How German Is American?
SHAPING CULTURE
In many respects, a distinct German-American national identity has
receded over the past century, and the historic connections to the
Old Country are no longer obvious, even though the German heritage
has left an indelible imprint on American mass and local culture.
However, one exceptionally visible community of Americans has successfully
preserved aspects of its European spiritual heritage—namely
the religious group known as the Old Order Amish. Somewhat ironically
for believers who would prefer not to be famous, the popular
media have “discovered” the Amish and projected their images
around the world, including and especially back to Germany, where
fascination with a “deep-frozen” German-speaking society in the
midst of the U.S., of all places, runs high.
The Amish trace their origins to the Anabaptist movement in
Central and Western Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Core tenets of the Anabaptist Christian faith include the
practice of adult (believer’s) baptism and the maintenance of a symbolic
distance from the rest of society. Amish Christians evoke this
symbolic distance more visibly than many other Anabaptist groups,
notably their close spiritual cousins, the Mennonites, by dressing distinctively
and accepting only selectively some of the material aspects
of modern life. Underlying their apparently paradoxical lifestyle is
one core virtue toward which the Amish strive, namely humility
(Demut). The image shown here is paradoxical for
observers, who are inclined to view Amish society in negative terms
(NO electricity, NO cars, NO fun ...). Though most Amish are of
Swiss German descent, nearly all are bilingual in Pennsylvania
Dutch and English. A small minority of Amish whose ancestors emigrated
directly from Switzerland in the nineteenth century still speak
a form of Bernese Swiss German.
In addition to speaking both Pennsylvania Dutch and English
natively, the Amish also have a basic reading knowledge of the standard
German of the Bible and other religious texts. Although the
core tenets of their faith have remained unchanged since the sixteenth
century, all other aspects of Amish culture, including dress,
foodways, occupations, leisure activities, etc., show unmistakable—but limited—influences from mainstream America. The current Amish
population is ca. 200,000 in the United States and Canada; there
are no Amish left in Europe. Because of low attrition and large average
family sizes, the Amish population is doubling every twenty
years, thereby securing the future of the Pennsylvania Dutch language
and this modern American counterculture.
Like the history of the Amish in America, the Jewish experience
in this country is a rich one, extending back to the colonial era,
when Sephardic Jews from Holland settled in New Amsterdam,
the forerunner of modern New York. During the early nineteenth century,
most Jewish immigrants were German-speaking Ashkenazim
from Central Europe, who were strongly influenced by the ideals of
the Enlightenment and its Jewish expression, the Haskalah. As
ancient restrictions on Jews were lifted across Western Europe, partly
in connection with the democratic aspirations of the revolutionaries
of 1848, a number of German Jews sought to reshape traditional
practices, and the movement known as Reform Judaism was born.
Today, even though most American Jews trace their ancestry to
Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe who came in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, Reform Judaism, with its roots
in Germany, is the largest branch of the faith in the U.S. It is also
important to note that the International Order of B’nai B’rith, the
world’s oldest continually operating Jewish service organization,
was founded in 1843 by a group of German-American Jews in New
York who defined as their mission the fostering of a civic identity
based on both traditionally Jewish and American values.
After Hitler came to power in 1933, approximately 100,000
German Jews came to the U.S., many of whom settled in New York.
In 1934, the German Jewish Club of New York (later renamed the
New World Club) began publishing a newsletter, Aufbau, which
quickly grew to become one of the most important German-language
periodicals in this country among both Jews and non-Jews.
Aufbau thrived by changing with the times, incorporating an
increasing number of articles in English for its U.S.-born readers,
and becoming the world’s premier source of information on Jewish
issues in German; Aufbau was one of the few newspapers to report
in detail on the events of the Holocaust as they unfolded. Leading
German-speaking exiles wrote for Aufbau, including Hannah
Arendt, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Mann. The first-page article of
the Aufbau issue shown above was written by Emanuel Lasker, a
mathematician, philosopher, and world champion chess player;
born in Germany in 1868, he fled to New York in 1933, where he
remained until his death in 1941.
As successive generations of German-speaking American Jews
declined in numbers, so did Aufbau’s subscriber base. The journal
ceased publication in 2004, but in 2005 it was reborn as a monthly
magazine published in Europe, now serving a different readership.
Over the last decade, large numbers of Jews, mainly from Russia,
have emigrated to Germany, and as Jewish life there enters a new
era, Aufbau has found a new outlet for its high-quality journalism.
Many German-speaking Jewish and non-Jewish refugees
fleeing Nazi persecution came to southern California, as
well as to New York. Some of the more famous among
them included Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas Mann,
Erich Maria Remarque, and Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel.
Although a number returned to Europe after the war, many stayed
and made important contributions to the arts and the intellectual life
of the region. Hollywood, in particular, benefited from the talents of
these new immigrants, and their
influence on American popular culture
is unmistakable.
The deep interrelationship between
American popular culture and its
German backgrounds is hinted at
through the image shown at right,
one of German-born immigrant artist
Kurt Wiese’s illustrations for the story Bambi. Wiese (1887–1974) is known
in the U.S. mainly as the illustrator of
over 300 children’s books, including
works of authors such as Zane Grey and Rudyard Kipling. Two of his
books were named Caldecott Medal honor books.
Bambi, published in German in 1923, was written by the
Hungarian/Austrian Jewish writer Felix Salten (pseudonym for
Siegmund Salzmann, 1869–1945) and first appeared in the U.S. in
English translation in a 1928 edition that included Wiese’s drawings.
Read by Americans, both in the original as a popular story for students
of German and in English, Bambi later became one of Walt
Disney’s most beloved family movies (1942). While Bambi is associated
today with children, Salten originally wrote the novel as an
adult allegory alluding to the growing threats confronting European
Jews in the period between the World Wars. Disney adapted the
story to express his concern about human encroachment on wildlife
and the forests. Initial public reaction to both Salten’s novel and
Disney’s film was intense. In Austria, the book was banned, while in
the U.S. the American Rifleman’s Association vehemently protested
the film’s anti-hunter bias.
There are numerous other examples of German contributions to
Hollywood and also to Broadway. One is Alan Jay Lerner and
Frederick Loewe’s musical Brigadoon, based on Friedrich
Gerstäcker’s Germelshausen, which ran for 581 performances when
it opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre in March of 1947 and later became
a Hollywood movie starring Gene Kelly (1954). Beyond these, of
course, one should not forget the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales, which
have repeatedly been translated, read, and adapted for every medium,
most famously, once again, by Walt Disney for his animated films.
The export of Broadway and Hollywood products, especially to
Europe, is well known. One of the most interesting examples of this
is the Sound of Music phenomenon. The Rodgers and Hammerstein
musical (1959) and the film version directed by Robert Wise (1965)
created an image of Austria that bears little resemblance to either
historical or modern reality. (Sorry, “Edelweiss” is not the Austrian
national anthem.) Indeed, The Sound of Music is more an expression
of American postwar popular culture than anything European. The
Sound of Music was not performed on stage in Austria until 2005;
defying critics’ skepticism, the Viennese production has been a popular
success.
Underlying the commercial success of mass cultural products
like Disney films and The Sound of Music are simple storyline
formulas and marketing strategies that have given
American entertainment a reputation for homogeneity. On stage and
screen, viewers want good to triumph over evil, with no question
about who is on which side. The sameness that appeals to so many
consumers of mass culture worldwide is reflected in many American
enterprises that have been exported with great success, notably
McDonald’s. Hungry patrons expect that McDonald’s fries will always
taste the same, whether the restaurant serving them is in Heidelberg,
Kentucky; Heidelberg, Minnesota; Heidelberg, Mississippi; Heidelberg,
Pennsylvania; Heidelberg, Texas; or at any of the five McDonald’s in
old Heidelberg itself.
For decades, the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile™ has been a
uniquely American fixture, but behind the successful marketing campaign
of this American company lies a long tradition of German-American foodways and entrepreneurship. Like other immigrants,
Germans brought with them their own unique culinary traditions,
especially in the areas of meat curing and sausage making.
Cookbooks published in America for German immigrants list dozens
of different sausage recipes, ranging from raw beef sausage and
bratwurst to liver balls and bologna. In the multicultural American
context, people of various ethnic backgrounds became acquainted
with German dishes, while German Americans incorporated the food
traditions of their neighbors. Over time a number of historically
German food items and dishes were forgotten, while others, such as
the “frank(furter),” evolved beyond their European origins to become
staples of a new American cuisine. On a more local level,
Midwesterners of all ethnicities, especially Wisconsinites, know immediately
that a “brat” is a kind of sausage, and not an ill-behaved
child. While modern Germans would have no difficulty finding
bratwurst at their local butcher shop, it is safe to assume that cheddar
cheese brats or “Hawaiian-style” pineapple brats would be as rare as
the 27-foot-long fiberglass hot dog and bun mounted on a Chevrolet
van chassis equipped with mustard- and ketchup-colored seats and a
license plate spelling “WEENR” tooling down the autobahn.
Many years have passed since 1883, when the enterprising immigrant
Oscar F. Mayer opened his first meat shop in Chicago, but his
synthesis of Old World techniques of sausage making with developments
in manufacturing, refrigeration, and transportation has yielded
products and a brand name known across America and, increasingly,
around the world. In 1973, the first Wienermobile arrived in Spain;
another went to Japan in 1988. And in 2000, the Wienermobile
made its first visit to ... Germany.
The Wienermobile clearly speaks more to the stereotypical
image of modern America as a monolithic culture than to the
nineteenth-century roots of the Oscar Mayer Company; and
the commercial success of American exports like hot dogs continues
to feed that image. Below the surface, however, one finds much real
and widespread diversity, often linked originally to particular regions,
in areas such as foodways, but also artistic expression. Cajun cuisine
and music that came from the bayous of southern Louisiana, for
example, are now appreciated by millions and recognized as part of
American culture. Less well known is the historical synthesis of German
and non-German idioms in American regional (“roots”) music.
During the nineteenth century, thousands of German-speakers
migrated to Texas, along with members of other European ethnic
groups and Yankees. They came to an area—the northern expanse
of Mexico—already characterized by years of rich cultural transfer,
especially between Spanish colonists and indigenous peoples. One
of the most enduring artistic expressions of multicultural contact in
this region is what is known popularly as “Tex-Mex” or “Tejano”
music. The leading sub-genre of Tejano music today is “norteño”
(‘northern’) or “conjunto” (‘conjoined’) music, which developed in the
early part of the twentieth century. Building on a traditional northern
Mexican ballad form called “corrido,” norteño/conjunto music incorporates
musical influences from German and Czech immigrants,
notably the polka, and especially the use of the button accordion.
One of the pioneers of the “norteño sound” was Fred Zimmerle
(1931–1998), who formed the Trio San Antonio in his hometown of
the same name. Earliest norteño music was instrumental, based
mainly on the button accordion, bass, and the bajo sexto, a Mexican
12-string guitar. To this instrumental structure, Zimmerle, the grandson
of a German immigrant, added a traditional vocal duet, forming
a synthesis that is now characteristic of modern norteño/conjunto
music. Zimmerle’s reputation extended back to Germany in one
of the more intriguing examples of German-American musical
contact. The German independent rock band F.S.K. (<“Freiwillige
Selbstkontrolle” [‘voluntary self-control’]) visited Fred Zimmerle in
Texas and referred to him in the song “Die Kaiser Wilhelm” on its
1996 album International. The final line of the song reads: “Fred
Zimmerle, Sankt Anton, drückte das Akkordeon selbst in der
Pfingstprozession, brachte kein Wort Deutsch hervor, dafür das
Spanische schon, ganz wie du ein Texas-Sohn, doch auf dem
Grammophon, da dreht sich der Beethoven Männerchor” (Fred
Zimmerle, San Antonio,
squeezed the accordion
even in the Pentecost
procession, could speak
no word of German, but
Spanish instead, just as
much a son of Texas as
you, but on the grammophone,
the Beethoven
Männerchor is turning).
As with music, cultural contact is often reflected in the transfer
of words across languages. Language contact is naturally
promoted by large-scale immigration, but it can also occur
through other means, including global media, education, and
transnational commerce. The mutual influence of German and English
on one another is a good example of the way languages can be
enriched through contact. Many German-derived words have entered
the English lexicon through the immigrants’ everyday language,
including “coffee klatch,” “dachshund,” “delicatessen,” “dummkopf,” “frank,” “gesundheit,” “kindergarten,” “kitsch,” “pretzel,” “sauerkraut,”
and “waltz.” Other English words, such as “angst,” “bildungsroman,” “doppelganger,” “festschrift,” “gestalt,” “leitmotif,” “wunderkind,” and “zeitgeist,” came by way of literature, the arts,
and education; until about the middle of the twentieth century,
German was the most widely taught modern foreign language in U.S.
schools and colleges. Even as immigration from German-speaking
countries has declined and fewer Americans learn German, words
like “foosball” and “poltergeist” still find their way into English. Not
just words, but also parts of words from German are productive in
English, including “-fest” (“gabfest”), “-meister” (“spinmeister”), and the
prefix “über/uber” shown here, which means “over-” or “super-” In
colloquial and regional speech, the expressions “How goes it?”,
“Bring it with,” and “The dog wants out” are familiar Germanisms.
The influence of German and other languages on English is not a source of concern among most “language mavens.” In Germany, on the other hand, there are many who lament the increasing use of English-derived words in technology, business, advertising, and everyday speech, leading to a mixture often derisively called “Denglisch” (from “Deutsch” + “Englisch”). Words like “Bestseller,” “downloaden,” “Event,” “fit,” “Kids,” “live” (as in a “live broadcast”),“Lifestyle,” “Management,” “open air,” “relaxen,” “Service,” “shoppen,” and “Wellness,” are ubiquitous, but they comprise only a small percentage of the total German vocabulary and do not generally replace words already in the language. Those who fear the “Überfremdung” (excessive foreignization) of modern German generally overlook this fact about the contact between English and German.
It is fitting to end these thoughts on the question “How German Is American?” with a single image from today’s Germany. This is a public-service message from the Berlin municipal sanitation department (Berliner Stadtreinigung) informing the city’s residents, “We Kehr For You,” a play on the German verb “kehren” (to sweep). Not only do such examples of verbal creativity demonstrate that borrowing from a foreign language is a communicatively enriching process; they also show how the centuries-long interaction between German and American cultures continues today, affecting both sides of the Atlantic.
[This booklet is available in PDF format:
http://mki.wisc.edu/HGIA/HGIA_booklet.pdf ]
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