as volunteers in hastily assembled military units, reportedly comprised most of the 202 men of the First Rifle Battalion at its headquarters on Callowhill Street. Under the command of Major John F. Ballier, they were assigned to the Second Infantry Regiment of the First Division of Pennsylvania Volunteers. Within a few weeks, the redesignated Twenty-First Regiment, mustered in Franklin Square. On May 25, with reports of early fighting in Virginia, their unit, behind a regimental band, mounted officers and baggage wagons, marched to Suffolk Park to await further orders. Along the way, two young vivandière, in tricolored skirts and beaver pelt high hats, full of life as they kept in step, embellished the scene. Having already been praised in rifle drills, German recruits, carrying muskets of an earlier era, had now joined the fight against the Confederacy.14 As hostilities began, a Richmond, Virginia newspaper noted that the Federal army consisted largely of German and Irish men, who “always made splendid soldiers, and whose courage and endurance are proverbial.” The actual number of Germans who wore Union blue or Confederacy gray remains unknown, but claims reach as high as 100,000 to 200,000 of them for the Northern army. While their performance also remains difficult to assess, Joseph G. Rosengarten, the son of immigrants and veteran of the 121st Pennsylvania Infantry, before becoming a prominent lawyer, sought to fill this gap by a comprehensive study, first presented in a lecture at the German Society of Pennsylvania in 1885, Published as a book in the following year, and a revised edition in 1890, he noted the long record of distinguished soldiers of German birth or descent who had brought the training and experience acquired in their native country to the service of “their new fatherland.” Perhaps the most familiar name was reputedly the great grandson of a Hessian officer in the British army during the Revolutionary War, who settled in Pennsylvania after Burgoyne’s surrender, where he Anglicized his name from the original “Küster” to the more easily pronounced “Custer.” His flamboyant offspring, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, would achieve much fame in the Civil War, then in the Indian Wars before his death at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. But Lieutenant John T. Greble had a stronger German lineage as well as greater relevance to Philadelphia’s Germans. After emigrating from Saxe-Gotha in 1842, his great grandfather, Andrew Greble, had settled in the city, where he and four sons joined the Continental Army and fought at the battles of Princeton and Monmouth.

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Rosengarten claimed that one of the younger Grebles, born in Philadelphia, a graduate of West Point, and a member of the First Artillery, was the first officer to die in the Civil War, while attempting to save other men at Big Bethel, Virginia, in June 1861.15 It, however, is in their more collective story that Philadelphia’s German soldiers reached significance in the Civil War. Many of them, soldiers before leaving their native country, arrived with a military zeal that had encouraged the formation of a militia in Philadelphia in 1836 which provided recruits for the Mexican War and entire regiments for the Civil War. And when rebellion broke out in the South, old comrades of the 1848 revolution in Germany and their sons were among the first to offer their support to the Union, with nearly a hundred officers of German birth in the regular army and many more among as field officers of the volunteers. In Pennsylvania, Germans had formed entire regiments and in other states their own companies within regiments, while volunteers could be found scattered in mixed regiments. And when they returned to earlier pursuits without seeking any other reward for what they regarded as a sacred duty at war’s end, Rosengarten argued that their service had earned them the right to American citizenship.16 Dismissing a German source that claimed over a million persons of German birth or descent as Pennsylvania residents, Rosengarten relied on reports of the U.S. Sanitary Commission that gave a far lower figure of 138,244 Germans in the state, with 17,208 of them having served in the Union army, a total exceeded only by New York, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois. The 187,858 Germans for all states easily surpassed any other foreign origin group, with 139,052 Irish a distant second. Among volunteers in the regular army, many soldiers of German birth had obtained commissions as officers. But foreign-born personnel, among all 2,500,000 men who served, whether as enlistees or conscripts, tended to fall below their proportion of the total population. Rosengarten’s state-by-state inventory of units comprised entirely or mainly of men of German origins, included the First German Regiment of the 74th Pennsylvania Infantry and the Second German Regiment of the 75th Pennsylvania Infantry. Within the ranks of the Confederate army, Gustav Schleicher, born in Darmstadt in 1823, before immigrating to San Antonio, would distinguish himself by earning the rank of colonel, then as the first German elected to Congress after the war, where he gained a reputation as a representative of all Germans in the United States. But Southern sympathizers, promoting their cause in Europe, would find that Germans, swayed by profits from investments, remained far more supportive of the Union. While Germans joined the Confederate army, some in all German units, a much greater number of them served with Union forces. They belonged, as Rosengarten asserted, to an important chapter in the unwritten history of the war.17

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Rosengarten, relying on Samuel P. Bates’s five-volume History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865, wrote that many Germans, including some whose ancestors had been among the earliest settlers, had joined the first five companies formed in Pennsylvania at the start of the war. Of the 25 regiments raised for three-month service in what was expected to be a brief war, ten of them consisted mainly of Germans, including the 18th Regiment, under Lieutenant Colonel Charles Wilhelm, and the 21st Regiment under Colonel Ballier, of Philadelphia. By early August, both regiments would be disbanded with their recruits mustered out of service. But as the conflict intensified, newly organized three-year regiments in Pennsylvania and other states bore the brunt of the war. The 27th Regiment, reorganized as a threeyear light artillery unit in May 1861, consisted entirely of men recruited from the districts of Northern Liberties and Kensington of Philadelphia, at least one-half of them being German, with many having already seen military service either in this country or Europe. Beyond regiments formed in the city, men of German birth or descent were amply found in other units raised in surrounding counties. Rosengarten regarded the ceaseless supply of German soldiers, experienced in wars of their homeland, who greatly strengthened the regular army as noncommissioned officers, as nothing less than “a great stroke of good fortune when a volunteer company had one of these welltrained and well-disciplined men in its ranks,—he steadied the whole line, and gave it an example of soldierly existence in every particular.”18 Within the 74th Infantry Regiment, organized in Pittsburgh with recruits from counties across Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia during the summer of 1861, the names of principal officers—Schimmelfennig, Hamm, von Hartung, Hoburg, Freyhold, von Mitzel, Veitenheimer, Blessing, Schleiter, Klenker, and Rohbach testified to its highly German character. Colonel Alexander Schimmelfennig, a former Prussian army officer, member of the Communist League, personal friend of Carl Schurz, and activist in the republican movement of 1848, before migrating to the United States in 1854, took command of the 35th Pennsylvania Infantry at Fort Wilkins in early September 1861. Increased by newly recruited men from Philadelphia, comprising Company K, under Captain Alexander von Mitzel, it encamped near Washington, DC. Receiving arms, uniforms and equipment and redesignated as the 74th Infantry Regiment, but sometimes still referred to as the 1st German Regiment of Pennsylvania, it would distinguish itself in several of the most important battles of the war—Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg—before being decommissioned in August 1865. The words inscribed at Schimmelfennig’s grave at the Charles Evans Cemetery in Reading, after his death in September 1865, easily applied to other comrades who had served their adopted nation: “A German by birth; An American in death; he wrote his name on the hearts of his countrymen.”19

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Philadelphia Germans occupied the ranks of the 75th Infantry Regiment in even greater numbers, under officers whose names—Bohlen, Schapp, Mahler, von Matzdorff, and Ledig—reflected their origins. Known as the 40th Pennsylvania Volunteers while training at Camp Worth in West Philadelphia under Colonel Henry Bohlen, a veteran of the Mexican and Crimean wars, in August 1861, many recruits were veterans of European wars. Commended for their discipline and skill in drills, some 800 members, with upgraded rifles having replaced antiquated weapons, filled its ranks when it reached Washington. It was assigned to the Third Brigade, 2nd Army Corps, as a division of the Army of the Potomac under General Louis Blenker, another former officer in the Bavarian army who had migrated after the 1848 revolution. In April 1862, it marched into Virginia, then slowed by heavy snowfall and scarce provisions, before encountering an unanticipated tragedy. Attempting to cross the rapidly coursing Shenandoah River in pursuit of General Thomas J. “Stonewell” Jackson’s forces, three officers and 50 enlisted men drowned with the sinking of an improvised ferry, leaving a horrific scene of floating knapsacks as bodies slipped beneath the waters. Among many victims recruited in Philadelphia, Sergeant Joseph Tiedemann, son of a prominent physician, although regarded as an expert swimmer, lost his life in an unsuccessful attempt to save his captain. His brother, Adjutant Frederick Tiedemann, who had also been believed to have drowned, reported the incident to the press. In early June, the regiment, assigned to protect the left flank of Union forces at the Battle of Cross Keys, came under intense enemy fire while covering their retreat, until being forced to withdraw. In the aftermath, the reorganization of Union forces transferred the regiment to the 3rd Brigade of the Army of Virginia, with Blenker replaced by General Carl Schurz as division head, but with the regiment being held in reserve. In August, it arrived too late to take part in the Battle of Cedar Mountain. Even worse, despite being mainly engaged in brief skirmishes, it would lose General Bohlen as he led reconnaissance on the Rappahannock River to a Rebel marksman. Incurring an even odder loss, its band, led by Rudolph Wittig, who would be later acclaimed as a composer of war songs, and 15 German musicians recruited in Philadelphia were summarily dismissed by a general order. In August 1862, it entered into more formidable action at the Second Battle of Bull Run, in which two officers and 28 men lost their lives, and five officers and 98 men were wounded. Receiving lavish official praise for gallantry under fire, but little consolation for losses, its men, with the arrival of autumn, finally found some respite from raging waterways and battlefield violence.20 The 75th Regiment, reinforced by fresh replacements and returnees discharged from hospitals, was deployed in defense of Washington, DC, before being moved back into the field for the most decisive encounter

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of the war, as an old nemesis, “Stonewall” Jackson, unleashed 40,000 men at Chancellorsville in early May. Bearing the brunt of attack, the regiment, separated from command and scattered into disarray, hastily retreated, with significant numbers of men captured, before being relieved by reinforcements. Demoted to second line support of an artillery battery, it awaited assignment as a massive buildup of troops revealed that a more significant engagement was imminent. On July 1, after a 14-mile march, some 258 fatigued men, under Colonel Francis Mahler, resting in a field east of Carlisle Road, north of the village of Gettysburg, suddenly found themselves in the midst of action. Attacked by Confederate troops, they regrouped on Cemetery Hill. The wounded Mahler, extricating himself from beneath his fallen horse, urged his men, despite heavy enfilading fire, to hold their new position against enemy charges. Wounded a second time, Mahler would die a few days later, but his regiment, under continued shelling, stood firm. After three days of fighting, some 31 officers and men had been killed, 100 more wounded, and six others captured. With victory secured, the 75th Regiment marched south, sometimes under heavy rain, in pursuit of Robert E. Lee’s retreating forces. On their return to Philadelphia in early January 1864, its members, granted a 30-day furlough, would march with “a very creditable appearance” in their home city. But with some 75 war-weary men refusing the call to re-enlist being temporarily assigned to an Illinois regiment, the 75th Regiment, bolstered by new recruits, left for duty in Tennessee.21 With the war shifting in favor of the Union, the men of the 75th Regiment expressed their confidence in an increasingly inevitable outcome. Writing from Waverly, Tennessee, one soldier, prompted by his belief that friends of the regiment would like to hear of its whereabouts described recent happenings in a letter to a Philadelphia newspaper in September 1864. Ordered to protect bridges and railroad lines that enabled the movement of supplies to General William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces on their devastating march through the South, nothing of a warlike character had recently occurred except an occasional “gobbling up a few of the Johnnys.” A patrol, carried out on horses obtained from local farmers, had captured two Confederate cavalry men. With no change in officers, the health of the regiment remained very good, largely due to the skills of its two surgeons. Assessing the political climate, the writer believed that people throughout the area were “strongly Secesh,” but hearty advocates of General George C. McClellan for president and Representative George H. Pendleton for vice president in the upcoming election. In his ambiguous conclusion, the soldier-pundit opined that while a week among the Rebels would convince uncertain voters that they were doing all that could be done for the nation, his comrades in the 75th Regiment remained steadfast in loyalty to President Lincoln and the Union cause.22

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From autumn of 1864 through most of 1865, the 75th Regiment continued operations in Tennessee, mainly guarding trains, providing reconnaissance and serving provost duty, with occasional minor skirmishes that included defending itself against irate civilians. Four months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, it was mustered out of military duty on September 1, 1865, with 236 discharged men reaching Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 12 days later. But the returning soldiers lost little time in doing their part to acknowledge their own effort in preserving the Union on their return to Philadelphia. On September 22, a committee of them called upon the mayor to present their regimental banner with the expectation of having it placed in Independence Hall.23 Among Rosengarten’s hagiographic portraits of men with ties to Philadelphia, General Galusha Pennypacker, born at Valley Forge in Chester County, was a descendant of Heinrich Pannebäcker, who had migrated and settled on Skippack Creek in the late seventeenth century. Although other members had scattered themselves in Montgomery, Chester and Berks counties, the family name, altered to its more familiar form, would become highly visible in the later development of Philadelphia. After entering military service in April 1861, as a noncommissioned officer of the Ninth Pennsylvania Volunteers, a three-month unit recruited across the state, Pennypacker rose in rank until he became the youngest officer in either the Union or Confederate army as a Brigadier General. For his actions at the Second Battle of Fort Fisher in January 1865, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Remaining an officer until retirement from active duty in 1883, his death in October 1916 was attributed to complications from wounds received in battle a half century earlier. John F. Ballier, born in Würtemburg, who studied at a military academy at Stuttgart before coming to Philadelphia, became a member of the Washington Guard, the first German military organization in the North in 1836. After enlisting in the First Pennsylvania Regiment for the War with Mexico, he reached the rank of colonel in command of the 21st Infantry Regiment, then the 98th Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Twice seriously wounded, Ballier weathered a court martial for insubordination, survived the war and returned to Philadelphia, where he purchased a hotel and saloon which he operated at North Fourth Street and Fairmount Avenue. Appointed as an Inspector at the U.S. Custom House in the city in 1866–1867, he was elected as a City Commissioner in 1867–1870. He retained the rank of Colonel of the 3rd Regiment of the Pennsylvania National Guard from 1869 until his retirement in 1876. Active also in the German community, Ballier was a co-founder of the Cannstatter Volksfest Verein in 1873, a board member of both the German Hospital and the German Society of Pennsylvania, before his death at the age of 77 in February 1893. After other notable Philadelphians

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marched across his pages—General Isaac J. Wistar; General William J. Hofmann; General Adolph Bushbeck; General Henry Bohlen; the Vezin brothers—Oscar, Henry, and Alfred; General John A. Koltes, who would die at the Second Battle of Bull Run; Joseph Tiedemann, drowned in the Shenandoah River, and his brother Frederick, the unfortunate one who had to report the news of it—Rosengarten ended his parade with a shining cameo of General Louis Wagner.24    The contributions by soldiers of German origin to the success of the Union army gained special recognition in Germany. Only ten days after Lee’s surrender, the legislative body of the free city of Bremen, before taking up other business, listened to an impassioned president judge as he proclaimed, “Many of our sons are fighting in the ranks of the Federal army, and the men of freedom and the Germans have shown that persistency and valor must finally conquer victory (sic), even over the infuriated struggling elements of the enemy.” When he asked for a show of sympathy for the victorious North, the entire assembly rose from their seats and cheered the Union.25

Figure 1.1  General John F. Ballier. Source: Brady-Handy photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

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Figure 1.2  Brigadier General Henry Bohlen. Source: Civil war photographs, 18611865, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Rosengarten’s enthusiastic account of the Civil War easily gave the impression that no one but Germans could be found on its battlefields. It was reaffirmed by his inclusion of remarks by Andrew D. White, the first president of Cornell University and former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, delivered at the centennial celebration of the German Society of New York. Addressing “Some Practical Influences of German Thought upon the United States,” the staunchly pro-German scholar and diplomat expressed his hope that “the healthful elements of German thought will aid powerfully in evolving a future for this land purer in its politics, nobler in its conception of life, more beautiful in the bloom of art, more precious in the fruitage of character.” Rosengarten added his own belief that what the Germans had done for the country gave the best assurance that White’s fervent prayer would be granted. Their recent actions “to show their share as soldiers in the wars of the United States” validated the right and duty cast upon them to see that no injury

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Figure 1.3  Colonel Francis Mahler. Credit: Mathew Brady (Washington, D.C.)

should ever fall upon their adopted nation. Rosengarten’s earnestly expressed conclusion fully captured the conviction of many German Americans.26 Rosengarten’s brief book was a heroic attempt to document the presence, if not the contributions, of Germans to the military history of America from the War for Independence to the Civil War. But it also revealed itself to be a nearly impossible task, despite being supported by the documentation provided by Bates and others. Yet, even as an incomplete fragment of that actual experience, his effort, which sometimes made Union troops appear to be almost a mercenary army, recruited in Bremen and other parts of Germany, presented the Germans as an indispensable component of American forces at a time of an unprecedented crisis. As indisputable testimony of their value to an adopted nation, it is difficult to believe that later events could ever alter that judgment. NOTES 1. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880). Volume I, Population, 457–8. For

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Franklin’s remark, written in 1751, see his Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c. (Boston, 1755). Franklin did not allow his reservations about the increasing immigration to interfere with his willingness to publish hymnals and other religious books in German, as well as the Philadelphia Zeitung, possibly the first German language newspaper in America and to use German type in printing. Oswald Seidensticker, German Day (German Society at Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania, 1892), 12–16. Seidensticker, born in Gottingen, Germany in 1825, earned a doctorate in philosophy, before following his father, a lawyer deported for his political activities, to America in 1846. After teaching at secondary schools in Boston, Brooklyn and Philadelphia, the younger Seidensticker became the first professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. His innovative and eclectic scholarship earned him acclamation as the “father of German American historiography,” while he also maintained an influential role in the community, before his death in January 1894. http:​/​/www​​.arch​​ives.​​upenn​​.edu/​​peopl​​ e​/180​​0s​/se​​idens​​ticke​​r​​_osw​​ald​.h​​tml and Joshua L. Chamberlain (ed.) University of Pennsylvania (Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1901). 2. “Germantown Celebrates 232d Birthday Today,” Evening Public Ledger (October 6, 1916). Marion Dexter Learned, The Life of Francis Daniel Pastorius, The Founder of Germantown (Philadelphia: William J. Campbell, 1908). 3. A summary of Professor Seidensticker’s research “In Memory of GermanAmerican Patriotism,” appeared in The Pennsylvania German, VII; 9 (September 1907), 451. For the 209th anniversary of their arrival, celebrated in October 1892, Seidensticker prepared a chronology of the Germans in Pennsylvania from 1626 to 1870 with listings of churches, organizations, and newspapers; biographical sketches of prominent residents of German origin; and related ephemera. For Joseph George Rosengarten’s remarks, see The German Soldier in the Wars of the United States (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1886), 34–5. The first version of his text had been presented in a lecture to the Pionier Verein at the German Society in Philadelphia on April 21, 1885. It was then printed in the June, July, and August issues of The United Service, a monthly magazine of military and civil affairs. Translated into German, it appeared in successive issues between June and October of the Nebraska Tribune, before being published as a pamphlet by J. B. Lippincott. After “numerous applications, showing interest in the subject,” Rosengarten, prepared the 1886 edition. 4. “In Memory of German-American Patriotism,” The Pennsylvania German, VII; 9 (September 1907), 446, 451. 5. “Items,” The (Boston) Columbian Centinel American Federalist (October 22, 1825); “Public Meeting,” The Inquirer (September 6, 1832); “Fourth Centennial Celebration,” The Inquirer (June 19, 1840); “Germany and the Art of Printing,” The Inquirer (July 1, 1840); untitled, The (Baltimore) Sun (July 13, 1842); untitled, The (New Orleans) Daily Picayune (July 30, 1840). 6. Editorial, The Inquirer (May 28, 1830). 7. Untitled, Philadelphia National Gazette and Literary Register (June 29, 1837); “Germans In Philadelphia,” Baltimore Gazette And Daily Advertiser (July 3, 1837). 8. “Local Affairs,” Public Ledger (November 1, 1842); “Local Affairs,” Public Ledger (November 8, 1842).

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9. “Military Report In Relation To The Southwark Riot,” North American and Daily Advertiser (July 25, 1844); “Give Unto Cesar (sic) The Things That Belong To Cesar (sic),” Public Ledger (July 25, 1844). Dithmar, preoccupied with the formation of a new military unit, dissolved his long partnership with George Butz in October 1862. He was involved in a collision with a train of the Germantown Railroad in which his wagon was destroyed and horse killed in October 1865. Dithmar died at the age of 66, on March 7, 1869. His life can be traced from numerous business advertisements and other items in local newspapers. 10. “Emptying Their Prisons,” Public Ledger (December 12, 1844); “Criminals From Germany,” Public Ledger (December 25, 1844); “Arrival Of The Brittani (sic),” North American and United States Gazette (June 27, 1848). 11. “Local Affairs—Festival to Mr. Hecker,” Public Ledger (October 13, 1848); untitled, Pennsylvania Freeman (October 19, 1848); “Grand Mass Meeting In Independence Square,” Public Ledger (August 21, 1849); untitled, The (Trenton, N.J.) State Gazette (December 12, 1851). 12. Untitled, Charleston (S.C.) Mercury (August 17, 1858); “German Mass Meeting—Proposed Festival,” The Inquirer (August 19, 1858); “German Festival,” The (Baltimore) Sun (August 20, 1858.); “Local Affairs—Steuben Festival,” Public Ledger (September 06, 1858); “Local Intelligence—The Steuben Festival,” The Inquirer (September 7, 1858); “Local Affairs—the Steuben Festival,” Public Ledger (September 8, 1858); “Baron Steuben,” North American and United States Gazette (September 7, 1858); “Local Intelligence—The Steuben Fund,” The Inquirer (September 28, 1858). 13. “Local Intelligence Schiller Jubilee,” The Inquirer (February 9, 1859); “Local Intelligence—The Schiller Celebration,” The Inquirer (September 21, 1859); “Local Intelligence—he Schiller Festivities,” The Inquirer (October 26, 1859); “Local Affairs—The Schiller Festivities,” Public Ledger (October 26, 1859); “Local Intelligence—The Schiller Celebration,” The Inquirer (November 5, 1859); “The Schiller Centennial Celebration,” The Inquirer (November 7, 1859); “Local Affairs— Schiller Centenary Celebration,” Public Ledger (November 8, 1859); “Amusements, etc.—The Schiller Festival,” The Inquirer (November 9, 1859); “Local Intelligence— The Schiller Procession,” The Inquirer (November 9, 1859); “Local Intelligence— Honor to the Memory of a Great German Poet,” The Inquirer (November 10, 1859); “Amusements, etc.—The Schiller Festival,” The Inquirer (November 10, 1859); “Local Affairs —The Centennial Jubilee and Imposing Procession,” Public Ledger (November 10, 1859); “Amusements, etc.—The Schiller Festival,” The Inquirer (November 11, 1859); “Local Affairs—Grand Jubilee,” Public Ledger (November 11, 1859). Classified advertisements in major newspapers provide a detailed picture of the program. For Gustavus Remak, Sr., see Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (ed.), University of Pennsylvania: Its History, Influence, Equipment and Characteristics; with Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Founders, Benefactors, Officers and Alumni, vol. 2 (Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1902), 339. 14. “The City Yesterday,” The Inquirer (April 17, 1861), reprinted 30 years later as “The Rebellion,” The Inquirer (April 18, 1892); “City Military Affairs,” The Inquirer (May 27, 1861).

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15. “Late From The South,” The Inquirer (November 27, 1861); “Late Foreign News—American Tribute to German Sympathy,” The Inquirer (August 9, 1862). Rosengarten, The German Soldier…, 55, 68–71. Other accounts of George Armstrong Custer’s life dispute this account of his ancestry. 16. “German Soldiers,” The Inquirer (April 22, 1885). 17. Rosengarten, The German Soldier…, 74–99; Theodore Griesinger, Frieheit u. Sklaverei unter dem Sternenbanner oder Land u. Leute in Amerika Stuttgart, 1862)/ Rosengarten tried, but with little success, to use the only official source on birth places of soldiers in the Union army, found in the medical statistics of General James B. Fry’s Final Report … of the Operations of the Bureau of the Provost Marshal General of the U.S. (Washington, DC, 1866). Fry was a much decorated officer before becoming Provost General, but in this case, his data fell far short of what was needed. Rosengarten also considered the findings of Benjamin Apthorp Gould, a well-known astronomer who as actuary of the United States Sanitary Commission made a seminal contribution to anthropological statistics by his Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldier, U.S. Sanitary Commission Memoirs, Statistical Volume (New York: 1869). Gould was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as one of the incorporators of the National Academy of the Sciences in 1863. George C. Comstock, “Biographical Memoir—Benjamin Althorp Gould, 18241896,” and National Academy of Sciences, Volume XVII, Seventh Memoir (1922), 153–80, accessible as: http:​/​/www​​.naso​​nline​​.org/​​publi​​catio​​ns​/bi​​ograp​​hical​​-memo​​irs​/ m​​emoir​​-pdfs​​/goul​​​d​-ben​​jamin​​.pdf. 18. Rosengarten, The German Soldier…, 100–2. 19. For specific units and individual biographies, see The Union Army: A History of Military Affairs in the Loyal States 1861-65—Records of the Regiments in the Union Army—Cyclopedia of Battles—Memoirs of Commanders and Soldiers, Volume 1 (Madison, WI: Federal Publishing Company, 1908). The section on Pennsylvania was apparently written by David McMurtrie Gregg, a West Point graduate who served with distinction in the war before becoming an important public figure in the state. See also Samuel P. Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861–5, Volumes 1–5 (Harrisburg, PA: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869). For more information on the 74th Infantry Regiment, see http:​/​/www​​.olyp​​en​.co​​m​/tin​​kers/​​74th%​​20Pen​​nsylv​​ania/​​ Webpa​​ge​/​de​​fault​​.htm. Despite being frequently described as an all German regiment, Bates’s work shows that recruits of other ethnic backgrounds were in its ranks. For regiments with Germans recruited in Philadelphia, see Frank H. Taylor, Philadelphia in the Civil War, 1861–1865 (Philadelphia: Published by the City, 1913), 96–7. 20. The previously cited sources provide ample information, especially: The Union Army…, 411–12; and Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers…, Volume 2, 915–19 . 21. Bates, Volume 2, 919–20; “Parade of the Seventy-Fifth Regiment,” The Inquirer (January 26, 1864). 22. “Seventy-Fifth Pennsylvania Veteran Vols: Correspondence of the Inquirer,” The Inquirer (September 17, 1864). 23. “Presentation of a Suit of Colors,” The (Philadelphia) Age (September 22, 1865); “The Colors of the Seventy-Fifth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers,” The

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Inquirer (September 22, 1865). Bates concluded his section on the 75th Regiment with the observation: “On the 4th of July, 1866, its tattered banner, carried through all its campaigns, was presented to the Executive for preservation in the archives of the State, and the colors presented by ladies of Philadelphia, before leaving in 1861, were deposited in Independence Hall.” In his detailed account of the celebration of both the end of the war and 90th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that appeared in The Inquirer, listing veterans from military units throughout the nation, Bates did not mention participation by the Seventy-Fifth Regiment of Pennsylvania. See: “1776. Our Battle Flags. 1866,” The Inquirer (July 5, 1866). 24. Rosengarten, The German Soldier…, 104–14. See also Galusha Pennypacker: America’s Youngest General (Philadelphia: Christopher Sower Company, 1917); “Gen. Galusha Pennypacker,” The New York Times (October 2, 1916). The Pennypacker family may have been more of Dutch ancestry than anything else. In his autobiography, former Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker, a cousin of Galusha Pennypacker, while acknowledging roots in the Netherlands, emphasized the mixed origins of the family. Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker, The Autobiography of A Pennsylvanian (Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, 1918), 16–30. John F. Ballier papers, Joseph P. Horner Memorial Library, German Society of Pennsylvania. 25. “Rejoicings in Bremen,” The Inquirer (May 10, 1865); 26. Rosengarten, The German Soldier…, 155–6.

Chapter 2

A More Distant War—and Closer Peace (1866–1871)

Although muted by the loss of sons, brothers, and fathers in the recent war, Philadelphia’s Germans renewed their pursuit of life in the city with energy and enthusiasm. Their public events, whether recalling the historical and cultural past of a homeland from which they had departed, but not left behind, or engaging in the newer opportunities of America, mediated adjustment. As they transposed their communal life, they not only secured a lifeline in uncertain waters but plunged themselves more deeply into local civic life. Whether honoring a present-day hero or an iconic scholar of the past, then unified by a distant war, before another peace brought anticipation of a more promising future, they would more firmly entrench themselves as citizens of Philadelphia. In March 1869, Germans warmly welcomed Carl Schurz, Senator-elect of Missouri, to the city. After a speech by William Horstmann before an enthusiastic audience at the German Society, a chorus of more than 400 singers entertained at the home of Dr. Heinrich Tiedemann, the head physician at the German Hospital since its opening three years earlier. In September, the dedication of a monument to Alexander von Humboldt, the famed Prussian geologist, explorer, and philosopher drew an even more massive crowd to Fairmount Park. A huge parade, with General Ballier as chief marshal and six divisions of participants, reflected the social, economic, and political life of the community. Following a phalanx of American and German flags, a large delegation of butchers, representing one of the dominant skills of local Germans, preceded a convoy of 24 carriages that carried such dignitaries as Mayor Daniel M. Fox and Grand Marshal Horstmann. Military units, turnverein clubs, freemasons, singing societies, chapters of the Red Men, beneficial societies, cabinet makers, and rifle clubs followed, before the marchers, after listening to prolix orations, became revelers at Engle 25

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and Wolf’s farm, a favorite gathering place operated by a well-known brewer, for a grand festival “enjoyed in the characteristic manner for which the Germans are so justly celebrated.” A newspaper account declared that as England honors Newton, and America honors Franklin, so too does Germany justly honor Humboldt for his research of worldwide importance, and that learned men of all times and places would forever venerate his memory. But its writer failed to notice that it was, in this case, Philadelphia and its German community rather than a far-off nation that had turned out to celebrate.1 After another year, a less charitable editorial asked why the proposed statue remained to be dedicated. Was Philadelphia to be forever known for the ease with which a cornerstone was placed without proper steps to insure that end, and leaving the final monument unbuilt? But with new efforts by “gentlemen of enterprise and spirit” to appeal to citizens of German birth, “whose monument this ought to be,” a revised assessment could declare: “The Germans are thrifty and intelligent, and we anticipate that such a response will be made to the Committee as will enable them to erect a memorial creditable alike to the philosopher and to the city of Philadelphia.” When the dedication of the statue finally took place at the Centennial of the United States in 1876, the Germans had also earned the right to be more fully embraced by Philadelphia.2 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR Philadelphia’s Germans found another cause around which to rally with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870. By midmonth, local newspapers had turned their attention to the reactions of the small French and much larger German populations of the city. Whether in larger beer saloons, within musical societies, or in private homes, the main topic of conversation for Germans had become the war. Confident of a quick victory, they prepared to devote themselves to the cause of their native land. Gathering at Ladner’s Military Hall on North Third Street to listen to patriotic speeches and song, they laid plans to raise funds for widows and children of fallen soldiers. Against German pleas for some form of alliance against Napoleon III as “a tyrant and a monster,” The Inquirer urged that the United States, without any real interests to protect in a struggle between European powers, remain disengaged from it. And the Public Ledger, without urging any specific course of action, warned that agitators, whose republican sentiments forced them into exile in 1848, had suddenly become supporters of Prussia and organizers of protests in American cities. While Germans united in support of their homeland, other Philadelphians remained more cautious.3

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As the Franco-Prussian War gained the attention of German immigrants, it facilitated unification, not only in their homeland but their communities in America. With the declaration of war, some 500 of them reportedly left the steamship Cimbria at the port of Le Havre before it could depart in order to join the Prussian army. Despite rumors of 20,000 volunteers in New York City intending to come to Prussia’s aid and General Franz Sigel, the former Union army officer, offering to lead an invasion of France, German immigrants would be limited to marching in public demonstrations. As similar fervor reached Philadelphia, a large audience, not to be outdone by their conationals elsewhere, met at Concordia Hall on Callowhill Street, with familiar names—Horstmann, Siedensticker, Lankenau, Mucklé, and others—featured on the program. Gottfried T. Kellner, who had fled a Prussian prison and come to New York City in 1852, before becoming editor of the Philadelphia Demokrat four years later, read a proclamation on behalf of the “German citizens of Philadelphia” that pledged the support of an estimated 150,000 Germans in Pennsylvania. It declared: “As German Americans we feel the deepest sympathy with the German fatherland and the German people in their just opposition against foreign usurpation.” Reasserting the ties between German Americans in the state and Germans in their native land, Kellner intoned, “The entire German Pennsylvania race is with you and for you in this great struggle.” With an ingenious stroke of revisionism, he alluded to the “brave, noble and industrious German Pennsylvanian race,” descendants of refugees who had been driven by the despotic Louis XIV, some 180 years earlier from their homes in Alsace, Lorraine, the Palatinate, Baden, and Würtemburg. Endorsing imminent national unification, he invoked “German Brethren! . . . We well know, and we are proud to observe that North and South Germany, monarchs and people, have formed an indestructable covenant for the purpose of defeating and humbling an enemy.” Capturing the contradictions of political expediency and compromised republican sentiments, émigrés who had escaped Prussian repression, now rallied with former enemies in a common effort to oust the French from disputed territory and secure the consolidation of Germany as a modern nation. Revanchism had triumphed over Republicanism and nationalism had erased self-determination.4 But as victory unified Germany, other factors promoted emigration. Steadily increasing, it reached a peak of 215,000 in 1854, before sharply declining, partly due to the War between the States, to less than 28,000 in 1862. With more than 57,000 German immigrants in 1864, the tide again reversed itself before the war had ended. In July 1863, despite rumors that new arrivals were being conscripted, a Philadelphia newspaper projected a favorable future: “We are happy to observe that there is almost a certainty of such an influx the next year as was hardly ever known. . . . the close of the war has animated thousands who would never otherwise have contemplated coming to make arrangements

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for so doing.” With peace restored, German immigration increased to over 83,000 in 1865. By early 1866, as German ports filled with persons seeking to depart, the U. S. Department of State reported that immigration was expected to far exceed previous years. Another newspaper described what was bringing them: “Aside from the usual arguments for emigration which have so long and forcibly influenced the Germans, it must be remembered that their countrymen here are steadily representing to them the superior advantages of life in America, reporting to them the wages, informing them of the comforts, and giving them those inducements which are most valuable when sent from responsible sources to their direction.” But along with “pull factors” at their destinations, the approaching war provided an equally important “push factor” in their country of origin: “These matters, valuable and influential at all times, are rendered more controlling by the prospective European war and the agitations which now sweep Germany in expectation of it.” Along with Irish immigration, it concluded: “We . . . shall be glad to greet a corresponding number of Germans.” From 1866 on, well over 100,000 German immigrants arrived in each of the next seven years, except for a dip to 82,000 in 1871.5 By 1867, despite efforts to discourage the departure of “vigorous males,” the volume of arrivals from Germany brought warnings of disruption on the labor supply in America and restrictive legislation in Europe. Three years later, with the start of war, while Germans in America loudly proclaimed their intention to return for military service, authorities in Germany still struggled to deter emigration. But when “immigration season” resumed in the spring, an unprecedented wave of Germans, now greater than any other group, some 35,000, reaching 3,000 on a single day, had arrived, many on their way to the West, by early June. The directors of the German Immigrant Society of New York expressed concern, when only 7,371 Germans on 45 vessels mainly from Berlin and Hamburg came in July, a substantial decrease from the 10,225, from the previous year. With slightly more than 55,000, having fallen by over 19,000 from January through July, it was rumored that German immigration would be indefinitely “suspended.” And by November, with westward bound Germans passing through Harrisburg noticeably diminished by the “great European rupture,” it was believed that “many of those who would now be in this country . . . remained on the other side to fight against France.” As similar claims for the port of New York appeared, it was hoped that German immigration would rebound with the end of the war. But the official count of more than 118,000 German immigrants in 1870 showed that fears had been greatly exaggerated. And while the Franco-Prussian War contributed to some decline, its short duration had rendered any expectation of greater impact to be unfounded.6 Although the French had initially been expected to win the war, Prussian forces, prevailed almost from the beginning. With the surrender of the French

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army and the capture of Napoleon III at the Battle of Sedan in September 1870, Philadelphia’s Germans, like their co-nationals elsewhere, took to the streets in celebration. Along with the ubiquitous display of German and American flags, as cheers and music resounded, “The Watch on the Rhine” and other nationalistic music poured from saloons and music halls. A cable to Kaiser Wilhelm, with the message “Three Cheers for the German Empire and its heroes,” conveyed the sentiments of “100,000 Germans of Philadelphia.” And with the collapse of the Second Empire, as France’s new republican government failed to find any more success against Prussia than the forces of Napoleon III had, the celebration continued.7 In autumn of 1870, as Prussian troops attacked French defenses at Paris and Metz, an American newspaper presented an image that would haunt Germans and German Americans in the years ahead. Assessing economic challenges after peace was restored, it declared that the Prussians had been responsible for tremendous ruin of property and livestock in France. The enormity of destruction left its human victims so debilitated that many of them were forced to consider emigration rather than to struggle in poverty in any attempt to rebuild their lives along past lines. But the Prussian role was even worse: “They have ravaged the whole country as mercilessly as though they did not know of such things as civilization and humanity.” Describing what it claimed had not been seen since the Thirty Years War, the indictment of Prussian brutality continued: It is a melancholy fact that this German horde has not even left the people behind to rebuild their ruined houses. They have slaughtered the peasants and villagers with an inhuman butchery that is a disgrace to the German name. We have well authenticated accounts of an entire village, men, women and children, perishing at the hands of the Germans, burned or suffocated to death in their houses.8

While alleging that German emigration would carry far more wealth out of Germany than investors returning to markets of that country would bring into it, readers were more likely to remember the depiction of German character than the details of investments, credits, and risks of foreign markets. It was an ugly depiction that would prove difficult to erase when it intruded on events during a later period of international politics. Local life projected more favorable images of German character. At its 106th annual meeting in December 1870, the German Society of Pennsylvania reported, along with the election of Horstmann as president, along with other officers, and a membership of 978, that clothing, medical attention, and other forms of aid had been provided to 1,754 Germans in “needy circumstances.” Beyond kindness to the distressed, newspapers also

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described, as they usually did at this time of the year, German Christmas customs, rapidly becoming the observances of others, which brought their originators back into Christiandom. A more dramatic sense of the season, similarly conveying that Germans were not necessarily demons, came from the war zone. An account of a “Christmas Truce,” some 44 years earlier than the celebrated incident of 1914, reported wounded German and French soldiers, recuperating at an army hospital in Dresden, who wept as they listened to carols of their enemy, before joining together to sing as brothers seeking peace. Showing that Germans could be as human as the French provided a special gift to Philadelphia’s German Americans at Christmas 1870. But the next year would bring something even more desired—victory in the war.9 In early 1871, with French and German soldiers, encouraged by the news of peace negotiations, began lowering their weapons and embracing each other at the prospect of going home, the German Society of New York, in its annual report, attributed the decline of arrivals to Castle Garden to a war that had actually not yet ended. And with its relief committee aiding needy clients, the Society, protesting the poor treatment of passengers, advised German emigrants, perhaps too late, to avoid British shipping lines that landed passengers at Boston rather than New York.10 Philadelphia’s Germans, with the end of the Franco-Prussian War, announced plans calling for religious observances, followed by a parade of members representing 100 societies, behind General Ballier as Grand Marshal, and a picnic at the Schützen Verein over three days in May. But with larger industrial employers expected to suspend operations, the “Peace Festival,” as it had been renamed, with an anticipated 30,000 German participants, would expand into a four-day event. With major coach and carriage manufacturers providing vehicles and the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad offering reduced rates to visitors, the program would assume an even greater scope than its initial impetus had promised.11 Das Friedenfest, promoted as an observance of “peace,” would appropriately begin in houses of worship, about two weeks before the collapse of the Paris Commune and execution of the Communards provided a postscript to the recent war. In Philadelphia, as German Jews crowded Sabbath services, Rabbi Marcus Jastrow, of Rodeph Shalom, praised Germany for having heard “the sound of heaven.” And Rabbi Samuel Hirsch of Kenéseth Israel, declaring: “as men, as Jews, as Germans, as having been born in Germany, as having been educated there and raised in its spirit,” eloquently gave thanks for the German victory. On Sunday, ministers and priests similarly extolled German culture and character, as well as a united Germany, as Christian congregations observed the restoration of peace.12 The parade, praised by The Inquirer as “the finest pageant that had ever moved through the streets of Philadelphia,” provided the main attraction.

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At dawn, under blue skies and a gentle breeze, the roar of a 37 gun salute in Fairmount Park by veterans of the Keystone Battery, a civil war artillery unit, followed by ringing bells across the city, launched an appropriately German day of celebration. Public buildings, commercial firms, meeting halls of fraternal and civic associations, churches and private homes decorated by flags and bunting, evergreens and laurel, mottoes, paintings and transparencies, projected images of famous Germans and inspiration based on Teutonic wisdom. The same spirit was conspicuous at the office buildings of the Philadelphia Demokrat, Abend Post and Freie Presse, voices of the German language press. In the eyes of some observers and perhaps their throats as well, saloons served as the true nexus of activity as patrons drifted in and out throughout the day. It could be claimed with justification that at the center of the German community at North Third Street and Girard Avenue, “one might easily have imagined himself driving through some German city on fete day.”13 As they moved beyond the confines of their community, German marchers staked a claim on the entire city. From Broad Street and Columbia Avenue, their parade moved into Center City, then South Philadelphia, before turning north, and back through the German quarter, until ending at Penn Square, adjacent to City Hall, converted into a fair ground encircled by refreshment booths. The first carriage of dignitaries, with a military guard and sounding the hymn, “Die Wacht am Rheim,” displayed the exalted names of Keppler, Copernicus, Schiller, Goethe, Lessing, and Humboldt in homage to Germany’s past. The first division of marchers, mainly military units of civil war veterans from local regiments, carrying their tattered battle flags, led by Ballier and other officers on horseback wearing Prussian helmets, followed by members of the German Society, hospital association, rifle club, a mounted band, gymnasts, and school children. With nine more divisions and some 100 wagons, numerous smaller carriages and barouches, the parade displayed the place of Germans in the economy and social life of Philadelphia. Bearing colorful badges, ribbons, flags, and banners, the impressive cavalcade of crafts and skills included fresco painters; manufacturers of mathematical, optical, and telegraphic instruments; piano makers; printers; jewelers; watchmakers; manufacturers of rubber products; manufacturers of tin ware; glassworkers; pottery makers; terra cotta workers; cutlers and manufacturers of surgical instruments; chain makers; roofers; masons; iron molders, machinists, file and tool makers; coppersmiths; gauge and gas fixture makers; stove makers; safemakers; carriage makers; manufacturers of sewing machines; tailors, coatmakers, capmakers, and hatmakers; morocco and leather tanners; leather goods and saddle makers; furriers; shoemakers; wood and ivory turners; marble, millstone, fire brick, and clay workers; textile weavers and dyers; carpet weavers; cabinet makers; keg, barrel, and cork makers; broom makers; paper

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box makers; hair goods makers; butchers; bakers; barbers; cigar makers; haberdashers; toy makers; milk dealers; confectioners; brewers; wine importers; and coal distributers. On many wagons, machines in operation showed how their work was done. Interspersed paraders on foot or wagons represented recreational organizations, sängerbunden (singing societies); schützen verein (rifle clubs); turnverein (gymnasts), and benevolent societies, while other wagons carried live animals, floral displays, heroic figures, and allegorical tableaux of past moments cherished by Germans. Bands provided sprightly music, while marchers, seeking to mitigate solemnity, amused spectators. As butchers left their factory and smokehouse on wheels to offer sausages, bakers passed out samples of breads, pastries and pretzels, and milk dealers poured glasses of their beverage. And John Bower & Company, purveyor of meat products, dispatched an elaborately designed wagon, drawn by six mules, displaying a whimsical banner that read “Peace—but there is no peace like a piece of Bower’s hams.” Such acts of irreverence made Philadelphia, at least for the moment, into that German city on “fete day.”14 Beyond impious mummery, the only irregularity among the paraders had been wagons without decorations, but covered with signs promoting various businesses in a crude display at the end of the parade. The opportunists who placed themselves among a potpourri of organizations that had applied too late to be assigned to the regular order of march showed that not even the gravity of its purpose could protect the Peace Festival from some degree of commercialism. But such encroachment could not diminish the occasion as an immediate event or erase its place in longer-lasting public memory.15 But the Peace Festival carried further meaning. The exalted interpretation that rabbis, ministers, and priests had offered within their own temples would be enhanced by secular speakers who sought to place the event within a broader perspective. As the parade paused at Independence Hall, Mayor Daniel M. Fox, after conveying the official endorsement of the city, expressed gratification over the end of war between two great nations of the Old World and the hope that it would never again occur as long as the world stood. Fox also praised Germany as a new nation without imperialist aspirations and as a protector of international order. Other speakers would even more emphatically place Germany as a defender of peace not only for Europe but for the entire world.16 When the marchers reached Penn Square, encores of “Die Wacht am Rheim” and other Teutonic hymns rang out, before the strains of “Die Siegesgang der Deutschen nach der Hermannsschlacht,” the tribute to an ancient victory over the Romans and anthem to modern nationalism, introduced another theme. From the speakers’ stand at the northwest corner, draped in red, black and gold colors, under the huge banner of a foreign nation, the fatherland for many in the crowd, the messages of other orators filled the air—greeting, thanking,

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extolling, and saluting everyone within earshot. The journalist Kellner, the featured speaker, began an ominous paean to Germany as the guide of civilizations and leader in art and science that had arisen as “a glorious empire,” whose rule the world need not fear, for it was not of the sword, but of real and lasting peace, and not based on force, but on wisdom and truth. The yoke that she would impose on other nations was not a heavy one, but one which would ease and free the world—and be known as civilization, humanity, and spiritual freedom. With resurrection through “blood and iron,” its work as guardian and apostle of peace could now begin. Germanism, with its freedom, equality and popular sovereignty, would replace Romanism, with its mock-civilization, brutal barbarity, and immorality. Having deposed ancient Rome, then gaining freedom of thought and religion by the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War, and bringing forth free governments in Switzerland, Holland, England, and the United States, Germany was destined to erect upon the ruins of barbarian civilizations a new temple of culture and humanity. The time had come for Germany or the Teutonic Race to assume with firm hand the control of more general events. Reminding his audience of German contributions to agriculture, industry, commerce, arts, sciences, and trades in Pennsylvania and the United States, Kellner ended his oration. Unlike the platitudes of other speakers, his message, with its perception of cultural superiority and invincibility, not easily dismissed as empty rhetoric, contained anticipation of an unfortunate future era. But shrouded by gaiety and euphoria, it was, for the moment, all but invisible.17 On the final day of the Peace Festival, another throng converged on the Schützen Verein Park on Indian Queen Lane at the Falls of Schuylkill. With trains of the Germantown and Norristown Railroad Company disgorging riders four or five times each hour from dawn to dusk, jammed platforms gave the impression that every German family in the city had come in search of enjoyment at the park. As arriving passengers reached their destination on this indelibly chaotic day, others waited to board for the return trip. Along the dusty road to the park, thousands of people passed one another in coming or going. On pathways on either side, vendors offered fruit, beer, peanuts, or lemonade, while carriages, plying the center of the road, raised thick clouds of dust that fell upon walkers. Far up on the hill, flags waved in welcome. At the entrance gate, passed through only with difficulty, the hectic atmosphere was replaced by the sight of a green expanse where happy revelers rose on swings in high arcs toward the sky, fired mock weapons at shooting gallery targets, or simply sipped ices while sitting in shade beneath the boughs of hospitable trees. But many others preferred the comfort of cool lager and shelter in a building from where they watched everyone else. And thus the day unfolded, for one observer, uncomfortable in the attempt, but joyously savored once reached.18

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Beyond amusement, the more solemn part featured the planting of a Linden tree, a symbol of peace, and the dedication of a monument, a gift of Jacob Kohler, former Lieutenant Colonel of the 12th Cavalry, 113th Volunteer Regiment of Pennsylvania. While the ubiquitous Kellner again addressed the public, George Siegmann’s remarks would be more important. As previous orators, Siegmann, a U.S. Customs Service appraiser, extolled the virtues of “a peace-loving, industrious and kindly disposed people like the German, and without whose permission not a cannon-shot will be fired in all Europe.” He reminded German Americans, as they celebrated peace, to remember to mourn for the lives sacrificed by both France and Germany and to be mindful of the sufferings and tears shed by thousands of parents, wives, and children. He called upon Germans throughout the world to emulate the virtues of Americans in order to facilitate their own influence by social gatherings and festivals that could purify the morals of a whole people. Siegmann, mindful of unresolved conflicts of the 1840s, also called for an internal peace that would extinguish still simmering tensions and bring unity among his people. He urged “red republicans” to remember that most people would not accept extremities and “old fogies” to see that the world was progressing. Along with the singing of “Der Siegesgesang” and its numbing power of nationalism, Siegmann again raised the specter of a triumphant Germania that embraced a new role ensuring the order of Europe.19 When the last speaker had left his words before an audience that had probably much earlier ceased paying attention, the overly patient crowd moved toward the station. With a concealed police squad reportedly waiting to quell disorder, only good humor and enjoyment marked the day. As tired revelers reached the train station, they met the same inconveniences that had been encountered at their arrival. And as soon as a train reached the station, they abruptly emptied the platform with cars filled beyond capacity, but finally homeward bound. Disconsolate stragglers left behind had only a short wait until the next train arrived and the process was repeated through the evening until Schützen Verein Park, now illuminated by Chinese lanterns, disgorged its final patrons, claimed to have been as great as 50,000 visitors. And so the Peace Festival of 1871 ended.20 While Philadelphia’s Germans enjoyed amusement and entertainment, newspapers probed the meaning of the Peace Festival. It came in a sometimes trivial compliment about how its participants uniquely celebrated such occasions, as when The Patriot, a Harrisburg newspaper, noted, “The Germans are happy and enjoying themselves as only Germans can.” At a more serious level, The Inquirer declared that the Peace Jubilee deserved a much greater place than the Meschianza, the farewell celebration for General William Howe during the British occupation in 1778, in the annals of local history by showing what Germans could do when their feelings were deeply stirred.

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As “the most emphatic representation to the American mind of the reality of German freedom, unity and national life” that the war had prompted, it was expected to leave a lasting impression. But the event remained, above all else, a celebration of peace. On opening day, the Public Ledger, declared that the festival “in the strongest degree worthy of notice . . . takes the form of a rejoicing for the restoration of peace between the two great nations, so recently engaged in a most deplorable war.” And Philadelphians, despite civil war in France, were urged to regard the local event in that spirit, as the Public Ledger declared that “German America had possession of our city yesterday.”21 German leaders and city officials sought to find a loftier meaning, by proclaiming Germany’s new role in international affairs rather than a triumph over another nation. But buried under such claims and denials, some 30 persons, even before the celebration began, had objected that their names had been published without their consent for what they identified as the “German Peace Festival.” The names, from Bouvier to Forestier, are not only French in origin but members of La Société Française de Bienfaisance de Philadelphie, showed that, despite “peace” being a central theme, the festival had not received the endorsement of all communities. And in some sense, the FrancoPrussian War had not ended.22 While another editorial recognized a civics lesson for school children, it actually offered a message for all Philadelphians: It is seldom that our German fellow citizens come together in such large, compact numbers as they will do this morning. But what they have accomplished heretofore in their minor celebrations is a guarantee of the intelligence, good order, and attractiveness which will characterize to-day’s pageant. By resolution of Councils, all public offices will be closed and the Board of Education has given the children of the schools a full holiday. All this is commendable, for our children, of both large and small growth, have too few holidays, and they can have no better one than that which teaches them, amid great rejoicings, that humanity values above all things peace and good will among men.23

The Peace Festival marked the end of a war between two foreign nations, fought on another continent, in which there was no direct participation by the United States. While strongly resonating with Germans, it had gained the attention of other residents through newspaper coverage. But its outcome, while remaining remote from the lives of most Philadelphians, had prompted the kind of public demonstration that had been reserved for wars waged on American soil or, in later years, would involve American troops overseas. Some Americans perhaps preferred to believe that the unification of a new German nation, achieved through the defeat of another state under a despotic ruler, had

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followed the precedent set by America in its own earlier war against England. That illusion, as the Italian struggle for independence and national sovereignty, flattered Americans of the nineteenth century. But beyond erudite editorials, eloquent orators, and the protests of French residents, the demonstration in the streets by marching rank-and-file workers of every skill and craft in the local economy, along with the celebration by families in the park, made a different statement. It was almost as if the Germans were saying: we are here; we are many; we are important; and Philadelphia could not be what it is without us.

NOTES 1. “City Intelligence,” The Inquirer (March 1, 1866); “Humboldt: The Centennial Celebration,” The Inquirer (September 14, 1869); “Alexander Von Humboldt,” The Inquirer (September 14, 1869). 2. “The Humboldt Monument,” The Inquirer (June 1, 1870). 3. “What The French and Germans Think of the War in Europe,” The Inquirer (July 19, 1870); “Large and Enthusiastic Meeting of Germans,” The Inquirer (July 20, 1870); “Respectfully Declined,” The Inquirer (July 20, 1870); “The Germans and the War,” Public Ledger (July 20, 1870). 4. “European News: The War Fever Strong Upon Them,” The Inquirer (July 22, 1870); “The Latest News,” Public Ledger (July 26, 1870); “Sympathy for Prussia,” The Inquirer (July 28, 1870); “Local Affairs: The European War Meeting of Germans,” Public Ledger (July 28, 1870). 5. Walter F. Willcox (ed.), International Migrations. Vol. I, Statistics (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1931), 377–93. “Emigration and Immigration,” North American and United States Gazette (September 9, 1865); “Increase of German Immigrants,” Public Ledger (January 20, 1866); “Immigration,” Daily Age (February 3, 1866); “German Immigration,” North American and United States Gazette (May 26, 1866 ). 6. “Immigration,” North American and United States Gazette (May 4, 1867); “The Tides of Migration,” Public Ledger (March 30, 1868); “Things in New York,” Public Ledger (June 3, 1870); “German Immigration,” Public Ledger (August 5, 1870); untitled, New Orleans Republican (August 9, 1870); “Emigration Westward,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (November 16, 1870). 7. “The French Surrender—The Receipt of the News,” Public Ledger (September 5, 1870). 8. “When Peace Returns,” North American and United States Gazette (October 22, 1870). 9. “German Society,” The Inquirer (December 16, 1870); “Christmas,” The Inquirer (December 26, 1870); “News By Mail,” Public Ledger (January 30, 1871). 10. “This Morning’s News,” The Inquirer (February 1, 1871); “Peace Prospects,” The Inquirer (February 2, 1871); “Things In New York,” The Inquirer (February 24, 1871).

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11. “Local Affairs: The French And German War—Celebration By The Germans,” Public Ledger (April 27, 1871); “Local Summary,” The Inquirer (April 29, 1871); “The Peace Festival,” The Inquirer (May 4, 1871); “Local Intelligence—German Peace Jubilee,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (May 12, 1871). 12. “Das Friedenfest,” The Inquirer (May 15, 1871); “Peace Jubilee,” The Inquirer (May 16, 1871). 13. “Das Friedenfest,” The Inquirer (May 15, 1871). 14. “Das Friedenfest,” The Inquirer (May 15, 1871); “Peace Jubilee,” The Inquirer (May 16, 1871); “The Grand German Peace Festival,” Public Ledger (May 16, 1871). 15. “Peace Jubilee,” The Inquirer (May 16, 1871). 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. “German Pic-Nic,” The Inquirer (May 17, 1871). 19. Ibid; “German Jubilee,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (May 17, 1871). 20. “German Pic-Nic,” The Inquirer (May 17, 1871). 21. “German Celebration,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (May 16, 1871); “Peace Jubilee,” The Inquirer (May 16, 1871); “The Peace Festival,” Public Ledger (May 15, 1871). 22. “Peace Festival,” The Inquirer (May 11, 1871). Founded in 1793, La Société Française de Bienfaisance de Philadelphie (or the French Benevolent Society), the oldest such society in the United States, was an important voice of the small, but highly accomplished French population of Philadelphia. See: Francis James Dallett, “The French in Philadelphia: The French Benevolent Society of Philadelphia,” in Jean Barth Toll and Mildred S. Gillam (eds.), Invisible Philadelphia: Community Through Voluntary Organizations (Philadelphia: Atwater Kent Museum, 1995), 78–82. 23. “Peace and Good-Will,” The Inquirer (May 15, 1871).

Chapter 3

Welcoming More Germans (1871–1881)

In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, The Inquirer, commenting on the failed uprising of the Paris Commune, bade good riddance to the bad blood and villains being ushered out of the world. An editorial appraised the people of a defeated nation: “The fickle and visionary character of the French seeks change for its own sake and not in the cause of real popular results.” With the repression of the Communards by the army of the Third Republic, the City of Lights had been devastated by its own people. But with meager pity for what France had suffered, The Inquirer now praised the Germans for having refrained from the damage that its army could have inflicted, and “respecting a capital which its own inhabitants have turned, fire and all, into a hell upon earth.” Far away from these momentous events, Philadelphia, with circumspect magnanimity, welcomed a new wave of German immigrants. Dispersing more widely within the local area as well as joining the movement of settlers to the states and territories of the American West, Germans comprised a major component of the late nineteenth-century migration. For those who chose to remain in Philadelphia, German labor would greatly contribute to its emergence as an industrial giant. And recognizing the need to expand their presence and raise their voices in politics, the German impact on local life would also increase. But exuberant public celebrations would challenge other citizens, disturbed by what was perceived as an overindulgent use of alcohol and insufficient observance of the Sabbath. For the city, the decade would become an era of growth and development; for Philadelphia’s Germans, it would be a time of transition and adjustment.1

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PHILADELPHIA AND BEYOND With sharply increased emigration, government officials in Germany, concerned over abandoned houses, rapidly declining land values, and a shortage of agricultural workers, considered the need to restrict outward movement. For Germany, at the vortex, as well as the mercy, of Russia, Austria, and France, potential invaders who could easily obliterate the precarious independence and fragile unification recently gained, the loss of population carried great political implications. With the Imperial Government being urged to revoke the licenses of emigration agents, departures, greater than ever and likely to become even larger, were draining Germany of its labor force and military strength. In some regions, a fourfold increase in wages over the past 30 years did not stanch the flow of departing workers. And throughout Germany, the threat of compulsory military service provided an additional incentive for young men to seek life elsewhere. While noting: “Their people are coming here to escape grinding poverty, to exchange it for prosperity,” a Philadelphia newspaper, mindful of the role of compulsory military service as an inducement, succinctly described the dilemma faced by any young man: “He is born into the army just as certainly as he is born into the world.” In Berlin, members of the Reichstag, alarmed at the number of laborers and artisans leaving Germany, and no longer available as recruits for the Imperial army, called for the restriction of emigration. Meanwhile, negotiations between Germany and the United States, seeking a diplomatic treaty that could mollify both nations, were lifting immigration from a matter of personal choice to one of governmental policy and international relations.2 Along with the lower cost of fares, improved safety and steerage conditions that mitigated the rigors and dangers of passage greatly raised the volume of traffic across the Atlantic. And as they disembarked from the steamer Frisia at Castle Garden in early March 1880, “agriculturalists” with paid tickets for destinations in the Western states and women holding young children in their arms represented highly desirable arrivals. About a month later, when the Pennsylvania reached Philadelphia, with some 250 westwardbound Germans among its 615 third-class passengers, the largest number ever carried by a ship of the American Line, they praised treatment that had included food prepared to meet tastes of their native land. With no serious illness or loss of life, but increased by one new born, his parents, grateful for a safe crossing, paid tribute to their port of entry by naming him “William Penn.” In late May, when the British Crown docked at the Christian Street pier, followed by the Indiana on the next day, some 1,728 immigrants from Norway, Sweden, Ireland, England and Germany, were the most arrivals to reach the port within a 24-hour period. With almost all of them heading West, credit was given to the firm of Peter Wright & Sons, general agents

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for the International Navigation Company, for having provided protection and accommodation “about as near perfection as such arrangements can be brought.” By 1881 the flood of arrivals at Castle Garden, the more popular point of service, nearly 3,000 immigrants on a single day in April, almost 10,000 in one week of the same month, and more than 6,300 on one day in May, with Germans comprising the largest component, had reached a cataclysmic level.3 For families with relatives or friends who had already migrated, America had already ceased to be an entirely foreign land. Letters with exuberant claims of having prospered as workers encouraged others to follow in a quest for a life that promised well-being both to themselves and to their new nation. With millions of acres of unoccupied land available on easy terms in the West, and the belief that immigrants with little education could acquire a skill or craft that brought employment almost from their moment of arrival providing another inducement, a compelling scheme of persuasion had been established. But the judgment was mutual. The Inquirer maintained that “all Germany looked towards America as its future home, for here there is the broadest liberty, light taxation, high wages and every political and social advantage.” It also declared: “There are no better emigrants coming here from foreign lands, or who are more cordially welcomed, than the German speaking peoples of the North of Europe,” whose “health and strength, habits of labor and economy,” along with being well educated, skilled workingmen, enabled them to find profitable employment in industrial centers or land in the West to be filled with intelligence and energy. Germany’s loss had become America’s gain.4 While personal correspondence had helped Germans to form expectations, the Handbuch der Stadt Philadelphia und Umgebung (The Handbook of the City of Philadelphia and its Surrounding Area), by Charles Theodore Eben, a local linguist, translator and classics professor, provided another resource. Its 448-page pocket-size format gave a history of the city; information on municipal authorities and public offices; and descriptions of churches, educational institutions, libraries, institutes of arts and sciences, hospitals, asylums, theatres, and other places of amusement, hotels, parks, banks, commercial institutions, and railroads. While intended to be helpful to Germans already living in the city, copies of Eben’s Handbuch reaching Hamburg provided vicarious information about Philadelphia. With details unknown even to longtime residents, a later edition guided visitors at the 1876 Centennial, before eventually fading from public attention, but not before acquainting countless arrivals from Germany with their new destination.5 As immigration from their homeland grew greater, Philadelphia’s Germans redistributed themselves in new patterns of settlement. In July 1873, Board of Health inspectors visiting Alaska and Spafford streets in the Fourth Ward

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found recently arrived Italians sometimes crowded 20 persons to a room in slum housing. In Murray’s Court and Keene’s Court, such newcomers had displaced former German residents in a process that was redefining urban neighborhoods. But with the “new immigration,” largely of Eastern and Southern Europeans, Germans were also spreading into more distant locations. During two previous decades, some of them, inspired by their belief in “Eigener herd ist goldeswerth” (“There’s no place like home”), had followed the Camden and Atlantic Railroad through the pinelands of South Jersey to find Egg Harbor City, where they cultivated grapes and other farm products in a new life on rich soil.6 By 1880, disregarding the amenities found in Philadelphia, other Germans, responding to necessity and opportunity, as well as the successful vintners at Egg Harbor, had announced plans for a new settlement in Delaware. The German Land Association, a group of investors from Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore pooling a capital stock of $100,000, sought to organize farmers in a community to be called Humboldt City on Bombay Hook Island. Renamed the Bombay Hook Land Company, they purchased about 1,600 acres and other property near Smyrna for an undisclosed sum. Despite its early promise, the project failed, but its backers had learned that some German immigrants, like their earlier predecessors, still sought to return to the land as farmers rather than to pursue their fortune in industrial America.7 Whether in older enclaves of the city or agricultural experiments of rural areas, the reception for German arrivals was mediated more by the perceptions and attitudes of other Americans than the demands of urban labor or challenges of the land. Although annual immigration from Great Britain was often substantially larger, the greater homogeneity of Germans and Austrians, and their tendency to form communities, invited resentment. But against any antipathy toward German-speaking newcomers, it could also be argued that the English cared little for the Scots, and even less for the Irish, and that “such feelings could be found among all the races of the British Isles.” The implications for ethnic consciousness and conflict made the distinction even more significant. As one newspaper noted: “Hence, to a certain extent, the British emigrants are soon lost among the population of this country; while the Germans, by their sociability and friendly intercourse with each other, are more compact and powerful as a community.” If favorable attributes brought praise, the tendency of Germans to coalesce now evoked wariness.8 CITIZENS, VOTERS, AND CANDIDATES As new arrivals replenished population, immigrant enclaves further matured as communities. Although retaining vestiges of foreign identity and culture,

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Philadelphia’s Germans increased their salience as citizens and strength as voters. In September 1871, The Press, claimed that Germans, often insulted by Democrat journalists during the Franco-Prussian War, would strongly support the Republican slate. As city officials made plans for a school where classes in English would prepare Germans for citizenship, political candidates were more concerned with how they would vote. In early October, former U.S. Senator John W. Forney, now Federal Collector of the Port of Philadelphia, and probably the source of the charge that had appeared in The Press, after excoriating Democrats at a mass meeting at Concordia Hall, declared that he was unable to find any reason for Germans to vote for them. Colonel William B. Mann, the district attorney and leader of the Republican Party, delivered a plea for the election of William S. Stokley as mayor. And the candidate himself promised that, if he were elected, the police would provide equal protection for all residents, American or foreign, and that appointments of “foreign” police officers would no longer be exclusively Irish. Gaining the support that he sought, Stokley would be elected as mayor of Philadelphia for the next three terms, holding office from January 1872 to April 1881.9 In June 1872, as Republicans convened for their national convention in Philadelphia, Germans demonstrated their support for incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant at a rally at Concordia Hall. In a spirited address, Major J. A. Blohler, a delegate from Washington, DC, condemned the Liberal Republicans, meeting in Cincinnati; repudiated Schurz as a dangerous leader; affirmed the candidacy of Grant; and urged steadfast adherence to party principles. But while regular Republicans hoped to keep Philadelphia as a stronghold, their own reform faction and the Democrats also pursued German voters. In July, an anonymous letter to a New York newspaper described a group of Democratic, Conservative, and Liberal Republicans of German birth, who met at 505 Vine Street, to endorse Horace Greeley and Benjamin Gratz Brown, recently nominated at conventions in Cincinnati and Baltimore. Signing himself as a “German Republican,” its writer claimed that the leading Germans of the city supported the two candidates, while the only backers of the regular slate were the Freie Presse, a newspaper of limited circulation, a few mail carriers and patronage appointees at the U.S. Customs House, and predicted that Grant would not receive 500 votes from Philadelphia’s Germans in the upcoming election. In September, dissidents, meeting at Concordia Hall, declared their support for Greeley and the Democratic ticket, after listening to orators, speaking in German, denounce the duplicity of President Grant’s administration in Washington and the corruption of Mayor Stokley’s government in Philadelphia.10 With their preferences still uncertain, German voters remained a highly sought prize. Among supporters of Greeley and the Liberal Republicans,

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General Schurz, the most respected German in the nation, offered a compelling voice. On a whirlwind tour of the major centers of German population, he reached Philadelphia in late September. Greeted at the West Philadelphia station by a committee of prominent Germans, he was escorted to the home of Dr. Tiedemann at Marshall and Brown Streets in the heart of their community, where he delivered remarks, as requested by hundreds of German citizens, in their native language. Having taken planning out of the hands of the Liberal Republican Association, and promising a reception “such as his greatness merits,” the organizers hoped that Germans, regardless of party affiliation, would heed his message. In the evening, before an overflowing crowd at Concert Hall, after long applause and a band rendering “Hail to the Chief,” evoking an emotional pause, Schurz, again speaking in German, delivered a lengthy endorsement of Greeley’s candidacy. Citing his long support of Republican principles, he argued that no party should be judged only on what it had already done, but also what it proposed to do. Schurz condemned the failure of the Grant administration to protect the newly acquired voting rights of former slaves and for allowing carpet-baggers to take advantage of the poor of both races. He charged government officials with being a corps of rascals rather than honest men, with Grant being the supreme one for having violated the Constitution by attempting to declare war in order to annex Santo Domingo. Enumerating further misdeeds, and comparing Grant’s leadership to absolute monarchy, Schurz urged his audience to vote for Greeley as a man of principles who would restore honesty to government and peace to a divided nation. Having once recruited Germans for the army, he now sought to mobilize them as voters. Praising them for having promptly answered the call in wartime, he asked them to march again with him. Their enthusiasm indicated their apparent consent.11 Another crowd and more musical bands later greeted Schurz at the La Pierre Hotel where, addressing the throng in English, he explained the background of the breakaway Liberal Republican Movement; condemned the failed policies of the current administration in the South; and urged his listeners to cast their ballots for Greeley and Charles R. Buckalew, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania. But Schurz’s efforts to persuade Philadelphia’s Germans to support Greeley would soon be rendered moot. After suspending his campaign to be with his ailing wife, whose death six days before the election would leave him in deep depression, Greeley suffered a landslide loss at the polls, then die himself even before members of the electoral college could convene to cast their votes.12 Four years later, with another presidential election looming, German Americans, despite claims of favoring New York’s Governor Samuel J. Tilden, would remain loyal to his Republican opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes. Having flocked to the party during the debate over slavery and to the Union

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cause during the ensuing war, the perceived preference of Democrats for the French cause during the Franco-Prussian War had solidified the Republican hold over German voters. In early November, with the Centennial celebration nearing its end, a late-minute decision to observe German Day brought both parties into a momentary truce. But tranquility may have also been prompted by a Twelfth Ward Republican Club meeting at Concordia Hall one week before the election at which former senator Forney, defending his inability to understand previous speakers who had used German, attempted to clarify his pride in being of German descent. While traveling in Germany, he claimed to have found a dialect which, forty years earlier, had been as familiar to him as his mother tongue. With his clever self-validation, Forney declared his sympathy, like his audience, with “my nation” in Germany’s recent war. But he found nothing as monstrous as the foreigner who, after escaping from European tyranny, should join the pro-slavery party in America. Forney then discordantly noted: “I cannot refrain from saying that the Catholic Church, that oppressive church, that church which aims to enslave, and does enslave both the body and the mind, is the organized foe of free institutions.” Describing his agony over Bull Run, suspense preceding Gettysburg, and grief at Lincoln’s assassination, Forney tied together the Confederacy, the Catholic Church, and Tammany Hall. But with the delicate consensus that the anticipated German Day had brought now shattered, Forney’s rhetoric had also reignited the political cauldron.13 Whether in Philadelphia or elsewhere, the issues facing Germans transcended the choice of parties and candidates. With administrative policies bearing on their status as citizens in both countries still being determined, immigrants who returned to their native land found themselves in an ambiguous situation in respect to which nation’s laws applied to them. In 1868, George Bancroft, the American minister in Berlin, had negotiated the first treaty with Prussia and the North German Confederation, which defined naturalization, citizenship, extradition, and the right to reclaim one’s original nationality. But abuses in the implementation of its provisions were easily recognized. Citing an egregious avoidance of conscription, the New York correspondent of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung described the sons of “Mottenburg” merchants and shipowners who were sent to finish their apprenticeship in New York, where they obtained American citizenship before returning to Germany as “Americans.” While making a humorous allusion to a theatrical comedy that depicted a corrupt citizenry, his purpose was entirely serious: Those young fops of the German seatowns, who reside here as merchants, and who do not in the least conceal their intention of merely making money in America, in order to spend it at a later date in a “fashionable way” in Germany,

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and who, besides, affect to find fault with every thing American in the most saucy and ignorant manner—those fops are no real German-Americans, even if they succeed in annexing, for their own and private purposes, a certificate of naturalization. They are, wheresoever their fate, or love of money, may carry them, “Mottenburgers” and remain such.14

The young “Mottenburgers” had compounded their ruse by becoming “draft dodgers” who petitioned consuls during the American Civil War, hoping to have their German allegiance properly certified in order to escape military service in the United States. While the repatriated emigrant’s military obligation remained unresolved even after the signing of the Bancroft Treaty ten years later, the diplomatic situation, with Germany seeking to keep men available for conscription along with the possibility of annulling the treaty, had entered the dialogue on immigration.15 As diplomats confronted treaty-related issues, Republican candidates, on the eve of another election, rediscovered not “Mottenburgers,” but the sons and grandsons of Pastorius. On a Saturday night in February 1877, after a display of fireworks in the winter sky, they filled Concordia Hall to hear why they should reelect Stokley as mayor. After several preliminary orators, the spirited audience welcomed the candidate himself with hearty cheers, but Stokley offered only perfunctory remarks before escaping into the cold darkness outside. A week later, on another night blustery in weather and political rhetoric, Germans again gathered to show their support for the Republican ticket at Brown’s Hall at Hancock and Diamond Streets in the Nineteenth Ward. After more fireworks lit the sky above Norris Square, the crowd listened to an array of speakers, before Stokley, in a much longer speech, claimed that if his opponent had held office: “You would not have your streets paved, your gas and water pipes laid and a thousand and one improvements you now have, and which have given you a large and influential population that commands respects at home and abroad.” After acknowledging the applause of his German backers, he again abruptly fled into the night. The apprehensions of Stokley and others, reflecting a sense of a now tenuous German vote, would be confirmed by results on Election Day. At least one voter, rejecting both parties, was reported to have derisively cast his ballot for Gustavus Bergner, a well-known brewer. While wards 13 and 14 in Spring Garden and ward 8 in Kensington supported the incumbent mayor, wards 11 and 12 in Northern Liberties, ward 15 in Spring Garden, and wards 16, 17, and 19 preferred Joseph L. Caven, the Democratic and Independent ticket candidate. Ward 12 and 19, won by Caven, were two sites that had been depicted by The Inquirer as strongholds of German support of the incumbent mayor. While it had been much easier to see how they were solicited as voters than to anticipate how they would cast their ballots, the outcome revealed a now divided German polity.16

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In the spring of 1878, further developments more broadly reshaped the German American political scene. With the new National Party planning a state convention, hesitant Germans, reluctant to commit their support too easily, met in an effort to ensure representation in a workingmen’s movement seeking an eight-hour workday, perhaps behind the red banner of Communism. While the original National Party, with its populist agenda resting on a fragile Greenback-Labor coalition that would fade away in coming years, it became even more quickly irrelevant to the city’s Germans. Increasing numbers of newly arrived Germans described, along with Scandinavians, as having the highest and most desirable character among newcomers, had found a welcome that enabled them to “to make grass grow where none grew before, and to add by their labor and money to the material wealth of the country.” And as they made their westward trek, an assessment of the possible termination of the Bancroft Treaty underscored the value of German immigration: “Its worth is unquestioned and unquestionable.” But as authorities sought to appraise the value of their presence, Germans who chose to stay in such seaboard cities as Philadelphia, also remained a potential prize for local politicians.17 By February 1880, German Americans, to the dismay of Republican leaders, appeared to be almost unanimously opposed to the reelection of President Grant. Having left Germany partly because of their unwillingness to accept “personal government,” they were believed to be recognizing the same deficiency in his administration. With their opposition to a third term, The Inquirer declared that Grant could not win. And after an advocate of Grant’s reelection had sneeringly referred to opponents as “irreconcilables, scratchers and Germans,” Germans recognized the dangers of an imperialism in America similar to what they had escaped from in their Fatherland. Grant’s reelection was especially unlikely without the support of Germans in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, and even more so in New York and Pennsylvania, where machine politics might control conventions, but not the people. Holding the balance of power in at least five states, the Germans could not be ignored. And neither could they be demeaned.18 Schurz, now Secretary of the Interior, returned to Philadelphia seeking support for James A. Garfield, who had been chosen over Grant and other candidates at the party convention, but his listeners, as he again spoke in German, like their countrymen in other cities and states, needed little persuasion to support another Republican. For local Germans, it was a gesture of great deference by a party that had neither forgotten their past loyalty nor overlooked their importance for the present. And while they might find greater solace in Sunday picnics, Germans would continue to enjoy the attention brought by political exigency.19 But Republicans were not alone in soliciting Germans. In December 1880, when thirty-one Socialists, expelled from Germany by a government

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order, landed at Castle Garden, the news of their arrival brought alarm to Philadelphia. While sympathetic countrymen waited to greet them, no reception was accorded for several hundred other immigrants. With other Socialists reported to be on their way, a newspaper warned that expatriated Germans, if in search of work, would be widely welcomed, but if coming to foment Socialism, “the sum of all political evils,” their hasty departure would be preferred. A rumor that a larger demonstration would greet them not as Germans, but as Socialists elicited further admonition that while they might be allowed to think Socialism, they would be well advised “not to act Socialism,” for they would discover that it is not liked here when put into practice any more than in Germany. A few days later, before 2,000 supporters, a speaker, denying that a recent attempt to assassinate emperor Wilhelm II had been carried out by Socialists, noted that their publications had been suppressed and their members had lost jobs and been jailed. After resolutions denouncing Bismarck and the Hohenzollerns, the gathering concurred that the duty of Socialists in America was to heal the wounds inflicted upon Germans by their government, to sway public opinion, and to gain the support of newspapers against despotism in Germany. But in Philadelphia, the press, rather than becoming sympathetic to a radical cause, saw only a threat.20 BEER, MUSIC, AND “JOLLY GERMANS” Far-sighted observers whose vision went beyond politics easily recognized what Germany and its immigrant people could contribute to America. With efforts to develop public education, the German system, like that of Switzerland, represented a model ripe for emulation. In Germany, all children began a period of compulsory schooling at the age of seven, during which they learned basic grammar, spelling, writing, arithmetic, and geography. Students who made sufficient progress, if able to be spared from work by their families, entered the lyceum or gymnasium, where the curriculum included basic elements of the sciences, mathematics, history, philosophy, drawing, and music. Well prepared with knowledge and skills, they could find employment in factory, workshop, bank, counting house, office of the engineer, studio of the architect, or enter a university in pursuit of a scientific career or learned profession. At a great university such as Heidelberg, students attended lectures and laboratories in six month semesters for four or five years, with modest cost of tuition, food, and lodging. Unlike the emphasis in America to finish quickly, young Germans, more patiently, or perhaps more leisurely, acquired their education. To graduate with honors, a candidate paid an honorarium, the equivalent of about $100 at Heidelberg, to become eligible to take a qualifying examination. To an American critic, the

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only defect was the obligatory theology lectures, compounded by doctrinal diversity among professors and laxity of belief throughout Germany, but easily resolved by relegating the field to seminaries. With its rigor in education, rapid strides of Germany in trade, commerce, art, science, learning, and power could be expected. In the search for superiority in science and technology, scholarship and intellectual life, and literary and artistic endeavors, neither Philadelphia nor the nation could dismiss the potential rewards of borrowing from the cultural life and institutions of Germany.21 Philadelphians, however, were likely to be more acquainted with moments where Germans found distraction, comfort, and security but which outsiders could only look into, sometimes participate in, but never be fully a part of. In August 1871, when the Saengerbund held its annual picnic at the Falls of Schuylkill Park, the “happy Germans” again enjoyed music, dancing, and what was quaintly termed as rural sports. With all available space covered by tables and chairs, a well-stocked temporary saloon furnished lager beer, “that most harmless of drinks,” while “German fathers and mothers collected in groups around the tables and enjoyed those quiet and cozy hours of conversation which mark the intercourse of this race at all times.” With a brass band playing throughout the day, “all was as happy and joyous as could be, the true picture of national amusement which one ever enjoys at the picnics of Germans.” And the Saengerbund, first prize winners five years earlier at the national Saengerfest in New York City, sang “more sweetly than we have ever heard them,” before a large crowd of listeners who well understood the character of the selections and style of performance. Often described in envious tones by newspapers, other Americans had no event of their own quite like the German picnic.22 Such occasions also revealed the gifts of Germans to America as well as their own future as Americans. According to an earlier observer, the Irish, despite their huge migration, did not appear to have placed any particular custom within American manners. By adopting American habits and institutions while being absorbed within the larger population, Hibernians had, except for countenance and speech, lost their distinctiveness. Although his view ignored Catholicism, it recognized an often overlooked aspect of immigrant adjustment. In contrast, Germans, maintaining rigidly venerated customs, adjusted with a strong Teutonic flavor, nowhere more evident than in their preferred amusements, against American forms of recreation that held little interest: “Give him his gymnastic association, his dancing festival, his singing fete, his Rhine wine and his lager beer, and he considers himself happy. He has come to this country to enjoy freedom, and if he can, while being an American, be also German, he is extremely blessed.” But the tenacity of German identity went beyond the promise of beer to become the preferred beverage of all citizens. And while eschewing gymnastics, the American preference for

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baseball over cricket could be seen in its physicality as reflecting German influence. But the German passion for music had not been similarly adopted. While willing to listen to military bands, Americans were unlikely to embrace the Saengerfests, which engaged Germans with intense excitement by a grand event that attracted societies and performers from all over the country. After long hours of rehearsal, the final convocation often meant fine musical exercises and a great consumption of lager at a picnic attended by men, women, and children enjoying wholesome entertainment at a local park like Schuylkill Falls Farm. While such festivals remained unlikely to enter the core culture of America, the future held an even bleaker prospect: Even the descendants of Germans born among us will not keep up the culture of their fathers. So long as emigration continues the newcomers will join in them, and continue their attachment for life; but should German emigration ever cease, singing festivals will be unknown to Americans of German descent.23 With international migration about to enter its most formidable years, assimilation already encroached upon immigrant culture.

Philadelphia’s Germans found another cause for celebration in the 25th anniversary of the Schützen Verein (the Philadelphia Rifle Club), at the Falls of Schuylkill in August 1871. Founded in 1846 to cultivate skill at shooting and fellowship among members, its program again brought Germans together. After another parade opened ceremonies, editor and community leader M. Richards Mucklé, General George Gordon Meade, and Mayor Fox offered speeches with familiar themes. Speaking of the tendency of Germans to bring “happy and peaceful” customs to new destinations, Mucklé cited their musical societies, gymnastics teams, and rifle clubs. From its six original founders to 1,800 members, the Schützen Verein had established a musical society, orchestra, drum corps, gymnastics club, rifle corps, and “not unmindful of the days of sickness and death” a burial fund for members. And with plans for a library, it possessed the elements of a thoroughly intellectual, social, scientific, and humanitarian organization. In his remarks, Meade praised Germans as soldiers in the service of the United States. And Fox saluted them for their enjoyment of life in moments of rest and pleasure that reflected a love of home, both in their native place and adopted land. As on previous occasions, the orations, filled with hyperbole, embodied the need to apotheosize the group as it engaged in a celebration of itself. For immigrant people, it was an almost necessary ritual in finding a place in another land by comforting reminders of what they once were. But among the banners carried on this day, the new German flag, with black stripes in four quarters, a black eagle wearing a golden crown, holding a sceptre and globe in a circle at its center, and the iron cross imposed over black, white and red stripes in another corner,

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which would remain the imperial standard until the end of the Great War, also was the totem of an unexpected future.24 Away from picnic grounds, other patterns of collective life for Philadelphia’s Germans had become clearer. On any day of the week, they gathered for various forms of entertainment and more serious activity—balls, concerts, and public meetings—at the Stadt Theatre in Corcordia Hall, the center of social life for Germans of the entire city. But on the Sabbath, beneath the hall, “thirsty Teutons” purchased forbidden refreshments, as the proprietor slipped lager beer and Rhine wine to patrons who discreetly tucked beverages under waistcoats, until the scheduled theatrical performance, often called a “sacred concert,” ended, but usually not before midnight. For many Germans, accompanied by their wives and children, it was an excellent way of ending the day of worship. Or perhaps it only reflected the envy of a reporter who described the scene.25 Outside of election season, local Germans, freed from the importuning of office-seeking candidates, easily found other reasons for gathering. In May 1877, Whit Monday provided sufficient cause for them to celebrate at several sites. Boarding railcars of the Reading Railroad Company for the short trip to Schuetzen Park, an estimated crowd of 5,000 persons enjoyed two orchestras for dancing and strolling along tree-shaded walks. The members of the mainly German Cabinetmakers’ Association, along with several singing societies, pursued similar pleasures at Schuylkill Falls Park, while other revelers found their way to Sanger Park, South Broad Street Park, and Echo Park. As many of them boarded trains at the Columbia Avenue station to Schuetzen Park or Schuylkill Falls Park, undeterred by large crowds, a newspaper account saluted their determination to find pleasure: Whoever heard of a day that was too hot for a German to leave the city on an early train, and, after sweltering for half an hour or more in a passenger car crowded with people, he will walk half or three-quarters of a mile in the broiling sun until he reaches the breezy park or the shady beer garden, and then for the remainder of the day he will enjoy himself in the manner that he loves best, drinking lager and listening to music, while he smokes placidly in the shade.26

The occasion was not as peaceful as might have been expected, when the Schützen Verein and the Concordia Singing Society confronted each other in disagreement over access to the South Broad Street Park. Having built a shooting gallery in the park, the Schützen Verein believed that it held an agreement that restricted entrance to its members; but the manager opened the park to the Concordia Society for Whitsuntide Monday. After obtaining an injunction barring Concordia members from the park, the Schützen Verein considered the issue as having been settled. But on Whitsuntide Monday,

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Concordia Society members, arriving early to defend their claim to its use, denied admittance to the Schützen Verein. As the dispute lingered throughout the day, the threat of violence escalated when the Schützen Verein, armed with arrest warrants for Concordia officials who were placed under bail to await a hearing. In the following week, a court ordered the defendants to be held until a substantial fine was paid. Claiming that Germans seldom quarreled during holiday festivities, a reporter concluded: “With this exception, which could hardly be called a disturbance, but rather a misunderstanding, the day passed quietly enough.” But newspaper coverage, often glossed by stereotyping and euphemism, easily obscured the cleavages that sometimes divided the German community.27 By June 1879, Germans, having resumed more peaceable encounters at Rising Sun Park, Sanger Park, Schuylkill Falls Park, Schuetzen Park and Rockland in Fairmount Park, enabled a newspaper to declare: “Nothing occurred to mar the festivities.” But public celebrations, especially when accompanied by prodigious consumption of beer, could be interrupted by episodes of fist-fighting among other sporting events. Only a month later, an attack by a 75 man posse on a group of German excursionists, known as the Black Hussars, marring a beer drinking frolic at nearby Red Bank in Gloucester County, New Jersey, confirmed the belief of abstinence supporters of the evils of beer and similarly pernicious swills.28 In August 1879, the North American Turnerbund returned to Philadelphia, after a 23-year absence, for its nationwide program of competition. A grand parade of athletes marched through the streets complemented by colored lights, banners, music, and enthusiastic onlookers After speeches by city officials, General Franz Sigel, now a honorable icon, attempting to speak in English, against cries of “Speak German,” recalled an incident 25 years earlier, when Turners, returning from a similar festival at Lemon Hill, were attacked by “roughs,” but failed to gain sympathy from other Americans. He cited the great change made evident by the warmer reception of the present occasion. Crediting the 175,000 German soldiers whose wartime service won the gratitude of the nation, he offered a mild reproach: “I hope that we know not only how to enjoy ourselves, but how to behave ourselves.” Over the next four days, gymnasts and fencers entertained spectators, nourished by foamy draughts of beer from ubiquitous kegs. From opening day, when an orchestra and 400 voice chorus offered a “sacred concert” before upward of 12,000 persons, decorum prevailed. On the second day, an immense procession, led by a contingent of Black Hussars, followed by orations that likened modern turners to the athletes of ancient Greece, met Sigel’s hopeful admonition. After another two days, marred only by faulty public transportation that forced cancelation of some events, the organizers, jumping into local affairs, urged the commissioners of Fairmount Park to maintain rather than demolish

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the Exhibition Hall of the 1876 Centennial. While also using the opportunity to call for a new sports arena, German American performance at the “olympics” of the time, echoed Sigel’s call “not only to enjoy ourselves, but how to behave ourselves.”29 The annual Cannstatter Volksfest, more than any other event, implemented Sigel’s mandate. Since its origin at Cannstatt, near Stuttgart in Württemberg in 1815, it had promoted agriculture, handicraft and industry, as well as patriotism, fellowship, and convivial rivalry among people of the region impoverished and demoralized by the Napoleonic Wars. Transplanted by immigration to America, it revealed the value of beer as a commodity that would be worth fighting for if challenged by abstinence advocates. With proceeds intended to support charitable undertakings, it financed the care of needy members of the community. Almost paradoxically, the mainly musical entertainment would be described as “a great relief from the otherwise monotonous vista of beer bars” found in German neighborhoods. But its program also provided a platform for orators who sought to strengthen group consciousness and solidarity as ties with the fatherland were loosening. What was actually occurring was the opposite of what speakers were asking for. On such playing fields, German games were becoming American games. And as participants played at being German, they enmeshed themselves further in the process of acculturation and assimilation as they became more American.30 In April 1880, Germans observed Whitsunday with well-attended programs at Schuylkill Falls Park, School Lane Park, Rising Sun Park, South Broad Street Park and Saenger Park, with “manly sports,” then a mazy dance, often with the aid of beer mugs, which “in the hands of a German seems to cheer without inebriating.” Skilled and not-so-skilled gymnasts displayed varying levels of talent “with an unflagging zeal throughout the day,” sometimes interrupted by “roughs” from Camden or other places who preferred fighting as their form of amusement. More genteel Germans attended the Ladies’ Relief Society May Festival, where concerts and other entertainments at Schuetzen Park for the benefit of a hospital fund were provided without any brawling. In August, an estimated 8,000 Germans attended the Bavarian Folksfest at Saenger Park, which offered the familiar formula of music, dancing, games, tableaux, and “plenty of beer drinking,” while staged scenes of arriving immigrants finding a new life free from fear projected special meaning for the audience. But the Cannstatter Volksfest, the German version of a county fair, remained the largest event. Even with dancing and boisterous sports prohibited on the Sabbath, an estimated crowd of 15,000 poured into Schuetzen Park for the reenactment of a Swabian wedding and musicians who kept “waves of melody incessantly in motion,” along with games, acrobats, and the perennial column of fruit and flowers. As Godfrey Keebler, president of the society, succinctly explained: “the verein made money, spent

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money, and had money left to give away to any worthy object, irrespective of creed or nationality.”31 TEMPERANCE AND THE SABBATH Pursuing their pleasures in public venues, Germans collided with an increasing active temperance movement that sought to deny them the essentials of a happy life. In Cleveland, when female advocates of temperance protested at salons, an angry crowd threatened to turn into a riot before police reinforcements arrived. In a counter-demonstration, German brewers organized a procession of wagons, laden with kegs, with men imbibing beer as they moved along the streets. In Philadelphia, where resistance remained more peaceful, Germans organized in support of political candidates who pledged themselves to the repeal of restrictive liquor laws. But the incidence of suicide among Germans presented a concern that could be linked to such circumstances. In response to reports that the suicide rate of Germans in Cincinnati was not only much greater than other groups but far out of proportion with their size in the population, a Philadelphia newspaper attacked the German propensity for beer, the leniency of American authorities, and the presence of saloons: “It has long been known that their places are the most insidious of all the classes of drinking resorts in their effects upon others . . . , and now comes these suicide statistics to prove that the Germans themselves are fearful sufferers.” While adding that Germans stood “solidly arrayed against any interference with their unlimited drinking facilities, and political demagogues are ever ready to side with them,” such opinion refueled civic debate.32 The mobilization of a response by Germans was not restricted to political parties and candidates, but included the work of organizations that provided services without soliciting votes. As the plight of immigrants who had fallen upon difficulties was being discovered by an incipient welfare profession, such agencies as the German Society of Pennsylvania offered assistance for less fortunate members of the community. In June 1874, having received 565 applications for relief, involving 664 adults and 437 children, it distributed financial aid, moved needy persons to other cities, brought the ill to hospitals, and found employment for job seekers, while its library lent books in German and English. Its Committee on Prisons had obtained the release of persons charged with minor crimes, while persuading judges to reduce punishment in other cases. After complaints about commitments to the House of Correction of persons unable to speak English, it sought to have an agent appointed to protect innocent Germans from being held. A special committee distributed to German children at Christmas. Its Committee on Immigration reported 462 Germans among 3,207 immigrants who had arrived at the port, despite

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difficulty in obtaining accurate figures. In the following year, the Society, reporting 3,031 Germans, almost one-third of all arrivals having landed, provided free passage to their final destinations. But 32 less fortunate persons had been assigned to the almshouse. Some 64 ailing individuals had been treated free of charge by physicians of the Society. Its School Committee noted that 526 students had attended English-German night classes. The efforts of the German Society showed that needy clients often found themselves falling far short of the expected opportunities and conditions that had brought them to America.33 Meanwhile, German hotel and salon keepers showed another kind of united effort by their struggle against temperance advocates. At a meeting in June 1877, one owner urged that an association be formed whose members would pledge themselves not to buy from or support temperance activists or their allies in church bodies and to invite like-minded Americans to join into their cause. Another proposal called for a petition to the mayor, signed by supporters who, having worked throughout the week, wanted the right to do as they pleased on Sundays. While these initiatives stalled, agreement was reached that their officers should confer with the presidents of other German societies to organize a mass protest against the temperance movement. With charges that recent attempts to persuade the mayor to enforce the ban on the sale of liquor on Sundays reflected bigotry, another delegate insisted that the main question was whether participants at the meeting wished to live as freemen or slaves. While the issue remained unresolved, and often wrapped in a loftier defense of personal freedom, Germans had given a warning that they would not readily acquiesce to others, but uphold their own values as citizens.34 As Germans plotted their course of action, Presbyterians and other righteous defenders of public morality, objecting to the failure to properly observe the Sabbath, argued for restrictive intervention. Echoing Benjamin Franklin, the Reverend Doctor D. W. Poor, secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Education, proposed: “to endeavor to Americanize them instead of letting them Germanize us.” Mindful of the challenge, Pastor Poor sought to reach Germans through the use of their own language in a city where, with only one German Presbyterian church, he believed that there ought to be twenty or thirty of them. For his part, Mayor Stokley only exacerbated matters by calling for strict enforcement of the long ignored Act of Assembly of 1794, forbidding such “worldly employment” as theatrical performances, concerts, and the sale of liquor on Sundays. By late December 1878, the decision had raised “no trifling amount of excitement” among Germans. Patrons, who visited drinking establishments at Third and Green Streets, expecting to find them open, discovered that proprietors, having received warnings from the mayor’s office on the previous day, had decided to obey the edict. But singing societies, with halls in the same neighborhood, held

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“private concerts” or rehearsals that enabled them to evade the law. And at Maennerchor Hall at Fairmount Avenue and Franklin Street, tuxedoed men and women in gowns indulged themselves at a festive ball, while a burly attendant blocked reporters from entrance, informing them that no tickets could be purchased at the door. Despite the prohibition, the Philadelphia Horn Quartette, a musical society of some prominence, also chose to defy the ban. Across the German district, other places, behind closed doors, provided beer to patrons. As Germans denounced the police for interfering with “harmless festivities,” abstemious opponents supported the campaign against “dens of vice.” And the proprietors of the recently opened Arcade Garden Theatre, on North Eighth Street, were arrested and held on bail on charges of selling alcohol to minors and operating a resort for “disorderly characters,” brought by members of the nearby Zion Reformed Church. With battle lines being drawn, observing the Sabbath properly had exploded as a contentious issue between Germans and the defenders of public morality and decorum.35 Among Philadelphians disturbed by lingering “foreign” ways, Presbyterians led efforts to find alternatives. At the dedication of the Corinthian Avenue German Presbyterian Church in September 1879, prominent clergy, seeking to erase older boundaries, expressed the intention to reach out until the day when their church would stand “..as a beacon light to all Germans in the United States.” The same Reverend Poor, now a familiar voice in missionary activities, commended the success of the church since its founding two years earlier as the beginning of greater things. Praising the Germans as a social people, whom he oddly labeled as being like ants, but whose collective life as Christians made them into a family, he offered them his congratulations. With 320 contributors, 225 communicants, and 320 children in its Sunday School and mission, the congregation hoped, with the sale of its former building, to erase its $1,600 debt, incurred by improvements at the new site, in another year and a half. With most Germans being Lutheran, or secondarily Catholic, this small community of Presbyterians, having gained the sympathy and aid of other Americans, espoused the importance of being more like their supporters, not only in religion but in cultural character as well.36 Within an increasingly familiar pattern, Philadelphia’s Germans had become simultaneously visible and invisible in the social landscape of the city, but also caught between the security of acceptance and uncertainty of controversy. Colorful newspaper accounts of happy, jolly, and merry Germans celebrating at picnics had encouraged a sense of confidence in their place on the local scene, with their acceptance as sometimes boisterous but generally responsible neighbors. In January 1881, taking the initiative in protecting their interests, a group of Germans, responding to recent efforts to enforce the closing of salons on Sundays, met to organize what they awkwardly called “The Agitation Association of the Independent Citizens of

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Philadelphia.” With their main objective being “to combat by every honorable means in our power temperance of Sunday bigotry,” they sought to form chapters in every ward in order to secure nomination of political candidates pledged to “the repeal of old, obnoxious laws in relation to temperance, as such laws are incompatible with the progress and spirit of the present age.” Anticipating a large turnout for the ratification of rules at its next meeting, the Germans had fired another volley in defense of their right to enjoy beer in a salon on a Sunday night.37 As Philadelphia’s “Jolly Germans” continued to celebrate Whitsuntide in the spring, the Saengerfest in August, the Cannstatter Festival at harvest time, and every propitious occasion in between, vividly captured by newspaper accounts of the prodigious consumption of beer, more virtuous citizens, with indignation and envy, continued the effort to impose their own moral code on everyone else. From his pulpit, the Reverend John F. Meredith, pastor of the Hancock Street Methodist Church, excoriated the Germans for having attempted “to organize into an association to dethrone our Sabbath” [and] “to open wide the places where liquor is sold and drank.” Meanwhile, Germans, finding the merrymaking agenda in Philadelphia to be too scant, flocked to Egg Harbor for an annual three-day festival which included “the gathering of the grapes, which are ripe and in abundance, and the pressing of the new wine, together with some of the customs of the Fatherland.” And in November 1881, The Inquirer could admit: “In accordance with the habits and customs of the Faderland (sic) the German population look upon Sunday as a day, not only of a cessation from toil and for rest, but for enjoyment.” When imbibers seeking refreshment from “the Gambrinian liquid” violated the newly passed act of the State Legislature prohibiting the sale of liquor in places of amusement, The Inquirer laconically commented: “It may not be known to Mayor King that the theatres give performances on Sunday night, and that liquor can be obtained in the buildings, but nevertheless it is a fact.” What the advocates of temperance had not understood, and never would be able to understand, such occasions involved far more than a predilection for beer. By remembering “the customs of the Fatherland,” the celebrations at Egg Harbor, Schuetzen Park, the Concordia and Germania theatres, or wherever Germans gathered, were moments in which they revived, displayed, and perpetuated personal identity and solidarity. It was not as much about beer or wine as it was about being German.38 As the battle with the temperance movement revealed, the acceptance of Germans was episodically qualified. Immigrants now pouring in, while seeking to take their place in American society, were not eager to abandon their traditional culture. And the consumption of beer and other spirits had a role in their lives that they were not willing to pay as part of the price of becoming American. But many other Americans harbored a moral agenda that held

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priority not only for themselves but for everyone who wanted to become citizens of their society. For the temperance movement, seeking to sweep all pernicious tendencies from America, German celebrations had become almost bacchanals of perdition. The conflict between these perspectives had galvanized German Americans in their political response. As the engagement in which beer fueled the antagonism led to a call for greater restriction on one side and resistance on the other, it would reignite conflict in the years ahead. JUDGING THE GERMANS Nearly a century and a half after first being praised as “an extremely industrious type,” dislodged by political upheaval in their native land, another wave of Germans with skills, ingenuity, and energy would fuel the development of Philadelphia. By the United States Census of 1880, some 55,169 German residents, more than 27 percent of all newcomers, behind only the Irish, made the city, after New York and Chicago, the third most popular choice in the nation. But the so-called “German family,” also contained American-born children, speaking the German language in a nearly exclusive community, who would be counted as Americans. And with longevity as a population further reducing distinctiveness, their patterns settlement was marked by a wideranging spatial distribution, with newer arrivals living in rural areas as well as in urban neighborhoods. Thus, any count of Germans that focused on the city was likely to underestimate their overall presence. Recognizing what it called “a curious fact,” the Census also noted that while previously reporting themselves as natives of one of the older states—Prussia, Baden, Bavaria, and so on—they almost entirely saw themselves simply as “German” by 1880. Their shift in identity, reflecting the nation-building of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the land left behind, would hold great psychological and political consequences for their future.39 Despite being able to find virtue and merit in Germans, other Americans still deigned the British as the most preferred newcomers. As a Philadelphia newspaper expressed it: “the Englishman still holds the place of honor. While not always agreeable as an individual, his principles and language were closest to ‘ours,’” and “the second generation forms an American intelligently loyal to this country and useful in strengthening it.” To a society threatened by cultural differences, German immigration “sought to impose laws and customs rather than accept those it found. It was more or less aloof from American thought and habit, owing to its antecedents and language.” With immigrants reaching high proportions within urban populations, Philadelphia shared the fear of foreign presence. Despite a native stock that remained dominant in civic affairs, the impact of immigrants, attracted by opportunities

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found in rapidly growing industries, posed a broad threat: “There can be no doubt that the increased number of the foreign born must modify the tastes, manners and customs, institutions and general characteristics of our people wherever a community is largely infused with them.” Instead of being acculturated along Anglo American lines, immigrants were altering what it meant to be an American: “We see this in most of our leading cities, which have now departed so far from the primitive characteristics as to have become Europeanized.” The warning was especially directed at cities with large concentrations of immigrants: “Whether the nation can digest and assimilate so large a foreign influx as we have received since 1860 is a very serious problem, especially when the foreign element predominates in great cities as in New York.” In Philadelphia, where descendants of British settlers retained an Anglo American hegemony, such views annealed the social structure and culture within which Germans found themselves.40 As the “Old Immigration” from Northern and Western Europe began to bend under the “New Immigration” from Eastern and Southern Europe, public dialogue increased its concern with the consequences for American character, culture, and institutions. In a relatively nuanced perception, a Philadelphia newspaper declared that the “saving grace of our nationality” was that the English-speaking “races” remained one-half of all foreign-born

Figure 3.1  Philadelphia Schuetzen Verein. Source: Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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persons, while it also praised the “alloy” that other European groups represented. For German Americans, the daily life of workers in the burgeoning industrial economy, was further nurtured in family life, home ownership, and even the diversions found in often envied celebrations. But they also were a group in transition, undergoing their own assimilation while mediating the broader shift to newer sources of immigration. Meanwhile, German immigrants continued to arrive; the German government persisted in its search for ways to discourage further emigration; the German Society maintained its efforts to provide assistance to needy newcomers; the Schützen Verein held its competitions and celebrations at the park in East Falls; and the nolonger new communities thrived at Egg Harbor and other places. All could be deemed as monuments of German industry and energy.41 

NOTES 1. “The Lessons Of The Commune,” The Inquirer (June 5, 1871). 2. “Emigration From Germany,” Public Ledger (May 24, 1872 ); “German Emigration,” Public Ledger (June 14, 1872); “The German Exodus,” North American and United States Gazette (June 21, 1872); Editorial, The Inquirer (March 12, 1881); “Westward the Course Of Immigration Takes Its Way,” The Inquirer (September 29, 1881); “Germany: Immigration vs. Emigration, The Inquirer (June 15, 1881). 3. “Our New York Letter,” The Inquirer (March 26, 1880); “Local Intelligence: Splendid Record,” The Inquirer (April 28, 1880); editorial, The Inquirer (April 28, 1880); The Inquirer (May 10, 1881); “Crowds of Emigrants by the American Line,” The Inquirer (May 25, 1880). Edward Needles Wright, “The Story of Peter Wright & Sons, Philadelphia Quaker Shipping Firm, 1818–1911,” Quaker History, 56:2 (Autumn 1967), pp. 67–89. The author, the great grandson of the founder, was a faculty member in the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania for 24 years. 4. Editorial, The Inquirer (March 12, 1881); “New York Letter” The Inquirer (April 8, 1881); “Notes,” The Inquirer (April 12, 1881); Closing the Gates,” The Inquirer (June 23, 1881). 5. “The Handbook of The City of Philadelphia,” Public Ledger Supplement (December 21, 1872). 6. “German Immigration to the United States, The Inquirer (March 10, 1873); “Among The Slums,” The Inquirer (July 11, 1873); “South Jersey,” The Inquirer (September 2, 1873); “Germany And Emigration,” The Inquirer (October 17, 1873). 7. “People and Events,” The (Chicago, IL) Daily Inter Ocean (October 18, 1880); “Delaware Land Speculation,” The (Baltimore, MD) Sun (October 27, 1880). 8. “Emigration—Teutonic and British,” The Inquirer (July 25, 1871). 9. “Political,” The (NY) Evening Post (September 16, 1871); “Public School Night,” The Inquirer (October 5, 1871); “City Intelligence—German,” The Inquirer (October 6, 1871).

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10. “The Germans,” The Inquirer (June 5, 1872); “Local Affairs—Mass Meeting of German Citizens,” Public Ledger (June 5, 1872); “The Germans of Philadelphia for Greeley,” New York Tribune (July 19, 1872); “Greeley and Buckalew,” The Inquirer (September 14, 1872). 11. Classified notice, “Carl Schurz at Concert Hall,” Public Ledger (September 24, 1872); “Local Affairs—Carl Schurz in Philadelphia,” Public Ledger (September 25, 1872); “Hon. Carl Schurz,” The Inquirer (September 25, 1872) 12. “Local Affairs—Carl Schurz in Philadelphia,” Public Ledger (September 25, 1872); “Hon. Carl Schurz,” The Inquirer (September 25, 1872). 13. Editorial, North American and United States Gazette (July 24, 1876); “The Exhibition,” The Inquirer (November 1, 1876); “The Twelfth Ward,” The Inquirer (November 1, 1876). 14. The first “Bancroft Treaty,” an agreement signed by the North German states and the United States on February 22, 1868, was terminated during World War I when the American government sought to make naturalized aliens eligible for military conscription. The Bancroft Naturalization Treaties with the German States; The United States’ Constitution and the Rights and Privileges of Citizens of Foreign Birth (Würzburg, 1868). 15. “An Unhappy German,” North American and United States Gazette (November 11, 1877). 16. “Approaching Victory,” The Inquirer (February 12, 1877); “In the Nineteenth Ward,” The Inquirer (February 19, 1877); “We Told You So!” North American and United States Gazette (February 21, 1877). For Joseph Lewis Caven, almost totally ignored by historians, despite serving five terms on Common Council and as its president, a member of Board of City Trusts, and president of Real Estate Title and Insurance Company, see John J. Jordan, Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania Biography (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1921), 78–80; also his obituary, “Joseph L. Caven,” New York Times (March 18, 1907). 17. “A Nice Fight Brewing,” The Inquirer (April 19, 1878); editorial, The Inquirer (July 1, 1878); “The Cannstatter Closes,” The Inquirer (September 12, 1878); editorial, The North American and United States Gazette (November 18, 1878); “Immigration,” The North American and United States Gazette (December 27, 1878). 18. Editorial, The Inquirer (February 10, 1880); editorial, The Inquirer (March 4, 1880). 19. “The Germans,” The Inquirer (November 11, 1880). 20. Editorial, The Inquirer (December 3, 1880); “Socialistic Exiles,” The Inquirer (December 6, 1880). 21. “The Schoolmaster Abroad,” Public Ledger (August 15, 1871). 22. “The Sængerbund,” The Inquirer (August 18, 1871). 23. “The ‘Saengerfest,’” The Inquirer (July 17, 1865). 24. “City Intelligence—Schuetzen Verein,” The Inquirer (August 29, 1871). 25. “Philadelphia and Suburbs—Stadt Theatre,” The Inquirer (February 17, 1873). 26. “Whit-Monday,” The Inquirer (May 22, 1877). 27. Ibid; “Germans’ Troubles,” North American and United States Gazette (May 24, 1877).

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28. “The German’s Fourth of July,” The Inquirer (June 3, 1879); “A Raid on the Black Hussars,” The North American (July 18, 1879). 29. “Merry Turners,” The Inquirer (August 4, 1879); “The Turnerfest,” The Inquirer (August 5, 1879); “Disgusted Germans,” The North American and United States Gazette (August 8, 1879). 30. “Joyous Germans,” The Inquirer (September 1, 1879). 31. “Whit-Monday,” The Inquirer (May 18, 1880); “The May Festival,” The Inquirer (May 25, 1880); “The Bavarian Volksfest Verein,” The Inquirer (August 2, 1880); “The Bavarian Festival,” The Inquirer (August 3, 1880); “The Cannstatter Volksfest—Swabian Village Scenes,” The Inquirer (September 6, 1880); “The Festivals,” The Inquirer (September 7, 1880). 32. “Police Protecting The Ladies In Cleveland,” The Inquirer (March 21, 1874); “The Temperance Germans,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (April 4, 1874); “Suicide As A German Fruit,” North American and United States Gazette (May 4, 1874). 33. “About Town,” The Inquirer (June 20, 1874); “The German Society,” The Inquirer (September 18, 1874); “The German Society,” The Inquirer (December 17, 1875). 34. “Liquor Dealers In Council,” The Inquirer (May 30, 1877). 35. “Our German Population,” The Inquirer (November 25, 1878); “Sunday Night Among the Germans,” The North American and United States Gazette (December 30, 1878); “War Against Disorderly Dens,” The Inquirer (December 30, 1878). 36. “Local Intelligence: Corinthian Avenue German Presbyterian Church,” The Inquirer (September 9, 1879). 37. “Against Sunday Closings,” The Inquirer (January 21, 1881). 38. “Merry-Making Germans,” The Inquirer (August 23, 1881); “Merry-Making Germans,” The Inquirer (September 6, 1881): “Temperance,” The Inquirer (September 19, 1881); “Festivities at Egg Harbor,” The Inquirer (September 26, 1881); “Sunday Amusements,” The Inquirer (November 14, 1881). 39. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880). Volume I, Population, 536–7, 674–92. 40. “Organized English Immigration,” The Inquirer (October 2, 1873); “A Foreign City,” North American and United States Gazette (March 18, 1874). 41. “Native And Foreign Stock,” North American and United States Gazette (August 10, 1874). “To Egg Harbor City,” The Inquirer (September 23, 1875).

Chapter 4

Liquor, Labor, and Politics (1882–1890)

Despite Chancellor Bismarck’s success in forging a united nation, his government’s efforts to stem the outward movement of population were a notable failure. German immigrants to America, more than 210,000, nearly twofifths of all European immigration in 1881, would reach their highest total, over 250,000, in 1882. Along with the desire to avoid compulsory military service, the low wages and high cost of food in German cities, against the high wages and low cost of food in urban America, made Philadelphia a compelling destination. In May, with more than 25,000 newcomers from all countries arriving at Castle Garden in just seven days, immigration reached an unprecedented level. Among them, many Germans, searching for a new life in America, believed that one could become “in his own person sovereign, a prop and pillar of the state, with a personal interest in it, and a part and share in its government.” Other arrivals, such as the Italians, described by Superintendent of Immigration Henry J. Jackson as “the lowest and least desirable of our immigrants,” enabled Americans to appreciate Germans even more. And what Bismarck had lost, Philadelphia would gain.1 During a crucial decade, Philadelphia’s Germans, eagerly pursuing opportunities in a rapidly growing urban economy, would recognize the need to more effectively consolidate community life. With rising employment, residential dispersion, and the proliferation of voluntary associations, they would increase efforts to aid less fortunate members. They would also jump further into the maelstrom of local politics and organized labor. But their boisterous public celebrations, too often requiring defiance of restrictive liquor laws, would bring even greater confrontation with local guardians of temperance and propriety. As they sought to strengthen their place on the turf of Philadelphia, their leaders would call for an intense self-examination, intending to awaken German Americans as individuals and achieve a more cohesive 63

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community. And as other observers sought to reappraise their character and worth, a wide spectrum of “solutions,” ranging from experimental agricultural colonies to utopian visions of radical politics, solicited their attention. SERVING NEEDY GERMANS Sporadic acts of violence, such as a “serious stabbing” incident among members of the Harmonic Singing Society, did not discourage German immigrants who sought opportunities in Philadelphia in the early 1880s. But not all Germans would enjoy good jobs with high wages, enhanced by an occasional Saengerfest, and a life of prosperity and comfort. Many Germans only found places, along with the Irish, Italians and Russian Jews, in the dirty and dangerous “opportunities” of the mills and factories in the developing industries of the city. Along with immigrants and native-born residents being reshuffled at all skill levels, Germans remained among the laborers who toiled in the work that needed to be done.2 Philadelphia’s Germans also held tightly to cherished memories and ties to a distant homeland, particularly when distress sent out a call for assistance. In January 1883, a committee of citizens with well-known German names— Wanamaker, Lankenau, Ballier, Blankenburg, Morwitz, Sallinger, Kellner, and Remak among them—met with Mayor Samuel G. King to develop a plan to aid victims of recent flooding of the Rhine River. With nearly $2,000 pledged before the meeting adjourned, the project was further strengthened by its linkage to the Bicentennial Celebration of Pastorius’ historic landing in the coming October. When another group met under the auspices of the German Pioneer Society, chaired by Professor Oswald Seidensticker, the preliminary agenda, calling for church services, parades, a Saengerfest and a grand picnic similarly testified to the lingering salience of the past.3 While such preoccupations served as distractions that softened the rigors of everyday life, their impact could easily spill beyond the German community. In 1883, anticipating the upcoming celebration of the founding of Germantown, the 10th annual program of the Cannstatter Festival featured costumed children hauling carts with statues of Penn and Pastorius, followed by Quakers, Continental soldiers and young Indians, then an incongruous Bacchus on his own wagon. After a wagon bearing the coat of arms of Germantown, another division presented the industries of the old settlement, before a final group of children led a flock of sheep. While the crowd at Schuetzen Park, estimated at 30,000 persons, perhaps larger than in any previous year, enjoyed a relatively quiet day, marred by only one arrest, the reported consumption of 250,000 glasses of beer also attracted the attention of covert agents of the temperance movement.4

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Two years later, Philadelphia’s Germans, paying homage to their great poet, Friedrich Schiller, showed that remembrance of their homeland did not require disaster in the Rhineland as a prerequisite. In a program organized by the Grand Lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons of Pennsylvania, with members of the Cannstatter Verein serving as hosts, more than 2,000 guests, gathered at Horticulture Hall in Fairmount Park, to place a cornerstone for a monument. After former mayor and past grandmaster of the Masons Richard Vaux delivered an address in English, newspaper editor Kellner offered his oration in German. Speaking of the poet’s political and philosophical legacy, Kellner asserted that, as the multitude of immigrants poured into America, Schiller’s wandering spirit remained with them in German song, language, and culture. With their heritage now providing the foundation for what was commendable about America, it also indicated why Germans might be reluctant to have it taken away by assimilation.5 But with collective health still also resting upon the availability of social services, the German Society of Pennsylvania, catering to less fortunate co-nationals, remained a major communal resource. In March 1884, the organization, always more than a self-contained scholarly body, reported on its welfare work. From membership dues amounting to nearly $1,400, it had disbursed almost $900 in aid during the first two months of the year. It had enabled 59 persons to find employment, while assigning 21 others to homes and families. Its German-English school provided instruction in English to Germans in the Eleventh Ward. And its board had begun a plan to establish lodging facilities for wayfarers.6 In December 1888, the dedication of the new building of the German Society on Spring Garden Street was a “red letter day” for the entire community. Elegant in exterior architecture and interior design, with 30,000 volumes in its library and portraits of renowned predecessors adorning hallways, it offered a place of erudition, scholarship, and culture. With many public officials and dignitaries participating in ceremonies, the rich musical program of patriotic hymns, Mendelssohn opera, Schumann ballads, and oratorical tributes to German character enhanced the program. Although how many more ordinary folk found places in the crowd went unreported, the occasion saluted Germans as a people who had contributed much in the past, but still held great promise for the future of Philadelphia. The august building not only expressed the presence of the Society but invited greater appreciation of the history it sought to preserve.7 German Americans enjoyed more mundane events with the opening of another season at their major theatres. In September 1883, the recently renovated Concordia Hall on Callowhill Street, renamed as the Thalla Theatre, resumed its role as a provider of entertainment and hub of social life. A few days later, the similarly refurbished Germania on Third Street below Green,

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launched its program of drama and song. But while Germans found either place to be where “their own mother tongue will rule the boards,” the two theatres offered far more than distraction. Like the summer picnic grounds, they were arenas of refuge from Anglo American life where Germans found their own forms of popular culture.8 RELOCATING AND ADJUSTING As a growing German population, with employment and prosperity, now spilled beyond its older confines, Camden, on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, attracted real-estate speculators and home buyers. In June 1884, the “Liberty Park Mutual Homestead Association” promised prospective buyers “an easy way to procure a home of their own, clear of encumbrance, within a few years.” Having secured a highly desirable parcel of land on the south side of Kaighn Avenue, between the Camden and Atlantic Railroad and Haddon and Mount Ephraim Pikes, it offered building lots to shareholders for $200, payable in weekly installments, with ownership transferred upon the payment of $25, and the deed conveyed when the full amount was reached. Paid-up members could then borrow money from the association to construct a house, with profits from the loans and original purchase redistributed among shareholders. Within another year, the enterprise had achieved enough success to organize a second Liberty Park Association. But by 1890, the “pioneer in urban homestead association” would find itself mired in legal difficulties in state equity courts. While Liberty Park would remain a largely German neighborhood well into the next century, it would fall short of further development as a community.9 But more modest initiatives also sought the attention of younger Germans. In early 1885, the Young Men’s Christian Association founded its first German branch at Association Hall at Fifteenth and Chestnut Streets, offering English classes on Wednesday evenings and religion classes on Friday evenings within another year. By early 1886, the YMCA had established similar programs, providing recreational activities and facilitating Americanization in twenty-two cities. It was, in some sense, the American alternative to the widely popular turnverein which offered athletic programs within a cultural framework that sustained German culture and identity. By October 1886, the YMCA effort required the opening of additional rooms at 425 Girard Avenue, a location more central to the German community.10 The YMCA program competed with more German agencies in providing for the health, recreation, and education of younger members. From its location at 433–35 North Sixth Street, the 30-year-old Turngemeinde Society offered a broad agenda of “mental and physical culture.” Its school enrolled

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314 boys and 86 girls, with classes in German and related matters for 11 boys and 39 girls; drawing for 190 boys, sewing for 40 girls, and 60 pupils in an artisan evening school at the nearby Paxson Elementary School. Along with a physical culture program for adults, its singing society of 100 male and female voices drew praise from the public school board and city councils.11 By October 1890, when the German Society observed the 207th anniversary of Pastorius and the founding of his colony, the program of speeches by Professor Seidensticker, Judge Pennypacker and editor Kellner, with Governor James A. Beaver and Mayor Edwin H. Fitler in attendance, followed a familiar script. In tribute to the hybrid audience of Germans and Americans, an orchestra fittingly played both “Die Wacht am Rheim” and “Yankee Doodle.” Meanwhile, a program at Parker’s Hall in Germantown recalled that the old suburb where it all began represented for one-fifth of all Americans what Plymouth Rock did for New Englanders.12 POLITICS AND LABOR As German Americans continued to seek, adapt to, and construct their place in Philadelphia, politics remained the most powerful arena. While German citizens had long tended to become Republicans, the liquor laws again threatened to draw them, at least temporarily, into the ranks of the Democratic Party. After a statewide Democratic sweep of Ohio in autumn of 1882, a wave of defection appeared likely to undermine the balance of power in Pennsylvania. With their strong belief in personal freedom not easily dismissed, as representatives of sixty societies met at Schuetzen Hall at Third and Green streets in August 1883 to begin planning for the Pastorius Bicentennial, their political strength had already congealed.13 German Americans were also strengthening their place in organized labor. While journeymen tailors, who had formed associations since the 1830s, with only limited results, garment cutters remained involved in efforts to organize workers. In April 1884, some 50 German tailors, along with a few Englishmen and Italians, answered a call by the Philadelphia Manufacturing Tailors’ Association to meet with wholesale dealers who controlled their work and wages. Although a speaker, delivering “an apparently communistic address,” would be warmly applauded, the meeting ended with the modest intention of renegotiating what dealers were willing to pay, with increased costs being passed on in higher prices. It was, in some sense, an anachronistic undertaking, as the introduction of ready-made clothing had already created a different type of tailor, lacking the skills of the journeyman, who worked within a more complex division of labor. But in that twilight, Germans embraced labor militancy.14

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Along with the tailors, professional musicians, overwhelmingly German, seeking to defuse the threat of less-skilled workers, formed new trade unions. Of approximately 1,000 musicians in the city, Germans comprised most of the 900 members of two negotiating bodies. Meanwhile, the Journeymen Tailors’ Protective Union, a newly formed German and English-speaking body of about 1,000 workers, declared its intention to strike a local factory rather than to accept a 15 percent reduction in wages. With a large emergency fund, it also threatened to call a general strike if other firms attempted to lower wages. But even with the growing unity, local tailors and musicians, hoping to avoid broader political issues, preferred to remain independent rather than to affiliate with the more militant Knights of Labor.15 By February 1885, when members of the International Workingmen’s Association met at a saloon at Eighth and Callowhill Streets, to discuss “the relative merits of dynamite, gore and beer,” a concern with radical politics had also emerged. The Inquirer, offering details of “anarchists and advocates of social reform” speaking in a foreign tongue behind closed doors, reported that “German revolutionists” had denounced the press as the organ of capitalism, with similar contempt for other institutions, while anticipating the worldwide triumph of anarchism. It also gratuitously described the role of beer: “As a necessary condition these speculations were stimulated and supported by the contents of several kegs of beer, which the bartender kept himself busy passing over the counter as fast as he could fill the glasses.” For “Socialist fanatics” of German origin, convinced of imminent revolution, beer played a persistent role: “It is this grand scheme of reconstructing human society on a co-operative basis that seems to idealize the dreams of a score or more blear-eyed Germans who help themselves to a foretaste of the common enjoyment of life in their Sunday beer drinking festivities.” While also unable to distinguish anarchism from socialism, the fanciful portrayal of the press reflected a persistent inability to sound a serious alarm of radicalism without indicting the “softer” danger of beer.16 In March 1885, The Inquirer, certainly no friend of radical politics, claimed that a speaker, soliciting carpet weavers during an already seventeenweek strike, who appealed on behalf of the International Working Peoples Association at a meeting hall on Fourth and Norris Streets, had found reluctance from his audience. Contrasting the meager yearly earnings of workers with the tenfold or more greater profits of bosses, he spoke of the 90 percent of the world population who toil, yet must go hungry, thinly clothed and homeless, while the other 10 percent owned the land, machinery, and means of production. He condemned governments that protected the interests of one class over another as a corrupt system that must be destroyed. But the 50 or so Germans in his audience, although outwardly agreeing, declined the opportunity to join his movement. With the strike winding down and management

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asking workers to renounce affiliation with the Knights of Labor, when the same speaker, described as a “paid agitator of the Anarchists,” called for the destruction of the private property system at another meeting, Germans applauded but again withheld further support.17 While ignoring the lure of more militant action, Germans workers remained in the midst of labor strife. In April 1885, when stevedores walked off company wharves in South Philadelphia, the International Navigation Company reportedly hired men who had only recently arrived on its own ships from Germany as replacements. Caught up in an internecine struggle between workers who had decided to remain at their jobs and others who chose to strike, newly arrived, job-seeking Germans faced the prospect of violence that “scabs” had come to know too well.18 With secret sessions behind closed doors failing to bring consensus in the struggle against inequity and injustice, public events projected a more favorable impression. In late September 1885, a reporter commented: “Not for years has organized labor in this city united in such a parade as took place on Saturday evening.” He was describing a massive march by the Knights of Labor, augmented by several independent trade unions, perhaps exceeding 5,000 men, that converged on the Industrial Art Building, where 500 female weavers, shoemakers and patent ironers, and other supporters waited. But when a group of Germans at the head of the Textile Arbeiter Verein, hoisted the red flag, democratic impulses abruptly failed, as parade organizers, unsympathetic to socialist doctrines, ruled that such banners could not be brought inside the hall. A spokesman timidly explained that only a few Germans had been involved, while the Textile Union, connected to a socialist group, was not recognized by the Knights of Labor or the Central Labor Union. Despite such denials, Germans of unorthodox ideas had partly succeeded in disrupting efforts to organize.19 And radical speakers remained undeterred as they continued their attempts to gain the attention of workers. In November 1885, about 200 members of the Textile Workingmen’s Association attended a lecture by Paul Grottkau, a well-known journalist and Socialist Labor Party leader from Milwaukee, on the subject of the eight-hour day at a meeting hall at Sixth and Berks Streets. A few days later, an audience of German cloth cutters listened to Grottkau, described as a “labor agitator” at Scheutzen Hall. With Grottkau recognized as an opponent of Johann Most, the off-derided “apostle of Anarchism,” a handful of Germans, receptive to the ideas and oratory of the radical Left, had aligned themselves with the more extreme reaches of a fractious political spectrum.20 But beyond any speaker, the Haymarket Affair, beginning with a demonstration by German anarchists in Chicago that brought police violence, would provoke workers throughout the nation in May 1886. The incident,

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along with the execution of four “rioters” by the state of Illinois, would not only invite sympathy for their cause but become a turning point in American labor history. With increasing apprehension against foreigners, it held greater implications for Germans than for any other immigrant group. When they next observed Whitsunday in Philadelphia, although an alarmed newspaper focused on what it called “the strongest remaining link between the emigrants as a body and their old home,” the Haymarket Affair brought a clear message that they could no longer find well-being simply in beer at national festivals, but had to become more militant.21 Philadelphia’s Germans reassembled as members of organized labor when over 7,000 brewers, beer wagon drivers, engineers and firemen, coopers, printers, and bakers, members of more than 70 chapters of the Knights of Labor, gathered at Schuetzen Park in August. Speakers described the objectives of the order and benefits of membership, while condemning monopolies subverting the rights of workers. But with orations ended, “jolly Germans” fed themselves at sandwich counters offering huge slices of bread concealing slabs of ham and cheese with mustard at the gentle price of ten cents. Beer remained the favorite beverage, with an estimated 80,000 glasses of the brew consumed by thirsty picnickers. And as “the best of order prevailed through the program,” a mildly astonished reporter could only describe the proceedings as “phenomenal.” But overlooked by the press, the Knights of Labor, as the event well demonstrated, had finally succeeded in organizing German workers.22 Against “opera buffa” newspaper depictions, when the Central Labor Union declared its opposition to Democrat Maxwell Stevenson as a candidate for Congress, Germans rejoined the fusion of labor and politics. John S. Kirschner, a cigar industry organizer and secretary of the American Federation of Labor, described by The Inquirer as an “agitator,” argued that it could not support a lawyer “who has been engaged in trials for the purpose to condemn working men while they are struggling for their rights.” He noted that if more of the effort devoted to strikes, boycotts and lockouts were directed toward voting, labor would strengthen its role in politics. His argument rested on the plight of 18 workers facing charges of conspiracy by laws waiting to be repealed. While both “old parties” voiced “empty platitudes and soft soap” by their platforms, one had appealed to laboring people by its choice of candidate. But most workers, Kirschner insisted, were unserved by “pot house politicians,” who showed solicitude only just prior to an election. Seeking more independent action by organized labor, Kirschner urged greater political militancy. But his call had already been heeded, as Germans or their union representatives, comprising most of the 15 members appointed from his audience, would serve as delegates to the Greenback-Labor Party convention in Harrisburg in another month.23

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On the following day, candidate Stevenson, responding to the charges made against him, summarized the situation in which Germans now found themselves. After praising their loyalty to fatherland as well as adopted country along with their respect for law, order and the rights of others, he argued that the violence and lawlessness of a few anarchists, masquerading as Socialists, had left a heavy cloud of suspicion. While these “bad men” represented a menace to organized labor that had to be quickly rooted out, he maintained that Germans, faced more complicated challenges, not only in Chicago but in Philadelphia and other cities, after the Haymarket Massacre. But like other apologists, Stevenson neglected the inconvenient fact that police and state repression were pushing Germans and other workers into the labor movement.24 On a sunny afternoon of the “festival season” in late summer, 1886, as its president, Godfrey Keebler, again saluted the Cannstatter Society, life for Philadelphia’s Germans seemed tranquil. But if they had been able to shift their attention to another location—Sheffield, Indiana—on the same day, they would have heard workers singing “La Marseillaise,” turned into a labor anthem by German words, and Lucy Parsons, the wife of Albert R. Parsons, convicted in the aftermath of Haymarket, condemning the court and pleading for her husband’s life. Almost in antithesis to Keebler, she declared: “If these men are hung and you people before me do not resent it powerfully and so that it will be remembered for many a year to come, you are unworthy to be called men. . . . It is your duty and I demand of you to echo the crash of these seven scaffold traps by a counter crash that this country will hear, and, hearing, tremble.” While Lucy Parson could not save her husband from being executed in another year, her words would reach some Germans, again about to disrupt labor politics in Philadelphia.25 At a heated meeting in late September, two printers’ unions and a granite workers’ union, representing some 1,500 workers, more than half of the total membership, abruptly withdrew from the Central Labor Union. The decision was in response to allegations that the Tageblatt, the official organ of the central body had hired “rat,” or nonunion, compositors, following several months of unresolved contention between typographical workers and management. Delegates of the cigar makers and the carpenters and joiners, the two remaining unions, were also expected to withdraw. Julius Froelich, defending the hiring, insisted that his Guttenberg Bund was not a rogue body of “rat” printers, but an affiliate of the Progressive Workingmen’s Union of Philadelphia and Printers’ Union No. 9 of Chicago. But another speaker, David M. Pascoe, expressed regret that the affiliation with the Chicago union had been brought up: “I would be ashamed to be connected with an organization which has as its members men who are now under sentence of death for Anarchy.” With the meeting exploding, German delegates burst into calls of

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“Shame! Shame!” As Pascoe attempted to assert, “Any printer not connected with Union No. 1 or 2 is a rat! Mr. President, a rat,” the Germans shouted their disapproval. But with order restored, the dissenting chapters began announcing their withdrawal.26 With defections leaving the Central Labor Union in crisis, disgruntled German workers, comprising much of its membership, easily heard the solicitous appeals of socialism. Addressing an audience in Philadelphia during a speaking tour of the United States, Edward Aveling, the partner of Karl Marx’s daughter, Eleanor, claimed that its ranks had been greatly increased. Supported by about 1,000 German members from the “upper portion of the city,” it sought to accomplish through organizing workers what the Anarchists preferred to do by violence. For some time, their school on Columbia Avenue, attended mainly by German children, had offered English along with the tenets of socialism. The two local sections of the party regularly met at Fritzsche’s Saloon, 325 Callowhill Street, and Weisser’s Hall, 1802 Germantown Avenue. But their results remained limited, with most Germans still satisfied by affiliation with more moderate factions of organized labor.27 By late November, with leaders predicting a strong future for a rejuvenated United Labor Party, organized labor regained strength, partly by the recently formed German Workingmen’s Club with about 30 members in the Seventeenth Ward. But two weeks later, the incipient effort, at its third meeting, discovered that a more radical faction had not abandoned the labor movement. During an intense two-hour debate, W. J. Gorsuch, facing opposition calls for expulsion because of his anarchistic views, strongly defended his right to remain a delegate. While abruptly leaving the meeting before any action could be taken, Gorsuch and some 25 other delegates, mostly Germans, in a maneuver that made his removal almost impossible, showed that the adherents of Anarchy had not ended their efforts.28 In January 1887, with Philadelphia’s Germans still embroiled in dispute, Julius Froelich, of the German Federation of Trades, urged striking brewery workers to resist demands to return to work, as an audience booed the names of saloon keepers who opposed their action. Earlier in the day, when a police officer attempted to arrest a worker for disturbing the peace in Brewerytown, a crowd, protesting in broken English, moved to defend him. After another striker was arrested, irate sympathizers gathered at saloons, with the aid of “union” beer, to express support. A few days later, brewery owners, at a mass meeting of workers, rejected the concessions that might have settled the strike and refused to meet with committees of the Federation of Trades and the Central Labor Union. But German workers who filled the hall had shown that they could hold their ground against owners.29

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With the first municipal election under a new city charter, no political faction could afford to ignore the German vote. The United Labor Party would name Thomas Phillips, a member of the Knights of Labor as its mayoralty candidate, whose popularity among Germans was believed to guarantee more votes than any other endorsement. The Democrats chose George DeBenneville Keim, a harness and saddle manufacturer from an old Quaker family, as their candidate, similarly because of his presumed strength among Germans and African Americans. While Keim’s claim to be a member of the Turngemeinde brought accusations of “coquetting with the German vote,” party leaders believed that they had chosen the right candidate. But a newspaper editor expressed a more skeptical view: “No doubt he will secure the support of a few personal friends among the Republicans of each of the German societies with which he is associated. I do not believe, however, that there is to be a large defection from the regular German Republican vote.” And when Keim donned a fool’s cap at the annual “Fools’ Meeting” of the Cannstatter Society and made lavish promises to take care of them, more Germans became offended. A letter, signed as “Many Germans,” to a local newspaper, declared: It was a humiliating sight to see a candidate for the highest office in the second largest city in the second largest city in these United States soliciting votes by putting a big fool’s cap on his head and showing that he could drink as much beer as any German and making promises which he knows he never could fulfill. It is a great mistake to think that the German vote can be bought with beer. The thinking and respectable Germans look with contempt and disgust upon such a candidate. Some people pretend to carry the German vote in their pocket, but no Blankenburg nor any other Burg controls the German vote, much less the candidate for Mayor.30

Other events further revealed the hazards of assuming how Germans would or should act, especially when it involved the dictates of a person seeking to control them. On Election Day, Keim would win only a few wards, while Phillips had even less success, as the incumbent Fitler with a 30,000 vote majority, the first four-year term mayor in city history, rendered the German vote almost a moot issue. In the long “German corridor” between Vine Street and Poplar Street, and other neighborhoods, both Fitler and Keim had won and lost wards, but the actual German vote was impossible to determine. But as the United Labor Party regrouped elsewhere in the nation, Phillips’s dismal result forced it to virtually suspend activity in Philadelphia.31 With the election over, the German Federation of Trades, now at odds with “music-loving Germans,” proposed a boycott of programs at the Germania Theatre, along with the invoking of the Sunday law prohibiting

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entertainment. As a committee waited for a response from Charles Theiss, the proprietor of the Germania and two large breweries, its members, objecting to wage and employment practices by four major producers, grumbled at the sale of “nonunion” beer at the theatre. Theiss, for his part, accused the union of attempting to force saloon keepers to sell stale beer. As the dispute erupted, a cautious striker expressed his fear of incurring the enmity of Germans at large. With the leading German evening newspaper rejecting the plan of the Federation, morning papers were expected to follow suit. And when union leaders, seeking to negotiate with the theatre manager, canceled a meeting, Theiss defended his employment practices and condemned their demands. As opposition grew, the position of the brewery workers weakened.32 With the disagreement unsettled, attention abruptly shifted when more than 700 members of the American branch of the German Socialist Party convened at Maennerchor Hall to commemorate the ill-fated Paris Commune. Their regular meeting place, 325 Callowhill Street, also housing the German Federation of Trades, had become the center of radical activism. The Inquirer, with irrelevant derision, noted that “nearly all were wearing long beards.” John S. Kirchner, the “agitator” vice president of the International Cigar Makers Union and former chairman of the now-defunct United Labor Party, opened the program with “a stirring speech, in which the sentiments of the Communists were heartily endorsed.” But after more rousing oratory in German by Gustave Metzler, singing and dancing provided the audience with a merrier agenda for the rest of the evening.33 In November, with growing concern over whether German voters would remain steadfast in support, William R. Leeds, chairman of the Republican Committee and candidate for City Sheriff, increased his own efforts to reach them. When he met with the German Republican League of the Nineteenth Ward at See’s saloon at Fourth and Norris Streets, where “beer was on tap and free to all,” he cleverly used an empty glass as a gavel. Despite growing claims that Germans were now more likely to vote for Democrats, Leeds believed that Republicans, with Personal Liberty League backing, had nothing to fear. He had also been assured by Andrew J. Maloney, a Republican member of City Council and candidate for Controller, that Germans were a law-loving people who, if they had any grievance or sought any change, would do so in an orderly manner and not as communists, socialists, anarchists, or bomb throwers.34 But with The Inquirer and other usually reliable supporters of Republican candidates charging election fraud, growing dissidence among a newer generation of his own party, and prominent lawyers, clergymen, and businessmen splintering away as Independent Republicans, Leeds’ campaign faltered. At a crowded Lincoln Hall, Lincoln L. Eyre, the youthful advocate of reform, urged his audience to vote for Charles H. Krumbhaar, the Democratic

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candidate who was also the choice of the Independent Republicans. While endorsing all other regular Republicans, The Inquirer gave its main reason to reject Leeds: “He is a boss and his election tomorrow would make him a very despotic boss.” And on Election Day, a terse editorial began with the words “Today decides,” before emphatically asserting that good government and sound policy dictated: “Vote the whole Republican ticket except Leeds.”35 Election night brought its own drama. Preliminary returns carried early reports of Krumbhaar’s success to the headquarters of the Personal Liberty League at the Young Maennerchor Hall. By 9:00 p.m., with the outcome no longer in doubt, about 100 workers waited for official confirmation. Shortly before 11:00 p.m., when Secretary William G. Troelsch claimed victory, a deafening roar resounded and congratulations were exchanged in several languages. Troelsch, seemingly rattled by his own words, spoke in German and English as he read out more detailed results. At the end of a long table where he had been calmly tabulating incoming figures, Karl Kuhl, president of the Personal Liberty League, appeared to be the least excited man in the room, finally declared, “I think we have won,” without any further comment.36 On the morning after Election Day, The Inquirer, under a headline “Boss Rule Broken,” reported that Krumbhaar, with 82,278 votes, had scored a sweeping victory over Leeds, with 75,218 votes, a plurality of 7,060 votes, for the office of City Sheriff. Another Democrat, Former Lieutenant Colonel Robert Porter Dechert, a distinguished Civil War veteran, with 83,566 votes, had been re-elected over Maloney, with 75,308 votes, by a plurality of 8,263 votes, as City Controller. But Republican candidates had won all other offices. As Democratic Party leaders celebrated the defeat of Leeds and Maloney, the reform-seeking Independent Republicans could also now claim to hold the balance of power. Meanwhile, The Inquirer welcomed “a fresh triumph of law, order and decency in Philadelphia.” With its endorsed choices winning and the one candidate whom it had vigorously opposed suffering a loss, it saluted voters “in this strongly Republican city” for having made choices that reflected the reputation and previous service of each aspirant. And with Leeds “buried under a mountain of popular disapproval,” it reiterated: “It is the end of Boss rule in Philadelphia.”37 Later in the day, Leeds encountered Krumbhaar at the office of the city commissioners and despite the ignominious setback that he had suffered offered his congratulations. After Krumbhaar offered similar words of respect, the two men chatted cordially, even sharing some humor, until Leeds departed. Krumbhaar afterward described Leeds as having performed “a most courteous and gentlemanly act.” Shortly afterward at the Union Republican Club, Leeds assumed a harsher demeanor: “I attribute my defeat to several causes, but mainly to the liquor men and Personal Liberty League. The Germans were against me as you have only to look at the returns from the

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Eleventh, Twelfth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Nineteenth wards to find how they voted. Then take the wards where the large breweries are located and you will see why I was beaten there.” Leeds’s testimony affirmed the decisive role of Germans in the outcome of the election.38 In early January 1888, the Daily Buerger Zeitung, a newspaper with Republican leanings, offered its view of the future. In a thinly veiled reference to the defeat of Leeds, it asserted that many voters, despite opposing one or two of its endorsed candidates in the last election, remained “ready and willing to stand by the flag of Republicanism.” It also warned political leaders and candidates that they could not ignore the Germans without risking almost certain defeat.39 In late summer, with their party revitalized, about 50 Germans met at the Young Democratic Battalion Headquarters on Broad Street, where the Central Democratic German Campaign Club, representing almost all the wards of the city, launched an ambitious recruiting drive. Their effort culminated with a program with General Franz Sigel as the main speaker at the Academy of Music in late October. Before nearly 2,000 persons, including many veterans who had fought “mit Sigel” in the Union Army, the controversial hero, speaking in German and English, recalled his earlier visit during the Civil War. Sigel’s main point, made more emphatic by his recent shift to the Democratic Party, was his endorsement of Grover Cleveland as a presidential candidate. A few days later, the Personal Liberty League provided an even greater but not entirely unexpected surprise, at a meeting with Kuhl presiding at its Callowhill Street headquarters, by declaring that it was endorsing only Democrats. And seeking to avoid the English language press that had purportedly hampered previous efforts, the League intended to publish its choices only in German language newspapers.40 On Election Day, The Patriot, a Harrisburg newspaper, claimed that the German vote had been “practically solid for the Democrats” in Philadelphia, with a majority of 5,000 of the 70,000 voters from all countries naturalized during the year. Despite the opposition of the Personal Liberty League, presidential candidate Benjamin Harrison and his party had triumphed in what remained a Republican city. But with the final count of ballots, Republican city chairman Allen B. Rorke declared that, with the recent action of the liquor license court repelling voters, the defection of Germans, showing their resentment over the temperance issue, had decreased the majority for his party. And once again, although unsuccessful in fulfilling objectives, the German vote had been a factor.41 As a more complicated picture of political loyalties emerged, disappointed members of the Personal Liberty League were expected to remain within Democratic ranks while other Germans returned to the Republican fold. The Inquirer explained that the prodigal Germans had been due to “the

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indiscretion of a fat, jolly Teuton, who presides over an establishment on Callowhill Street, not far from the old Concordia Theatre.” It was presumably referring to Christian Krug, a saloon keeper who had allegedly become a Republican when he realized on the morning after the election that a proper political affiliation would bring better results before the liquor license court. It would soon be difficult to find a Democratic saloon keeper anywhere in the city. But William Regenspurger, editor of the Sonntags Journal, reportedly blamed the Personal Liberty League for the defection of 12,000 voters from Republican ranks. President Kuhl, denying that it had supported only Democrats, feebly offered the name of one endorsed Republican candidate as evidence. And while the League may have responsible for some lost votes, the number would have been even greater with other Germans raising the cry “Make Pennsylvania Democratic.” It was, he maintained, a foolish slogan that had dissuaded voters, despite their sympathy with the League, from supporting favored choices. Kuhl also believed that the Democrats had undercut candidates in some districts to prevent the League from receiving credit for its efforts. Voters in his own Nineteenth Ward, instead of the usual substantial majorities to Republicans, had supported candidates of both parties. Annoyed by the betrayal, Kuhl warned that German voters could easily retaliate by restoring Republicans. Noting “this little fact” as something that “should be remembered by our Democratic friends,” Kuhl joined the chorus proclaiming that German voters not be taken for granted by either party.42 TEMPERANCE AND PERSONAL LIBERTY In the summer of 1882, Germans, reacting to the Sabbath Association “catand-mouse” strategy of surveillance followed by action, fired back in the renewed war over beer. With many Germans among several thousand persons who converged on the picnic grounds at Ridgeway Park, on what had formerly been Smith’s Island on the Delaware River, on a warm Sunday afternoon, agents of the Association remained vigilant to possible liquor law violations. But as waiters attempted to enforce limits on beer being served, occupants moved to new tables and called for other waiters to serve them, while tipplers went after their own steins of beer. With the abstinence campaign far from over, Germans refused to surrender to restrictions that would deprive them of beer.43 In late August, as organizers of the Pastorius Celebration solicited Germans throughout the city, their efforts again attracted wary attention. J. K. Wheeler, a lawyer, and Reverend T. A. Fernley, of the Sabbath Association, “always on the alert to guard the American Sabbath from being desecrated, and ready to do what it can to inculcate proper moral sentiments on the subject,” addressed

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a “kindly letter” to planners. Although in accord with their intent, they asked their fellow citizens to avoid any public parades, amusements or dancing on the day “commonly called Sunday,” out of respect for American sentiments and the rights of working men for a day of rest. In his reply, Dr. Ferdinand H. Gross, head of the executive committee for the event honoring Pastorius, noted that the official program called only for religious observances on Sunday in the German churches of the city. Despite mutual cordiality, the exchange confirmed that opposition had not ended.44 Two weeks later, continuing his crusade against debauchery, Fernley described the Cannstatter Festival on a recent Sunday to officials of the Sabbath Association. With a railroad taxed to capacity and a carrousel of flying horses and swings spinning at full speed, several bands had noisily played. But even worse, with bartenders unable to meet the demands of thirsty drinkers, “the onslaught on lager beer was terrible.” Fernley saw the day as “one of revelry and drunkenness.” Further noting that patrons had paid fifty cents to hear a speaker at a Catholic church later on the same evening, he asked, “It is high time that we should know whether or not Americans have any laws which foreigners are bound to respect.” Within Fernley’s assessment, Puritanism and nativism—in this case by a marriage of Sabbatarianism and Anglo supremacy—had again found themselves as willing partners.45 Undaunted by limited funds, the Bicentennial Celebration of Germantown unfolded over four days in early October. With a grand concert and speeches at the Academy of Music on a Saturday evening, followed by church services on a more solemn Sunday, a parade of nine divisions of historical reenactors, military veterans, singing societies, athletes, tradesmen, and industrial workers required two and a half hours on a concluding Monday. In neighborhoods adorned by the flags of many nations, but especially the red, white and black banner of Germany, it offered “a gala day among the Teutons on the street.” Ignoring warnings against interrupting business, spectators crammed doorways and windows for a better view of the parade. But the main event was the final picnic, with entertainment by singing societies and gymnastics clubs, and dancing under electric lights in the evening at Schuetzen Park. Throughout the festivities, Philadelphia’s Germans, at least in their own eyes, had properly observed the Sabbath.46 As newspapers continued to fuel controversy, The Inquirer, patronizingly described the Saxon Society picnic, in which hundreds of people passed the day at Rising Sun Park “in accordance with the customs of their forefathers” in June 1885. Two months later, the Bavarian Festival at Schuetzen Park, evoked a less flattering assessment: “The character of the day’s festivities was most prominently and conspicuously beer drinking, and next to that sauerkraut eating.” But dilating its perspective, it also declared: “In the absorption of the national beverage that appeals most largely to the German heart, no

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conscientious scruples in regard to regulations for the preservation of law and order of the Sabbath intrude themselves in the path of Teutonic indulgence.” Further on, it added: “Nothing so disgusts a German merry-maker as the least intimation of a wholesome respect for Sunday laws. According to his notion they ought to be packed away in some quiet corner of a brewery ice house for safe keeping.” Another item noted the impending dedication: “as a fitting testimony of their love” to the memory of Friedrich Schiller in Fairmount Park. While perhaps revealing more about a newspaper and its editors, such tones reflected the ambivalence toward others who could still be perceived as “foreign.” In this case, it was a population with an old presence, but whose people were still arriving, while for others of more recent origins, the perception would be even harsher and the reception more inhospitable from a society, as well as a newspaper, struggling with diversity.47 When the Cannstatters held their annual festival in September 1885, the press, again preoccupied with the prodigious consumption of beer, sauerkraut, and pork, confirmed the worst fears of abstinence supporters. Gathered on the grass or seated at tables, “festive Teutons drew foaming draughts of beer” from their kegs. And in conspicuous defiance of prevailing but ignored liquor law, “None seemed to think the day was the Sabbath, and if they did they said there was no harm.” As any previously noted decorum was being wiped away: “Gushing from hundreds of spigots beer flowed like water in every corner of the park. Busy barkeepers, coatless and perspiring, attended to the scores of yelling waiters, and impatient customers pounded on the tables with their empty glasses.” The imagery was hard to ignore.48 Philadelphia’s Germans, still refusing to accept what others, whether by images or constraints, sought to impose upon them, remained defiant. At its first meeting in February 1886, the Personal Liberty League denounced the 1794 law banning entertainment and the sale of alcohol on Sundays as being incompatible with the spirit of the times, while branches were expected to conduct political action throughout the state. Along with the conspicuous position of Germans within the association, many saloons, cigar shops, confectionary stores, and other businesses would defy Mayor Thomas B. Smith’s recent proclamation calling for observance of the ban. But moral reformers remained similarly resolved to launch another campaign against violators of the law. And Germans again found themselves in the front lines of the battle.49 Before the month had ended, the likelihood of reelection to Select Council for Democrat John J. McDevitt in the heavily German Twelfth Ward appeared to be threatened by his personal abstinence and broader position on the matter of beer. When results were tallied, Republican Frank Schanz, a German carriage maker had won by a slim 52 votes of more than 2,200 cast. Post-election analysis attributed the result to McDevitt’s inability to speak German and his personal distaste of beer.50

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German saloon keepers acquired an important ally, when Irish proprietors, abandoning older, ineffective associations, while praising their counterparts for protecting business interests by political action, formed the Liquor Dealers and Brewers Progressive Union in March 1886. When the dissident Irish met in the following month, a speaker again saluted the Germans as the only other thoroughly reliable league of owners, while another officer again warned of the threats posed by the Law and Order Society, a coalition of Protestant clergy. With a growing awareness of their shared interests, the Germans and Irish would maintain their alliance in the years ahead.51 As press coverage continued to portray German merrymaking as a form of ethnic vaudeville, an account of the Bavarian Festival of August 1886 described a chaotic rush for food and drink, long lines of impatient patrons, overburdened waiters who inflated prices, food widely spilled on the grass, and a worker who nearly sliced two fingers off his hand while cutting meat. The final toll, once again given in terms of prodigious consumption, was tallied at over 10,000 dishes of sauerkraut and 120,000 glasses of “the German national beverage.” And as the irreverent depiction of food customs and eating behavior placed a caricature of Germans before other Philadelphians, it further reinforced the misgivings of the Sabbath Association.52 In March 1887, the “music and rum won’t mix” mandate of former mayor Stokley, now director of Public Safety, gained broad public attention while provoking German music hall proprietors. When the widely sweeping edict forbade performance of a biblical opera by the Deutscher Sonntagschel Verein of Kensington on a Sunday evening, theatre managers converged on the Seventh Police District headquarters in protest. At the Germania and other venues in the German district, all events had been canceled. And when a manager applied for police protection for a planned ball, he was warned that officers would be imposing other sanctions if they found a bar in operation. But even with most saloons closed, police reported a higher than usual number of “drunks” being brought to station houses, presumably intoxicated by “egg nog” consumed at home. While tavern lights had been dimmed, rear doors had become entrances, but no evidence was sufficient for charges to be filed, as the Sunday ban became a special challenge in German neighborhoods.53 The renewed attention to violations of the Sunday ordinance was ominously accompanied by fears that radical politics lay beneath any disturbance. The Inquirer charged that the Central Labor Union had become composed almost entirely of Socialists. With Kirchner identified as a leader of the American wing of the Socialistic Labor Party, the largely German membership of the CLU, abandoning its usual meeting site on Callowhill Street, convened at Goodfellows’ Hall at Sixth and Walnut Streets in April 1887. After listening to Kirchner chide them for prior inactivity, delegates elected new officers; pledged support of the International Cigar Makers Union’s efforts

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to establish a labor lyceum; and denounced the Cabinetmakers for meetings above a saloon where nonunion “egg nog” was sold. Secretary Froelich, reporting cash accounts of only thirteen cents, closed his books with a heavy sigh and declared that it had been a pleasant day. Other union officials, who would neither affirm nor deny whether Public Safety Director Stokley had been censured for his recent liquor order, only repeated Froelich’s comment that it had been a fine day. But the early impact of the Sunday ban had become undeniably felt.54 In May, Whitsunday, under the ban on beer, quietly unfolded for a greatly diminished number of celebrants. While morning church services had been well attended, “the afternoon ruralizing was among the things of the past.” But more earthly pleasure seekers who found their way to Gloucester, New Jersey, were turning a new site into “a city of refuge for lovers of beer.” And the proprietor of Ridgeway Park, the mid-Delaware River island resort, which remained under the authority of the Philadelphia Department of Public Safety, announced his willingness to forego hard liquor, if the city would allow the sale of beer. With Stokley adamantly opposed to easing any restriction, Germans had to wait only another day before beginning the fuller observance of their traditional holiday. On Monday, an estimated 10,000 “sweltering and dusty excursionists” crowded trains bound for Schuetzen Park, while smaller contingents headed to other destinations. It was, however, no longer only Germans, now reported as being in the minority among revelers, who were imbibing at Schuetzen Park, as proprietors, enforcers of law, and lovers of beer all searched for a solution to an altered, but still unresolved, civic question.55 Recognizing the need for more hospitable places, members of singing, tumbling, and shooting clubs deliberated future plans. A. Ernest Theodore, publisher of the Vereins Zeitung, charged that the present situation, with municipal government taken over by “fanatics” and having regressed to “the times of Puritans,” was no longer bearable. While accusing the German press of seeking to draw voters into the Democratic Party, he was even more incited by the apathetic German, who “only growls in the saloons but goes no further as long as his beer is permitted him, even under restrictions, on week days.” Theodore called for an awakened “Deutscher Michel,” pursuing “united effort and harmonious action,” who would rise above partisan politics. Proposing a ban on newspapers, milk dealers, bakers, barbers, confectioners, cigar dealers, railroad companies, managers of excursions, and all others who did business on Sundays to show the folly of the blue laws, he explained: “We demand no anarchy, but respect the laws and honor the Republic.” Urging that nation and city be governed in the spirit of modern times and in harmony with sound reason—he repeated his cry: “German Michael—wake up!” With Germans weary of being routinely humbugged by politicians, and unwilling

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to vote for any candidate who did not favor modification of the blue laws, Theodore, urging societies and organizations to come together, sought to awaken his slumbering people.56 In August, some 150 musical societies, gymnastics clubs and labor unions, meeting at Young Maennerchor Hall, launched a joint effort to promote German interests. Rejecting a role to any brewer, saloon keeper, liquor dealer, journalist or labor agitator, who advocated socialist principles, one faction preferred only “sound, conservative citizens” who were not already prominent in politics, to assume key positions, with a new naturalization bureau to protect Germans against undesirable influences within their own community. Two days later, its 1,200 delegates rose in anger against Mayor Fitler and the Sunday Liquor Laws. Kuhl, president of the Columbia Singing Society, called for repeal of any restriction that prevented people from enjoying their day of rest. After thirty years of increasingly harsh law, the failure of Germans to act would show that their political spirit had been extinguished. But even if not in the majority, their votes in the next election could send an appropriate message. Other speakers displayed even greater indignation. Louis Werner, editor of the Tageblatt, objecting to law with more impact on the poor than on affluent citizens, caustically noted that Fitler could go to Long Branch, a New Jersey resort, while leaving his police to act as spies on Sundays. John S. Kirschner, a Labor Party delegate, argued that the people, betrayed by both political parties, wished for the day when Germans would be more independent. But a more radical speaker who began a polemic on the rights of working men was quickly silenced before he could go any further.57 Opposition to the Sunday Liquor Law grew stronger when delegates from over 200 singing societies, lodges and other organizations, representing 30,000 to 40,000 members, were joined by French and Swiss societies. At a meeting in August, Kuhl, acting as chairman, declared that while the movement had gained wider approval, the laws still deprived the poor man of his beer, but not the rich man from his champagne. But more than venting anger, the occasion also brought an expanded Association for Maintaining Personal Freedom, whose main purpose would be to seek repeal of obsolete laws. The new body intended to follow a more moderate plan than Kirschner’s proposal for regulation of the relations of capital and labor which would be voted down. The Inquirer, shifting attention to the annual volksfest of the Bavarian Society, could only offer another banal observation: “No one who visited Schuetzen Park, Falls of Schuylkill, yesterday could have any doubt that the German citizens of Philadelphia understand how to enjoy themselves.” But enjoyment would not divert new efforts to overturn the restrictions on “personal liberty,” as further meetings, interrogating candidates for political offices, endorsed only those who provided the right answers.58

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As Germans pursued their campaign, the opposition again responded. From his pulpit, the Reverend Madison C. Peters, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Northern Liberties, argued that individual liberty must be subject to state sovereignty and every foreigner who became a citizen assumed an obligation to which he must conform. With the Sabbath as a bulwark of Christianity, the strongest bond uniting Protestantism, and the foundation of defense for liberties, England, Scotland, Switzerland and the United States, the countries which best observed it, provided popular freedom and good government to the world. But men who sought liberty by demanding that everything remain open on the Sabbath were asking for a freedom that would compel others to work seven days. And attempts to impose liberty as a means of improvement had become another concession to tyranny. Peters concluded by asserting that society degenerates as Christianity is corrupted and the Sabbath is perverted.59 Undeterred by eloquent homilies, the organizers of the Association for Maintaining Personal Freedom proceeded with their plans. In early September, as the Cannstatters celebrated with “a blaze of glory” in Schuetzen Park, some 3,000 Germans assembled at Industrial Hall, on Broad Street above Vine, where Kuhl, as president of the United German Societies, argued that the main issue was not the drinking of beer on Sundays, but the individual rights of Americans. To the charge that Germans had brought bad habits, he replied that without immigration the nation would be depopulated. Noting that it was not only a Christian country, but as much a Jewish one, Kuhl asserted that the Sabbath was made for the people, not the people for the Sabbath. But almost as if his adversaries were in attendance, he saved his strongest volley for last: “When Methodist pastors want to refer to the Bible for argument, we can also meet them with the Scriptures. These preachers had better remain quiet, for we can show them that a large majority of those who commit crime are either church members or else connected with church organizations.”60 As the Personal Liberty League gained wider attention, State Senator Thomas V. Cooper, Chairman of the Republican Committee of New York, viewing recent voting results, charged that it was not only under the direction of Socialists but apart from all religious Germans. With concern over the national election in the coming year, Cooper and others believed that German “freethinkers and saloonkeepers” in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York would oppose the Republican ticket because of its commitment to restrictive Sabbath Laws; while more religious Germans, the so-called Israelites, who favored the Sunday laws, would support its candidates. While claiming that the temperance issue had cost Republicans about 6,000 votes throughout the state in previous voting, with a presidential election looming, the question remained: “What will the Germans do?”61

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The uncertain political direction of Germans now threatened their public life. When Christian Krug, steward of the Schützen Verein, sought a license renewal for Schuetzen Park, having run afoul of the Sunday Liquor Law in the previous May, he intended to restrict the sale of beer to members of the Cannstatter, Bavarian, and other German clubs. Opposing his application, a property owner and two clergymen testified that drunk and disorderly patrons had demoralized younger people of the community, while a police officer reported arrests of as many as thirty people for drunkenness on a single day just outside of the park grounds. And although less disruption had occurred in the past two years, picnickers too often visited nearby taverns. Another policeman, testing the law, had bought beer and cigars and listened to music, while waiters delivered trays of beer in violation of it. Two weeks later, when the court again denied Krug’s license, Germans had learned the need to proceed more carefully.62 Soon afterward, when a large crowd attended the cornerstone laying for the new building of the German Society of Pennsylvania, dignified ceremonies, singing groups and representatives of English, Irish, French and Swiss societies, and orations extolling Teutonic character, brought only praise. Ironically, William Henry Lex, the attorney who led the opposition to Krug in the license court, served as a featured speaker at the dedication. But unlike the boisterous events alleged during Krug’s day in court, the program showed what German citizens could do away from Schuetzen Park.63 Germans again opted for moderation when the Schützen Verein celebrated Whitsuntide with great restraint. Two officials, stationed at the entrance to Schuetzen Park, admitting members but not the general public, projected the prospect of a relatively quiet day. With beer and a rifle exhibition, but no music or other attractions, “an almost Sunday school stillness reigned within the high board fence which surrounds the park.” While some disappointed patrons moved on to the Swiss Society program at another location, the Germans at Schuetzen Park had exercised great restraint for the occasion.64 Kuhl and the Personal Liberty League gained more support, when the Liquor Dealers, Brewers and Bottlers association met at Maennerchor Hall, under conditions of extreme secrecy and permitted only the names of newly elected, mostly Irish, officers to be publicly announced, in December. But leaked information revealed that some 400 saloon keepers bottlers and dealers; ex-saloon keepers; wholesale distributors and brewers sought to counsel one another on the best means to protect their mutual interests. A preliminary notice had already advised prospective members that the great opportunity of the coming year, a statewide referendum on prohibition, would require a thoroughly organized effort. One German member, convinced that Pennsylvania would vote to go dry, intended to move to a “wetter” country until the organization could become strong enough to defy Prohibitionists and

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their Republican allies. He had undoubtedly spoken for many other Germans who, whether they planned to stay or migrate elsewhere, were preparing themselves for what lay ahead.65 The greatest immediate impact would come from restrictions that the Brooks High License Law of 1887 placed on sites that had long hosted the “people’s festivals.” Its first victim, the Cannstatter Volksfest Verein, having lost access to Schuetzen Park, faced the prospect of another quiet celebration restricted to its membership. Keebler, president of the Cannstatters, expressing regret that none of the old amusement parks had been licensed, could only promise that their 15th anniversary celebration would be properly observed. Less optimistic members believed that the new restrictions, having weakened charitable support for needy recipients, would reduce the occasion to a purely social gathering. When asked whether funds in their treasury could be used to erect a better facility for events, a trustee replied that the Cannstatters and other German groups had to build stronger organizations. But against such hopes, if prohibition prevailed at the ballot box, a new hall would be of little use for even a strengthened society.66 Philadelphia’s Germans, knowing that the defeat of prohibition would not negate the Brooks Law, had already found other destinations. On Whitsuntide Monday, abandoning their homes and neighborhoods, they crowded onto street cars and ferries on the way to New Jersey. Packed trains rumbled through the Pine Barrens heading to Atlantic City. On every conveyance, “a vast and thirsty multitude of Teutonic birth,” lamenting the loss of old sites, did not allow it to deter the pursuit of fresh air, music, and beer. To the dismay of forsaken vendors in Philadelphia, the excursionists carried money that would be spent in New Jersey or Delaware. Thousands of families chose the beach and bathing at nearby Gloucester or the Stockton Rifle Range and Liberty Park, retitled as Schuetzen Park, at least for this day, in Camden. Singing societies convened for a “monster picnic” at newly opened Pavonia Park, with shooting contests, foot races for fat men, games for women and children, and hot-air balloon rides. On the river, steamers, filled to capacity, plied their way to suddenly popular resorts waiting to reap a harvest of spending. On the Richard Stockton, as the Alemannia Singing Society on its way to Bay Head, sixty miles downriver in Delaware, passed beyond city limits, “hilarity commenced, and liquid as well as solid refreshments could be had in any quantity.” The Edwin Forrest brought singing societies from West Philadelphia to Oakland Park in Trenton, for picnics and spirited vocal competition. The John A. Warner, with the Columbia Gesang Verein of the Nineteenth Ward aboard, cruised a seventy mile, two-and-a-half-hour course to Sea Breeze on the Delaware Bay. And the 1,500 Germans at Rising Sun Park, preferring to remain in Philadelphia, discovered that beer could not be bought at or brought onto the grounds as hucksters offering kegs were halted

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by the police and pelted by the bricks of thirsty patrons. While some societies relocated festivities to halls open only to members, other Germans, eschewing the search for beer, found themselves less satisfied. The almost universal conclusion was that it had been the driest Pfingstmontag that they had ever known.67 When Pennsylvanians went to the polls in June 1889, it marked the third time that they voted on the question of prohibition. It had been defeated by a statewide margin of slightly over 5,000 votes in 1854. When citizens voted on the issue as a local county option, it had been similarly rejected in 1873. After 16 more years, it was expected that a 50,000 to 100,000 margin would bring a similar outcome. While the ballot also carried a question on suffrage, the proposed amendment to the State Constitution that would ban the manufacture and sale of liquor drew greater attention. When the polls closed, an overwhelming majority, upward of 175,000 throughout the state of Pennsylvania and almost 94,000 in Philadelphia, more than any other county, had defeated prohibition. With resoundingly margins in every ward of the city, the results in dense German areas were unsurprising. In the Eleventh Ward, some 1,906 voters rejected the amendment, while only 69 had favored it; in the Twelfth Ward, the margin was 2,211 to 145; in the Thirteenth Ward, it was 2,514 to 379; and in the Nineteenth Ward, it was 7,733 to 991. But while beer and other spirits would now be permitted, the licensing and regulatory power, which remained in effect, ensured that it would not be poured too freely.68 Germans were now even further expanding their solution to the impositions of the Brooks Law at South Jersey seaside resorts. With sleepy fishing hamlets and upper-class reserves discovered by the masses, the summertime custom of “going to the shore” was becoming a part of the folkways of Philadelphians. In a “red-letter day” for Sea Isle City, some sixty-nine carloads carried 3,795 excursionists on five special trains to the resort, where they filled every hotel and boarding house in August 1889. At Cronecker’s Depot House, some 600 “jolly Germans” dined and enjoyed themselves under a huge tent. Flags and streamers, fanned by ocean breezes, waved in welcome from hotels and other buildings, while sailboats with colored pennants bobbed on the bay under a cloudless sky. The invading sojourners, including several singing societies and social clubs, passed the day, “as all Germans usually do,” in a quiet, orderly fashion, promenading on the boardwalk or bathing in the surf, while musicians serenaded from hotels. It was, all in all, a “pleasing spectacle,” as Germans on the beaches, along with Blue Book Philadelphians, stirred a new mix of social classes at seaside resorts.69 While behaving in “orderly fashion” on New Jersey beaches, the conduct of Germans brought a far less favorable reaction in Philadelphia. When the Sunday Barbers’ Closing Association met in September, seeking to enforce opposition against shops serving the public on the Sabbath, its secretary, John

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Uckos, singled out German customers for criticism: “The kickers are, as a rule, Germans who have been here only a few years. . . . The Germans say this is a free country, but the trouble is that they do not know the definition of the word ‘freedom.’” He also announced that nearly 700 tickets had been sold for a river boat excursion that would include music, lunch, and beer. For Uckos and his fellow barbers, while shaving patrons violated the Sabbath, the sale of beer, as long as drinkers stayed sober, did not. While the Association vigilantly opposed barbers who disguised their shops into sartorial speakeasies on the “Lord’s Day,” Uckos’s objection to men shaving themselves would prove to be an even greater miscalculation.70 In the same month, the Cannstatters, displaced from their usual site on Queen Lane, moved their annual festival to Stockton Park on the outskirts of Camden. Crowding ferry boats departing from Philadelphia, an estimated 10,000 persons had arrived by noon, before the throng swelled to 20,000 at 4:00 p.m. As the scene played out, they witnessed a street parade, listened to President Keebler welcome the heads of other societies, and admired the towering fruit column. Waiters in white aprons rushed to fill orders as family heads called for half kegs for their tables. A final account reported the consumption of 100,000 glasses of lager and 50,000 plates of sour kraut. Large and small musical bands, along with singing societies, entertained throughout the day, while couples danced on a crowded pavilion, before a finale of fireworks lit up the sky. On the next day, when the Cannstatters began all over again, the celebration carried their defiance against those who had denied them their usual venues, or believed that Germans did not understand the meaning of “freedom,” or questioned their motives in elections, or had merely become uncomfortable with them.71 NEW INITIATIVES, OLD IMAGES, NEW SELF-IMAGES For Germans caught in an everyday struggle for work and wages, the sustenance found in a festival, theatre or beer garden remained nurturing, even as programs reflected the intrusion of a broader American culture that was transforming patrons. When the twelfth annual Cannstatter Festival took place in September 1885, some 25,000 people reportedly attended on opening day, benignly described without reference to any undue appetite for beer, but only compliments for “jolly Germans” who came, as family men should, with their wives and children. But with its growth in charitable work, the society had opened membership and aid to persons of other origins. And although being touted as a renewal of tradition, the performance of scenes from The Mikado at the festival revealed a similar drift toward a more cosmopolitan world. Despite newspaper headlines proclaiming “Scenes from Fatherland,” or

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“Home Memories,” the ties of Germans with their homeland were becoming more attenuated. And the celebration of what was promoted as “traditional German culture” could only partly disguise the increasingly hybrid character of personal identity, overt behaviors, and organizations.72 When publisher Theodore called for the awakening of “Deutscher Michel,” he argued: “It is no longer sufficient to clench the fists in our pockets in impotent rage; we must act now short and decisive in order to secure our rights as men and citizens.” But other leaders disagreed with the assessment; objected to the manner in which it had been issued; or could not find a proper course of action. While newspapers dissented in editorials or by entirely ignoring the matter, the Gazette raised another troubling consideration: We Germans have lost some of our credit with the Americans recently without cause, or they suspect behind us Revolutionists, Anarchists, dynamiters and other monstrosities, and we can therefor rest assured that should they have the least reason to suspect the wind in our undertaking to blow from that quarter they will show us the cold shoulder and let us severely alone.

Against such reticence, the Freie Presse, another evening newspaper, protested: Every German citizen must discharge his duties as a citizen in a quiet, serious, but determined manner, and is compelled to say loud and convincing to the temperance fanatics that they foster hypocrisy and weakness, the principal causes of drunkenness, by regulating picnic parties and by closing the (beer) parks and bathing houses on Sundays and certain holidays. If the German citizen does not do this he is a coward, and not a sovereign American. It is very bad for your Gazette if you don’t feel this way.73

Contrary to the façade presented by the mainstream press, Philadelphia’s Germans were not a monolithic community, without internal distinctions, but also a presence that threatened to disrupt the larger social order of the city. In September 1887, reacting to the formation of the Association for Maintaining Personal Freedom, the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Sabbath Association released a report that declared: “As American citizens we are not disposed to yield to this alien and anti-American demand.” While acknowledging the existence of many worthy and intelligent Germans, it noted, “there is another class of irreligious, socialistic and beer-guzzling foreigners, and it is these who are attempting to subvert our Sunday laws. Such are of no benefit to any country, and the time has come when all good citizens should unite in concerted methods to exclude them from ours.” Along with calling for the restriction of immigration, broader indictments of foreign

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influence took aim at the Irish and Germans. When members of the American Party crowded Earley’s Hall on Arch Street, Pastor Peters again extolled the influence of religion on politics as part of “the American idea.” But H. H. K. Elliott, a local publisher, ex-chairman of the Republican State Committee, one of the founders of the American Party, and provocateur in the 1844 riots, offered blunter remarks. Declaring that Americans had been asleep to their own cause, the unabashed nativist argued “Irishmen are organized; Germans are organized and all the other foreigners. They come into our public conventions and elect our officers from their own nationality by preconceived plans. They are ruling us. They defy our laws and sneer at our institutions. It is high time that Americans should be at least even with the foreigners.” With another speaker calling for “an American, not a German Sunday,” the agenda widened. Robert H. Hinckley, a local attorney and member of the Executive Council, declared: “I believe that Germany is the only country abroad where women have been seen in the fields harnessed up with dogs. Let these personal liberty men go to their own country and break up this barbarous slavery of their women.” With such views of German character, the platform shared by the Philadelphia Sabbath Association, the American Party, and the Law and Order Society conflated opposition to the Sunday laws with the conviction that beer on the Sabbath subverted American culture and institutions. A few days later, the Law and Order Society announced plans for a mass meeting at the Academy of Music that would call opponents of personal liberty and immigration together.74 In meeting halls throughout the city, the dispute had become a matter of who would be first to take to the streets of Philadelphia to demonstrate moral integrity and political strength. Meanwhile, The Inquirer accused the Personal Liberty League with duplicity in claiming that its main objective was “the preservation of race issues and by opposing the amalgamation of all nationalities into the common mass of American citizens.” It charged that League members, despite residing in this country and claiming all the rights of American citizens, not only intended to remain German but “to force all other nationalities, including Americans, to conform to their peculiar views.” While claiming that city officials had long neglected to enforce the Sunday Liquor Laws because of their fears of German voters, such failure harbored the danger of losing the American vote. Speaking for “we who are Americans,” it warned that Kuhl and his associates were actually encouraging stricter adherence to the laws against which they protested. As other opponents of the League, The Inquirer was reconstructing Germans from merry festival celebrants, preferred immigrants and responsible citizens into a sinister, threatening and un-American presence.75 As 1888 began, with Germans reshuffling identity and politics, the reassessment of their presence would also continue. In January, 300 Germans and others

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met under the auspices of the German Federation of Trade Unions to protest that the German Society of Pennsylvania had been enabling newly arrived immigrants to replace striking workers of the Reading Railroad Company. J.S. Kirschner, once again described by the press as a “professional agitator,” would loudly condemn the “harmony” between capital and labor as a fraudulent deception. Within a few weeks, Germans, coming together at the death of Kaiser Wilhelm I, again reasserted their loyalties to a native land. Reverend Adolph Spaeth, speaking at St. John’s German Lutheran Church, intoned: “Although we have found a new home under the protection of the American government, yet our eyes ever look back with love and solicitude to the land of our birth, and we cannot see our brethren sorrowing without feeling the pangs, too.” Pastor Hugo Grahn paid a similar tribute to the memory of the Kaiser at the Evangelical Lutheran Emanuel Church in South Philadelphia: “Although we have not lost an emperor, we have lost a father, and is not this as much. But he shall ever live in the greatest work of his life, the unification of Germany.” While charges against the German Society of Pennsylvania had briefly divided Germans, the death of the Kaiser now reunited them in sorrow.76 

Figure 4.1  Reverend Adolph Spaeth. Source: Life of Adolph Spaeth, D.D., L.L.D., told in his own reminiscences, his letters and the recollections of his family and friends, edited by his wife (Philadelphia, 1916).

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When other Philadelphians, unable to find empathy for Germans grieving a dead emperor, or in maintaining an older identity, discovered another peril in the teaching of a foreign language, the assault on German character entered a disturbing new stage. With awkward prescience, The Inquirer declared that the children of America wanted English. Noting that some protagonists “would have Uncle Sam set up schools to teach the Germans German, the Italians Italian, the Indians their tribal tongues, and the next thing we shall hear of a movement to instruct the negroes in African tongues,” it disdainfully asked “What kind of nation of tribes would the United States become if such plans were to be carried out?” While reflecting deep insensitivity to what language meant to foreign peoples, such opposition anticipated what the future held for Germans, as America, seizing the issue of language, widened the scope of assimilation. Along with schools that sought to instruct in German, The Inquirer reported that German language presence in Bucks County had dropped from six or eight to only three languishing newspapers over the last twenty years. For children taught in English in their schools, but listening to high German in their churches, the outcome was a syncretic blend, regretted by younger and older members of their community. But if German lingered in any form in outlying counties, it was being even more quickly erased within the boundaries of Philadelphia.77 Still seeking a proper path to assimilation, many Germans, despite their long presence in Republican politics, had shifted allegiance to the Democratic Party. While “old line” Republicans, conspicuous in public life, could be mistakenly perceived as being American born, other Germans sought access to similar opportunities. During the recent presidential campaign, many of them had worked for the party, but no German organizations, except for one club in the Nineteenth Ward, had been formed in the city. And only one German newspaper, Joseph E. Metzger’s Philadelphia Buerger Zeitung, could still be identified as a Republican journal. If Republican strength had waned, the unresolved liquor dispute continued to bring Germans into action. In March, publisher Metzger called a private meeting in an effort to mobilize opposition to the prohibition amendment that would be tested in the upcoming June referendum. He would afterward reveal that residents of the Twelfth, Thirteenth and Nineteenth wards, but none engaged in the brewing, liquor, or saloon business or connected with the Personal Liberty League, the moribund Anti-Prohibition Society, or the Central German Democratic organization, had attended the meeting. While opposing the prohibition bill, its participants supported modifications that would regulate the transfer of licenses, the number of taverns, and the licensing of amusement parks. Claiming that action had been delayed by the Democrats, its leaders called for another mass meeting in the near future. Despite being outspoken in his opposition to the Personal Liberty League which he believed many Germans were reluctant to join, but being a staunch supporter of party boss Leeds, Metzger expected that all forces opposing prohibition would soon unite in a common effort. He

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had already conferred with Kuhl, head of the League, without reaching an agreement on how to forge that outcome. But the threat of prohibition was compelling Germans to consolidate their efforts to protect the rights of beer drinkers in public places.78 As Germans plunged deeper into the struggle over beer as an issue of civil liberties, the agenda of the German Society of Pennsylvania reflected other harsh realities. When General Louis Wagner, Chairman of its Education Committee, offered space to the Philadelphia Board of Education for English classes in autumn 1889, it revealed that many recently arrived Germans needed assistance. When the Society issued its annual report in January 1890, the care of needy clients remained a major priority. And the plan to meet with agencies from other states in Washington, DC to discuss legislative proposals for restriction, indicated that even immigrant entry remained an issue. As leaders deliberated such matters, German mechanics and small businessmen pursued a more comprehensive solution by an agricultural colony in Prince George County, Maryland. Organizers imagined a central village surrounded by canneries, creameries and other industries in a cooperative system, with workers sharing in management. After farming cooperatively for several years, it would be divided into individually held parcels. Experiments in cultivating sugar beets, under agreement with the Claus Spreckels Sugar Company, were expected to be undertaken. The immediate plan called for a search for land, the recruitment of workers, and the drafting of a constitution. From the benevolent efforts of the German Society to the more utopian vision of rural colonists, Germans searched for a better life.79 German initiatives, especially when seen as too aggressive or independent, continued to draw objections from the self-appointed guardians of American culture. In spring 1890, the Bennett Law, recently enacted by the state legislature of Wisconsin, requiring that English be used in all private and public education, prompted debate in faraway Philadelphia. And while largely being a dispute between Irish and German Catholics over the control of education, the underlying stimulus, whether in Milwaukee or Philadelphia, remained the issue of American versus foreign influence. The Inquirer contended: “The Germans will avail themselves of American hospitality and then turn their hosts out of doors.” Criticizing the German proclivity for compromise as being based upon Bismarckian principle, it was not simply a matter of substituting their institutions for American ones, but whether foreigners who swore an oath to defend the Constitution should be allowed to destroy its principles. The Inquirer, parsing the dispute even further, declared: “it is entirely probable that the problem will go on until it involves the final supremacy of American or foreign institutions.” But it was also a warning of an impending storm over the place of German culture in a society that preferred to recognize only Anglo-Saxon roots.80

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In Philadelphia, other events attracted more positive attention. In summer 1890, the Maennerchor Society, forced to abandon its former site, opened a new picnic garden, where members and guests could enjoy musical performances, and a commodious clubhouse with a reading room, card and billiard parlor at Fifth and Green Streets. Programs sometimes included the Maennerchor Chorus, the all-male ensemble whose voices favored the polyphonic sounds of German composers. Its customary patrons represented a roster of power, prestige, and accomplishment within the community. The merry crowds and wealth of entertainment in a unique place that “could have only have grown up under the fostering care of the happy German temperament, which possesses in the highest degree the faculty of enjoying itself,” projected a comforting, albeit momentary, image before other Philadelphians.81 Under a headline asking “Who Shall Rule In America?,” The Inquirer renewed its attack on foreign threats to American politics in the autumn of 1890. Citing reports of 76,000 German voters in Kansas being organized to oppose prohibition, it expected “all genuine Americans” to reject such action. Although the nativist movement had been unwise and deserved defeat, The Inquirer endorsed the principle that had served as its foundation—Americans must rule America. A diverse population could not be harmoniously amalgamated in any other way. While the “mild temper” of Americans enabled foreigners to bring their customs and prejudices without asking them to become American before the second generation, they should remain subject to the law of the land rather than seek to replace it with their own authority. The Inquirer insisted that any attempt to set up a foreign government, as in Wisconsin and Kansas, would be “like rousing a sleeping lion” that could only bring disaster. But while hardly a matter of establishing a foreign government, an alarm had once again been sounded. If Germans engaged in cultural and political subversion elsewhere, what would prevent them from attempting to do it in Philadelphia?82 After supporting former mayor Richard Vaux’s futile campaign to retain his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, Philadelphia’s Germans welcomed a more controversial speaker in November 1890. Shortly after Election Day, a mostly German crowd of ushers, young women and older men wearing “the red badge of anarchy,” listened to the now widowed Lucy Parsons as she spoke on Anarchism in America at Maennerchor Hall. With listeners nervous under vague rumors of possible disturbance, Parsons cried out, “Let not a man or woman leave this hall as long as a drop of blood remains in their bodies.” Indicting police action at the Haymarket Affair as a shameless outrage upon the rights of Americans to free speech, she thundered “there is no liberty in this country, except the liberty of workingmen to starve,” as her audience resoundingly applauded. Then she more quietly

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concluded: “This may be said by some people to be merely the complaining of a wife who has a grievance. But it is not so. I do not sorrow for my husband. I am speaking of what I see and hear and know to be so.” To Germans with love and loyalty for family, her words could hardly have been more poetic. To Germans with anarchist leanings, her argument could not have been more persuasive. But to other Philadelphians, her rhetoric could not have been more alarming.83

NOTES 1. Willcox (ed.), International Migrations ... 386; “Our New York Letter,” The Inquirer (May 22, 1882). For wages and the cost of living as reported by the U.S. Consul General in Frankfurt on Main, see the editorial, The Inquirer (June 28, 1882). On immigration, earlier accounts gave figures that greatly varied from later versions. For instance, compare the information for 1881 from an editorial in The Inquirer (January 31, 1882) with Willcox’s data. See also “Germany’s Blunders,” The Inquirer (April 18, 1883); “Our New York Letter,” The Inquirer (June 15, 1883). 2. “Serious Stabbing Affray,” The Inquirer (May 22, 1882); editorial, The Inquirer (July 8, 1882). 3. “Aid For Germany,” The Inquirer (January 12, 1883); “A German Bi-Centennial,” The Inquirer (February 28, 1883); “Arranging for the German Bi Centennial,” The Inquirer (March 2, 1883) 4. Editorial, The Inquirer (September 8, 1883); “Cannstatter Festival,” The Inquirer (September 10, 1883); “The Sabbath,” The Inquirer (September 18, 1883). 5. “The German Poet,” The Inquirer (November 11, 1885). 6. Editorial, The Inquirer (March 21, 1884); “German Society,” The Inquirer (March 22, 1884); 7. “The Building Dedicated,” The Inquirer (December 27, 1888). 8. “Teutonic Thespian Temples,” The Inquirer (August 25, 1885). 9. “New Jersey,” The Inquirer (June 9, 1884). Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries of the State of New Jersey, for the year ending October 31st (Trenton, NJ: 1886), 273; “Armstrong vs. Ebener,” in Reports of Cases Decided in The Court of Chancery, The Prerogative Court, and, on appeal, in The Court of Errors and Appeals of the States of New Jersey, Vol. I (Trenton, NJ: 1890), 457–67. Liberty Park, with a massive settlement of immigrant Poles and their families, would later become known Whitman Park, and the center of their community in Camden. 10. “Y.M.C.A.,” The Inquirer (January 20, 1886); “A Grand Work,” The Inquirer (February 2, 1886); “Young Men’s Christian Association,” The Inquirer (October 13, 1886). 11. “Culture Of Mind And Body,” The Inquirer (April 2, 1887). 12. “The First German Colonists,” The Inquirer (October 5, 1890); “Germans To Celebrate in Germantown,” The Inquirer (October 6, 1890); “Germans Rejoicing,”

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The Inquirer (October 7, 1890); “The German Celebration,” The Inquirer (October 12, 1890) . 13. “Liquor License In Ohio,” The Inquirer (June 28, 1883); editorial, The Inquirer (June 29, 1883); “Their Bi-Centennial,” The Inquirer (August 4, 1883). 14. “Knights Of The Needle,” The Inquirer (April 14, 1884). Elden Lamar, The Clothing Workers in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Joint Board: Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 1940). Despite their long involvement, efforts fell short of what organized labor would become in later years. In 1862, Uriah S. Stevens, a garment cutter, helped to form what became the Tailors’ International Trade Union. The first national convention, with delegates from seven cities, was held in Philadelphia in 1865. In April 1868, German garment cutters formed an “auxiliary branch,” acting in concert with the English association in offering protective and beneficial service to members. In November 1869, after previous efforts failed, Stevens and his associates founded the Knights of Labor. While German tailors in some cities refused to join the new body, deemed to be too political, their counterparts in an independent organization would remain active through the 1870s in Philadelphia. From the late 1860s on, newspapers reported efforts by German journeymen, garment cutters and tailors to organize. As late as 1905, the German tailor, despite the influx of Italians and Russian Jews, were still perceived as elite craftsman, as was evident from an advertisement for a department store which declared that its women’s suits were “tailored as only German tailors know how to do it.” Advertisement for Blum Brothers in The Inquirer (April 12, 1905). 15. “Festive Germans,” The Inquirer (September 2, 1884); “United Musicians,” The Inquirer (October 28, 1884); “Joining the Knights,” The Inquirer (December 17, 1884). 16. “Socialistic Gas,” The Inquirer (February 9, 1885). The title of the article, which an editor must have found to be clever, was repeated at least twice more for later items. 17. “They Did Not Bite,” The Inquirer (March 9, 1885); “An Iron-Clad,” The Inquirer (March 31, 1885). 18. “Violent Strikers,” The Inquirer (April 23, 1885). 19. “Labor On Parade,” The Inquirer (September 28, 1885). 20. “Youthful Toilers,” The Inquirer (November 9, 1885); “Labor Notes,” The Inquirer (November 16, 1885). 21. “Jolly Germans,” The Inquirer (June 14, 1886). Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 22. “Merry German Workers,” The Inquirer (August 9, 1886). 23. “A Slap At Stevenson,” The Inquirer (August 23, 1886). 24. “Stevenson Talks,” The Inquirer (August 24, 1886). 25. “Storming Schuetzen,” The Inquirer (September 6, 1886); “Anarchists,” The Inquirer (September 6, 1886). Lucy Parsons remained active in radical politics until her death in Chicago in March 1942. Carolyn Ashbaugh, Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing, 1976). 26. “A Big Labor Split,” The Inquirer (September 27, 1886). 27. “The Growth of Socialism,” The Inquirer (October 4, 1886).

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28. “The Local Labor Party,” The Inquirer (December 1, 1886); “On Tope Again,” The Inquirer (December 14, 1886). 29. “Blunt Brewers,” The Inquirer (January 6, 1887), “General Labor Matters,” The Inquirer (January 12, 1887). 30. “What Will They Do?” The Inquirer (January 20, 1887); “The Democratic Mayoralty,” The Inquirer (February 1, 1887); “Keim’s Teutonic Angling,” The Inquirer (February 7, 1887); “A Personal Canvass” (sic), The Inquirer (February 12, 1887); “The Popular Ticket,” The Inquirer (February 14, 1887). The “Fools’ Meeting” was a once a year event at which Cannstatter members wore a fool’s-cap, performed “monkey-shines” and acted as circus clowns. 31. “City Returns By Ward,” The Inquirer (February 16, 1887). 32. “Waging A Novel War,” The Inquirer (February 28, 1887); “Raising A Rumpus,” The Inquirer (March 1, 1887). 33. “Sunday With The Socialists,” The Inquirer (March 21, 1887). Gustave Metzler, not otherwise identified, may have been the same person as the proprietor of the Boston One Price Clothing House of Jersey City, New Jersey, who died in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in May, 1891. Der Deutsche Correspondent (May 28, 1891). 34. “Leeds On The Road Again,” The Inquirer (October 29, 1887); “On The Last Trip,” The Inquirer (November 1, 1887); “Leeds’ Hypocrisy,” The Inquirer (November 1, 1887); William R. Leeds, as city sheriff, chairman of the Republican City Committee and other positions, remains less well known than other party bosses. The WPA Guide to Pennsylvania (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2013), 265; and “Leeds’ Successor Quickly Named,” The Inquirer (November 6, 1894). At his death, it was said: “Probably no leader was better known in the city than Mr. Leeds and probably none had stauncher friends or more bitter enemies.” 35. “Beaver To The Rescue,” The Inquirer (November 4, 1887); “Nor Cheated Into It,” The Inquirer (November 4, 1887); “An Oratorical Windup,” The Inquirer (November 7, 1887); “Close Of The Campaign,” The Inquirer (November 7, 1887); “The Election,” The Inquirer (November 8, 1887). Leeds’s critic, Lincoln Lear Eyre, born in Italy, was the son of James Wilson Eyre, U.S. Consul to Venice during the Italian Risorgimento. He became a successful attorney, board member of the Municipal League of Philadelphia, activist in efforts to reform city government, and early writer on American aristocracy, a subject with which he was familiar from the inside. Reflecting his artistic sensibilities, Eyre participated, with painter Thomas Eakins and manufacturer Joseph Fels with 21 other devotees in a salute to the recently deceased Walt Whitman by reading “O Captain! My Captain!,” on the poet’s birthday on May 31, 1892. From their home on DeLancey Place, his wife, Marianne Binney Eyre pursued a similarly engaged role with the Civic Club of Philadelphia. Charles Hermann Krumbhaar, born in Philadelphia in 1848, of a family whose original name may have been Krumbahr, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and joined the law firm of John M. Thomas. He was elected to the Common Council from the Eighth Ward, a county commissioner for two terms, then City Sheriff, before being appointed by Governor Robert E. Pattison as the first commissioner of the newly created Department of Banking of the State of Pennsylvania in 1891. He died at the

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age of 73 at “Eastover,” his home at Mermaid Land and Cresheim Valley Drive in Chestnut Hill in June, 1921. 36. “Boss Rule Broken,” The Inquirer (November 9, 1887). 37. “Boss Rule Broken,” The Inquirer (November 9, 1887); “The State and County Returns: City Returns By Wards,” The Inquirer (November 9, 1887); “The Result,” The Inquirer (November 9, 1887). For Robert Porter Dechert, see: Philadelphia and Popular Philadelphians (Philadelphia: The North American, 1891), 44; and John Russell Young (ed.) Memorial History of the City of Philadelphia, from Its First Settlement to the Year 1895, Volume II, Special and Biographical (New York: New York History Company, 1898), 440–1. 38. “The Last Laugh Best,” The Inquirer (November 10, 1887). 39. “The German Republicans,” The Inquirer (January 11, 1888). 40. “Leaders Who Don’t Lead,” The Inquirer (August 24, 1888); “Why Gratz Is Strong,” The Inquirer (October 27, 1888); “Men To Vote Against,” The Inquirer (November 1, 1888). 41. “Victory Certain This Day,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (November 6, 1888); “Clutching At Straws,” The Inquirer (November 8, 1888). 42. “Who Struck Patterson?” The Inquirer (November 17, 1888). 43. “At Ridgeway Park,” The Inquirer (August 7, 1882). 44. “German-American Bi Centennial,” The Inquirer (August 30, 1883); “German Bi-Centennial: An Effort to Protect the Sanctity of the Sabbath during the Celebration,” The Inquirer (September 8, 1883). Born in Gudensburg, Germany and brought as a two-year-old by his parents to America, Dr. Ferdinand H. Gross, a graduate of Jefferson Medical College, served as an army surgeon during the Civil War. Wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga, he resumed civilian life after the war as the senior visiting surgeon at the German Hospital. “Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Ferdinand Hermann Gross,” in Society of the Army of the Cumberland, TwentySecond Reunion (Cincinnati, OH: Robert Clarke & Co., 1892), 177–8. He is not to be confused with Dr. Samuel D. Gross, a German American born near Easton, Pennsylvania, a graduate of the same medical college, who later became immortalized by Thomas Eakins in the famous painting of The Gross Clinic. S.D. Gross’ son, Samuel W. Gross, an 1857 graduate of Jefferson, achieved acclaim as a pathologist, researcher, and chief of surgery at the same institution. Frederick B. Wagner, Jr., “The Founding Fathers and Centennial History of the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery,” Annual Oration for 1979, Annals of Surgery, 192:1 (July, 1980), 1–8. 45. “The Sabbath,” The Inquirer (September 18, 1883). 46. “German Bi-Centennial,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (October 4, 1883); “Monster Processions,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (October 9, 1883); “Germans In Line,” The Inquirer (October 9, 1883); “Law And Order,” The Inquirer (November 20, 1883). 47. “The Germans,” The Inquirer (June 22, 1885); “Bavarian Festival,” The Inquirer (August 17, 1885); “Cullings From City News,” The Inquirer (August 17, 1885). 48. “Beer And Kraut,” The Inquirer (September 14, 1885). 49. “Pennsylvania News,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (February 2, 1886).

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50. “The Day Of Battle,” The Inquirer (February 16, 1886); “After The Battle,” The Inquirer (February 17, 1886). 51. “Bolting Tavern-Keepers,” The Inquirer (March 19, 1886); “The Liquor Traffic,” The Inquirer (April 1, 1886). 52. “A Big Day At Schuetzen,” The Inquirer (August 16, 1886). 53. “Director Stokley’s Orders,” The Inquirer (March 11, 1887). 54. “At Their Old Tricks,” The Inquirer (March 11, 1887). 55. “The Restriction On Beer,” The Inquirer (May 30, 1887); “Barrels Of Beer,” The Inquirer (May 31, 1887). 56. “Protesting Germans,” The Inquirer (July 23, 1887). 57. “Summer Festivities,” The Inquirer (August 2, 1887); “What Steps To Take,” The Inquirer (August 3, 1887); “Indignant Teutons,” The Inquirer (August 5, 1887). 58. “What Will They Do,” The Inquirer (August 15, 1887); “Festive Germans,” The Inquirer (August 16, 1887); “For Personal Liberty,” The Inquirer (August 20, 1887). 59. “The Germans And The Sabbath,” The Inquirer (September 5, 1887). For a summary of Peters’s life, see “Madison C. Peters Dies Of Influenza,” The New York Times (October 18, 1918). 60. “A Scene Of Splendor,” The Inquirer (September 6, 1887); “For Personal Liberty,” The Inquirer (September 9, 1887). 61. “The Temperance Issue, The Inquirer (November 30, 1887); “Defeated Candidates Run Best,” The Inquirer (December 30, 1887). 62. “Beer Or No Beer,” The Inquirer (May 11, 1888). 63. “German-Americans,” The Inquirer (May 15, 1888). 64. “The Day They Celebrate,” The Inquirer (May 22, 1888). 65. “Prohibition To Be Fought,” The Inquirer (December 5, 1888). 66. “Cannstatters Growing Anxious,” The Inquirer (May 28, 1889). The effort by states to regulate the sale of liquor through licensing began in Nebraska in 1881. In Pennsylvania, Public Law 108, the Brooks High License Law, quaintly described as “an act to restrain and regulate the sale of vinous and spirituous, malt or brewed liquors, or any admixture thereof,” passed by the State Assembly on May 13, 1887, required the licensing of any room, house, tavern, or other place selling liquor. See James Monaghan, Liquor License Laws of 1887, including the Brook’s high license act, and the wholesale dealers’ license act, with a history of their passage, and so on (Philadelphia: T. and J. W. Johnson, 1887); and the detailed account by a British barrister, Evelyn Leighton Fanshawe, Liquor Legislation in the United States and Canada (London: Cassell & Co., 1892), 225–37. See also Mark A. Noon, Yuengling: A History of America’s Oldest Brewery (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, 2005). After passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Volstead Act, the Brooks Law remained a controversial concern of judicial reconsideration. See “Colura v. State,” (No. 33) Court of Error and Appeals of New Jersey, June 23, 1922) The Atlantic Reporter, Volume 117, June 17–September 14, 1922 (St. Paul: West Publishing, 1922) 702–04. 67. “A German Holiday,” The Inquirer (June 11, 1889). Pfingstmontag or Whit Mondy, the day after Pentecost Sunday, is a widely observed holiday in Germany.

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68. “To Vote To-Morrow,” The Inquirer (June 17, 1889); “The Proposed Amendments,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (June 18, 1889); “The State Goes Wet,” The Inquirer (June 19, 1889); “How The Wards Voted,” The Inquirer (June 19, 1889). 69. “Sea Isle’s Biggest Crowd,” The Inquirer (August 26, 1889). 70. “Barbers Keep Closed,” The Inquirer (September 2, 1889). 71. “Germans On A Picnic,” The Inquirer (September 10, 1889). 72. “Scenes From Fatherland,” The Inquirer (September 7, 1885); “Home Memories,” The Inquirer (September 8, 1885); “The Cannstatter Festival,” The Inquirer (September 9, 1885). *“Deutscher Michel” is the symbolic representation of the German people. 73. “A Want Of Harmony,” The Inquirer (July 30, 1887). 74. “Hitting The Germans,” The Inquirer (September 20, 1887); “The American Party,” The Inquirer (October 11, 1887); “A Public Protest,” The Inquirer (October 14, 1887); “Insulting The Germans,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (October 15, 1887). While The Inquirer erroneously identified Robert H. Hinckle as the source of the memorable simile, The Patriot, citing the account that appeared in The Press, another Philadelphia newspaper, correctly recognized Robert H. Hinckley as the speaker. Each newspaper, probably reflecting the note taking of its reporters, provided a somewhat different version of the words spoken on this occasion. But unlike The Inquirer which included the comment in a news article, The Patriot offered a sharply critical editorial judgment of Hinckley’s remarks. 75. “Germans For Rulers,” The Inquirer (October 27, 1887). 76. “Sympathy For Strikers,” The Inquirer (January 16, 1888); “The Dead Kaiser,” The Inquirer (March 12, 1888). 77. Editorial, The Inquirer (April 5, 1888); “Bucks County ‘Dutch,’” The Inquirer (April 23, 1888). 78. “Claiming Their Reward,” The Inquirer (February 9, 1889); “Teutons Alarmed,” (March 7, 1889). 79. “Education Matters,” The Inquirer (September 27, 1889); “To Help The Emigrants,” The Inquirer (January 17, 1890); “A Cooperative Movement,” The Inquirer (April 9, 1890). 80. “An American Issue,” The Inquirer (April 9, 1890). 81. “Music In The Garden,” The Inquirer (July 14, 1890). 82. “Who Shall Rule In America,” The Inquirer (October 2, 1890). 83. “Enthusiastic Vaux Men,” The Inquirer (October 31, 1890). Although the unanimous choice of the Democratic Party after the death of Congressman Samuel J. Randall in May, 1890, Vaux was defeated largely because of factionalism when he ran as an Independent Democrat in November. “Mrs. Parsons Talks,” The Inquirer (November 13, 1890). The Maennerchor Society, founded in 1835, with headquarters for many years at Fairmount Avenue and Franklin Street, should not be confused with the Young Maennerchor Society, founded in 1852, and located at Sixth and Vine Streets. Both societies had choral ensembles highly successful in local and national competitions. See: Philadelphia and Its Environs, A Guide to the City and Surroundings (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1896), 92.

Chapter 5

German and Philadelphian (1891–1900)

In the late nineteenth century, America, “overwhelmed by vast hordes of ignorant foreigners,” had allegedly become “the world’s asylum for all the criminals driven from their own homes and for the dregs of the earth’s humanity.” To a more than rhetorical question, “What is the lesson taught?” the Inquirer replied: “The answer is plain. Immigration must be restricted, and the vicious and ignorant kept from storming our doors.” Without more effective policy, the nation risked the return of the principles if not the party of the Know Nothings. In the eyes of new Nativists, even the Chinese, barred by the Exclusion Act of 1882, were superior to the “hundreds of savages and criminals from all other portions of the globe” being dumped on the wharves of New York, who huddled together in shanties, lived on refuse, wallowed like hogs in a pen, and hoarded their money until they could return to their homelands. And while agents of steamship companies, promising jobs that did not exist, had violated federal law, this army of “miserable, dirty, disease-breeding, law-breaking foreigners,” unable to speak English, was crowding out native-born American workers. But other immigrants remained welcomed—Germans who became honest citizens (but not the Anarchists who might be among them); the Irish who, being for the most part intelligent, made good laborers; Scandinavians who migrated West to become farmers or lumbermen; and even educated Italians.1 But despite being welcomed, German immigrants could not avoid the risks and dangers inherent in their passage to America and resettlement in Philadelphia. From the outset, immigration had separated families, leaving members to search for one another in a foreign land, sometimes with success, but often with failure. In May 1891, among some 1,057 immigrants, arriving from Antwerp on the Belgenland of the Red Star Line, the largest number on any ship reaching the port of Philadelphia so far, one young German came in 101

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search of his 18-year-old sister, who had disappeared after leaving their home in Dresden. On arrival, he could only say “All I want is to find my sister and to take her back home.” A month later, an unemployed 47-year-old mechanic, depressed by the death of General Helmuth von Moltke, under whom he had served in Germany, hanged himself on the banks of the Frankford Creek. Such tragedies, grim markers of inherent dangers, showed that neither a safe crossing nor a good life after landing could be guaranteed.2 SCENES OF DAILY LIFE In the cities of America, Germans, like other newcomers, quickly learned that finding work was crucial to survival. As the 1893–1894 economic crisis struck New York City, men waiting for newspapers printed in their own language gathered long before dawn on Monday mornings, the day that most advertising of jobs appeared. They were bakers, barbers, waiters, and brewery workers—patient, industrious, frugal men, perhaps with a great liking for beer and brass bands, but also steady-going and home-loving, with eyes open for a “main chance.” Recognizing that they did not threaten public order, but only sought employment, the police did not interfere with them. Once the newspapers arrived, the men formed smaller groups to weigh the relative merits of shops, wages, employers, and foremen, before they rushed off with information in hand, scattering themselves around the city in response to the ads. It was a scene in New York City, but it could easily have been in Philadelphia or any city where Germans found their destinations and destiny.3 For the unemployed and working poor, a high incidence of suicide and other forms of violence routinely disrupted day-to-day existence. On an evening in October 1899, when an intoxicated guest, brandishing a whiskey bottle and revolver, shot his host, the killing ended a “jolly little party” at a house on North Beechwood Street. The death of the victim, “an honest German workingman” would leave a wife and three children in destitution. And no charity could replace a dead husband and father. But even minor misfortunes would be acerbated by language differences. When a barefoot four-year-old boy who hid himself in a milk wagon became disabled by a splinter, his inability to speak English prevented the police from finding his family, before a desperate mother found him nearly nine hours after his disappearance. Such events provided the parameters of daily life.4 As German American organizations sought to aid the less fortunate, their efforts often served other purposes. In February 1891, the annual charity ball of the Bayerischer Volksfest Verein brought together “hundreds upon hundreds of Americans, Germans and that product of our soil ‘German-Americans’” and leaders of local government—Mayor Edwin S. Stuart, Director of Public

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Safety Abraham M. Beitler, City Solicitor Charles F. Warwick, members of city council and the commonwealth legislature, along with “not a few of Philadelphia’s 400.” Tableaux depicting the landing of Columbus, as well as a decoration of “Columbia and Germania clasping hands for charity,” embellished the scene. As men in formal dress and women in gowns of “exceptional elegance” moved in stately procession at the grand march, dancers crowded the floor throughout the evening. Beneath a philanthropic agenda, such events enabled the elite of a still foreign population, parvenus in some sense, to legitimize their status. And with the “freedom of German customs linked to the joviality of American life,” migrants of social mobility, mimicking local aristocracy, knocked at a new portal of status, where charity in a “democracy” offered a safer form of stewardship than more fundamental, but less dignified, revisions of social structure.5 GERMAN DAY Other celebrations offered similar opportunities. While other cities had marked German Day since the early 1870s, Philadelphia’s Germans waited until the 200th anniversary of Pastorius’ arrival to observe the occasion for the first time in October 1883. Eight years later, The Inquirer, calling for the reading of John Greenleaf Whittier’s Poem “The Pennsylvania Pilgrim,” warned “To the extent that it becomes German in its nature it loses the interest and sympathy of the American public and rearouses (sic) those latent racial prejudices which, created against the Pennsylvania Germans of the last century for political purposes, still leaves their traces in the writings of the historians and college professors of today.” Against the view of Professor Robert Ellis Thompson of the University of Pennsylvania that the German language did not belong in an English-speaking society, it cited Carl Schurz’s argument that such retention harmed neither the people using it or the society as a whole. Beneath the surface of such discontent, if other Philadelphians were troubled by the retention of a foreign language, it was a harbinger of the future.6 In summer 1892, when the Chautauqua Society observed German Day at Mount Gretna, state librarian William Henry Egle, speaking on “The Pennsylvania German—His Place in the History of the Commonwealth,” contended “For its place in the history of the Union, the State is more indebted to the Pennsylvania German than to any other class or race of people. I cannot but be loyal to my ancestry if I am loyal to my State and my God.” Julius F. Sachse, a prolific pioneer in ethnic and local history, taking up the subject of “The True Heroes of Provincial Pennsylvania,” used the occasion to extol the virtues and influence of the German mother “who needs no brazen tablet nor

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granite monument, nor poem to sing her praise. . . . Among no other nationality who settled in the province of Penn can you produce her equal.” In the following year, Thomas B. Zimmerman, a Reading newspaperman, focusing on “Our Ancestral Virtues,” after enumerating great achievements by their ancestors, called for German Americans to boast first of their American citizenship, then of their German origins. While placing the question of divided loyalties before the public, German American scholars and intellectuals, with a rhetoric that continued to resound in subsequent years, sought to construct a collective memory for their people.7 While the Chautauqua program encouraged serious reflection, the agenda in Philadelphia usually included lighter moments. In October 1892, the Maennerchor Society, marked the 25th anniversary of its founding, with music and other entertainments. But community leaders also used the opportunity to express allegiance to their adopted country, as the celebration under the auspices of the German Society of Philadelphia at Washington Park did in 1898. In the late afternoon, the United German Singing Societies, the Cannstatter Volksfest Verein, the Ladies’ Cannstatter Volksfest Verein, the Swiss National Society, the Bavarian Society, the German Military Societies, the Gloucester, New Jersey Volksfest Verein, and several turnverein societies gathered to salute the American flag and sing the Star Spangled Banner. At a nearby pavilion, Charles J. Hexamer, the principal speaker, noted that the opposition of German newspapers to the U.S. involvement in the war with Spain had raised concerns over celebrating German Day in America. He answered that it was not a German celebration, but a patriotic demonstration in which Americans of German birth or descent gathered not to glorify Germany, but to exalt their role in building their adopted nation, while showing their loyalty and support for America. Mayor Charles F. Warwick, commending the 200,000 Germans who had served in the Union Army, added that the current war again required that German Americans accept their duty to serve the nation. He confidently declared “I am sure you’ll find a German behind the cannon, shouldering the rifle or whatever danger needs a victim or war a hero.”8 The festivities of German Day increasingly placed ethnic identity within an American context. In June 1899, the event featured speeches by Mayor Samuel H. Ashbridge and the ubiquitous Hexamer, at Washington Park. Along with singing groups, children dancing, gymnastics, a fireworks display, and a tableau depicting Columbia and Germania, the program again commemorated of the arrival of the first German settlers. In the same year, another German Day agenda, at the National Export Exposition at Horticultural Hall in Fairmount Park in late October, offered a gymnastics performance by the Turngemeinder, a concert by the Junger Maennerchor, instrumental music by the famed Damrosch Orchestra, and a traditional

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Bavarian Commers, the drinking and song festival of southern Germany. A newspaper account vividly depicted it as a colorful occasion in which “German seemed the State language” and “good fellowship reigned.” In June 1900, the German Society of Philadelphia featured a more distinctively American procession of mounted “cowboys” on North Fifth Street in the Fox Chase section of the city. The increasingly mixed forms of public celebration suggested that German Americans, like other immigrant populations, were now seeking ways of affirming ties with America.9 LANGUAGE AND ASSIMILATION The widespread use of German, however, as Professor Thompson had hinted, by many families and individuals, complicated adjustment. In June 1897, Judge Abraham M. Beitler, magistrate of the Court of Common Pleas, ruled against the “traditionalists” of St. Peter’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church in West Philadelphia, who sought to impose the exclusive use of German in church affairs in June 1897. Their intention was to retain the “unaltered Augsburg confession” of Martin Luther’s “small catechism” in its original vernacular. Beitler, having deposed far more radical voices as Director of Public Safety, would affirm their right to worship, teach, and conduct business in their own language as being protected by the U.S. Constitution. But taking a more sociological than juridical view, he maintained that Germans had recently shown a greater desire to amalgamate with the English-speaking masses than in earlier days; and the children of immigrant parents, despite understanding German, routinely spoke English. Beitler then offered his opinion: “The language of this state and this country is the English language, and this court cannot sanction or in any way approve an effort on the part of the German-speaking citizens composing St. Peter’s Church, to prevent their successors, if they desire to change the language spoken in the church to the English tongue, to do so.” While Beitler’s opinion focused on Germans, it reinforced an increasingly popular answer to the question of foreign language retention by immigrant peoples.10 In an earlier test, when unscrupulous bankers sought to exculpate themselves from business responsibilities, the proper use of German, spilling into more worldly matters, found a blunt, but dubious, defense. With the Unique Building and Loan Association unable to make funds available to depositors in September 1892, its secretary, deflecting attention from insolvency, contended that the firm’s “German committee” judged the language used in promotional circulars to be improper, while cleverly adding: “We are not going to pay for bad German.”11

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When organized labor took up “the difficulties that hedge about the road to citizenship for the Teuton residents of Philadelphia,” leaders of the United German Trades claimed that artisans who contributed much by their work and raising of families in the city, but remained within the confines of their own community, were failing to acquire the necessary command of English. For petitioners appearing before the naturalization court, the “want of familiarity with the Saxon tongue” often became their downfall. With questions placed in English, the applicant became nervous, frightened, and forgot what he already knew. But infrequent court sessions and lost time and earnings while waiting to appear also impeded the acquisition of citizenship. After an effort to form a new German section failed, another proposal called for shifting to courts in Reading and Pottsville, where judges were more likely to understand the language difficulties of Germans. Although the UGT had raised citizenship to the top of its agenda, the solution was proving to be elusive. Whether seeking employment, beseeching God or gaining citizenship, the reluctance of Germans to abandon their ancestral language had complicated implications.12 While descendants of early settlers had already abandoned their use of German, it remained a valued resource for later arrivals. For members of the John A. Koltes Post, No. 228, campfire reunions carried memories of the Civil War in their native language. While these “sturdy sons of Germany, who fought for their adopted country,” brought their wives and children to “fraternize as only Germans can,” many of them, with the exigencies of living in an Anglophonic society, had become bilingual. But political candidates understood the value of an idiom that validated their efforts among voters. When German American Republicans met at Maennerchor Hall in November 1892, orators, alternating between German and English, urged support of incumbent President Benjamin Harrison. The power of ethnicity itself appeared to have lessened when a Connecticut newspaper declared, “In the main we have heard less than usual about the German vote or the Irish vote, or the Italian vote. The voters are American voters. They should be called only by that name. It does not matter where they were born. The attempt to stampede a lot of men by exciting race animosities is a mistaken course.”13 RELIGION AND THE GERMANS At the cornerstone laying of Holy Cross Evangelical Lutheran Church at Ninth Street and Lehigh Avenue in July 1898, Dr. Adolph Spaeth, speaking in German, took up the controversy that had emerged over Germany’s position in regard to war with Spain. His remarks well reflected the views of Lutheran pastors throughout the city. Exhorting congregants to remain loyal

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to their adopted land in the manner that Martin Luther would have wanted them to be, Spaeth’s oration linked religious faith to political allegiance. It was a message which Philadelphia’s Germans did not require much urging to follow, but an eagerly grasped course on which they would remain steadfast in loyalty to America.14 Less than a year later, the views of German Catholic pastors, priests and laity, insulated by the submersion of religion within a patriotic context, would be well represented at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania League of German Catholic Societies in May 1899. With delegates from over 500 societies passing under an American flag as they entered St. Peter’s Hall on North Fifth Street, Father John Ottar, a Sharpesburg priest, urged them to be not only good Germans and Catholics but good Americans as well. After his audience rose and gave three “Hochs” in their salute to Pope Leo XIII, he reminded them of another allegiance, recently proclaimed by the hierarchy on the role of the Church in the Americanization of Catholics. On the next day, during a concelebrated Mass, presided over by Patrick John Ryan, the Irish-born Archbishop of Philadelphia, at St. Peter’s Church, Father E. O. Hilterman, rector of Holy Trinity, the first German Catholic church in the nation, encouraged delegates to not only retain their mother tongue but also to be good citizens of America. In subsequent days, other speakers reiterated the theme. At the end of May, children at the parish school of St. Bonaventure, at North Sixth and Cambria Streets, raised an immense American flag donated by congregants for the celebration of Decoration Day. In a speech given in German, John Essig, a parishioner, declared that while Germans were right to honor the Stars and Stripes, German Catholics had an even greater duty to do so. As other denominations, clergy, and laity were forging an adjustment that linked their identity and traditions as Germans, faith as Catholics, and allegiance as Americans.15 Unlike the Lutheran and Roman Catholic confessions with a large presence in their old world religious life, Presbyterians saw Germans as a foreign population that, despite efforts that began with the First German Presbyterian Church in 1860, remained ripe for proselytization nearly 40 years later. At the Presbyterian State Synod of October 1899, the Permanent Committee on German Work, reporting 400,000 residents of Pennsylvania, 50,000 of them in Philadelphia, declared that the sterling quality of German character made them well suited for Presbyterian doctrine and policy, and called for greater efforts among them.16 With immigration finding new sources, the Reverend Samuel A. Mutchmore, pastor of the Memorial Presbyterian Church, at Montgomery Avenue, below North Eighteenth Street, was a rare dissenter, defending newcomers from Italy, Hungary, and Greece while deprecating Germans. Speaking on Scotch Irish immigration, he argued that persecution by the Catholic Church, the

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great “enemy of Presbyterianism,” had done more than anything else to stimulate the migration of his own people. But Mutchmore also attacked the Personal Liberty movement, dismissing the argument of its advocates as being mere sentiment. With his ardent defense of Italians, Mutchmore, inverting widespread public opinion, placed Germans in a less favorable position. Praising Italians for their literature, arts and sciences, and for establishing a republican form of government, he commended their more recent struggles against the Church. Despite “unreasoning and unchristianlike” hostility toward them, Italians had improved every land they had entered, although they had not always bettered themselves. And Italians had never been as disturbing in this country as the Irish, and not one-half as much to be dreaded as the Germans, Hungarians, and Russians, whose Anarchist and Socialist tendencies provided a greater threat. Nor had Italians ever produced an agitation that sought to rob owners of their property and reduce Americans to beggary. The German anarchist was the most dangerous among cranks who assassinated public figures, because the intellectuality of Germans made them the best teachers of both good and evil. Mutchmore proposed that immigration only be restricted, not prohibited; education be made compulsory, with all foreigners being taught in English, the “sovereign language of our land, ” without any money spent on the teaching of any foreign language; and all immigrants being required to wait twenty-one years before gaining the right to vote. With Germans being less worthy, when he summoned his congregation to pray for Christian generosity and sympathy, it was for the Italians, not the Germans.17 Mutchmore was not alone in his objections. Speaking at a church in West Philadelphia, Reverend Charles E. Knox, president of the German Theological School of Newark, New Jersey, called attention to the size of the German population, especially in Chicago which he saw as an almost entirely German city. With the extent of foreign influence resulting from immigration, he urged a program of education, not only of children but of the heads of families, as the remedy. While his real target was the Catholic Church, he regarded Germans as part of the problem. His clerical colleague, Reverend D. J. McMillan, secretary of the Presbyterian Home Missionary Board, reiterated the focus on Germans as a people that needed “Christianizing.” While such calls for missionary work must have startled the pastors of Catholic and Protestant churches who had served Germans in Philadelphia, the underlying message attacked the enduring foreign culture of their congregants.18 If Presbyterians remained hesitant, other organization were becoming increasingly receptive of Germans. In March 1899, the Young Men’s Christian Association of Philadelphia announced that German Americans would be permitted to become members of the central organization. And at times, even nature itself seemed to welcome the foreign born, as a newspaper

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reported a public scene at the end of the century: “Here is a cosmopolitan crowd. Americans and Germans mix with their brothers from Little Italy, and an occasional Chinaman mingles with the crowd.” But such moments more likely testified to the capacity of urban life to absorb Germans and other “foreign” groups in a more inclusive comity.19 BECOMING AMERICAN; REMAINING GERMAN Philadelphia’s Germans, however, would remain resistant to restrictions that city authorities imposed upon them. When police sought to enforce liquor laws at singing society concerts, they openly defied the disruption of their community life. Attempting to calm their anger, Arno Leonhardt, president of the Junger Maennerchor, denying accusations that he had already denounced the police, sought some sort of resolution from Abraham L. English, Director of Public Safety. After reaching a tentative agreement, Leonhardt would inform his membership to expect no further interference; and English would instruct his officers to refrain from any further intervention. The outcome, only tentatively settling matters, was a precarious compromise between Germans and municipal government.20 But while seeking solutions on such matters, local Germans, as they became more Americanized, retained strong ties with Germany. With the approach of Christmas, they flocked to post offices to send cash remittances to needy friends and relatives overseas. Germans, like other immigrants, were not only providing material support for those whom they had left behind but demonstrating that they had not forgotten their roots. As they overcame the difficulties on the road to citizenship, such largesse reflected their persisting transnational identities.21 With their hybrid visibility, German Americans were easily depicted in stereotyped images. In May 1895, a reporter, who had posed as a door-to-door book salesman seeking to peddle his wares, painted an amusing portrayal of a German family. Their attempts to converse in broken English, along with the arrival of friends for an infant christening, and a festive meal of steaming roast pork, bread, cake, and coffee, accompanied by huge stone pitchers of foaming beer, filled the scene. With only the Katzenjammer kids of popular culture missing, his portrait of domestic life, whether a contrived fiction or an actual encounter, offered Germans as a comic foil for other Philadelphians.22 With their strong accents also making them vulnerable to caricature, Germans, in another newspaper depiction, performed as “full, florid-faced conductors” on trolleys coursing through neighborhoods. Plying along one busy artery, they could be heard calling out “Chirard afenue.” And with their colleagues on other lines, they constituted “an interesting section of

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working humanity.” But far more than an amusing vignette, German street car conductors, restaurant waiters and chefs, meat market butchers, bread and pastry bakers, brewery workers, textile weavers and tailors, staffed a vast army in the rapidly expanding local economy of late nineteenth century Philadelphia.23 As older origins and newer citizenship fell into greater harmony, German Americans continued to remember their past. In late August 1899, they honored another great poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, when more than 150 organizations were invited to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. A two-hour program, with orations in German and English and a choral performance of 1,000 voices, culminated at the Goethe Monument in Fairmount Park. But such events often incurred some risk if they failed to include some expression of Americanism. And while remembering a cultural icon such as Goethe might be acceptable, homage to a political hero such as Bismarck without allusion to a new fealty was not.24 When Philadelphia’s Germans saluted Carl Schurz on his seventieth birthday in March 1899, the former Senator’s letter, describing his inability to attend, addressed to “his friends,” expressed his attachment to them. But their celebration, almost as if his absence had not been noticed, reflected their own achievements. Carefully orchestrated by Charles J. Hexamer, the program unfolded with toasts by Pastor Adolph Spaeth to “Carl Schurz”; Lawyer and Lutheran lay leader William H. Spaake to “Our Country, the United States of America”; German Consul Carl B. Marheinecke to “The Old Fatherland”; out-going Mayor Warwick to “The City of Brotherly Love”; businessman and future mayor Rudolph Blankenburg to “The German-American Citizen”; General Louis Wagner to “The German-American in Our Army and Navy”; editor Joseph Morwitz of the German Democrat to “The Press”; University of Pennsylvania Professor Marion D. Learned to “The German as an Educational Factor in Our Nation”; and ophthalmologist Dr. Carl Weiland to “The Ladies.” And while paying homage to prominent businessmen, lawyers and jurists, physicians, scholars, and journalists—a loudly cheering audience reaffirmed its solidarity as German Americans.25 POWER AND POLITICS With Germans well aware that politics still provided their most important resource during the greatest depression that America had ever experienced, radical voices again sought to capture their attention. In August 1893, Emma Goldman and two supporters were arrested in front of Buffalo Hall at Eighth and Chestnut Streets, where a packed house of Germans, Poles, and Russians vainly waited for the featured speaker. Like Lucy Parsons three years earlier,

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the 25-year-old German born Goldman offered anarchism in response to economic crisis. When news of her arrest reached the hall, angry supporters were met by police squads led by Public Safety Director Beitler and Detective James Tate. In custody, she reiterated her views on the use of force to bring down government; support of free love; and denial of the existence of God. Asked why she had come to Philadelphia, Goldman’s answer—to organize the people—explained the enthusiasm of her intended listeners. Meanwhile, tumult erupted inside the auditorium when D. A. Massenger, chairman of the meeting, announced that the speakers had been arrested. Exclaiming that despite being foreign born, as an American who had “shouldered a musket in ’61–’62,” he urged the unemployed not to pay rent and to resist eviction before adding: “Let the Commonwealth collect the rent from the millionaires. . . . Look at what they’re doing. Arresting people without cause. I do not care if there are officers here. It is not justice. Our judges even are corrupt.” Other speakers condemned, in English and German, the injustices of capitalism to a cheering audience. With Goldman silenced by arrest, anarchism, nevertheless, resounded as she, charged as a fugitive from justice, awaited extradition to New York.26 With a stalled economy unable to ease the distress of workers, dissent only grew louder. In a meeting of the Socialist Labor Party, Frank M. Gessner, editor of The People, condemned the price and wage system, as well as both major political parties, while proposing Socialism as the remedy to an audience of Germans at the Labor Lyceum. Unlike the recent Goldman incident, the absence of any disturbance rendered plainclothes officers scattered among the audience unnecessary, but city officials still regarded such speakers as potential dangers to public safety, if not to the established economic order. But German Americans remained attentive to their views.27 When German Americans sought a suitable slate for the election of November 1894. Albert H. Ladner, a member of City Council with “a hold on the Germans . . . that could not be shaken off,” was a popular choice for city magistrate. But they would find an even more formidable candidate, Republican Frederick Halterman, for the House of Representatives. Born in 1831, in Vegesack on the Weser River, a part of the old Hanse town of Bremen in Germany, he had immigrated to Philadelphia in September 1849. After working in a grocery store, Halterman opened a corner market at Fifth and Callowhill Streets, gaining a reputation as an honest businessman over the next 38 years. In 1872, he was elected as a director of the Board of Public Schools and in 1880 to a three-year term as a member of Select Council. After an eight-year absence, he returned to the School Board in 1889 for another six years. While not an inspiring speaker but willing to undertake an uphill struggle, party leaders viewed him merely as a “dummy candidate.” But Halterman’s personal modesty and appeal actually made him a strong choice.28 

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While his strength came mainly from Germans, Halterman reached other voters by calling for a protective tariff before an enthusiastic audience at Keystone Hall on Germantown Avenue. Delivering a similar message at the Workingmen’s Protective Tariff League on Germantown Avenue, prominent Republicans offered their support. In accepting the nomination, he described the service of German and Irish soldiers during the Civil War and the needs of unemployed mechanics, laborers and tradesmen, before invoking President Abraham Lincoln on the desirability of the tariff: “Born on a foreign soil, I have been reared and lived amongst the citizens of the fairest, freest and most prosperous land on earth. I shall vote to keep it such by building up American homes and American industries on American soil.” Ingratiating to both major constituencies of his district, cognizant of his own marginality, and as clever as any native-born politician in rhetoric, Halterman not only affirmed the wisdom of party leaders but left little doubt of his inevitable election.29 When the Philadelphia Demokrat, followed by some 552 merchants and businessmen, largely from outside of the German community, endorsed him, Halterman was predicted as the “sure winner.” The final estimate against his

Figure 5.1  U.S. Congressman Frederick Halterman. Source: Leland M. Williamson et al. (ed.), Prominent and Progressive Pennsylvanians of the Nineteenth Century, Volume II (Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Record Company, 1898)

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Democratic rival, Joseph P. McCullen, a young Catholic lawyer chosen by “Ringsters, Roosters and Ruffians,” projected Halterman’s majority to reach at least 5,000. But his success at the polls would be even greater.30 As election results came in, it quickly became evident that Halterman would be elected by an overwhelming majority. With considerable irony, McCullen, not being properly registered, and unable to even vote for himself, insisted that his defeat could only come from fraud and treachery. The presumptive winner, accepting congratulations at the Union League, declared that he never harbored doubts about being elected, but only satisfaction that his district was firmly anchored within the party of protection for American industries. When the vote was officially tabulated, with 13,443 votes cast for Halterman, the 6,463 plurality was almost as much as the total of 6,980 cast for McCullen. Halterman had won in each of the eight wards, with a nearly three-to-one margin in the mixed Fourth and Fifth Wards in South Philadelphia and the heavily German Eleventh Ward in Northern Liberties and a roughly two-to-one margin in two other wards of North Philadelphia. The race had been close in only the Sixth Ward of Center City.31 Halterman’s decisive victory was part of a Republican resurgence throughout the city and state. Of the 30 seats representing Pennsylvania, the party division had gone from 20 Republicans and 10 Democrats in the previous session to 28 Republicans and only two Democrats in the newly elected 54th Congress. In Philadelphia, as a German resident returned home early in the morning, a baker covered with flour, asked if he had any election news. With the answer that Daniel H. Hastings of Pennsylvania and Levi P. Morton of New York had been elected governors of their states, the baker exclaimed “Oh, I mean in the Third District; is Halterman elected?” When the other man informed him “Yes, Halterman is elected by six thousand,” the baker shouted back “Then I name my baby Frederick Halterman. The boy was born on election morning. My name is Schneider, Herman Schneider, and I live at 1619 Hope Street in the Sixteenth Ward. Hurrah for Frederick Halterman Schneider!” And as the baker threw his hat into the air, elated Germans could tip their own caps to an immigrant grocer who had become a member of the United States House of Representatives.32 Prompted by Halterman’s success, the Seventeenth Ward German Republican Club, seeking to regain what had long been a Democratic district, unanimously endorsed Charles F. Warwick as its candidate for mayor in January 1895. Three days later, the German American Republican Club of North Philadelphia approved Warwick and the rest of the party ticket. Anticipating a large turnout of Germans, Halterman declared that voters of his district, like himself a part of the reform faction of the party, held Warwick in greater esteem than any other candidate. In early February,

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Germans, gathered at Kellerman’s Hall at North Eleventh Street and Columbia Avenue, seeking to consolidate their strength within the GermanAmerican Republican League. With Germans having become a voting bloc that captured the attention of candidates and press, Warwick was expected to win by a large margin. The candidate himself, addressing the Thirty-seventh Ward German-American Republican Club, decisively declared: “You are here not as Germans but as American citizens.” But it would have been more accurate to say that his audience was there because its members were both Germans and Americans.33 In February, Warwick and the unified Republicans defeated ex-Governor Robert E. Pattison by an overwhelming margin of about 60,000 votes. In the Mill District of Northeast Philadelphia, having keenly felt the effects of the depression, German voters, urged by the Workingmen’s Protective Tariff League, solidly supported Warwick. On the day after the election, Democrat State Representative John H. Fow, the Kensington born son of a German butcher, who had earlier served the heavily German Seventeenth Ward in City Council, explained the result: “The Democratic defeat is due in a great degree to the loss of the German vote, as evidenced by the leading German Democratic wards, notably the Eleventh and the Twelfth.” Citing unpopular actions by Pattison, Fow astutely observed: “It looks as if it is not safe to ‘monkey’ with the German votes, because they will invariably resent any interference with their personal liberties.”34 With an increased role in local politics, the German-American Republican League began holding weekly meetings to accommodate its 22 ward organizations. But by early 1897, “anti-Combine” forces contested the power of the regular party. Angered by Halterman’s defeat in his bid for reelection in the autumn primary, “indignant Germans” charged that party bosses had only reluctantly supported him. Alienated by a sense of betrayal and convinced of their own strength, the insurgents aligned with dissident forces in support of candidates opposed to the regular Republican organization. The ensuing struggle would determine the “place” of Germans in local politics.35 Germans reasserted their power when Republican candidate Samuel H. Ashbridge faced Dr. W. Horace Hoskins, one of the founders of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, but without experience or standing in politics, in the mayoralty election of 1899. Shortly before Election Day, a meeting of the German-American Ashbridge Campaign Committee, with Hexamer chairing, resolved: “As Mr. Ashbridge has always shown himself an efficient public servant, and as he has repeatedly shown his good will for the German-American element of our community, it is the sense of the meeting that Mr. Samuel H. Ashbridge is an eminently fit candidate for Mayor of Philadelphia.” By seeking to convince “our kinsmen” to vote for him, the action was intended to maximize the margin of victory in

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an election already determined. With his prior public service as coroner, it was a somewhat spectral endorsement. But the “blue ribbon” membership of 300 German Americans that included Hexamer, Lierz, Leonhardt, Halterman, Mucklé, Wagner, and almost everyone else of any standing in the community ensured the outcome.36 On Election Day, Ashbridge scored an overwhelming victory with 145,778 votes, against Hoskins with a mere 23,557; and candidates of the Prohibition, People’s and Single Tax parties, even more distantly behind. The Democrats had failed to win a single ward. With a plurality of 122,202 votes, the largest ever recorded, Ashbridge had won 84 percent of the vote, while Hoskins received the smallest total ever for a Democratic candidate for the office. But the victory carried special resonance for Germans. With some 400 “non-political” societies expected to participate in a massive street parade, “as attractive as it will be unprecedented,” The Inquirer, proclaiming Ashbridge as the “Idol of the Germans,” described their contribution: “Of all the foreigners who have made the United States their home, none evince more patriotism and loyalty than German citizens. Ample proof of this was given Philadelphians last night in the celebration of the glorious victory of the Republican candidate for Mayor. The honor the Germans paid Samuel H. Ashbridge was as sincere as it was enthusiastic.” But a thoroughly corrupt political machine also left the role of German voters in electing Ashbridge somewhat tainted.37 The fuller assessment of Ashbridge only came with the passage of time. Four years after the election, when journalist Lincoln Steffens, emerging as a “muckraker,” coined his memorable phrase “corrupt and contented” to describe politics in Philadelphia, he made a fleeting reference to the soliciting of the Irish and Jews, but not the support that the Republican Party had secured from German voters. Calling the election of Ashbridge the final triumph of the ruling triumvirate of Matthew S. Quay, Boise Penrose, and Israel W. Durham, Steffens described the tendency of “Stars-and-stripes Sam” to ingratiate himself by patriotic speeches to eager audiences. One year later, Gustavus Myers, similarly focusing on “the most corrupt city in the world,” charged that the election of Ashbridge had brought to office “the worst mayor that Philadelphia has ever had.” Against the self-approbation that flowed from Ashbridge and other politicians on public occasions, Myers cited the North American, the most progressive voice of the press: “This paper believes Philadelphia to-day the most plundered municipal corporation on earth. Its commerce, its transporting facilities, and many of its public franchises dealing with the necessities of life are largely controlled by corruption and dominated and manipulated with the sole view of gratifying the cupidity of a very few rich men and a few potential politicians.” Modest estimates claimed not less than 30,000 fraudulent votes, with some placing the number

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at 50,000, had been cast in the elections of 1899 and 1900. One man admitted to have voted for the Republican ticket 37 times in the 1899 election. The Municipal League declared that it was well known that the police used methods ranging from mild persuasion to clubbing and false arrest to implement orders to assist candidates approved by the city administration. Myers concluded that the “Philadelphia thieves were never more powerful than they are to-day; the end of the domination is apparently still remote. Well may the world contemplate this City of Brotherly Love with justifiable disgust and horror.” With his broad denunciation of those who had endorsed Ashbridge and remained beholden to his party, Myers placed a serious blemish upon the enthusiasm of Germans at the outcome.38 In February 1900, local politics again summoned the Germans. As the annual ball of the Junger Maennerchor opened the “Silly Season” preceding Lent, political bosses used the occasion to pursue voters rather than dancing partners. Fred M. Wagner and Adam Ackerman, candidates for magistrate, displaying their fluency in German, received a cordial reception as German American Republicans endorsed the party slate at a rally. Party leaders who hoped that Germans, swayed by their own candidates, would support the entire ticket, were not disappointed on Election Day. At the final count, regular Republicans, despite an insurgent bloc, had won a decisive victory, with both Wagner and Ackerman among candidates receiving the highest numbers of votes. Incumbents Albert H. Ladner and William Eisenbrown, having forsaken the Democrats for the Municipal League faction, were also among the winners. With four successful candidates, Germans had remained loyal to the “Hog Combine,” while also electing two “reformist” choices.39 With political success providing leverage, Germans found a door open for their interests. Seizing that opportunity, the German-American Central Association of Pennsylvania, willing to provide a competent teacher, petitioned the Philadelphia Board of Education for the introduction of “physical culture” to the public school curriculum. Having already become a highly praised program in other cities, earlier efforts by Turner societies had failed in Philadelphia. In 1891, a bill that proposed physical culture in schools had been approved by the State Assembly, but faltered in the State Senate. Two years later, similar legislation, endorsed by both houses, was vetoed by Governor Pattison. After another proposal by the German-American Central Association passed early in 1901, the Board of Education introduced a program of “physical culture” in city schools—quietly securing an almost entirely forgotten German contribution to American education. The expanded curriculum even more discreetly secured another innovation of the recreational landscape of America—the introduction of the indoor gymnasium and the outdoor playground.40

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ORGANIZING DEUTSCHER MICHEL As “jolly Germans,” from Whitsuntide in spring time until “the last grape had been gathered and the wine ran from the press” in the autumn. renewed their zest for “any and every opportunity which offers amusement and recreation,” their celebrations continued to become more American. On Independence Day of 1893, some 10,000 enjoyed the annual picnic of the 34 choral societies of the United Singers in Stockton Park northeast of Camden. In early September, a reported 8,000 members of German and Swiss societies returned for the Cannstatter Volkfest Verein. With banners hanging from trees and a fruit tower welcoming arrivals at the entrance, groups gathered around kegs from which draughts of beer flowed, while vast amounts of sour kraut and frankfurters were consumed. After President Keebler’s welcoming speech, Turnverein members displayed their skills. But rather than a familiar reenactment of Swabian mythology, the landing of Columbus on the lakeside beach, before the event ended with fireworks, reflected new aspirations for “Deutscher Michel.41 On Labor Day, chapters of the German Federation of Trades, united more by material interests than patriotism, gathered at the Labor Lyceum. Blacksmiths, machinists, wagonmakers, metal workers, engravers and platers, textile workers, typographers, leather workers, bakers, marine workers, cigarmakers, furriers, carpenters, fresco painters, shirtmakers, coatmakers, pantsmakers, and capmakers, marched with contingents of the Socialist Labor Party. Accompanied by families, they crossed the Delaware and proceeded to Pavonia Park, where each unit hung its banner and tapped its first keg of beer. Their standards bore mottoes that challenged the arrest of Emma Goldman just a few nights before: “The Government Should Be Compelled to Support the Unemployed,” “The Ballot is Our Weapon to Rout Tyranny and Introduce Justice,” and “Socialists’ Labor Party—Men of All Countries Unite.” Engaged by lively discussions of labor problems, a reporter observed: “There were no dudes among the picknickers, every man being a sturdy son of toil.” But political preoccupations, renourished by Gemütlichkeit and King Gambrinus throughout the day, did not preclude the singing, dancing, games, and fireworks that enlivened the moment.42 With Germans still forced to go to New Jersey for the open purchase of beer, the Sunday Liquor Laws remained an unresolved issue. But opposition to German taste would not prevail against reasonable demands, especially when aggravated by financial loss. In April, 1894, Henry Lierz petitioned the Liquor License Court for a license for Pastime Park on Allegheny Avenue as a “resort” for the United German Singers, which he now conveniently served as president. When the court, expressing its hope that the establishment “will be conducted in such a manner as to prove that a place of that kind

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can be made to afford the same innocent enjoyment here that it does in other countries,” approved his application, Germans had regained the opportunity to buy beer in the parks of Philadelphia. Two weeks later, with the trip to New Jersey no longer necessary, they returned on Whitsuntide Monday, to “a regular old-time picnic” at Rising Sun Park. And as the decision implied, it was a victory for all Germans.43 By late May, bicycles and private carriages passing over the newly paved Allegheny Avenue and trains arriving at the Bellevue Station of the Reading Railroad brought the public to Lierz’s resort, renamed Washington Park, where “Everything that will gladden the youthful heart and recreate the matured pleasure seeker has been provided.” Along with free admission, it offered a grand concert led by Professor Gustave Boehm, former director of the Austrian Royal Orchestra; a baseball game hosted by the Manayunk Club; prize bowling open to all; and fireworks in the evening. Within a few more days, Scottish athletes and ersatz “Scots,” competing as the Caledonian Athletic Club, replaced Germans for a program of track and field events. In June, the National French Association occupied the park for an afternoon, before it served as the grounds for the Irish National Games, sponsored by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, for two days in July. In the same month, the Philadelphia Turngemeinde held its annual gymnastic festival, before a reported crowd of 5,000 spectators. On Bastille Day in July, the French community, despite the recent assassination of France’s president Marie F. S. Carnot by an Italian anarchist, celebrated its national holiday at Washington Park. In late August, Englishmen and their families flocked to the first annual sports and games competition of the United Societies of the Northwest District of Philadelphia, which featured a baseball game between the Falls Protestant Athletic Union and the St. Timothy Club of Roxborough. While Washington Park had become an international playground, it served Germans as a symbolic battlefield in their quest for “personal liberty.”44 With Labor Day being observed for the first time as a national holiday in September 1894, textile workers, furniture workers, metal workers, cigar workers, Socialists, and local chapters of labor unions brought a radical presence to Washington Park. Impassioned English and German-speaking orators declaimed on the dignity, contributions and plight of workers, while the Socialist Liedertafel and other choral societies tempered the mood of the day. In another week, when the Cannstatter Volkfest Verein returned for its annual festival, after seven years of exile in Reading and Camden, thousands of Germans boarded special trains of the Reading Railroad, fleeing the heat of the city for the more refreshing confines of Washington Park. The most engaging entertainment reenacted the Swabian return from Spain after the defeat of King Andeca of Gallaecia in the sixth century. Beneath its historical veneer, it also reflected the homecoming, not from Iberia but only New

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Jersey, of more modern Germans. And to hear it more musically, a children chorus sang “Home, Sweet Home.” Other programs confirmed the victory over Temperance. On the day after the Cannstatter festival ended, some 300 employees of the John F. Betz and Sons Brewing Company, in the first parade of their industry since the High Liquor License Law had gone into effect, led by officers on hunting coaches, followed by 20 delivery wagons, proceeded to Washington Park. In three more days, the Cannstatters invited the public, on “the greatest day of the season,” to witness the dismantling of the fruit column. While offering “10,000 portions of sauerkraut” to patrons, the granting of the remaining fruit to Lierz “as a reward for his services,” expressed the appreciation of grateful Germans.45 In 1896, when German workers again observed Labor Day, a holiday still searching for its character and direction, the United German Trades Unions, the United Labor League, and the Amalgamated Building Trades Council converged in a massive protest against capitalism. An estimated 2,000 workers, joined by cycling clubs and singing societies, marched behind banners whose slogans defined the day. As it was reported: “Some of the banners carried attracted considerable attention and were exceedingly Socialistic in their tendency.” At Washington Park, Frank M. Gessner, the well-known labor organizer (whom The Inquirer could only vaguely identify as “a socialistic political speaker from Pittsburg”), went even further with an oration in German urging support for the Socialist Party on Election Day and defending the gold standard as a protection of the purchasing power of wages.46 Beyond rhetoric paying homage to the working class or urging revolutionary action, Germans continued to display their old world memories and new world expectations. At its 1896 festival, the Cannstatter Volksfest Verein evoked ancestral homeland and culture by a reconstructed sixteenth century Swabian village occupying nearly one-half of Washington Park. With background scenery representing Munderkingen on the Danube River in Württemberg, a wall, flanked by one of its ten towers, rose above the shops of blacksmith, baker, butcher, soap manufacturer, shoemaker, tailor, and cabinet maker. The mock village also replicated the old town hall, the homes of the Burgomeister and town scribe, a hostelry, a church, a school house, and market square. The scenes of village life during the revolutionary year of 1848—peasants selling their wares, young men being conscripted into military service, agitators urging revolution, and even women engaged in gossip—provided drama. But a final tableaux of exiles and refugees being welcomed to America by Uncle Sam amid trumpets and a band playing the Star Spangled Banner depicted a newer chapter for Germans. As The Inquirer aptly noted: “The period of jollification is perhaps the biggest event in the whole year’s calendar for native Germans and their families who have sought

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the hospitality of these shores, but whose fondest memories are attached to the scenes and doings of the Fatherland.”47 In August 1897, Philadelphia’s “Jolly Germans” recalled their military past as member organizations pitched tents, paraded, drilled, and stood for inspection in the second annual encampment of the United German Military Societies at Washington Park. In the evening, they entertained spectators by reenacting a memorable battle from German history. While such displays might induce concern, especially after some recent “sabre rattling” by the Kaiser, the spectacle only demonstrated loyalty to America. Later in the month, when the Cannstatter Volksfest Verein observed its 24th annual festival, an estimated 18,000 visitors on opening day, attracted by a program that again featured a village celebration in the Palatine, offered a more peaceful scene. The staged veneer of traditional customs, costumes, music and foods reflected the prosperity and security that Germans had found as workers, citizens, and residents of Philadelphia, and the message that they were not only here to stay but intended to remain German as well.48  On Labor Day of September 1898, as the United German Trades Unions joined other branches of organized labor at Schuetzen Park in Camden, the jingoism of a nation in an early stage of war brought a display of cultural revanchism. On the Philadelphia side of the river, before a crowd claimed to reach nearly 30,000 at Washington Park, the Cannstatters again reconstructed a German village as its centerpiece. Despite some depiction of recent naval operations against Spain, the festival, over the next three days, remained more focused on traditional culture than current affairs. But in October, when Germans, having sufficiently displayed allegiance to America, honored the memory of Chancellor Bismarck, the agenda, featuring speeches by General Wagner, Reverend Spaeth and Hexamer, restored a greater emphasis on international affairs.49 In November, Germans from 24 wards sought legal relief that would allow musical bands and parades for funerals on the Sabbath. With the Roman

Figure 5.2  Cannstatter Volksfest Verein at Washington Park (1897). Source: Courtesy of the Cannstatter Volksfest Verein

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Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Salvation Army, and political clubs also denied, the burial ceremonies of military veterans provided the only exemption. But Police Superintendent Robert J. Linden contended that their petition, rather than being a matter of municipal jurisdiction, fell under the authority of the state legislature, since the ban originated with an Act of Assembly of 1798. With other Philadelphians opposed to any easing of the Blue Laws, it was the opening volley of a renewed war. The adoption of the “Liberal Laws League” as the name of a new organization confirmed apprehensions. Within another week, a resolution before the quarterly meeting of the Presbyterian Ministerial Union protested that the Germans, by supporting infractions against Sunday as a day of rest, were advocating the observance of a “continental Sabbath.” And much like the “aggressive Presbyterians” awakened by “civic consciousness” who supported territorial expansion in the war against Spain, an imperialist clergy now defended Anglo American control over a more local colony of Germans.50 In September 1899, the Cannstatters, flocking to Washington Park for their 26th annual festival, embodied the synthesis of entertainment, memory, and loyalty. As in past years, the program, officially to raise funds for charities, exalted ethnicity through the retelling of history. The reenactment of the struggle between Emperor Conrad III and Duke Heinrich of Bavaria in twelfth century Würtemburg, where many immigrants had their origins, provided the main attraction. The decisive moment of the apocryphal tale, in which besieged women fled the ducal castle, carrying men upon their backs, dissolving the conflict between emperor and duke, invoked the nurturing role of women in German families. With remission granted by a magnanimous emperor to once defiant subjects, actors and audience turned their attention to the soaring tower of fruit, the perennial symbol of abundance at harvest festivals. But such pageantry, far beyond mere entertainment, no longer offered respite from the struggles of daily life in Würtemburg, but in Philadelphia.51 Germans, marked by a proliferation of new local chapters and physical facilities, had also reached a new level of participation in organized labor. Their strong sense of fraternalism enabled them to support, along with their regular organizations and activities, three Labor Lyceums. On the former site of Kenéseth Israel Synagogue at Sixth and Brown Streets, the United German Trades provided facilities for various unions, which also housed branches of the Socialist Labor Party. A large refreshment room, lecture room, billiard room, and library occupied the ground floor, while a spacious auditorium accommodated events on an upper floor. The Labor Lyceum Association supported the Tageblatt, the daily German labor newspaper. Further north, the Kensington Labor Lyceum, occupying a new building at Second and Cambria Streets, provided a more modest scale of programs. And the Southwark

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Lyceum, in rented quarters at Passyunk Road and Federal Street, offered entertainment.52 German American militancy increased when Cigar Makers’ Union Local 165, a constituent of the United German Trades, announced its intention to affiliate with the United Labor League in June 1900. Its members, assessed 50 cents each, would support striking women and girls at the Harburger & Homan cigar factory at Tenth Street and Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia. Meanwhile, the Sheet Metal Workers’ Union and the newly formed Pretzel Bakers Union would join the UGT. And Textile Union Local No. 8 reported its strike at Printz’s Mill had been settled.53 With any picnic harboring a political rally featuring discourse and debate, German unionists observed Labor Day, long before it became merely the closing act of summer, as it was originally intended. In September 1900, the United German Trades offered a flurry of activity as coppersmiths, carpenters, custom tailors, woodworkers, and textile workers reported increases in membership and a new body of cement finishers gained affiliation. But varnish makers, after a complaint by the woodworkers, were expelled from membership. The Bakers’ Union announced plans for a mass meeting on the coming Saturday at Barth’s Hall at Third and Noble Streets. With a newly formed committee deliberating demands for better working conditions, the Butchers’ Union declared that it was affiliating with the National Butchers’ organization. The Pretzel Bakers reported that its blue label would soon appear on all pretzel boxes. Piano and organ workers, with almost 500 employed in the city, had established a new local. But more discouraging conditions revealed that employment was not always secure. The textile workers reported the closing of the Wente & Weed factory at Kensington Avenue and Huntingdon Street, with 50 percent of its members were full-time workers, some 25 percent in part-time employment, and another 25 percent unemployed. After the UGT, following lengthy debate, suspended its customary parade, leaving unions to march on their own, textile workers planned to occupy the streets of Kensington where most of them lived, along with any union that wish to join with them. Brewery workers, whose working hours precluded fuller participation, announced that they would march in the afternoon before joining other tradesmen at Labor Lyceum Grove in Frankford. German Americans, shifting events from old world nostalgia to new world urgencies, had unequivocally asserted their presence in organized labor.54 GERMAN HOSPITALITY Germans, however, had found other opportunities beyond labor politics in which their efforts would have a notable impact on the local scene. Although

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neighborhood saloons had long welcomed other patrons, German entrepreneurs, who sensed its commercial value, were now also placing their hospitality before a wider public. In April 1893, when an applicant petitioned the Liquor License Court, the presiding judge asked “It does require an interpreter to drink a glass of beer, does it?” And the supplicant’s lawyer astutely answered “No, Your Honor, but it does to talk about it in a German saloon. A man does not usually go into a saloon to jerk a glass of beer down his throat and then hurry out.” Other petitioners similarly testified to the necessity of a place where beer could be enjoyed while accompanied by conversation in the English language. With its context of alternating separation and contact, frequently crossed boundaries and the reversal of status, the episode reflected the changing milieu of the late nineteenth century.55 Two months later, the opening of Jacob Gartenstein’s saloon on Ridge Avenue, a place where no interpreters would be needed, provided a new haven against the zealotry of the Temperance Movement and diffidence of the Liquor Court. Against Public Safety Director Stokley’s efforts to promote a more abstemious city, the proprietor, stretching if not breaking local codes, offered beer and music in an elaborately decorated concert garden. With assurances from authorities that no action would be taken if conduct remained orderly, Gartenstein took precautions to stay within the law. At the entrance, a sign warned “Ladies not admitted during concert hours,” while waiters inside, under the vigilance of a special officer, filled orders from crowded tables. Gartenstein, well aware of its broader implications, told a reporter “I have made the break. . . . Stokleyism is dead and beer and music can mix, if they mix properly. . . . I have accommodated 3,000 people today and there has not been a disturbance. Most of my patrons are Germans. They are a beer-drinking crowd and they enjoy the concerts.” Germans, as well as other patrons, would have fully agreed with him.56 No establishment enjoyed greater success than Charles Henry Reisser’s once formidable restaurant and saloon that, despite its past popularity, has now faded from local history. Its owner was born in the town of Marbach, the birthplace of Friedrich Schiller, on the Neckar River in Baden Württemberg in December 1845. A biographical sketch claimed that he worked in restaurants at Frankfurt-on-Main, Geneva, Milan, Zurich, Nice, Marseilles, Luzerne, Lyons, and Ouchy on Lake Geneva during his early years. At the age of 20, Reisser sailed from Hamburg on the S.S. Saxonia bound for New York City in December 1865. Coming with the intention to remain in the United States, he became an American citizen in April 1869. After working in New York, Reisser was employed as a cashier at Philip J. Lauber’s acclaimed German restaurant at the Centennial of 1876. A few years later, he would be a partner at Lauber’s Restaurant at 24–26 South Fifth Street, until it reopened with Reisser as the sole owner in early September 1884.57

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Reisser’s undertaking was grand in magnitude, service, and public impact. While the Ladies Dining Room, adjoining the main rooms on Fifth Street, filled a long-felt need, a café (or “smoking room”) was available for male patrons who sought a more private atmosphere. With the “oyster season” in early autumn, a preferred cook prepared various kinds of shellfish. The bar was stocked with fine wines and liquors, along with domestic and imported beers. Reisser conducted the kitchen under his personal supervision and “to the satisfaction of the guests.” The wine department displayed Rhine wines, champagnes, clarets, sauternes, cordials, and other liquors recently imported from the “best houses in Europe.” His “card to the public,” in which he announced the purchase of the interest of his former partners, the Messrs. Philip J. Lauber & Company, graciously asked for “the continuance of the patronage kindly bestowed on us, with the assurance that nothing will be left undone nor pains and time saved to keep up the reputation and standard of the Restaurant.”58  By the late 1880s, the rechristened “Reisser’s Restaurant” had become the favored banquet site of the Reporters’ Club, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick,

Figure 5.3  Charles H. Reisser. Source: Philadelphia and Popular Philadelphians (Philadelphia: The North American, 1891)

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the Pen and Pencil Club and other civic, professional and fraternal groups. Bankers, lawyers, councilmen, politicians, newspapermen, actors, brokers, merchants, and manufacturers enjoyed its hospitality. During the trout fishing season in April, it held a week-long exhibition of live and cooked specimens; familiar and exotic game and their meat from around the world were featured in December. By January 1891, the restaurant was expanded to meet increased demands. Two years later, its fish and game show attracted a public eager to see mutton bearing the mark of Anthony J. Cassatt, vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose frequent presence enhanced the reputation of the restaurant. Diners with more aesthetic sensibilities might recognize poet Walt Whitman, quietly enjoying dinner in the company of friends. But financial troubles brought judgments against two wholesale liquor dealers, trading as C. H. Reisser & Company, for overdue notes worth more than $22,000 in July 1893. Despite the use of his name, Reisser was not one of them. With the Brooks Law of 1887, he sold his interest in the firm, ending his involvement in its operation, but granting the buyers the right to use its original name. Reisser, in fact, was now a creditor, holding the largest note at $12,000. The new proprietors, claiming that their failure was due to the slow collection of money owed to them and the refusal of creditors to extend deadlines, promised the court that they would use their ample stock to meet liabilities. Reisser, no longer an owner of the business that bore his name, remained a creditor in what had become a precarious enterprise. It would soon become even worse for him.59 In late December 1894, The Inquirer, in what appeared to be a full-page feature article, described the recently renovated Reisser’s Restaurant as being for Philadelphia nothing less than what Delmonico’s was for New York. It had no counterpart, was unrivaled for picturesqueness, and operated by a host whose reputation made it the leading resort in the city. Located a short distance from the Stock Exchange, the Custom House and major trade marts, as well as Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, more men prominent in commerce and finance could be found dining there than anywhere else. But guided by the German principle of absolute equality and freedom, introduced to dining at the Centennial Exposition, clerks and bookkeepers, along with patrons of all ages and nationalities, took frugal midday meals, as a nearby millionaire bank president enjoyed an epicurean repast. While eating at the same time and table and served by the same waiter each day, cigar smoking diners talked business in a spacious first floor. On the second floor, an equally handsome room allowed women to dine with their husbands. But Reisser’s own “happy idea,” replicating the traditional meeting place of town fathers in Germany in perfect detail, with American innovations providing further comfort, made the Rathskeller the jewel of the establishment. Above its Minor Street entrance, an elaborate

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stained glass window proclaimed “Philadelphia Rathskeller,” with an image of King Gambrinus, holding aloft his glass of beer, symbolic of what awaited inside. Beyond stout doors, a great table welcomed patrons to a wine room with walls adorned by paintings of “typical characters in life” and selections from bottle and barrel found nowhere else in America. Polished oak paneling, high-backed, leather-upholstered chairs, massive furniture, curved arches, inscribed with the words of Goethe, Schiller, and Hauff, and whimsical scenes of adventure-filled areas illuminated by hundreds of electrified globes. Plain and elaborate personalized beer mugs, hanging on wall pegs or resting on shelves, waiting to be claimed by owners, evoked student life in Heidelberg or a beer hall in Munich. In folklore imported from Germany, plaster gnomes, having dug themselves from the underground of Mother Earth brought good cheer, while a family of stuffed bears added their own amusement. Reisser’s remarkable setting, acclaimed as the greatest dispenser of alcoholic beverage in Philadelphia, uniquely proffered German hospitality.60 But what was presented as a feature article was actually a promotion prepared for several newspapers, which in subsequent days, when praise was abruptly cast in a different light, become more of a dirge than an ode to commercial health, and perhaps part of an effort to rescue Reisser’s establishment. In early January 1895, as several firms collapsed under the weight of unpaid debt, the celebrated dining place conspicuously appeared among them. Unable to extricate himself from financial distress, news of Reisser’s failure reached well beyond Philadelphia. The New York Times noted that “Charles H. Reisser, proprietor of one of the largest and best-patronized restaurants in Philadelphia, today confessed judgment on notes aggregating nearly $58,000.” But while treating the bankruptcy almost as a crime, it offered a more favorable view of the future. Although total obligations approached $100,000, a prospective buyer’s offer of $150,000 for the restaurant could erase its debt. Even more promising, most of the money was owed to friends who would be unlikely to “force him to the wall.” But the view from New York was overly optimistic. With an assessment slightly different in detail, The Inquirer reported that he was facing overdue debts of $54,000. The restaurant and Rathskeller, probably the most valuable property of its kind in the city, had an estimated market value of nearly $200,000. Despite a business and real estate of considerable worth, what was about to unfold carried a far bitter taste. Just a few days after the public learned of the failure, creditors, meeting at the place that Reisser had ruled over, began an examination of his business records. Meanwhile, Reisser, unable to prepare any statement of finances, as a municipal judge weighed transfer of his liquor license, was reported to be seriously ill and confined to his home, suffering emotionally and physically.61

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In late February, a sheriff’s sale assigned ownership of Reisser’s Restaurant to Gustav A. Soulas, to whom its liquor license had already been transferred. In early April, the judge declared that the application for renewal belonged to its new holder. A few days later, an obituary in The Inquirer tersely stated “Reisser—On the 7th instant, Charles H. Reisser,” but nothing more. Two days later, his many friends attended the funeral at his home on North Broad Street. But even his final disposition became a matter of controversy, when Masonic officials objected that cremation, for which he had asked, would not allow a Christian burial. In accord with a ruling supporting that view, his body was placed with Masonic rites in a cemetery vault. Although the attending physician listed cirrhosis of the liver and kidney as the cause of Reisser’s death, his recent misfortunes could not be dismissed as factors in his failing health and eventual loss of life.62 While Reisser’s death had removed him from the local scene, his influence would linger before the public. Advertisements for the “oldest established restaurant in Philadelphia,” but now owned and operated by Soulas, declared that it was the “Successor to Reisser’s.” Whether it was the trout exhibition in April, the game displayed in December, or imported German wines chosen by him, Reisser’s name remained somewhat visible. By July 1905, however, either sufficient respect had been paid to the previous owner or the market value of his name had been exhausted. With newspaper advertising extolling the electrical fans that made it comfortable even on the hottest day referred only to “the original rathskeller,” the proprietor being G.A. Soulas, and libations provided by imported and domestic beers in mugs or glasses or “my own importation of Rhine, Moselle and Claret wines,” the final chapter in the life of Charles Henry Reisser had reached its end.63 OTHER LOSSES Reisser’s death was not the only fatality that diminished the German American community. Godfrey Keebler and Oswald Seidensticker, within a four-month span, represented arguably greater losses. Four days after his final speech at the Cannstatter picnic, Keebler, 72 years old, died at his home at 643 North Twenty-Second Street on the evening of September 8, 1893. Having left the park grounds with an ailing gall bladder from which he had suffered for two years, his physicians could do little to prevent an inevitable outcome. His life had been an impressive saga of success. Born in Würtemburg in 1822, he migrated at the age of ten to Pennsylvania, where he first worked in a mill owned by the Pennypacker family near Phoenixville. After moving to Columbia in Lancaster County, he began learning the trade of bread baking. By 1850, Keebler had relocated to Philadelphia where he opened a bakery on

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Market Street, near North Thirteenth Street. In another five years, after briefly living in Camden, he was auspiciously listed in a City Directory of 1855 as a “crackerbaker,” with his establishment at 242 North Twenty-Second Street and residence at 2222 Brandywine Street. After working as a foreman for the John T. Ricketts Company, a baking establishment on Front Street, he bought its equipment at the death of the proprietor and opened a wholesale bread baking firm at 258–68 North Twenty-Second Street in 1862. In his three-story building, with steam-powered machinery that kneaded, mixed and rolled dough, a work force of 100 employees turned 300 barrels of flour each week into breads, biscuits, and crackers. In spring 1890, Keebler and Augustus Weyl, recently returned from Saint Louis, incorporated the Keebler-Weyl Baking Company, with the former as its president, that eventually became an international giant of the baking industry. Involved in numerous charities and community programs, Keebler had helped to found the German Hospital, held membership in both the Maennerchor and Young Maennerchor societies, served as the president of the Cannstatter Volksfest Verein, and was a Free Mason. In his civic life, he had played conspicuous roles with the reformist Municipal Committee of Fifty and the Citizens’ Committee of One Hundred. But above all else during his lifetime of accomplishment, he was a baker whose products, despite his own humility, would make his name, embellished by graphic images of elves borrowed from German folklore, familiar to households around the world. During his remarkable trajectory from baker to global icon, he had not only been dedicated to his craft and trade but devoted to his fellow Germans. His death, along with General Ballier’s several months earlier, had left vacant both the office of president and vice-president of the Cannstatter Society. But his passing left an even greater void in the German community.64  With the death of Professor Oswald Seidensticker, of a lung ailment at his home on South Fortieth Street, German Americans lost their most highly respected scholar in January 1894. It came only a few weeks after the publication of his best-known work, The First Century of German Printing in America, 1728–1830. Born in Gottingen, Germany in 1824, he had migrated to America in 1848. At the time of his passing, he was one of the oldest faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania, an authority on all matters related to German history and literature, and was widely involved in the civic life of German Americans. While his final work provided a wealth of information on printers and publication, it also amplified the early history of Germans in America. Seidensticker pointed out that Benjamin Franklin’s effort to pit Germans against the Quakers and proprietors would not only lead to the latter’s defeat as a candidate for election to the Assembly of the colony but leave the roots for inchoate tensions beneath a deceivingly tranquil surface. Less than a week after reviewing his book, The Inquirer praised his

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Figure 5.4  Godfrey Keebler. Source: Courtesy of the Cannstatter Volksfest Verein.

historical studies as deserving much greater attention and extolled him as being representative of the “newer German element in American life.” But the importance of Seidensticker’s work had been lessened by its publication in German, a language that other scholars were too often unable to read.65 CHOLERA AND IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION Beyond the passing of any businessman, civic leader, or scholar, the cholera epidemic of the early 1890s, while also disrupting immigration, represented a greater threat to the future of the German American population. The arrival of the S.S. Moravia at the port of New York in August 1892 with 22 of its 385 steerage passengers buried at sea as victims of the disease incited the concern of health officials and public. With an epidemic erupting in Hamburg, its port of departure, the ship was placed in quarantine for fumigation of clothing and compartments. Almost daily reports of new cases in European cities, and 20 more ships from “infected ports” on their way, increased the concerns of

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steamship officials and government agents who sought protective measures at American destinations. But angry New Yorkers, unconvinced that such efforts were actually being made, began forming vigilante groups to obstruct landings. A week later, Philadelphia’s Board of Health agents greeted the S.S. Princess, a British ship carrying mostly German immigrants as it steamed up the Delaware River. With passengers forced to wait on deck under wintery conditions exposing them to other threats to their physical well-being, the Board of Health was severely criticized for procedures of little value for already ill arrivals. After visiting quarantine facilities in New York, Senator William E. Chandler, a New Hampshire Republican and chairman of the Senate Committee on Immigration, called for the suspension of immigration in December. Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Steamship Conference instructed agents to refuse to book German emigrants who were attempting to leave German territory during the most recent days of the disease. An editorial in The Patriot, a Harrisburg newspaper, anticipating the World’s Fair scheduled for summer in Chicago, captured the fears of many Americans: “What a festival of death the Columbian celebration will become if cholera be one of the guests!” In the midst of such concerns, Germans discovered that they, even if not afflicted by any illness of the body, were not immune to the remedies of government.66 With virtually all German, Russian and Polish emigration suspended, the cholera epidemic exacerbated the challenge of immigration. Three options— restriction of immigration, quarantine of incoming vessels, and preventive measures at the ports of departure—offered possible solutions. In early January, the U.S. Senate approved a bill expanding the quarantine powers of the government, with an amendment authorizing the president to prohibit the landing of persons or unloading of property possibly infected with the disease. In the debate preceding passage, the power to halt immigration was struck from the wording, leaving an emphasis on quarantine provisions. It required any ship leaving a foreign port to obtain certification of its sanitary history and current condition from U.S. consular officials, and banned any vessel that did not meet state or local government restrictions from entering an American port. But the action of the Senate in approving the bill, while allowing Chandler’s proposal for a total ban to lapse, remained only a partial remedy.67 As the cholera epidemic subsided, the return of the “immigration season” required stronger protection from other threats of foreign origin. In early March, Congress, adopting Chandler’s proposals in the final act of its session, enacted the Immigration Act of 1893, requiring steamship companies to prepare passenger lists with much fuller information at points of departure and deliver them to inspectors on arrival at American ports. Its stringent provisions were intended to block undocumented immigrants from

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entering the United States, strengthen the control of American officials, and prevent steamship companies from trafficking in the transport of aliens. The action could not have come at a more propitious moment. Only a week after its passage, the U.S. Department of State announced that steerage traffic, reported as discontinued on January 1, had actually been resumed. And by May, as the new law went into effect, thousands of immigrants were on vessels bound for New York City. Some 10,000 Italians had left Marseilles on eleven ships, with the Belgravia alone carrying 1,400. An even greater number, some 13,000 emigrants, including many Germans, had left Bremen, along with a similar volume of departures from other ports. The first steamship to reach Philadelphia under the new procedures, the S.S. Pennsylvania of the Red Star Line, having sailed from Antwerp, landed some 818 passengers, mostly Germans and Poles, at the municipal pier on May 18, 1893.68 While cholera had a lethal but only temporary impact on public health, immigration posed a greater threat to the cultural foundations of America. Henry Gannett, an authoritative voice, bluntly asked “Are we becoming a mongrel nation?” Having served as chief geographer for the U.S. Census, he argued that the slow flow of immigration for two and a half centuries had facilitated assimilation, leaving very little foreign blood, language, or ideas, at a time when it could be said that “ours was an American nation.” But the deluge of Europeans in recent years prompted the question of whether the “American nucleus of the population” could absorb the enormous movement now underway. Unlike scholars more troubled by the shifting origins of immigration, Gannett did not exclude Germans from his concerns. Although emigration from the German states, stimulated by “political troubles,” started almost as early as that from Ireland, it had remained much lower until the 1880s when 1,500,000 new arrivals, more than twice the number of Irish, increased the German population in America to 4,500,000. After comparing volume and geographical distribution, Gannett took up the fact that immigrants rarely intermarried with other groups. As he put it, “Irish marry Irish and Germans marry Germans and their children are measurably Irish and German still.” And with their American-born offspring settling in great concentrations in some urban areas, one could ask “Is this an American city?” In Milwaukee, Gannett noted, the German language was heard more commonly than English, while in parts of the Northwest with large settlement by Scandinavians, “our tongue is never heard.” Even more troubling, he claimed that the high disproportion of immigrants and their American-born children in prisons showed their great tendency toward criminality. But they also filled lower ranks of employment, pushing Americans into professions, business and the clerical class, and leaving “the brains and wealth of the country . . . still in the possession of its native element.”69

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Despite early satisfaction with the Immigration Act of 1893, demands for further restriction persisted. Three years after its passage, Representative William A. Stone, a Pennsylvania Republican, proposed new legislation calling for the examining of prospective immigrants by U.S. Consular officials at their ports of departure. Seeking an even stronger measure, some legislators supported Tennessee Congressman John McCall’s bill establishing a literacy test. Other members urged combining the two proposals. Stone, attempting to deflect objections raised by the Pittsburger Volksblatt, the leading German newspaper in Western Pennsylvania, was forced to defend his views on German immigrants. Speaking as a person of German descent, he maintained that Germans, unlike Southern Europeans who glutted the labor market, lowered wages, and left workers at the mercy of capital, were a frugal, saving, and hard-working people who made good citizens. He objected, however, to agents who not only brought pauper labor to America but stirred up German American opposition to passage of any restrictive legislation. Seeking to refute the Volksblatt, Stone asked Germans to express their views to him and other members of Congress. It was, however, not only the Volksblatt but Chairman Richard Bartholdt of Missouri, chairman of the House Committee and one of the most powerful Germans in American politics, who strongly objected to Stone’s proposed act. While the House would fail to pass the bill, uncertainty remained over what position German Americans might take in the debate on legislation. But the on-going assessment of the value of Germans to the nation had also exposed the question of how German they remained and how American they may have believed themselves to be at this point.70 As legislators, press and public debated in America, Germany again entered the controversy. In Berlin, the Deutscher Reichsanzeige, a state newspaper, using information from the annual report of the German Society of New York, warned that educated German mechanics would find themselves unable to compete against “ignorant immigrants” from Italy, Russia, Poland, Ireland, and Austria. It warned Germans who sought to purchase land that property titles often turned out to be fraudulent, doubtful, or encumbered by conditions which undermined profit. It advised clerks, educators, officers, scientists, and female teachers not to go to America, no matter how unfavorable their conditions at home were. It also believed that any proposed reform of immigration laws by the American government would not improve matters. While not surprising that German officials, facing a possible “brain drain” that would impair their own workforce, had joined the opposition, the result, as undesirable immigrants replaced preferred arrivals, represented a double liability for America. For many Americans, some form of restriction appeared to offer the only solution.71 The requiring of literacy as a precondition for admission to the United States, however, would provide Germans with an enviable advantage. With

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a highly effective system of education in their homeland and an adult illiteracy rate of about 4 percent, very few Germans would be excluded. Only Scandinavians, with even lower illiteracy rates, were better prepared as candidates for admission. In marked contrast, with an underdeveloped system of public education leaving a high illiteracy rate, more than half of all adult Italians would be excluded. But Germans in Pennsylvania, and their concentration in some areas, posed language problems of another sort. While political candidates had long recognized the value of being able to address voters in German, job seekers, especially as clerks in smaller stores, were reported to be having difficulty in finding employment unless they were able to speak to customers in German as well as English. In areas where immigrant culture persisted, language went beyond the issue of literacy as a prerequisite for admission and affected everyday life as well.72 FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND POLITICAL LOYALTY As Congress struggled with the need for new immigration policy, the vestiges of foreign culture among Germans already in America, despite being “preferred immigrants,” revealed the failure of assimilation to erase that which was not fully “American.” And even when reminded of German contributions, other Americans, unable to understand the reluctance to abandon an original culture, expected that no immigrant group should prevent assimilation from taking its course. With Germans unwilling to accept that advice, the seeds of further contention had been planted.73 In June 1897, Germans proudly welcomed the 18th National Saengerfest, being held for the first time in many years in Philadelphia. With banners and bunting bearing the Imperial tricolor adorning homes and neighborhoods, a German ambiance pervaded city streets. As trains disgorged hundreds of singers, “friendly brother Germans,” waiting on the platforms, greeted them. With an invasion by a “great army of Germans” from shortly after dawn and stretched until nightfall on opening day, The Inquirer declared that “the German singers now own the town.” Along with the “handsome, stalwart American sons of German parents,” special praise came to daughters, “whose Teutonic beauty softened by the environment of American cities and American ways, renders them almost peerless among the women of every race, in all the charms and graces of womanhood.” Billed as the “greatest festival ever held in America,” upward of 6,000 singers performed at the newly opened Saenger Halle at North Eleventh and York Streets. And a newspaper cartoonist offered perhaps the highest compliment that the Quaker City could deliver, depicting William Penn, the iconic symbol of Anglo Philadelphia, with his arm interlaced with that of an archetypical German, wearing a

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Saengerfest sash, while both raised their other arm in an amicable salute of “Hoch! Hoch!.”74  The Saengerfest, with its apotheosis of Teutonic character, brought a summit of appreciation and amity between Germans and other Philadelphians that would soon be threatened by international politics. Only a day after its closing, local newspapers reported that Kaiser Wilhelm II had declared that he feared, even more than the growing power of China or the threat of Anarchists, the possibility of American intervention in European affairs. He was referring to mounting tensions involving Spain’s role in the American hemisphere. A few days later, The Inquirer, citing British sources, charged that the Kaiser, while threatening to align his nation with Spain in any dispute over Cuba, was attacking American foreign policy in order to disguise his own scheme of colonial expansion. While neither Wilhelm nor his predecessors had ever viewed emigration favorably, he believed that German immigrants still loved the songs, poetry and traditions of their Fatherland; and despite becoming Americans, he hoped to see colonies on the American

Figure 5.5  Editorial Cartoon: Philadelphia Saengerfest (1897). Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer (June 22, 1897).

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continent that maintained allegiance to German institutions, rulers, and his empire. The Inquirer, denying that the United States had any plan to interfere in the affairs of other nations, insisted “We need neither be the envy nor the apprehension of king or Kaiser.” But Germany, despite Wilhelm’s hopes, had already lost the fealty of its emigrants; and as America moved closer to a war with Spain, German Americans would rally behind their adopted nation.75 Mindful of their foreign roots alongside of allegiance to America, Philadelphia’s Germans sought to assuage the concerns of other Americans. In March 1898, sons and daughters of old revolutionaries, crowding into Turngemeinde Hall on North Sixth Street, celebrated the 50th anniversary of the events of 1848, when democracy momentarily prevailed in Germany, before being extinguished by conservative forces. Among the speakers, Charles J. Hexamer, the young chemist now emerging as a community leader, explained how the immigration that resulted from the failed revolutionary movement had brought favorable consequences for America. Three weeks later, with war against Spain imminent, German veterans of earlier conflicts in their homeland convened to listen to patriotic oratory before pledging their services to the United States. Philip Zauner, a North Philadelphia tailor and saloon keeper, decorated for gallantry in the Franco-Prussian War, hoped to raise an infantry battalion that might become a full regiment, from the several thousand men who, like him, now lived in the Philadelphia area. Responding to a call in a German language newspaper, enthusiastic volunteers, as their counterparts in the Union Army, sought to form local contingents that would recruit throughout the nation. As Zauner explained it, “we are in hopes that the same would be done in every city where there are old German soldiers. Uncle Sam has done much for us at times. It’s our turn now.”76 Germans were not alone in responding to the impending war. And when Russian and Polish veterans of European wars, announced their intention to mobilize volunteers in military units, the enthusiasm of the foreign born for their new nation gained notice in Europe. In Germany, where the press had unanimously condemned recent action by the American government, the Hamburger Nachrichten, another state newspaper, called for special attention to the feelings of Germans living in America. And the Schlesischer Zeitung, aware of immigrant sentiments, declared: “There are millions of Germans in the United States who love their old home, but feel in this matter the same as other citizens of the United States.” Further events in Philadelphia confirmed this perception. By May, responding to a call issued at German Society Hall, some 600 Germans, in two infantry units, one cavalry unit and one artillery unit, prepared to drill under the command of Zauner, self-appointed to the rank of a major, in Washington Park, now a military encampment, while another officer urged veterans of German wars to join the incipient forces.77

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A week later, the First Battalion of German Volunteers marched under falling rain in readiness to serve with other Federal troops. Starting from German Society Hall, they moved down to Chestnut Street in Center City, before turning back up to Turngemeinde Hall. They were immigrants from Prussia and Bavaria who had served in the Union Army in the Civil War or Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. Their advanced age was more evident than any youthful vigor. Offering themselves to a new country, they carried American flags. Mingled with the sizable crowd of spectators on the sidewalks, Hussars with drawn sabres, standing at attention at the corner of Marshall and Spring Garden Streets, honored the military traditions of their homeland. Following speeches by officers, a dispatch from Secretary of War Russell A. Alger announced that if more troops were needed after the state militia reached the front, he would summon the First Battalion of German Volunteers. But while a newspaper headline proclaimed “Germans ready for the war,” what had transpired was little more than a public gesture of the consciousness and allegiance of German Americans.78 In a grimly prophetic article, Sterling Heilig, a Philadelphia-born foreign correspondent, described what war might bring: “every European is to-day a soldier; and . . . every one imagines that wars in the future will be simply unendurable.” But veterans of earlier wars, flushed with patriotic sentiments, succumbed to jingoistic appeals and rallied throughout the city. In June, German American volunteers gathered at a camp fire and picnic at Washington Park, seeking to raise funds for equipment, as a battalion of “Keegan’s Brigade,” a private militia, waiting to be called to duty by the War Department. And the previously popular Kladderadatsch, a Berlin based humor weekly, after deriding American policy against Spain, saw its circulation plunge from several hundred copies to virtually none among readers in Philadelphia.79 Despite the early clamor, German American units would not attain any serious place among American forces, but only engage in sham battles and maneuvers on local picnic grounds. In June, when the Cannstatter Frauen Verein, held its spring festival at Washington Park, more than 100 boys and girls, marching behind a German banner and an immense American flag, rendered their version of the Star Spangled Banner. In July, the two-day festival of the German Society, along with the usual oratory and athletic events, featured a solemn raising of the American flag, the singing of patriotic hymns, and a mock battle by Zauner’s military battalion at Washington Park. Offering “an expression of loyalty and devotion to the country of their adoption,” the strained relations between Washington and Berlin would not dampen their efforts. One newspaper reported “Such demonstration is considered by many German-American citizens as peculiarly appropriate at the present time, when rumors of Germany’s hostility to the United States in

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the present crisis are flying thick and fast.” As community leaders hurried to attest to American loyalty, Arno Leonhardt, president of the Maennerchor Society, declared: “No one . . . has the slightest doubt of what the attitude of Germans of the United States would be in case of war with Germany or any other country. This is our country, and to it we owe all our allegiance.”80 Meanwhile, the Germans again found unexpected allies. The Inquirer, not a reckless advocate of foreign causes, offered support by its coverage of celebrations and political activities, but even more emphatically in editorials. When author Henry James, writing of the “fabulous capacity for absorption and assimilation on the part of the primal English stock,” but assailed other elements of the American population, the local newspaper bristled in disagreement. Along with the so-called “primal English stock” being no more primal than half a dozen other stocks, it was a glaring absurdity to impugn the delayed absorption of the German stock. And while modification had certainly occurred, it had happened to the English as well as all other groups in America, and was political and linguistic rather than racial. None of them had absorbed any other group. Except for a few isolated areas, it asked, where had the rest of the nation not been “softened and elevated by German sentiment or broadened by Dutch charity, or enlivened by Scotch-Irish audacity.” The Inquirer had not only incisively defended Germans but also recognized the merits of other peoples who were forging a pluralistic America.81 German Day, now a highpoint of the summer, again offered an opportunity to confirm allegiance in 1898. Along with the German colors, a proliferation of red, white, and blue decorations greeted participants entering Washington Park. At the main pavilion, two wreaths bore the dates “1764,” alluding to their early settlement, and “1898,” denoting their present moment as citizens. In his oration, Hexamer asked whether it was appropriate in view of the attitude being taken by German newspapers to even be observing German Day. His emphatic answer was that it was no longer a German but an American celebration, and German Americans were assembled not to glorify Germany, but America. While extolling the role of their ancestors in building a new nation, he called upon the members of his audience to pledge their loyalty. In the closing address, Mayor Warwick, despite his Anglo American roots, spoke almost as if he were one of them. After praising their service in the Civil War, he took up the current conflict: “Now that we are in it, it is our duty as German-Americans to put our shoulder to the wheel and fight. I am sure you’ll find a German, shouldering the rifle or where danger needs a victim or war a hero.” Much like the banners and bunting, it was a rallying cry for German Americans facing another loyalty test.82 Reports that the German government, seeking to strengthen naval forces in a growing dispute over the control of Samoa, was soliciting financial support from abroad, soon brought another challenge. Kaiser Wilhelm II, openly

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approving the plan, hoped that it would knit together Germans at home and overseas. But German Americans refused to be sewn into a pan-Germanic tapestry. Pointedly asking how it would look if a German warship, built by money from America, ever shelled an American port, Leonhardt declared that there was no need to fear that German Americans would ever act so foolhardily. With leaders denying any interest in the scheme, German Americans had given an unequivocal response. But the unwholesome possibility that a foreign government could call upon its emigrants, at a time of need, although quickly settled by diplomatic negotiations, left a specter that had been largely absent in previous years.83 Despite the recent “Samoan Crisis,” German and German American businessmen, mindful of any threat to profits, easily identified the bonds that cemented international relations. In March 1899, Gustav Wocker, a visitor from Berlin representing a syndicate that controlled several American breweries, claimed that talk of serious trouble was merely idle chatter that could not bring a war. He observed: “There are too many Germans living under your flag as adopted citizens of the United States and too many dollars of German money invested in American enterprises to ever admit of that.” A year later, Emil T. Mueller, the treasurer of Heileman Brewing, one of the largest beer producers in America, and a leader among Wisconsin’s Germans, on a visit to Philadelphia reiterated the same argument in almost verbatim words. With ties binding the two nations being no less than those between Great Britain and the United States, German financial investments were too great to allow a war to break out. And several million people born in Germany, many of them already naturalized as American citizens, with family and friends in the Fatherland, made war even less likely. Scoffing at current reports, Mueller insisted that neither Germans across the sea nor Americans here needed to lose sleep over the possibility of war. Local German Americans could only take great comfort from the views of perceptive businessmen.84 HARDY PEOPLE—GOOD CITIZENS Throughout its long history, German life in Philadelphia, except for the brief interlude of the Franco-Prussian War, had been conspicuously marked by the absence of violence or tension with other ethnic or racial groups. It stood in sharp contrast to the Irish troubles during the Nativist riots of the 1840s that lingered in later decades, or the duress under which Italians found themselves during mass migration, or the animosity encountered by Jews, both within their community among Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and Eastern Europeans as well as from outside of their population. It paled even more alongside of the brutal experience from which Afro Americans from colonial times on could

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never escape. But an incident that projected a different shading deserves some attention. In late September 1893, Boldt’s Restaurant, located in the Bullitt Building on South Fourth Street, the first modern office building in the city, announced that its 49 “colored waiters” would be replaced. At a meeting of the Waiters’ Alliance, African Americans urged white members to reject the opportunity to replace the discharged workers. Whites, dismissed from employment because of a dispute over their mustaches in the previous spring, countered that they themselves had lost their jobs to African Americans. Boldt management, claiming that diners preferred white waiters, had already hired French and German servers who would soon be at work. Unlike other areas of employment where Whites and Blacks with similar levels of skill found themselves in competition, the case of a single restaurant momentarily raised a question about the place of Germans in racial conflicts. But with more skilled German workers even less likely to find themselves competing with members of other groups, the dispute between two camps of waiters remained an isolated event rather than a more common occurrence.85 In the absence of conflict, Germans moved toward some measure of acceptance, if not full assimilation, despite the lingering cultural traits that reflected their origins. In smaller cities such as York, Reading, Lebanon, Lancaster, Allentown and Bethlehem, business signs on the streets; the accent and language of the people; center squares that once served as sites for farmers’ markets; straight thoroughfares; and houses built close upon sidewalks, testified to their character as Pennsylvania German centers. But when the Pennsylvania German Society met in York in October 1893, The Inquirer protested that the annual conference in which members shared the results of their research on Pennsylvania’s Germans, should have been held in Philadelphia. While York had actually been the first German town in the state, the newspaper argued that Philadelphia, even if not as conspicuously visible as in other localities, remained a meaningful center of German life and culture. A month later, the return of the Liberty Bell, after being exhibited as the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, further affirmed the place of Germans in city’s past. Amid extravagant proceedings, the United German Singing Societies, assembled on the front sidewalk, sang “This is the day of the Lord . . . ,” as the nation’s most sacred relic was transferred to its customary site beneath the rotunda of the building. With the same hymn said to have been sung when the bell was hidden at the High German Evangelical Reformed Zion Church in Allentown during the British occupation of Philadelphia in 1777, the choice of music reinforced the point.86 In the diverse and polyglot circumstances of a large city, however, younger Germans, easily moved, along with children of other immigrant origins, toward a highly promising future. In a district that housed Italians, Russians, Poles, and Germans, but few native-born Americans, Miss Kate H. Bunting,

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its supervising principal, and a corps of dedicated teachers, sought to transform the children of immigrant families at the Florence Combined Secondary and Primary Schools on Catharine Street in South Philadelphia. The Inquirer reported “It is an unusual and gratifying spectacle to see hundreds of little foreign-born children sitting quietly and in perfect order in school learning to read, write and talk English and being instructed in all the branches of study which are taught to American children of their age.” Despite being an overcrowded school greatly in need of physical improvements, academic results matched the levels of other schools in the city. As German children, when given such opportunities, not only measured up to their American peers but even more easily than their parents became good citizens.87 Despite the evidence easily found in the achievements of German children, the press remained somewhat ambivalent in its reaction to the vestiges of immigrant culture. When New York’s Governor Roswell P. Flower vetoed legislation banning foreign flags on public buildings, The Inquirer, accusing him of having pandered to race prejudices, argued that when any Frenchman, German, or Irishman migrates to America with the intention of becoming an American citizen, he absolves himself from all political connection with his place of birth. It avowed: “We have then, in a political sense, no German-Americans, no Franco-Americans, no Irish-Americans.” Although immigrants who loved their native land could be allowed to display a foreign banner in society halls and street parades, America could not be allowed to become a nation of different races. It had one common flag and knew none other. Its institutions and public buildings belonged to the American people, whether they were born here or were citizens by adoption. A foreign flag over a public building enabled another nation to usurp the place of the Star and Stripes. Implicit in this point of view, a new kind of Nativism, despite tolerating “symbolic ethnicity” on ceremonial occasions, was taking root. While accusing Governor Flower of promoting racial hatred, The Inquirer praised Mayor Stuart for refusing to allow a white flag, a symbol of universal peace, to fly over Independence Hall during the recent Peace Conference. It distinguished a mayor, who was a “true citizen,” from an unpatriotic governor, defiant of American history and institutions, who had yet to learn the lesson taught by “the roar of artillery and the baptism of blood.” The bellicose imagery, along with the excoriation of the hyphenated American, provided a glimpse of what lay ahead for German Americans.88 But the preferability for German immigrants would not greatly lessen as the century neared its end. In early 1896, a poll taken in 30 states, conducted by the offices of their governors, showed that residents of 18 states regarded Germans and Scandinavians as being more thrifty and adaptible to available employment. With the population of the nation having grown by about 31,000,000 over the past 25 years, one-third of its increase had come from

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immigration. And while England, Scotland, and Wales had exceeded Irish immigration, Germany and Scandinavia had sent even more than the entire United Kingdom. Echoing the findings, the Germans could easily be characterized as “hardy people [who] unlike the Poles, Huns and Italians, have made excellent citizens.”89 UNDER A SCHOLARLY LENS By the late 1890s, as various “authorities” assessed the character and impact of the foreign born, scholars, with stronger methodologies and analytic sophistication, placed their own answers before public opinion. And politicians, arguing with each other while seeking votes, proposed legislation that promised to bring more desirable immigrants along with the safety and stability of America. Robert P. Porter, a British-born, naturalized American journalist, and director of the Eleventh Census of the United States, was well qualified as an expert on immigration. In his “letter from New York,” regularly published by The Inquirer, Porter felicitously argued that early settlers, with willing hands and grateful hearts, finding opportunities and liberties, were able to buy land to farm. Although lacking education and poorly prepared for obstacles that would be encountered, immigrants and their children quickly became Americanized. Unskilled laborers, despite low wages, succeeded in buying homes even in cities where real-estate values were high. In rural areas, a greater percentage of farmers from every country, except for Italy, owned property than Americans did. Germans ranked high, with 81 percent of proprietors being owners of farms, but they were exceeded by several other groups. As owners of homes separate from farms, Germans, with 43 percent, against the 41 percent of native-born proprietors and well above other immigrant farmers, were ahead of all other groups. And in the 58 American cities with populations greater than 50,000, Germans, with 32 percent being home owners, ranked first, far above the native born and other immigrant groups. Porter extolled America as a land “very much more for the masses than for the classes,” where immigrants found what was denied to them in their home countries. When applied to Philadelphia, home ownership, going far beyond “jolly Germans” in the parks, empirically confirmed the rewards and satisfactions that they found as residents.90 Meanwhile, Terence V. Powderly, recently appointed as CommissionerGeneral of Immigration, on his first visit to inspect landing facilities, witnessed the arrival from Antwerp of the S.S. Belgenland, the giant steamer of the International Navigation Company at the Washington Avenue pier. Commenting on its mainly German steerage passengers, he had been particularly struck by the intelligent-looking men and women who had disembarked.

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The former union organizer expressed his intention to keep the interests of the working-class uppermost, whether by restricting or encouraging immigration, but always guided by a spirit of fairness both for foreigners and Americans.91 But German Americans were never left entirely to the mercy of judgments of their character and worth by “outsiders.” As they had at Chautauqua, German American intellectuals, far more than other immigrant groups, offered scholarly perspectives on their own people. In October 1896, when the Pennsylvania German Society, founded five years earlier, met for the first time in Philadelphia, at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Julius F. Sachse and Frank F. Diffenderfer presented their seminal findings on the role of German immigrants and colonists in a “new history” of the state. The Inquirer used the occasion to reiterate its view that the German Society, deliberating where its collections ought to be stored, should bring its holdings to Philadelphia. But far more importantly, the forum, by granting Sachse and Diffenderfer a platform to display their authority, also allowed Germans retain some control over the historical narrative being placed before the public.92 German Americans gained much more than scholarly attention when Philadelphia welcomed the North American Gymnastic Union for the national Turnerfest in July 1900. With a massive street parade, the gymnasts cast a memorable image: “Take the average ballet, dress them in gray, multiply them five hundred times, set them in a great green field and there let them go through their various movements, and one can get a fair idea of the scene on the ball field yesterday.” After two days of competition, a great sommernachtfest, with “song and merry-making and the German’s favorite beverage,” closed the program. While the Turners had once espoused a Socialist perspective by which they hoped “to remove the pernicious antagonism between labor and capital,” gymnastics provided a more moderate impact

Figure 5.6  Festive Turners March. Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer (June 24, 1900).

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on America. With ingratiating performance amply repaying the city for its hospitality, the press could only declare: “But for a jovial, thirsty, shouting lot, the Turngemeinde has endeared itself to Philadelphia hearts.” It was an assessment that perhaps mattered far more than any academic analysis being delivered within the walls of a historical society.93  AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY In 1882, about 80 percent of the 800,000 immigrant arrivals to America had origins in Great Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia, with less than 20 percent coming from all other countries. Over the next 18 years, the ratio would reverse itself. By 1900, less than 25 percent were expected to come from Northern Europe, while Southern Europe would send nearly 75 percent of the total. Emigrants from Italy would reach about 100,000, with more than 85 percent of them coming from Southern Italy, and another 100,000 arrivals from the Austro-Hungarian Empire for the year. With these sources now claiming the lion’s share of the nearly 350,000 newcomers entering America, The Inquirer contended that the growth of undesirable immigration had to be evident to any student of “racial development.” Claiming that the Irish, Germans, English, and Scots had been absorbed almost from the moment that they landed, the leading morning newspaper of the city, adopting a Nativist perspective, darkly warned “but these south Europeans are a very different class.”94 Population figures also confirmed the large German presence in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania for the same period. While it had often been said that onefifth of Germany was in the United States and that one-fifth of the American population was German, their proportion in Pennsylvania was actually much larger. The Inquirer asserted that the older German stock, nearly one-half million settlers before the War for Independence, while not having lost sight of their origins, no longer recognized a mother country in Europe, but had become thoroughly Americanized, and gave allegiance only to America. After more than two centuries of further immigration, few people in Philadelphia or Pennsylvania could be said to not have “German blood in their veins.” Indeed, the U.S. Federal Census of 1900 would report 71,319 residents of Philadelphia who had been born in Germany, making it the fourth largest population of German residents in the nation. While it was a smaller number of Germans than that found in New York City, Chicago, and Baltimore, it was larger than for such “German” cities as St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati. With their formidable population likely to increase, Germans, even as they celebrated their past, remained confident that they would always be welcome. And if the Immigration Bill, with its literacy test, being debated in Congress,

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were to be enacted, closing a door on only 5 percent of Northern Europeans, but as many as 60 percent of Italians, Hungarians, Russians and other “undesirables,” Germans would be relatively untouched by new restrictions. But that fact made their loyalty an even larger question.95 Germans, the largest component in the greatest migration in human history, had made the American population more German than anything else. But while not indicted with the “New Immigration,” they could not avoid the opposition toward an “open door” policy. And along with increasing unemployment and rising prices, the prospect of group conflict and social fragmentation threatened the security of life in America. With any erosion of social structure, demoralization would weaken personal and collective cohesion. In the late 1890s, America found itself in a situation that resembled Europe a half century earlier. As Eric Hobsbawm has noted, whether in nearby countries or more distant destinations, the uprooting of peoples, “perhaps the most important single phenomenon of the nineteenth century,” had once again produced psychological effects that ranged from mild homesickness to a more serious mal de pays or mal de coeur. Immigrants who had eagerly sought economic opportunity and political freedom, were more likely to find, rather than the fulfillment of any kind of dream, a nightmare. But by their “reconstruction of tradition,” Philadelphia’s Germans, with sentimental songs and patriotic festivals, had attempted to weave a mythology of past experience into a master coil that might hold their adjustment as Americans, along with their survival as German Americans, in place.96 As important as it was for Germans to remember their past, life in America had brought a new agenda that now bent their collective will toward finding employment and protecting wages and workplace conditions. And as Deutscher Michel more fully enlisted in the ranks of the American working class, the celebration of Labor Day, shifting in emphasis from old world memories to new world exigencies, held new meaning and objectives. But even as Germans strengthened their arsenal with indispensable contributions to local industry; a growing presence in the Labor Movement; increased power as a voting bloc in city, state, and national politics; and the undeniable envy of other Philadelphians toward their public events, new questions of assimilation and loyalty had abruptly emerged among the concerns of other Americans. While it did not seriously threaten the German presence at this moment, it would incur a more ominous resonance in a new century.

NOTES 1. “America an Asylum for Murderers and Pauper Labor—Stop It,” The Inquirer (April 6, 1891).

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2. “Seeking New Homes,” The Inquirer (April 15, 1891); “A German’s Fatal Grief,” The Inquirer (May 2, 1891). 3. “Up Early Looking For Work,” The Inquirer (April 16, 1894). 4. “Merry Making, Then Mourning,” The Inquirer (October 10, 1899); “Caused By A Splinter,” The Inquirer (October 14, 1899). 5. “But The Greatest Of These Is Charity,” The Inquirer (February 7, 1893); “A Pleasant Ball,” The Inquirer (February 13, 1894). 6. “Germans to Celebrate,” The Inquirer (October 5, 1891); “The Celebration of German Day,” The Inquirer (October 11, 1891); For more on Thompson, who introduced sociology and other fields at the University of Pennsylvania, see: James H. S. Bossard, “Robert Ellis Thompson—Pioneer Professor in Social Science,” American Journal of Sociology, 35:2 (September, 1929), 239–49. 7. “Pennsylvania Germans,” The Inquirer (July 19, 1892); “‘T’was German Day On Mount Gretna,” The Inquirer (July 18, 1893). 8. “Germantown’s Anniversary,” The Inquirer (September 8, 1892); “Germans Declare Their Allegiance,” The Inquirer (July 26, 1898). 9. “German Day Celebration,” The Inquirer (June 23, 1899); “Buildings Ready,” The Inquirer (September 2, 1899); “Big German Fest,” The Inquirer (October 26, 1899); “‘Twas German Day,” The Inquirer (October 27, 1899). See the almost daily classified advertisements for the 1899 exposition in the same newspaper. “GermanAmerican Celebration,” The Inquirer (June 5, 1900). 10. “English To Remain,” The Inquirer (June 13, 1897). 11. “Stockholders Want Their Money Back,” The Inquirer (September 10, 1892). 12. “To Be Naturalized Requires Nerve,” The Inquirer (December 3, 1900). 13. “Events Of Interest In The Post Rooms,” The Inquirer (October 9, 1892). “The Party Men Getting Ready For The Election,” The Inquirer (November 9, 1892); “The ‘Register’ In The Campaign, The New Haven (CT) Evening Register (November 8, 1892). The Koltes Post was named in honor of Colonel John A. Koltes. Born in Trier in 1827, Koltes emigrated at the age of 17, and taught at a Catholic school in Pittsburg, before enlisting in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. Discharged in Philadelphia, he served with the U.S. Marine Corps at the Naval Yard, until being employed at the U.S. Mint. With another war, Koltes mobilized the Maennerchor Music Society as a Home Guard militia unit, the Maennerchor Rifle Guards, in April 1861. Two months later, he helped to organize the 73rd Regiment as the Pennsylvania Legion, 45th of the Line, which trained at Lemon Hill in June and July 1861, on the grounds of Engle and Wolf’s farm where German Americans had enjoyed picnics. Assigned to General Louis Blenker’s division of the Army of the Potomac, Koltes’s brigade participated in the Virginia campaign, where he died at the Second Battle of Bull Run at Manassas in August 1862. Both Generals Carl Schurz and Franz Sigel praised his bravery and leadership. Joseph George Rosengarten, The German Soldier in the Wars of the United States (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1886), 111–12; and Charles Vetter, Jr., Charles H. Heimsoth and John R. Russell, A Brief History of the Sons of Veterans, U.S.A., General John A. Koltes (Utica, NY: Ronalds Press, 1899), 33–2. For the 73rd Infantry Regiment, see Frank H. Taylor, Philadelphia in the Civil War, 1861–1865 (Philadelphia: Published by the City, 1913), 96–7; also, The Union

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Army: A History of Military Affairs in the Loyal States 1861–65—Records of the Regiments in the Union Army—Cyclopedia of Battles—Memoirs of Commanders and Soldiers, Volume 1 (Madison, WI: Federal Publishing Company, 1908), 408–10; and Samuel P. Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861–5, Volume 2 (Harrisburg, PA: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869), 862–92. 14. “A New Church on Lehigh Avenue,” The Inquirer (July 25, 1898). The Reverend Doctor Adolph Spaeth (1839–1910) was a towering figure in the religious history of Philadelphia. In a biography by his widow, Harriet Reynolds Krauth Spaeth, a formidable person in her own right, presents his views on a wide range of topics in her chapter “The German American.” See: Life of Adolph Spaeth, D.D., L.L.D., told in his own reminiscences, his letters and the recollections of his family and friends, edited by his wife (Philadelphia, 1916), 267–94. 15. “Leo’s Name Cheered,” The Inquirer (May 16, 1899); “German Catholics,” The Inquirer (May 17, 1899): “Flags Unfurled,” The Inquirer (May 31, 1899). It is unknown whether John Essig, not otherwise identified, was a pupil at the school or an adult member of the parish. 16. “State News: Presbyterian State Synod Names Committees,” The Inquirer (October 21, 1899). 17. “Dr. Mutchmore On Prohibition,” The Inquirer (April 22, 1889); “Log College Jubilee: Speeches By Eminent Divines,” The Inquirer (September 6, 1889); “Justice For The Abused Italian,” The Inquirer (November 2, 1891); “Our Modern Cranks,” The Inquirer (December 14, 1891). From his arrival in Philadelphia in 1866 until his death in 1898, local newspapers frequently reported on the activities of Reverend Samuel A. Mutchmore. Charles Morris (ed.), Men of the Century: An Historical Work (Philadelphia: L. R. Hamersly & Co., 1896), 87. 18. “The Emigration Problem,” The Inquirer (February 5, 1894). 19. “Against Separation,” The Inquirer (March 24, 1899); “Spring Indeed,” The Inquirer (May 1, 1899). 20. “German Singers Thank Director,” The Inquirer (December 4, 1900). 21. “Presents for Friends at Home,” The Inquirer (December 14, 1900). 22. “The Baby’s Christening,” The Inquirer (May 12, 1895). 23. “Varying Types Of Car Conductors,” The Inquirer (February 12, 1893). 24. “Goethe’s Birthday,” The Inquirer (August 12, 1899); also, “Honoring The Illustrious Dead,” The Inquirer (July 10, 1899). 25. “Countrymen’s Tribute,” The Inquirer (March 3, 1899). 26. “Emma Goldman Placed In A Cell,” The Inquirer (September 1, 1893). 27. “A Cure Suggested For Hard Times,” The Inquirer (September 4, 1893). Although incorrectly identified as “F. U. Gessner,” the speaker probably was Frank M. Gessner, a glassworker and Knights of Labor activist, who later pursued a more radical course as a journalist and advocate, fluent in German, of the Socialist Labor Party. 28. “To Name A Third Ticket Next Year,” The Inquirer (July 29, 18940: “Plans Laid For A Vigorous Campaign,” The Inquirer (August 31, 1894); “Harmony Among The Republicans,” The Inquirer (September 19, 1894); “What The ‘Squire Says,” The Inquirer (September 21, 1894); “Halterman To Win Hands Down,” The Inquirer

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(September 23, 1894); “The Germans To Organize,” The Inquirer (September 26, 1894). See also Fifty-Fourth Congress (First Session) Official Congressional Directory (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1896), 110; and One Hundredth Eighth Congress, Second Session, House Document Number 108–222, Biographical Directory Of The United States Congress, 1774–2005 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2005), 1181. See also Leland M. Williamson et al. (ed.), Prominent and Progressive Pennsylvanians of the Nineteenth Century, Volume II (Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Record Company, 1898), 226–8. 29. “Curley Named For Recorder Of Deeds,” The Inquirer (September 27, 1894); “Working For Halterman,” The Inquirer (September 30, 1894); “Halterman Will Be Notified To-Morrow,” The Inquirer (October 5, 1894); “Halterman Makes A Strong Speech,” The Inquirer (October 7, 1894). 30. “Political Pointers,” The Inquirer (October 14, 1894); “Democrats Refuse To Trust Workers,” The Inquirer (October 25, 1894); “Certainty Or Uncertainty?” The Inquirer (October 27, 1894); “The Sorry Plight Of The Democracy,” The Inquirer (October 29, 1894); “The Tidal-Wave For Halterman,” The Inquirer (November 3, 1894); “Votes, Not Confidence, Wanted,” The Inquirer (November 3, 1894). Major Carl Lentz, another immigrant who served with the Union Army during Civil War, was probably the most powerful German leader in Essex County, New Jersey. See: Frank John Urquhart, A History of the City of Newark, New Jersey, Volume II (New York and Chicago: The Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1913), 1103–10. 31. “Republicans Will Sweep The City,” The Inquirer (November 4, 1894); “Halterman Carries The Third District,” The Inquirer (November 7, 1894); “What Voters Did Around The Polls,” The Inquirer (November 7, 1894); “Treachery Charged,” The Inquirer (November 7, 1894); “Scenes At The Clubs,” The Inquirer (November 7, 1894);“Official Figures Of The Big Slump,” The Inquirer (November 10, 1894). For more on the voting results, see: John Augustus Smull et al. (eds.), Smull’s Legislative Handbook and Manuel of the State of Pennsylvania, 1896 (Harrisburg, PA.: Thos. B. Cochran, 1896), 598. 32. “Promptly Named,” The Inquirer (November 8, 1894). 33. “General Hastings To Aid Warwick,” The Inquirer (January 22, 1895); “Democrats Playing A Game Of Bluff,” The Inquirer (January 25, 1895); “The Germans Are Out For Warwick,” The Inquirer (February 2, 1895); “Germans For Warwick,” The Inquirer (February 5, 1895). The boundaries of the 17th Ward were Girard Avenue (south); North Sixth Street (west); Oxford Street (north); and Frankford Avenue (east) in 1895. The 20th Ward ran east of Broad to Sixth Street, with Poplar on the south and Montgomery Avenue on the north as far as Eleventh Street, from where Susquehanna formed its northern limit. The 28th Ward covered west of Broad Street through the area known as the Falls of Schuykill. The 37th Ward was north of Susquehanna Avenue, between Broad Street and Germantown Avenue. 34. “Warwick Gets 60,000 Majority,” The Inquirer (February 20, 1895); “The Mill District,” The Inquirer (February 20, 1895); “The House Committee,” Wilkes-Barré (PA) Times (February 21, 1895). See also: “John H. Fow, Lawyer, Politician, Unique In City Annals, Dies,” Evening Ledger (August 31, 1915). State Representative John H. Fow, known to friends as “Ducky,” and characterized as “unique in city annals”

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at his death, served widely in local and state politics. In his autobiography, former Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker memorably declared: “Fow was a character quite unusual. The son of a German butcher, born in Kensington, and much in the rough, he read law. Because of his huge voice, he held the soubriquet of ‘Fog Horn’ Fow. Short and fat, when he spoke he shook all over. When he argued he began in the middle of the proposition and worker both ways at once with the most intense energy. Yet, worthy and assiduous, he won respect and, what is more remarkable, respect as a constitutional lawyer.” Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker, The Autobiography of A Pennsylvanian (Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, 1918), 414–15. Also see “John H. Fow,” in John W. Jordan, Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania, Biography, Volume II (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1914), 386–8. In his own work, The True Story of the American Flag (Philadelphia: William J. Campbell, 1908) Fow probably was the first person to discredit the myth of Betsy Ross as creator of the American flag. 35. “The Germans Are Out For Warwick,” The Inquirer (February 2, 1895);“German-American League,” The Inquirer (May 20, 1895); “Brisk Struggle For Magistrates,” The Inquirer (January 8, 1897); “Germans Revolt Against Combiners,” The Inquirer (January 23, 1897). 36. “Greet The Mayor,” The Inquirer (February 19, 1899). Hoskins achieved greater success as a veterinarian than in his brief political career. At his death in August 1921, he was dean of the New York State Veterinary School at New York University and regarded as one of the leading veterinarians in the nation. Among many achievements, he had been instrumental in establishing the Veterinary Corps of the U.S. Army. It was erroneously claimed that Hoskins had received the largest number of votes ever given to a Democratic candidate for mayor of Philadelphia in the 1899 election. See: “Veterinary Dean Dead,” New York Times (August 12, 1921); William Herbert Lowe, “A Tribute to Dean W. Horace Hoskins,” Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Volume 60, New Series, 13:1 (October, 1921), 80–2; and History of the School of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, 1884–1934. Compiled by the faculty in Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the School’s Founding (Philadelphia: 1935). 37. “Ashbridge’s Majority Breaks All The Records,” The Inquirer (February 22, 1899); “Stalwarts Speak,” The Inquirer (February 26, 1899). 38. Lincoln Steffens, “Philadelphia: Corrupt and Contented,” McClure’s Magazine, XXI;3 (July 1903), 249–63; Gustavus Myers, “The Most Corrupt City In The World,” The Living Age, Seventh Series, Volume XXII, No. 3111 (February 20, 1904), 449–64. 39. “Celebrating the Silly Season,” The Inquirer (February 2, 1900); “Republicans Are Ready For Battle,” The Inquirer (February 11, 1900); “A Quay Man Leads The Ticket,” The Inquirer (February 22, 1900). 40. “Martin Cannot Hold His Men,” The Inquirer (October 5, 1900); “Standing at Attention: Physical Culture In Philadelphia’s Schools,” The Inquirer (October 7, 1900); “Physical Culture in Public Schools, The Inquirer (June 7, 1901). 41. “The German’s Gala Day,” The Inquirer (June 7, 1892); “A Day Of Gladness Was Whitsunday,” The Inquirer (May 22, 1893); “A Big Picnic,” The Inquirer (July 5, 1893); “The Cannstatter Picnic,” The Inquirer (September 5, 1893).

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42. “How Labor Day Was Observed,” The Inquirer (September 3, 1893). 43. “Want To Keep Hotels,” The Inquirer (April 10, 1894); “More Licenses To Sell Liquor,” The Inquirer (May 2, 1894); “Germans Celebrate” The Inquirer (May 15, 1894). Germania Park opened in May 1894 as the “Finest Family Resort on the Delaware River,” with daily concerts by its “famous Parisian organ,” the equal of a 40 piece band, and reached by frequent ferry boats from the Callowhill Street Pier at a round trip price of 25 cents for adults and 10 cents for children, with park admission included. The Inquirer described it as a beautiful family resort destined to become famous for attractions that included the finest carousel in the world and a toboggan ride, along with a prize-winning organ at the Paris World’s Fair in the previous year, and its own Athletic Military Band in daily concerts. Jules Levy, billed as the “world’s greatest cornetist,” performed in July 1894, and in the next month, Ferruccio Giannini, the local tenor, composer, and proprietor of Verdi Hall, and father of soprano Dusolina Giannini, voice teacher Eufemia Giannini, and composer Vittorio Giannini. But after a murder at the Germania Park Hotel, with the victim believed to be buried at the park site, and the accidental death of a 15-year-old boy on the toboggan, it would close after only two years. “Germania Park,” The Inquirer (May 27, 1894) and other articles during the year. 44. “Summer Resorts,” The Inquirer (May 27, 1894); “Washington Park,” The Inquirer (June 2, 1894); “Washington Park,” The Inquirer (June 3, 1894); “Caledonian Games,” The Inquirer (June 7, 1894); “Here And There,” The Inquirer (June 19, 1894); “The Hibernians’ Holiday Sports,” The Inquirer (July 4, 1894); “The Irish Games,” The Inquirer (July 5, 1894); “German Athletes,” The Inquirer (July 10, 1894); “The Bastile’s (sic) Fall Duly Celebrated,” The Inquirer (July 15, 1894); “Sports At Washington Park,” The Inquirer (August 26, 1894). See also the classified advertisements for Washington Park that appeared on opening day and throughout the season. 45. “The Bavarian Picnic,” The Inquirer (August 14, 1894); “German Picknickers,” The Inquirer (August 28, 1894); “Labor’s National Holiday,” The Inquirer (September 3, 1894); “Great German Fete,” The Inquirer (September 11, 1894); “Fun In Abundance,” The Inquirer (September 12, 1894); “Brewers’ Parade,” The Inquirer (September 14, 1894); classified advertisement, The Inquirer (September 15, 1894); “At Washington Park,” The Inquirer (September 16, 1894); “Italians at Washington Park,” The Inquirer (September 21, 1894). 46. “Toilers Celebrate Labor’s Own Day,” The Inquirer (September 8, 1896). 47. “Happy Scenes From The Fatherland,” The Inquirer (September 15, 1896). 48. “Germans Have A Picnic,” The Inquirer (August 3, 1897); “Palatian Festival Enjoyed By Many,” The Inquirer (August 31, 1897); “Vivid Reproduction Of German Sport,” The Inquirer (September 1, 1897); “Jolly Germans’ Harvest Festival,” The Inquirer (September 7, 1897); “Children’s Day At The Cannstatter,” The Inquirer (September 8, 1897). 49. “How Labor Day Will Be Spent,” The Inquirer (September 5, 1898); “Germans Have A Grand Festival,” The Inquirer (September 6, 1898); “Bismarck’s Memory,” The Inquirer (October 2, 1898). 50. “Germans Organizing,” The Inquirer (November 24, 1898): “Liberal Laws League,” The Inquirer (December 12, 1898); “Aggressive Presbyterians,” The Inquirer (December 20, 1898).

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51. “Cannstatter Fest,” The Inquirer (September 5, 1899). The act to which Linden referred cannot be verified. 52. “New Labor Lyceum,” The Inquirer (August 10, 1897). 53. “Germans Join Labor League,” The Inquirer (June 18, 1900). Two years later, the Harburger & Homan factory was the scene of one of the worst workplace disasters in local history, when an elevator accident involving a young, hearing and speechimpaired janitor took the lives of eight young women, along with three others who died later, and injured 40 more workers in a panic to escape. The firm, a division of the American Tobacco Company, employed about 1,200 workers, mostly girls, as young as twelve years old. See: “Eight Girls Killed in a Factory Panic,” The New York Times (May 1, 1902). The Printz’s Mill mentioned in The Inquirer article is somewhat mysterious. The water-powered grist mill, the first of its kind, established by Johann Printz, Governor of the Swedish colony, about 1645, remained in operation for perhaps 10 years before being closed. Located on Cobbs Creek in what later became Southwest Philadelphia, the site is regarded as the birthplace of Pennsylvania industry. The 1900 strike, which took place elsewhere, remains obscured by the lack of further information. 54. “Germans Discuss Labor Day Outing,” The Inquirer (August 6, 1900). 55. “A Slow Day In The License Court,” The Inquirer (April 8, 1893). 56. “Beer And Music Mix Once More,” The Inquirer (July 2, 1893). 57. Classified advertisement, The Inquirer (September 6, 1884). Reisser’s predecessor, Philip J. Lauber, deserves greater attention from local historians. A native of Bohemia, Lauber immigrated to Philadelphia in 1848. After establishing a wine bar at Third and Callowhill Streets in 1849, he opened a restaurant on South Fifth Street in 1852. At the height of his career, his personal wealth was believed to have reached $250,000. During the Centennial Celebration of 1876, his “German Restaurant,” near Horticultural Hall, was perhaps the foremost dining site on exhibition grounds. His brewery at Broad Street and Columbia Avenue was claimed as the first to produce Bohemian beer in the United States. He also had a restaurant on Library Street, opposite the Post Office, and another one at Eighth and Chestnut Streets. But after facing opposition by the Law and Order Society, bankruptcy left him a “broken-hearted man” who died at his home on Brown Street in North Philadelphia in 1887. “Death of Philip J. Lauber,” The Inquirer (April 11, 1887). A food historian credits Lauber’s restaurant at the Centennial for having popularized what would become the hamburger. See: Andrew F. Smith, Food and Drink in American History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2013), 744. 58. Classified advertisement, The Inquirer (September 6, 1884). 59. Classified advertisement, The Inquirer (April 3, 1885); “Reporters At Dinner,” The Inquirer (September 29, 1885); classified advertisement, The Inquirer (January 19, 1889); “Hibernian Banquet,” The Inquirer (March 19, 1889); “Reisser’s Game Display,” The Inquirer (December 30, 1891); “Wine House In Trouble,” The Inquirer (July 13, 1893); “Stylus Club Dinner,” The Inquirer (December 13, 1893). For Reisser and his restaurant at the height of its popularity, see “Reisser’s” in Philadelphia and Popular Philadelphians (Philadelphia: The North American, 1891), 247; and “Reisser’s Café and Rathskeller,” in Frank H. Taylor (ed.), The City of Philadelphia as it Appears in the Year 1894 (Philadelphia: Trades Leagues of Philadelphia, 1894), 236.

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60. “Reisser’s Rathskeller,” The Inquirer (December 16, 1894). 61. For an exhortatory article on “Reisser’s Rathskeller” in other newspapers before it appeared in The Inquirer, see: The Philadelphia Times (March 25, 1894) and The Reading Times (October 4, 1894). “C. H. Reisser’s Financial Trouble,” New York Times (January 4, 1895); “Business Failures Mark The New Year,” The Inquirer (January 4, 1895); “Reisser’s Creditors Meet,” The Inquirer (January 10, 1895); “In The Law Courts,” The Inquirer (February 22, 1895). 62. “Notes Of The Courts,” The Inquirer (March 31, 1895); “Before The Court,” The Inquirer (April 2, 1895); “Died,” The Inquirer (April 9, 1895); “Charles H. Reisser’s Funeral,” The Inquirer (April 11, 1895); “Cremation,” Park and Cemetery, 5:4 (June 1895), 71; and “Cremation Not Christian Burial,” New York Times (April 11, 1895). 63. Classified ads for Soulas’ Restaurant, The Inquirer (April 15, 1897; April 26, 1897; December 28, 1897; April 18, 1898); the program for 33d National Encampment of Grand Army of the Republic (Philadelphia: September 4–9, 1899), 242; and the classified ad for the singular proprietor, The Inquirer (July 19, 1907). Gustav Albert Soulas, born of French and German parentage in Hanover, Germany in October 1851, emigrated as a child with his brother, Charles, and their mother in July 1861 or 1863, and was naturalized as an American citizen in 1872. Both he and his brother had long careers, first as partners, then owners of separate restaurants. He died in retirement at the age of 75 in June 1927. 64. “Godfrey Keebler Dead,” The Inquirer (September 10, 1893); “Keebler-Weyl Baking Company,” in Philadelphia and Popular Philadelphians (Philadelphia: The North American, 1891), 157. Weyl, the son of a German immigrant, born either in Columbia or Philadelphia in 1835 was a morocco leather tanner in Mount Holly, New Jersey, before learning the baker’s trade from his father and brothers in Wilmington, Delaware. One of his brothers, identified both as Henry or Harry Weyl, was a detective, sometimes enmeshed in controversy, with the police department in Philadelphia. After moving to Saint Louis, Missouri, Augustus Weyl formed a partnership in purportedly the largest cracker factory in the world, before becoming a supplier of rice to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and investor in ore mining in Arizona. In St. Louis, Augustus Weyl was accused of having alienated the affection of an employee of his bakery by a husband in a divorce court action, which led his own wife, Mary, to seek an end to their marriage. These circumstances, if all pertaining to the same “Augustus Weyl,” suggest reasons for his return to Philadelphia. “News Comments,” Bismarck (N.D.)Tribune (April 14, 1882); “Local Happenings,” Tombstone (AZ) Epitaph (January 28, 1888); “Invaluable Criminal Records,” The Inquirer (March 29, 1891); and “Suits for Divorce,” St. Louis Republic (April 4, 1894). 65. “A New Standard English Dictionary,” The Inquirer (January 8, 1894); “Death of Professor Seidensticker,” The Inquirer (January 12, 1894); “The Late Professor Seidensticker and His Work,” The Inquirer (January 13, 1894); “Germans Remember Him,” The Inquirer (February 26, 1894). Lillian M. Evans, “Oswald Seidensticker, Bibliophile,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 7:1 (January 1940), 8–19.

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66. “America A World’s Heaven,” The Inquirer (December 21, 1892); “Warding Off Cholera,” The Inquirer (January 1, 1893); “Board of Health’s New Kindergarten,” The Inquirer (January 8, 1893); “Steamships Bar Germans,” The Inquirer (January 11, 1893); “A Plain Duty,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (January 2, 1893). The quarantine of the S.S. Moravia and other ships during the cholera epidemic was especially well covered by New York City newspapers. See: “Stopped At Quarantine,” New York Times (September 1, 1892); “Immigration Suspended,” New York Times (September 2, 1892; “Will Stop Immigration,” New York Times (September 2, 1892); and subsequent accounts. For an official document, prepared by the State of New York, see the Report of the Medical Advisory Committee of the Chamber of Commerce of New York, on Certain Points Relating to Quarantine Detention of Passengers, and the Disinfection of Passengers’ Baggage, Merchandise and Infected Ships, in the Thirty-Fifth Annual Report of the Corporation of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, for the year 1892–1893 (New York: 1893), especially pp. 83–112. For other similarly valuable sources, see: “Cholera and Our Quarantine” Harper’s Weekly 36 (September 17, 1892), 890; “Cholera in New York Bay,” Harper’s Weekly 36 (September 24, 1892), 906; and “The National Quarantine,” Harper’s Weekly 37 (August 26, 1893), 822–3. For a more recent study, see: Howard Markel, Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 67. “Quarantine Bill Passed,” The Inquirer (January 11, 1893). 68. “New Immigration Bill,” The Inquirer (March 4, 1893). For a more recent discussion of such legislation, see Edward P. Hutchinson, Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, 1798–1965 (Philadelphia: Published for the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies by the University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 106–110. “Steerage Traffic,” The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (March 13, 1893); “Foreigners Headed This Way, The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot (May 3, 1893); “Under The New Law,” The Inquirer (May 19, 1893). 69. Henry Gannett, “Are We Becoming . . . A Mongrel Nation?” The Inquirer (January 8, 1893). Gannett (1846–1914), was the author of numerous books on geographical and geological topics, but especially cartography and topography, whose pioneering studies remain important. His 15 years (1882–1896) as chief geographer of the U.S. Geographic Survey, during which he wrote the seminal “Manual of Topographical Surveying,” on the methods used by the agency, earned him recognition as the “Father of America Map Making.” Along with his work in mapping state boundaries and resolving the duplication of place names, he was a founding member of the National Geographic Society (1888) and the Association of American Geographers (1904). Gannett’s encyclopedic The Building of a Nation (New York: The Henry T. Thomas Company, 1895), written as an independent scholar outside of his official service, contained an extensive discussion of immigration and its impact. Also see N. H. Darton, “Memoir of Henry Gannett,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 7 (1917), 68–70 (Courtesy of Jstor), http://www.​.jstor​.org​/ stable​/2560792 (accessed: 04-01-2016 14:51 UTC). 70. “For Legislation On Immigration,” The Inquirer (February 9, 1896); “Drawing The Line On Immigration,” The Inquirer (February 22, 1896); “Working To Allay

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Immigration Ills,” The Inquirer (February 27, 1896); “Stone’s Bill Favored,” The Inquirer (March 17, 1896); “The Immigration Laws,” The Inquirer (March 31, 1896); “Stone’s Immigration Bill, ”The Inquirer (April 3, 1896); “Too Many Immigrants,” The Inquirer (May 4, 1896); “The Question Of Immigration,” The Inquirer (May 7, 1895); “Some Spicy Letters,” The Inquirer (May 9, 1896). 71. “Emigrants Checked,” The Inquirer (May 10, 1896); “A German View Of America,” The Inquirer (May 14, 1896). 72. “The Immigration Bill,” The Inquirer (May 25, 1896); “State News And Comment,” The Inquirer (June 9, 1896). 73. “The Celebration of German Day,” The Inquirer (October 11, 1891). 74. Classified advertisement, The Inquirer (June 20, 1897) and in subsequent days; “Great Saengerfest Opens Tomorrow,” The Inquirer (June 20, 1897); Wilkommen Sanger!!; “The Saengerfest’s Opening,” The Inquirer (June 22, 1897); “Das Grosse Saengerfest,” The Inquirer (June 23, 1897); “The Prizes Awarded,” The Inquirer (June 25, 1897); “Close of the Saengerfest,” The Inquirer (June 26, 1897); “Everybody’s Day As A Good Windup,” The Inquirer (June 27, 1897). 75. “The Kaiser Fears The United States,” The Inquirer (June 27, 1897); “Uncalled-for Solicitude,” The Inquirer (July 1, 1897) 76. “Germans Celebrate,” The Inquirer (March 20, 1898); “Germans Are Ready To Help Uncle Sam,” The Inquirer (April 9, 1898). Born in 1847 and immigrating to the United States in 1884, Philip Zauner worked with his father and brothers in a shop on North Fifth Street. Court records show his declaration of intention in August 1887 and petition for naturalization in April, 1895. He obtained a liquor license and became a saloon keeper in 1898. “License Transfers,” The Inquirer (November 17, 1898). As president of the Deutscher Veteranner of Philadelphia, he presided over a ceremony in which Ferdinand Ritschl, German Consul in the city from 1900 to 1907, presented a flag sometime in the early 1900s. Emil Witte, Revelations of a German Attaché (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1916), 229. He also represented the local society of veterans, when Prince Heinrich of Prussia, the younger brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II, visited Philadelphia on a tour of the United States in 1902. “Royalty Was A Guest Of The Most American Of Cities,” The Inquirer (March 11, 1902). 77. “Poles Will Fight,” The Inquirer (April 19, 1898); “Germans Bitter,” The Inquirer (April 24, 1898); “Germans Patriotic,” The Inquirer (May 11, 1898). 78. “Germans Ready For The War,” The Inquirer (May 17, 1898). 79. “All Europe Afraid Of War,” The Inquirer (May 22, 1898); “Loyal Germans,” The Inquirer (June 5, 1898). C. M. Keegan, had organized “Keegan’s Brigade,” a private effort to mobilize volunteers, in anticipation of a call-up by the War Department, but which after a moment of public attention faded away without further consequence. 80. “Happy Germans,” The Inquirer (June 9, 1898); “Patriotic Germans,” The Inquirer (July 9, 1898); “Loyal To Uncle Sam,” The Inquirer (July 10, 1898). Arno Leonhardt, the operator of a lithography firm founded by his father, was a prominent member of almost every important German organization in the city. Leland M. Williamson et al. (ed.), Prominent and Progressive Pennsylvanians of the Nineteenth Century, Volume II (Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Record Company, 1898), 224–6; and Max Heinrici, Das Buch der Deutschen in Amerika (Philadelphia, 1909), 803–5.

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81. “Mr. Henry James and the ‘Primal American Stocks,’” The Inquirer (June 15, 1898). The comments by Henry James, appeared in his regular feature “American Literature” as part of a review of a recent book, Story of the Palatines: An Episode in Colonial History, by Sanford H. Cobb, in the May 21, 1898 issue of Literature, a British literary magazine, 82. “Germans Declare Their Allegiance,” The Inquirer (July 26, 1898). 83. “Loyal To America,” The Inquirer (March 1, 1899). In this newspaper article, Arno Leonhardt is erroneously identified as Theodore Leonhardt, his father, the founder of the family firm that still bore his name, who had died in 1877. 84. “Personal Paragraphs,” The Inquirer (March 24, 1899); “Personal Mention,” The Inquirer (May 9, 1900). 85. “Colored Waiters To Go,” The Inquirer (September 25, 1893). 86. “The Pennsylvania German Society,” The Inquirer (October 11, 1893); “Welcome Home, Liberty Bell,” The Inquirer (November 3, 1893); “The Liberty Bell Is Home Again,” The Inquirer (November 5, 1893). 87. “Teacher And Pupil In Public Schools,” The Inquirer (May 6, 1894). 88. “An Un-American Governor,” The Inquirer (May 26, 1894). 89. Editorial, The Inquirer (April 12, 1896). 90. “Robert P. Porter’s New York Letter,” The Inquirer (February 23, 1897). Born in Norwalk, England in 1852, and educated in British and American schools, Robert P. Porter, an authority on demographic, economic and political issues, strongly supported the protective tariff in international trade. He began his career as a journalist with the Chicago Inter Ocean while only 20 years old in 1872. In 1880, Francis A. Walker, Superintendent of the U.S. Census, appointed him head of the statistics department in charge of data on wealth, debt, and taxation. In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur chose him as a tariff commissioner. During the 1880s, Porter served on the editorial staff of The Philadelphia Press and an active officer in the Social Science Association of Philadelphia. But his protectionist views were not always appreciated. In 1884, The (Harrisburg, PA) Patriot declared that “If there is any living man who can make figures lie it is the same Robert P. Porter, who is the hired and paid attorney of the protected monopolies. Nor is he content with falsifying statistics. He is bold enough to make a deliberate misstatement of facts.” In 1887, he helped to found The New York Press, published daily before merging with the New York Sun nearly 30 years later. In March 1889, President Benjamin Harrison named him as the Superintendent of the 1890 U.S. Census. As its director, Porter was first to claim that population movement and settlement had closed the western frontier. In 1897, the National Association of Manufacturers sent him to investigate industrial and commercial conditions in Japan. From early 1897 through 1898, his “New York Letter” was a popular feature in The Inquirer. At the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, President William McKinley appointed him as a special commissioner to investigate conditions in Cuba and Puerto Rico. After twice rejecting the president’s request that he direct the census again, Porter joined the staff of The Times of London, eventually becoming its Washington correspondent, and editing special supplements from 1909 on. In late February 1917, he died at the age of 64, after an automobile accident. He left an unfinished short history of Japan being prepared for Oxford University Press.

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For accounts of his life, see: Evening Public Ledger (February 28, 1917); The (New York) Sun (March 1, 1917); The (Washington, DC) Evening Star (March 1, 1917); The New York Times (March 2, 1917). See also the “Editorial Comment” section of American Industries: The Manufacturers’ Magazine, (March 1917), 8. 91. “Powderly’s Visit To Philadelphia,” The Inquirer (August 9, 1897). 92. “A New History,” The Inquirer (October 13, 1896); “The Meeting of the Pennsylvania German Society,” The Inquirer (October 15, 1896); “A New History Of Pennsylvania,” The Inquirer (October 16, 1896). 93. “Festive Turners March In Parade Five Thousand Strong,” The Inquirer (June 24, 1900). See Henry Metzner, A Brief History of the North American Gymnastic Union (Indianapolis, IN, 1911), 180. 94. “Change in Our Immigrants,” The Inquirer (June 7, 1900). 95. “Germany As She Is,” The Inquirer (January 12, 1898). For population figures, see: Census Reports, Volume 1, Population, Part 1, Table 35, Foreign-born population, distributed according to country of birth, for cities having 25,000 inhabitants or more: 1900, 796–803. (Washington: United States Census Office, 1901). 96. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 137.

Chapter 6

Germans in Tongue; Americans in Heart and Soul (1901–1916)

It is sarcastically known as “The City of Brotherly Love,” though all men are not brothers there or elsewhere, nor have they ever been. —James W. Babcock, “Historic Philadelphia,” The Masses (March 1912)

At the dawn of the twentieth century, German life in Philadelphia, although dispersed in different neighborhoods and socioeconomic levels, rested on a bedrock of communal institutions. St. Peter the Apostle at Girard Avenue and North Fifth Street, the titular cathedral for Catholics, and other parishes, along with numerous Protestant churches in the German version of the “Holy Experiment,” and several synagogues provided religious support. On a more material plane, neighborhood banks, with the German American Building and Loan Association as a cornerstone, offered home mortgages and other financial services. If someone seeking work, he or she could answer newspaper advertisements that asked for a “German” or “German American.” For recreation and amusement, they turned to the German American Bowling League or to the Junger Maennerchor, Maennerchor, and Harmonie Associations, highlighted for many of them by an annual charity ball. If they became ill, German Americans could seek the services of German-speaking physicians who practiced in their neighborhoods or at the German Hospital, one of the most advanced medical facilities in the city, at Girard and Corinthian Avenues. At life’s end, they could be buried in the German Lutheran Cemetery. If they left assets, their heirs could turn to one of several German American beneficial societies. To keep informed, Germans could read any of the several newspapers published in their native language, but especially the Tageblatt. To maintain their cohesion, the National German American 157

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Alliance, although only founded in 1901, offered cultural and political programs that reaffirmed identity and linkage with their homeland. And the German Society of Pennsylvania provided an institutional umbrella for the entire community. More than simply providing spiritual solace, churches and synagogues, centers of community life, provide a rough indicator of German residential concentrations at the turn of the century. German Catholics were members of 12 parishes, ranging from historic Holy Trinity, founded in 1788, their first church in the city, at Sixth and Spruce Streets, to the recently opened St. Aloysius at 26th and Tasker in the Gray’s Ferry section of South Philadelphia. But most Catholic parishes were located in North Philadelphia or adjacent districts, where the bulk of the German population resided. In addition to St. Peter’s, they included St. Mary of the Assumption (Manayunk); All Saints (Bridesburg); St. Boniface (Fishtown); Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Port Richmond); Our Lady Help of Christians (Port Richmond); St. Bonaventure (Fairhill); St. Ludwig (Brewerytown); and St. Ignatius (West Philadelphia). Such churches, often accompanied by a parish school, convent and cemetery, were intended to meet the needs of mainly workingclass families employed in the mills and factories of a rapidly developing industrial economy. But St. Alphonsus, at Fourth and Reed Streets in South Philadelphia, although founded to serve German communicants in 1852, with an increasing population of Lithuanians and Poles by the late 1890s, also reflected the displacement and succession pattern that would become increasingly common in subsequent years.1 German Protestantism presented a more complicated picture of organization, affiliation, and location. Predated by preachers without churches, the German Evangelical Reformed Church, also known as the Market Square Church, founded on Germantown Avenue in 1733, was one of the first German Reformed Churches in the nation. It would join the Presbyterian Church in 1856. A second church, with a congregation that also gathered in private homes a decade or so earlier, the first German Reformed Church opened its doors to worshippers at Fourth and Sassafras (now Race) Streets in center city in 1747. The Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church was founded in Frankford, at the time a part of Oxford Township, in April 1792. With the withdrawal of members from the First German, the Salem German Reformed Church was established at North American and Green Streets in 1817. By the late nineteenth century, seven Reformed congregations using the German language in their services were meeting in North Philadelphia, with three others in Bridesburg, Point Breeze, and West Philadelphia. Six other churches belonged to the Evangelical Association, five located in lower North Philadelphia, and another in Nicetown. Four Presbyterian churches, three in North Philadelphia and one in South Philadelphia also functioned. Congregations of the General

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Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church formed another bloc. After depending upon earlier Swedish pastors, St. Michael’s (later becoming joined with and known as Old Zion), first at Fifth Street above Mulberry, became the mother church of German Lutheranism in 1742, before relocating as New Zion to Franklin Square in 1870. By 1898, 14 such churches, mainly in North Philadelphia, but also in South Philadelphia, Roxborough and Germantown, and the Mary J. Drexel Home chapel, offered services. Germans similarly supported two Lutheran churches of the Missouri Synod, one in North Philadelphia and another in South Philadelphia, along with one Independent Lutheran, four Baptist, two Methodist and one Mennonite church, with a mission chapel. Like Catholic national parishes, these churches provided burial grounds for members, and seeking to preserve and transmit an older culture to children often offered schools where the German language was taught.2 Catholic and Protestant churches represented parallel communities defined by religious identity, often co-existing in the same neighborhoods, but rarely intersecting, and even more importantly not colliding with each other. While remotely sharing a common Christian identity, they remained, in a pre-ecumenical age in which the Reformation and Counterreformation had not yet ended, separated in their programs and activities, and somewhat suspicious, if not hostile, of each other. But the gulf between Christians and Jews was even greater. In the late nineteenth century, Philadelphia’s Jews worshipped, at least, at 12 principal synagogues. After the founding of Mikveh Israel, a Sephardic congregation of Spanish and Portuguese rite, in 1740, later synagogues were far more likely to accommodate Ashkenazi Jews from Germany, Poland, and Hungary in the “uptown” area of the city. Rodeph Shalom, granted a charter in 1802, was recognized from its beginning as “the German synagogue.” While Beth Israel, founded in 1840, was said to house a “Polish congregation,” a public circular described it as “German Jewish” and “old German and Polish.” But with Kenéseth Israel (1847) and the introduction of radical Reform Judaism,” another kind of distinction, based on belief and rite, became more important than national origins. Being led by rabbis such as the charismatic Joseph Krauskopf, born in Prussia, appointed to Kenéseth Israel in 1887, who steered it on a more American course, it would remain largely “German” in membership and character Adath Jeshuran (1858) and the short-lived Teshu’ath Israel (1893), absorbed by the latter two years after its founding, along with the Jewish Foster Home in Germantown and the Jewish Hospital on Olney Road, completed the main worship sites for the time being. And when Henry Samuel Morais wrote his history of the Jews in Philadelphia in 1894, he reported that a recent population of about 4,000–5,000 had grown to nearly 40,000, with “prospects of a steady increase” of masses still “by far, composed of Ashkenazi.”3

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Widespread violence in Russia and Poland, beginning in 1881, however, would bring successive waves of immigration that profoundly altered the Jewish presence in Philadelphia. Eastern European Jews, as Morais noted, would leap from 2,000 to almost 25,000 by 1894. And new synagogues, B’Nai Abraham and B’Nai Jacob, both on Lombard Street and the nearby Emmath Israel-Oheb Shalom, were organized to meet the needs of newcomers crowding into South Philadelphia. With the changing population, the rapidly proliferating Chebroth, more of a “society” than a full-fledged synagogue also held services and dispensed benefits to smaller congregations. Although the oldest dated back to 1861, and at least three were in Port Richmond among “uptown” sites, most of them were in South Philadelphia, with several carrying the names of Russian cities. Morais added that even more of them with smaller congregations could be found, before curiously concluding, “In almost every section of Philadelphia, such services are witnessed during the annual sacred period.”4 Despite the great influx of new arrivals, German Jews not only retained power, prestige, and influence but along with their hegemony a strong sense of identity as Germans. And while scholars like Morais depicted newcomers with empathy, and Krauskopf was willing to welcome them, other observers still offered a higher assessment of German Jews. In 1901, German Jews, having been well assimilated in Germany, could be praised for bringing integrity, wisdom and skill to every city in America. With German idealism making their cause triumphant, German Jews had not only given their life-blood for America in war but served in peace time as “the intermediators of culture, workers for broad philanthropic and humanitarian ideas.” But their role was even greater, for America needed the German Jew as a cosmopolitan agency and cementing link among a vast conglomeration of races and sects. Indeed, this assessment of the German Jew held that “the ideal of God-fearing, lawabiding, large-hearted citizenship” was nothing less than the instrument that held America together. While primarily seeking to defend Ashkenazi in comparison to Sephardim, it also reflected how German Jews could see their own character against more recently arrived Russian Jews.5 With the security and confidence that community provides, even when self-contained, Philadelphia’s Germans, whether Catholic, Protestant or Jewish, were now poised to assert their presence—to find their “day in the sun” before an even broader audience. German Day would provide that opportunity. GERMAN DAY: ETHNICITY AS A COMMODITY German Americans reached a peak of public visibility during the Jamestown Exposition of 1907. From late April to December, an ambitious program

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featuring different states of the Union, railroad companies and other commercial enterprises, and various educational and cultural groups celebrated the 300th anniversary of the founding of the first enduring English settlement in America. German Americans, coming from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and other states, would co-opt the limelight on German Day, August 1. The agenda, organized by the National German American Alliance, observed the 132nd anniversary of the declaration by Philadelphia’s Germans to take up arms against British rule in August 1775. By commemorating an act of defiance that had occurred eleven months before the Declaration of Independence, Germans were also asserting their priority in the struggle for American sovereignty. Charles J. Hexamer, the main speaker, described the role that Germans had played in early colonization by their support of religious toleration, while Puritans were “burning witches” in New England. And with 75 percent of early German colonists being literate, they had led in the publishing of newspapers and books. Quoting Pastor George C. Heckman, of Reading, Pennsylvania, Hexamer declared, “We may assert with absolute truth that there would have been no united colonial rebellion nor any United States of America, but for the patriotism of the Germans of the colonies.” With Pennsylvania as the “great pivotal colony” at the outbreak of the Revolution, its estimated one-third to more than one half “Germanized” population had been responsible for its ultimate success. While almost all Germans had strongly supported the rebellion, the English-speaking “better classes” had remained largely pro-British Tories. By asserting that Germans had been far more responsible for the emergence of America as a nation than British Americans were, Hexamer was attacking Anglo American hegemony. But German American communal life, along with other such claims, would soon become tarnished by events that would change the entire Western world.6 While the Jamestown Exposition provided a unique moment of celebration, Philadelphia’s observance of German Day provided a more constant reflection of the German presence during the early years of the century. By 1903, German Day had been elevated to the Academy of Music, the most prestigious venue in Philadelphia, with the governor expected to attend for the 230th anniversary of the arrival of Germans to Pennsylvania. In the same year, John Wanamaker’s, the leading department store of Philadelphia, initiated a commercialized version of the event. By March 1904, exaggerated fanfare promised the “Greatest German Day the old store ever had,” although only in its second year. Newspaper advertising, beneath a full-length photograph of Kaiser Wilhelm II, greeted readers with “Willkommen,” and claimed the city to have 350,000 residents of German origin. After depicting the founding of Germantown “by Philadelphia Friends who helped make this the Quaker City” it asked, “With such a history, is it any wonder that we have

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set apart one day each year in our anniversary month for the celebration of an old fashioned Volksfest.” With departments decorated in German national colors and the rendering of “some of the old German airs” by the Philadelphia Quartett Club, the “Volksfest” invited shoppers to vote for “the German, still living, who has rendered most service to his fellow-Germans in this country . . . also for the most popular German in Philadelphia.” With this venture, Wanamaker, of tenuous German origins himself, as well as a highly innovative businessman, introduced the grand scale exploiting of ethnic identity as a tool of retail marketing.7 As German Day spread throughout the nation, it also affirmed the accord between Germany and the United States. At the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, widely called the St. Louis World’s Fair, Carl Schurz, speaking before a huge audience, captured an essential feature of that relationship: “‘German Day’ in the United States is the celebration of the friendship of the two nations. In no single point are the interests of America and Germany hostile and we are bound together by close bonds of kinship.” While the moment may have been the “high point” of the celebration of German Day in America, Schurz’s message would be forgotten. But with John Wanamaker’s purchase of a large collection of furniture, a giant Art Nouveau (or jugendstil) brass eagle, embodying German pride at the fair, would become an iconic totem of American commercialism that remains in its original site after landing at what was once his emporium in Philadelphia.8 Wanamaker’s annual tribute to German Americans would capture local attention over the next decade. In March 1904, its patrons chose Albert H. Ladner, Magistrate of Police Court, as Philadelphia’s most outstanding German American citizen. In the following year, the program proclaimed U.S. Marines Sergeant Richard Binder, a Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor as the winner. But with merchandise advertised as “specially for German Day,” the event was more a device to lure shoppers than to acclaim distinguished German Americans. Moreover, it was not unique, but among such similar promotions as “Anglo American Day” that the store offered. And by 1908, it was no longer alone in such marketing. Not to be outdone by its rival, Strawbridge & Clothier, another major department store, offered German Day, with 15-minute recitals in its third floor piano department by Ferdinand Himmelreich, an acclaimed organist; free post cards commemorating the founding of Germantown; and the sale of special merchandise. But in contrast to department stores, the celebration of German Day at the German Society provided a more community-controlled program that reaffirmed the presence of German Americans without entrepreneurial intent.9 In 1908, the celebration of German American heritage was marked by an even greater focus on the past. As a part of the city-wide Founder’s Week, the National German American Alliance, with delegates from 42 states, met

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at the Academy of Music, where 800 members of the United Singers sang and prominent orators spoke. The ambitious commemoration of Pastorius featured a parade that culminated with placing a memorial plaque in Vernon Park in Germantown. With a grant of $30,000 from Congress, along with donations from German Americans across the nation, J. Otto Schweizer, the Swiss American immigrant sculptor whose war memorials would be found throughout the city, had designed a bronze relief tablet to be placed on a granite cornerstone. It depicted “characteristics of the race” by a heroic, male figure “in alert repose, ready for action, typifying German manhood, strength, fortitude and courage,” while another image of Pastorius and his followers reflected “the genii of industry, science and the arts . . . moving through heavy clouds, pierced by the rays of the rising sun, bearing toward the new found land priceless gems for all time.” The hallowed names of founding fathers of the colony were etched beneath bronze shields of Germany and the United States, with the old seal of Germantown on the side. While its bellicose imagery provoked little concern at the moment, it would convey a different message in later years.10 The 25th German Day in early October 1908 again expressed amity and concord between Germany and the United States and the bonds that linked German Americans to their adopted nation. Aptly described as a day on which “all roads led to Germantown,” a reported 20,000 participants, starting at Broad Street and Erie Avenue, marched to the old borough where they passed under an arch bearing only the word “Welcome.” At Vernon Park, an estimated 50,000 spectators, crushing against the speakers stand and spilling onto surrounding streets, listened as Hexamer read a telegram from President Roosevelt congratulating the National German American Alliance. Beyond this endorsement, Hexamer, Sigmund George von Bosse, and Mayor John E. Reyburn extolled German character and contributions to America. At the evening program at the Academy of Music, Hexamer again read Roosevelt’s message, before introducing Governor Edwin S. Stuart, a former mayor of Philadelphia, who offered his own salute to German Americans.11 But on this occasion, Reverend Adolph Spaeth, more than any other speaker, elucidated the meaning of German Day. Pastor of St. Johannis Church on North Fifteenth Street since 1867, professor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia for 35 years, and president of the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of North America, the highest office of his denomination, he was a learned scholar and prolific author. Briefly referring to Pastorius’ early leadership and the growth of German population in colonial times, Spaeth delivered the long overdue response to Benjamin Franklin’s calumny against the “Palatinate boors” of 1751: “The first mission of the Germans in this country is to become Americans. It is their duty as well as their privilege to enter deeply, heartily

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and with all the fervor and steadfastness of Teutonic manhood into the current of American religious, political and social life. There is no room in this country for a German nation beside an American nation, and if there were, neither this country nor the Germans would be the gainer by the establishment of one.” Spaeth saw the best traits of German thought and feeling being rejuvenated in a grander sphere while becoming absorbed by America and its people. He believed that Franklin had oversimplified the issue by asking whether Germans should become Anglicized or the English Germanized, when it was more a matter of whether the English as well as the Germans, and all later arrivals “of every tongue and nation, from all the ends of the earth,” should be Americanized. Germans, especially those who were citizens of the United States, shaken from lethargy by unification of their homeland, could recognize that they now formed “a weighty factor in this greatest world-power of the Western Hemisphere.” It was their right and duty, not only to recall but to remind fellow-citizens of what they had contributed to America, instead of allowing such facts “to die out in silence, or to be maliciously perverted or falsified.” Spaeth observed “Only since there has been a Bismarck, and a German Empire across the sea, have we begun to celebrate ‘German Day’ here.” Delivered in German, and all but ignored by reporters who understood only what English speakers had said, other Philadelphians were denied the opportunity to read his perceptive message on the reciprocal nature of assimilation that not only surpassed what sociologists could offer but met the wider civic needs of German Day.12 Philadelphians, however, were preoccupied with more than assimilation. With local brokerage offices concerned over the behavior of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the ongoing Bulgarian crisis, The Inquirer offered an assessment of his character and intentions. With his influence on markets and chancelleries around the world, he was believed to be holding the dogs of war in leash only with great difficulty, while remaining as eager as “a strong man who rejoiceth to run a race.” As skeptics argued that the Kaiser really did not want to fight but only “to be the boss,” his funding of $500,000,000,000 for national defense over the next five years revealed “the kind of man who will allow no one knock a chip off his shoulder.” But the prospect of war held ominous implications for city and nation. While the refusal of German financiers to invest in the Northern Pacific Railway had been blamed for the bankruptcy of Jay Cooke’s firm in 1873, German Americans still controlled many of the oldest local financial houses a generation later. With strong and steady relations between German and American firms, leaving German finance available for good investments, the future of economic stability rested far more upon political order than upon Wilhelm’s personal character.13 As German Americans celebrated past contributions and present security, it was the final chapter of a passing era. In March 1909, Wanamaker’s

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customary tribute promoted what was now being called “German American Day” by praising German Americans, then used their ancestral language, “Wunderschoene Strumpf gerade aus Deuschland,” to announce the arrival of “Fresh from the Fatherland” hosiery from the textile mills of Chemnitz. On its own German Day in October, the German Society of Pennsylvania, encouraged by the success of the Pastorius Monument project, announced a plan to honor General Peter Muhlenberg, an officer of the Continental Army, ordained minister and member of Congress, with a statue to be temporarily placed in City Hall Plaza. In February 1910, Mayor Reyburn requested support for a display of products made in Philadelphia at the American Exhibition in Berlin in the coming summer. When the Muhlenberg event finally unfolded, with a massive parade of an estimated 25,000 participants and virtually every local German organization, one newspaper opened its coverage by describing, “Exercises that were as impressive as they were picturesque and which marked probably the most elaborate demonstration ever undertaken by the Germans of this city.”14 In his speech at the dedication of the Muhlenberg memorial on German Day of 1910, Hexamer declared that the statue was not just another “plastic representation of an American hero,” but “a tangible proof of the awakening of Americans of German birth and extraction to claim their rightful place in American history.” Recognizing a latent issue of historiography, he added, “We have sat by and have allowed others to write our history for us, a history viewed through New England spectacles.” Hexamer averred that Pastorius and other Germans, whose names had been all but forgotten, actually towered above the leaders of other colonies and left an indelible imprint on the American people by their early opposition to slavery which had given recognition to the personal rights of others. And that, he concluded, was what German Day was all about. But Hexamer had also identified what many German Americans would soon be denied.15 Hexamer reappeared before the public by a letter which appeared in an advertisement saluting Wanamaker’s on its Golden Jubilee as a local business on German Day in March 1911. Noting estimates that Germans comprised a fifth to a third of the American population, he declared that the celebration was owed to them for their contributions to the nation. He praised the store’s founder, whose name indicated his German extraction, with his success being due to the “sterling qualities characteristic of his race,” especially that of “Gründlichkeit,” the German term for dedication and efficiency. Hexamer’s letter, acclaiming a place where every day could be regarded as German Day, illustrated the manner in which the department store sought to tie itself to the local German American community. While Germans were not the only group solicited as customers, and competitors offered similar incentives to various groups as well, Wanamaker’s surpassed all rivals in promoting such

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occasions. But its efforts soon became even more ambitious. In June 1912, Wanamaker’s, hosting the 23rd annual National Saengerfest, claimed itself to be “closer to the Fatherland than any other spot in America”; the only store in America that made an annual festival of German Day; and whose founder had been honored by Kaiser Wilhelm II. And while the Saengerfest marked another high point for German Americans, time was, nonetheless, running out on such moments.16  Wanamaker’s final German Day celebrated the past while turning to the future in October 1913. On the 100th anniversary of the battle of Leipzig, when Prussia had joined a coalition of nations to defeat Napoleon’s forces, a program that included music played as troops marched into battle a century

Figure 6.1  Advertisement—Wanamaker’s German Day. Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer (March 20, 1911).

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earlier welcomed members of the German Society of Pennsylvania. In its publicity for the event, another letter, this time by John Wanamaker himself, proclaimed “Heute ist Der Deutsche Tag.” Giving a roster of early settlers and their descendants who had played prominent roles in local history, it declared that the growth and prosperity of Philadelphia had been due to “commanding forces bearing German names.” The tribute also proclaimed the city’s close touch with German bankers, manufacturers, literature, language, and music. While a special greeting from the Kaiser asserted that no monarch had ever so perfectly realized that political power must rest upon industrial development, Wilson’s recently imposed tariff went unmentioned. Wanamaker’s letter ended by noting that there was hardly any part of the vast store in which German goods could not be found. With his candidly expressed pride in German products and influence, he had placed himself on a limb from which he would soon be forced to make a hasty retreat. But he was not alone.17  WAR COMES TO EUROPE In September 1914, as newspapers reported Germany’s invasion of Belgium, America became divided by foreign events. While support for the Allied cause would steadily grow over the next three years, many Americans remained hopeful that their nation would remain apart from what was seen as the “European war.” In its early stages, a formidable coalition of Socialists, trade unionists, feminists, peace activists and progressive politicians, rejecting militarism as a solution to international disputes, opposed any intervention by the United States. And as newspapers described the defeat of Belgian resistance on the Aisne River on the seventh day of the opening offensive, Charles W. Eliot, the former president of Harvard University, extolled the more benign German impact on American education. With many young scholars who returned after studying at German universities, bringing academic freedom, universal education and civic liberty as values transforming their own institutions of higher learning, Eliot found a special bond between the two countries. But such forms of German influence would soon become difficult for most Americans to appreciate.18 In Philadelphia and other cities with large immigrant populations, the war, even before America became more directly involved, would test local leadership, threaten community institutions and bring German Americans under suspicion. Quickly recognizing the need to mute the observance of German Day, German residents in Washington, DC would not observe German Day in the usual manner, but gather in churches for a day of prayer. Responding to President Wilson’s proclamation of a national day of supplication for the restoration of peace on the first Sunday in October, they would be commended

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Figure 6.2  Advertisement—Wanamaker’s German Day. Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer (October 17, 1913).

for their willingness to abandon their traditional celebration. But as Germans joined into the search for peace, many of them, despite increasing obstacles, clung to their devotion to Germany. Like Wanamaker at his department store, but with even more futility, C. J. Hexamer, asserting his personal ancestry and defending his political sentiments, took up a position that had become untenable, even before the United States entered the war. In August

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1915, Hexamer, as principal speaker of German Day at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, again recalled the accomplishments and contributions of German Americans, along with an invidious comparison to Anglo Americans and the need for German Americans to reclaim their history. He implored: “Quiet in their tastes, deeply absorbed in the peaceful avocations of life, undemonstrative to the verge of diffidence, without clannish propensities, they have permitted their more aggressive neighbors to deny them a proper place even on the historic page.” While his words may have gratified German Americans, his message, like the argument being made for neutrality, had already become exhausted. It would soon end from coast to coast as America prepared for war. And it would not reappear until the United States and the Allies inflicted defeat on Germany in two major wars of the twentieth century.19 The course of the war soon forced German Americans to shift their rhetoric from German contributions to America to the political aims and military tactics of Germany. In October 1914, an estimated crowd of 8,000 supporters filled the Turngemeinde Hall and spilled onto Broad Street to denounce England and her allies, defend Germany as having done all within its power to avert war, and proclaim that it had not violated Belgian neutrality. Tumultuous applause affirmed remarks by Professor Eugen Kühnemann, the well-known philosopher of the University of Breslau as he maintained that German forces had moved in defense of the Fatherland and the promotion of civilization itself. In an even more impassioned oration, Hexamer argued that the German army had reacted against a secret plan of French and British forces, revealed by the discovery of a cache of munitions, to break through Belgium and outflank the opposition. City Solicitor Michael J. Ryan, President of the United Irish League, whose wife was German born, castigated British control of the American press and asked for what he called “honest neutrality.” In a display of dual allegiance, the audience joined musical societies in singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Deutschland über Alles” and “Die Wacht am Rheim.” And John B. Meyer, the chairman, used the occasion to solicit contributions in support of the German Red Cross. In the next month, Philadelphia’s Germans and Irish came together to raise funds for the German and Austro Hungarian Red Cross on the 47th anniversary of the execution of the Manchester martyrs by the British, with a mass meeting at the Academy of Music. Along with music by “Irish friends” and oratory from Hexamer and other leaders, the program featured James Larkin, the controversial Irish labor activist seeking support for laborers in Dublin, and a three act play, “The Irish Rebel,” dramatizing the Irish struggle for independence. The plight of Irish revolutionaries, along with German animosity toward England, resonated with affinities that brought two hyphenated groups together. But while Irish Americans, rallying behind their adopted country, were beyond reproach,

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German Americans, tarnished by early hesitation, remained under suspicion throughout the war.20 As a distant war brought hardship to Philadelphia, German residents believed that they had already become victims of local hostility. In late November, unemployed workers, besieging the home relief department of the Emergency Aid Committee, came away convinced that anti-German sentiment had obstructed their efforts. Along with mothers carrying children in their arms, “stalwart sons of the Fatherland, with tears in their eyes,” claiming to have been summarily deprived of their jobs, had unsuccessfully begged for employment. One man explained that “the hungry man asking for work,” often rejected because he was thought to be addicted to alcohol, found something even worse now driving their despair—“the blind racial hatred of some of your countrymen.” With some women being offered sewing jobs, men were referred to the Society for Organized Charities. While many Philadelphians found themselves in need, a new prejudice struck at German Americans even before their country of origin became America’s enemy.21 In January 1915, Hexamer joined German Americans from New York, Baltimore, and Chicago in an effort to persuade the House Foreign Affairs Committee to pass legislation that would forbid military aid to belligerent nations. Contending that existing laws discriminated against Germany, the war would only be prolonged by the shipment of arms and munitions manufactured in America. And mindful of which nations were receiving such aid, they argued that the government should not allow weapons to be used against men whose relatives here numbered in the millions. Testifying in Washington, Hexamer and other witnesses asked for a strict adherence to neutrality. In a recent plea to the president, Hexamer noted, “With what chagrin and bitterness it fills Americans of German descent to see the resources of this great country which they have helped to build up placed at the disposal of enemies who with their overwhelming forces have proclaimed it their avowed purpose to crush our ancestral home.” Two weeks later, a New Jersey chapter of the National German American Alliance called for the resignation of William Jennings Bryan as Secretary of State, charging that he favored the Allies, while it condemned the exportation of guns and ammunition for use by the armies of the Triple Entente. But such efforts would only encouraged further doubts about the loyalty of Germans Americans.22 As their spokesmen increasingly called for neutrality, German Americans still enjoyed social events that distracted them from their political vulnerability. In late January, when 3,000 guests attended the 28th Annual Charity Ball of the Maennerchor Society, deemed to have been a “radiant success,” one member declared that he had managed to forget his anxiety and have “one of the best times in his whole life” despite having fourteen relatives already in the war. But other German Americans, also seeking to set aside

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apprehensions over separated but remembered relatives and friends, could only engage themselves in daily routines that blurred an uglier reality that moved closer with each day.23 In March, a specious letter circulating within their community, purportedly signed by the vice president of the Public Ledger, was alleged to be “evidence” that city newspapers had entered into an agreement to slant reporting in favor of the Allies. The Evening Ledger replied that, despite German apologists with contrary arguments, major publications across America, as the president himself, had maintained a commendable neutrality on the war. And the journalist John Reed, recently returned from the front, had even composed a favorable portrayal of the German soldier. But with such polemics, a reassessment of all things German, including German American character, was growing as a topic of public discourse along with increasing tensions for German Americans.24 The death of M. Richards Mucklé brought its own immeasurable impact on the German American community. Born in Philadelphia in 1825, Mucklé worked as an errand boy before becoming editor and business manager for 55 years at the Public Ledger. Appointed a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1846, he rose to the rank of colonel six years later. Returning to civilian life as a dominant voice in German American affairs, he served as a delegate to a national conference seeking ways of protecting German immigrants, held in Indianapolis in 1870. As well as being one of the founders of the German Hospital, he was credited with proposing the idea for the 1876 bicentennial of the city; a member of the planning committee for the Bicentennial of Pennsylvania in 1882 and an organizer of the Peace Jubilee of 1898. With recognition in Germany, including honors bestowed by the Emperor, as well as in the United States, his achievements embodied responsible citizenship as an American, while reflecting undiminished pride in his ancestry.25 Only a few days after Mucklé’s death, some 300 members of the National German American Alliance traveled to Harrisburg, joining 3,000 supporters of the “special option” legislation that would allow local officials to regulate the production and sale of alcohol. With financial support from brewers, German Americans were not merely seeking to gain access to favored beverages, but to win a larger political battle. For other citizens, it also aggravated growing fears of German American power. As “stomach Germans” gathered at the state capital, a greater number of “soul Germans” observed “Prince Bismarck Day” at the Metropolitan Opera House on North Broad Street, where a program of speeches by Hexamer, Kühnemann, and others concluded with the United Singers singing “Love of Home,” by Julius Wengert, a Stuttgart composer. While celebrating the anniversary of Germany’s unification, the event also reflected the solidarity of German Americans in Philadelphia. With the consolidated ball of the Junger Maennerchor and Harmonie societies paying

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similar tribute a few days later, German Americans were beginning to convert almost every public occasion into a defense of the politics of their native country and demonstration of their loyalty as Americans.26 The submarine attack that sank the Lusitania, with 32 local residents among the victims, carried great portent for German Americans throughout the nation. Although a newspaper headline proclaimed that Germany was jubilant, local German Americans responded with great caution. On the day after the sinking, the effort by reporters to find someone willing to provide a “German” point of view was met with almost complete silence. In cafes, restaurants and other places where they usually gathered, German residents, preferring to talk about other matters, avoided any expression of satisfaction over the incident. At the German Turnverein on North Fifth Street, the only reply was, “No German American is anxious to see innocent women and children die.” Other members would say even less. At the German Seaman’s Home on East Moyamensing Street, no resident was willing to make any kind of statement. In neighborhood saloons, Germans drank no toasts and offered no rejoicing. With charges that the United States had been favoring the Allies, the Lusitania, conveying munitions in its cargo, had not been entirely an instrument of innocence on its final voyage. But while Germany may have exulted, Philadelphia’s Germans only voiced sorrow.27 If the fate of the Lusitania held many compelling personal stories, none may have been more relevant to hyphenated Americans than that of Justus Miles Forman, a writer, and Charles Frohman, a theatrical producer who were among its passengers. Forman, already well known as a novelist, but growing in his reputation as a playwright, was the author of The Hyphen, widely regarded as the first American war drama. As “a play of American patriotism,” it portrayed enemy agents who sought to influence German Americans in a small town in Pennsylvania. Forman said that it had been inspired by the words of Kaiser Wilhelm, “Germans I know; Americans I know; German-Americans I do not know,” and former president Roosevelt, “I stand for the American citizen of American birth or descent, precisely as I stand for any other American, but I do not stand at all for the GermanAmerican or any other kind of hyphenated American.” The two comments, cleverly juxtaposed, appeared in newspaper advertising for the play. Having opened at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York City in April 1915, one scene depicted Germans interrupting their more serious spying to sing “Die Wacht am Rhein.” Although provocative enough to stir a noisy patron to interrupt one performance before being escorted from the theater, its audience had laughed at inappropriate moments. With bad reviews, the artistically flawed play would achieve only a short run. After two weeks, amid reports that it would be staged in Boston or Philadelphia where it might be appreciated more, Frohman blamed unfavorable critics and indifferent audiences for

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his decision to cancel further performances. Forman and Frohman soon left on the Lusitania in search of opportunities in Europe. A later source wrongly claimed that the death of both writer and producer had been responsible for its closing, while another critic declared that it had antagonized too many people. Forman’s departure was also said to be the result of his hiring as a war correspondent for the New York Times. But the two men would be widely mourned by the theatrical world. On the campus of Yale University, flags flew at half-mast in tribute to Forman, one of three graduates lost in the sinking. While his other works would be presented on stage or in motion picture adaptations, The Hyphen, never performed again, remained a gloomy harbinger of what awaited hyphenated Americans.28 The reaction became even more complicated when President Wilson, speaking before 4,000 newly naturalized citizens at Convention Hall (then located at Broad Street and Allegheny Avenue in North Philadelphia) four days after the sinking of the Lusitania, sounded a note of conciliation before later clarification that it represented his personal view rather than a declaration of presidential policy. While disappointed that Wilson had not offered a stronger judgment, the new Americans showered applause on an aging Mayor Blankenburg, speaking with a distinctly German accent, when he called on younger citizens to assume the tasks that older men must soon relinquish, and showing that a German American, when he said the right things, could retain the esteem of other Philadelphians. In a few more days, Wilson’s diplomatic note to the Kaiser calling for a ban on submarine warfare, while not asking for reparations, but a guarantee of safety for passenger liners, carried further implications. Amid mounting tensions, Herman Ridder, publisher of the Staats-Zeitung, the most widely circulated German language newspaper in the nation, declared from his New York City office: “There has never been but one flag under which the German American has fought. There can never be but one flag under which he will ever fight. And that flag is the Stars and Stripes.”29 GERMAN AND AMERICAN In the spring of 1915, Mayor Blankenburg, while greeting representatives of German Masonic lodges at City Hall, again espoused his allegiance to America. Ignoring President Wilson’s demands on the Kaiser, he vigorously asserted, “We all love the country of our birth and we think with deepest love of those we left behind, but when we came to this country, we took an oath of allegiance to become true citizens of this great country.” The masons responded to his remarks by enthusiastic applause. In the next few days, with his words praised throughout the nation, newspapers extolled Blankenburg as

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an exemplary German American. But W. Charles Welter, a Masonic leader from New York City, speaking at the same meeting, may have captured the gist of German American loyalty even better when he declared, “while we are Germans in tongue, we are real and true Americans in heart and soul.”30 German Americans would soon find the need to more emphatically reassert their claims of loyalty. In Wilson’s second message of protest to the German government, reflecting an “iron fist of determined Americanism skillfully gloved in [the] velvet of tactful diplomatic language,” the president, denying the claim that the Lusitania had carried arms, provoked critics within his own cabinet. Although possibly a result of Wilson’s failure to seek his advice before acting, Bryan, claiming that the president had moved the nation closer to war, resigned as secretary of state. In a letter to Wilson, Bryan, exposing the asymmetry found in American indignation over the sinking of the Lusitania against its indifference to the British blockade of ports that denied food supplies to Germany, asked “Why be shocked at the drowning of a few people, if there is no objection to starving a nation.” Bryan, now acting as a private citizen eager to avoid war, turned to German Americans by an open letter asking them for help in finding a solution before the crisis escalated further. Although his strategy backfired, bringing charges of a betrayal of the president, but without doing any great harm to Wilson, Bryan’s solicitation had flattered German Americans. And despite the deteriorating international situation, when the National German American Alliance, resuming seasonal festivities, celebrated Whitsuntide at Central Park on North Fifth Street, neither the schuhplattler in Bavarian costumes nor the guttural tones of traditional folksong suggested any alien threat.31 With much of Europe already engulfed in war, Philadelphians, despite the distance from battlefields and their government’s claim of neutrality, recognized that they too would become a part of the conflict. But preparing for that exigency also meant justifying which side they would be on. The issues of hyphenated citizenship and Americanization helped to provide an answer. In an address to the graduating class at South Philadelphia High School, Assistant District Attorney Joseph P. Rogers clarified what it meant for a younger generation soon to become more directly involved when that European war also became America’s war: “Perfect citizenship cannot be attained by a hyphenated American. America is destined to become more than ever, after the great war in Europe, the ‘melting pot of the world.’” The class valedictorian reiterated the message by calling attention to the role of public schools in assimilating a diverse population. With such views becoming more widespread, the Evening Ledger, seeking a moderate view, argued that Americanization, rather than relying on repressive denunciation of the hyphenated, should resort to other means to solve the problem of the foreign born in our midst. But Americanization, instead of becoming a

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benign solution, would soon adopt more aggressive methods of persuasion and control.32 As Americanization gained momentum, calls for action against aliens veered in unanticipated directions. In July 1915, amid mounting fears and suspicions, the Pennsylvania legislature enacted a bill that prohibited hunting and dog ownership by all foreign-born persons. One Philadelphia newspaper pointedly ridiculed its passage: “If we are to have trouble with Germany, it will be a great relief to feel that no alien dachshund may be conveying secret dispatches down the Delaware and across the Atlantic to Wilhelmshaven.” An unamused immigrant declared: “I know not how many anti-alien laws Pennsylvania has on its statute books, but for irritating the poor aliens and producing a minimum of benefit to the state, I should think the latest, the Alien Dog law would be difficult to beat.” In March 1918, the five aliens arrested as owners of 15 dogs ordered by a West Philadelphia magistrate to be exterminated were probably even more distressed. Enforcement had already “executed” 13 other dogs. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, recognizing the alien peril to public safety even before the United States entered the war, had introduced a constraint that would impinge upon the foreign born long after the Armistice. And as late as 1924, one could still read: “Those who have had to deal with aliens know the difficulties in the way of teaching ignorant and lawless foreigners to respect regulations in regard to other people’s property.”33 By summer of 1915, America had declared itself as a neutral witness to a foreign war on far off battlefields. It was a claim weakened by sympathy for putative democratic states, despite one being ruled by a king and another by a tsar, and challenged by large pockets of population of “Teutonic” origin with unclear allegiance. With widespread debate in newspapers, lecture halls, legislatures, pulpits, restaurants and saloons, its citizens sought to better understand what they faced at the moment as well as what the future would ask of them. As concerns over the potential threats posed by hyphenated American sharpened in focus on German Americans, the argument shifted to more specific issues. One newspaper bluntly asked about the “hyphen” who would continue to work in munitions factories if America went to war with their “hyphen-land.” The end result was a litany of diverse concerns: supporters of Germany had allegedly used un-American and questionable methods to argue their case; Germany, by virtue of its control of Germans overseas, had too much influence in the United States; the immigrant struggled with divided loyalties that threatened the safety and security of other Americans; what motives had really brought immigrants to America; and who was at fault in starting the war? Along with earnest answers found in letters to newspapers, many scholars, writers, and politicians joined into the dialogue. But even celebrity status did not save opinion from well-warranted criticism as when

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the Evening Ledger accused Agnes Repplier, one of Philadelphia’s most admired authors, of having interwoven religious prejudice, racial antagonism, and national animosity in an article written for The Atlantic Monthly. While hating Germans, it charged, she also hated Jews, was only mildly tolerant of Irishmen and Italians, and believed that most foreign-born could not become true Americans. And having to be paid to take baths, they lived in ghettoes by preference and dominated American politics. While attacking every principle upon which America had been founded, Repplier exemplified the vitriolic assault on German Americans that rested on ethnic, racial, and class prejudices.34 Philadelphia’s German Americans, as in other cities, had reached a moment that required a new response. In July, when the statewide Federation of German Catholic Societies met at St. Paul’s Hall, the question of American neutrality provided the main issue. The chairman of the Resolutions Committee, Father Theodore Hammache, pastor of St. Ignatius of Loyola parish at 43rd and Wallace Streets in West Philadelphia, shared his recent message to President Wilson protesting that the latter’s stance was, in fact, far from neutral, and asking for a prohibition on the exportation of arms and ammunition to belligerent nations. While the meeting also challenged restrictions on liquor distribution as an interference with liberty of conscience, the war presented the greater concern. City Solicitor Ryan, again accusing Great Britain of trying to draw the United States into the conflict, demanded an embargo on arms shipments in his keynote address to 300 applauding delegates at the Metropolitan Opera House. And Joseph Frey, head of the Central Verein of New York, exposing another issue, declared, “We object to being called German Americans or hyphenated Americans . . . it is no treason because of our feeling of loyalty to our fatherland to demand that the United States stop sending firearms abroad.” But as the nation continued its drift toward the Allied camp, German American support of neutrality and opposition to the sale of arms moved closer in the view of other Americans to treason.35 The public dialogue now also recoiled under advice and accusations by others who offered direction for the future of Germans in America. From the Holy See, responding to an appeal from Midwestern prelates for the Church to intercede in the growing tension, Pope Benedict XV urged them to rely upon the wisdom of President Wilson and remain loyal to their adopted nation. Meanwhile as submarine attacks took more American lives, amid rumors that men of German parentage were preparing to defect from the National Guard, military officers insisted that there was little likelihood of such action from units undergoing training exercises. But with the head of the German American Society of New York reported as stating that naturalized citizens from Germany would not serve the United States in a war with their

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homeland, secret service agents flooded neighborhoods in Philadelphia hunting for spies seeking to subvert shipping to England. And Teddy Roosevelt, again provocatively moved into the foreground, when a German newspaper compared him with Italy’s Gabriele D’Annunzio as another “irresponsible big talker” for groundless charges against German Americans and sabrerattling calls for war against Germany.36 In September, after meeting with leaders in several Western states, Hexamer resumed his defense of German Americans. Emphatically arguing that German Americans had kept America out of the war, he accused the Anglo American “Money Trust” of being the “most sinister influence in our national life” for its support of a proposed $1,000,000,000 loan to England and France. But Hexamer’s effort to convince the public that it had more to fear from others than from Germans Americans would not go unchallenged. In the next month, in a speech to the Daughters of the American Revolution, President Wilson, after declaring his faith in the loyalty of most immigrants, warned that “Those who would seek to represent them are very vocal, but they are not very influential.” While praising the virtues of the foreign born, he was eager to see those who thought first of other countries separated from those who held American first. Comparing the task to campus hazing during his days as president of Princeton University, he called upon the DAR to help in indoctrinating the foreign born to American ideals. And seeking to discredit the claim of George S. Viereck’s The Fatherland, a magazine for German Americans, to have well represented the interests of 90 percent of the population who were hyphenated Americans, the Evening Ledger agreed that too much attention had been given to highly vocal “hyphenates,” who were actually few in number and weak in power. Calling for advocates of foreign interests to step aside for the more loyal citizens who placed America first, it argued: “The Fatherland does not speak for German Americans but for Germany. There can be but one loyalty among us—to America, first, last, and all the time.” With such rejoinders aimed at Hexamer and other apologists, abetted by rumors of sabotage plots, German Americans faced a rapidly eroding credibility.37 Two months later, President Wilson, in his annual message to Congress, again called attention to “certain citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life.” He claimed that they had formed plots to destroy property; entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the nation; and sought to pry into confidential messages of the government in order to serve alien interests. Without having violated any existing laws, they had attempted to discredit the authority of the government, destroy industries, and debase politics. Being nothing less than

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treason, he demanded, “Such creatures of passion, disloyalty and anarchy must be crushed out.” Although Wilson had not used the word “hyphenate” in his address, it would conspicuously appear in newspaper coverage of his remarks.38 Following Wilson’s charges, a plan of action against “hyphenated conspirators” was soon underway. As Congressional Committees prepared legislation, post-office inspectors and secret service agents gathered information that could be used as evidence. A Philadelphia newspaper impatiently declaimed, “Hardly a day passes without some revelation of the pernicious actions of Americans who have been more loyal to the home of their ancestors than to America, or of some foreigners who have abused the hospitality of our shores in order to wage wars upon our industry and to conspire to embroil us in war.” Noting the negotiations between Mexico’s former president Victoriano Huerta and German Naval Captain Franz von Rintelen that sought to obstruct arms shipments to the Allies and to bring about a possible invasion of the United States, as “one of the many conspiracies, which have grown so numerous that they no longer can be tolerated,” it endorsed Wilson’s call for action. But among a handful of dissenters, Rabbi Isaac Landman of Keneseth Israel, a reform congregation near the center of one German neighborhood, saw implications that escaped many others. He believed that Wilson’s earlier choice to pursue neutrality had laid the foundation for “America First” agitation to become the most divisive domestic issue since the Know-Nothing Movement of the previous century. He feared that Wilson’s attack on hyphenated Americans would promote disdain for all foreign born and their children and encourage anti-immigration legislation. And as an immigrant from Russia, he saw the contradiction of collaboration by England, claiming to protect smaller nations, with his country of origin, crushing smaller nations. But as he compared Great Britain’s hypocrisy to a man who preaches morality as he consorts with prostitutes, Rabbi Landman was a lonely voice in a wilderness of patriotic fervor.39 Rabbi Landman had expressed himself in anticipation of the National Conference on Immigration and Americanization in January 1916, in which one speaker after another would reiterate the need to make aliens into real Americans. For orators such as Theodore Roosevelt, the call for Americanization had not come soon enough. As its keynote speaker with well-known views on the topic, the former president attacked Wilson at every chance, but especially for only recently recognizing the need to endorse Americanization, before a huge audience in the Metropolitan Opera House. Without specifying any particular origins, Roosevelt broadly asserted that “they are bad Americans if they are hyphenated Americans,” before declaring: “The hyphen is incompatible with patriotism.” But Roosevelt was also

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using the opportunity to ignite his campaign to regain the presidency of the United States.40 The use of the term “hyphen” could not, however, obscure the fact that the increasing apprehensions were more emphatically being directed against German Americans. It was buttressed by the highly visible increase in hostility against Germany. In February 1916, the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors ordered the deletion of 75 feet of “close up” views of Kaiser Wilhelm “close up” and Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg from a film being shown at the Chestnut Street Opera House under a law prohibiting scenes that were “sacrilegious, obscene, indecent or immoral or tend to debase or corrupt public morals.” The Board, claiming to be exercising “strict neutrality,” argued that such scenes, with the potential to incite rioting between German and English viewers were “immoral.” But the Board’s action was also a precursor to the kind of restriction that would become even more common in future months.41 As apologists defended their constituents, Max Heinrici, managing editor of the German Gazette and press agent for the National German American Alliance, wrote that he believed that Wilson did not mean German Americans, innocent of conspiracy and truer Americans than any other people in the nation, including the British. Noting the recent conviction of Hamburg American line officials on charges of conspiracy, he defended German Americans as having nothing to do with the case, as the guilty were German subjects, and tersely pointed out “We are not.” Reiterating that Wilson’s message was not meant as an indictment of German Americans, but if it were, “it would be untrue.” Confirming Heinrici’s view three months later, Wilson recognized the need for “damage control.” Meeting with Paul F. Mueller, head of the National Association of German publishers and editor of Chicago’s Abend Post in March 1916, the president expressed his confidence in the German American press and most Americans of German birth, but noted that others had sought to speak for them without their consent.42 As the anti-hyphen crusade reached American industry, the Packard Motor Company announced that important positions would be restricted to nativeborn Americans, naturalized citizens, and persons who had filed their first papers for naturalization. While employees who retained foreign citizenship would not suffer discrimination in presently held positions, they would not be promoted to levels of greater responsibility and trust. But loyalty to government and flag, as well as the company itself, remained prerequisites to employment. On the following day, the “Packard Plan” reached Philadelphia, when Henry Disston & Sons, proprietors of the Keystone Saw, Tool and File Works, and John B. Stetson Hat Company, among the largest manufacturers of such products, endorsed a similar policy, despite neither having enough foreign workers to necessitate action. On the next day, the Vim Motor Truck Company and Biddle Motor Car Company, automotive manufacturers,

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became the first local firms to prohibit the hiring or promotion of aliens. In a statement far stronger in platitudes than facts, a Vim executive declared that infiltration by hyphens, espousing treasonous propaganda that had infected the spirit of loyalty of factories and other institutions had to be eradicated if the nation was to avoid disaster. Describing hyphens as “human vultures” who cared nothing for America, but looked only for dollars and cents, he called upon Philadelphia, as the place where American ideals had first been brought into being, to take the lead in combating the evil. In an ironic note to its own commitment to patriotism, the Vim Company had recently rejected a war-related order for more than 700 trucks for military use, in order to continue producing exclusively for the more profitable domestic market which left it, as the same official put it, no time for “war brides.” With other firms expected to join the struggle against hyphenated Americanism, a sense of uneasiness was thought to be bringing many workers into a rush to gain citizenship. Meanwhile, an official of the Biddle Company, with notices already posted in its factory warning the foreign born of new restrictions, proposed a city-wide meeting of manufacturers to draw up a plan facilitating naturalization. With other companies intending to implement similar policies, their earnest explanations revealed the underlying ideology justifying the “war on the hyphen” that would be waged in the months ahead.43 Whether as ideology or in practice, the “war on the hyphen” would be marked by arbitrariness, inconsistency and contradiction, and often be based more on beliefs and rumors than on actual evidence. But it would not deter advocates from waging that war. An editorial in the Evening Ledger, although raising questions on the “Packard Plan,” tersely indicated why it did not intend to discredit the new fervor of Americanism: “Distaste for the hyphen is a normal and desirable thing.” While Americans working abroad might be harmed by indiscriminate actions against non-citizens, it was not the equivalent of the dreaded hyphen. As news pages found increasingly sensationalistic tones, the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, the Victor Talking Machine Company, and the Keystone Leather Company rallied in the trenches of Camden in the “war against the hyphen.” A Keystone Company spokesman claimed that while the hyphen spirit was not expanding in industries on the other side of the Delaware River, it was to be feared among American-born businessmen with parents of foreign birth, who had too boldly criticized Wilson, American institutions, and government policies. And when he concluded that hyphenates had given the situation “an evil look,” it was a vision in the eye and mind of the beholder.44 Beyond the rants of industrialists, the hyphenated American had become a topic for a broad spectrum of commentators and audiences. In a wellcomposed letter to a newspaper, a keenly observant writer argued that the “Packard Plan,” by coercing aliens to become reluctant citizens hoping

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to keep their jobs, had reached workers who were no different than other Americans in seeking the dollar. And such distinguished scholars as Edward A. Steiner, himself an immigrant, commanded attention when he lectured on the topic of “The Hyphenated American.” An Irish American orator, addressing his countrymen on their own national holiday with renewed animosity for the British, declared with a hoarse voice before a storm of applause: “The hyphen is the instinct of freedom and it is the instinct that denounces tyranny. It is the principle of liberty that links Ireland to America.” With German songs, cheers for Germany, and praise for the submarine as being itself Irish for the damage inflicted on British shipping, the occasion captured a widened public. In an even more bizarre variation, a Protestant clergyman assailed “Hyphenated Christianity” as the inadequate practice of faith in a sermon at St. Peter’s Church at South Third and Pine Streets. Together, the great range of meanings and applications testified to the powerful currency that had become attached to the concept of the “hyphenated.”45 The war of words, however, was far from over. Only a few days after Wilson’s attack on community journalists, reports circulated that Congress planned to investigate charges published by the New York World that the National German American Alliance was seeking to limit passport procedures; challenge the financing of arms and loans by reserve banks; and support opposition at the nominating conventions of both parties. Hexamer, identified as one of four Philadelphians involved, responded by denying that the Alliance was the driving force behind any lobby seeking to influence Congress. But Hexamer found himself embroiled in more controversy when he was called as a witness in proceedings against liquor industry officials facing charges of violating laws banning election campaign contributions by corporations. An eager U.S. Attorney, pursuing a so-called “booze-politics partnership,” threatened to reveal the Alliance as a complicit partner in the scheme. And when the United German American Charity Association advertised that proceeds from its upcoming fair would be used to aid the families of soldiers who had died or who were in hospitals, despite some being under American auspices, in Munich and Vienna, German Americans further lost the confidence of other Americans.46 Meanwhile, no one was exploiting the hyphenated American issue better than Teddy Roosevelt. At his estate at Sagamore in early April, expressing his willingness to accept the nomination for the presidency if offered by the Republican Party, he declared: “Every American citizen must be for America first and for no other country even second, and he hasn’t any right to be in the United States at all if he has any divided loyalty between this country and any other,” He would easily find wide support. Asking “Who is an American?,” the Public Ledger, Philadelphia’s most respected newspaper, answered that millions of immigrants had taken their places in America without using the

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hyphen to qualify their citizenship or allegiance. Although oversimplifying American history, it carried a message that easily resonated with the views of Roosevelt.47 As submarine warfare prompted further deliberation over entering the war, German Americans flooded members of Congress with telegrams urging them to resist any break in relations with the Berlin government. And while messages emanated from the centers of German settlement, the press delicately identified the writers as “hyphens” rather than as Germans or German Americans. As their leaders revealed that if war came they would organize peace marches in protest, but do nothing more, a prominent member of Cincinnati’s German community proclaimed: “We are loyal Americans.” And Roosevelt, charging into a political version of San Juan Hill, opened his campaign for the presidency, with a thinly veiled attack on his likely opponent at the upcoming Republican convention, Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes. In a letter to a supporter, he declared: “I do not have to improvise my convictions on either Americanism or preparedness,” before adding: “Our citizens must act as Americans; not as Americans with a prefix and qualifications; not as Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Native-Americans—but Americans pure and simple. It is an outrage for a man to drag foreign politics into our contests and vote as an Irishman or German, or other foreigners.” A few days later, when his campaign reached Detroit, where he tossed his “helmet” into the ring of electoral politics and found Henry Ford as his anti-war adversary, Roosevelt had reshaped Americanization into a means of securing the unity necessary for military preparedness.48 As Roosevelt disputed the loyalty of “hyphenates,” a Philadelphia reporter found “quiet resignation” among German Americans saddened by the prospect of fighting against their fatherland, but ready to provide Uncle Sam with the best soldiers if and when war came, and even more prepared to defend their allegiance. A restaurant manager, who had served in the Spanish American War, said: If war is declared on Germany it will be a terrible thing for us, so terrible that Americans who have no German blood in their veins cannot comprehend what it means. It means shedding the blood of our brothers. . . . But if the storm breaks—and God forbid that it should—you shall see us in the front ranks. We are not cowards or hypocrites. We plainly say that we wish that it would be otherwise, but the call of duty shall not find us wanting. We know that our duty is under the Stars and Stripes. When we came to this country and became its citizens we burned our bridges behind us. Our duty is here. The German government has no claim upon us, however much love we may bear for our mother country.

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No Philadelphian could have more sincerely avowed to his own loyalty or that of other German Americans than this German American who promised: “But when the time comes you shall see us repay slander with patriotism.”49 Other German Americans asserted similar sentiments. A Turnverein member claimed that his countrymen had not only provided the army with many recruits but were more patriotic than any other group of foreign birth or extraction. An officer of the Alliance said that the high regard for law and authority held by people of “German blood” enabled them to realize that Wilson was within his power in breaking off relations with Germany and that decisions by the president or Congress, even when not in agreement with them, had to be obeyed. Hoping that Germany would yield in the current dispute, he believed that his view was shared by most German Americans. Although revealing only what German Americans were willing to share with a reporter who was possibly a government agent, it reflected the outlook of a newspaper that did not always praise German Americans. Only a few days afterward, an editorial in the Evening Ledger reproduced an old bromide overheard at a charity event for German victims of the war: “True German-Americans love the Vaterland as a man loves his mother, but they love America, the land of their adoption, as a man loves his wife.” Claiming that 99 percent of German Americans would heartily agree, their efforts on behalf of war victims were seen as a credit to their humanity and deserving of support from all persons. But beyond the approval of charity, it also conveyed the hope that German Americans would remain loyal to America if war came.50 German Americans, whose future remained uncertain, pursued efforts that further revealed their convictions. In early May, the newly constituted German-American Charity Association, having merged the work of Hilfsfond and the Deutschwehr, two relief agencies, ended what may have been the most successful fund-raising event in city history. With a claimed attendance of 300,000 persons and profits of $200,000, it had exceeded the expectations of organizers. The proceeds were to be donated in support of hospitals and Red Cross stations that treated the war sufferers of the Central Powers. On its final day, proclaimed as “All-Philadelphia Day,” German Americans had been joined by Irish, Scots, and Italians at booths offering articles for sale, mingling and spending money in a common cause. But while showing that animosities could be momentarily set aside, its hope for peace among nations had come too late to mask the realities facing city and nation.51 With the approaching Republican Party convention, German Americans, recognizing themselves as targets of Roosevelt’s charges against “hyphenates,” overwhelmingly favored the candidacy of Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes for the presidency. Gustav Mayer, publisher of two local German language newspapers, the Gazette and the Demokrat, believed that they would even support Wilson, despite being a Democrat,

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if the Republicans nominated Roosevelt. But opposition to Roosevelt also increased pressure to demonstrate their loyalty. In late May, when the German American Newspaper Association met in Chicago, editors and publishers, dissatisfied with both Wilson and Roosevelt, rallied under the slogan “They may be hyphenated Americans, but their Americanism is unhyphenated.” At the opening session, delegates elected two Philadelphians, John B. Meyer, a hosiery manufacturer, as chairman, and Adolph Timm, an editor and publisher, as secretary, both members of the Alliance, hoping to form an organization that would implement a new political agenda. Within a few days, Roosevelt, speaking in St. Louis, a city with the second largest German population in the nation, charged that anyone who tried to retain dual citizenship and allegiance was a man without any country. Turning his attention to recently published warnings that German Americans would present a united bloc of voters, Roosevelt, in one of the most direct attacks ever made against “hyphenates,” declared that such threats amounted to “moral treason.”52 German Americans fought back by denouncing Roosevelt as a candidate. An editorial in the Westliche Post of St. Louis, one of the oldest German language newspapers in America, noted that although he had often claimed to be fighting against attempts to introduce discord among the American people, Roosevelt was, in reality, the “most dangerous peace destroyer” in the nation. And after dividing his party, he was now sowing discontent by stigmatizing one element as traitors and encouraging other Americans to persecute them. Another newspaper accused Roosevelt of speaking as a demagogue against an element of the population who despised him as “an ambitious self-seeker.”53 As Irish Americans renewed their attack, Justice John W. Goff, of the State of New York Supreme Court, charged that British Secret Service and persons of private wealth, under the guise of peace efforts, blood relationships and linguistic affiliations, had sought to persuade America to join England in the war. Reflecting Irish American support in the struggle for an independent Ireland, Goff argued: “To the American citizen of Irish birth or blood it is cause for deep gratification that on more than one occasion he has been an important factor in defeating England’s designs to embroil America in her world schemes of conquest and plunder.” But in this case, it was the British who were spreading propaganda across America and subverting traditional American values and institutions. It was a message that could be easily heard wherever Irish Americans gathered.54 With Americanism and the “hyphenate issue,” along with military operations on the Mexican border heading the agenda, delegates to the Republican convention faced decisions of leadership. Former Congressman Richard Bartholdt, the spokesman for German Americans, strongly opposed the choice of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge as chairman of the Resolutions Committee on the grounds that “a tory with British leanings” was ill-suited

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to prepare a plank on foreign-born citizens. Another delegate, a German language newspaper editor, declared that German Americans would support Hughes or any other aspirant for the presidency, but not one backed by “big munition interests of the East.” Pledged to oppose Roosevelt, other German Americans claimed to have evidence of support by Standard Oil and munitions interests for him. When a Pittsburgh delegate identified the main issue as the ending of foreign influence on government, and questioning legislation beneficial to “warring Powers,” he was referring to the Allied nations, but his answer to critics of German Americans was even clearer: “We contend that this is not Americanism.”55 With other Republicans engaged in deliberations, Roosevelt, emerging from his bunker at Oyster Bay, reentered the forum with his reply to a request to address the convention. In a letter released before leaving New York, Roosevelt, anticipating his role as a candidate, began an attack of wide scope. He charged Wilson with having rendered the “most evil service” to America by similarly feeble policies against Germany and German Americans that endangered the nation and dulled the national conscience. Roosevelt also suggested that Justice Hughes had allowed German American interests to nourish his candidacy. But he saved his strongest vitriol for “professional German Americans” who had acted through “alliances” in seeking to determine the outcome of the convention. Although representing only a section of the German American vote, it was “anti-American to the core,” and sought to “terrorize” delegates who would select the next president. And Hexamer’s challenge to Congress to investigate Roosevelt’s allegations would only leave a more precarious situation for German Americans.56 While Roosevelt failed to win the nomination, his compelling presence had left an impact on the convention. When the party platform was made public, one of its planks declared, “Everybody true to one flag.” But for Hughes, the choice of Republicans, who would not mention the hyphen issue when he formally accepted the nomination in late July, it had left a dilemma. If he chose to attack the hyphenated citizen, he would certainly lose the German American vote; and if he too openly sought to win their favor, he would forfeit the “American” vote. And during the weeks that followed, Democrats would repeatedly accuse him of having made a secret pact with German Americans and Irish Americans. In three speeches delivered on the same day only two weeks before the election, Hughes finally openly rejected the support of any group that had not placed American interests above all else. Although his supporters claimed that he had knocked democratic charges “into a cocked hat” during the closing days of the campaign, Hughes would lose the election.57 As Democrats successfully rallied behind an incumbent president, the difficulties posed by loyalty and unity remained a challenge for America.

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Although the “hyphenated American” had been recognized since the 1880s, the war, with the underlying question of which side would the United States eventually take in the conflict, had given the matter even greater urgency. In civic discourse throughout the entire nation, such terms as “hyphen” and “hyphenated American” had become coded references to German Americans. John J. “Butch” McDevitt, of Wilkes Barre, the eccentric candidate of the eponymous McDevitt Party, seeking to mock the election process, facetiously declared as the ninth plank of his platform: “We denounce the hyphenates. I am a loyal Irish-American and we want no hyphenates.” But while the public might find humor in such quips, “hyphenated Americans” could not be easily dismissed. And in Philadelphia, the “Jolly Germans” of earlier days were about to be replaced by “enemy aliens.”58 NOTES 1. Public Ledger Almanac (Philadelphia, 1898), 32–4. The websites of parishes, where available, provide further details. 2. Public Ledger Almanac (Philadelphia, 1898), 18–31. For the nationalistic labeling of synagogues, see: Gopsill’s Philadelphia City Directory for 1895 (Philadelphia, 1895), 2094. 3. Public Ledger Almanac (Philadelphia, 1898), 18–19. Henry S. Morais, The Jews of Philadelphia: Their History from the Earliest Settlements to the Present Time (Philadelphia: The Levytype Company, 5654–1894), 131–3; 206–8; 210–24. 4. Morais, 223–4. 5. Max J. Kohler, “The German-Jewish Migration to America,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, 9 (1901), 87–105. 6. “Deusche Tag Grosser Erfolg,” The (Richmond, VA) Times Dispatch (August 2, 1907). 7. “To Celebrate Landing of Germans,” The Inquirer (September 20, 1903). Advertisements for “The Wanamaker Store,” The Inquirer (March 3, 1904; March 24, 1904; March 25, 1904; and March 30, 1904). The final advertisement reported Carl Schurz, the political and military leader, and Reserve Officer Beck of the Police Department as winners of the voting for the most influential national and local German American. 8. “Germans Observe Day At The Fair,” The Inquirer (October 7, 1904). William R. Leach, Land of Desire (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 212–13. Wanamaker also later obtained the massive pipe organ originally built for the St. Louis Fair for his store in Philadelphia which remains a major attraction at what is now Macy’s. 9. “The Wanamaker Store,” (advertisement) The Inquirer (March 28, 1905); Max Heinrici, Das Buch der Deutschen in Amerika (Philadelphia, 1909), 812. Born in 1846, near Stuttgart in Swabia, where his father operated a hotel and brewery, Albert H. Ladner’s family immigrated to Philadelphia when he was seven years old. At the age of 15, he joined the 98th Volunteer Regiment of Pennsylvania, under

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General John F. Ballier, during the Civil War. After being discharged, he operated his own business as a plumber. Active in Democratic Party politics in the densely German 12th Ward, Ladner was elected at the age of 21 to the Common Council of Philadelphia in 1870, a position in which he served for three terms. In 1880, he was elected as a judge of the Police Court, over 13 other candidates, and re-elected five more times, the last time as the choice of the Independent Party in 1905. His subsequent efforts to gain elective office were less successful. Nominated by the Democrats for the office of mayor, he lost to Edwin S. Stuart in the election of 1891. In other endeavors, along with serving as president of an insurance company, Ladner was a Mason and belonged to several fraternal and civic organizations. After a two year illness, he died of stomach cancer at his home on North Fifth Street in January 1912. His funeral service at St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church at North Third and Brown Streets was presided over by its pastor, S.G. von Bosse, who would later become president of the National German American Alliance. Ladner was buried at West Laurel Hill Cemetery. See: “Albert H. Ladner Dies At His Home,” The Inquirer (January 25, 1912) and “Ladner Funeral Saturday,” The Inquirer (January 26, 1912). For the October event, see “To Celebrate German Day,” The Inquirer (October 1, 1905). See also the Founder’s Week advertisement for Strawbridge & Clothier, The Inquirer (October 6, 1908). 10. “Founders’ Parade For Education,” The Inquirer (April 14, 1908); “German Day Plans For Founders’ Week,” The Inquirer (April 14, 1908); “Bronze Tablet Will Honor Memory Of German Pioneers In America,” The Inquirer (September 23, 1908). 11. “Germans Honor Race Pioneers In Penn’s Province,” The Inquirer (October 7, 1908);”Germans, 20,000 Strong, March On Historic Streets,” The Inquirer (October 7, 1908); “50,000 See Unveiling In Vernon Park,” The Inquirer (October 7, 1908): “Governor Pays German Stock Warm Tribute,” The Inquirer (October 7, 1908). 12. Life of Adolph Spaeth, D.D., L.L.D., told in his own reminiscences, his letters and the recollections of his family and friends, edited by his wife (Philadelphia, 1916), 267–9, 275, 290. With the linguistic limitations of reporters, Philadelphia newspapers could only indicate that Spaeth and other Germans also spoke at these events. Spaeth’s remarks, however, appear in fragmentary form in the biography by his second wife, Harriett Reynolds Krauth Spaeth. He died of a heart attack while preparing a sermon at his desk less than two years after his memorable oration of “German Day” of 1908. See “Rev. Dr. Spaeth Falls Dead As He Prepares Sermon,” The Inquirer (June 27, 1910). 13. “Stocks Irregular, Close Strong,” The Inquirer (October 7, 1908). 14. See advertisement for Wanamaker’s, The Inquirer (March 19, 1909); “To Celebrate German Day,” The Inquirer (October 6, 1909); “‘Old City’ Zone May Be Improved Like Market Street,” The Inquirer (February 4, 1910); “Germans Plan Big Day: Will Unveil Plaza Statue On Thursday,” The Inquirer (October 2, 1910); “Germans Honor Noted Patriot With Monument,” The Inquirer (October 7, 1910). 15. “Germans Honor Noted Patriot With Monument,” The Inquirer (October 7, 1910).

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16. “This Is Red Letter Day At The Wanamaker Store,” The Inquirer (March 20, 1911); “Wanamaker’s: Headquarters For Saengerfest Visitors,” The Inquirer (June 29, 1912). 17. See advertisement for Wanamaker’s, The Inquirer (October 17, 1913). 18. Charles W. Eliot, “America’s Debt to Germany Told by Charles W. Eliot,” Evening Ledger (September 17, 1914). 19. “German Army Crashes Through Allies’ Lines and Seizes Beaumont,” Evening Ledger (September 19, 1914); “German Day Will Be Devoted to Prayers,” Evening Ledger (September 19, 1914); “President’s Peace Proclamation For National Day of Prayer,” Evening Ledger (October 3, 1914); “Churches Of City Unite In Mighty Prayer For Peace,” Evening Ledger (October 3, 1914). See also the classified listings under “Religious Brevities” and “Religious Notices” on the following day. “‘Germans Here Promote Freedom’—Dr. Hexamer,” The Inquirer (August 6, 1915). 20. “Germans Fill Hall And Broad Street, Too, To Make Protest,” Evening Ledger (October 15, 1914); “Mass Meeting For Red Cross,” Evening Ledger (November 24, 1914); advertisement, Evening Ledger (November 17, 1914). 21. “Germans Appeal For Work; Complain Of Prejudices,” Evening Ledger (November 30, 1914). 22. “Oppose Shipment Of Arms To Europe’s Belligerents,” Evening Ledger (January 1, 1915); “Resignation of Bryan Asked By German Club,” Evening Ledger (January 8, 1915). 23. Advertisement for 28th Annual German American Charity Ball,” Evening Ledger (January 23, 1915). Also “German Charity Ball,” Evening Ledger (January 23, 1915); “Charity Affairs,” Evening Ledger (January 25, 1915); “German Charity Ball,” Evening Ledger (January 25, 1915); and “German Charity Ball Scores Radiant Success,” Evening Ledger (January 26, 1915); “Charity Ball,” Evening Ledger (January 26, 1915). 24. “Germans Are Told Phila. Papers Plot To Color War News,” Evening Ledger (March 3, 1915); “Germanism,” Evening Ledger (March 15, 1915). 25. M. Richards Mucklé, Prominent Citizen, Dead At Age Of 90,” Evening Ledger (March 30, 1915); “Funeral of M. Richards Mucklé,” Evening Ledger (March 31, 1915); “Mucklé Estate Goes To Grandchildren,” Evening Ledger (April 6, 1915). Contrary to the Evening Ledger headline, Mucklé was actually 89 years old at the time of his death. Among the numerous sources on the life of this forgotten Philadelphian, one invaluable, biographical sketch can be found in: Charles Morris (ed.), Men of the Century: An Historical Work (Philadelphia: L. R. Hamersly & Co., 1896), 39. 26. “3000 Local Option Men Go To Capital,” Evening Ledger (April 6, 1915); “Germans of City Honor Prince Bismarck Today,” Evening Ledger (April 6, 1915); “German Americans Attend Ball,” Evening Ledger (April 13, 1915). 27. “German Americans Here Silent As To Sea Tragedy,” Evening Ledger (May 8, 1915). 28. For a review of Justus Miles Forman’s The Hyphen, see The Theatre: Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Dramatic and Musical Art, XXI (June 1915), 280. Accessed on Google Books (March 10, 2015). Also see: http:​/​/www​​.lero​​yny​.c​​om​

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/Ne​​ws​/20​​02​/05​​20​/H​i​​stori​​cal/;​“News Of Plays And Players,” New-York Tribune (March 22, 1915); “News Of Plays And Players,” New-York Tribune (March 23, 1915);” Young American Actress Gets Chief Role In New War Play,” Harrisburg Star-Independent (March 27, 1915); “The ‘Hyphen’ To Be Seen,” The (N.Y.) Sun (April 18, 1915); “New Productions,” New-York Tribune (April 18, 1915); “Another War Play Presented,” New-York Tribune (April 20, 1915); “‘The Hyphen,’ War Time Drama, Seen,” The (N.Y.) Sun (April 20, 1915); “German Plotters As Stage Villains,” New York Times (April 22, 1915); “Play Protestor Ejected,” New York Times (April 25, 1915); “The Spring Theatres,” The (N.Y.) Sun (April 25, 1915); “Second Thoughts On First Nights—A Play Written In A Hurry,” New York Times (April 25, 1915); “News Of Plays And Players,” New-York Tribune (April 26, 1915); “Jeers Fatal To ‘The Hyphen,’” The (N.Y.) Sun (April 26, 1915); “News Of Plays And Players,” NewYork Tribune (May 1, 1915); “Many Noted New Yorkers On Lusitania,” New-York Tribune (May 8, 1915); “A. G. Vanderbilt Lost On Liner, Frohman Also Among Missing,” Evening Ledger (May 8, 1915); “Novelist Went Down on the Lusitania,” Harrisburg Telegraph (May 11, 1915); “Forman’s Death A Dramatic Outcome,” The (N.Y.) Sun (May 11, 1915); “Play Touched On War; Its Run Ends,” The (Chicago, IL) Day Book (May 14, 1915); “In Memory of Lusitania Victims,” The (Washington, DC) Evening Star (May 17, 1915); “Across The New York Footlights,” The Washington (DC) Herald (February 13, 1916). 29. “President Refuses To Be ‘Stampeded’ Into Hasty Action,” Evening Ledger (May 10, 1915); “4000 New U. S. Citizens To Get Wilson’s Welcome,” Evening Ledger (May 10, 1915); “Wilson Says Speech Didn’t Reveal Policy,” Evening Ledger (May 11, 1915); “President’s Peace Desire Plainly Indicated Here In Talk To New Citizens,” Evening Ledger (May 11, 1915); “President’s Audience Tense, Expectant And Thankful,” Evening Ledger (May 11, 1915); “New And Old Citizens Storm Convention Hall,” The Inquirer (May 11, 1915); “30,000 Cheer As President Defines True Americanism,” The Inquirer (May 11, 1915); “Friends Laud Wilson For Stand On Peace,” Evening Ledger (May 11, 1915); “German Leader In U.S. Says Wilson ‘Is All Right,’” Evening Ledger (May 11, 1915); “New York Newspapers Praise Wilson’s Note,” Evening Ledger (May 15, 1915). 30. “No Anti-German Boycott Evident In Philadelphia,” Evening Ledger (May 14, 1915); “Mayor’s Patriotism Cheered By Germans,” Evening Ledger (May 18, 1915). 31. “U.S. Appeals To German Reason In Second Note; Warns Without Threat,” Evening Ledger (June 11, 1915); “Bryan To Beg Germans Here To Uphold Him,” Evening Ledger (June 11, 1915); “No Cause For Alarm In Note To Germany, City Leaders Think,” Evening Ledger (June 11, 1915); “Man In The Street Couldn’t See What Made ‘Bill” Bryan So Mad,” Evening Ledger (June 11, 1915); “WilsonBryan Break Started When First Note Went To Berlin,” Evening Ledger (June 12, 1915); “Songs Of Fatherland In Brilliant Festival,” Evening Ledger (June 26, 1915). For William Jennings Bryan’s remark to President Woodrow Wilson, see: Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (New York: Vintage Books, 1957), 202. 32. “J. P. Rogers Attacks Hyphenated Citizens,” Evening Ledger (June 22, 1915); “The Way to Deforeignize Is to Americanize,” Evening Ledger (July 7, 1915).

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33. “A Leash for War Dogs,” Evening Ledger (June 8, 1915); “Letters To The Editor: The Alien’s Dog,” The Inquirer (May 17, 1916); “15 Dogs Sentenced To Die; Alien Owners Arrested,” Evening Public Ledger (March 21, 1918); “The Pennsylvania Dog Law,” The Immigrants in America Review, II:1 ( April, 1916 ), 13–14; “Notes on Laws and Decisions: Game Laws” The Immigrants in America Review, II: 1 (April, 1916) 90–1; “Alien Dog Law,” Annual Report of the Board of Game Commissioners of the State of Pennsylvania for the Year 1918 (Harrisburg, 1919), 16–18: “Pennsylvania’s Dog Law,” The National Humane Review, XII:6 (June, 1924), 109; “Pennsylvania Dog Law Again,” The National Humane Review, XII: 7 (July 1924), 138. 34. “Letters From The People,” Evening Ledger (July 26, 1915); “Does German Control America,” Evening Ledger (July 26, 1915); “The Difficulties Of Hyphenated Citizenship,” Public Ledger (August 22, 1915); “Driving in the Hyphen,” Evening Ledger (September 1, 1915). 35. “German Catholics Prepare A Protest,” Evening Ledger (July 12, 1915). 36. “Pope Tells U.S. Prelates To Support The President,” Evening Ledger (July 12, 1915); “German-Americans Loyal,” Evening Ledger (August 21, 1915); “Secret Service Men Seek Supposed Spies,” Evening Ledger (August 26, 1915); “Roosevelt’s Attack Denounced By Germans,” Evening Ledger (August 30, 1915); “Roosevelt’s Attack Denounced By Germany,” Evening Ledger (August 30, 1915). 37. “Doctor Hexamer Returns From West,” Evening Ledger (September 14, 1915; “Hexamer and Norris Differ On Question Of Billion Dollar Loan,” Evening Ledger (September 15, 1915); “Those That Are For America,” Evening Ledger (October 13, 1915); “Fifth German Conspirator Reveals Leaders’ Plans To Blow Up Munitions Plants,” Evening Ledger (October 26, 1915). For Wilson’s speech to the DAR, see: http:​/​/wwl​​2​.dat​​aform​​at​.co​​m​/HTM​​L​/30​5​​03​.ht​​m. 38. “‘Crush Them Out,’ Cries Wilson In Message To Congress Denouncing The ‘Hyphenated,’” Evening Ledger (December 7, 1915); “Wilson’s ‘Hyphenated’ Not A Rap At German-Americans, Asserts Max Heinrici,” Evening Ledger (December 7, 1915). 39. “Government To Act At Once Against All Foreign Plotters,” Evening Ledger (December 9, 1915); “It Can’t Be Done Too Quickly,” Evening Ledger (December 9, 1915); “‘America First’ Bad Doctrine, Says Rabbi,” Evening Ledger (January 15, 1916). 40. “‘Make Aliens Americans,’ Cry Speakers,” Evening Ledger (January 20, 1916); “‘Come Halfway To Meet Elephant?’ Cries T.R. ‘Yes, And Kill Donkeys,’” Evening Ledger (January 21, 1916); “Become Americans, Says Roosevelt To Hyphens, Or Leave,” The Inquirer (January 21, 1916). 41. “Censors Bar Film of the Kaiser as Bad for City Morals,” Evening Ledger (February 12, 1916). 42. “Wilson’s ‘Hyphenated’ Not A Rap At German-Americans, Asserts Max Heinrici,” Evening Ledger (December 7, 1915); “President Has Faith In GermanAmericans,” Evening Ledger (March 2, 1916). 43. “‘Americans First’ Rule Is Adopted In Packard Shops To Show Men The Company Appreciates Them,” Evening Ledger (February 1, 1916); “Anti-Hyphen

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Idea Seized By Great Companies Here,” Evening Ledger (February 2, 1916); “Two Auto Firms Now In Fight On Hyphen In City,” Evening Ledger (February 3, 1916). 44. “Trampling The Hyphen,” Evening Ledger (February 3, 1916); “War On Hyphens Growing Daily In Magnitude,” Evening Ledger (February 4, 1916). 45. “War On The Hyphen,” Evening Ledger (February 5, 1916); “What’s Doing Tonight,” Evening Ledger (March 6, 1916); “Irish Patriots, At Emmet Birthday Meeting, Pull John Bull’s Coattail,” Evening Ledger (March 10, 1916); “Hyphenated Christian Lenten Sermon Topic,” Evening Ledger (March 24, 1916) . 46. “Congress May Probe Teuton Lobby Charge,” Evening Ledger (March 7, 1916); “German-American Alliance Not ‘Driving Force’ Of Lobby,” Evening Ledger (March 7, 1916); “Hexamer And Bonner Answer Summons,” Evening Ledger (March 22, 1916); “Bonner, Hexamer And Fleming Called Today,” Evening Ledger (March 23, 1916); “Dr. Hexamer Denies Liquor Affiliation,” Evening Ledger (March 25, 1916). For the Charity Fair, see advertisement, “A Heart To Heart Appeal,” Evening Ledger (April 12, 1916). 47. “Roosevelt’s Hat In Ring On America First Issue,” Evening Ledger (April 6, 1916); “Who Is An American?” Public Ledger (March 28, 1916). 48. “Von Bernstoff Cables Home U.S. Means Business,” Evening Ledger (April 20, 1916); “Cincinnati ‘Hyphens’ Send Many Telegrams,” Evening Ledger (April 20, 1916); “Roosevelt Helmet Hurled Into Arena In Letter To Friend,” Evening Ledger (May 12, 1916); “Teddy’s Hat Goes Into Ring In Ford’s City,” Evening Ledger (May 19, 1916). 49. “German-Americans Here Ready To Fight For Stars And Stripes,” Evening Ledger (April 21, 1916). 50. Editorial, Evening Ledger (April 26, 1916). 51. “German Bazaar Ends Tonight After Week Of Great Success,” Evening Ledger (May 1, 1916); “War Relief Bazaar Visited By 300,000; Proceeds $200,000,” Evening Ledger (May 2, 1916). 52. “Hyphenates Support Hughes,” Evening Ledger (May 24, 1916); “Americanism of Germans,” Evening Ledger (May 29, 1916); “Colonel Assails German Alliance As Treason Body,” Evening Ledger (May 31, 1916). 53. “Hyphens Assail Roosevelt For Address In St. Louis,” Evening Ledger (June 1, 1916); 54. “England Plotted To Get U.S. In War, Says Justice,” Evening Ledger (June 5, 1916). 55. “German-Americans Would Favor Hughes, But Never Roosevelt,” Evening Ledger (June 6, 1916); “‘Hyphenated’ War May Be Fought At Convention,” Evening Ledger (June 7, 1916). 56. “‘Americanism First,’ Demand of Roosevelt,” Evening Ledger (June 8, 1916); “Hexamer Challenges Critics Of His Policy,” Evening Ledger (June 20, 1916); “Back Hughes, Teddy Urges Progressives,” Evening Ledger (June 26, 1916). 57. “Americanism Key In Platform For The Republicans,” Evening Ledger (June 6, 1916); “‘Hyphenated’ War May Be Fought At Convention,” Evening Ledger (June 7, 1916); “‘Americanism First,’ Demand Of Roosevelt,” Evening Ledger (June 8, 1916) ; “‘Everybody True To One Flag,’ Says Platform Of Republicans,” Evening

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Ledger (June 8, 1916); “Democrats Will Not Have Cinch, Leaders Admit,” Evening Ledger (June 17, 1916); “Hughes Speech Makes Tariff Dominant Issue,” Evening Ledger (August 1, 1916); “Democratic Attack On Hughes As Ally Of ‘Hyphens’ Denied,” Evening Ledger (October 23, 1916); “Hughes Has Knocked Cries Of ‘Hyphenate’ Into Cocked Hat,” Evening Ledger (October 25, 1916). 58. “Mr. McDevitt ‘Submerges,’ Snubs Philadelphia And ‘Sails’ Seaward,” Evening Ledger (October 10, 1916). John J. McDevitt has yet to be the subject of the study which he, as a humorist and critic, richly deserves.

Chapter 7

The War against Enemy Aliens (1917–1918)

War has been declared. Arrest all enemy aliens in your district. Have arrested seven Germans, four Russians, two Frenchmen, five Italians, two Roumanians and an American. Please say who we’re at war with.1

The foreign born posed a concern for America during the Great War—but none more so than the Germans. Living in a nation at war with its original homeland, they became the center of a debate in which such terms as “hyphenates” and “aliens” disguised their actual reference. With the entry of the United States into the war, the more dangerous “enemy alien” emerged, as concern expanded to espionage, sabotage, and the need for surveillance against threats to American security. For Philadelphia’s Germans, it would also produce the saddest chapter of their long history as residents. THE COMING OF WAR In late January 1917, the Maennerchor Society, redirecting proceeds from its annual charity ball from overseas “war sufferers” to police and fire department pension funds, quietly but unmistakably conveyed a hint of an altered atmosphere. Within a few days, the nation was far more greatly inflamed by the loss of a Baltimore seaman in a lifeboat shelled during a U-Boat attack on a British ship. With mounting tensions, the State Department advised American citizens to leave Germany. Recognizing the growing threat to his community, C. J. Hexamer, president of the National German American Alliance and spokesmen for 2,000,000 German Americans, solicited friends across the country, seeking a solution. He was making his first public statement after Wilson severed diplomatic relations with Germany three days 193

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earlier. Noting that European nations had gone to war without the consent of their people, he hoped that the United States would find its course by a national referendum. If the nation decided in favor of war, German Americans would fight for America as they had in the past, while he would give “my last drop of blood to defend the United States.” Expecting to be widely attacked, he maintained that unless his right to assert himself was respected, the nation had ceased to be a republic. And vehemently denying rumors of promoting German propaganda, he defended the National German American Alliance as the largest peace society in the world.2 Some German Americans emphatically affirmed Hexamer’s promise of loyalty, among them Ralph B. Strassburger, the scion of a family that had settled in Bucks County in the 1700s. A former football star at the U.S. Naval Academy, Strassburger had served as a naval officer before becoming the U.S. Consul General to several Balkan states. Expressing his readiness for military duty in a telegram to Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, Strassburger declared that Pennsylvania’s Germans would support President Wilson and the nation. Against charges that “Americans of German name and extraction” who preferred the cause of their native land against Britain, were not Americans at all, but traitors, he argued that if war came, those of German descent, having fought in all previous conflicts, would again be among America’s staunchest defenders. Strassburger eloquently maintained: “German blood does not breed traitors. There were no Pennsylvania German Tories in 1776 and no Pennsylvania German renegades in 1812, and there will be none in 1917, or at any other time when the call for service comes.” Despite his enthusiastic choice of words, it was less clear whether his pledge had spontaneously originated within him or had been induced by military authorities to promote recruitment.3 By early February, while despair over the prospect of war with their native country was reported to have encouraged a few suicides, most Germans preferred the less fatal solution of becoming American citizens. In New York City, hundreds of them, exceeding all previous records, lined up at public offices to submit their applications for citizenship. And in Philadelphia, where a preponderance of Jews among applicants had shifted to “other nationalities,” some 80 percent of petitions had been filed by Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians over the three-year interval since 1914. With rank-and-file German Americans also flooding the White House with “America First” messages, their leaders sent telegrams assuring Wilson of their support. In Philadelphia, the 70th annual charity ball of the Scheutzen Verein broke with older tradition, with the Academy of Music decorated with American flags, but not the German flag; only American songs played by the orchestra and a crowd of 1,500 standing to sing the Star-Spangled Banner. As one newspaper reported, the hyphen had been “thrown out of the window.”4

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As the National German American Alliance pledged support and financial aid to the government of the United States in the event of war, Hexamer reiterated its promise of manpower: “You will also see the ranks of the United States army filled by German-Americans if the call comes. There are no citizens who are more loyal and patriotic.” Within a few days, Hexamer had forcefully spoken; the Alliance had decisively voted; and many Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians had publicly declared their allegiance to America. It was almost as if they too had thrown their hyphen out of a window.5   But even as they became citizens, German Americans encountered dissension within their own community and hostility from other Americans. With state branches of the Alliance opposing the transfer of funds collected for the German Red Cross to the American Red Cross, Hexamer could not prevent disagreements from disrupting German American unity. Meanwhile, other voices, in contrast to such skeptics as Roosevelt, from pulpit or with pen recognized the loyalty of German Americans. In a Lenten sermon at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, the Reverend Doctor Lyman P. Powell, president

Figure 7.1  Charles J. Hexamer. Source: Bain News Service Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

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Figure 7.2  A German American Alliance—Augustus Goodyear Heaton. Source: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

of Hobart College, expressed his trust. In a letter to the Evening Ledger, an anonymous reader, who signed himself merely as R.H., averred his belief that at war’s end we will probably find out that “our friend is not such a bad fellow after all,” before adding that “lots of Germans in this country have a mother and father in the homeland, as pure and noble as any other folk God’s sun shines upon.” But the newly launched efforts of the U.S. Department of Justice projected a less salubrious image of German Americans.6 With increased apprehension over aliens who might serve their native governments behind the guise of American citizenship, as a result of reported British experience, fears grew of an elaborate system of espionage planning to destroy munitions plants and disrupt shipping, cripple the nation by industrial strikes, foment dissatisfaction of the public, and commit violence. Such concerns demanded the enactment of law that would revoke the citizenship of undesirable foreigners, register all resident aliens, and restrict enemy aliens

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from the vicinity of naval bases and defense industries. German Americans, larger than any other such group, posed a credible threat as the drama of modern warfare within a civilian setting began to unfold.7 As America approached the precipice of war, the same fears brought calls for military and civilian preparedness. In an interview with the local press, Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary warned that German “air raiders” could easily rain death and destruction upon Philadelphia. The famed Arctic explorer called for searchlights, listening devices, and above all else anti-aircraft guns to raise a “curtain of fire” against any attack on the city and urged the recruitment of “airplane chauffeurs” and small boat fishermen who would serve in its defense. With Peary’s message fueling the need for preparedness, about 400 leaders of business, industry, the professions, and civic organizations assembled at City Hall to draw up a comprehensive plan of protection. Mayor Thomas B. Smith, chairman of the meeting, declared, “It is no longer a possibility that we may go to war with Germany. We are in a state of war already.” A reporter claimed a thrill swiftly greeted his words.8 As John B. Mayer, president of the German Society of Pennsylvania and United Singers of Philadelphia, pledged the support of the city’s German Americans, his opening words received little attention. But listeners turned in their seats with recognition of the significance of what he was saying, as he reiterated the increasingly familiar message that Philadelphians of German birth or extraction, like their ancestors who had fought in the Revolutionary War and Civil War, “will do their full duty, and will not be found wanting in loyalty or patriotism.”9 When Mayor Smith called for businesses to close and citizens to assemble in a citywide demonstration of loyalty, German Americans found another opportunity to show their allegiance to America and support for the president. On an unseasonably warm day in late March, German American and Austrian workers, marching as a unit of Midvale Steel, joined John Wanamaker employees, Central High School students, Civil War veterans and other business, patriotic and civic groups in a massive parade to Independence Square, where the speeches of political dignitaries culminated with the pledge of allegiance and singing of the national anthem.10 As German Americans sought to demonstrate their allegiance, institutions and firms, such as the German Hospital and the German American Title and Trust Company, after first denying any contemplated changes, renamed themselves as part of the solution. Before March had ended, the hospital had become Lankenau Hospital, and by the next January, the bank was the Liberty Title and Trust Company. In early April, former Mayor Blankenburg, still affable, well-respected and influential, but even more important, German born, began a highly anticipated message: “The President has spoken, Congress is about to declare a state of war between our country

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and the German Empire.” Calling upon citizens of German birth to show their unflinching loyalty to America, he reminded them, “We sought a home in the New World and found it.” As he continued, Blankenburg colorfully added, “On attaining citizenship, we foreswore fealty to the potentate under whose sceptre we were born, a fealty which we disowned, for we abhorred being slavish subjects of King or Prince when liberty beckoned us from beyond the sea and offered us equality among all men. This, therefore, is our home, the country of our choice; to its honor and defense we pledge our all.” Speaking of their country of origin, with its cherished ties of affection and friendship that bound them to family and home, he expressed his hope for peace. But Blankenburg had saved his strongest words for last: To our President and our common country we send greetings. Our acts will show how we condemn and scorn the “hyphen” so unjustly bestowed upon us as a class. We are not German-Americans, but Americans of German birth or descent, and as Americans we shall live or, if need be, die.

On the following day, April 6, Good Friday on the Christian calendar of 1917, President Wilson announced that Congress had declared war on Germany.11 President Wilson’s declaration of hostilities included 12 regulations on the conduct of “all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of Germany, being males of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized.” It prohibited the possession of arms, ammunition, bombs, or material used in the manufacture of explosives. It forbade the possession, use or operation of aircraft, wireless or signaling device, cipher code, or anything written in such code or invisible writing. It authorized the confiscation of any property that violated such regulations. It barred any approach or presence from one-half mile of any military site or naval vessel as well as factory or workshop where munitions or products for military use were made. It enjoined writing, printing or threatening against the government or Congress, or against measures or policy of the United States, or against the person or property of a person in military, naval, or civil service of the government at any level. It prohibited hostile acts against the United States or giving information, aid, or comfort to its enemies. It banned residence in any area which could become dangerous to public peace and safety. It permitted removal of anyone believed to be aiding or about to aid the enemy or at large a danger to public peace or safety or who had violated or was about to violate any of these regulations. It forbade departure from the United States without official permission. It allowed landing or entrance to the country only with official permission. If necessary to prevent violations of any regulation, it would require registration. In any case of actual or probable

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aid to the enemy, or violation of a regulation, it authorized arrest and confinement in a prison, camp, or other place of detention. While not applying to already naturalized persons, but only to enemy aliens, the proclamation promised that no one who complied with the regulations and other laws would be disturbed by authorities. But despite its qualifications, the new regulations could only evoke a more threatened sense of place for German Americans.12 President Wilson’s Executive Order, issued on the same day to Attorney General Thomas W. Gregory, further regulated the conduct of enemy aliens. It authorized the arrest of any alien whom the attorney general or his agents believed to be subject to arrest, deportation, removal or restraint, as well as to issue any necessary permits or licenses, and to take any other prescribed or authorized action. In his response, Gregory instructed federal attorneys and marshals to give full publicity to the statement that no enemy alien who had not been implicated in any plot against the United States needed to fear being the subject of action by agents of the Department of Justice so long as that person had obeyed the law and refrained from discussing the war. While the message had a seemingly acceptable core, the injunction against discussing the war provided further cause for alarm among reasonable persons. But it was only the beginning of an even more elaborate code of restrictions that would be imposed on enemy aliens.13 Wilson’s proclamation, along with his instructions to the attorney general, opened the way for more restrictive measures, sometimes originating at a local level. The Philadelphia Department of Public Safety, seeking to prevent plots against the government, banned the sale of firearms without written permission from its director. And Anthony Caminetti, U.S. commissioner general of immigration, issued new rules under which no German or other enemy alien would be allowed to leave the United States without receiving permission from an agent of the department. But despite such efforts, fearful citizens could believe that such restrictions were already too late.14 The declaration of war quickly brought the public assertion of loyalty to a “fever pitch.” Responding to a recent proclamation by Mayor Smith asking all citizens to display the flag, diva soprano Geraldine Ferrar stepped out on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House on North Broad Street, between acts of the performance of Tosca, holding an American flag and sang the “Star-Spangled Banner” to an enthusiastic audience. But as a rash of “patriotic” gestures swept the city, Germans, along with being held up in naturalization procedures, were reported as being forced to kiss the flag. And as suspected “spies” were being arrested, local colleges and universities, joining institutions of higher learning across the nation, formed military units whose drilling exercises sought to make students into soldiers. And similarly, women and children began forming “home guard” units, while flag ceremonies became daily events at factories. Meanwhile, college and professional

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sports teams joined into patriotic expression by including flag raisings and military displays as parts of their scheduled events. But in contrast to newspaper stories of men volunteering to fight for the allies, the unanticipated case of Dr. Casper Gregory, a Philadelphia native and University of Pennsylvania graduate, who was reported as being killed in the war while serving in the German army, could also only increase the duress under which local Germans now found themselves.15 The sweeping restrictions on Germans took on an increasingly draconian character when Director of Public Safety William H. Wilson, attempting to implement President Wilson’s recent order prohibiting enemy aliens from having firearms, ammunition or explosives in their possession, directed that all such objects be surrendered to the police within the next twenty-four hours. But armed or disarmed, with the enemy alien now officially defined as a security threat, private initiatives eagerly entered into a widening agenda. Within a few more days, the American League for National Unity, under Charles P. Steinmetz, a German-born refugee and famed electrical inventor, as its chairman, along with a board of distinguished citizens, launched a campaign to eliminate “hyphenism” as a factor in American citizenship as well as to promote Americanization and support the war effort.16 But Philadelphia’s German American leaders, following Blankenburg’s example, quickly reasserted their loyalty. Speaking to the Young Men’s Republican Club, William E. Hexamer, a member of the Select Council from the heavily German Fifteenth Ward, and younger brother of C. J. Hexamer, urged support for President Wilson, along with establishing the club as a recruiting station and a roll of honor posting the names of enlistees. On the following day, the elder Hexamer, declaring that anyone who did not support the government in the present crisis was a traitor, repeated his earlier promise that German Americans, more patriotic and loyal than other citizens, would fill the ranks of the army. Meanwhile, as German Americans in New Jersey also responded, a delegation led by a Newark resident called at the governor’s office to pledge their allegiance to America. In Atlantic City, community members, dismissing reports of being under surveillance or ever having been arrested, planned a mass rally. And in Camden, a public manifesto proclaimed its signers as Americans. With such gestures, local German Americans were emulating their co-nationals across the country.17 Protesting leaders and community demonstrations would not be enough to protect German Americans from widespread suspicions, accusations, and abuse from other citizens whose patriotic fervor had been aroused. In August, a letter writer to a local newspaper alleged that “some people living right in my own neighborhood, of German origin, that have flags, and on all other occasions have displayed them, but at this critical time have refused to do so.” And even more ominously, the perceptive defender of nation

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and neighborhood warned: “Persons refusing to do this will certainly bear watching.”18 But as America entered the war, the editing of history also became required if all threats were to be disarmed. In May, at the urging of Mayor Smith, portraits of Generals Johann De Kalb and Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, German heroes in the American War of Independence, replaced less acceptable images on confiscated ships. While such alterations reflected the cultural paranoia sweeping the nation, nothing could completely ease the fears of a frightened public. And through the summer of 1917, more serious threats, intensified by eager law-enforcement officials, brought a more volatile atmosphere for German Americans. In July, newspapers reported that government officials in New York believed that Germans who were no longer “enemy aliens” but “declarants” who had taken out their first papers for naturalization, had acted as enemy spies by reporting the departure of troopships. Special agent Frank L. Garbarino of the Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowledged that his office had also been keeping prominent German Americans under close watch by monitoring their mail and movements at clubs, offices, and residences. Despite their protestations of loyalty, German Americans had become the first targets of the newly developed surveillance apparatus of the U.S. government.19 With German Americans as prey for federal agents, the loyalty debate was refueled. Although President Wilson, defending a railway clerk in Missouri who lost his job despite being a model citizen, had cast praise on German Americans, the task of defending them fell more fully on C. J. Hexamer’s shoulders. In August, when the National Security League asked 450 German American editors to sign a “loyalty creed,” Hexamer denounced the scheme as an “insult to intelligence,” and its proposed statement of principles as being more a confession of sins by the Kaiser and his government that journalists were expected to condemn in a shared expression of remorse. When the Alliance convened its executive council, Hexamer refused to attend on the grounds that there was no need to discuss such questions if the editors had already proven their loyalty. When asked if he would sign the “creed,” Hexamer replied “No, I won’t.” As evidence of German American fidelity, he offered the many German names to be found on the Liberty Bond subscription list, and declared: “It is nonsensical to send out such questions, and it is also an insult.” Two months later, Hexamer, resigning after 17 years as head of the Alliance, denied that his decision was due to such differences, but to his failing health and the need for younger leadership.20 A convincing demonstration of German American loyalty, however, had to go beyond the protests of leaders by taking more concrete action. Recognizing that need, the German American Insurance Company announced its subscription of one million dollars to the Liberty Loan in October 1917. The German

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Alliance Insurance Company, a partner firm, committed itself for one-half million dollars to the same drive. Each company also declared that it was “a purely American Institution, neither a branch nor a part of any foreign Company whose directors and officers are all American citizens, born in the United States.” In the following year, the first firm, in an even more decisive step, would abandon what had been its corporate identity since its founding in 1872 and rename itself as the Great American Insurance Company. With organizations reshaping themselves in public events, German American singing societies, “composed of German Americans loyal to the United States,” joined performers from the Metropolitan Opera Company in entertaining a huge crowd at a “Song and Flag” festival in Fairmount Park. But in what have been its most significant expression, as German Americans reconstructed their identities within a broader community, the Philadelphia Turngemeinde published its roll of honor, with the names of 78 members who already wore the uniforms of the nation’s armed forces.21 SPIES AND SABOTEURS On April 10, 1917, 4 days after America went to war, a tremendous explosion, followed by 2 smaller ones, at the Eddystone Ammunition Corporation, near Chester, took 133 lives, mostly women and girls, including 55 victims who would never be identified, with hundreds more injured. Early reports of sabotage were supported by a woman who claimed to have found a letter at the Broad Street Station with a disturbing message: “All ready to blow up Eddystone. Send up help.” With public officials and business leaders convinced that a plot had been carried out, special agent Garbarino declared that his office was investigating the possibility. Government authorities in Washington, similarly certain of subversive activity, promised a thorough response. Undaunted by its enormity, the company announced that all departments would be open on the day after it had occurred, with workers expected to report. With defiant protestors hindering entrances, long unemployment job seekers, willing to accept risk, sought to fill vacancies at the plant. And a callous management announced its expectation that enough new workers would be found to take the places of those who had died or been injured. Local newspapers described the search for bodies, along with lists of the dead, injured and missing, photographs of the victims, and human interest stories. The neighboring Baldwin Locomotive Works, Remington Arms Company, and Eddystone Ammunition temporarily closed in order to allow 25,000 workers to participate in a farewell for those who had died. And two days after the disaster, Catholic priests and Protestant ministers came together in an unprecedented ceremony with a vast crowd of mourners under

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a steady rain as 52 victims were buried in a common grave at the Chester Rural Cemetery.22 By late April, as the death toll reached 138, the coroner, unable to find evidence of sabotage, but recommending further investigation, closed his inquest. With a newspaper protesting the unresolved inquiry, company officials insisted that the explosions had been the result of subversive agents. By early May, the Workingmen’s Compensation Board, after paying slightly more than $71,000 in settlement of 44 cases, declared that it had satisfied all claims, except for cases involving foreign workers and unidentified victims, and closed its temporary office in Chester. A few days later, Remington awarded the first contract to produce rifles for the U.S. army, providing jobs for 16,000 workers in day and night shifts. And on May 26, Eddystone Ammunition, opening a new boom in employment for area residents, advertised for “150 able-bodied, steady and reliable men—white or colored—for outside laboring work; steady job; 10 hours daily with overtime.” But neither the closing of further investigation, nor the resumption of normal work routines could fully dispel rumors that had taken on a life of their own. And the Eddystone tragedy, imagined as an act of sabotage in frightened minds, only confirmed apprehensions of the imminent threat of enemy agents.23 In August, as reports of “suspected spies” soared throughout the nation, Otto Greiner, a 32-year-old German army veteran who had immigrated in 1912, allegedly possessing notes that he had made on troop ship movements, was arrested by naval agents at a boarding house on Mifflin Street in South Philadelphia. While neighborhood residents saw “the student,” as possibly demented for habitually wearing dark glasses as he sat for hours staring from a window, his eccentric behavior, having attracted more serious attention, placed him in detention as a possible spy.24 When a series of explosions destroyed five buildings, killed two workers, left two missing, and injured 30 others at the Frankford Arsenal, not far from heavily concentrated German enclaves, on an early morning in September, it was viewed from the beginning to have been the result of a workplace accident. Workers who had witnessed the moment could convincingly describe the mishandling of a tray of detonators in a work area where volatile powder was also stored as the precipitating cause. And while the tremendous blast that shook surrounding streets and threw sleeping residents from their beds garnered front-page coverage, almost as much attention on the same day was paid to Congressional concerns over faulty ammunition being manufactured at the plant. And when the coroner arrived on the scene, he would declare “It was just an accident, pure and simple.” Despite such assurances, disquieted residents, well aware of sabotage attributed to enemy agents in other parts of the nation, remained wary of the possibility that it had found its way to their neighborhood.25

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And other events would keep German Americans under suspicion. In October, William J. Dunbar, a U.S. Navy ensign from Pottstown, Pennsylvania, perhaps the same person who had taught French at the exclusive Hill School, now serving as commander of a submarine chaser, was charged with being a German spy in New York City. According to one account, men under his command who had seen him frequently leave the vessel dressed in civilian clothing were responsible for his arrest. Later in the same month, some 2,000 Germans, banned from shipyard zones on the Brooklyn, Long Island and Staten Island waterfronts, would lose their jobs. While some 28,000 enemy aliens remained under surveillance in greater New York, they were not expected to draw further action unless they committed suspicious acts. But on the same day as the announcement of the dismissal of the shipyard workers, an event in Baltimore brought exactly that speculation.26 Any unexpected explosion, fire or accident, especially one with human casualties, could bring charges of possible sabotage by enemy agents that clouded efforts of German Americans to claim their place as loyal citizens. While accusations had sometimes been too easily made, other allegations carried more plausibility. In late October, when a tremendous fire destroyed two Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company piers in Baltimore, with the loss of a large supply of grain and munitions with an estimated value of $5,000,000, the Department of Justice quickly declared that deliberate action by German agents had caused the disaster. In the wide attention given by newspapers across the nation, an almost complete consensus, calling for a better system of security, declared that America could no longer tolerate any form of pro-German opinion. While German culpability in the incident in Baltimore would dissipate with the passage of time, it was firmly implanted, at the moment, as an instance of German sabotage.27 With efforts by enemy agents ostensibly growing, the Evening Ledger, under an alluring headline, “Kaiser’s Agents Infest America,” reported that the German spy system had spread into every town and city of the nation. Meanwhile, civilian and military officials, “alive to the gravity of the situation” warned that America “complacently reposes upon dynamite,” a message only slightly defused by the promise that restrictions could be “tightened with a jerk.” A few days later, authorities in New York, announcing more measures to deal with the “enemy alien menace,” claimed that upward of 6,000 Germans had committed perjury in seeking to enter forbidden zones. And in Philadelphia, public officials and private citizens remained preoccupied with the need for greater protection against possible action by enemy agents. Local authorities, seeking to safeguard vulnerable sites, issued an order calling for silence at the Navy Yard and other shipbuilding facilities. Signs posted in public places, warning “Enemy ears are everywhere,” cautioned military and naval personnel and civilian maritime workers against disclosing information.

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And fearful of what had occurred elsewhere, the Chamber of Commerce, endorsing further measures to combat subversive activity, asked the government to take over properties with military value or where defense work was being conducted. Meanwhile, the New York Tribune, reporting “The Augmenting, Sinister Menace of Enemy Aliens,” offered a list of 57 incidents of alleged German sabotage between August 1914 and November 1917. Despite the lack of evidence, such assertions, including some that would later be dismissed, cast a long shadow over German Americans. But with Wilson, prompted by recent fires and explosions in munitions plants and dock areas, now preparing stricter regulations, particularly against anticipated espionage activities, Germans Americans would face only further restriction.28 RESTRICTION, REGISTRATION, AND INTERNMENT From the late days of 1917 and well into the next year, incidents of dubious validity were placed at the feet of German responsibility. In early November, a sailor whose hand was slashed in a fight on Broad Street claimed that his assailant’s “German accent” and questions about the Navy Yard made him a German spy. In the next month, a German woman, charged with disorderly conduct, was also accused of disloyalty for spitting upon a service flag in a dispute among neighbors on Van Hook Street in Camden. Witnesses further alleged that the defendant had also expressed the hope that the other woman’s soldier son would be killed in battle by the Germans. In February 1918, state policemen, arresting a suspect, revived the contention that the “Eddystone Horror” of the past April had been the work of a German plot. And in March, when unexplained tremors swept a wide path over the city, rumors quickly spread that “pro-Germans” had blown up the Hog Island shipyard on the banks of the Delaware River.29 Such instances fluctuated from personal disputes inflated by more serious accusations to more formidable threats that held the potential to disrupt life at a far more comprehensive level. In March 1918, the case of a “pro-German policeman,” involving remarks made in a grocery store, brought before the Police Trial Board, reflected much of the more general situation. According to the principal witness for the prosecution, George S. Reissler, a Frankford district patrolman, had stated that the United States was at war merely to aid the British, Germany was the only cultured nation in the world, and the Germans would soon give America good cause to change its mind. Perhaps even more provocatively, the defendant was also alleged to have declared that he would rather shoot himself and his children in City Hall courtyard than take up arms against his native country. While insisting that the matter was nothing more than a feud between families, Reissler admitted to describing a

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“politicians’ war” in which the sons of local officials would not have to serve. And contending to be not pro-German, but someone whose family had been driven out of Germany, he maintained, “I am willing to don a uniform right this minute and fight for the American flag.”30 With an argument already made by German American leaders and other opponents of American policy, Reissler was testing the limits of free speech during wartime. While more public critics would draw greater attention from the press, the dispute over choosing sides remained alive. If claims were greatly exaggerated or distorted the German American presence, America, now at war, could not easily dismiss its own insecurity and vulnerability. And neither could President Wilson ignore the need for action. President Wilson’s expanded measures, announced in late November 1917, required all enemy aliens to carry newly issued registration cards, without which they would be subject to arrest, and banned them from areas near ships engaged in foreign or domestic trade, as well as facilities serving such vessels; all boats except public ferries within three miles of shore lines; and all means of air travel. It authorized the attorney general to issue further orders of exclusion from other areas of warehouses, elevators, and railroad facilities. The registration provision also compelled enemy aliens to regularly report their presence to local, state, or federal authorities and forbade any change in their employment without prior permission from the same agencies.31 On the day following the announcement of new restrictions, while the paucity of arrests gave an early impression that the program had stalled, enforcement had already begun. In New York City, squads of soldiers apprehended about 200 men in saloons, waterfront rooming houses and on the streets, loading them onto boats for Ellis Island before relocation to an internment camp in the South. Having not been involved, city police were unable to provide answers to relatives and friends inquiring about them. But describing a fire on an army transport ship at a Hoboken pier, newspaper coverage implied that it was an act of sabotage by the men who had been taken into custody. On the next day, Secretary of War Baker was reportedly planning a new branch of military service, 100,000 men strong, to guard war plants as another means to “stamp out the destruction of property . . . by enemy aliens.” Ropes would be used to bar enemy aliens from areas near the waterfront or occupied by war-related factories and storage facilities being watched by National Guard units. In Philadelphia, where shipbuilding yards and munitions factories provided easy targets, similar directives, relying on the dubious protection of ropes or guardsmen deemed unfit for military service, were quickly implemented. With the earlier decree having been too lenient, a newspaper decried the new order for not coming sooner: “Our patience has been sorely tried by munitions explosions, incendiary fires, anti-draft agitation, transmission of military information to Berlin and

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other activities of espionage.” But believed to have already reduced potential dangers, it could not be seen as too drastic: “Unremittingly severity is the only proper treatment for Prussianism in this country. . . . at last we have taken adequate means to protect the country from the quietly disloyal and the actively hostile.” With every citizen expected to act as a voluntary policeman by reporting “suspicious happenings or suspected persons” to federal authorities, Philadelphia had been put on alert.32 The new restrictions, broadly interpreted and widely applied, disrupted the lives of aliens who had never held any intention of harming a nation to which they had come, as so many other immigrants, in search of what had been denied in their homeland. But their timing became, with the outset of the war, unexpectedly unfortunate. In New York City, some 1,500 men, victims of suspicion, were abruptly ordered by authorities to leave their jobs and housing in waterfront zones of the Hudson and East Rivers. Restraint was not limited to enemy aliens as the Justice Department sought the dismissal of anyone holding pro-German or anti-war sentiments from employment in Washington and other major cities. In Philadelphia, the ruling triumvirate of homeland security, U.S. District Attorney Francis Fisher Kane, U.S. Marshal Frank J. Noonan, and special agent Garbarino, without further instructions from Washington, announced their own plans to protect a city by automobile and motorboat patrols of the waterfront and the deployment of Home Guard units in areas surrounding factory zones.33 Despite efforts by authorities, the new procedures proved to be difficult to implement. District Attorney Kane, after inquiries from Germans on how they were to obey the law, stated that such matters would be decided by local officials, while a section of the city was being sought where dislodged aliens, without undue hardship, would be able to find housing. But Kane was far less conciliatory in seeking a court decision that would prohibit the granting of citizenship to any German, regardless of when a petitioner’s final papers had been filed, for the duration of the war. If granted, the judgment would also revoke the naturalization of some 100 Germans, who had already secured citizenship, and the applications of 300 more who had obtained first papers since the United States had entered the war. And with further clarification, the original restriction that forbade aliens from approaching within 100 yards of any factory engaged in war-related work was supplemented by a ban of similar distance from the waterfront, without indicating who would guard the new boundaries. Meanwhile, special agent Garbarino, denying rumors that violators would be “shot on sight,” declared that they would only be arrested and held until the war ended. And as the Justice Department tried to unravel the legal status of children of alien parents who were in various stages of the naturalization process, legal and administrative issues became even more tangled.34

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If the situation had become difficult for officials charged with administering procedures, it was more discouraging for aliens subject to them. In late November, Germans in New York, either not understanding the ban or choosing to defy it, began to be arrested at places of work on the waterfront. In Philadelphia, matters appeared to be even more broadly chaotic. Justice Department agents, making a house-to-house sweep of neighborhoods near the Schuylkill and Frankford arsenals forced several hundred German Americans to search for new housing outside of restricted areas. With petitions for exemption rejected by an Appeals Board, five disappointed Germans, despite not being American citizens, found themselves facing induction for military service. Other Germans were dismissed by government order from employment at the Race Street pier and on a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company tugboat at the North Pier on Delaware Avenue. When a man with first papers for naturalization already secured, who had lost both his job and home sought advice, U.S. Marshal Noonan assured him that he need not worry. Within another day, nearly 50 other displaced Germans besieged the marshal’s office in the Federal Building seeking to learn what areas of the city were open to them. As authorities began to recognize their plight, one case involved the manager of a large shipping company, who had not resided in the United States long enough to become a citizen, but whose responsibilities required him to inspect incoming vessels at a Front Street pier. For government officials, the moment posed difficult questions, but for aliens, it brought severe hardships, as what they had once believed to be the land of opportunity became a place of suspicion and restriction.35 But even trivial “offenses” risked serious repercussions. In Philadelphia, the police, aided by vigilant citizens, arrested three “German propagandists,” after another patron claimed to have overheard them making “treasonable utterances” in a Girard Avenue saloon. After hearing charges, an unsympathetic judge could state, “If I had my way all men like you would be thrown into the river,” despite being unable to find them guilty of any crime. And a special agent of the Department of Justice, after severely reprimanding them, warned the men to be more careful in the future. The case also showed that innocent men could be abused by the court as well as by government agents, and that German Americans had to be careful of their behavior in public places. And even when charges could not be confirmed by actual evidence, German Americans had fallen into a widening abyss of recrimination.36 In late November, after inspecting vulnerable areas, U.S. Attorney Kane reiterated the necessity of relocating alien residents, partly to protect them from being blamed if sabotage did occur. But along with the hardships incurred in moving them, he acknowledged that many Germans were incapable of committing such acts. In early December, with as many as 250 to 400 enemy aliens besieging his office daily, Marshal Noonan proposed a census as

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a means of assisting them. With work permits being recalled for reexamination to determine whether they were held by the same person whose name and picture appeared on them, it was evident that more efficient procedures had to be found. Special Agent Garbarino, the third principal protector of local security, called attention to swindlers misrepresenting themselves as government officers in order to obtain money from fraudulent permits granting access to restricted zones. While warning aliens to be wary of such schemes, Garbarino’s men eagerly sought to make more arrests. Meanwhile, the overall agenda, ostensibly offering greater protection for enemy aliens, provided more for their registration and control, enabling authorities to determine who they were, where they were, and what they would be allowed to do.37 Despite claims of success, blunders marred the efforts of agents. In early December, Garbarino’s men arrested William Lepkowski, employed at the Frankford Arsenal until the previous June, for his involvement in an alleged “plot” to produce defective ammunition for troops in France. When questioned by authorities, he named another worker as having been involved. With Garbarino anticipating more arrests, Kane announced that the importance of the case required him to take over its prosecution. But its details revealed something other than the suspected plot. Lepkowski a native of Posen, a province in partitioned Poland belonging to Germany, had migrated to the United States in 1885, and been naturalized as an American citizen after renouncing “absolutely and forever all allegiance and fidelity” to Emperor Wilhelm II in 1913. At his arrest, Lepkowski, 47 years old, lived with his wife and four children in a Polish neighborhood in the Bridesburg section of the city. His family claimed that Lepkowski, despite being in the United States for over 30 years, could not speak English. Although identified as a “naturalized German,” he protested at his arraignment that he had no allegiance to Germany, but was of Polish blood and sympathy. With the arrest of the other worker, Charles Sholla, both men insisted that their motivation had more to do with personal earnings than with politics. By not wrapping shells in paper intended to protect them from moisture, but unaware that it would spoil ammunition, they had increased their output as piece workers. As opportunists rather than saboteurs, Lepkowski and Sholla had only sought to make more money. By the end of the year, although still being reported in newspapers, the case had been dismissed by authorities in Philadelphia.38 The fear of harm by aliens had also spread to loftier chambers of higher culture. With the war in its early months, Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was forced to defend himself and his musicians against anonymous critics who had objected to the performance of Tchaikowsky’s “Marche Slave,” with its strains of the Tsarist national anthem in November 1914. Having protected his musicians from military service in their native lands, Stokowski left selection of pieces for any program

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to the consensus of orchestra members whose preferences, resting more on artistic merit than political values, reflected the conviction that “good music knows no wars.” But for an ensemble with an estimated 75 percent of German or Austrian descent, it would prove to be risky and controversial. Three years later, with the music world politicized by the war, the local scene became further complicated by the annual visit of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, led by German-born maestro Karl Muck, who had been maligned for his alleged refusal to play the Star Spangled Banner at recent concerts. In early November, the controversy surfaced at a U.S. Army band concert in Baltimore, when Edwin Warfield, former governor of Maryland, demanded that Muck be sent to an internment camp, and an even angrier patron called for a firing squad before a wildly cheering audience. After the national anthem was sung, when Warfield asked for a reaction to a possible visit by Muck, another man cried out “This isn’t Philadelphia,” to which the politician loudly replied “Thank God, no!” And while Pittsburgh officials chose to prohibit “German music,” Stokowski remained opposed to any ban on German composers. A member of the orchestra’s board of directors added that if such works were eliminated, only a minor quantity of comparable music would be left, leaving the future of the orchestra uncertain. What happened in Baltimore and Pittsburgh had unavoidable implications for Philadelphia. And in another month, with Stokowski no longer able to provide protection, eight German musicians were dismissed from the Philadelphia Orchestra.39 With growing belief that stronger measures were needed to protect America, attention shifted to other threats. In early December, the U.S. Post Office launched an ambitious program that allowed inspectors, purportedly trained as “linguists,” to open, read, and censor mail addressed to foreign destinations, whether intended for military or civilian recipients. Meanwhile, with an imminent declaration of war against the Austro Hungarian Empire, its immigrants, widely employed in coal mines, steel mills, iron ore ranges and other industries, posed another danger. In Philadelphia, an estimated 50,000 residents with origins in the Hapsburg domain suddenly became enemy aliens. With some of them already drafted by the U.S. Army, it also required solving the plight of an inductee who had been previously called to arms by Austria, captured by the French, before he escaped and migrated to America where his application for citizenship not only left him eligible for military service but with the prospect of going to war against two brothers in his former army. Like similar cases, he seemed destined to be either held as an enemy alien or as a prisoner of war. With about 100 Austrians already weeded out, and as many as 200 more in training at Camp Meade, such matters waited to be resolved.40 With the declaration of war against Austro Hungary on December 4, the program on the home front expanded with more ambitious efforts to

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conduct it. The posting of large placards, with warnings written in English and German advising aliens against entering prohibited areas, would somehow persuade saboteurs against inflicting damage. With images of Noonan affixing the first poster gaining front-page space of local newspapers, press coverage had become another instrument in the campaign against dangerous aliens.41  The consequences of government policy and procedure varied from Philadelphia to other urban centers. With its entire population of Germans living in a prohibited zone under the threat of being arrested and interned, an exodus began in Washington DC Of the 1,200 who left the nation’s capital, most of them relocated to Baltimore, with the rest in nearby towns of Maryland and Virginia. Other aliens faced far lesser inconveniences. In Philadelphia, when some 500 aliens crowded the Federal District court, many applicants seeking citizenship had more personal than political motives. A 54-year-old Canadian born woman, brought to the city as an infant, who had long taught in the public schools, mistakenly believed that she already was an American citizen, until the Board of Education imposed a policy that required all teachers to be citizens. Notified of her imminent dismissal, she immediately applied for naturalization, which was granted. But her case showed that along with open hostility toward enemy aliens, an unreceptive atmosphere had diminished space for other foreign-born residents as well.42 In December, U.S. Attorney General Gregory, in his annual message, claimed 31 important cases had been prosecuted, with 63 other aliens, posing a threat if allowed to remain at large, arrested since the declaration of war. From further efforts that began in August 1914, the Justice Department, amassing a large body of classified information, had prepared a list of Germans and German sympathizers that would facilitate further arrests. In

Figure 7.3  Warning Sign—Forbidding Enemy Aliens. Source: Evening Public Ledger (December 7, 1917).

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the earliest phase of operations, some 295 suspects had been apprehended by June 30, 1917; and by October 30, 1917, that number had increased to 895. In January 1918, Major General Enoch Crowder, the Provost Marshal of the Selective Service System, reported that 279,431 enemy aliens had registered for the draft, with 104,672 summoned, and 14,461 called up for military service. Some 928 inductees were Germans, with the rest being either Austrian or Hungarian. With immigrants from other nations included, a total of 76,546 aliens had been accepted. Expecting aliens to seek discharges on the grounds that foreign citizenship made them ineligible for conscription, the War Department indicated its intention to nullify such exemptions. The foreign born thus faced the choice of either being arrested and interned as dangerous aliens or inducted as recruits into military service.43 In Pennsylvania, aliens, however, gained exemptions at a surprising rate. Out of the 815,973 who registered for the draft, local boards called 302,541 of them, and certified 101,626 for military service. Of the 176,654 foreignborn registrants, some 98,204 were natives of allied nations, 5,568 others owed allegiance to neutral countries, 3,002 were enemy subjects, and 69,280 belonged to other nations allied with Germany, largely Austro Hungary and not “enemy aliens” at the time of registration. Of the 68,389 aliens who sought to be excused from military service, 14,253 had been denied, with the remaining 54,136 presumably granted exemptions. But accusations against aliens of reaping the benefits of living in America while unwilling to serve the country in its time of need now provoked further controversy.44 The growing fears of Americans, encouraged by newspaper reports, made almost any occasion a threatening event. If idle conversation in a neighborhood saloon could elicit charges of treason, belief, and emotion threatened to bring further harm. Along with charges that interned German ship crews were being given high wages and excessive food rations by the U.S. government, the treatment of internees poured further fuel on the fire. When Attorney General Gregory informed Congress that arrested persons must be confined in places used for federal prisoners in local districts, before being transferred to detention camps, immigration stations, or military reservations, forts, and camps, a newspaper saw it as a call for “prison at hard labor” to replace an “internment camp and a nice soft berth.” Another newspaper reported an Austrian-born employee of the Cramp Shipbuilding Company as being “under circumstances surrounded by the deepest mystery,” after a patrolman found him standing at a street corner on an early hour of the morning, carrying a warm pistol with two of four shells recently fired, along with a special officer’s badge and “a wicked-looking knife with a blade six inches long.” Although insufficient to convict the hapless suspect, his arrest alarmed readers of the dangers of aliens in their midst. And newspaper coverage could hint that a foreign suspect must have been involved by gratuitous details of a

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devastating fire of a chemical plant located “on the edge of the zone barred to enemy aliens.” Rumors without evidence, or outright dishonesty, had become parts of a climate of suspicion of an anxious public under the dual stress of being at war and infiltrated by enemy agents.45 With alarming news echoing before the public, an official of the Justice Department reported that 12 dangerous Germans, “the last of the horde which sought by sabotage and propaganda to wage war on United States soil,” remained at large in early 1918. Perhaps to calm nervous citizens in Philadelphia and elsewhere, he added that the plotters were being shadowed by the best-trained agents and permitted to entertain a false sense of security so that the government, by learning more about their motives and co-conspirators, would soon be able to make arrests. In late January, a mildly contemptuous newspaper item, featuring a mock enemy alien document with photograph and fingerprints, identified William Hohenzollern, or “Kaiser Bill,” as a Philadelphia resident. But federal and local authorities brought more serious news that a census of enemy alien women “as a precautionary step in the alien menace” was receiving “energetic attention” from Secret Service and Department of Justice agents. Claiming to have discovered a plot to destroy wharves, docks, grain elevators and ferries along the East Coast, authorities, calling for greater vigilance in barred zones and waterfront areas, now feared women as potential spies and saboteurs.46 In early February, Attorney General Gregory launched an attempt to register enemy aliens throughout the nation. In Philadelphia, under a newspaper heading advising “Germans Should Read This,” it required each male German, fourteen years of age or older, who was not fully naturalized as an American citizen, to report to the police station in his district of residence, present four photographs of himself and be fingerprinted by specially deputized registrars. (Somewhat anomalously in view of the recently announced plan for a census of women, the given statutory definition excused them from the registration.) About 6,000 men, out of a total 10,000 males of all ages, were expected to comply with the directive. When registration began at 8:00 a.m. on February 4, among five men already waiting at the 65th and Woodland Avenue police station in West Philadelphia, four of them wore Liberty Bond buttons and three others Red Cross buttons that read “A heart and a dollar are all you need.” Within an hour, four more men arrived. Another man, “who did not in the least look like a German,” reportedly asked a police lieutenant to kick him off the front steps and into the snow after he was registered. When asked why, he sadly answered: “Because I’m ashamed of myself. I’ve lived here for years and no one imagines that I am not an American citizen. But, as a matter of fact, I never took out citizenship papers. I’m so ashamed of myself I don’t want to look anybody in the face.” When he finished his registration, he again asked to be kicked into the snow, adding that it would do him good.

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Another registrant, 70 years old, with a Liberty Bond button in his lapel, cried as he entered the police station, escorted by his already naturalized son. Not objecting to being required to register, but after already obtaining his first naturalization papers, he was disconsolate over being identified as an “enemy” alien. As applicants lined up at the 42 police stations of the city, one-quarter of the estimated population of Germans registered on the first day. Depicted as “woebegone men,” it could also be said: “With scarcely an exception they gave the impression of being loyal Americans who were ‘sore’ at the turn of fate which had kept them from being fully naturalized before the war broke out.”47 On the same day as the enemy alien registration began, about 200 Germans, Austrians and Italians, seeking to become American citizens, converged on the Federal Building, to file Declarations of Intention in such an unexpectedly large number that police had to be called out to maintain order. But for Germans and Austrians, only first papers would be issued, with final naturalization delayed until the end of the war. Although failing to find an immediate avenue to citizenship that would enable them to avoid the more onerous registration as enemy aliens, their efforts carried them away from being “woebegone men” and closer to becoming more fully American.48 Although calling for treatment “in a courteous and friendly manner,” and a penalty that left any reluctant alien “liable to restraint, imprisonment and detention for the duration of the war,” the registration plan faltered. After early reports exaggerated its results, the large numbers of aliens who had failed to comply required that registration be extended by three more days. Despite police claims to know the identities of “slackers” from the recent canvas of forbidden zones, facilitating criminal prosecutions if necessary, less than 300 Germans would take advantage of the extension. And across the river in Camden, with the entire police force prepared to deal with an anticipated rush of applicants, not even one had appeared by late morning. With some 6,481 Germans first reported as having complied, the final total fell far short of expectations in Philadelphia. While attributed mainly to ignorance of the law or uncertainty of nationality, the U.S. Marshal was expected to prosecute negligent aliens. Within a few more days, as registration cards became available, the tally of alien German men had reached 7,841. A deaf and blind elderly man who had to be escorted to his registration site conveyed the more human side of an experience that transcended its numbers. Or perhaps even more by a frightened worker who, being informed by his employer that he had to register, had bolted from a sleigh and an uncertain fate—before being brought under restraint to the police station in suburban Abington, where he could only ask “Ist das alles?”49 But other aliens willing to register were now turning against co-nationals who had chosen not to do so. When one German reported another man to

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the police for failing to comply with the registration order, a journalist could bray: “Here is an alien enemy who is an alien friend.” As the accused man was taken into custody, the police commended the alien who had identified him. Alongside of “patriotic” registrants willing to identify less responsive ones, many Americans remained apprehensive. But for Germans, anguish also easily turned inward. When a 62-year-old German farmhand was found hanging from a rafter in a shed at his workplace in the Krewstown section of Philadelphia, it was reported that, despite having registered, he had worried over the war and his own status as an enemy alien. While not verified, it offered a plausible explanation for his tragic ending.50 The fear of treason, sedition, and sabotage remained dangers often stoked by authorities. In late February, special agent Garbarino, now bringing threats to public attention almost daily, claimed to have discovered bomb plots, propaganda activity, and “other German tricks” being carried out by nativeborn Americans with “Huns higher up” covertly providing money and ideas. And while “many Teutons and pro-German workers” had been interned, the government had been lenient with native-born collaborators, with the real targets being Germans lurking behind them. In a speech on “Pro-Germanism,” Garbarino claimed that a German network of spies had been active for more than 40 years in every country in the world. Urging his audience to reveal the identity of anyone who made pro-German or disloyal remarks, he urged, “no matter if he may be your friend, report him to me and we will take care of him.” But it would not be necessary to intern all enemy aliens, because “We are not a country of barbarians.” While Garbarino’s argument would not turn America into a police state, it was smothering empathy, while promoting drastic remedies in disposing of the enemy alien. In an editorial that began with a chilling premise, “The inconvenience of having a Constitution must sometimes be endured even when the nation is at war,” the Evening Public Ledger, commenting on proposals to restrict the rights of enemy aliens, asked: “Why not try internment?” It was a hypothetical probe that pushed restriction even further than Garbarino had.51 By March, with officials preoccupied with restricting the movement of aliens, Federal Marshal Noonan announced new regulations that required an alien German to immediately report any change in residence within a registration district or to obtain a permit for any move to a new district. As with earlier restrictions, violation made the person liable to penalties that included arrest and detention for the remainder of the war. About a week later, a furlough plan was moving enemy aliens known not to be dangerous from an internment camp in Gloucester City to farms in South Jersey and factories in urban areas, with employers guaranteeing supervision and safekeeping until the end of the war or return to government custody. Numbering not more than 100, and confined for expressing their loyalty to the Kaiser or

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other pro-German remarks, these workers, placed in near peonage, were callously described: “As a rule, they are ignorant aliens, but suitable for manual labor.”52 The wider-ranging provisions of the Sedition Act, signed by President Wilson in mid-May, amending the Espionage Act of 1917, prohibited reports or statements that interfered with the operation of military or naval forces; promoted the success of its enemies; incited disloyalty, insubordination, mutiny, or refusal of duty; obstructed recruitment or enlistment into the armed services; spoke or wrote against the government; displayed the flag of another country; encouraged curtailment of production; abetted anything forbidden by the act; supported any enemy country; or opposed the cause of the United States. Anyone convicted under the act would be subject to a fine of not more than $10,000 or a jail term of up to ten years or both penalties and denied the privilege of mail delivery. Intended to prevent dissent that might obstruct the recently passed Selective Service Bill, nearly 2,000 persons would be arrested and about 1,000 convicted under its broadly stated terms, before its repeal in December 1920. Its most notable victim was Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate for the presidency, after a stirring campaign speech in Canton, Ohio. The Sedition Act would be the third of three bills that President Wilson sent to Congress in an effort to strengthen government powers against internal enemies. The earlier War Materials Destruction Act (also known as the Sabotage Act), passed by Congress and signed by the president in April, penalized acts of sabotage that involved the destruction of war-related materials. Beyond these major acts, the Woman Spy Bill, to which Wilson attached a proclamation banning alien enemy women from Washington, DC and other zones already prohibited to men, and requiring their registration, had also been passed.53 The calls for more aggressive action reached military recruitment, when registration for the Selective Service fell short of expectations and demands rose for treaties that would allow the conscription of previously excused immigrants from allied and neutral nations. Although the House of Representatives had passed legislation providing for the deportation of aliens who failed to report for registration, the Senate had rejected the bill. As a result of diplomatic and legislative failure, many aliens remained immune from any military obligation. An angry editorial noted: “If they will not fight in the armies of their own countries we cannot make them fight for their own countries in our armies.” If the State Department did not find some way to get alien slackers into military duty, Americans, wanting to know why, were determined that the nation not become “an asylum for slackers of any race.”54 By June, with some 42 police stations ready to register German women as enemy aliens, an expanded program restricting civilian aliens had begun in Philadelphia. During the next week, a steady stream of females over the

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age of 14 years of German birth or married to subjects of Germany reported for registration. Each one was expected to bring three copies of a photograph of herself and to be fingerprinted. Somewhat surprisingly, Austrian and Hungarian women were not required to register. Under the supervision of Federal Marshal Noonan, agents of the Justice Department carried out the operation, while Acting Police Superintendent, William B. Mills served as chief registrar, assisted by a police lieutenant in each district. Women who did not appear would be charged with a misdemeanor. Department of Justice officials soon announced that women who had not registered would be granted further time to do so, but be subject to arrest and internment if they were suspected of contributing to enemy propaganda. In the confusion created by regulations, German and Austrian women discovered that if they had previously filed their first papers for naturalization, they would not only be denied the opportunity to obtain their final papers but be left without any country. Among more troublesome cases, a woman, who had married the American-born son of an alien German, found herself with a husband, staunchly patriotic to America and subject to the draft, while she, the daughter of a long line of Americans, was expected to register as an enemy alien.55 Beyond the difficulties of registration, the restriction of enemy aliens proved to be another overwhelming task. Varying interpretations of personal circumstances led to decisions that were not only inconsistent from jurisdiction to another, but often unjustified and excessive. In Boston, where Maestro Muck had earlier been arrested and dispatched into internment, the trustees of the symphony orchestra announced that his successor, violinist Ernst Schmidt, was among eighteen Germans who would be dismissed from employment. In other places, authorities could only offer their rationalizations for arbitrary decisions. When an alien was discovered to have been driving without a proper permit, the Motor Vehicle Commissioner declared, “I don’t intend that any enemy alien shall get a license to drive in New Jersey, especially a man who has been in this country for eleven years, has earned his livelihood here and then comes into this state and violates the law. There are enough Americans to drive cars, even after we have recruited an army big enough for all purposes on the other side.” Along with lesser tragedies, enemy aliens were learning that even driving a car, like owning a dog, was another privilege that was too risky to security as long as the “land of opportunity” was at war.56 By late June, the government reported some 5,000 Germans being held as prisoners of war, dangerous or undesirable enemy aliens, and “commercial prisoners.” While it had been believed that a much larger number were in internment camps, not more 1,500 actually were in such facilities. To endure their confinement, one contingent had built a picturesque village reminiscent of their origins at a camp in Hot Springs, North Carolina. While thousands

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of other Germans and Austrians had been investigated, but permitted to remain outside of custody under some form of surveillance or with probation and restriction of their movements, further clarification of their status was expected.57 With acute concern over enemy aliens, mundane incidents continued to provoke alarm. When a 42-year-old Austrian was caught scanning the landscape with “night glasses” in Fairmount Park, police found his actions sufficient to warrant arrest before remanding him to the custody of Department of Justice agents in late July. When it was discovered that he was an unregistered alien, his innocence deteriorated further. And a front-page headline could declare that he had been arrested as a “spy suspect.” Similarly, criminal misdeeds were easily transformed into political acts. When a young man from Scranton was charged with assault and carrying concealed weapons in North Philadelphia, a newspaper identified him as an enemy alien. Sentenced to two years of imprisonment, the judge sharply admonished him: “American citizens are not permitted to carry deadly weapons and surely no court can deal leniently with a dangerous enemy alien who dares to arm himself with a loaded revolver.” His admission that he had lived in the United States for two decades without being naturalized prompted a further judicial rebuke: “He has enjoyed the liberties and protection of America for twenty years and did not think enough of his land of choice to become a citizen.” While the offender had illegally possessed and fired a weapon at another man after arguing over a woman, the court had focused on its political aspects. And the newspaper that reported his conviction referred to the offender in another headline as a “German Gun Toter.” Even a star gazer or jealous lover, if he were also an alien, was now easily perceived as a possible spy or saboteur.58 But more dangerous Germans lurked in the offices of big business. When Karl Feldman, former president of the Berlin Aniline Works, was arrested, he was among three Germans described by the press as being “a real menace to the country.” Feldman, prospering as a businessman, lived at a fashionable location on Walnut Street near South Sixteenth Street, where he hosted prominent Philadelphians. He resigned from the exclusive Racquet Club after other members objected to his pro-German remarks in conversations. With his personal assets and business confiscated by the Alien Property Custodian, Department of Justice agents regarded him as most capable of inflicting harm among several arrested men because of his education and knowledge. Authorities, claiming to have investigated Feldman, were convinced that, while hiding behind commercial interests, he had been actively engaged on Germany’s behalf. While charges remained unsubstantiated, the Justice Department would intern Feldman at Fort Oglethorpe.59 By April 1918, federal policy clarified what awaited Germans who were deemed to be dangerous. In New York City, some 21 “distinguished secret

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German agents,” charged with having plotted against the United States, boarded special coaches of the regular Southern Express on their way to confinement at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Among them were a German nobleman, newspaper editor; two former members of the U.S. Army, both wearing their uniforms, including one who had served as an interpreter under General John J. Pershing in France; a chemist who was a close friend of Dr. Muck, the famed conductor; and a prominent statistician. In another day, Muck himself was among more internees bound for the same destination. The newcomers were joining earlier detainees who had already arrived as internment superseded the previous procedure of “arrest and then parole.” With demands that internees not be held in comfort but in some type of punitive labor, government officials, unsure of what international law would allow, searched for an appropriate solution. While prisoners of war could be compelled to perform daily labor, it was less certain what should be done with detained civilians. German and Austrian naval personnel, held at Fort MacPherson, worked on roads and farms in Georgia. Enemy aliens, confined under the Department of Labor at Hot Springs, North Carolina, toiled on farms with pay or in the daily upkeep of their camp without any remuneration. The “German agents” being sent to Fort Oglethorpe would be offered a similar option.60 Security was further expanded by the recognition of alien women as a possible threat to the nation. While waiting for President Wilson to sign a bill that would enable them to be apprehended, about 100 German and Austrian women were placed under surveillance. While others, anticipating what awaited them, had left the country, but enough remained to warrant action that would prevent them from gathering information on war-related matters. The wives of German and Austrian businessmen, mainly from the New York City area, would be reunited with husbands already in confinement, while their property was being confiscated by the federal custodian. When Wilson finally signed the bill intended “to cope with the activities of female agents of Germany,” its broad brush also prohibited female subjects of Germany from entering Washington, DC and all other zones from which aliens were banned.61 In Philadelphia, as 300 alien workers sought permits that would allow them to enter prohibited zones where they were employed, police action was required to restore order at the office of Federal Marshal Noonan. When operators of wharves, piers, docks, and other waterfront facilities were granted a one-week extension of the time to obtain permits, the crush of applicants employed as stevedores and in other maritime occupations again overwhelmed the agency. The restrictions on hiring had not only become an obstacle to employers but also kept workers away from jobs and income by which they supported their families. With the demand for labor generated by the war, aliens who would have been rushing to secure naturalization, if that

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opportunity had not been denied, represented less of a threat than an indispensable asset in America’s economy. But local authorities, who would not find such men safe from security risks, arrested five German workers at the Hog Island shipyard and ordered them to be interned, while two others fled from custody in Gloucester, New Jersey.62 Whether workers who eagerly sought employment were better off than fellow enemy aliens who had been interned may have been a moot point. But in April, some 350 others, after training with the 28th Infantry “Keystone Division” at Fort Hancock, Georgia, were separated from their unit and reassigned to noncombative service at Fort Crook, Nebraska. Having acquitted themselves as soldiers in action with the Pennsylvania National Guard on the Mexican border, and giving every evidence of being “loyal to the core,” many of them openly wept at the news that they would not be allowed to remain with their division as it embarked for France. For these men, knowing that precaution rather than disloyalty had dictated the decision did not make losing the opportunity to serve their adopted country any easier.63 In April, a report from Washington that the government planned to arrest and intern more than 100 German and Austrian women, who had been under surveillance, confirmed that any action against enemy aliens would include both men and women. With prevention of any more of them leaving the country, as others already had done, and confiscation of any property that they owned, the action only awaited the signing of impeding legislation by President Wilson.64 As government officials continued their own efforts to persuade the public of the existence of dangers, the publication of “The Eagle’s Eye,” a series of weekly newspaper articles, based on documents released by William J. Flynn, the recently retired head of the U.S. Secret Service, promised to tell “the true story of the Imperial German Government’s spies and intrigues in the United States.” While praised as the leading detective in America, the 20-part exposé amounted to little more than sensationalism and scaremongering. But its impact on a gullible public now being saturated with accounts of nefarious German activity remains difficult to estimate.65 By May 1918, easily frightened minds believed that German spies were hiding under every bed, in every closet, and even in the classrooms of America. The arrest of an instructor at Vassar College confirmed fears that countless aggressively pro-German women had taken advantage of the immunity granted by the American government. Another rumor held that about 20,000 women in New York were disseminating German propaganda. Convinced that German intrigue was based upon the emotionalism and unreason of females, as well as the large number of Germans in America, an egregious indictment reinforced the perception and judgment of many Americans.66

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With government agents pursuing the registration of enemy aliens, about 260,000 male Germans had been recorded by late August. Although the results of the campaign to register women had not yet been fully counted, it was believed to be slightly less than 200,000. Without internees whose number had not yet been revealed, men and women together totaled nearly a half million alien Germans. If reports that called attention to dangerous aliens, arrested aliens, interned aliens, and aliens under suspicion were not sufficient to sustain alarm, the total number of registered Germans was large enough to confirm apprehensions of a possible internal enemy.67 As the government waged its campaign against suspect men and women, Philadelphia children engaged in more informal, but not less “patriotic,” forms of surveillance and sanction. On the playground of the Friends Neighborhood Guild at Fourth and Greene Streets in the Northern Liberties section, youngsters of “pronounced patriotism,” many of foreign origin themselves, were reportedly thrashing a ten-year-old boy on a daily basis. The head worker, ignoring any commitment to Quaker pacifism, blithely offered her praise: “Some of the worst boys in the neighborhood have become little fathers and it has tamed them down wonderfully.” But such scenes of local childhood only more openly reflected the world of their parents and other adults.68 Among officials who sometimes appeared to be competing with one another in making themselves larger parts of the scene and story. Garbarino, for instance, proved to be a popular speaker with a provocative message. Addressing a luncheon at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel, he described such burdens of his job as reporters seeking to persuade him to reveal secret information or the spies who did not speak German dialect and broken English but might be educated German Americans in the audience. Urging his listeners once again to report those who made disloyal remarks, the flamboyant special agent promised “I will do the rest,” before ending with more comments on the worldwide German system of espionage. With the attention given by the press to such occasions, Garbarino established himself as a colorful personality before the public as well as a nemesis to enemy aliens.69 CONFISCATING WEALTH AND PROPERTY As the United States entered the war, national and local officials, beyond their concerns with alien loyalty and possible acts of subversion, began to secure the disposal of property and wealth belonging to subjects of enemy countries. The passage in October 1917 of the Trading with the Enemy Act established the Office of the Custodian of Alien Property which was also granted authority to sequester foreign holdings until the war ended. President Wilson chose former Congressman A. Mitchell Palmer to serve as the Alien

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Property Custodian. For the Swarthmore College graduate whose Quaker conscience had led him to decline the post of Secretary of War, it was an early step in a controversial career as a “watchdog” of American security that would culminate with his leadership as attorney general during the “Red Scare” of later years. At its enactment, the present law was accompanied by much uncertainty about its scope, provisions, and implementation. German holdings, believed to be enormous, were not to be permanently confiscated but only held by the U.S. federal government, before being returned to owners with the restoration of peace. With Palmer’s role unclear, but in direct control of “staggering aggregations of money and business,” he was expected to become “a person of international importance.” While any regulation or prohibition of commerce could affect ordinary Germans with earnings deposited in local saving funds or building loans associations, Palmer announced that his real target would be the vast amounts in gold and property that could finance the German war effort. It would not threaten the personal wealth of foreign-born residents as individuals, but the ownership of large corporations. When asked if millions of dollars could come from Philadelphia, Palmer replied that it was a reasonable estimate of what the government had been authorized to seize.70 By early November 1917, the first stages of confiscation began when city detectives and deputy marshals, acting on orders from Washington, seized books, records, and equipment in a raid on the offices of the Hamburg America Steamship Line in New York City. As Americans took comfort in such action, more alarming news claimed that agents of the German spy network had spread into virtually every city and town of the nation. And Justice Department officials and military authorities could only heighten tension by revealing that “America . . . complacently reposes on dynamite.” But government sources indicated, somewhat superfluously after the regulations imposed by Wilson’s declaration of war, that activities of enemy aliens were to be “tightened with a jerk.” It was perhaps not a coincidence that the “news” of America being “infested” with enemy spies came at the same time as the seizing of a major shipping firm, an action which it may have been meant to justify. But two weeks later, when U.S. Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo ordered the liquidation of all German insurance operations, except for existing life insurance policies, it was believed to have been the result of reports that inspectors employed by German companies had been gathering information on munitions factories. On the same day, the Justice Department clarified the promised “tightening” by an announcement prohibiting enemy aliens from coming within 100 yards of certain designated facilities. While special agent Garbarino denied a rumor that aliens found within any restricted area would be “shot at sight,” he indicated that they would, if acting in a suspicious manner, probably be imprisoned for the duration of the war.71

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If political intrigues were not sufficient to muddle matters, an occasional romantic entanglement, perhaps more than just a footnote to events, could also disturb international relations. In early December, news from Berlin revealed that Count Christian Guenther von Bernstorff, son of the former German Ambassador to the United States, had married Marguerite Vivian Burton, the adopted daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia insurance executive. When asked if she would welcome the couple to their home in Burlington, New Jersey, her foster mother replied, “Of course, we will. But I’d prefer to welcome her and her husband after the war is over. Not now.” Beyond her parents disappointment over their daughter’s marriage, the diplomatic maneuvers of her new father-in-law against the United States intensified its significance. But the free-spirited bride, now making her third trip to the altar, further aggravated matters when she renounced her American citizenship, while remaining a member of the Burlington Club, an organization engaged in patriotic knitting and Red Cross work. Marguerite Burton was hardly alone in falling to Old World charms, but her case became more complicated by wealth liable to seizure by the custodian of alien property. Among similar cases, Gladys Vanderbilt, another American beauty, the daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, president of the New York Central Railroad Company, had been married to Count László Széchenyi since 1908. And Harriet Daly, heiress to her father’s vast Montana copper-mining fortune, became the wife of Count Anton Sigray two years later in 1910. With both Vanderbilt and Daly among American women who had forfeited corporate securities, property and citizenship by marriages to Austrian noblemen, such unions and others later would remain disputed even after the war ended.72 Under the zealous Palmer, government confiscation of alien property quickly gained an auspicious prize of considerable monetary and symbolic value, when agents seized stocks and bonds, belonging to Jeanne Luckemeyer von Bernstorff, the American wife of the former ambassador, estimated to be worth as much as $900,000 in early 1918. But it was a small prize compared to other wealth being garnished. After less than four months, Palmer’s summary of operations showed that 11,467 formal reports of enemy property had been filed and his office had opened 1,378 separate trust accounts with an estimated value of $134,605,231. The assets of 14 insurance companies, worth over $33,544,000, had been liquidated under the Treasury Secretary, with seven other companies, worth more than $7,000,000, awaiting action. At final disposition, all holdings would be turned over to the custodian of alien property. Estimating that the value of confiscated property would eventually exceed $9,000,000,000, but knowing that his work had only begun, Palmer asked Congress to authorize expansion of his powers by amending the original trading-with-the-enemy legislation. For the purpose of relieving the government of the expense of maintaining seized property, he specifically

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sought permission to dispose of it by public sale. With the ultimate intention being the purchase of Liberty Bonds, it was a request that Congress could hardly deny.73 In early 1918, federal officers arrested Adalbert Koerting Fischer, president of the Schutte Koerting Company, a producer of steam equipment, at his office at Twelfth and Thompson Streets in the industrial corridor of North Philadelphia. Charged with having smuggled into the city chronometers taken from a sequestered German steamer, Fischer, also alleged to be related to the Krupp family, manufacturers of munitions for the German government, and a reserve officer in the German army, was immediately designated for internment for the duration of the war. A few days later, special agent Garbarino and two squads, armed with search warrants, raided the Fischer home on Wissahickon Avenue in Germantown and the company office, where documents revealed that both properties were German owned. Along with a cache of $50,000 in gold confiscated at the Fisher residence, all papers and property were turned over to Palmer’s office. As more complicated details unfolded, it was soon revealed that the plant, despite being “owned and operated by relatives of the Kaiser,” had produced vital parts for U.S. Navy warships. Its seizure had been ordered after hearings in Washington in which Helene Fischer, the wife of A.K. Fischer, and other officers committed perjury by their testimony over whether stock transfers had occurred before or after the United States entered the war. Meanwhile, A. K. Fischer would be transferred to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, while translators, examining company records, some said to be written in code, sought to determine if any action could be brought against either spouse. But Helene Fischer’s status would remain unclear since provisions for the interning of women, along with the determination of property ownership, remained to be clarified.74 As Palmer’s raiders, undeterred by restraints, pursued German wealth and property, another large “enemy-owned,” but unidentified plant, in Philadelphia, was seized by the federal government in March. On the same day, a compliant Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously authorized the sale of property taken into custody, purportedly “to weed out entirely German interests in the United States.” It also approved the purchase of waterfront piers owned by German companies in Hoboken, New Jersey, to be resold but used by the government until the end of the war allowed return to the original owners. But with Congress facilitating the efforts of the custodian of alien property, the confiscations had also attracted mounting concerns over possibly excessive conduct by Palmer. Avowing that the power of sale would only be used when it was necessary to divorce German capital from American industry, he insisted that the ordinary German subject faced no danger of having property confiscated. Due notice of sale and full description of property would be provided by public advertisement; and only American

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citizens who represented American capital exclusively, without any present or prospective benefit to the enemy, would be eligible to buy such property. But Palmer’s explanation meant that what had been initially designated as a program of temporary custody over enemy property now involved loss of ownership, and transfer of wealth to American buyers. And despite a promised exemption of “ordinary” cases, German Americans also had reason to worry about the future.75 But despite claims to the contrary, German laborers also became targeted. In February 1918, a local newspaper reported that officials in Washington had ordered the discharge of all Germans employed in shipbuilding in the Philadelphia area, including those already naturalized, as a precautionary measure for the duration of the war. Although the report could not be otherwise confirmed, it was said to affect hundreds of workers in local shipyards.76 As the nation moved deeper into war, Palmer’s bureau, having deflected recent criticism, joined an expanding effort against Teutonic influence. In April, amid investigation by the Justice Department of several major woolen producers, the Alien Property Custodian seized the Botany Worsted Mills of Passaic, New Jersey, after the state of New York concluded that its ownership was “thoroughly German.” Shortly afterward, the agency also prepared itself to take over the property of more than 100 German and Austrian women, characterized as a “menace to the nation,” already under surveillance and expected to be arrested as soon as President Wilson signed legislation that classified them as enemy aliens. Some of them, wives of businessmen, were expected to be interned with their husbands. In May, local agents attended a three-day national conference of the Polish Defense League, held in North Philadelphia, as a precaution against infiltration by German propagandists. In June, on the day after three piano manufacturing companies were seized, President Wilson issued a proclamation attempting to resolve the question of who exactly was an “enemy alien.” A broadened definition included enemy women, enemy government agents, prisoners or internees, propagandists who lived outside of the United States, and anyone who resided in enemy territory since 1914 and still lived outside of the United States. By requiring firms having any connection with such persons to report them to the custodian of alien property, the edict also enlarged the scope of that office to being the custodian of enemy aliens. Meanwhile, familiar names again emerged with the seizure of the entire estate of Mrs. Lily Busch, the widow of Adolphus Busch, the well-known brewer and veteran of the Civil War. Busch had died on a visit to Germany in 1913, with his body returned for burial in St. Louis two years later. When his widow moved to Germany, their breweries in St. Louis and other cities and real estate in New York worth millions of dollars, became subject to confiscation under the law in June 1918. In the midst of controversy, while retaining his own focus on the pursuit of other large industrial

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operations, Palmer would expand the assault on Germany’s economic presence in America.77 If the American public still had to be convinced of the need to confiscate German property, Palmer’s frequent speeches under the auspices of the National Security League served that purpose. His depiction of the high stakes authoritatively informed the direction of government policy. Speaking in Detroit in May, he claimed that Germany had built a great financial and industrial structure, controlling 200 corporations, with a monetary value of $2,000,000,000, whose threat to war production was potentially fatal for America. In his view, these companies had made huge war profits that could only be returned to their foreign owners after the war. American newspapers echoed his message by almost daily news based on information provided by Palmer’s agents. In late June, one account reported: “Investigators for the Alien Property Custodian are here today on the trail of further enemy millions alleged to have been concealed under the cloak of American corporations, as the result of a widespread plot just discovered.” And with $3,500,000 worth of property already seized, more arrests were imminent. With the magnitude of the situation, the alien property bureau shifted from its earlier preoccupation with surveillance, investigation and seizure to the disposal of confiscated properties. In July, the sale by auction of the Orenstein-Arthur Koppel Company, one of world’s largest manufacturers of railroad engines, cars and other equipment, was authorized by an Executive Order of President Wilson. With offices in Berlin and factories producing for the Imperial German Army, its vast American facilities in Beaver County, Pennsylvania had been a sure target for such action. But it was only the beginning of a wide and controversial sale of German properties that would continue over the coming months.78 Palmer’s policies and conduct as the custodian of alien property provoked controversy. With his choice of Joseph F. Guffey, the former candidate of the “Palmer faction” of the Democratic Party in the recent gubernatorial primary in Pennsylvania to serve as general sales manager in the disposal of German-owned property, Republicans accused him of appointing personal friends and political allies to key positions. With some 140 corporations capitalized at about $100,000,000 reported to be ready for sale, the market value of German-owned property was expected to reach about $3,500,000. It consisted of small lots of shares in some corporations and larger bundles of stock in others; production facilities and machinery; a wide range of raw materials, finished goods and other commodities; metals; precious gems; cotton waste; optical equipment; pianos, Portland cement; upholstery goods; cocoa beans; wheat; railway boxcars and other equipment; woolen goods, and almost everything else that could be eaten, drunk; worn or smoked. It included such familiar names as Pabst, Rohm and Haas, Merck, Guardian Life Insurance, Schutte & Koerting, Stollwerck Brothers, and others. When

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the great “sell off” began, Palmer’s opponents charged that he had opened the gates to a department store bargain basement fire sale of underpriced property to favored buyers.79 The reactions against Palmer’s office went beyond partisan-based opposition. The widowed Lily Busch, preparing to sue the government, contended that her property had been unjustly appropriated from a loyal American citizen whose long visits to relatives in Germany should not have jeopardized its ownership. But Palmer’s aggressive tactics and wide range of targets far exceeded the property rights of individuals. In early July, government agents arrested Dr. Edward A. Rumely, a physician and publisher of the New York Evening Mail, who had not only supported Germany before the war but attacked British policy after it began, charging that the ownership and control of the newspaper by the German government had violated the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917. In August, the arrest of Karl Feldman, the Philadelphia businessman interned at Fort Oglethorpe, was similarly questionable. Despite protests against such implementation of wartime powers, the sale of firms and personal holdings would continue, but not without other repercussions, until well after the war had ended.80 In February 1919, President Wilson appointed Palmer as the Attorney General of the United States, an office that he had long coveted. Despite Republican charges that Palmer, having named fellow Democrats to lucrative positions, should be investigated for his conduct as custodian of alien property, the nomination encountered only futile resistance. Palmer himself emphatically denied the accusations and invited an inquiry into his actions. But the American Defense Society, a patriotic organization, even more strongly objected to Palmer because of his argument regarding the Lusitania, made as a member of the House of Representatives some four years earlier, that the victims had knowingly assumed the risk of an ocean crossing during wartime and the United States as a whole should not be held responsible. The ADS regarded the incident as “the murdering of over one hundred Americans in the most brutal fashion by the foreign foe against every law of God and of man, and against every precept of humanity and morality.” What was at stake was the casus belli that many Americans had found in the sinking of the Lusitania. And even four years after victory over Germany, the lingering memory of the tragedy had not altered the unwillingness to absolve others who had not agreed on its meaning for America—and perhaps even more so for supporting neutrality in the early stages of the war. Despite such opposition, Palmer was confirmed and took office as attorney general in early March.81 Palmer’s final report as custodian of alien property charged Germany with gathering business secrets that it intended to use for military purposes. In addition to several Philadelphia firms, he cited the Orenstein-Arthur Koppel

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Company, whose assets had been seized in the previous year, for having passed confidential blueprints to strategists in Germany. The firm was said to have provided light railway equipment to virtually every munitions factory, steel plant and related concerns, and by its contracts with Westinghouse, U.S. Steel, Dupont, and other companies to have penetrated nearly one-half of all large industrial operations in America. And while the president of the Schutte Koerting Company of Philadelphia, the first plant to be sold by the agency and placed entirely into American hands, had been interned as a “dangerous alien,” its real owner was Ernest Koerting, widely known as “the Carnegie of Germany.” During its 16 months of operations, the Alien Property Custodian had received 35,400 reports and administered 32,296 accounts, with an aggregate value of $502,945,724.75. With about 9,000 cases not yet fully determined, the final appraisal was projected to likely reach $700,000,000. By making the enemy-owned corporations “a part of America’s great fighting machine,” the office had energetically sought to weaken the capacity of the enemy to wage war. The lengthy report, exceeding 600 pages, also identified more than 1,000 “interned enemies” who had been confined, mainly at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia and Fort Douglas, Utah for the duration of the war.82 THE PALMER POSTSCRIPT Palmer would not escape controversy in his new office. In the summer of 1919, J. Hampton Moore, a former reporter, now a Republican member of the House of Representatives, scathingly condemned Palmer’s conduct in his former position and its continuing implications in an argument almost directly opposite of the criticism raised at the time of his appointment. In his regularly featured “letter” on the editorial page of the Evening Public Ledger, Moore argued that Palmer had secured support even of strongly Republican manufacturers and financiers by the questionable manner in which he had managed the alien property office. Describing the anomalous lack of opposition as “one of the real curiosities of the political situation,” Moore found his answer in the confiscation and distribution of an estimated $1,000,000,000 of German property in the United States. He contended that Palmer’s appointment of many Republicans to nominal “dollar-a-year” positions, along with other business directors, superintendents, attorneys and accountants, had erased any willingness to oppose him. Moore’s list of names included many Philadelphians who had gained Palmer’s favor and one New Jersey appointee who brashly described his remuneration as being little more than what he paid his chauffeur. But while Moore sought to discredit Palmer’s record, the future held more serious controversy.83

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Palmer’s opponents, having multiplied even within his own party, not only found the opportunity to condemn his past actions, but to deny him a greater prize at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco in July 1920. From the beginning, Palmer’s likelihood of being chosen as the candidate for the presidency may have only reflected the enthusiastic hopes of supporters than an actual possibility. On its eve, a Philadelphia newspaper that saw Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo, Wilson’s son-in-law, as the more plausible choice, placed Palmer in a dubious category of “the other provincials who went to the convention with hobbies rather than with the sort of knowledge which can only come with a national view and national experience.” Subsequent events confirmed that judgment. After entering the convention as one of the leading candidate, Palmer’s 256 supporters on the first ballot, which included all 76 Pennsylvania delegates, and only ten votes behind McAdoo’s count, steadily declined until James M. Cox, the governor of Ohio, became the eventually choice for president and assistant secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt was acclaimed by voice vote as vice president. By the time that the 44th ballot ended the long proceedings, only one delegate remained steadfast in casting a vote for Palmer. On the second day of voting, from his office in Pittsburgh, James McClurg Guffey, oil magnate and longtime Pennsylvania Democratic Party boss (and uncle of Joseph F. Guffey, the Alien Custodian program sales manager), piqued at having been ousted from power by Palmer’s reform faction, contentedly anticipated the downfall of his nemesis. But problems mounted even further on the morning after Cox’s nomination, when newspapers reported that William Armstrong, a Chicago attorney, had provided evidence to a Senate committee of Palmer’s abuse of power of his office in order to influence delegates to the convention. The Senate gained even more reason to investigate Palmer’s campaign practices after testimony from hearings in St. Louis that the former executive secretary of the state of Missouri “high-cost-of-living bureau” had been dismissed from her position because she was a Republican.84 In late July 1920, some underlying factors in Palmer’s situation were further clarified. A columnist in the Evening Public Ledger, reassessing the Wilson Administration, argued that if the Cox campaign were to reach voters, it had to disassociate itself from “the most reactionary attorney general the country ever had.” While the Senate had castigated Cox’s campaign manager, its charges had not directly tarnished the candidate. But Cox had to protect himself from any connection with Palmer, which Republicans were using as a device to keep Wilson’s record before the electorate. Although not an issue in the Senate investigation, Palmer’s administering of confiscated property drew the charge that many of those into whose hands it had passed had become active supporters of his recent campaign for the presidential nomination. While defenders believed that enough had been distributed to

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Republican recipients to preclude any charges of misconduct, Palmer, being “generally disliked,” was likely to remain the subject of inquiry. Even if a façade for opposition to Wilson, it remained difficult to ignore the legacy that had been established by Palmer as the custodian of alien property. And while his role in the campaign against German Americans had ended, he would provoke greater controversy as attorney general during the Red Scare of 1919–1920.85

NOTES 1. The apocryphal words, supposedly expressed by a young British officer in South Africa before the United States entered the war well apply to the later situation. See: (Chicago) Day Book (March 2, 1915). 2. Advertisement, Evening Ledger (January 27, 1917); “Americans Called Home As Conflict Threatens,” Evening Ledger (February 6, 1917); “War Referendum Plea of Hexamer,” Evening Ledger (February 6, 1917). 3. “R. B. Strassburger Answers U.S. Call, The Inquirer (February 12, 1917). For Strassburger’s later role as a critic of the League of Nations and supporter of Senator Hiram Johnson, see “Ralph B. Strassburger, 75, Dies; Norristown Publisher Since ’21,” New York Times (February 28, 1959). 4. “Germans And Austrians Seeking Naturalization,” Evening Ledger (February 6, 1917); “Teutons, In Big Flocks, Seek U.S. Citizenship,” Evening Ledger (February 8, 1917). “No Hyphenat (sic) Ball,” Evening Ledger (February 7, 1917). “Fear Of War Drives Germans To Suicide,” Evening Ledger (February 8, 1917); “__ (sic) Mistrustful Of Alien Rush,” Evening Ledger (March 19, 1917). 5. “Hexamer Pledges Alliance Loyalty,” Evening Ledger (February 8, 1917). 6. “Hexamer Doubts Split,” Evening Ledger (February 13, 1917); “German Americans Loyal, Speaker Says,” Evening Ledger (March 6, 1917); “The Voice Of The People: Treatment of German Americans,” Evening Ledger (March 26, 1917); “U.S. Sleuths Hunt Plot Trail At League Island,” Evening Ledger (March 12, 1917). 7. “__ (sic) Mistrustful Of Alien Rush,” Evening Ledger (March 19, 1917). 8. “Perry Says Air Raiders Could Shatter This City,” The Inquirer (March 24, 1917); “Peary Advises City to Arm Itself with Anti-Aircraft Guns,” The Inquirer (March 25, 1917); “Large Air Squadron Needed to Protect U.S., Peary Asserts,” The Inquirer (March 26, 1917); “City’s Leading Men, United, Will Work for Home Defense,” The Inquirer (March 21, 1917). 9. “City’s Leading Men, United, Will Work for Home Defense,” The Inquirer (March 21, 1917). 10. “Mayor’s Call For Public Meeting To Pledge Anew Loyalty To Nation,” Evening Ledger (March 27, 1917); “Nation-Loving Multitude Makes Liberty Shrine Ring Cheering Loyalty Addresses,” Evening Ledger (March 31, 1917); “Patriotic Airs Sound Again At Liberty Shrine,” Evening Ledger (March 31, 1917); “Stirring Scenes Mark Penn Square Parade,” Evening Ledger (March 31, 1917).

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11. “German Hospital Denies Any Change To Its Name,” Evening Ledger (April 4, 1917); “America Plunges Into World Conflict; Declares War On Imperial Germany,” Evening Ledger (April 6, 1917); “To German-Americans: An Appeal by ex-Mayor Blankenburg to be True to Their Oath,” New York Times (April 5, 1917). 12. http:​/​/res​​earch​​.arch​​ives.​​gov​/d​​escri​​ption​​​/2999​​66 13. Annual Report of the Attorney General of the United States for the Year 1917 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917), 53–76. 14. “Selling Of Firearms Prohibited By City,” Evening Ledger (April 11, 1917); “U.S. Guards Travel of Aliens,” Evening Ledger (April 19, 1917). 15. “Star-Spangled Tosca Arouses Patriotism,” Evening Ledger (April 14, 1917); “German Forced to Kiss the Flag He Insulted,” Evening Ledger (April 4, 1917); “Germans Held Up on Naturalization,” Evening Ledger (April 9, 1917). Many other similar articles document the rapidly developing events at this moment. See also “Dr. Casper Gregory Killed in War,” Evening Ledger (April 13, 1917). 16. “All Germans in City Must Give Up Firearms,” Evening Ledger (April 14, 1917); “League for Nation’s Unity Opens Fight to Eliminate Hyphenism,” Evening Ledger (April 19, 1917). 17. “Councilman Hexamer Makes Patriotic Plea,” Evening Ledger (April 10, 1917); Stand By Nation, Hexamer Advises,” Evening Ledger (April 11, 1917); “German Americans In New Jersey Pledge Loyalty,” Evening Ledger (April 4, 1917); “German-Americans Call Meeting To Proclaim Loyalty To Uncle Sam,” Evening Ledger (April 16, 1917); “Loyal German-Americans,” Evening Ledger (April 26, 1917). 18. Letters to the Editor: “On Displaying the Flag,” The Inquirer (April 17, 1917). 19. “Pictures And Scrapple,” Evening Ledger (May 30, 1917); “Germany’s Best Spies Believed Now Here,” Evening Ledger (July 7, 1917); “‘Underground’ Tip On Sailing Of Troops,” Evening Ledger (July 7, 1917). 20. “Wilson Says Good Word For German-Americans,” Evening Ledger (August 3, 1917); “Hexamer Resents ‘Loyalty Creed,’” Evening Ledger (August 6, 1917); “Hexamer Quits Office In Germanic Alliance,” Evening Ledger (October 1, 1917). 21. Advertisements, Evening Ledger (October 3, 1917). “‘Song And Flag’ Festival In Park,” Evening Ledger (October 13, 1917); “Honor German Americans In Service,” Evening Ledger (October 29, 1917). 22. “Woman Finds Scrap O’ Paper Saying Plan ‘All Ready’ For Destruction Of Eddystone,” Evening Ledger (April 11, 1917); “Terrified Employees Quit Scene Of Catastrophe,” Evening Ledger (April 11, 1917); “Blast Takes Father From Poor Family,” Evening Ledger (April 11, 1917);” Stillness Of Death In Wake Of Great Disaster,” Evening Ledger (April 11, 1917); “Arms Plants To Close In Respect For The Dead,” Evening Ledger (April 12, 1917); “Blast Victims Buried In Rain As 8,000 Weep,” Evening Ledger (April 13, 1917). 23. “Will Name Jury In Blast Inquest,” Evening Ledger (April 16, 1917); “Eddystone Probe May Prove Plot,” Evening Ledger (April 18, 1917); “Coroner Seeks Facts In Explosion Probe,” Evening Ledger (April 25, 1917); “Coroner Told Of Many Plots At Eddystone,” Evening Ledger (April 26, 1917); “Probe At Eddystone To Be Pushed Deeper,” Evening Ledger (April 28, 1917); “Eddystone Compensation

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Pleas Settled By Board,” Evening Ledger (May 14, 1917); “Eddystone Will Make Rifles For New Army,” Evening Ledger (May 18, 1917); “Men Wanted,” Evening Ledger (May 28, 1917). 24. “Spy Suspect Caught as He Wrote Report; Once German Soldier,” The Inquirer (August 19, 1917). 25. “2 Die, 30 Hurt In Arsenal Blast At Frankford,” Evening Ledger (September 8, 1917); “House Orders Wide Munition Inquiry,” Evening Ledger (September 8, 1917); “Paint Plant Again Swept By Flames,” Evening Ledger (September 8, 1917). 26. “U.S. Naval Officer Arrested As Spy, Evening Ledger (October 16, 1917); “War Zone Order Ousts 2000 German Workers,” Evening Ledger (October 31, 1917). 27. “Plot Shown In Blaze Burning War Supplies,” Evening Ledger (October 31, 1917). 28. “Kaiser’s Agents Infest America,” Evening Ledger (November 9, 1917); “Aliens Must Watch Step In New York” Evening Ledger (November 13, 1917); “New Move To Curb Outrages By Aliens,” Evening Ledger (November 16, 1917); “Spy Warnings Posted On Federal Property,” Evening Ledger (November 17, 1917) “The Augmenting, Sinister Menace of Enemy Aliens,” New York Tribune (November 18, 1917); “Wilson Moves against Espionage Activities,” Evening Ledger (November 19, 1917). 29. “Sailor Is Slashed by Man Whom He Thinks German Spy,” The Inquirer (November 5, 1917); “German Woman Charged with Spitting on Flag,” The Inquirer (December 7, 1917); “Eddystone Horror Result of German Plot, Probe Shows,” The Inquirer (February 15, 1918); “Mysterious Tremors Sweep over the City; Thousands Agitated,” The Inquirer (March 21, 1918). 30. “Alleged Pro-German Policeman Is Tried,” The Inquirer (March 19, 1918). 31. “Wilson Moves Against Espionage Activities,” Evening Ledger (November 19, 1917). 32. “Few Arrests Yet Made Of Enemy Aliens By U.S.,” Evening Ledger (November 20, 1917); “Army Transport Afire At Hoboken,” Evening Ledger (November 20, 1917); “New Military Branch To Guard War Plants,” Evening Ledger (November 21, 1917); “Ropes To Inclose City’s Alien Zones,” Evening Ledger (November 21, 1917); “The Viper In Our Bosom,” Evening Ledger (November 22, 1917). 33. “Start Teuton Hegira Under Wilson Rule,” Evening Ledger (November 22, 1917); “‘Put Only Americans On Watch,’ U.S. Order,” Evening Ledger (November 22, 1917); “Plans To Guard Alien Enemies,” Evening Ledger (November 23, 1917). 34. “Plans To Guard Alien Enemies,” Evening Ledger (November 23, 1917); “Kane Seeks To Cancel Gemans’ Citizenship,” Evening Ledger (November 24, 1917); “Aliens Barred From Waterfront,” Evening Ledger (November 26, 1917). 35. “Ten Enemy Aliens Arrested In New York,” Evening Ledger (November 28, 1917); “Drive Aliens Out Of Forbidden Zones,” Evening Ledger (November 28, 1917); “Five German Subjects Drafted By Board No.2,” Evening Ledger (November 28, 1917); “Alien Guards Dismissed From Their Post,” Evening Ledger (November 29, 1917); “Enemy Alien Inquires As To Course Of Action,” Evening Ledger November 28, 1917); New Rulings On Aliens Bring Some Hardships,” Evening

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Ledger (November 29, 1917); “German Guards Discharged,” Evening Ledger (November 30, 1917) . 36. “Wants Drastic Action Against Pro-Germans,” Evening Ledger (November 30, 1917). 37. “Must Guard All Piers, Kane Says After Tour,” Evening Ledger (November 30, 1917); “Alien Enemies To Be Listed,” Evening Public Ledger (December 3, 1917). Note: The former Evening Ledger became the retitled Evening Public Ledger with its issue of December 3, 1917. 38. “Arrest May Solve Ammunition Mystery,” Evening Public Ledger (December 5, 1917); “German Held in Plot To Spoil U.S. Shells,” New York Tribune (December 6, 1917); “May Arrest More Arsenal Suspects,” The Inquirer (December 6, 1917); “Former U.S. Arsenal Worker Held For Plot,” The Inquirer (December 7, 1917); “Held In Arsenal Plot,” The Inquirer (December 15, 1917); “Arsenal Employees Held,” New York Tribune (December 15, 1917); “Create New Ship Building District,” South Bend (IN.) News Times (December 15, 1917); “Shellmakers Are Held,” Oregonian (December 15, 1917); “Made Defective Shells,” The (Washington, DC) Sunday Star (December 16, 1917); “Important News The World Over,” The (High Point, North Dakota) Review (December 27, 1917); “Held For Making Defective Shells,” Salt Lake (UT) Telegram (December 30, 1917). 39. “Music Russian Or German? Players Strictly Neutral,” Evening Ledger (November 6, 1914); “Muck Denounced By Baltimoreans,” The Inquirer (November 7, 1917); “No Ban On Playing German Airs Here,” The Inquirer (November 10, 1917); “Orchestra Places Not Yet Filled,” Evening Public Ledger (December 5, 1917). 40. “To Censor Foreign Mail,” Evening Public Ledger (December 4, 1917); “50,000 Austrians Here May Be Hit,” Evening Public Ledger (December 4, 1917); “Austrians Offer Hard Problem For U.S.,” Evening Public Ledger (December 5, 1917); “200 Austrians At Camp Meade,” Evening Public Ledger (December 6, 1917). 41. “Large Placards Will Warn Alien Enemies,” Evening Public Ledger (December 5, 1917); “Alien Enemy Warnings Arrive In City,” Evening Public Ledger (December 6, 1917) “Uncle Sam Warns Aliens From Barred Zones,” Evening Public Ledger (December 6, 1917). 42. “Germans Hurrying Away From Capital,” Evening Public Ledger (December 14, 1917); “1200 Germans Quit Capital,” Evening Public Ledger (December 15, 1917); “Big Rush Of Aliens To Become Citizens,” Evening Public Ledger (December 14, 1917). 43. Annual Report of the Attorney General of the United States for the Year 1917 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917), 53–76; “Only 50,000 Slackers In Whole Country,” Evening Public Ledger (January 5, 1918). 44. “Third Of Draftees Fit After Army Test,” Evening Public Ledger (January 14, 1918). 45. “Denies Interned Germans Are Kept Luxuriously,” Evening Ledger (November 30, 1917); “Gregory Takes Steps To Rid U.S. Of Spies,” Evening Public Ledger (December 7, 1917); Annual Report of the Attorney General of the United

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States for the Year 1917 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917); “Cop, Hearing Shots, Seizes Enemy Alien,” Evening Public Ledger (December 22, 1917); “Probing Fire On Edge Of City’s Barred Zone,” Evening Public Ledger (January 7, 1918). 46. “Twelve Big German Spies Trailed By U.S.,” Evening Public Ledger (January 10, 1918); “Kaiser ‘Bill’ As An Enemy Alien,” Evening Public Ledger (January 29, 1918); “Women Alien Enemies To Be Listed Here” Evening Public Ledger (January 31, 1918). 47. “Aliens, Ashamed, Register Today,” Evening Public Ledger (February 4, 1918); “Quarter Of German Enemies Registered,” The Inquirer (February 5, 1918). 48. “Naturalization Court Crowded With Aliens,” Evening Public Ledger (February 4, 1918). 49. “Police Plan For 3 New Alien Registration Days,” The Inquirer (February 10, 1918); “6481 Germans Register Here,” The Inquirer (February 15, 1918); “Enemy Aliens Slow To Obey Registration,” Evening Public Ledger (February 13, 1918). 50. “‘Alien Enemy’ Proves His Loyalty To U.S.” Evening Public Ledger (February 21, 1918); “Enemy Alien A Suicide,” Evening Public Ledger (February 22, 1918). 51. “Plots Laid To Native Born,” Evening Public Ledger (February 22, 1918); “Quietly Intern Teutons,” Evening Public Ledger (February 23, 1918); “German Citizens And Spies, Charge,” Evening Public Ledger (March 13, 1918); “Why Not Try Internment,” Evening Public Ledger (March 13, 1918). 52. “Enemy Aliens Must Get Permission To Move Now,” Evening Public Ledger (March 13, 1918); “‘Good’ Enemy Aliens To Be Placed In Jobs,” Evening Public Ledger (March 22, 1918). 53. “Enemy Aliens Must Curtail Activities,” Evening Public Ledger (May 22, 1918). 54. “Get After The Alien Slackers,” Evening Public Ledger (June 10, 1918). 55. “To List German Women,” Evening Public Ledger (June 12, 1918) “Police Register German Women,” Evening Public Ledger (June 17, 1918); “To Intern Female Foes,” Evening Public Ledger (July 3, 1918); “German Women Are Without A Country,” The Inquirer (June 20, 1918). 56. “Drops Teuton Musicians,” Evening Public Ledger (June 22, 1918); “Bars Alien Autoists,” Evening Public Ledger (June 18, 1918). 57. “U.S. Holds 5,000 Germans,” Evening Public Ledger (June 24, 1918); “5,000 Germans Held Under Guard In United States,” Wilkes Barre (PA) Times Leader “U.S. Holds 5,000 Germans Under Guard,” Marshalltown (IA) Evening Times Republican (June 28, 1918). 58. “Arrested As Spy Suspect,” Evening Public Ledger (July 26, 1918); “Enemy Alien Held for Assault,” Evening Public Ledger (August 12, 1918); “German Gun Toter Punished,” Evening Public Ledger (August 21, 1918). 59. “Local Dye Firm Head Interned,” Evening Public Ledger (August 21, 1918). 60. “German Spies Leave New York For Southern Internment Camp,” Evening Public Ledger (April 5, 1918); “Dangerous Enemies Go To Prison Camp,” New York Times (April 5, 1918); “U.S. Orders War Prisoners Work,” Evening Public Ledger (April 15, 1918).

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61. “See Alien Women As Menace To Nation,” Evening Public Ledger (April 16, 1918); “Woman Spy Bill Signed,” Evening Public Ledger (April 19, 1918). 62. “Rules On River Passes,” The Inquirer (April 19, 1918); “Police Called To Check Aliens Seeking Permits,” Evening Public Ledger (April 22, 1918); “German Shipworkers Ordered Interned,” Evening Public Ledger (May 1, 1918). 63. “350 Camp Hancock Aliens Sent West,” Evening Public Ledger (April 26, 1918). 64. “See Alien Women as Menace to Nation,” Evening Public Ledger (April 16, 1918). 65. “Flynn Bares Enemy Plots against U.S.,” Evening Public Ledger (April 20, 1918). 66. “Women Aliens,” Evening Public Ledger (May 2, 1918). 67. “Big Alien Registration,” Evening Public Ledger (August 26, 1918). 68. “Boy Thrashed Daily for Favoring Kaiser, The Inquirer (August 27, 1918). 69. “Garbarino Is Gloomy Over Many Burdens,” Evening Public Ledger (March 22, 1918). 70. “‘Dictators’ To Do Everything,” Evening Ledger (June 13, 1917); “Stopping Trade With Germany,” Evening Ledger (July 25, 1917); “Great German Wealth Reported To America,” Evening Ledger (October 24, 1917); “Custodian Of Enemy Property,” Evening Ledger (October 24, 1917); “Rich Hoard Of German Gold For U.S. Here,” Evening Ledger (October 26, 1917). The original Office of Alien Property Custodian lasted until May 1934, when its operation was transferred to the newly established Alien Property Bureau. 71. “Hamburg Ship Line Office Seized By U.S.,” Evening Ledger (November 9, 1917); “Kaiser’s Agents Infest America,” Evening Ledger (November 9, 1917); “Aliens Barred From Waterfront,” Evening Ledger (November 26, 1917). 72. “American Bride For Bernstorff,” Evening Public Ledger (December 10, 1917); “Austrians’ American Wives Lose Property,” Evening Public Ledger (December 11, 1917). Count Anton Sigray met his future wife when he came to New York City to act as best man at the wedding of his friend, Count László Széchenyi, to Gladys Vanderbilt. 73. “Palmer Seizes German Stocks,” Evening Public Ledger (January 18, 1918); “Palmer Has Seized $134,605,231 In Funds,” Evening Public Ledger (January 19, 1918); “Palmer Wants Tax On Enemy Property,” Evening Public Ledger (January 23, 1918). 74. “Intern Fischer as Alien Enemy,” Evening Public Ledger (February 6, 1918); “German Firm’s Cash Seized By Garbarino,” Evening Public Ledger (February 13, 1918); “Fisher Is Sent To Prison Camp; U.S. Takes Plant,” Evening Public Ledger (February 15, 1918). 75. “Enemy-Owned Plant Seized Here Today,” Evening Public Ledger (March 7, 1918); “Seeks To Avoid Clash In Alliance Inquiry,” Evening Public Ledger (March 7, 1918); “Alien Property Safe From Unjust Seizure,” Evening Public Ledger (March 28, 1918). 76. “Discharge All Germans,” Evening Public Ledger (February 18, 1918). 77. “Urge Probe Of Wool Deals By U.S. Firms,” Evening Public Ledger (April 8, 1918); “Sees Alien Women As Menace To Nation,” Evening Public Ledger (April

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16, 1918); “Seek German Moves At Defense League,” Evening Public Ledger (May 4, 1918); “U.S. Takes Piano Firms,” Evening Public Ledger (June 4, 1918); “Alien Enemies Defined,” Evening Public Ledger (June 5, 1918); “Busch Estate In U.S. Is Taken By Palmer,” Evening Public Ledger (June 18, 1918). 78. “Palmer Would Keep Enemy’s $2,000,000,000,” Evening Public Ledger (May 21, 1918); “U.S. After Hidden German Millions,” Evening Public Ledger (June 25, 1918). See notice for the Orenstein-Arthur Koppel firm, in the Evening Public Ledger (July 17, 1918) and other newspapers. This sale, originally announced for mid-August, would be postponed until September 1918. 79. “Guffey Heads Sales of Alien Property,” Evening Public Ledger (July 16, 1918). 80. “Mrs Busch Wants Her Property,” Evening Public Ledger (July 7, 1918); “New York Mail Publisher Held,” Evening Public Ledger (July 9, 1918). After being convicted of perjury, Rumely’s appeal to the Supreme Court was denied in 1919, before President Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence to a month and pardoned him in January 1925. He later became a critic of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal as well as an early attributor of cigarette smoking as a cause of cancer before his death in 1964. Guide to Edward A. Rumely Papers, 1904–1959, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries. “Local Dye Firm Head Interned,” Evening Public Ledger (August 12, 1918). 81. “Nominates Palmer Attorney General,” New York Times (February 28, 1919). 82. “Firms Here Aided German in War,” Evening Public Ledger (March 10, 1919). For the report itself, see: United States. Alien Property Custodian Report: A Detailed Report by the Alien Property Custodian of All Proceedings Had by Him under the Trading with the Enemy Act during the Calendar Year 1918 to the Close of Business on February 15, 1919 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919) 83. “Congressman Moore’s Letter,” Evening Public Ledger (August 2, 1919). 84. “The Inevitable McAdoo,” Evening Public Ledger (June 29, 1918); “Col. Jim Guffey Waits,” Evening Public Ledger (July 2, 1920); “Palmer Accused of Abusing Power to Aid Candidacy,” Evening Public Ledger (July 7, 1920); “Palmer Campaign Will Be Probed,” Evening Public Ledger (July 8, 1920). 85. “How Does It Strike You?: By Kellamy,” Evening Public Ledger (July 23, 1920).

Chapter 8

America’s First “Culture War”

Recently I read in one of our papers that “Kindergarten has reopened and many little kiddies have enrolled this year.” “Kindergarten,” eh!— why not call it a little stronger? Perhaps it will sound better if we call it “Deutscher Kindergarten.” I think that time has come, and it’s good and ripe to get rid of the German words in our language. Special care should be taken to keep the German language far away from our “little kiddies.” —letter to the editor, The Inquirer (September 14, 1918)

While the Office of Alien Property Custodian had energetically pursued the interests of the American government against Germany’s material presence, its cultural influence presented another elusive, and perhaps more challenging, threat to local and national authorities. It revolved around a national organization with headquarters in Philadelphia; a time-honored language with its attendant literary, philosophic and artistic implications, along with a newspaper that gave voice to that idiom; and a monument dedicated to the founder of Germantown, which provoked a dispute that lingered in postwar years. Each of these cultural devices would occupy the attention of “patriotic” defenders of American thought, expression, and public space. With the end of the war, the mood in Philadelphia toward German Americans had assumed both an ambiguous and an ambivalent character, with loyalty still an issue being placed before the public. Less than a month after the Armistice, when a U.S. Senate committee investigated how the activities of brewers related to pro-German propaganda, A. Bruce Bielaski, Chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice, produced 237

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a diary of a German agent, containing a list of persons who had purportedly been pro-German prior to and after America’s entry into the war. The names included faculty members at major universities, well-known journalists, a federal judge, and other prominent Americans as well as Dr. Charles J. Hexamer. In his testimony, Bielaski, tracing the origins and operation of German propaganda, declared that no governmental official had been “seduced” by such efforts, with the possible exception of one Illinois Congressman. He also described the sometimes more successful attempts to gain the support of Hearst newspapers and Irish patriotic societies. Without providing any damaging information on the former head of the National German American Alliance, Bielaski had also reintroduced Hexamer as a subject of public scrutiny.1 In early 1918, the nation faced two particular remaining perils rooted in Philadelphia’s German community. U.S. Senate hearings that brought about the revoking of the federally granted charter, and thus suppression, of the National German American Alliance would extinguish the first threat. The federal trial in which the owners and editors of the German language newspaper, Tageblatt, would be charged with sedition provided the second matter. The outcomes reflected the animosity toward enemy aliens and “proGermans” who threatened national security. And even though leaders of the Alliance had emphasized their cooperation with federal marshals and the police in the recent registration of enemy aliens as evidence of their loyalty, it would not be convincing enough, as no defense of anything German could prevent what awaited not just organizations and newspapers, but German Americans in general in the days ahead.2 THE NATIONAL GERMAN AMERICAN ALLIANCE With the debate over loyalty still raging in early 1918, powerful and respected voices rose in defense of German Americans. In January, Senator Boies Penrose, Pennsylvania’s senior member in the chamber, expressed his strong confidence in them as citizens of his state. In replying to Utah Senator William H. King, chairman of a special subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, at the start of hearings on possible espionage and sabotage, Penrose declared, “I represent a state having as many German Americans in its population as, perhaps, any six Senators on this floor and I know they are as loyal as anyone else.” He was, of course, not referring to his Senate colleagues but to his German American constituents. He was also staunchly opposing King, the most ardent critic of German Americans among members of the Senate. But Penrose was not alone in his defense of German Americans. Rudolph Blankenburg, the former mayor of Philadelphia, also

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renewed his efforts to defend his own people by joining a group of prominent men, mostly of German ancestry themselves, meeting as the Friends of German Democracy in New York City. Such leaders as Penrose and Blankenburg had taken a course of some risk by their support of German Americans, but had placed a sense of justice above the need to promote the patriotic fervor sweeping the nation.3 As Congress brought pressure on the commercial efforts of hyphenated Americans, businesses throughout the country continued to divest themselves of the traces of their German origins. Following the course of banks in Philadelphia, financial institutions in several states had similarly purged themselves, replacing “German” in their titles with more suitable terms such as “American” or “Liberty.” But while financial institutions providing indispensable services for their clients succeeded in recasting their public image, other entities could not easily shed their German visibility. For the National German American Alliance, whose “foreign” identity was essential to what it was and did, it would not only be nearly impossible to abandon but remained a disturbing presence to Americans who saw themselves as guardians of their nation’s well-being.4 In mid-January, Senator King brought the question of the National German American Alliance to a head by submitting a bill that would revoke its federally granted charter of 1907, even before hearings had begun. By their subsequent attempt to expose a danger to internal security, King and his subcommittee, far beyond merely decertifying the organization, would put the German presence in America on trial. Their first witness, Gustavus Ohlinger, a 40-year-old Toledo, Ohio attorney, the author of a controversial book, Their True Faith and Allegiance, in which he accused the Alliance of promoting German politics and obstructing the assimilation of German Americans, was an ideal choice to initiate testimony. His book, at the time of its publication two years earlier, had drawn warnings that while its evidence was difficult to deny, its usefulness was doubtful. Observing that it did not help to learn to hate the German American but better to amalgamate him “not devoured alive,” a reviewer recommended Owen Wister’s highly favorable preface as an antidote to a “bitter and unreasoning diatribe.” But the hearings provided the opportunity for Ohlinger to prove himself as a well-qualified watchdog of the Teutonic threat. Born to Methodist missionary parents in China where he spent the first 20 years of his life, he had studied at the University of Michigan before embarking on a career in law. Of German descent on his maternal side, he counted among his relatives a private in a Berks County Company of the Pennsylvania Militia during the War for Independence, enabling him to become a member of the Sons of the American Revolution. Almost immediately after the hearings, Ohlinger would enlist in the army, serve as an instructor in aerial mapping in France and attain the rank of

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captain on the General Staff of Military Intelligence in Washington. He resumed his earlier polemic with the publication of a later book, The German Conspiracy in American Education in 1919. But within a career marked by much accomplishment, his testimony on the National German American Alliance would remain a decisive moment of his public life.5 During the first two days of the hearings, Ohlinger, fluent in German, revealed what he had learned from his reading of the monthly Official Bulletin of the Alliance. Much of his testimony boiled down to seven charges against the organization: using the German language press, schools, stage, societies, and propaganda to mobilize all persons of German descent; arousing racial antagonisms to resist assimilation; conducting propaganda for Germany; opposing American policies; promoting the aims of disloyal organizations and individuals; opposing prohibition or any interference with liquor traffic; and relying upon secret sources of financial support. Agreeing with Ohlinger’s accusations, an editorial in a Washington newspaper declared that it was not the time to temporize with anyone guilty of such indictments. While the majority of German Americans had become Americans, with many of them in active service or with relatives determined to crush the “military clique” in Germany, they should not be confused with the alleged 3,000,000 members of the National German American Alliance. But if the organization was as Ohlinger had claimed, the editorial could only conclude that it should be crushed.6 The hearings also threatened to tarnish the reputation of several public figures. In his testimony, Ohlinger accused former Representative Richard Bartholdt of Missouri of having supported the election of candidates favoring “Germanism” during the 1916 Republican Convention. For Bartholdt, it was a renewal of a familiar charge, having been accused of treason, with two other Congressmen, by a New York newspaper, for having acted as agents of the German government in 1914. Another published report claimed that the National German American Alliance, “now fighting for its corporate existence,” had opposed the nomination of both Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root as presidential candidates, as well as having raised money for the defense of the Tageblatt, the newspaper that the government sought to suppress for allegedly disloyal views. The subcommittee also reportedly had evidence that the Alliance, despite denials by its officers, had disseminated propaganda and engaged in other unacceptable activities. In the next month, testimony by the president of the Kansas chapter of the Alliance identified Charles J. Hexamer, as the principal organizer of a massive telegram and letter-writing campaign to sway congressional opinion toward Germany.7 As allegations were being made in Washington, an even more disturbing claim was raised that Pennsylvania was “honeycombed with German spies and propagandists” who sought to disrupt public order. The source

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was Howard C. Heinz, a name that reflected his Bavarian ancestry, but now president of his family’s food company, speaking as chief of the United States Food Administrator for the Commonwealth. With the kind of license that immense wealth grants, this well-known business leader and government official, claiming that he had found indisputable evidence of subversive activities throughout the state, added, “We must string up thousands of these pro-Germans and shoot them full of holes.” His widely reported remarks, appearing on the front page of newspapers, had credibility that was not easily ignored, which however excessive, further fed the atmosphere of fear and suspicion that threatened German Americans.8 As hearings continued in Washington, another witness, V. A, Hajek, a former Secret Service agent who had conducted the original investigation, claimed that documents held by the government showed the relationship between the Alliance and the Tageblatt, as well their ties with the German government. But agent Garbarino, head of the local office, refused to release them without an official order from the Department of Justice. Hajek accused Garbarino of allowing a German agent, believed to be involved in illegal activities, to remain free on the streets of Philadelphia. The hearings were further confounded by the issue of contributions by the National Association of Commerce and Labor, a lobbying organization supported by the United States Brewers Association, which represented the interests of the brewing industry and related trades. The Senate subcommittee sought to clarify the role of the Alliance as a recipient of funds from such organizations to promote opposition to legislation favoring Prohibition. With German Americans regarded as a heavy drinking population, their support appeared feasible by the industry. But the target expanded further when Senator King, leading the questioning, induced Joseph Keller of Indianapolis, vice president of the Alliance, to describe its attempts to influence public school education in his home state. While the German-born witness, alternating between German and English, emphatically denied allegations implied by King’s questions, his testimony was easily distorted by the blatantly misleading claim that he had urged the teaching of German “kultur” in the schools of Indiana.9 If patience over the Senate investigation into subversive activities was beginning to wane, it was not because of sympathy for the accused. In midMarch, an Evening Public Ledger editorial called for an end to the hearings because no further corroboration was necessary and Hexamer and other leaders of the Alliance should be denied any more public attention. Having convincingly shown to have “babbled the pieces they were taught by the Berlin foreign office,” they had betrayed the vast majority who had been members “for reasons of sentiment or for the love of old times rather than because of any sympathy with a lunatic Government that is carrying its people steadily downward through matchless agonies to destruction.” The newspaper

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demanded that the Senate withdraw the federal charter of the Alliance, simply because “We have had enough.”10 With public attention about to shift to the trial of two editors and three business officers of the Tageblatt in Philadelphia, the immediate focus remained with the Senate subcommittee hearings in Washington. Another witness, Adolph Timm, secretary of the Alliance, while denying that any improper effort had been made to influence the state legislature, testified that his organization, having supported Liberty Bond drives and assisted authorities in registering enemy aliens, was patriotic in all things. Along with denying ever having had any connection with or receiving money from the German government, Timm disputed a long list of other charges. On the next day, Reverend Sigmund George von Bosse, a Lutheran pastor and Hexamer’s successor as president, declared that the Alliance had sometimes followed the wrong course of action in the past, but was reforming itself and remained loyal to the United States. And revoking its charter would only damage relations between Germans and other Americans which it had sought to improve. Contending that the Alliance was not a political body, von Bosse defended its ties with the brewing industry as having been mainly intended to promote solidarity among Germans. At the next session, Senator King displayed leaflets printed in English and German denouncing Wilson as “a British subject” and urging support for his Republican opponent as evidence of political activity by the Alliance. When questioned if their organization had distributed them, both Timm and von Bosse denied having done so. But von Bosse also asked to not be judged for opposing Wilson and defending Germany before the war as it was entirely within his rights, while adding that he had changed his opinions and attitude since that time. King then read from articles in the official publication of the Alliance reporting that state chapters had passed resolutions calling for support of candidates who favored German interests. When asked if the Alliance had ever disavowed such articles, von Bosse confessed that it had not. While doing what it could to solicit votes for Hughes in the presidential election, von Bosse admitted that the Alliance had also attempted to enlist ministers of German American churches in the effort. Having only recently become president of the Alliance, his testimony had now also weakened his hold on the office.11 As the hearings reached their final days, the future of the National German American Alliance further darkened. On April 1, von Bosse announced his resignation as its president to his congregation at Zion Evangelical Lutheran church in Wilmington, Delaware. Declining to offer a more specific explanation, he would only say that he had taken the action for the sake of his parishioners. Von Bosse also reiterated his claim that since America had entered the war he had only wished for its victory and the return of peace and that he had done his share and intended to continue doing so in order to

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bring about that result. In Washington, an officer of the Allegheny County chapter of the Alliance testified that the campaign fund of the Penrose wing of the Republican Party had helped to pay for circulars distributed to Germanspeaking voters in Pittsburgh during the previous fall. Several other witnesses declared that Alliance opposition to “muckers,” political workers of puritanical disposition who sought to restrict the personal liberties of German Americans, had determined its outcome. But participation in the Liberty Loan campaign, enlistment in military service or other initiatives in support of the nation could not negate mounting evidence that the Alliance had, indeed, engaged in political mischief.12 Listening to witnesses from February to April, Senate subcommittee members were convinced that the Alliance was guilty of having fostered the spread of “Germanism,” even though much of the testimony pertained to the period before the United States had entered the war. They also concluded that the Alliance had engaged in unacceptable political activity by opposing the nomination and election of Wilson. In the final passage of its summary, issued after deciding to suspend further hearings, the subcommittee, rejecting the claim that the Alliance had merely served the interests of German Americans, declared: Throughout the hearings the officers of the National German American Alliance have sought to identify themselves with the great element in our population which is of German origin. They have sought to ward off the attacks made upon them for their own misdeeds by pretending that those attacks were aimed at our loyal citizens of German descent. This attitude of the officers of the National German-American Alliance is as cowardly as it is contemptible. They do not represent, and have never represented, the great element in our country which is of German blood. They represent and have represented no one but themselves and a small coterie of noisy propagandists who were more interested in Germanism than in Americanism. The overwhelming majority of our citizens of German descent are absolutely and unqualifiedly loyal to this country, its ideals and institutions, and their sons are to-day fighting our battles. The cloud which the Alliance and its leaders have so insidiously sought to place on these loyal citizens must be swept aside and the stigma placed where it alone belongs— upon the National German-American Alliance and those responsible for its disloyal and disgraceful career.13

While finding that the Alliance had acted with disloyalty to the United States, the subcommittee adjourned without making a formal recommendation, which would only come in another three months. The hearings, however, had exposed an even more basic issue than the possibly subversive activities of the Alliance. Ohlinger’s opening assault

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had reached far beyond politics to the character and influence of German Americans. Citing the Official Bulletin of the Alliance, he had introduced the primacy of Anglo Saxon culture in American life. Moreover, if the basis of support for abstinence was found in Puritanism, as Ohlinger had argued, even the German American rejection of prohibition became another challenge to Anglo American superiority. He had referred to the work of Hugo Münsterberg, a German American Jew and professor at Harvard and Berlin universities, whose studies posited the higher character of German ideals and institutions. Beyond other witnesses fearful of America becoming a British colony again and Senators more concerned with subversion, Ohlinger exposed the German challenge to Anglo Saxonism, the belief that America’s core culture rested on British origins. German witnesses, arguing that German contributions to the American republic were being dismissed, contended that abandoning their own culture would mean being assimilated by an inferior one. Von Bosse had presented an editorial from the Official Bulletin, that sought to discredit Ohlinger’s views, including his assertion that German Americans were little more than “dunces of the Prussian junkers.” Von Bosse’s testimony identified German Americans as the first formidable challenge to Anglo Saxon culture in America. But it could not have been more poorly timed. While America, still reeling under the impact of mass migration, was hardly ready to embrace ethnic pluralism, it was wrong for another reason as well. For the Germans were attempting to defend their own culture and secure its legitimacy at the importune moment that the host society had entered into war against the nation which it had come. It was a formula doomed for failure. As the situation reached a crucial moment, German Americans, whether out of an unqualified intention to act as patriotic citizens or to save the reputation of the Alliance, joined into the effort to finance the war. With the launching of the third Liberty Loan in early April, a newspaper account, although giving most of its attention to support from inmates at the Eastern State Penitentiary, reported in a note buried at its end that about 20 prominent German Americans had gathered at the German Society of Pennsylvania to pledge $160,000 as the first installment by their community. Beyond being a good business investment, J. B. Meyer, president of the Society, asserted that it was also a family matter. With 200 sons of members in military service, he maintained, “it is our duty as fathers to provide for them.” He repeated a now familiar mantra of loyalty: “There is no German-American who will not buy Liberty Bonds. . . . There is not a German-American who does not proudly keep the oath of allegiance. . . . We want a large subscription to this Liberty Loan. . . . Actions speak louder than words.” But unlike prison inmates who could gain no acquittal, Meyer was also seeking to reclaim the reputation of a much maligned people.14

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German American voices and actions, however, remained insufficient before friends and foes who stirred suspicion and animosity. In a speech in Baltimore, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels thanked God for a united nation, before incongruously noting that armed and determined Americans would find the spies and traitors among its people and leave none of them outside of prison. In Chicago, radical leader Victor Berger, awaiting arraignment for violating the Espionage Act, prepared to address a Socialist rally, whose agenda included songs in German along with other speakers on the question “Why we are under indictment.” In Menominee, Michigan, Reverend C. H. Auerswald, a German Lutheran pastor, after commenting that American soldiers who lost their lives on the recently sunk S.S. Tuscania had probably gone to Hell, found himself charged with having made seditious remarks. In Washington, DC, the executive committee of the International Lyceum Association prepared to expel Arthur E. Gringle, a popular Chautauqua circuit lecturer and editor of the Lyceum World, who had already been suspended from membership after accusations of unpatriotic and treasonous statements. In Spokane, Washington, police raided the headquarters of lumber and agricultural unions affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World, arresting 50 men and confiscating books and literature at the site. Although no charges were made against the men, the IWW was no longer permitted to occupy the building without a court order. In Seattle, a steamship officer, arrested after attempting to disable his vessel on its maiden voyage to Hawaii, faced charges for stating that he had hoped that Germany would win the war. In Red Wing, Minnesota, the trial of an organizer of the Nonpartisan League, who protested that he was neither pro-German nor a Socialist, began with witnesses who claimed to have heard him ask as he entered a barbershop, “Is there a man here who will shave a pro-German?” In Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, a resident was charged with violating the Espionage Act, after being reported to have said, “Any man who was fool enough to enlist for volunteer should be sunk on the way over,” and “If Wilson had the first shot through his heart, the war would stop.” In New York City, glass particles were found in bread that came from an East Side bakery where 47 enemy aliens were employed, while similar discoveries were being reported to the police in all boroughs. And in Albany, Governor Charles S. Whitman signed a bill that permitted only citizens to be hired as teachers in public schools, but allow the foreign born to remain in such positions by applying for naturalization within a year. Perhaps there were “spies and traitors” among them, but less political, although no less impolitic, provocation had also done its damage.15 In Philadelphia, German Americans, as individuals and as a group, now engaged in a strategic retreat. In early April, Hexamer, packing belongings and vacating residential quarters, quietly resigned his life membership at the Manufacturers’ Club, while other members loudly demanded that the board

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of directors affirm his expulsion. Two days after Hexamer’s departure, the Executive Committee of the Alliance, reacting to Senator King’s proposal to revoke its charter, met to consider its voluntary dissolution. Heinrici, its editor and press agent, insisting that the action should have been done as soon as the United States entered the war, warned that continuation would only encourage further enmity toward German Americans. On April 12, the executive committee unanimously accepted the resignation of its president and officers, approved a resolution for dissolution, adjourned sine die, and closed its offices. In a final statement, it declared “the supreme duty of every American citizen to give his unqualified support to the Government in the successful prosecution of the war.” While emphatically denying ever having done anything that would justify the charge of disloyalty, the officers had now concluded that no better service could be made than by disbanding at this time. It also announced that the $30,000 in its educational fund would be given to the Red Cross of Wilmington, Delaware. By enormous coincidence, Philadelphia’s German Americans, on the same day as the self-imposed end of the Alliance, also lost probably their best-known champion by the death after long illness of former mayor Blankenburg. Characterized as “One of the most American of Americans, [who] never forgot his native country,” it could have been said of many other German Americans, who remained steadfast in loyalty to their nation—the United States.16 But the decision of the Alliance did not deter further efforts by Senator King and his colleagues to officially revoke its charter. And the Senate would finally reach a long-sought goal by voting to repeal the 1907 act that had incorporated the National German American Alliance, without any discussion or roll call in a session from which many legislators were absent on July 2, 1918. Although the society itself had already disbanded, the decision was deemed necessary, or at least desirable, after subcommittee hearings that had ended in April. Ignoring its self-imposed demise, several Senators charged that the Alliance, through its branches and estimated 3,000,000 members, had sought to spread pro-German propaganda since before the war, as well as taken an unacceptable role in American politics by opposing Wilson in the last election. Among more specific accusations, it was alleged to have turned over about $887,000 to Bernhard Dernburg, the organizer of German opposition to American intervention with the allies. Although the Senate action carried an impact throughout the nation, it was more greatly felt in Philadelphia where the central office of the Alliance was located, and with its old and large German American population, than anywhere else.17 As legislators waged their campaign against the Alliance and others suspected of less than full allegiance, German Americans, refusing to stand passive before such attacks, launched diverse efforts to demonstrate their loyalty. Since early 1918, the Friends of German Democracy, under the

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leadership of Franz Sigel, the son of the famed Union Army general, had pursued a nationwide program seeking to overthrow autocratic government and militarism in Germany, while also testifying to their support of American ideals and policy. Its slogan was “Democracy must triumph over autocracy.” As it gained a presence in Philadelphia, new members, Mayor Blankenburg, shortly before his death, and Professor Morris Jastrow, the well-known University of Pennsylvania Orientalist, joined scholars from universities across the nation already in its ranks. When it met at the central YMCA in May, its agenda included speeches by the younger Sigel and Walter Damrosch, the opera and classical music conductor. While President Wilson declined an invitation to attend, he issued a statement that indicated the significance of the organization: “I believe that by such means a vast deal of the unjust suspicion which has rested upon some classes of our fellow citizens may be effectually removed and their genuine loyalty and devotion brought into high relief.”18 At almost the same time as the launching of the Friends of German Democracy, German Americans of more modest station, concerned with personal biography rather than collective history, similarly sought to change their own identity as well as the perception of other Americans. Jacob Baerncopf, a resident of North Philadelphia who intended to anglicize his surname to Bancroft, announced his plan to organize a movement to encourage legislation that would enable the many persons wishing to substitute “real American cognomens for those made in Germany.” While nothing more was ever reported of his efforts, Baerncopf, an Austrian born Jew, who had been naturalized as an American citizen in 1895, would be Jacob Bancroft in the federal census of 1920 and buried under that name when he later died in the same year.19 Rather than seek a legislative solution, the citizen who found himself as an individual to be too “German” could also improvise a more personal strategy in his quest for a more desirable surname. Having been already rejected by the U.S. Marine Corps, Elmer Howard Migrantz sought an “American” name when he petitioned a local court to delete several letters and alter his name to “Grant.” He would, however, still be identified as Migrantz when he died of “bronchial pneumonia” in Methodist Hospital, possibly another victim of the flu epidemic in late September.20 Being German sometimes penetrated even further into domestic life when it provided grounds for divorce. In May 1918, Edith Sievers charged her husband Elwood with having insulted the government and threatening to desert if he were called to the colors. During violent outbursts of temper, he displayed “marked Teutonic characteristics,” disparaging the flag while refusing to salute it. Forced to turn over her meager weekly wages of $9.00, she had endured other hardships, but her spouse’s lack of patriotism appeared to be

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the more decisive factor when the divorce master recommended a decree in her favor.21 And if one’s neighborhood carried a measure of opprobrium by bearing an unacceptable name, another kind of divorce could be sought. In July, the City Council of Camden, responding to a petition from local residents, voted to erase German Street from the city map, by renaming the thoroughfare as the far more acceptable Pershing Street, while also honoring an American hero. Such self-imposed modifications of domestic life and residential location, induced by an erratic sense of “patriotism,” would be pursued in Philadelphia and elsewhere throughout the war years.22 Geographical revisionism now sought to “purify” the map of the nation. When advocates of a more “American” identity in New Berlin in central Pennsylvania, rejecting any reflection of the enemy “kultur,” proposed abandoning what had been the name of their town since its incorporation in 1795, but the initiative would be rejected. But in Ohio, New Berlin would become North Canton—as communities throughout America, often founded by German settlers or largely populated by their descendants, but now saddled with an onerous identity, wrestled with a similar dilemma. In June 1918, Representative J. M. C. Smith, a Michigan Republican born in Belfast Ireland, introduced a bill to Congress calling for the renaming of all municipalities, counties, townships, streets, and highways from “Berlin” or “Germany” to “Liberty,” “Victory,” or a similarly patriotic designation. It also directed that after passage all letters and other mail addressed to any person residing in any municipality called Berlin or Germany would be prohibited from transportation or delivery. It sought to express public sentiment that included the opposition to the study of German in elementary and secondary schools; the change of vocabulary from “sauerkraut” to “liberty cabbage”; and German family names to more American forms. While Portland, Oregon had already changed the “Teutonic” name of several of its streets, some 28 places in the United States still had “German” or some variation as their name and 30 more had “Berlin” or some derivation of it.23 Such revisions of place and practice eventually appeared to approach ludicrous limits such as when clergy, music directors, and prospective spouses jointly conspired in the banishment of traditional wedding music that had been deemed to be too “Teutonic,” and called for the substitution of such American marches as “Yankee Doodle” and “Over There.” It probably was no less so than the planning by the South Philadelphia Business Men’s Association that called for the burning of German flags and portraits of the Kaiser as the main feature of the Independence Day ceremonies in a bonfire at Broad Street and Oregon in July 1918. But even as the war reached its final day, the Department of Justice continued to warn of the necessity of regulations that would keep a “lid” on enemy aliens—by the necessity of measures to guard against disloyalty.24 

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Figure 8.1  How All of Us Feel—To Hell with the Kaiser. Source: Evening Public Ledger (November 11, 1918).

For Philadelphia’s German Americans, any reminder of their recent difficulties, even after the war, renewed the need to demonstrate their loyalty as Americans. In the summer of 1919, an announcement of a mass meeting which proclaimed their intention “to prove that German loyalty is no empty phrase” also declared that “one should not take into consideration anything but the need of the German people.” Despite humanitarian objectives conflated with political themes, federal agents and local police were reported to be not alarmed. Advertising, however, written in German that appeared in German newspapers contained more disturbing details. An announcement on behalf of the Hilsfund of Philadelphia, renamed as the German Relief Society during the war, was signed by Joseph Schlenz, its president, who was alleged to have been forced to resign as vice president of the North Penn Bank when his loyalty to the United States was questioned for his refusal to buy Liberty Loan bonds. With Schlenz now reportedly opposed to revealing the names of speakers for the program, several Germans “who became notorious through

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their un-American activity preceding and during the war” would participate. In addition to Schlenz, they included Hermann Kreimer, formerly of the Tageblatt; S. G. von Bosse; and C. J. Hexamer. The thrust of the impending program invited the charge that Germans Americans retained allegiance to previously discredited leaders.25 Shortly afterward, the Evening Public Ledger, in a lengthy editorial, assessed the program as the first major meeting of “avowed Germans” held in Philadelphia since before the United States had entered the war. Despite being an opportunity to erase the misunderstanding that had blinded the public in recent years and to build a new bridge over unhappy rifts, the event was seen as only revealing another example of “the German genius for irrational leadership.” As stereotype replaced analysis, the account maligned von Bosse for having “boomed like Ludendorff” and “strutted like Hindenburg” while he “bawled defiance” against those who blamed Germany for the war. Alleging that the Star-Spangled Banner had been rendered in “funereal silence,” it charged that the Tageblatt had resumed the mood for which its editors had been sentenced to prison. Declaring “This is all very sad—for Germans,” the editorial maintained that von Bosse, Hexamer, and the now-defunct National German American Alliance had misrepresented the interests of millions of citizens of German name, nativity, or ancestry whose sentimental concern for Germany had never lessened their loyalty to America. As one of the “minor tragedies” of a war endured in pain and silence while their sons fought and died with the American army in France, it added: “No one has spoken for these Americans of German descent or origin. Many of them were old people whose spirits were torn at the prospect of conflict between two countries and two peoples whom they loved. . . . Yet, it was not Germany that called to millions in America, though they may not have known it. It was the days of their youth and the innocence of life.” While America had “gone cheerfully about the business of feeding a destitute people who wanted to conquer us,” the editorial urged, or perhaps warned, that German Americans “who were never touched by the anti-America mania” should leave von Bosse and others like him off any future programs.26 FOREIGN VOICES With the demise of the Alliance, the press in Germany also appeared to have turned against German Americans. But while derision had become common in America, it was motivated more by disappointment in the homeland. The Lokal Anzeiger of Berlin, although not surprised by recent action, had hoped that German Americans would have expressed more sympathy with their native country. In its view, being weak and cowardly compared to

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other groups from the beginning, they had been smugly content with neutrality before realigning themselves for personal reasons with the allies. In a far-reaching indictment, while Germans had expected more from German Americans in peacetime, their optimism was based on sentimentality rather than realism. With banquets and press full of “hot air,” and English widely used by people afraid to speak German, it was not surprising that American comic pages frequently made German Americans subjects of wit and humor. The Tageblatt of Berlin, similarly alleging cowardice, argued that the dissolution of the Alliance also showed Wilson’s desire to wipe out everything German, unlike the Irish League which had not been terminated. It bitterly noted “and they call this a fight for freedom.” But other papers, ignoring recent events in Philadelphia, focused their attacks on the perfidious Wilson rather than the Alliance or German Americans.27 The Evening Public Ledger quickly responded to German press attacks by an editorial that offered a backhanded defense of German Americans. It termed “this noisy outburst from Hundom” to be “a final and amazing proof of an isolation of mind that is at once tragic, ludicrous and criminal.” Having seen people of their own blood fed to slaughter to satisfy the vanity of a mad man and his mad son, the local paper, on the edge of stereotyping, declared “even the most sentimental German-American, even the dullest and most rabid fatherlander” had to see the contrast between the governments in Berlin and Washington. In contrast to what was often found on its pages, the Evening Public Ledger now concluded, “America has never feared GermanAmericans.” With great bravado, it offered the conclusion that America was simply “too strong to fear any enemy within or without.” But in view of recent prosecutions, it was an explanation that rang somewhat hollow.28 In late June, the Weser Zeitung of Bremen provided another interpretation of how the situation threatened America. Having earlier expressed indignation at attempts to prohibit the teaching of German in public schools, it now returned to the same issue along with its concern over efforts to ban publication of German language newspapers. Scoffing at the contention that using the language undermined loyalty, the Weser Zeitung asked if Wilson realized what harm would come from a plan unlikely to succeed. Although German Americans lacked the courage to oppose Wilson’s policies and the war, their patience still had limits. And if otherwise knowledgeable Americans were unaware of the hatred that such measures would elicit from the rest of world, did they not understand that they were bringing their own country down to the level of Russia. The Weser Zeitung warned of a postwar era in which the repatriation of Germans and Austrians to their homelands would not only drain America of the most conscientious and intelligent laborers but further immigration from Europe would also halt. It was a curious argument from a newspaper with a specious concern for the social well-being of a country

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at war with Germany, but less than a decade later, America’s government, drastically revising immigration laws, would propose a remarkably similar answer.29 The Great War not only brought the need to confront Germany’s military power but its symbolic culture as well. And while statuary icons and traditional celebrations annoyed “patriotic” Americans, the language of an enemy nation disturbed them even more. But the struggle against the use of German in speech and print did not fully erupt until America formally entered the war. In April 1915, members of the Deutsche Verein at the University of Pennsylvania, together with the Junior League of the German American Alliance, presented Das Kecht der Frau, a three-act comedy in German, at the auditorium of the Philadelphia Turngemeinde at Broad Street and Columbia Avenue. While the performance by students of German language and literature attracted scant notice, it was the kind of public event that would become highly controversial. Less than a year later, in May 1916, the “Patriotic Students Organization,” a vigilante organization which sent out several thousand circulars to students and faculty members protesting the participation of singers of German parentage in a production of Aida, sought to change the same university into a less hospitable environment. But the effort, widely opposed by other members of the campus community, achieved virtually no success, when its claims were rejected, and even more so because of indifference.30 For nearly two years, despite widespread sympathy for the Allied cause, the use of the German language did not attract great public concern. But by spring 1917, with America having entered the war, the signs of a more hostile attitude had become evident. In early May, in a letter to a local newspaper, a prominent Philadelphia attorney, expressing an opinion shared by a growing number of others, called for the elimination of the teaching of the German language along with the removal of any books that depicted German military achievement. The writer, ironically bearing a name probably German in origin, declared, “It does not seem right that we Americans should have to put up with anything German, be it her customs, brags, or praises; yet we are requested to perfect our minds to be able to be able to speak, read and translate her tongue.” Although admitting some value to the language, he paradoxically concluded that while America was at war with Germany there was no reason to allow its language to gain any firmer foothold. Similar attacks and demands against the language of the enemy were rising throughout the nation.31 In its early phase, concern with the enemy presence in America focused mainly on the foreign language press. In August 1917, former president Roosevelt delivered another version of his now-familiar solo performance within the growing chorus of voices denouncing Senators, Congressmen, and

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editors who were “standing where the copperheads stood in the Civil War,” and calling for repression of German language newspapers and the deportation of all “fifty-fifty Americans.” Two weeks later, Representative Clifton N. McArthur, an Oregon Republican, declaring that “it is high time that the United States took a hand in suppressing the seditious and traitorous foreign language press of the country,” introduced a bill to prohibit the use of the mails by German language newspapers, magazines, and periodicals unless they printed parallel columns of verbatim English translations. The same provision, sponsored by Senator King, soon to become the Grand Inquisitor in the hearings on the National German American Alliance, was incorporated as an amendment into the Trading with the Enemy Act passed by the U.S. Senate in early October. In September, without waiting for final action on the McArthur-King legislation, Justice Department agents raided the office of the Tageblatt, confiscated files and records, and brought charges against the leading German newspaper of the city for having published seditious articles in violation of the Espionage Act of June 1917. In early October, another raid halted operations of Newark’s Freie Zeitung, one of the oldest German language newspapers in New Jersey, on similar grounds.32 A new wave of anti-German sentiment defined the problem as not being the press, but the German language, particularly in education. At its annual meeting, the New Jersey State Council of the Junior Order of the United American Mechanics, a Nativist labor organization founded in Philadelphia to oppose Catholic power in the 1840s, turning its attention to the new peril, urged that “the language of Germany, the arch-enemy of civilization and democracy, should be stricken from the curriculum of our public schools.” Although the ensuing debate stymied the recommendation, the issue had not only been introduced but would grow stronger. In December 1917, a letter submitted to the Board of Education of Philadelphia, claiming to be supported by a petition signed by a large number of parents threatening a mass protest, demanded the abolition of German from the city’s public schools. In January 1918, a letter to a newspaper asked, “What practical or cultural value is there in modern German except the science of war and aggression?” Seeing great danger to the republic in “all anti-American, anti-liberty, antidemocracy” inherent in the language, its writer advised: “No German in our schools till the war is over and then we shall see!”33 The campaign against the use of German, however, also recognized the strategic importance of mobilizing teachers to play a more important part against an enemy language and culture. One month after the parental petition to the Board of Education, Dr. John P. Garber, the Superintendent of Public Schools, sent a letter urging teachers to renew their efforts to counteract “the baneful influence of the various insidious ways adopted by Germany for undermining our strong, united, forceful determination to win the war.”

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Calling attention to the role of the public schools in training for citizenship, Garber asserted that the war had made it “more imperative than ever that our words, work and influence shall be energetically used for strengthening the hands of our Government and its allies.” He offered the conclusion that “any other course of action would not only have all the dangerous effects incident for the influence we have upon our pupils, but would also be in the nature of a disloyalty which would unfit us for being teachers.” But with the willing compliance of teachers, the more visible challenge would not be found in the classroom, but remained in the editorial offices of the German language press.34 In March, the trial of Louis Werner, editor in chief; Martin Darkow, managing editor; Peter Schaefer, president; Paul Vogel, treasurer; and Herman Lemke, business manager, of the Tageblatt, charged with treason, a crime that could bring the death penalty, began in the federal district court in Philadelphia. The indictment alleged that the defendants had composed, edited and published headlines, articles, and editorials that glorified German military strength and success; discouraged enlistments; abused the allies; attacked the sincerity of the United States; obstructed fiscal war measures; commended an anti-war stand on the part of German Americans; and falsified war news. The prosecution, led by federal district attorney Kane, argued that writing and publishing such material constituted an act of treason, if done by persons of a disloyal or treasonable state of mind. The testimony included sensational details about the gathering of evidence. Agent Hajek, a recent witness at the almost concurrent Senate hearings, claimed that when he went seeking information one of the defendants had threatened to throw him out of an upper floor window. But after five days of proceedings, Judge Oliver Booth Dickinson ordered dismissal of charges on the grounds of insufficient evidence, and the jury quickly returned its rejection of the case against the Tageblatt editors. In his instructions, Dickinson said that while the newspaper may have published seditious articles, the prosecution had failed to show that any overt act of treason, which required proof of aid and comfort to the enemy, had occurred, therefore negating any possibility of conviction.35 On the following day, the Tageblatt, again slipped on the shoals of sedition, with another editorial, describing a new long-range German artillery gun as a weapon that could quickly end the war, which enabled the government to renew prosecution. Special agent Garbarino, frustrated by the previous decision, sent a translation of the article to the Justice Department in Washington, seeking to atone for the previously bungled effort. The task was now to determine whether any assessment of enemy capabilities was detrimental to the United States. In what might be judged differently by later sensibilities, the editors had described the technical strength and strategic expectations, without making any endorsement, of German battlefield efforts. But it also

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revealed what was either internal staff conflict or other difficulties being encountered by the Tageblatt. A day later, with the resignation of the two editors, its business manager announced that he was glad to get rid of them and that the Tageblatt would become a “real American newspaper,” using German as its language, but “fully American in spirit.” Meanwhile the case against the editors, despite having been dismissed, remained on the docket for a new trial in June.36 The Tageblatt case, however, did not stand alone in a vacuum, but shared public attention with a persistent spate of other, sometimes even more disturbing threats. As the court neared its decision, the Evening Public Ledger reported the arrest of a German accused by a fellow worker of planning to destroy a supply of medicine intended for the use of soldiers on the western front and to blow up the Polyclinic Hospital on Lombard Street, the predecessor of the present-day Graduate Hospital, where both were employed. But even when difficult to prove, such charges could only exacerbate fears of the public over the enemy, whether journalists or hospital workers, within our midst.37 Meanwhile, the decision in the Tageblatt case, along with the boldness of its editors, unleashed accusations that the courts had gone soft in its prosecution. An editorial in the Evening Public Ledger condemned the “recurrent bleak travesties of federal procedure against traitors, seditionists and spies” that preferred being “gentle rather than brave in dealing with the most dangerous enemies of the country.” Calling attention to increasing demonstrations of disloyalty at the very moment that a German drive had placed Allied troops in great peril, its argument for a more aggressive response noted that other countries shot or hung spies and traitors, while America coddled them. Although two members of Congress had demanded the execution of more dangerous aliens, the editorial asserted that many people had to believe that officials with the power to suppress treason valued the lives of “pro-German paranoiacs” above those of soldiers at the front. But with the German language press remaining the prime target for attempts to contain inimical influence, U.S. district attorney Kane, had reportedly drafted a bill, as a result of his personal convictions after prosecuting the Tageblatt trials, to be placed in the hands of a member of the Senate, that would ban publication in the German language. Unsurprisingly, the unnamed legislator would turn out to be Senator King. When King renewed the attack against sedition, he proposed another amendment to his bill suppressing the National German American Alliance that would ban all German language newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals until the war ended.38 Justice Department officials, stung by their recent setback, attempted to place blame on Congress for the failure to obtain a conviction in the Tageblatt case. Responding to criticisms about the handling of the prosecution and the

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inability to accomplish what was being demanded throughout the country, they maintained that while arrests could be made, there was no basis in existing law that would have enabled any court to reach a guilty verdict. With such a decision under the statute against treason remaining almost impossible, prosecutors had charged the editors with violation of the Espionage Act, without reaching the desired outcome. But with comparable difficulty under existing statutes, the government was also unlikely to secure convictions of saboteurs. As proposed legislation, which included provisions against women deemed to be dangerous, reached a joint congressional committee but seemed unlikely to be passed soon enough, the Justice Department unsuccessfully sought to apply a lower legal standard to facilitate prosecution.39 But more serious threats to national security were also drawing attention. With Department of Justice agents investigating rumors of military societies, made up of well-armed veterans or sons of veterans of the German military, as well as some men prominent in business, mobilizing for action in Philadelphia and other American cities, the local contingent was reported to be as high as 5,000 members. While such reports failed to materialize any further, their appearance on the pages of local newspapers could not be easily dismissed or entirely ignored.40 With possible threats on the domestic scene as well as increasing casualties on the western front testing the patience of America, Justice Department officials reported that mob violence in retaliation against Germans and other undesirable persons had increased from an infrequent few to a daily dozen incidents. And despite an estimated 500,000 who had complied, the fewer than 250 Germans who had been arrested for failing to register in the enemy alien census, with only a handful of them interned, brought another concern. Other news further complicated matters. Speaking before a local Chamber of Commerce in Oklahoma, former President William Howard Taft condemned mob action, but called for spies to be court-martialed and executed by firing squads. In Oklahoma, some 60 young men waiting the call to military duty attacked a 72-year-old minister who refused to have a haircut until Germany won the war. Invading his hotel room, they awakened him, shaved his head, made him pledge allegiance to the United States, and distributed locks of his hair as souvenirs, before forcing him out of town. Having recently avoided conviction for obstructing the Selective Service, the unfortunate clergyman was freed on bail while awaiting a new trial. In Louisiana, local citizens administered 100 lashes before the tar and feathering of a restaurant employee who had allegedly made pro-German remarks. After being forced to shout “To Hell with the Kaiser!” and “Hurrah for Wilson!,” he too was driven out of town. In Texas, a German, recently registered as an enemy alien, believed to be traveling around the county “in the interest of Germany,” was arrested for making abusive remarks against President Wilson. And at

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Berkeley, the University of California board of regents, after voting to condemn conduct inimical to the United States, fired Alfred Forke, professor and chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature, and I. W. D. Hackh, a promising young assistant in the Chemistry Department for violating the resolution. Whether or not the Justice Department had exaggerated its appraisal of the situation in order to gain increased powers, anti-German reactions were taking a toll on victims across the nation.41 With the nation seeking greater security, other angry voices, skeptical of the need for further legislation, demanded swifter and surer application of existing laws. The Evening Public Ledger asserted that the present criminal code was adequate “to hang or shoot every enemy plotter and everyone who gives aid or comfort to a plotter,” but the Department of Justice had “failed scandalously” to properly apply measures already in force. It offered a litany of charges to support its argument: the offenses by the editors of the Tageblatt were already covered by the existing criminal code, which provided that “treason in a time of war is punishable by death”; the “fantastic and altogether humiliating collapse” of the case could be traced to the laxity and inefficiency of the government; as America’s enemies understood only force and fear, federal agents were prevented from being able to properly deal with propaganda; internment camps and prisons were being filled with men who would have been shot or hanged by another country at war. Alleging that Germans had avoided confinement or were enjoying comfortable internments, it asked whether political considerations had rotted the consciences of men entrusted with carrying out governmental responsibilities or local agents of the attorney general’s office had been merely incompetent. But such claims also rendered a judgment that the much-publicized efforts of Kane, Noonan, and Garbarino had fallen far short of expectations.42 Although forced to defer final action against the Tageblatt, the government could not prevent other attacks against the German language. In April 1918, civic organizations in Chicago banned the speaking of German, purged publications that carried favorable material on the Central Powers from their libraries, and imposed severe restrictions on membership, guest privileges and employment of enemy aliens. An official explained the new policy: “We already have measures upon our books . . . but we are going to tighten up so that not even a German thought can find its way into our presence.” In Philadelphia, the acting superintendent of police announced that permission for public meetings in which German was to be used by speakers would be denied, while adding that no patriotic person should want to attend such events. The ban, in response to an application for a permit for a mass meeting sponsored by the National Industrial Union, which the police believed to be affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World, also suppressed militant labor. Similar actions, sometimes with odd amendments, were now sweeping

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the country. In Sunbury, Pennsylvania, the school board halted the teaching of German, which would be replaced by the study of speeches on democracy by prominent Americans. Senator King’s amendment to the bill liquidating the National German American Alliance would prohibit the use of the mails for material published in the language of an enemy nation. Citing the Tageblatt case, he argued that “we should do everything to discourage attempts to keep foreign elements solid and aloof from assimilation.” Meanwhile, an editorial page item, under the heading “Bury Them!,” informed Philadelphia readers that German language newspapers were dying of their own poison. If the ongoing dialogue seemed to be only a rhetorical exercise, the lynching in southern Illinois of Robert Prager, an immigrant miner, by a mob convinced that he held pro-German views, whose members would be exonerated after a perfunctory trial, proved otherwise. And along with amendments of the Espionage Act suppressing newspapers, some Senators again called for the execution by firing squad for anyone convicted of being a German agent.43 Against authoritative scholars who defended the German language, a misguided logic rejected such views as unpatriotic. Dr. Philander P. Claxton, the U.S. Commissioner of Education, who had studied in Germany, endorsed German as a subject, before an audience of 200 young women at the Teachers’ College of Columbia University. With probably far more Germans in the trenches who understood English than Americans who knew German, he saw the value of German, not in order to read Heine and Goethe, but for its role on the battlefield. In a rejoinder, Professor George D. Strayer, a prominent professor of educational administration at Columbia, speaking at a conference in Washington, DC, insisted that the nation’s children should receive an education that would make them 100 percent Americans. He argued that the ideals and institutions for which America was willing to sacrifice her choicest manhood could not be maintained in schools that handed on the traditions and institutions of those who spoke another tongue. Other citizens bombarded newspapers with a simpler message. On the woman’s page of a Philadelphia newspaper, a reader, probably reflecting a widely shared view, asked, “What do we need to learn from the Germans?” As the mother of two students who had dropped the language, she doubted that it had any cultural value: “Literature and music are supposed to bring out the best in men. If Germany today is a specimen of the best in men, then I would say give us American ragtime. At least ragtime never bred a Kaiser.” In her ardent “exceptionalism,” she bluntly urged: “Out with the German from our American schools, I say!”44 Having become more than a war of words, the German language, from spring through early winter of 1918, was stripped from classroom, clubroom, and concert hall. In Philadelphia, as the issue of German in the curriculum of public schools tested the Board of Education, a newspaper anticipated that

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“the enemy’s tongue will be dropped.” As the school year closed, only 494 students, a huge decline from the 1,814 of the previous year, among a total of 3,352 enrolled in high schools expressed their intention to study German in 1917–1918. Seeking to avoid further controversy, the school board announced that the number of students rather than propriety of the language would determine their decision. Superintendent Garber, after stating that German would remain available as an elective, almost immediately reversed himself by declaring that if popular sentiment demanded its elimination, it would have to go. But for holding a hesitant view, critics demanded his resignation. Meanwhile, Edwin Wolf, president of the Board of Education, indicated that its members, in cooperation with the City Councils, were ready to “throw out German without any trouble.” Such action would rebuke Germans by showing that “we hate them as much as they hate the English, and when we acquire that spirit we will win the war.” And a city that had long proclaimed itself as the “cradle of liberty” now added hatred as a rationale for educational policy.45 Convinced of the undesirable impact of German, other voices took up the call to action. When John Gribbel, a utilities executive and former president of the Union League, declared “We should drive the German language out of every school in the United States, and if the various superintendents . . . do not change their tactics they should be made to walk the plank,” an audience of some 500 military veterans loudly applauded. At a nearby hall, the General Society of the Sons of the Revolution, holding its annual convention, adopted a resolution demanding the elimination of German from the curriculum of American schools. Similar sentiments were expressed by the president of the Patriotic Sons of America who declared that his organization had only begun its fight against all things German.46 The declarations and decisions of state and local officials displayed antiGerman sentiment, militant patriotism, and occasional absurdity across the nation. In Connecticut, Governor Marcus H. Holcombe’s broad proclamation mandated English in teaching and administration of public and private schools. The Board of Education of Chicago voted not only to ban German but also all foreign languages in its elementary schools. The school boards of Radnor, Lower Merion, Coatesville, Norristown, Reading, Lancaster, Allentown, Sunbury, Wilkes Barre and Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, as well as Camden, Collingswood, Glassboro, Paulsboro and Bordentown in New Jersey, had begun to consider or already decided to exclude German from the classroom. In Delaware, Governor John G. Townsend issued a decree banning the language throughout the state. In Philadelphia, various efforts converged in the campaign against German. The Junior Order of the United American Mechanics notified the Board of Education of its approval of any measure to eliminate the teaching of German from city schools. The Art Club

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of Philadelphia announced that it would no longer allow Germans to participate in programs or its members to use the language of Germany or any of its allies. While the ban included Slovak, Czech, Bulgarian and Turkish, it remained uncertain on Russian, perhaps because it was not yet clear which side the Tsar had taken. Meanwhile, the Daily Gazette, the sanitized, “more American” successor to the Tageblatt, proclaimed that it would be using an English typeface for articles, except for what the government, as it prepared for Liberty Loan appeals, deemed necessary for German readers. Similarly, the executive committee of the Chamber of Commerce expressed its judgment favoring the discontinuation of German in public schools and the exclusive use of English in newspapers in order to build English speaking and writing skills. And the Patriotic Order of the Sons of America adopted a demand that the Board of Education prohibit German in city schools as part of a statewide campaign, with “Four Minute Men,” volunteers who gave brief public speeches, recruited from its membership, who would carry opposition to its use in schools, churches, newspapers, and books by brief orations in 138 school districts.47 The opposition toward Germany and its language had a powerful hold on Americans who placed their own evidence and arguments before the public. A newspaper reader in Philadelphia asked: “How can you have the modern German language without the modern German thought, which is Kaiser-born German thought? Remember the well-proved German propaganda in our school textbooks; the 300 western schools in one state where German only is taught; the 1,000 schools in which the German anthem is daily sung and American national spirit not fostered at all.” It was also expressed by scholars such as Professor Robert M. McElroy, a prominent Princeton University historian, who described the teaching of German as “the secret but deadly propaganda which seeks to poison the soul of our nation” in a speech to the League to Ensure Peace meeting at the Academy of Music. With a bold assertion on the character of teachers, McElroy, a leading jingoist within academic circles, argued that the nation was playing into the hands of German ambition by allowing “men and women with Prussian souls to teach the German language to our youth.” Such “factual” claims made it easy to conclude that the German language could somehow undermine the likelihood of success in the war. In May 1918, when the Board of Education met again, the petitions of numerous fraternal and civic organizations demanded the banning of German. Whether acting out of their own convictions or having succumbed to such demands, its members unanimously voted to suspend the teaching of German at the start of the next academic year.48 The Board of Education decision was not simply a matter of German interests being suppressed by a dominant Anglo Saxon culture, but also in response to a milieu of more complicated ethnic diversity. In an hour of

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great distress for German Americans and sympathetic supporters, the leadership of another immigrant group recognized the opportunity to promote its own cause. After meeting at the Graphic Sketch Club in South Philadelphia, Giuseppe Di Donato, Charles C. A. Baldi, and other leaders of the Italian community, submitted a proposal to the school board that would allow their own language to replace the repudiated German. As Di Donato explained it, while the broken commercial and intellectual relations with Germany were unlikely to ever be restored, the alliance with Italy would continue after the war with more expanded trade and other points of contact between the Italian and American mind. But despite Italian efforts, school officials, not overly eager to allow any foreign language to usurp the impending gap in the curriculum, preferred to rebuild America as a monolingual culture.49 With American troops poised to begin the “big push” on the western front, civilian forces on the Home Front declared victory against the German language. On the day following the decision by the Board of Education, special agent Garbarino, head of the local office of the U.S. Department of Justice, announced that energetic efforts over the past thirty days had virtually wiped out the publication and circulation of books, postcards, and posters used in the spread of German propaganda in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It was, however, the sort of claim that tended to shrink upon closer scrutiny. Periodicals of satirical humor, or books with German words and phrases of ambiguous meanings or vaguely favorable to Germany, along with a German American calendar, all fell too easily into a “lair of propaganda lies.” Garbarino claimed that no stone had been left unturned in the search for “snakes lying coiled beneath to strike a blow at American patriotism.” But when he attempted to suppress all German language newspapers by soliciting the support of newsboys and dealers and posting an announcement on newsstands declaring “No German newspapers or periodicals are on sale at this stand,” the outcome still reflected the zeal rather than the actual accomplishments of his agency. Garbarino’s tenure in Philadelphia would soon end when he was assigned to reorganize the Department of Justice office in San Francisco in July.50 In the summer of 1918, with the future of curriculum also remaining an issue, the National Security League, under the slogan of “Make the United States a one-language nation,” claimed that efforts had succeeded in bringing about the discontinuation of instruction in the schools of 25 states. Seeking to protect American culture, it had also discouraged advertising and the distribution by news dealers of German language newspapers.51 Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the new trial opened against the Tageblatt for having violated the Espionage Act. The nine count indictment charged the two editors, Werner and Darkow, and three business officers, Schaefer, Vogel and Lemke, with having conspired to make false news reports that promoted enemy military operations and obstructed recruitment and enlistments in the

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armed forces of the United States. The subsequent proceedings revealed the support of brewery workers for the Tageblatt, not only by union ownership of stock but the building from which it was published. Further testimony unraveled issues of authorship and responsibility for published articles, along with the disclosure that circulation was actually quite low. The courtroom drama included a former editor, now a government witness who had identified writers at the previous trial, but having suffered the loss of his memory could no longer do so. The climax of testimony was reached on its third day when Werner, under intense questioning by prosecutor Owen J. Roberts, defended his editorials. As he explained his criticism of Congress for declaring war without a mandate from the American people, Werner ensured the likelihood of his conviction. His attempt to defend German U-boat activity, followed by his refusal to answer questions from his own counsel and his admission that he was a pacifist, discredited his position along with his fellow defendants. On the final day, a frigid courtroom forced jury members into overcoats under which they huddled with hands in pockets, while women spectators wrapped themselves in fur as they listened or walked in nearby corridors, as the presiding judge paced behind his bench in search of warmth. At its conclusion, Judge Dickinson remanded the case, with instructions that strongly reflected contentions by the prosecution, to a jury from which, despite defense objections, persons of German birth or descent had been challenged and dismissed. After only two hours, it returned a verdict of guilty, on at least one count, against each of the five defendants. When the defense asked for a retrial, it was promptly scheduled for a later hearing; but be of little avail when the court denied the request in early December. A few days later, Judge Dickinson issued sentences of five years in prison for editors Werner and Darkow, with lesser terms for the business officers, but released all of them on bail to await appeals. Dickinson added that the end of the war, along with age and poor health in the case of Werner, had persuaded him to be lenient and hinted that executive action could further reduce the punishments.52 But the compassion that had come in the Tageblatt case would not be found elsewhere. In North Dakota, federal judge Charles F. Amidon, far less forgiving than Dickinson, admonished a German Evangelical Church minister, convicted of making seditious remarks and interfering with military activities, for not having put away his German soul and cultivated an American one upon taking his oath of allegiance as a naturalized citizen: “You have cherished everything German and stifled everything American. You have preached German, prayed German, read German, sung German. Every thought of your mind and every emotion of your heart through all these years has been German. Your body has been in America, but your life has been in Germany.” For other German defendants, who spoke through interpreters despite their many years in America, he could see “made in Germany” stamped on them

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as if it were an inscription on a new coin. He expressed regret that America had welcomed them with land, opportunity and citizenship, but then left them alone and paid little attention to what they were doing. With the war shining a spotlight on national life, Amidon, unable to separate enemies from allies, offered a broad indictment: “We find all over these United States, in groups, little Germanys, little Italys, little Austrias, little Norways, little Russias. These foreign people have thrown a circle around themselves, and instead of keeping the oath they took that they would try to grow American souls inside of them they have studiously striven to exclude everything American, and to cherish everything foreign.” After decrying Israel Zangwill’s popular play “The Melting Pot” for promoting romance rather than fact, Amidon welcomed a rapidly approaching day when every foreign-born citizen and institution would be brought to judgment in America and made to either change or be returned to their native lands. And with that warning for all who sought to hold on to a foreign identity, customs and institutions, the patriotic judge sentenced the German pastor to three years in the federal prison at Leavenworth.53 With the war approaching its end, decisions on enemy aliens shifted in new directions. In early September, Anthony Caminetti, U.S. Commissioner of Immigration, announced that seven Germans and one Austrian, detained at the immigration station at Gloucester, New Jersey, would be paroled to a brick-making firm near Altoona, Pennsylvania, under a new policy by which enemy aliens who were not seen as particularly dangerous could be assigned to private industries. But despite such concessions, government authorities were not ready to fully abandon restrictions. In the first week of October, U.S. marshal Noonan, reporting that only a few hundred of the 5,000 registered alien women in Philadelphia had obtained permits allowing them to live near war industry plants, warned that his office was about to begin a round-up of those who had failed to comply with the requirement. Because of the currently raging influenza epidemic, he was postponing anticipated raids for a week or two in order to give alien women more time to obtain permits. Under the impact of a lethal disease that placed agents and aliens at great risk, Noonan’s directive, like Caminetti’s action, reflected an easing of policy.54 But the end of the war would not be enough to resolve the enemy alien problem. On Armistice Day, the Department of Justice issued an official warning against the relaxation of regulations related to the conduct of enemy aliens. Through its agents, the department intended to maintain even greater vigilance, particularly against propaganda that might disturb the solidarity of the allies during peace negotiations. It also planned to continue the internment of more dangerous aliens after any treaty was signed as well as the investigation of anyone applying for naturalization. As one newspaper headline indicated, the department clearly planned to “keep the lid” on enemy aliens.55

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During the early winter of 1918, official policy sharply changed when U.S. attorney general Gregory announced that the Armistice had removed the necessity of several regulations that had been imposed on enemy aliens. Proclaimed on December 23, but to take effect on Christmas Day, the “Christmas gift” abolished the permit and pass system and eliminated all prohibited and restricted zones throughout the country, allowing Germans to enter army camps, arsenals, naval yards, factories, waterfront areas, and the city of Washington, DC. All registration requirements would cease along with the need to obtain permits for change of residence or employment. The proclamation, however, did not affect the department’s authority over enemy aliens who had been detained, arrested, confined, or interned for a prior violation; release any of them from the obligations of a previously imposed parole; or eliminate the power to pursue action against any still dangerous alien. During the period in which restrictions had been in force, the Department of Justice had arrested about 6,300 enemy aliens, with more than 2,300 of them remanded to military authorities for internment. With the exception of a few released without restriction, the rest of them had been placed on parole, but otherwise allowed to remain free. With the new policy, except for those considered as having no proper place in the United States, whom the government intended to deport, interned aliens would be released. For the mass of ordinary people who had never been incarcerated it also represented a profound easing of sanctions. In Philadelphia, about 11,900 German residents, 6,500 men and 5,400 women, forced to register as enemy aliens, had regained their freedom to walk on any street or enter any neighborhood.56 THE PASTORIUS MONUMENT With the war over, German Americans joined the rest of the city in welcoming their sons home from overseas battlefields. Although their place could be obscured when they participated within the larger population, their visibility more easily drew attention, but with varying reactions, when they acted as a separate community. The German American League banquet that quietly honored eleven military veterans at the Quartette Club in Germantown in November 1919 undoubtedly elicited the approval of fellow citizens. In contrast, German Day, as well as the anniversary of the founding of Germantown, suspended during the war, but resumed with the return of peace, carried the risk of reviving tensions. But German Americans were not yet ready to abandon the cultural heritage that had long been a part of their public life in Philadelphia.57 Much earlier, German American leaders, while seeking to avert a break with their homeland, had continued in attempts to recognize their place in

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America. In March 1916, more than seven years after dedicating a plaque honoring his distant relative, Samuel Pastorius turned the first spade of soil in Vernon Park in the next phase of a long-delayed project. Ignoring bad weather conditions, other descendants of the original Germantown settlers, along with members of civic and patriotic societies, participated in the program. But after receiving financial support from federal government agencies and the National German American Alliance, the project was brought to a halt. In late April 1917, shortly after the United States declared war, John B. Mayer, secretary of the Alliance, sought advice on the propriety of dedicating a larger monument on Whit Sunday of the following month. In his reply, U.S. secretary of war Newton D. Baker recommended that the event be indefinitely postponed “until such time as the public mind be better disposed to honor this great pioneer.” Baker also expressed his hope that the war with Germany would not reduce the esteem of the American people for Pastorius. While the Alliance agreed to wait for a more auspicious moment, the project, with its basic objective denied, had received a now empty endorsement.58 Two days after Secretary Baker’s recommendation was announced, an editorial in The Inquirer noted that, while the monument had long been in progress and was far from completion, the end was in sight. And although the war may have been a poor excuse for postponing what was a purely local affair, the decision as a wise choice. With gratuitous praise for Pastorius and others, it defended President Wilson for having declared that we were not at war against the German people but against the Prussian military autocracy and Hohenzollern dynasty. It argued that people familiar with conditions before the war were aware that South Germany had long been disturbed by Prussian domination. Connecting political disjunction in Germany to public disturbance in Philadelphia, it charged the National German American Alliance with having provided the real reason for the recent decision. Incongruously asserting that while the organization was believed to be thoroughly loyal, the criticism that it had received during the past three years made more overt opposition a possibility. With Germantown unique in the nation, and nearly even its capital, when the time to dedicate the monument returned, it would be with the acclaim of the American people and of those who love Germany. It concluded: “This country owes nothing and the world little to Prussia, no matter how much it is indebted to other German states—a debt which is freely acknowledged.” The convoluted rhetoric had fused Prussian political and military domination in Germany with the influence of National German American Alliance in Philadelphia, implicitly accusing its leaders with having betrayed their co-nationals and adopted country. But the editorial also captured the delicate situation in which German Americans found themselves in the spring of 1917.59

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The hostility toward all things German that swept the nation momentarily redefined the place of Germans in local history. Along with halting the dedication of the Pastorius Monument, it substituted Richard Townsend an English settler, who arrived with William Penn and built what became known as Roberts Mill some months before any Germans had come, as the founder of Germantown. With the question of the unveiling of the Pastorius Monument, boarded up for nearly two years, placed on the agenda of the Site and Relic Society of Germantown (later to become the Germantown Historical Society), the overseers of public art for the community, controversy was renewed in April 1919. A hostile faction within its board of directors argued that the project had never been intended to honor Pastorius, but to promote an insidious form of propaganda that glorified German militarism. J. B. Mayer, chairman of the unveiling committee, insisting that more patriotic motives had guided the plan, argued that the dedication was only waiting for a peace agreement between nations. But the Evening Public Ledger countered that the figure of Germania, especially with a unified Germany far in the future when the project was originally conceived, was an anachronistic intrusion on the saga of Pastorius. It also noted that the founder of Germantown had become not merely a friend of William Penn, but a Quaker as well, during his brief period of residence in England. By adding that early settlers were only partly German, but also Dutch with Mennonite roots, it was removing both the mythic Germania and the recently deposed Germany from the early history of the colony.60 Wartime sentiments did not die easily. In June 1919, the Executive Council of the Stonemen’s Fellowship of the 22nd Ward passed a resolution opposing the unveiling the Pastorius Monument on the grounds that the project had been due to the efforts of the Alliance, an organization discredited for spreading propaganda and opposing Allied efforts during the war. Rather than being a tribute to Pastorius, the monument was “a memorial to German arrogance . . . typifying a form of so-called civilization and kultur that Americans will want to forget, as it was only overthrown after thousands of American lives had been sacrificed.” The neighborhood-based workers guild urged other patriotic groups to join its protest against the unveiling of the monument.61 The proponents of the Pastorius Monument as it had been first conceived, however, had not abandoned their defense of the original design. In October, Dr. Naaman H. Keyser, a prominent dentist, director of the Site and Relic Society, author of the principal history of Germantown, and a descendant of Dirck Keyser, one of the Dutch members of the colony, strongly disagreed with critics of the monument. Disputing objections, he argued that the woman depicted on the shaft of the work represented civilization, acerbically noting that she looked no more like Germania than a cat looks like an elephant. Since the design had been decided by a committee in 1885 with the intention

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to honor Pastorius and the other settlers, the charge that it reflected enemy propaganda was “all rot,” and no part of it even slightly exalted the Germany of the recent war. But despite Keyser’s warning that the fight to keep the statue from being changed or removed would continue, its future was now also threatened by the discovery that the contested figure itself had been badly cracked and would require restoration work expected to take another two years.62 While patriotic organizations guarded Americans against the statuary presence of Germany, other efforts sought to protect German Americans from military conscription by its government in any future war. The Treaty of Versailles would require that Germany recognize the naturalization of any former subject as a citizen of another nation, thus precluding any right to call such persons into military duty. Although American delegates joined the allies in signing the agreement of June 1919, Congress would not ratify the accord, but seek separate peace agreements with former enemy nations. But with the spirit of Versailles challenging America, as Philadelphia’s German Americans, embracing the peace as well as being embraced by it, renewed their attempts to demonstrate loyalty by another mass meeting in late August, the controversy over the Pastorius Monument remained a stumbling block.63 In December 1919, Philadelphia’s municipal government sought to resolve the matter when the director of Public Works submitted a bill to City Councils placing the Pastorius Monument under the supervision of his department. With such a solution, the protective boards that had barricaded the site and required constant surveillance against being damaged by angry citizens since the entrance of America into the war could be removed. As city officials deliberated further action fearful that the proposal could reopen controversy, the needed restoration work began. By April 1920, a warning was raised that the monument, particularly if its inscription alluded to Germania rather than civilization, would revive “a vexed subject.” While urging temperate action, another editorial flippantly dismissed its historical significance: “Pastorius was a first-rate chap and he began a good job when he started Germantown.” But whether being facetious or patronizing, the writer, recognizing that the final inscription “ought to be the equal to taking the offense out of a monument signalizing the origin of one of our finest suburbs,” anticipated a more tranquil course in the future.64 With the replacing of an immense granite panel, reportedly damaged in shipping, the completion of the restored Pastorius Monument was announced in June 1920. The female figure at its center, representing “Miss Civilization,” somehow honored Pastorius and the other settlers of Germantown. It was not only the sculpture itself that had being restored but its meaning as well. It could now be claimed that the public disfavor that had obstructed its dedication had been due to the misinterpretation of the figure as representing

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Germania. In September, Philadelphia’s Mayor J. Hampton Moore submitted plans to widen the Rittenhouse Street approach to Vernon Park and return the monument to city control. But with controversy not entirely ended, Moore also responded to opposition that he regarded as “absurd” and defamatory to the name of an honorable community itself. A more nuanced view argued that while wartime opinions could only be black or white, but not intermediate shades of gray; with the return of peace, Pastorius, as “the antithesis of Junker Teutonism,” and his chiefly Mennonite pacifist followers, could now be honored. In November, Germantown, after nine disputatious years, dedicated the Pastorius Monument. Some 500 persons, including officials of the War Department, the State of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia, as well as school children, descendants of founding families and other spectators joined the ceremonies. In accepting the monument for the city, Mayor Moore’s words caught the spirit of the moment: “We shall leave it for the most part to the people of Germantown to preserve it and see that it always stands for the principles for which it was erected—a memorial to the founders, an emblem of advancing civilization, a token of progress and enduring peace.” Despite charges of pro-German militarism, the monument remained a tribute to Pastorius, his companions, and the massive migration that followed them into Pennsylvania. But as Moore hinted, it also served, by coming a day before the second anniversary of the Armistice, as a reminder of the reintegration of Philadelphia’s German heritage with the history of the city.65

NOTES 1. “Pro-Germans in Berlin List Bared by U.S.,” Evening Public Ledger (December 6, 1918). 2. “Senate Summons Alliance Heads,” The Inquirer (February 21, 1918). 3. “German Americans Loyal, Says Penrose,” Evening Public Ledger (January 8, 1918); “Blankenburg To Aid In Ousting The Kaiser,” Evening Public Ledger (January 19, 1918); 4. German American Title and Trust Company, Evening Public Ledger (January 19, 1918); “More German Banks Join Liberty Parade, Evening Public Ledger (January 21, 1918). 5. “Senate Summons Alliance Heads,” The Inquirer (February 21, 1918). See: Their True Faith and Allegiance by Gustavus Ohlinger, The Advocate of Peace (1894–1920), 79, 1 (January 1917), 31. Published by: World Affairs Institute Article Stable URL: http://www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/20667697. Also see: http:​/​/www​​.find​​agrav​​e​ .com​​/cgi-​​bin​/f​​g​.cgi​​?page​​=gr​&G​​R​id​=5​​29787​​10, which includes Patrick Cook’s brief biography “Gustavus Ohlinger: A Man of the World.” 6. “German Propaganda,” Washington Herald (February 25, 1918). See: Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary of the United

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States Senate, Sixty-Fifth Congress, Second Session, on S.3529, A Bill To Repeal The Act Entitled “An Act To Incorporate The National German-American Alliance,” Approved February 25, 1907. February 23–April 13, 1918 (Washington: 1918). 7. “Resents Treason Charge,” Evening Ledger (December 16, 1914); “Ex-Congressman Named As Pro-German Worker,” Evening Public Ledger (February 27, 1918); “Tageblatt Editors Upheld By Alliance,” Evening Public Ledger (February 27, 1918); “Hexamer Led Plot To Sway Congress,” Evening Public Ledger (March 4, 1918). 8. “State Full Of Spies, We Must String Them Up, Declares Heinz,” Evening Public Ledger (March 4, 1918). 9. “Hajek Has Clash With Garbarino,” Evening Public Ledger (March 6, 1918); “Alliance Got Money To Fight Prohibition,” Evening Public Ledger (March 4, 1918); “Alliance Man Admits Urging ‘Kultur’ Here,” Evening Public Ledger (March 11, 1918). 10. “We’ve Had Enough,” Evening Public Ledger (March 13, 1918). 11. “Timm Declares Alliance Loyal,” Evening Public Ledger (March 13, 1918); “Alliance Head Admits ‘Bad’ Acts,” Evening Public Ledger (March 21, 1918); “Alliance’s Hand Against Wilson,” Evening Public Ledger (March 22, 1918). 12. “Von Bosse Resigns As Alliance Head,” Evening Public Ledger (April 1, 1918); “Tells How Alliance Helped Penrose Man,” Evening Public Ledger (April 2, 1918); 13. Hearings. . ., 697–8. 14. “Convicts In Line To Do Their Bit For Third Loan,” Evening Public Ledger (April 4, 1918). 15. “Country Holds Many ‘Hot Spots’ For Foes,” Evening Public Ledger (March 6, 1918). 16. “Dr. Hexamer Is Either Club Member Or Not,” Evening Public Ledger (April 9, 1918); “Hexamer Resigns From Manufacturers’ Club,” Evening Public Ledger (April 10, 1918); “German Americans May Dissolve Today,” Evening Public Ledger (April 11, 1918); “Unity Plea By Alliance,” New York Times (April 13, 1918). “Blankenburg, Great Reform Mayor, Is Dead,” Evening Public Ledger (April 12, 1918); “Former Mayor Blankenburg’s Career From Poor Boy To Ruler Of Great City,” Evening Public Ledger (April 12, 1918). 17. “German Alliance Fight Will Go On,” Evening Public Ledger (April 13, 1918); “Senate Acts Quickly On Alliance Appeal,” Evening Public Ledger (July 2, 1918). Bernhard Dernburg, a member of a Jewish family before becoming a Lutheran, represented banking and industrial interests in the United States before the war, and later a founder of the German Democratic Party, finance minister, vice chancellor of the Weimar Republic and member of the Reichstag before dying in 1930. 18. “Schiff Joins Friends of German Democracy,” New York Times (January 19, 1918); “Wilson Favors New German Movement,” Evening Public Ledger (May 11, 1918). 19. “Objects to Difficulty in Changing Surnames,” Evening Public Ledger (May 18, 1918). 20. “German Street Deleted,” Evening Public Ledger (July 16, 1918).

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21. “Husband Pro-German, Divorce Suit Charge,” Evening Public Ledger (May 29, 1928). 22. “German Street Deleted,” Evening Public Ledger (July 16, 1918). 23. “Town Will Change Name,” Evening Public Ledger (June 3, 1918); “To Strike Germany from Map of U.S.,” New York Times (June 2, 1918). 24. “June Brides Seek Substitute for Teuton Wedding Marches,” Evening Public Ledger (June, 24, 1918); “United Nations to Hail Liberty,” Evening Public Ledger (July 1, 1918). 25. “Pro-Germans Plan Loyalty Meeting,” Evening Public Ledger (August 28, 1919). Another account attributed Schlenz’s ouster at the North Penn Bank to his accusations of financial misconduct by a cashier. See “$35 Bank Clerk Lived In $10,000 Home, Is Charge,” Evening Public Ledger (July 31, 1919). 26. “When Will German-Americans Escape Their False Leaders,” Evening Public Ledger (August 30, 1919). 27. “German-Americans Disappoint Fatherland, Say Newspapers,” Evening Public Ledger (June 8, 1918). 28. “Germany And German-Americans,” Evening Public Ledger (June 10, 1918). 29. “Teuton Press Rants At Ban On Language,” Evening Public Ledger (June 25, 1918). 30. U. of P. German Play,” Evening Ledger (April 21, 1915); “‘German Singers,’ Cry Against U. Of P. Opera; Resented By Faculty,” Evening Ledger (May 31, 1916). 31. “The Voice Of The People: Dislikes Study Of German,” Evening Ledger (May 5, 1917). The writer, A. Lincoln Meyers, later become a successful local attorney. 32. “Roosevelt Denounces ‘Copperheads’ of 1917,” Evening Ledger (August 10, 1917); “Aims Bill At German Language Newspapers,” Evening Ledger (August 24, 1917); “Tageblatt Men Agree To Give Up,” Evening Ledger (September 12, 1917); “U.S. Prepares To Curb Enemy Language Press,” Evening Ledger (September 20, 1917); “Bar German Paper,” Evening Ledger (October 9, 1917). 33. “Jersey State Council, Junior Order U.A.M.,” Evening Ledger (October 15, 1917); “Would Drop German In City Schools,” Evening Ledger (December 11, 1917); “The Language Of Autocracy,” Evening Public Ledger (January 18, 1918). 34. “Teachers Are Urged to Fight Germanism,” Evening Public Ledger (January 4, 1918). 35. “Editor Defied U.S. Officer, Jury Is Told,” Evening Public Ledger (March 20, 1918); “Editors Freed In Tageblatt Treason Case,” Evening Public Ledger (March 26, 1918); “Editors Acquitted,” New York Times (March 27, 1918). Annual Report of the Attorney of the United States for the Year 1918 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), 42. 36. “Tageblatt Men Under New Fire,” Evening Public Ledger (March 28, 1918); “Tageblatt To Be ‘Real U.S. Paper,’” Evening Public Ledger (March 29, 1918). 37. “Says German Plotted to Blow Up Hospital,” Evening Public Ledger (March 23, 1918).

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38. “A Paradise For Traitors,” Evening Public Ledger (March 28, 1918); “Kane Bill Would End German Publications,” Evening Public Ledger (April 15, 1918); “Senator Would End German Publications,” Evening Public Ledger (April 3, 1918). 39. “U.S. Called Too Lax With Disloyal Aliens,” Evening Public Ledger (April 3, 1918). 40. “Charge Germans Here Plan Military Action,” Evening Public Ledger (April 15, 1918). 41. “Disloyalty Arouses Mob Spirit In U.S.” Evening Public Ledger (April 4, 1918). 42. “Gun And Rope,” Evening Public Ledger (April 4, 1918). 43. “German Is Taboo In City Clubs,” Evening Public Ledger (April 2, 1918); “German Oratory Banned By Police,” Evening Public Ledger (April 26, 1918); “Bar German in Sunbury Schools,” Evening Public Ledger (April 3, 1918); “Senator Would End German Publications,” Evening Public Ledger (April 3, 1918); “Bury Them!” Evening Ledger (April 5, 1918); “Illinois Lynching Under State Inquiry,” Evening Public Ledger (April 6, 1918); “Death For Spies, Senate Demand,” Evening Public Ledger (April 6, 1918). 44. “U.S. Study Of German Urged By Dr. Claxton,” Evening Public Ledger (April 11, 1918); “Raps Foreign Tongue For Schools Of U.S.,” Evening Public Ledger (April 12, 1918); “Out With German Language,” Evening Public Ledger (April 19, 1918). 45. “Garber Says German Study up to Pupils,” Evening Public Ledger (April 12, 1918); “Schools To Ban German Tongue,” Evening Public Ledger (April 18, 1918); “Would Rid Schools Of German Language,” Evening Public Ledger (April 20, 1918). 46. “Would Rid Schools Of German Language,” Evening Public Ledger (April 20, 1918). 47. “Foreign Language Barred,” Evening Public Ledger (April 25, 1918); “New Protest in German Teaching,” Evening Public Ledger (April 27, 1918); “Art Club Bars Foe’s Tongue,” Evening Public Ledger (May 1, 1918); “German Newspaper To Use English Type,” Evening Public Ledger (May 4, 1918); “Ban Put On German Language In Schools,” The (Washington, DC) Sunday Star (September 8, 1918). 48. “The Force Of Enthusiasm,” Evening Public Ledger (May 7, 1918); “Schools Cease German Study At Term’s End,” Evening Public Ledger (May 14, 1918); “Good-bye, German,” Evening Public Ledger (May 15, 1918); “Says German in Schools Poisons Soul of Nation,” Evening Public Ledger (May 16, 1918). The proposals and final decisions, banning German in the schools of the tri-state area, are found in numerous articles in the Evening Public Ledger, The Inquirer, and other newspapers during the spring and summer of 1918. 49. “Want Italian Instead Of German In Schools,” The Inquirer (June 23, 1918). 50. “Wipe Out Many German Newspapers,” Evening Public Ledger (May 14, 1918); “Would Stop the Sale of German Newspapers,” Evening Public Ledger (May 22, 1918); “Garbarino Goes West,” Evening Public Ledger (July 15, 1918). 51. “Curbs Teaching Of German,” Evening Public Ledger (July 22, 1918). 52. “Second Trial For Editors,” Evening Public Ledger (September 21, 1918); “Lawyer Assails Tageblatt Men,” Evening Public Ledger (April 23, 1918); “Brewers’

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Unions Back Tageblatt,” Evening Public Ledger (September 24, 1918); “Accused Editor Defiant In Court,” Evening Public Ledger (September 25, 1918); “Case Against Tageblatt Men In Jury’s Hands,” Evening Public Ledger (September 27, 1918); “Guilty, Is Verdict For Tageblatt Men In Espionage Case, The Inquirer (September 28, 1918); “Tageblatt Men Are Refused New Trial,” Evening Public Ledger (December 9, 1918); “5 Years In Jail For Editors In Tageblatt Case,” Evening Public Ledger (December 18, 1918). 53. “A Day Of Judgment,” Evening Public Ledger (September 3, 1918). 54. “Enemy Aliens Paroled,” Evening Public Ledger (September 4, 1918); “Foe Alien Women Warned,” Evening Public Ledger (October 17, 1918). 55. “Keep ‘Lid’ On Enemy Aliens,” Evening Public Ledger (November 11, 1918). 56. “Enemy Alien Ban Ordered Lifted As An Xmas Gift,” Evening Public Ledger (December 24, 1918). 57. “Service Men Honored,” Evening Public Ledger (November 13, 1919). 58. “Honor Pastorius,” The Inquirer (November 24, 1916); “Pastorius Statue Dedication Halted,” The Inquirer (April 25, 1917). 59. “The Germantown Monument,” The Inquirer (April 27, 1917). 60. “Everybody’s Column: Germantown Not Founded By Pastorius And His German Friends,” The Inquirer (February 11, 1918); “Protest Unveiling of Doubtful Art,” Evening Public Ledger (April 8, 1919); “Germantown’s Germania,” Evening Public Ledger (April 9, 1919). 61. “Protest on Monument,” Evening Public Ledger (June 9, 1919). 62. “Fights Attempt To Remove Pastorius Shaft From Park,” Evening Public Ledger (October 1, 1919); “Dr. Keyser Defends Statue Of Pastorius,” The Inquirer (October 2, 1919). 63. “Treaty To Protect German-Americans,” Evening Public Ledger (June 12, 1919). 64. “City Ready To Take Pastorius Statue, Evening Public Ledger (December 4, 1919); “The Pastorius Monument,” Evening Public Ledger (April 29, 1920). 65. “Monument Repaired,” The Inquirer (June 30, 1920); “Pastorius Statue Work Is Resumed,” Evening Public Ledger (June 25, 1920); “To Speed Acceptance Of Pastorius Statue,” The Inquirer (September 26, 1920); “Pastorius Deserves It,” Evening Public Ledger (October 18, 1920); “Pastorius Statue Unveiling Today,” Evening Public Ledger (November 10, 1920). “Germantown Pays Founders Homage,” The Inquirer (November 11, 1920).

Chapter 9

Indemnities and Restoration

Three days after being announced by the attorney general, the Evening Public Ledger, departing from its customary rancor, summed up what the easing of wartime restrictions meant for Germans. As the restored freedom of movement ended fears and delusions, they could once again be seen as loyal and safe citizens. Dismissing “melodramatic bunglers,” without specifically mentioning the Tageblatt and National German American Alliance cast of characters, thousands of “Teuton-born residents,” regardless of what sympathies they may have held, “had no penchant for getting into hot water.” Ignoring its past proclivity to condemn Germans even when their actions had not been criminal, it now praised the Secret Service for efforts that only few months earlier it had criticized as incompetent. But it could not allow itself to reach an entirely favorable view of a people that it had so recently demonized. Instead, it maintained that while outrages had been committed, the archplotters had an almost ludicrously difficult time, partly because docility was the main characteristic of most of the German-born population. Claiming neither to wish to whitewash or explore their hearts, it could only conclude that their good behavior was worth noting. Many Philadelphians probably held a similar view. The war was over, the killing had ended, and the domestic threat had passed. But while enemy aliens could be reinstated, the moment of full forgiveness had not arrived.1 If America had entered a new era, some observers were not ready to let go of the past. On the day after the Evening Public Ledger’s editorial praising “good” Germans, Frank M. D. Gaskell, assistant head of the Philadelphia branch of the American Protective League, described what the nation had narrowly escaped and could not easily forget. He claimed that government agents and APL members had uncovered a massive plot by enemy aliens to destroy a plant that handled hundreds of tons of explosive powder in daily 273

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operations at nearby Woodbury, New Jersey during the war. Alleging that half of its workforce had consisted of disloyal workers and spies, the APL force of 200 secret agents employed at the plant claimed to have found a cache of combustible materials, thus preventing a disaster and forcing about 200 enemy aliens to flee without collecting their wages. Summarizing the work of his organization, he reported that 1,752 enemy aliens had been investigated, 800 cases of sedition and disloyalty had been “run down,” and 3,736 men apprehended in slacker raids. By keeping enemy aliens under control, such efforts had saved Philadelphia from disastrous fires and explosions. He also promised a final raid without giving any further details. Against the prevailing euphoria over the end of the war, and with exaggerated praise for the APL, he challenged any unequivocal dismissal of charges against alien enemies and German Americans.2 With such lingering claims, the question of enemy aliens still held in internment was yet to be answered. As the year closed, the Department of Justice announced that it would ask Congress for legislation that would allow the deportation of 3,000 to 4,000 who remained confined. Most of them were believed to be male Germans, along with a few women. Many were heads of families who had lived in the United States for several years before internment, with some believed to be quite wealthy. The most provocative claim was that about one-half of them had actively operated as German agents under orders from the Kaiser’s government. In short, the United States was now left with the question of how to dispose of former enemy aliens, including some who had only recently wished to inflict serious damage. After another two years, it would be resolved by allowing them to choose between deportation and naturalization.3 Neither the Armistice nor the eased regulations ended the campaign against German culture. In December 1918, when German organizations in Philadelphia sought to use their own language, William B. Mills, acting Superintendent of Police, informed them that no gatherings would be allowed without English as the means of public communication as “a precaution against disorder,” with events being carefully watched by the police. But with other restrictions remaining in effect throughout state and nation, for the cultural warriors waging the battle against all things German, a ban on the teaching of German remained the final prize. In February 1919, Representative John Thomas Davis, a Republican of Indiana County, introduced legislation prohibiting German in all public and normal schools of Pennsylvania. Outlining reasons for opposing the language, his argument that it served to spread propaganda and German kultur gave the illusion that the Great War had not ended. And for xenophobes such as Davis, it had not, but he was not alone. In early March, the bill was passed by an overwhelming vote, with 180 in favor against only seven members of the assembly in opposition. In April, the State

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Senate similarly voted 43–3 to oust German from the schools. One legislator, among the three who opposed the measure, asked “Why pick out German? Why not French, Greek and Italian? It’s unfair.” Another member offered a blunt reply: “The reason it doesn’t cut out those languages is because they are the languages of civilized nations. The German nation has been barbaric and the German language has been the language of barbarism from start to finish.” With such legislative action in Harrisburg, while the shooting in France may have ceased, the culture war in America was far from over.4 Although hostility against German culture raged on, often in a seemingly senseless manner, a more conciliatory mood was slowly returning. In December 1918, Lutheran ministers, defying police superintendent Mills’ edict, endorsed the use of German in religious services on the grounds that many members of their congregations could not understand any other tongue. And in March 1919, when patrons of the Philadelphia Orchestra applauded Maestro Leopold Stokowski’s decision to restore the music of German composers to its repertoire, a newspaper declared the action “to have dismissed Teutonism in art as a war question no longer eligible for discussion.” But an even more significant sign of peace came when Governor William C. Sproul announced his veto of the Davis Bill, despite overwhelming support in the state legislature, which would have forbidden German in Pennsylvania schools. Calling attention to the more than 125,000,000 people around the world for whom German was their mother tongue and the large number of state residents of “Teutonic stock,” Sproul argued, “Whether we are to remain at peace with the German-speaking nations in Europe, or whether we are again to meet them in combat, it would be to our advantage to know their language.” After citing other reasons for knowing German, he asked why the languages of earlier enemies had not been prohibited. Sproul then advised that the nation, rather than becoming hysterical in patriotism, should adopt a broad, liberal, and practical view that enabled every educational facility to prepare citizens to meet the course of international affairs on which America had embarked.5 The restoration of “all things German,” proceeded sporadically over the next few years. In March 1921, newly appointed U.S. postmaster general, Will H. Hays, declaring his opposition to press censorship, announced the reinstatement of mail privileges for a German newspaper. Although the ban of materials advocating treason or forcible resistance remained in force, with records of each case open to the public to ensure fairness, Hays’ mandate opened the door for the revival of German American newspapers. But rather than a unilinear path, this period of cultural readjustment would follow a series of oscillating events. In February 1921, Paul Shorey, a distinguished professor of Greek at the University of Chicago, speaking on University Day at the University of Pennsylvania, renewed the assault on the hyphenated

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American. Calling for the restriction of immigration, the noted scholar, despite his own specialization, paradoxically condemned the use of any foreign language and denied the validity of a bilingual culture. But when an enthusiastic audience enjoyed the reintroduction of Wagnerian opera, with a performance of Lohengrin by the visiting Metropolitan Opera Company at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia in December, it was in great contrast to the turmoil that had disturbed attempts to present German opera in New York City two years earlier. With journalism and opera restored, the reappearance of German as a scholastic subject gained momentum. In March 1922, the Committee on Higher Schools of the Board of Education quietly approved German as an elective course, beginning in the fall term, for students in the public schools of Philadelphia. And a local newspaper, only recently hostile, now declared the decision to be not only inevitable but commendable because it was “an indisputable fact” that German provided an important medium for the expression of human thought, developed in literary and scientific works of great value, and one of the foremost “idioms of trade,” that could not be altered by what only a few Germans had recently done.6 While assessing German influence during the war remains a daunting task, the charges of espionage and sabotage stand in great contrast to the actual rarity of such activities. In Philadelphia and its surrounding area, despite allegations that sometimes led to prosecution, few convictions ever occurred. Much confiscation, however, of alien wealth and property, held by domestic and international business firms with offices and plants in the city, did occur, and their executives were interned. For the nation, while numerous tragic events were alleged to have been the work of German agents, only two incidents were ever confirmed. The devastating Black Tom Island explosion, which took two lives and injured many others, almost entirely destroyed the principal facility for the storage of ammunition and supplies awaiting shipment overseas in New York harbor and Jersey City waterfront on July 30, 1916. A few months later, another explosion, not far away, destroyed the Kingsland munitions factory in Lyndhurst, New Jersey in January 1917. Both incidents provoked reactions against Germany that remained matters of contention in diplomatic relations for many years.7 In weighing the impact of German sabotage, the rationale behind the strategy must be reexamined. With Wilson’s declaration of neutrality at the outset of the war, the United States had pursued a course of specious impartiality toward belligerent nations. The blockade of German ports by the British navy denied food shipments and brought the threat of starvation to the entire population of Germany. Meanwhile, American ships carried arms and ammunition manufactured in factories in the United States, along with other supplies, with great profits for ownership, to British and French ports. ProGerman voices, including officials of the Kaiser’s government, newspapers

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across Germany, and defenders of that nation’s interests in America objected that these conditions not only made the United States a de facto supporter of the Allies. Their argument often alluded to, or even explicitly pointed out, that the situation left Germany with a strategic, if not legitimate, incentive to strike at industries that produced war materials in America. In German eyes, the United States position of nonbelligerency was hardly one of neutrality. It was reflected in the disastrous matter of German submarine warfare against transatlantic shipping, such as the Lusitania case, accommodating civilian passengers, while also carrying war-related equipment to British ports. It was this contradiction that William Jennings Bryan addressed at his resignation as secretary of state. But while favorable opinion toward Germany could once be cautiously expressed, it would be overwhelmed by massive support for the Allied cause after the United States officially entered the war. The scope of damage inflicted by saboteurs remains uncertain. Some claims posit numerous cases, ranging from 50 to as many as 200 or 300 episodes, had taken place. But while any incident invited the suspicion that enemy agents had been involved, except for the Black Tom and Kingsland explosions, the origins of almost all of them remain shrouded. The final determination of the impact of enemy agents would depend upon complicated negotiations between the American and German governments. The United States, having never joined the Allied powers in ratifying the Treaty of Versailles, would enter into a separate agreement, the Treaty of Berlin, more than three years later in August 1921. With the establishing of the Mixed Claims Commission, representatives of both nations would rule on actions by German or Austro Hungarian nationals in the United States, as well as damages suffered by Americans while on German territory, between August 1, 1914, and July 2, 1921. It would fix all costs and consequences of the war, direct or remote, suffered by Americans, whether at home or abroad. During meetings in Washington, DC, Boston, the Hague, Munich, and Hamburg which lasted until 1939, the Commission disposed of 20,433 claims (12,500 counts of which were related to the sinking of the Lusitania) awarding judgment in 7,025 cases, totaling $181,351,008.45 in principal, not including interest, as provided by the Settlement of War Claims Act of 1928. Many claims for indemnities were a result of German submarine attacks and the sinking of American vessels. When the Commission took up the Black Tom and Kingsland cases in 1939, more than twelve years had passed since the original filing in March 1927. In its deposition, the United States charged that Germany, shortly after the outbreak of the war, had conducted a campaign to destroy war supplies, particularly munitions, intended for the use of the Allied powers, that had been extended to the United States during the time of its neutrality, and that the destruction at Black Tom and Kingsland had been due to German agents. In its response that came respectively in December

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1927 and January 1928, Germany, while admitting that it had carried out actions against Canada that had been initiated in the United States, denied that it had ever acted against American property. In particular, the young Captain Franz von Papen, Military Attaché at the German Embassy in Washington (who would later become the chancellor of Germany) before being recalled at the request of the American government, maintained that he had neither received any orders from military authorities or superiors, nor himself had ever given any instructions or authorization to destroy factories or munitions in the United States, or lent any support to any project aimed at such destruction. Along with contending that he had opposed sabotage operations, von Papen claimed that he had objected to a telegram authorizing action against the United States, believing that it had originated from Irish nationalist, Sir Roger Casement, rather than any German military authority. But while making similar denials, Ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff and other German officials offered distinctly contradictory testimony.8 On June 15, 1939, the Mixed Claims Commission reported its conclusion that the liability of Germany in both the Black Tom and Kingsland cases had been established. But a communication, dated five days earlier, from the German representative to the Commission and the German Embassy to the U.S. Department of State indicated that Germany would not participate in further proceedings. At which point, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts, a Philadelphian serving as Umpire for the Commission, and Christopher B. Garnett, a State Supreme Court of Virginia justice acting as American agent on the Commission, declared that awards should now be rendered to the United States on behalf of claimants but reconsidered at a further meeting of the Commission when appropriate action would be taken. When the Commission met again in October, Justice Roberts, reaffirming the standing of the claimant and the jurisdiction of the Commission, dismissed a German motion to reopen consideration of the claims. In an addendum to the action, the Commission noted that it handed down 153 awards in sabotage cases, totaling $21,157, 227.01 with interest reaching $31,400,000 as of January 1, 1928, that would continue to increase at an annual rate of 5 percent until paid. Germany, having withdrawn from the Mixed Claims Commission would ignore the decision. With the interruption brought by World War II, it would not be until after discovery of incriminating evidence in an Austrian archive in the 1950s that the German government, without ever acknowledging culpability, paid an indemnity of $50,000,000 in 1979.9 While the settlement of claims provides some measure of the damage incurred, other threats to security and safety held further consequences. In his 1919 Annual Report, Attorney General Palmer declared that the Bureau of Investigation had not ended its work. While pressure on the agency had been reduced, much of what occurred during the war had not been reported until

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peace had been restored. The Department of Justice, moreover, remained deeply concerned with social and economic unrest, only partly due to the war, stemming from its perception of increased activity by the agents of radical movements. With the Bureau of Investigation claiming to have gathered a large body of information, a special effort to deal with radicalism began in August 1919. But with its failure to bring about criminal prosecutions, mainly as a result of legal protections provided to American citizens, attention shifted to the deportation of aliens. Close cooperation with the Commissioner General of Immigration was encouraged by the belief that the nation would soon be freed of “a considerable number of undesirable aliens who have come as missionaries of unrest rather than as emigrants from oppression.” Since radicalism arose from factors beyond the individual, Palmer, suddenly a sociologist, argued that any intelligent investigation of the agitator and his work required an understanding of broader social and economic conditions. But unlike the newly discovered radicals, the German and German Americans who had antagonized Senators, Federal District Attorneys and marshals, aspiring office seekers, vigilant journalists, and other “patriotic” citizens during the war years, remained understood in far less sophisticated terms.10 Although not suffering any serious damage by enemy agents during the war, Philadelphia, the base of operations for the National German American Alliance and home of the Tageblatt, had harbored two major sources of unwelcome influence. Neither the controversial organization, with affiliated chapters across the nation, nor the newspaper represented a presence that other Philadelphians, especially with the constant deprecation of the local press, could regard as wholesome. The withdrawal of the Federal charter and the censure of the Alliance and the verdict against the Tageblatt editors affirmed apprehensions. But broader issues also afflicted the public throughout the course of the war—the question of loyalty; the incessant fears of espionage and sabotage; and the place of the German language, or at times any foreign language, in American culture and institutions. But while essentially “German issues,” the controversy that raged around them also revealed what it meant for America to be at war. And with the provocation easily found in local newspapers, German Americans easily became victims of the triumph of illusion over reality.

NOTES 1. “Reinstated Enemy Aliens,” Evening Public Ledger (December 26, 1918). 2. “A.P.L. Prevented Alien Bomb Plot,” Evening Public Ledger (December 27, 1918). 3. “Would Oust Enemy Aliens,” Evening Public Ledger (December 31, 1918).

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4. “Only English To Be Spoken,” Evening Public Ledger (December 2, 1918); “Would Bar German From State Schools,” The Inquirer (March 7, 1919); “Oust German Language,” Evening Public Ledger (April 23, 1918). Reverend John Thomas Davis, a North Carolina born Baptist minister, resigned his office after being appointed as Federal Prohibition Director for Pennsylvania. 5. “Want Services In German,” Evening Public Ledger (December 9, 1918); “Hun Art Tangles Again,” Evening Public Ledger (March 11, 1919); “Sproul Vetoes Bill Ousting German Tongue,” The Harrisburg Telegraph (May 3, 1909); “Forbidding German In Public Schools,” The Inquirer (May 4, 1919). 6. “End Of The Censorship,” Evening Public Ledger (August 16, 1921); “Bar Alien Tongues, Urges Penn Orator on University Daay,” Evening Public Ledger (February 22, 1921); “‘Lohengrin’ First Opera Revived German Tongue,” Evening Public Ledger (December 28, 1921); “Teachers’ Salary Advance Planned,” The Inquirer (March 14, 1922). 7. See; Henry Landau, The Enemy Within: The Inside Story of German Sabotage in America (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938); and Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America, 1914–1917 (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 1989). 8. For decisions on the Black Tom and Kingsland cases, see: Reports of International Arbitral Awards: Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, Agency of Canadian Car and Foundry Company, Limited, and Various Underwriters (United States) v. Germany (Sabotage Cases) June 15, 1939, Volume VIII, 225–460; 460–8. Accessed at: http://www​.un​.org​/law​/riaa/. 9. Reports of International Arbitral Awards: Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, Agency of Canadian Car and Foundry Company, Limited, and Various Underwriters (United States) v. Germany (Sabotage Cases) June 15, 1939, Volume VIII, 225–460; 460–8. Accessed at: http://www​.un​.org​/law​/riaa/. 10. Annual Report of the Attorney General of the United States for the Year 1919 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919) 12–16, 21–30.

Epilogue A Search for Meaning

In a 1915 article in the Berliner Tageblatt, Professor Georg Simmel, one of the founders of modern sociology, declared that United States, despite being nearly two years away from entering the Great War, would be the great winner in the struggle. Recognized as an authority on international politics, he argued that “America stands nearby as a waiting heir at the deathbed of a rich testator.” By putting weapons into the hands of belligerent adversaries and hoping that they would kill each other and themselves, Simmel declared that the United States, while reaping huge profits, was promoting the weakening of Europe. And while evolving from a debtor nation to a creditor nation, it would eventually emerge as the foremost military and political power in the world. But if Simmel, usually a highly perceptive observer of the antinomies found in human affairs, had further dilated his vision, he would have also recognized the historic irony in the role of German Americans in the transition that marked America’s new prominence on the international scene. Made even more clearer by the gift of hindsight, it also was one of the great tragedies of German American experience.1 Since the founding of the Pennsylvania colony, Germans had occupied a unique place in local and national history. Their great numbers as immigrants, larger than any other group, made the United States, at least in a demographic sense, more German than anything else. But beyond their vast numbers, the culture that they carried would contribute immensely to American as a society. In particular, from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century, Germans were the yeast that leavened the process and products of the furnace of industrialization. They brought the technology, skill, and energy that enabled American factories to manufacture steel, chemical, and pharmaceutical products; petroleum; optical equipment; pianos and other musical instruments; automobiles; lumber and wood; textiles and fabrics; clothing and 281

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shoes; and food processing. And while tempted to make light of such matters, German sausage, beer and pretzels enriched the dietary habits of Americans. Their impact could also be found in science and education, from kindergarten to the graduate schools of universities, as well as in newspapers, publishing, and journalism in America. But as Germans contributed to the making of America, they also profoundly reshaped themselves. Early German settlers did not come seeking to dominate the colony of Pennsylvania, but to find their own place within it. They hoped to build a community in which they could follow their own way of life, apart from the “English,” not as adversaries but simply in separation. In Pennsylvania, they would evolve as colonial settlers in the rural buffer before the frontier to farmers who provided sustenance for a growing urban population; to heroic military partners who helped to preserve the Union during the Civil War; to the “Jolly Germans” who threatened decorum by making the Sabbath into a day of self-indulgence, relaxation, and recreation; to the core labor supply of a burgeoning industrial economy; to preferred “model immigrants” during a time of human cataclysm; to suspect enemy aliens forced to reaffirm their claim of being loyal Americans. In each phase, Germans as they became German Americans not only altered their self-consciousness but the perceptions of others toward them shifted as well. And while this long trajectory unfolded, two aspects stood out. First, as they adjusted to life in America, Germans were also undoubtedly transforming America as a society. But they also understood that external forces were determining their adaptation to America—providing the opportunities, conditions, and boundaries of their lives. Being intuitively good sociologists, they recognized the wisdom of another great scholar Karl Marx who had famously proclaimed that “Men make their own history, but they do not do it just as they please.” And that historical truth would eventually make the second feature of their adjustment even more important. Many Germans recognized that Americanization meant becoming Anglicized. Thus sensitized, an inverted version of Benjamin Franklin’s old adage might have proposed “We must remain Gemanicized—or those British American boors will Anglicize us.” But as the Great War brought the United States politically onto a world stage, their adjustment was no longer a private matter but a public issue, and the German solution to the problem of assimilation was no longer tenable. If there is a central theme to the present work, it is that many Germans, even as they were on an inevitable course of becoming American, did not want to abandon being German. It was a hope that was often expressed in their public celebration of heritage, identity, and cohesion. But with America’s entry into the war, German Americans, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, faced the stigma of descent from an enemy nation, especially whenever they manifested their cultural origins. At times, it invited much more than merely apprehension

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from other Americans and encouraged prosecution by the government. And with the attenuation of institutional, cultural and communal life which had begun even earlier, German Americans were no longer allowed to be Germans. By late 1920, the return of peace had not only tempered patriotism and militarism but had moderated fears of treason and sabotage by German Americans. Moreover, the increasing preoccupation with the “Red Scare” had deflected attention to other threats to America. But even with the victory of the Allies, the problem posed by hyphenated identity remained unresolved. Nearly two years after the end of the war, Senator Warren G. Harding, the Republican candidate for the presidency, warned an audience of foreign-born citizens in Ohio against the dangers of hyphenated citizenship, but now to discourage an America on its way to isolationism from interfering in the affairs of other nations. He called for the nation to take up the task of Americanizing its population with a new determination. Proclaiming that the country should remain unalterably opposed to any present or future hyphenated American, Harding declared that it had put an end to such prefixes. A few months later, General Pershing, at a mass rally at Madison Square Garden, denounced alien propagandists and dual citizenship in March 1921. While accepting as entirely proper that foreigners cling to the folklore, literature, and music of their native lands, he assailed those who sought to apply the standards of their own countries to political affairs in America. In early April, Pershing brought a similar message on “All-American Day” to an enthusiastic crowd at the Metropolitan Opera House in Philadelphia. And in November 1923, the Americanization Committee of the Chamber of Commerce launched a massive city-wide effort to make foreign-born residents and their children more fully American. Such events abundantly showed that the presence of foreign identity and culture, whether German American or in any other form of hyphenated American, remained unacceptable.2 A preoccupation with German American experience during World War I, however, runs the risk of ignoring long roots, extending back to the Germantown colony, of America’s multicultural origins. The dual founding of Pennsylvania left a latent tension between the core Anglo community on the Delaware and the Germanic colony to the northwest. Party lines of city and province pitted Quakers, comprising the country party and majority of the assembly, against the governor’s or gentleman’s party as rival factions in the election of 1742. Both constituencies sought the support of the Germans—the first hyphenated citizens in local history. Benjamin Franklin’s calumny against the “Palatine Boors,” whose presence he opposed for fear that they would Germanize the colony in 1751, exposed the cleavage between Anglo Americans and Germans. It would reappear with intermittent bursts of visibility from colonial times until the early twentieth century. It would

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be echoed in the report of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate in 1918 by the accusation that the National German American Alliance had chosen to espouse Germanism over Americanism. Obscured by decades of symbiotic cooperation that masked a tacit struggle for political and cultural hegemony, the arrival and presence of other racial and ethnic groups— African Americans, Irish, and Italians—more likely to be found in the midst of collective or criminal disorder—buried it even further. But the Great War raised it to the surface. By attempting to retain their cultural affinities with Germany when the outbreak of war precluded political ties with their homeland, German Americans sought a more pluralistic society. When the exigencies of the times demanded not only loyalty to the nation but acceptance of a core Anglo American culture, there was no room for a divided America or hyphenated Americans. At its base, this difference represented an argument over what form assimilation would take. The Anglo Conformists would not only win but the influence of their version of assimilation would resonate throughout America long after the war had ended.3 The important question of what World War I meant for German Americans themselves may be another way of asking whether they were enemy aliens or loyal Americans. Whether in terms of an individual life or a more collective assessment, their military record on the western front and elsewhere provided an answer. Given their large presence in the population as a whole, German Americans also arguably provided the largest component of the armed forces of the United States. And by that service, they were perhaps to give their greatest contribution to America. The Evening Public Ledger on Armistice Day proudly claimed that Philadelphia had sent 60,000 “sons” into the army and navy, who had fought on land, on the sea and in the air, taking part in the biggest battles in which Americans had participated, on the firing line in Belgium, France, and Italy, and even in Russia. With their names appearing on every casualty list issued by the War Department, they had fought with a desperate courage that would not allow them to accept defeat. They had taken part in the crucial battles of Chateau-Thierry and the Marne, the drive across the Vesle, the fighting at Fismes and Fismette, in the St. Milhiel salient, and northwest of Verdun in the region of Montfaucon. They were purported to have seen more action than soldiers from any other city. Two months earlier, the same newspaper had more discreetly reported that some 307 young men from one Roman Catholic parish of Philadelphia, St. Peter the Apostle, where German had been the prevailing language for several generations because their forefathers had come from Germany, had enlisted with the Allies in the fight for democracy. White-haired women and stooped elderly men who spoke English only with some difficulty proudly smiled and brought forth pictures of their grandchildren in uniform. Through her German accented, broken English, an old woman explained “It is our country now. They must

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fight for what they believe right. I’m glad my little boys can help.” But the personal details of some of those “little boys” would clarify the role of German Americans in the war even further.4 On July 15, 1918, Corporal Frank William Reinhart, a 43-year-old member of Company C of the 28th Division, 110th Infantry, would die in the Allied counterattack during the Second Battle of the Marne. With other “Pottsville volunteers,” he had joined the 4th Pennsylvania National Guard Regiment at the age of sixteen and served in the Philippines during the Spanish American War and then in the Mexican border campaign. After being honorably discharged, he re-enlisted in the Third Regiment of the National Guard as it was being mobilized as the 110th Infantry of the new National Army at the armory at Broad and Wharton Streets in 1916. Assigned for training to Fort Hancock, Georgia, he was promoted to the rank of corporal just before being shipped to France in April 1918. In action at Champagne Marne, Company C would be almost entirely annihilated. Of 210 men, 48 were killed or died of wounds, 68 were wounded, and 126 taken prisoner, including almost all of the wounded, while repulsing the last major German offensive of the war. One member reported: “I saw Frank Reinhart shot and fall on the morning of July 15. I was about ten feet from him, but I do not know where he was hit. I did not see him afterwards.” He would be buried at the American military cemetery at Oise Aisne.5 Reinhart’s case had even more interesting details. The official military record of his death listed his last residence as being with his sister, Mrs. Helen Price, herself a widow, at 1201 Poplar Street in North Philadelphia. Several newspapers would also identify him as the grandson of General Wilhelm Reinhart, a member of Helmuth von Moltke’s general staff, who had marched into Paris during the Franco Prussian War. According to one account, after the Imperial Government seized his property, General Reinhart immigrated with his family to Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania. Married twice, a grandson from each marriage would find his way into military service. Leon Reinhart, of Reading, Pennsylvania, born to the second marriage, would be among the first American soldiers to reach France. Although such information remains difficult to verify, if true, the Reinhart family saga was not only extraordinary in its own right but displayed an arc that reflected much of German American history. But it was only one such tale among many cases in which men who had been once belonged to Germany’s past had made themselves an important part of American history.6  In August 1918, newspaper dispatches described one of the most crucial moments of engagement between American and German forces. After recent setbacks at the hands of American troops, the Fourth Imperial Prussian Guards, reputed to have never lost in any previous mission, sought to hold a new line of defense at Ourcq on the banks of the Vesle River. Portrayed

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Figure E.1  Corporal Frank William Reinhart. Source: (Ancestry.com).

as “the bitterest sort of fighting by brave men against brave men,” it would prove to be a decisive encounter as the war entered its final chapter. During two days in which American soldiers charged lines of enemy machine guns, with both sides refusing to retreat, the elite German division suffered its first defeat of the war. One company which had numbered 150 at the start had been reduced to only seven men whose ammunition had been exhausted, before being taken prisoner after hand-to-hand fighting with the Americans. But buried in the details, the newspaper account also revealed that “two of the four companies which helped to meet the Prussians were composed largely of German-American fighters. They certainly showed no sign of love or respect for the fatherland or its best military representatives.” It was an observation that could have been frequently made during the course of the war. Such news, moreover, not only brought information about the war to America but made it possible for readers to recognize battlefield

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contributions of German American soldiers that spoke far more convincingly about their loyalty than the protestations of their community leaders on the home front.7 One of America’s most popular writers, Booth Tarkington, writing as a member of the Vigilantes, the authors and artists who had sought to generate support for the war, offered his own view of German Americans in a widely circulated newspaper article. He began by quoting an unidentified writer: “When the German-Americans, as we call them, found that our country was in the war, they erased the hyphen. The hyphen is gone forever. . . . In our country there are only American citizens.” Warning that men cannot be goaded into loyalty, but only become more conscious of injury, Tarkington called for a policy of greater understanding: “Suspicion, rumor, and coincidence of circumstance should influence neither our judgements nor our actions; much less should we vent our passion against Germany upon the person whom we call the German American.” Without being alienated from their mother country as other Americans had been from England in the colonial era, they had first seen the current war as only a contest among foreign powers, before finding themselves as Americans after the United States entered it. But by accusing and threatening German Americans, Tarkington declared, we made it difficult for them to show patriotism. He then told of an encounter in which an American regiment in France, mainly made up of German American soldiers from Wisconsin had cursed astonished enemy prisoners in their own language. He noted that “Oaths in the German tongue were frequent and intensive.” Beyond telling their “German cousins” what fools they had been for following the Kaiser, the men from Wisconsin vented their anger at having to come over to defeat them in war. But seeing even more in the incident, Tarkington wrote: The citizens once called German Americans will work out their own salvation if we do not make it too hard for them to do so. . . . You cannot possibly produce a beautiful feeling in any man by threatening him or prosecuting him. . . . Here and there is an American citizen who has one son in the American army and another son in the German army. Let us go gently with a fellow citizen who finds himself in such a position. It is a hard enough one, without the additional burden of his neighbors’ suspicions. If his conduct be loyal, then in heaven’s name let us believe him loyal. The finest answer Germany has from any source is the loyalty of the “German-Americans” to America; and that was the answer of all most galling to Germany. Let us not punish them—now, when their boys are dying in the American cause—let us not punish them for sins that are not theirs. Let us not patrioteer at their expense. Let us not patrioteer at all. The war is too serious for patrioteering.8

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Unlike other Vigilantes, Tarkington had not only perceived the dilemma of many German Americans but offered a sympathetic response to their plight in an America swept away by wartime patriotism. He also recognized that their assimilation had already left them far more American than German. But it would not be sufficient to sweep away the fears of Americans who could not see beyond enemy aliens and potential saboteurs when actual events had physically and emotionally ripped America apart. The disasters at Black Tom and Kingsland were not imagined hallucinations. But any attempt to find what the war meant for German Americans must also rest on recognizing that a widely shared generalization does not answer the question. Instead of any “phalanx premise” which would depict their integration to a new society as if they moved forward, almost shoulder to shoulder, in simultaneous lockstep, it is far better to visualize German Americans as a highly diversified population in a file with different clusters lined up ahead of and behind one another. Some Germans, beginning with Pastorius and his companions, had stepped onto that pathway at a very early moment, had been on it for many years, and had moved far along it. Others, who entered much later, moved more slowly, or even appeared to have stopped on their way. From a more academic perspective, we are, of course, referring to internal differentials within the German American population which, measured by their personal identity and conduct, language, organizational affiliations and interaction with others, reflect how closely they remained German or were becoming assimilated as Americans. And when framed in this manner, the only answer that can be given is that German Americans adjusted, and can be found in differing clusters at almost any point along this trajectory. They ranged from unaltered, defiant nationalists who continued to see themselves as Germans, and covertly hoped the Central Powers would ultimately win the war at one extreme to completely assimilated Americans at the other extreme, who had abandoned virtually all vestiges of German consciousness, ways of acting and ethnic exclusivity, but with the mass of them falling somewhere in-between these two polarities. An even more elusive answer must be offered to the question of what had happened, was happening, or would happen in the future, more collectively to German identity, under the difficult circumstances that German Americans found themselves during the war. Did the war fully eradicate identity? After all, even the men from Wisconsin, whom Tarkington had described, as loyal as they were as American soldiers, had been able to reach into the recesses of their mental makeup to retrieve expletives of a nearly, but not entirely, forgotten language, to curse their enemy. And in this regard they embodied something more. At some point in the future, it would be safe again to more openly express one’s identity as a German American. But it would have to wait for even a second great war to pass. And German Americans in Philadelphia

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and elsewhere in the nation, might even forget Pastorius, but rediscover von Steuben, to serve them much as any historical icon did for some other ethnic group, and to find a history which validated their place in America. But that time would come. NOTES 1. European War Making U.S. Greatest Power,” Evening Public Ledger (August 2, 1915). 2. “Harding Warns Against ‘Hyphens,’” Evening Public Ledger (September 18, 1920); “Pershing Hits Hyphenates,” Evening Public Ledger (March 19, 1921); “Pershing Cheered For Loyalty Plea,” Evening Public Ledger (April 8, 1921). 3. For the election of 1742, see John Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, volume 1 (Philadelphia: L.H. Evarts, 1884), 210; and “Early ‘Hyphen’ Vote,” Evening Ledger (December 20, 1916). 4. “City Gave 60,000 Sons to Nation,” Evening Public Ledger (November 11, 1918); “German Parish Gives 307 Sons,” Evening Public Ledger (September 7, 1918). 5. “2 Dead, 13 Wounded and 19 Missing on Phila. Honor Roll,” The Inquirer (August 8, 1918); “11 Dead from Phila. 27 Injured in War,” The Inquirer (August 20, 1918); https​:/​/ww​​w​.hon​​orsta​​tes​.o​​rg​/in​​dex​.p​​hp​​?id​​=1580​​13 (Accessed June 16, 2020); Association of the 110th Infantry, P. (1920). History of the 110th Infantry (10th Pa.) of the 28th Division, U. S. A., 1917–1919: a compilation of orders, citations, maps, records and illustrations relating to the 3rd Pa. Inf., 10th Pa. Inf., and 110th U.S. Inf.. [s.l.]: The Association (accessed Hathi Trust Digital Library, June16, 2020). 6. See the newspapers previously cited as well as the file under Frank W. Reinhart at Ancestry​.co​m. Of particular interest is the letter by Mrs. Helen Price, his sister, dated June 29, 1919. 7. “Americans Beat Back Best German Troops,” Evening Public Ledger (August 1, 1918). 8. Booth Tarkington, “Patrioteering,” Daily (Ardmore, OK) Ardmoreite (August 13, 1918).

Appendix Studying the German American Experience—A Brief Biographical Essay

. . . peasants with solemn faces, workers with calloused hands, artisans with worried expressions. . . —Marcus Lee Hansen, The Atlantic Migration

Although once flawed by a “filiopietism” that mainly extolled the virtues and contributions of immigrants to American society, the scholar who examines the long historiography of German Americans now finds a rich trove of information and insight that unfolds as a map for subsequent inquiry. Beginning with his seminal work, The Atlantic Migration 1607–1860, published in 1940, Marcus Lee Hansen showed the conditions that brought emigrants from northern and western Europe from the formative years of colonization to the beginning of the industrial era. With crop failures that resulted in indebtedness, financial ruin, and poverty, Germans and others, induced by exploitative agents of transportation companies, abandoned despair in Europe for hope in America. But as emigrants to an illusively promised land, they often found themselves in a similarly desperate situation. Rather than being a movement of individuals incapable of reproducing their past, however, they had brought “the germs of institutions,” in the forms of association, worship, and pleasure by which they would build their future. Yet, while emigrant colonies, constructed out of the reassembled parts of their homelands, facilitated survival, the amalgamation of Germans into a new society remained unexamined.1 In Hanson’s account, early German resettlement was disrupted when their language, customs, and indifference to the outcome of the Seven Years’ War, brought early reprisals from other Americans. In the face of hostility, German farmers, who settled in the plains between the Delaware and Susquehanna 291

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rivers of Eastern Pennsylvania, strongly resisted assimilation. By the early 1800s, German and English settlers, provoked by various disputes, along with tedious legal proceedings within the Ministerium of the Lutheran Church, engaged in further bloodshed and violence. Meanwhile, with renewed emigration after the Napoleonic Wars, Philadelphia regained its place as the main port of arrival for Germans, some with families and others as redemptioners destined for farms in Pennsylvania. But while planned colonies, receiving little encouragement from Americans, failed to find success, the general attitude toward newcomers remained tolerant, if not cordial. In his analysis, Hansen returned to such “forces of expulsion,” as the flooding of the Rhine Valley in 1825, and to the ordeal of the Atlantic crossing, of which Germans told “gruesome stories of hunger, filth, disease and death.” But with awareness of “a system existed which would hire him, distribute him, train him and assure him a better economic and social status than the one he had left,” the emigrant held hope and belief in a new life.2 By the 1830s, as the spirit of revolution spread into the German states, popular dissent and uprisings began dislodging inhabitants. Emigrants departing from Le Havre asked what they expected to find on the other side of the Atlantic, sometimes emphatically replied, “Kein Konig dort!” (“No king there!”). And schemes for group migration included a proposed city where German life and culture would be renewed in America. But Gottfried Dudens’ letters, which Hansen regarded as the most important source of information, composed after their author’s return to Germany, described life on a Missouri farm, where formerly harassed peasants found the absence of overbearing soldiers, haughty clergymen and inquisitive tax collectors for which they had longed. Other letters revealed a society in which land-hungry peasant farmers could annually gain property twice as large as their present holdings, under a far less menacing military presence than in Prussia. But with the arrival of more emigrants, efforts to unite Germans in a new land still failed to find success.3 Hansen saw economic factors as the primary determinants of emigration. In the Rhine Valley, as in much of Northern and Eastern Germany, the rapid growth of population, diminished land holdings, fragmented ownership, and the exhaustion of tillable land disrupted the balance among people, environment, and society. Prospective emigrants, signing documents by which they renounced claims on community and fatherland, became free to leave for distant destinations. With elimination of tolls on rivers and tributaries leading to the Rhine, departure became even more feasible. As so many reached Le Havre, it eventually resembled a German town. And with similar commercial growth, first Bremen, then Hamburg, also became important “sluice gates” through which a rising tide of emigration abandoned continental Europe. But in the exodus to America, while colonization schemes, lacking support or

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sanction from official agencies, often failed, nationalistic aspirations continued to inspire emigrants who hoped to remain German even in another land.4 Hansen was particularly concerned with the famine that crested in Germany in winter of 1846–1847. As panic brought people to major ports in search of departing ships, the United States, seeking to mitigate the deadly conditions onboard, enacted legislation that called for the confiscation of vessels violating regulations. Unable or unwilling to ameliorate existing conditions, the expansion of transoceanic service loomed as another solution. By mid-century, with Germans eager to leave before further restriction denied them that opportunity, the Great Migration was well underway.5 Although recognizing the impact of politics, Hansen refused to ascribe greater influence than it warranted on emigration. With the early failure to establish a unified Germany, he believed that “after revolution came reaction.”6 Unlike other scholars, Hansen, noting that only a few thousand Germans had migrated as political refugees, offered another explanation: What, then, was the motive that caused three quarters of a million others to desert their fatherland? The bulk of them were peasants with solemn faces, workers with calloused hands, artisans with worried expressions—classes which had been little concerned with politics, and with revolution not at all. They came from regions where reaction had not always been the most pronounced, but where business was poor and the future of trade and agriculture unpromising. It was the desire to improve their economic station that actuated them.7

Along what would later be termed as “push factors,” Hansen recognized emigration as a profitable commodity as ships plied westward across the Atlantic. He also called attention to interpersonal mechanisms, anticipating what sociologists would call “migration chains,” based on the testimony of returned immigrants or personal letters to friends and relatives that evoked dreams and facilitated schemes for those who would follow them to America. But while establishing a more objective approach, his research also became a convenient foil by which other scholars measured their own contributions. And with revision, reappraisal took place. Twenty years after his death, Hansen ranked with Theodore Blegen, Carl Wittke, and Oscar Handlin among scholars who created the study of immigration. In Allan H. Spear’s view, Hansen, rejecting political and religious factors in describing “detached groups,” delineated the economic conditions that had more broadly set mankind in motion. Beyond the “expulsive forces” that impelled departure, Hansen described the existing routes of transportation and the social conditions of destinations that determined paths of emigration. But Hansen’s analysis, reaching well beyond American immigration, had relevance for the entire modern world. In doing so, Hansen gave immigration an influence that

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paralleled, or perhaps revised, what his mentor, Frederick Jackson Turner, had assigned to the frontier in creating America. Despite its limitations, Hansen’s basic framework would continue to guide the study of immigration. In his assessment, Frank Thistlethwaite, identifying Hansen as “the father of modern historical scholarship in migration,” whose questions not only remained unanswered but still beckoned the student of migration. And if Hansen had lived long enough to complete his agenda, emigration would have displaced Turner’s frontier hypothesis as the central theme of American history. Since newcomers were emigrants before becoming settlers, migration had been more important than the frontier in shaping American character and institutions.8 But not every scholar would be as favorable in their judgment of Hansen. In 1965, Carlton C. Qualey claimed that Hansen’s “friends and promoters” had greatly inflated his merit. Although immigration history had been in an early stage, he maintained that Hansen had not made full use of what was available at the time. Qualey dismissed Hansen’s use of sources, choice of hypotheses, and continuing usefulness, while faulting his handwriting as being “very difficult to read and at times is undecipherable.” But beyond illegible penmanship, Hansen had relied on superficial materials, while neglecting readily available primary sources and published works. Moreover, Qualey contended, when Hansen turned to Turner’s Frontier Thesis, with its emphasis on westward movement, while almost completely ignoring acculturation, he shackled immigration history to an impotent approach. With expanding labor markets, often in urban areas, providing a much better explanation of “pull factors,” the Turner hypothesis became “simply a confusing nuisance in dealing with the migration of peoples.”9 In Qualey’s view, the Atlantic migration, rather than being uniquely drawn to the American West, was part of a broader movement of population. And German migration, negating another aspect of the neo-Turnerian perspective, saw people abandoning limited freedom for a broader, truer democratic America. Germans had come not so much to build something new, but to preserve old ways of life that a modernizing Europe threatened to destroy. Wishing to neither abandon old traditions nor to risk family security, they hoped to maintain what was familiar and cherished. The studies of other migrations, reaching the same conclusion on the retention of culture, also refuted the hypothesis that Germans and other immigrants had “filled in” the land abandoned by native-born Americans who had left for the frontier. Qualey similarly rejected Hansen’s call for the study of the contributions of foreign groups as being a clearly “naïve and unwarranted” return to “filiopietism.” But amalgamation, although varying over time and between groups, represented a gradual process of identification by the immigrant with the American constitutional system, with its ease of access to citizenship,

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protection of property rights, and guarantee of civil liberties at its core. With a cosmopolitan population, open to foreign influences, many different strains influenced the shaping of American culture. In his sharpest rebuke, Qualey deemed that positing an “American culture” to which later immigrants contributed, and calling upon historians to find these contributions, was “manifestly a rather absurd approach,” and Hansen “should have known better.” But even with the acknowledgment that Hansen had brought the study of immigration into European and American history, praise turned into criticism. For with the paucity of monographs and the failure to reach a general synthesis, it was no service to perpetuate hypotheses left over from a primitive era of research. Having escaped the “negative qualities” of its approach, Qualey contended that work revised after Hansen’s death would probably not have turned out so well if he had completed it himself.10 While Qualey found fault in exactly what Thistlethwaite had praised, Hansen remained an important point of reference for scholars seeking a broad synthesis on American immigration. Maldwyn Allen Jones cited Hansen’s work as being “pre-eminent in its field” among authoritative sources on the rise of mass immigration. While placing Hansen among scholars focused on a single country or region, Philip Taylor commended his work as being “especially solid on the German states.” And David Ward, a social geographer, exploited points by Hansen (but not from The Atlantic Migration) in his analysis of nineteenth-century urbanization. As he positioned German migration into European and American history, Hansen left an orientation that was applicable to any other national group as a foundation for the more narrowly focused monographs for which Qualey impatiently waited.11 Other scholars, more broadly focused on the development of modern Europe, have examined factors that drove emigration. In his study of “the age of revolution,” Eric Hobsbawm, seeing growing disaffection by the poor, reiterated Dudens’ theme that Germans, embarking at Le Havre on their way to America, already a “dream county by the 1830s,” were motivated by the knowledge that “there’s no king there.” In discussing political upheavals in Europe, Hobsbawm offered other clues to immigrant experience—America as a haven for exiles; the role of printing and literacy in sustaining cohesiveness; and festivals as celebrations of cultural mythology. With the uprooting of peoples being perhaps the most important aspect of the entire century, the surplus population of Germany, the largest body of emigrants before the Irish famine, nurtured the growth of American industry. And while charity programs enabled wealthier classes to find protection against movements for equal rights in Europe, similar efforts unfolded in America. But Hobsbawm’s greater contribution may be his observations on the incidence of alcoholism, crime, suicide, and demoralization as not only afflicting the poor in newly industrialized cities of Europe but immigrants in urban America as well,

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along with the nostalgia that maintained older, rural customs, which eased the pain of their uprooting in the transatlantic experience.12 Dissecting mid-nineteenth-century capitalism, Hobsbawm argued that it was not only in Italy but Germany and elsewhere that segments of a divided population saw themselves in localistic rather than nationalistic terms. And while mutual aid societies had been organized in places where trade unions had been forbidden, similar agencies facilitated immigrant adjustment in America. In a chapter aptly titled as “men moving,” Hobsbawm characterized the century as a “gigantic machine for the uprooting of countrymen.” But emigration also raised the question of exactly where any man or woman who undertook that journey belonged. In dismissing the matter of whether bad conditions at home or better ones abroad were more compelling as a pointless debate, he saw the choice as being based more on an assessment of prospects rather than any force of destiny. By tying such experience back to the underlying economic system, and reiterating Karl Marx’s compelling metaphor of emigrants as “the light cavalry of capitalism,” Hobsbawm’s incisive analysis holds implications that remain to be fully tapped.13 More recent research on cities where Germans had a conspicuous presence—Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and St. Louis—has further amplified immigrant experience. Attempting to relate Philadelphia to other destinations, James M. Bergquist delineates a highly developed community, whose leaders, despite a fragmented population, sought to organize institutions that eased the transition into a new society by preserving traditional culture. Establishing an inherently contradictory course of action, the outcome ultimately depended on the more pragmatic needs of ordinary people. And after immigration peaked, the declining volume of new arrivals, insufficient to replace members “lost” by death or assimilation, encouraged an erosion of community reflected in the declining membership of organizations and readership of foreign-language newspapers. At the core of German experience, as well as that of other immigrant groups, the desire to protect, promote, and preserve cultural and institutional forms brought from a native land was being vitiated by the immensely powerful force of assimilation. Against the presence of other ethnic groups, the defenders of German culture reasserted claims of superiority, not merely for the benefit of German Americans, but for America as a whole. With great concern over language retention, leaders grew dismayed by the indifference of American-born generations. As increasingly futile efforts to a contrived sense of community, its more natural embodiment declined. Hoping to avoid divisive issues, a vague glorification of tradition, such as the celebration of German Day, could not stanch diminished cohesion. With churches being the final vestiges of a passing era, the outbreak of World War I further dismantled German American institutions. In Bergquist’s meticulous analysis, a diverse

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population with a complex social structure brought conflict rather than unity. With the changing priorities of later generations, what once appeared to be the “model” ethnic community entered its final days.14 Kathleen Neils Conzen, arguably the most influential recent scholar of German American life, has contended that emphasis on “contributions” has served to discredit immigrant impact as a legitimate object of historical inquiry. While placing German experience within a wider context, the historiography of the 1990s still tended to neglect the consequences of immigration upon the receiving society. By revising an important idea, Conzen sought “to assess anew the consequences for American society of the dreams, thoughts, and actions of the German Americans.” By going beyond the “framing questions” of scholars preoccupied with community formation and maintenance, which made the persistence of ethnicity itself the main “contribution,” or perhaps the only one, of immigrants and their descendants, Conzen asserted the need to rethink America as a society in a manner more receptive to a “contributionist” perspective.15 In contrast to any “diasporic imagination” with immigrants strewn over a physically and institutionally barren setting, Conzen presents a community that they would further strengthen. Borrowing from Friedrich Kapp, the midnineteenth-century observer of German life in New York, she proposes the “phantom landscape” as a metaphor for both what Germans expected and what they actually encountered in America. While immigrants entered a culturally rich and institutionally well-formed community, it was never entirely autonomous, but moored to the larger society. And as Germans moved between both worlds, their smaller one came closer to the larger one until, with the cessation of immigration and the coming of the Great War, it submerged and vanished. But the rising American landscape had absorbed three essential features as contributions. First, the colonial vision, shaping the selectivity of migration and the geography of settlement, prompted the formation of a vast number of church-centered communities on a base of family farms. Smaller and larger towns established by the need for market centers, even after the abduction of sons and daughters by mainstream America, remained bastions of traditional culture, resting on a matrix of farm, family, religion, and politics often expressed in public discourse. But in cities of the Northeast and Midwest, Germans, first as adventurers and transients, then shopkeepers and professionals serving them and job-seeking laborers gathered in colonies, made a more salient contribution by inventing their ethnic community. In what eventually became a dense network of institutions, they formed beneficial and mutual aid societies; organizations reflecting their appetite for culture, sociability and festivity; ethnic parishes and parochial schools for Catholics, trade unions for militant workers; and clubs over a wide spectrum of political ideology and expression. Such efforts resembled subsurface “shoals,” more influential in

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the past, although still capable of producing an occasional ripple. But the still unresolved 100-year-old culture war “waged in defense of their shadow landscape,” remained the greatest consequence. German defiance of an emerging centripetal thrust with little tolerance for cultural variation brought conflict with American society. Reflected in issues ranging from minor differences related to alcohol use, Sunday bans on amusement, and public celebrations to more serious matters such as slavery, centralized government, monetary policy, and foreign relations, Germans, wrapping themselves in the cloak of “personal liberty,” often stood apart from state and society. While forging a defense of their ethnic culture, they built a foundation for what would later be called “pluralism,” even as their “phantom landscape” was being engulfed by the rising tide of an unconsciously diversified society.16 Among scholars who have renewed the study of assimilation, Russell A. Kazal, citing Robert E. Park’s “Cycle of Race Relations” and W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki’s axis of disorganization-reorganization as seminal points, places its origins in the Chicago School of Sociology. Reviewing the work of successors who extended, modified, dissented from, rejected, or entirely ignored the founders by forging their own path, he distributes them into three distinct categories. The first “circle of scholars of ethnicity,” from Hansen and Oscar Handlin to Will Herberg, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Milton M. Gordon and Rudolph Vecoli, proposed an understanding of American society in which various ethnic groups passed through the processes that enabled them to become assimilated. In contrast, labor historians, more concerned with the rise of industrial unionism, only incidentally included assimilation as increasing working-class solidarity superseded ethnic diversity. These New Social Historians, using quantitative data and a cultural emphasis, were exemplified by the work of Herbert Gutman, John Bodnar, Paul Buhle, Philip Gleason, and John Higham. Werner Sollars, arguing that ethnicity is merely an analytic construct, along with the important rebuttal of Conzen and others reasserting its reality, provide a bridge to the final node. The third group, scholars of racial identity, David Roediger, Arnold Hirsch, Gary Gerstle and others, focused on how people of European origins assumed a sense of “whiteness,” in another type of trans-ethnic homogenization. After describing sociologist Richard Alba’s empirical data on the decline of ethnicity, Kazal presents Gertle’s view on pluralism as a disruptive ideology in race relations. Although these divergent approaches have increased our understanding, Kazal suggests that while pluralism has followed racial lines, with class formation percolating in separate melting pots, the proponents of the three main perspectives still need to engage in further dialogue on the meaning of assimilation.17 Kazal’s contribution to the understanding of German American experience begins with his distinction between “high pluralism,” the systematic theories

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of such intellectuals as Horace Kallen and Randolph Bourne, and “vernacular pluralism,” the views expressed at a popular, grassroots level by ethnic festivals, historical commemorations, and local histories. While the latter version did not share the more formal social scientific sense of the other approach, their similarly pluralistic view of society, with both of them recognizing mutual influence between groups, sometimes blurred their difference. And in 1903, when Marion Dexter Learned linked popular German American traditions that stressed the value of ethnic persistence with an understanding of the historical diversity of the state, it produced what Kazal calls “Pennsylvania pluralism.” As Conzen and her colleagues argued, earlier historians, recognizing the efforts of Germans to maintain group cohesion as the gifts that they bestowed upon the nation, had already invented “ethnicity.” With a linguistic and ethnographic interest in Germans, but not of German origins himself, Learned saw America as becoming fundamentally bicultural, a view in which he later included other groups. And while anticipating continued ethnic diversity at the time of the 1904 International Exposition in St. Louis, he would, with the ensuing debate over shifting patterns of newcomers, declare that it was “scarcely conceivable” that current immigration was much inferior to the South Germans of the eighteenth century. And in 1915, he expressed his opposition to the literacy test, aimed at excluding the “New Immigration” of Southern and Eastern Europe, at a meeting with President Woodrow Wilson. In Kazal’s view, pluralistic thinking not only predates Kallen and Bourne but is far more complex than usually rendered; while popular pluralism in any regional setting, along with local intellectual networks sustaining such views, also deserve investigation.18 In his study Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity, Kazal examines the complexity of ethnic experience by focusing on the alternating unity and diversity marking the path toward assimilation. Within Philadelphia’s German American population, differences would be only momentarily assuaged by consensus when confronting such issues as the public debate over alcohol use; meanwhile, during the volatile years of World War I, the hostility of a broader public would shift from alleged espionage and spying to a more general opposition to any expression of German culture and identity. Kazal contrasts two areas of German settlement: the Girard Avenue district, occupying two wards just above center city, which resembled the “classic immigrant neighborhood,” crowded, heavily industrial, and dominated by largely, but not an exclusively German population; and Germantown, the tree-lined railroad suburb of middle-class families, where a small minority of first- and second-generation Germans resided. Seeking to find implications not only for Germans but other ethnic groups as well, Kazal analyzes socioeconomic status and mobility while attempting to place biculturalism within the context of structural assimilation. At a decisive

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point, he introduces the concept of “old stock,” along with the erosion and collapse of the German American institutional order, then the rise of mass culture and consumerism as reshaping identity in the early twentieth century, until the provocations of activists, more than any other factor, brought reactions against their politics and culture during World War I.19 While the transformation of institutions, culture, and personal identity allowed German Americans “to re-enter public life with an image . . . that few could find threatening,” Kazal extends his analysis to other immigrant populations. With German American experience representing an extreme version of broader processes, other ethnic groups “if they did not share German America’s fate—at least, not to the same extent—they negotiated a landscape irrevocably altered by that fate.” Internally divided by class, gender, politics or homeland origins, they shaped their own program of identity and cohesion within the framework of Americanism imposed upon them. The urgency of allegiance during World War I undermined ethnic pluralism, exemplified so well by German Americans, while “conformist nationalism” restricted expression and identity to Americanism alone. But Kazal finds the final reason to remain concerned with German American experience in the divide between “white ethnics,” who still claim a particularistic identity, and “unhyphenated Americans,” who see themselves only as “Americans,” that has provided the “fault line” for the discussion of whiteness. He contends that German Americans not only straddled but greatly influenced the construction of that distinction. Against more particularistic aspects of their past, its broader implications for racial identity, shared with other ethnic groups, show that class, religion, and other fissures transcend any monolithic view of German Americans within American society. And finally, any review of prior scholarship should not overlook Charles T. Johnson’s study, Culture at Twilight: The National German American Alliance, which incisively examines a controversial presence that shaped public opinion during the critical years of World War I. At its core, it raises the question of how the efforts by the leaders and followers of one organization to protect the interests and reputation of Germany, as the United States lurched toward war with their country of origin, would alter the previous perception of German Americans as a population that had greatly contributed to the nation and enjoyed an enviable reputation among other Americans. Despite being a relatively low-profile work, Johnson’s analysis, which almost seems to represent a final tragic chapter, serves to pave the way for further research on the German experience in America.20 Although a review of earlier studies usually challenges the adequacy of data or criticizes an unsatisfactory interpretation, it can eschew this “faultfinding” mode and find, instead, a place for new work upon the scaffold of previous scholarship. The passage of time has not diluted the importance

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of Hansen’s focus that not only identified the factors which drove transatlantic migration but shifted analysis away from the filiopietism of earlier writers. Hobsbawm’s sensitivity to the demoralization of emigrants in their new settings introduced an often neglected social psychological dimension. Bergquist’s account of the demise of institutional structure provides an important warning for any attempts to chart the fate of ethnic communities. Conzen’s emphasis on the collision of expectations with the realities of a new environment illuminates the adjustment of any immigrant population. Kazal’s inquiry into the assimilation of German Americans establishes a rigorous standard for the study of all ethnic groups. And Johnson’s focus on a tragic interruption indirectly asks whether German Americans or any other ethnic group, after having suffered the misfortune of lapsing into pariah status as enemy aliens could recapture their previously envied position. In short, it all leaves the question of where should we want to go from here. And the preceding pages represent only a partial and modest answer. NOTES 1. Marcus Lee Hansen, The Atlantic Migration 1607–1860 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), 3–13. After Hansen’s death in May 1938, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., prepared a new edition and foreword for Harvard University Press, published in 1940. 2. Hansen, 51–120. 3. Hansen, 122–68. 4. Hansen, 185–241. 5. Hansen, 252–4. 6. Hansen, 262. 7. Hansen, 274. 8. C. Frederick Hansen’s profile, written shortly after his brother died, provides a candid portrait of M.L. Hansen’s life. See: “Marcus Lee Hansen—Historian of Immigration,” Common Ground (Summer, 1942), 87–94. For scholarly assessments, see: Allan H. Spear, “Marcus Lee Hansen and the Historiography of Immigration,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History, 44:4 (Summer, 1961), 258–68; Frank Thistlethwaite, “Migration from Europe Overseas in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in Stanley N. Katz and Stanley T. Kutler (eds.), New Perspectives on the American Past, Vol. II (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969), 52–81. Much of the comment on Hansen’s writings pertains to his essay, “The History of American Immigration as a Field for Research,” The American Historical Review, 32:3 (April, 1927), 500–18, rather than his book, The Atlantic Migration 1606 1860. 9. Carlton C. Qualey, “Marcus Lee Hansen,” Midcontinent American Studies Journal, 8:2 (Fall, 1967), 18–25. This article was first presented at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, in Kansas City, Missouri on April 22, 1965.

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10. Qualey, 21–5. 11. Maldwyn Allen Jones, American Immigration (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960), 330; Philip Taylor, The Distant Magnet: European Emigration to the U.S.A (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), 284; David Ward, Cities and Immigrants: A Geography of Change in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972). 12. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 1789–1848 (New York: Vintage Books, 1996; originally published, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), 121, 130, 136, 137, 178, 201, 202–4, 274. 13. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capitalism 1848–1875 (New York: Vintage Books, 1996; originally published, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975), 88–9, 108–10, 196, 197, 201–2. 14. James M. Bergquist, “German Communities in American Cities: An Interpretation of the Nineteenth-Century Experience,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 4:1 (Autumn, 1984), 9–30. Bergquist also provides an extensive listing of relevant studies on Germans in various cities in his endnotes. 15. Kathleen Neils Conzen, “Phantom Landscapes of Colonization: Germans in the Making of a Pluralist America,” in Frank Trommler and Elliott Shore (eds.) The German-American Encounter: Cooperation and Conflict between Two Cultures, 1800–2000 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2001), 7–21. This essay, ironically, was first presented at a conference at the German Society of Pennsylvania. 16. Conzen, 11–17. 17. Russell A. Kazal, “Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept in American Ethnic History,” The American Historical Review, 100:2 (April 1995), 437–71. 18. Russell A. Kazal, “The Lost World of Pennsylvania Pluralism: Immigrants, Regions, and the Early Origins of Pluralist Ideologies in America,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 27:3 (Spring, 2008), 7–42. 19. Russell A. Kazal, Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German American Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 20. Charles T. Johnson, Culture at Twilight: The National German American Alliance, 1901–1918 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999).

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Index

Ackerman, Adam, 116 Act of Assembly of 1794, banning “worldly employment” on Sabbath, 55 Act of Assembly of 1798, 121, 149n50 Adams, John Quincy, 7 African Americans, 5, 73, 91, 139, 284 Agitation Association of the Independent Citizens of Philadelphia, 56–57 Alba, Richard, 298 Alemannia Singing Society, 85 Alger, Russell A., 136 Aliens. See “enemy aliens”; seeking citizenship All Saints (Bridesburg), 158 Amalgamated Building Trades Council, 119 American Defense Society, 227 Americanization, 66, 107, 174–282 Americanization Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, the, 283 American League for National Unity, 200 American Party, 89 American Protective League, 273–74 Amidon, Charles F., 262–63 Anarchists, 68–74, 88, 101, 134 Ancient Order of Hibernians, 118 Andeca of Gallaecia, King, 118 Anglo Americans, 169, 283 Armstrong, William, 229

Ashbridge, Mayor Samuel H., 104, 114–16 Association for Maintaining Personal Freedom, 82–83, 88 Auerswald, Reverend C. H., 245 Austrians, 42, 194, 195, 210, 214, 217– 18, 251–52 Aveling, Edward, 72 Babcock, James W., 157 Baerncopf, Jacob, 247 Baldi, Charles C. A., 261 Baldwin Locomotive Works, 202 Ballier, Major John F., 12–14, 18, 25, 30–31, 64, 128, 187 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, 204, 208 Bancroft, George, 45–47 Bancroft, Jacob. See Baerncopf, Jacob Bancroft Treaty, 45–47, 61n14 Bartholdt, Richard, 132, 184–85, 240 Barth’s Hall, 122 Bates, Samuel P., 14, 20, 23–24 Bavarian Festival, 78–79 Bayerischer Volksfest Verein, 102–3 Beaver, Governor James A., 67 Beitler, Abraham M., 102–3, 105, 111 Benedict XV, Pope, 176 Bennett Law, 92 Berger, Victor, 245

311

312

Index

Bergner, Gustavus, 46 Bergquist, James M., 296, 301 Bernstorff, Ambassador Johann Heinrich von, 278 Bernstorff, Count Christian Guenther von, 223 Bernstorff, Jeanne Luckemeyer von, 223 Betz Brewing Company, John F. and Sons, 119 Biddle Motor Car Company, 179–80 Bielaski, A. Bruce, 237–38 Binder, Richard, 162 Bismarck, Chancellor Otto von, 48, 58, 63, 92, 110, 120, 164, 171 Black Tom ammunition depot explosion, 276–78, 288 Blankenburg, Rudolph, 64, 73, 110, 173–74, 197–98, 200, 238–39, 246–47 Blegen, Theodore, 293 Blenker, Colonel Louis, 15, 145 Bloch, Marc, x, 2–3 Blue Laws, 81–82, 121 Bodnar, John, 298 Boehm, Professor Gustave, 118 Bohlen, General Henry, 15, 18 Bolt’s Restaurant, 139 Bombay Hook Land Company. See German Land Association (or Bombay Hook Land Company) Bosse, Sigmund George von, 163, 187, 242–44, 250 Botany Worsted Mills (Passaic, NJ), 225 Bourne, Randolph, 298–99 Brewery Workers: strikes (1887), 72– 74; (1900), 122 Brooks High License Law of 1887, 85–86, 98n66, 125 Brown, Benjamin Gratz, 43 Bryan, William Jennings, 170, 174, 277 Buchanan, President James, 11 Buckalew, Charles R., 44 Buffalo Hall, 110–11 Buhle, Paul, 298

Bunting, Kate H., 139–40 Burke, Peter, x Burton, Marguerite Vivian, 223 Busch, Adolphus, 225 Busch, Lily, 225, 227 Bushbeck, General Adolph, 18 Butchers’ Union, 122 Caledonian Athletic Club, 118 Caminetti, U. S. Commissioner General of Immigration Anthony, 199, 263 Cannstatter Frauen Verein, 136–37 Cannstatter Verein (and Volksfest), 84, 104; Ballier as co-founder, 17; “Fools Meeting”, 73, 96n30; Ladies Cannstatter Verein, 104, 136–37; Volksfest, 53–54, 57, 64–65, 71, 78, 79, 83, 85, 87–88, 117–21. See also Keebler, Godfrey Carnot, Marie F. S., 118 Casement, Roger, 278 Cassatt, Anthony J., 125 Caven, Joseph L., 46, 61n16 Central Democratic German Campaign Club, 76 Central Labor Union, 69–72, 76, 80 Chandler, Senator William E., 130–31 Charles Augustus, Duke of Saxe Weimar, 7 Chautauqua Society, 103–4, 142, 245 Chicago, Germans in, 58, 69–71, 108, 143, 170, 179, 245, 257 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, 102 Cholera Epidemic of 1892, 129–31 Cigar Makers’ Union Local, 122, 165 Cleveland, Grover, 76 Columbia Singing Society (Columbia Gesang Verein), 82, 85 Concordia Hall (or Theatre), 27, 43, 45, 46, 57, 65–66, 76–77 Concordia Singing Society, 51–52 Conrad III, Emperor, 121 Conzen, Kathleen Neils, 297–99, 301 Cooper, State Senator Thomas V. (NY), 83

Index

Corinthian Avenue German Presbyterian Church, 56 Cox, James M., 229 Cronecker’s Depot House, 86 Custer, George Armstrong, 12, 23 Daily Buerger Zeitung, 76, 91 Daly, Harriet, 223 Daniels, Josephus, 194, 245 Darkow, Martin, 254, 261–62 Davis, John Thomas, 274–75, 280n4 Debs, Eugene V., 216 Dechert, Robert Porter, 75 “definition of the situation”, 2 De Kalb, General Johann, 201 Democrats for the Municipal League, 116. See also Municipal League Dernburg, Bernhard, 246, 269n17 “Deutscher Michel”, 81–82, 88, 117–22, 144 Deutscher Reichsanzeige (Berlin), 142 Deutscher Sonntagschel Verein of Kensington, 80 Deutsche Verein, at University of Pennsylvania, 252 Deutschwehr, 183. See also GermanAmerican Charity Association (Hilsfund) Dickinson, Oliver Booth, 254, 262 Di Donato, Giuseppe, 261 Diffenderfer, Frank F., 142 Disston, Henry & Sons, 179–80 Dithmar, Captain Frederick, 8–9, 22n9 Dudens, Gottfried, 292, 295 Dunbar, William J., 204 Durand, Jean Nicholas Louis, 6 Durham, Israel W., 115–16 Earley’s Hall, 89 Eben, Charles Theodore, 41 Eddystone Ammunition Corporation explosion, 202–3, 205 Egle, William Henry, 103–4 Eisenbrown, William, 106

313

Elections. See Germans/German Americans, elections, participation in Eliot, Charles W., 167 Eliot, T. S., x Elliot, H. H. K., 89 English: animosities toward other groups, 42; assimilation of, 163–64; among early settlers, 5–6, 266, 282, 291–92; German hatred of, 259; as local residents, 118; in politics, 161; potential violence with Germans, 209; as preferred immigrants, 42, 58–59, 137, 143, 161; societies, 84, 95; among tailors, 67 English, Abraham L., 109 English language, 52, 211; America as an English-speaking society, 103, 105–6, 108; commitments to House of Corrections, 54–55; difficulties in use among Germans, 101, 102, 284–85; in education, 42–43, 55, 65, 66, 90–92, 108; among foreign-born “races”, 59; in labor unions, 68; in personal conversation, 109–10, 123, 131; in places of business, 133; in public events, 10–11, 65, 72, 75, 76, 106, 110–11, 118–19, 274; in schools, 139–40; in Socialist schools, 72; use by German soldiers, 258; use by newspapers, 252–53, 260; used by Germans afraid to speak German, 251; used by witnesses, 241 Essig, John, 107, 146 Evangelical Lutheran Emanuel Church (South Philadelphia), 90 Evening Ledger, (or Evening Public Ledger); on Agnes Repplier, 175–76; on A. Mitchell Palmer, 228–30; on Congressional hearings, 241–42; on enemy aliens, 215; on Germans, 171, 174–75, 183, 204, 250–51, 273; history of, 4; on hyphenates and Americanism, 177, 180; on Pastorius monument, 266; on Philadelphians in World War I, 284; on Tageblatt case,

314

Index

255, 257; on Wilson Administration, 229–30 Eyre, Lincoln L., 74–75, 96n35 Falls Protestant Athletic Union, 118 Federation of German Catholic Societies, 176 Feldman, Karl, 218, 227 Fernley, Reverend T.A., 77–78 Ferrar, Geraldine, 199 “filiopietism”, 291, 294, 301 First German Presbyterian Church, 107 First Presbyterian Church of Northern Liberties, 83 Fischer, Adalbert Koerting, 224 Fischer, Helene, 224 Fitler, Mayor Edwin H., 67, 73, 82 Florence Combined Secondary and Primary Schools, 139–40 Flower, Roswell P., 140 Forman, Justus Miles, 172–73 Forney, Senator John W., 43, 45 Fow, John H., 114, 147–48n34 Fox, Daniel M., 25–26, 32, 50 Franco-Prussian war (1870), 26–28, 35; “Christmas Truce” of 1870, 30 Frankford Arsenal explosion, 203 Franklin, Benjamin, 6, 20–21, 21n1, 26, 55, 128, 163–64, 282, 283 Frey, Joseph, 176 Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, 124 Friends of German Democracy, 246–47 Froelich, Julius, 71–72, 81 Frohman, Charles, 172–73 Fry, James B., 23n17 Furness, William H., 11 Gannett, Henry, 131, 152n69 Garbarino, Frank L., 201–2, 207, 209, 215, 221, 222, 224, 241, 254–55, 257, 261 Garber, John P., 253–54, 259 Garfield, James A., 47 Garnett, Christopher B., 278 Gartenstein, Jacob, 123

Gaskell, Frank M. D., 273–74 General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 158–59, 163 German Alliance Insurance Company, 201–2 German American Bowling League, 157 German American Building and Loan Association, 157 German-American Central Association of Pennsylvania, 116 German-American Charity Association (Hilsfund), 181, 183 German American Insurance Company, 201 German-American League, 264 German-American Newspaper Association, 184 German American newspapers: Abend Post (Chicago), 179; Abend Post (Philadelphia), 31; Buerger Zeitung or Daily Buerger Zeitung (Philadelphia), 76, 91; Daily Gazette (Philadelphia), 260; Demokrat, (Philadelphia), 27, 31, 112–13, 183–84; Freie Presse (Philadelphia), 31; Freie Zeitung (Newark, NJ), 253; Pittsburger Volksblatt (Pittsburgh, Pa.), 132; Sonntags Journal (Philadelphia), 77; Staats-Zeitung (New York), 173; Tageblatt (Philadelphia): (charges in first case, 238; dismissal of first charges, 254–55; raids on office and new charges, 253; resumption of editorials, 250, 254; staff defections, 255; subsequent prosecution, 255–62, 273, 279; support of the National German American Alliance, 240–42); Vereins Zeitung (Philadelphia), 81; Westliche Post (St. Louis), 184 German American Republican League, 114 German Americans. See Germans/ German Americans

Index

German American Title and Trust Company, 197 “German corridor”, 73 “German Day”, 296; Chautauqua, 103– 4; Jamestown (1907); Philadelphia, 45, 103–5, 137, 162–69, 264 German Evangelical Reformed Church (Market Square), 158–59 German Federation of Trades (or German Federation of Trade Unions), 72–74, 90, 117 German Hospital, 17, 25, 97, 128, 157, 171, 197 Germania Hall (or Theatre), 57, 65–66, 73–74, 80 Germania Park, 149n43 Germanism. See Germans/German Americans, kultur German Jews, 159–60 German Land Association (or Bombay Hook Land Company), 42 German Lutheran Cemetery, 157 Germans/German Americans: allegiance and loyalty in wartime, 104, 106–7, 115, 120, 133–35, 137, 144, 170, 172–86, 194–97, 201–5, 220, 237–38, 243–51, 254–55, 267, 274, 279, 284, 287; American citizenship, seeking, 13, 43, 45, 104, 106, 109, 110, 160, 171, 174, 179–82, 194, 196–98, 200, 207, 210–14, 262–63, 283, 294–95; Americanization of family names, 248; aspirations and intentions, 2–3; assimilation, 3, 8, 11, 50, 53, 60, 65, 91, 105–6, 131, 133, 139, 144, 164, 239–40, 258, 282, 284, 288, 291–92, 296, 299, 301; Camden (NJ), settlement in, 66, 94; celebration of Labor Day, 117–20, 122, 144; changing of place names, 248; character of, assessing the, 2, 29–30, 47, 56, 58–60, 63–64, 89, 91, 107, 141–42, 163, 165, 171, 243–44, 247, 273; other cities and towns, in, (York and

315

other places), 139; commemorating the revolution of 1848, 119–20; community life and organizations. See names of specific organizations; competition with “colored waiters”, 139; conceptualizing the experience of, 1–3; Confederate Army, in the, 12–13; “conformist nationalism”, 300; contributions to America, 7, 33, 49–50, 116, 118, 133, 144, 163–65, 169, 244, 281–82, 291, 294–95, 297; discharge of shipyard workers, 204, 225; early patterns of migration and settlement, 3–11; Egg Harbor, (NJ), at, 42, 57, 60; elections, participation in: (city council (1886), 79; city council and other local offices (1887), 74–76; Congressional (1886), 70; Congressional (1890), 93; Congressional (1894), 111– 13; local offices (1900), 116; mayoralty (1871), 43; mayoralty (1877), 46; mayoralty (1887), 73; mayoralty (1895), 113–14; mayoralty (1899), 114–16; National Party Convention, (1878), 47; presidential (1864), 16; presidential (1872), 43–44; presidential (1876), 44–45; presidential (1880), 47–48; presidential (1888), 76–77; presidential (1916), 181–86; uncertainty of German vote (1887)); emigration, factors promoting, 291–94; enemy aliens, as: (children, 207; confinement at Fort Oglethorpe (GA), 218, 219, 224, 227, 228; denial of dog licenses, 175, 217; deployment as farm laborers, 215– 16; exemptions and restriction on military service, 212–13, 216, 220; fears of their presence, 212–13, 220; internment, 215–19; prosecution and arrest, 193, 198, 204, 206, 209–12, 215–20, 227, 255; registration and other sanctions, 198–99, 205–21,

316

Index

238, 264; releasing internees after the war, 274; restriction of women, 219, 220; restrictions after the war, 263– 64, 274–76; restrictions on military service, 220; romance and marriage, 223; selective service, 212, 256; wealth and property, confiscation of, 221–28); “German battalion”, 8–9; Germantown, 64, 67, 78, 158, 159, 161–63, 237, 264–68, 283, 299; hostile and violent incidents, 256– 57; immigrants, expectations and aspirations of, 41, 297; immigration, volume of, 131; “jolly Germans”, 120, 135, 141; “Keegan’s Brigade”, 136, 153n79; kindergarten, 237, 282; Kultur, 241, 248, 266, 274–75; language as an issue, 7–8, 91, 105–6, 252–62; letters from America, 41, 292–93; migration chains, 293; “model minority”, or as preferred immigrants, 3, 8, 133, 140–41, 282; needy Germans, 29–30, 54–55, 60, 64–66, 85, 92, 109; occupations — rural, urban and industrial, 6, 25, 31–32, 41, 64–65, 67–70, 84, 102, 109–10, 117, 122, 139, 141, 158, 203; “old stock”, 299–300; organized labor, in, 67–78; perceptions and attitudes of other Americans, 109–10; Philadelphia, settling in, 7–8; politics, in early colony, 6–7; population within America, as a, 5–6, 13, 58–59, 63, 79, 103, 107–8, 131, 140–41, 143–44, 161, 165, 175, 284, 288, 295; post war restoration of German American culture, 273–76; protecting them against conscription by Germany, 45–46, 267; radicalism in post war period, 278–79; reaction to war with Spain, 104, 106–7, 120, 121, 134–36; “reconstruction of tradition”, 144; redemptioners, 292; relative absence of violence, 138–39; religious life and

organization. See names of specific churches; remittances, 109; role in the industrialization of America, 39, 41, 60, 158, 282, 291; Sabbath, conflict over observance of, 39, 51, 53, 54–58, 77–87, 88–92, 120–21, 282; Socialists (or Socialism), 48, 68, 69, 72, 74, 82, 108, 111, 117; “soul Germans”, 171; “stomach Germans”, 171; suicide, 54, 102, 194, 295–96; support for Liberty Loan, 201–2, 243–44, 249, 260; Union army, during the Civil War, 12–20, 104; U.S. army in the, during World War I, 195, 200, 210, 284–87; War for American Independence, in the, 6–7; Whitsuntide celebration (Pfingstmontag), 51–52, 57, 81, 84, 85, 117–18, 174 German Society Hall, 135 German Society of New York (or German Immigrant Society of New York), 19, 30 German Society of Pennsylvania: charity work, 29–30, 54–55; cornerstone and dedication ceremonies, 65–66, 84 German Workingmen’s Club, 72 Germany: emigration, causes of and patterns in, 9, 27–29, 40–41, 47, 143; newspapers and World War I, 177; public education system, 48–49; restriction of emigration, 40, 132; Samoan crisis, 137–38 Gerstle, Gary, 298 Gessner, Frank M., 111, 119, 146n27 Glazer, Nathan, 298 Gleason, Philip, 298 Gloucester, (NJ), as a picnic site, 81, 85 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 31, 110, 126, 258 Goethe monument, 110 Goff, John W., 184 Goldman, Emma, 110–11, 117 Gordon, Milton M., 298

Index

Gorsuch, W. J., 72 Gould, Benjamin Apthorp, 23n17 Grahn, Reverend Hugo, 90 Grant, President Ulysses S., 43–44, 47 Great American Insurance Company. See German American Insurance Company Greble, Andrew, 12–13 Greble, John T., Lieutenant, 12–13 Greeley, Horace, 43–44 Greenback-Labor Party, 47, 70 Gregory, Attorney General Thomas W., 199, 204, 211–13 Gregory, Dr. Casper, 200 Greiner, Otto, 203 Gringle, Arthur E., 245 Gross, Dr. Ferdinand H., 77–78, 97n44 Grottkau, Paul, 69 Guardian Life Insurance Company, 226–27 Guffey, James McClurg, 229 Guffey, Joseph F., 226, 229 Gutman, Herbert, 298 Guttenberg Bund, 71–72 Hajek, V. A., 241, 254 Halterman, Frederick, 111–15 Hamburg America Steamship Line, 179, 222 Hamburger Nachrichten, 135 Hammache, Father Theodore, 176 Handbuch der Stadt Philadelphia und Umgebung (The Handbook of the City of Philadelphia and its Surrounding Area) See Eben, Charles Theodore Handlin, Oscar, 293, 298 Hansen, Marcus Lee, 291–95, 298, 300–1 Harburger & Homan cigar factory, 122, 150n53 Harding, Warren G., 283 Hastings, Daniel H., 113 Hayes, Rutherford B., 44–45 Haymarket Affair, 69–71, 93–94 Hays, Will H., 275–76

317

Hecker, Friedrich, 9–10 Heckman, Pastor George C., 161 Heinrich of Bavaria, Duke, 121 Heinrici, Max, 179, 246 Heinz, Howard C., 240–41 Herberg, Will, 298 Hexamer, Charles J.: celebrating the anniversary of German unification, 171; defending Germany in World War I, 169; end of his leadership, 245–46; on German American contributions and loyalty, 104, 110, 135, 137, 161, 163, 165–66, 168–69, 177, 193–94, 195, 200, 201; at Labor Day celebration, 120; and National German American Alliance, 163, 181, 238, 240–42; as proposed speaker after the war, 249–50; support of American neutrality, 170; support of Ashbridge for mayor, 114–15; and Theodore Roosevelt, 185 Hexamer, William E., 200 Higham, John, 298 High German Evangelical Reformed Zion Church (Allentown, PA), 139 Hilfsfond. See German-American Charity Association (Hilsfund) Hilterman, Reverend E. O., 107 Himmelreich, Ferdinand, 162 Hinckley, Robert H., 89, 99 Hindenburg, Field Marshall Paul von, 179, 250 Hirsch, Arnold, 298 Hirsch, Rabbi Samuel, 30. See also German Jews historical anthropology, x Hobsbawm, Eric, 144, 295–96 Hofmann, General William J., 17–18 “Hog Combine”, 116 Holy Cross Evangelical Lutheran Church, 106–7 Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, 107, 158 Horstmann, William, 25–27, 29

318

Index

Hoskins, Dr. W. Horace, 114–15, 148n36 Howe, General William, 34–35 Huerta, Victoriano, 178 Hughes, Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans, 182–85, 242 Humboldt, Alexander von, 25–26, 31 Humboldt City, 42. See also German Land Association (or Bombay Hook Land Company) hyphen, hyphenate, or Hyphenated American, the, 172–86, 194–95, 198, 287 Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church, 158 Immigration/Immigrants: aspirations and expectations, 301; assimilation, 3, 8, 50, 131, 133, 137, 144, 284, 298–301. See also German Americans, assimilation; causes of departure, 292–93, 295–96; life and adjustment, conceptualizing; New Immigration vs. Old Immigration, 42, 59, 144, 299; psychological effects, 144; restriction, calls for, 88–89, 101, 107–8, 129–33, 252, 275–76; volume, 40–41 Independent Republicans, 74–75 Industrial Workers of the World, 245, 257–58 Inquirer (Philadelphia): on Charles H. Reisser, 125–28, 133; on Germans, immigration and other issues, 8, 11, 26, 30–31, 34–35, 39, 41, 47, 57, 68–70, 74–76, 80, 82, 89, 91–94, 103, 115, 119–20, 133–35, 137, 139–40, 142–43, 149, 265; readers’ views, 237 International Cigar Makers Union, 74, 80–81, 122 International Lyceum Association, 121, 245 International Navigation Company, 40– 41, 69, 141. See also Peter Wright & Sons

International Workingmen’s Association, 68 Irish, 8, 12, 13, 28, 42, 43, 49, 58, 64, 80, 84, 89, 92, 101, 106–8, 112, 115, 118, 131, 138, 140–41, 143, 169, 176, 181–86, 238, 251, 278, 284, 295 Italians, ix, 41–42, 63, 64, 67, 91, 95, 101, 107–8, 131, 133, 138–41, 143– 44, 176, 183, 193, 214, 284 Jackson, General Thomas J. “Stonewall”, 15–16 Jackson, Henry J., 63 James, Henry, 137 Jamestown (VA) Exposition of 1907, 160–61 Jastrow, Professor Morris, 247 Jastrow, Rabbi Marcus, 30. See also Jews, German Jews Jews: Ashkenazi, 138, 159; German Jews, 30, 160; Jewish Foster Home, 159, 160; Jewish Hospital, 159; “Radical Reform”, 159; Sephardim, 138, 159, 160; Synagogues (and Chebroth): (Adath Jeshuran, 159; Beth Israel, 159; B’Nai Abraham, 160; B’Nai Jacob, 160; Emmath Israel-Oheb Shalom, 160; Kenéseth Israel, 44, 178; Mikveh Israel, 159; Rodeph Shalom, 30, 159; Teshu’ath Israel, 159) John Bower & Company, 32 Jones, Maldwyn Allen, 295 Journeymen Tailors’ Protective Union, 68 Junger Maennerchor, 104, 109, 116, 157, 171–72 Kallen, Horace, 298–99 Kane, U.S. District Attorney Francis Fisher, 207–9, 254–57 Kapp, Friedrich, 297 Katzenjammer kids, 109 Kazal, Russell A., 298–300

Index

Keebler, Godfrey, 53–54, 71, 85, 87, 127–28 Keebler-Weyl Baking Company, 128 Keegan, C.M., 153n79. See also Germans/German Americans, “Keegan’s Brigade” Keim, David M., 7 Keim, George DeBenneville, 73 Keller, Joseph, 241 Kellerman’s Hall, 113–14 Kellner, Gottfied T., 27, 33–34, 64, 65, 67 Kensington Labor Lyceum, 121 Keyser, Dirck, 266 Keyser, Naaman H., 266 Keystone Leather Company, 180 Keystone Hall, 112 Keystone Saw, Tool and File Works, 179. See also Disston, Henry & Sons Kindergarten, 237, 282 King, Mayor Samuel G., 57, 64 King, Senator William H., 238–42, 246, 253, 255 Kingsland munitions factory explosion, 276–78, 288 Kirschner, John S., 70, 82, 90 Kladderadatsch, 136 Knights of Labor, 68–70, 73, 95n14 Knox, Reverend Charles E., 108 Koerting, Ernest, 228 Kohler, Lieutenant Colonel Jacob, 34 Koltes, General John A., 18, 145n13 Kossuth, Louis, 10 Krauskopf, Rabbi Joseph, 159–60 Kreimer, Hermann, 250 Krug, Christian, 76–77, 84 Krumbhaar, Charles H., 74–75, 96n35 Kuhl, Karl, 75–77, 82–84, 89, 91–92 Kühnemann, Professor Eugen, 169, 171 Labor Lyceum, 111, 117, 121 Labor Lyceum Grove, 122 Ladner, Albert H., 162, 186–87n9 Landman, Isaac Rabbi, 178 Lankenau Hospital. See German Hospital

319

Larkin, James, 169 Lauber, Philip J., 123–24, 150n57 Law and Order Society, 80, 89, 150 Learned, Marion Dexter, 110, 299 Leeds, William R., 74–76, 91, 96n34 Lemke, Herman, 254, 261 Lentz, Major Carl, 147n30 Leonhardt, Arno, 109, 115, 137, 138, 153n80 Lepkowski, William, 209 Lex, William Henry, 84 Liberal Laws League, 121 Liberty Park (Camden, NJ), 85, 94n9 Liberty Park Mutual Homestead Association, 66 Liberty Title and Trust Company. See German American Title and Trust Company Lierz, Henry, 115, 117–19 Lincoln, Abraham, 9, 16, 23, 45, 112 Linden, Robert J., 121 Liquor Dealers and Brewers Progressive Union, 80, 84 List, Georg Friedrich, 9 Lodge, Senator Henry Cabot, 184–85 Logan, James, 5–6 Lokal Anzeiger, (Berlin), 250–1 Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904, 162 Lusitania, sinking of the, 172–74, 227 Luther, Martin, 105–7 Maennerchor Society, 11, 93, 99n83, 104, 128, 137, 145, 157, 170, 193 Mahler, Colonel Francis, 15–16 Maloney, Andrew J., 74–75 Manayunk Club, 118 Mann, William B., 43 Marheinecke, Carl B., 110 Market Square Church. See German Evangelical Reformed Church (Market Square) Marx, Eleanor, 72 Marx, Karl, 9, 72, 282 Mary J. Drexel Home, 159

320

Index

Masons, Grand Lodge of the Free and Accepted, 65 Massenger, D.A., 111 Mayer, Gustav, 183–84 Mayer, John B., 197, 265–66 McAdoo, William G., 222, 229 McArthur, Representative Clifton N., 253 McCall, John, 132 McClellan, General George C., 16 McCullen, Joseph P., 113 McDevitt, John J. (member of Philadelphia Select Council), 79 McDevitt, John J. “Butch” (Presidential candidate of Wilkes Barre, PA), 186, 192n58 McMichael, Morton, 10 McMillan, D. J. Reverend, 108 Meade, General George Gordon, 50 Memorial Presbyterian Church, 107 Mennonites, 6 Merck & Company, 226 Meredith, Reverend John F., 57 Metzger, Joseph E., 91–92, 96n33 Metzler, Gustave, 74, 96 Meyer, John B., 169, 184, 244 Migrantz, Elmer Howard, 247 Mills, William B., 217, 274–75 Mitzel, Captain Alexander von, 14 Moltke, General Helmuth von, 102, 285 Moore, J. Hampton, 228, 268 Morais, Henry Samuel, 159–60 Morton, Levi P., 113 Morwitz, Joseph, 64, 110 Most, Johann, 69 “Mottenburg, Sons of” (or Mottenburgers), 45–46 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 298 Muck, Karl, 210, 217, 219 Mucklé, M. Richards, 27, 50, 115, 171, 188n25 Mueller, Emil T., 138 Mueller, Paul F., 179 Muhlenberg, General Peter, 165 Munderkingen (Württemberg), 119

Municipal League, 96, 116. See also Democrats for the Municipal League Münsterberg, Hugo, 244 Mutchmore, Reverend Samuel A., 107–8 Myers, Gustavus, 115–16 National Association of Commerce and Labor, 255 National Association of German publishers, 179 National Conference on Immigration and Americanization, 178 National French Association, 118 National German American Alliance: charges being made against, 181; charges by press, 250, 265, 273; Congressional hearings on revoking charter, 238–42, 246, 283–84; decision to disband, 245–46; defended by Hexamer, 193–94; Founder’s Week celebration of German American heritage, 162–64; Jamestown Exposition, at, 161; loyalty of German Americans, on, 179, 193–95; relation to foreign language press, 253–54, 258; resignation of von Bosse, 242–43; scholarly study of, 300; support for legislation on alcohol, 171–72; support for Pastorius monument, 265; support for U.S. neutrality, 170 National Party, 47 National Saengerfest (1897), 133–34 National Saengerfest (1912), 166 National Security League, 201, 226, 261 Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church (Port Richmond), 158 “New Englanders”, as early majority. See Anglo Americans New Jersey State Council of the Junior Order of the United American Mechanics, 253, 259 New Social Historians, 298

Index

newspapers as a source in historical research, 2–3 New York Shipbuilding Corporation, 180 New Zion German Lutheran Church. See St. Michael’s German Lutheran Church (Old Zion) New York Tribune, 205 Noonan, U.S. Marshal Frank J., 207–9, 211, 215, 217, 219, 257, 263 North American Gymnastic Union, 142 North American (Philadelphia), 115 North American Turnerbund, 52–53 North Atlantic Steamship Conference, 130 Ohlinger, Gustavus, 239–40, 244 Old Zion German Lutheran Church. See St. Michael’s German Lutheran Church (Old Zion) Orenstein-Arthur Koppel Company, 226–27 Ottar, Reverend John, 107 Our Lady Help of Christians (Port Richmond), 158 Pabst Brewing, 226 Packard Motor Company, 179 “Packard Plan”, 179–81 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 221–30, 278–79 Pannebäcker, Heinrich, 17 Papen, Franz von, 278 Park, Robert E., 298 Parsons, Albert R., 71 Parsons, Lucy, 71, 93–94, 95n25 Pascoe, David M., 71–72 Pastime Park. See Washington Park Pastorius, Bicentennial Celebration of arrival, 64, 67, 77–78, 103 Pastorius, Francis Daniel, 6, 46, 67, 78, 103, 163, 165, 288–89 Pastorius Monument, 165, 264–68 Pastorius, Samuel, 265 Patriot, the (Harrisburg, PA), 34, 76, 113, 130, 154

321

Patterson, Major General Robert, 9 Pattison, Governor Robert E., 96–97, 114, 116 Pavonia Park (Camden, NJ), 85, 117 “Peace Festival” (Das Friedenfest) of 1870, 30–36 Peary, Admiral Robert E., 197 Pen and Pencil Club, 124–25 Pendleton, George H., 16 Pennsylvania, a “new history” of, 142 Pennsylvania, State of: Act of Assembly (1794), 55–56; Board of Censors, 79; Legislation on hunting and dog ownership by aliens (1915), 175, 217; Post war legislation prohibiting German in schools, 274–75 Pennsylvania State League of German Catholic Societies, 107, 176 Penn, William, 5, 40, 64, 133–34, 266 Pennypacker, General Galusha, 17, 24n24 Pennypacker, Samuel, 67 Penrose, Senator Boise, 115, 238–39, 243 People, the, 111 Personal Liberty League, 74–77, 79, 83–84, 89, 91–92 Peters, Reverend Madison C., 83, 89 Peter Wright & Sons, 40–41 Pfingstmontag (Pentecost Monday), 51–52, 85–86. See also Germans/ German Americans, Whitsuntide Celebration Philadelphia, City of: Board of Education, 35, 92, 116, 211, 253–54, 259–61, 276; Board of Health, 41–42, 130 Philadelphia Orchestra, 209–10, 275 Philadelphia Manufacturing Tailors’ Association, 67 Phillips, Thomas, 73 pluralism, 244, 298–300; high pluralism vs. vernacular pluralism, 298–99; Pennsylvania pluralism, 299 Polish Defense League, 225

322

Index

Poor, Reverend D.W., 55, 56 Porter, Robert P., 141, 154–55n90 Powderly, Terence V., 141–42 Powell, Reverend Lyman P., 195–96 Presbyterian Home Missionary Board, 108 Presbyterian Ministerial Union, 121 Presbyterians, 55–56, 107–8, 121, 158–59. See also specific churches by name Presbyterian State Synod, 107 Pretzel Bakers Union, 122 Price, Helen, 285, 289n6 Printz’s Mill, 122, 150 Progressive Workingmen’s Union of Philadelphia, 71 Public Ledger: alleged support for Germany, 171; on citizenship and allegiance, 181–82; on the Peace Festival of 1871, 35; on pro Prussian political agitators in 1870, 26 Quakers, 6, 64, 128, 283 Qualey, Carlton C., 294–95 Quay, Matthew S., 115 Reading Railroad Company, 30, 51, 90, 118 Reed, John, 171 Regenspurger, William, 77 Reinhart, Leon, 285 Reinhart, Corporal Frank William, 285, 289 Reinhart, General William, 285 Reisser, Charles Henry, 123–27 Reissler, George S., 205–6 Remak, Gustavus, 11, 64 Remington Arms Company. See Eddystone Ammunition Corporation explosion Reporters’ Club, 124–25 Repplier, Agnes, 175–76 Reyburn, Mayor John E., 163, 165 Ricketts Company, John T., 128 Ridder, Herman, 173

Ridgeway Park, 77, 81 Rintelen, Frans von, 178 Rising Sun Park, 52, 53, 78, 85–86, 118 Roberts, Owen J., 262, 278 Rogers, Joseph P., 174–75 Rohm and Haas Company, 226–27 Roman Catholics, allegiance among, 107 Roosevelt, Franklin, 229 Roosevelt, Theodore, 163, 172, 177–79, 181–82, 184–85, 195, 240, 252–53 Root, Elihu, 240 Rorke, Allen B., 76 Rosengarten, Joseph George, 6–7, 12– 14, 18–20, 21n3 Rumely, Dr. Edward A., 227, 236n80 Ryan, Archbishop Patrick John, 107 Ryan, Michael J., 169, 176 Sabbath Association, the Philadelphia, 77–78, 80, 88–89 Sachse, Julius F., 103–4, 142 Saengerbund, 49 Saenger Halle, 133–34 Salem German Reformed Church, 158 Saxon Society, 78–79 Schaefer, Peter, 254, 261–62 Schanz, Frank, 79 Schiller, Friedrich, 11, 31, 65, 79, 123, 126 Schimmelfennig, Colonel Alexander, 14 Schleicher, Gustave, 13 Schlenz, Joseph, 249–50, 270n25 Schlesischer Zeitung (Breslau), 135 Schmidt, Ernst, 217 Schneider, Herman, 113 Schneider, Frederick Halterman, 113 Schuetzen Hall, meetings at, 67, 69 Schuetzen Park (Camden, NJ), 120 Schurz, Carl, 14, 15, 43–44, 47, 103, 110, 145, 162, 186n7 Schutte & Koerting Company, 224, 226, 228 Schützen Verein (or Schuetzen Verein), 30, 32, 50–52, 60

Index

Schützen Verein Park (or Schuetzen Park), events at, 33–35, 50–53, 57, 60, 64, 70, 78–79, 81–85 Schweizer, J. Otto, 163 Sea Isle City (NJ), 86 Seidensticker, Professor Oswald, 21n1, n3, 64, 67, 127–28 Seventeenth Ward German Republican Club, 113 Sheet Metal Workers’ Union, 122 Sherman, General William Tecumseh, 16 Sholla, Charles, 209 Shorey, Paul, 275–76 Siegmann, George, 34 Sievers, Edith and Elwood, 247–48 Sigel, Franz (son of General Franz Sigel), 246–47 Sigel, General Franz, 27, 52–53, 76, 145, 247 Sigray, Count Anton, 223, 235 Simmel, Georg, 281 Site and Relic Society of Germantown, 266–67 Smith, Mayor Thomas B., 197, 199, 201 Smith, U. S. Representative J. M. C., 248 Socialist Labor Party, 69, 111, 117, 121, 146 Société Française de Bienfaisance de Philadelphie, La, 35, 37n22 Sollars, Werner, 298 Soulas, Gustav A., 127, 151n63 Southwark Lyceum, 121–22 Spaake, William H., 110 Spaeth, Reverend Adolph, 90, 106–7, 110, 120, 146n14, 163–64, 187n12 Spear, Allan H., 293 Sproul, William C., 275 St. Aloysius, 158 St. Alphonsus (South Philadelphia), 158 St. Bonaventure (Fairhill), 158 St. Bonaventure’s parish school, 107 St. Boniface (Fishtown), 158 Steffens, Lincoln, 115 Steiner, Edward A., 181

323

Steinmetz, Charles P., 200 Stetson Hat Company, John B., 179 Steuben, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von, 10, 201, 289 Stevens, Uriah S., 95n14 Stevenson, Maxwell, 70–71 St. Ignatius (West Philadelphia), 158, 176 St. John’s German Lutheran Church (or St. Johannis), 90, 163 St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. See Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 St. Ludwig (Brewerytown), 158 St. Mary of the Assumption (Manayunk), 158 St. Michael’s German Lutheran Church (Old Zion), 159 Stockton Park (Camden, NJ), 87, 117 Stockton Rifle Range (Camden, NJ), 85 Stokley, Mayor William S., 43, 46, 55, 80–81, 123 Stokowski, Leopold, 209–10, 275 Stollwerck Brothers, 226 Stone, William A., 132 Stonemen’s Fellowship, 266 St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church, 187 St. Peter’s Church (Episcopal-Third & Pine), 181 St. Peter’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church (West Philadelphia), 105 St. Peter the Apostle R.C. Church, 107 Strassburger, Ralph B., 194 Strawbridge & Clothier Department Store, 162 St. Timothy Club of Roxborough, 118 Stuart, Mayor Edwin S., 102–3, 140, 163, 187 Stueben, Friedrich Wilhelm von, 10–11, 201, 289 Sunday Barbers’ Closing Association, 86–87 Széchenyi, Count László, 223, 235

324

Index

Tageblatt, (Berlin), 281 Tailors International Trade Union, 95n14 Tarkington, Booth, 287–88 Tate, James, 111 Taylor, Philip, 295 Temperance Movement, 54–58, 66, 123 Textile Arbeiter Verein, 69 Textile Union Local No., 8, 122 Textile Workingmen’s Association, 69 Theiss, Charles, 74 Theodore, A. Ernest (or Albert E. Theodore), 81–82, 88 Thirty-seventh Ward German-American Republican Club, 114 Thistlethwaite, Frank, 294–95 Thomas, W. I., 2, 298 Thompson, Robert Ellis, 103, 105, 145n13 Tiedemann, Frederick, 15, 18 Tiedemann, Heinrich, 25, 44 Tiedemann, Joseph, 15, 18 Tilden, Samuel J., 44–45 Timm, Adolph, 184, 242 Townsend, John G., 259 Townsend, Richard, 266 Treaty of Berlin (1921), 277 Troelsch, William G., 75 Turnerfest of 1900, 142–42 Turner, Fredrick Jackson, 293–94 Turngemeinde Society, 66–67, 73, 118, 143, 202. See also Turnerfest of 1900 Turnverein, 25, 32, 66, 104, 117, 172, 183 Uckos, John, 87–87 “unhyphenated Americans”, 300 Union League, 113, 259 Unique Building and Loan Association, 105 United German Military Societies, 120 United German Societies, 83 United German Trades, 106, 119–22 United Labor League, 119, 122

United Labor Party, 72–74 United Singers, 117, 162–63, 171, 197 United Societies of the Northwest District of Philadelphia United States: Bancroft Treaty with Prussia and North German Confederation (1868), 46, 47; emergence as a world power, 164; Espionage Act of 1917, 216; Immigration Act of 1893, 130–31, 132; Interstate Quarantine Act of 1893, 130; Mixed Claims Commission, 277–78; Neutrality and World War I, 169–71, 174, 176–78, 227, 250–51, 276–78; postal service censorship, 210, 248, 275; proposed consular inspection of emigrants (1896), 130; proposed literacy legislation (1896), 132–33, 143–44, 299; Sedition Act of 1918, 216; Selective Service Act of 1917, 216; Senate Committee on Immigration, 230; Settlement of War Claims Act (1928), 277; tensions with Spain (1897), 104, 106–7, 121, 134–36; Trading with the Enemy Act (1917), 221–23, 227, 253; War Materials Destruction Act of 1918 (Sabotage Act), 216; Women Spy Bill (1918), 216 United States Brewers Association, 241 United States Centennial of 1876, 26, 41, 45, 52–53, 123, 125, 150 Vanderbilt, Gladys, 223 Vaux, Richard, 65, 99 Vecoli, Rudolph, 298 Vernon Park (Germantown), 163, 265, 268 Vezin brothers, Oscar, Henry and Alfred, 18 Victor Talking Machine Company, 180 Viereck, George S., 177 Vim Motor Truck Company, 179–80 Vogel, Paul, 254, 261

Index

Wagner, Fred M., 97, 116 Wagner, General Louis, 18, 92, 110, 115, 120 Wanamaker, John, 64, 162, 167, 168 Wanamaker’s Department Store, 161, 162, 164–66 Ward, David, 295 Warfield. Edwin, 210 Warwick, Charles F., 102–3, 104, 110, 113–14 Washington, George, 5 Washington Park, 104, 118–21, 135–37. See also Pastime Park Weber, Max, x Weiland, Carl, 110 Wengert, Julius, 171 Wente & Weed Textile, 122 Werner, Louis, 82, 254, 261–62 Weser Zeitung, (Bremen), 251–52 Weyl, Augustus, 128, 151n64 Wheeler, J. K, 77–78 White, Andrew D., 19–20 “white ethnics”, 300 Whitman, Governor Charles S., 245 Whitman, Walt, 96, 125 Whitsunday (Pentecost Sunday), 53, 70, 81 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 103

325

Wilhelm, Charles, 14 Wilhelm I, Emperor (or Kaiser), 90 Wilhelm II, Emperor (or Kaiser), 29, 48, 134–35, 137–38, 161, 164, 166, 172, 179, 209 Wilson, President Woodrow, 173–80, 183–85, 193–94, 198, 200, 201, 205, 206, 216, 219–20, 221, 225–27, 229–30 Wilson, William H., 200 Wistar, General Isaac J., 17–18 Wister, Owen, 239 Wittig, Rudolph, 15 Wittke, Carl, 293 Wocker, Gustave, 138 Workingmen’s Protective Tariff League, 112, 114 World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago), 130, 139 Würtemburg, 17, 27, 121, 127 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Zauner, Philip, 135, 153n76 Zimmerman, Thomas B., 104 Zion Reformed Church (Philadelphia), 56 Znaniecki, Florian, 298

About the Author

Richard N. Juliani is an emeritus professor of sociology at Villanova University. His previous books include the award-winning Building Little Italy: Philadelphia’s Italians before Mass Migration; Priest, Parish and People: Saving the Faith in Philadelphia’s Little Italy; and Little Italy in the Great War. He continues to lecture on immigration, ethnicity, and urban history for various public humanities programs in Philadelphia.

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