As of 2000, 15.2% of Americans identified themselves as having at least some German ancestry making it the largest ethnic group in the country. According to this webpage, 29% of Madisonians are of German ancestry. I'm a quarter German due to the fact that two brothers emigrated from Germany in the 19th century. The first landed on these shores in the 1838, if memory serves, and settled in Philadelphia while the other arrived severa years later in 1845 and made his way to Baltimore. Some of my ancestors eventually made their way to Wisconsin and settled in Sheboygan. A group left Wisconsin and settled to the west in Minnesota. And they are closest to me in the family line.
German immigrants long ago became fully assimilated into American society and so the number of German speakers has been declining for some time and German-language publications are few and far between. Here in Madison, one would be hard-pressed to tell that a lot of people of German descent lived here by wandering around town. There is but one German restaurant and one German grocery store (and it's not really a grocery store - more a sauage haus.) It's difficult to tell if this lack of outward recognition of the ancestry of a large part of the city's residents is due to disinterest or due to assimilation. While the number of businesses that explicitly reflect the German heritiage of the area is quite small, there are other hints as to the prevalence of German-Americans. We don't view certain things as characteristically German because they are all around us and enjoyed by everyone regardless of ancestry. For instance, the bratwurst is ubiquitous. While I don't have any data to back this claim up, I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that Madison grocery stores (and those in Wisconsin generally) have more bratwurst in their aisles than can be found in any other state in the Union. As I wrote about previously, Wisconsin's love of bier is due in no small measure to German immigrants. I really can't think of any other qualities of this town that could be said to be derived from German immigrants. We're not particularly stoic; we don't build everything big and brawny; anyone have any ideas?
I suppose it might help if I had taken some folklore or had gotten more into German studies while I was a student here at the UW. Luckily there's a couple resources at the UW that will be of use to anyone interested in the German-American experience here in Madison/Wisconsin as well as in America generally.
Firstly there's the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies. Up at their webpage, you can check out "How German Is American?", a section devoted to exploring German-American identity. Secondly, we have the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures. While their focus is more specific as far as the regions that are studied, the Center's scope includes all cultures here up nort and not just German-American.
Great post. It's made me think a lot about my own German ancestry.
ReplyDeleteI study German at the UW, and although it is not my major, it is by far the most impressive department I have come across so far. The teaching staff take great pains to connect American and German cultures for students taking their courses. I believe one of my TAs told me that one grad student did her dissertation mapping the colloquial distinctions of certain areas of Wisconsin and connected them to German Bundesländer language peculiarities.
You mentioned beer and brats already, but personal space is another commonality. Both Germans and Americans love their oversized personal bubbles, although one set of people is from a semi-cramped smaller country and the other from a very large one with wide-open spaces. Handshakes, too, although with Germans it is almost set in stone that two people must shake hands when introduced.
I've read that upon coming to the US, Germans were more likely than other immigrants to reject their own culture in favor of a more anglicized one, as I think you mentioned. And unfortunately, the 20th century has not been kind to German-Americans wanting to explore their roots due to WWII and its aftermath. Even in Wisconsin, my grandparents had difficulties in the late 40s and early 50s.
My grandfather, whose grandparents emigrated from Saarland, was a WWII vet. He and my grandmother had a very difficult time renting from people after the war because of his German name, and they opted to live in the upstairs of a farm house owned by a German couple for a time.
Another story passed down to me was that my grandfather one paid an amateur genealogist to find out more about our family. When the man came back with 'proof' that the German family was actually French, my grandfather went through the roof and refused to pay the man, telling him that his parents only knew the Mass in German, and could not, therefore, be French. My grandparents were convinced that the only reason the genealogist mentioned French ancestry was because of the cultural backlash against Germany at that time.
This doesn't really have a whole lot to do with Madison, but I wanted to share anyway. Germanophilia will hopefully increase as we move away from the last century
Thanks for the compliment and for your lengthy comment as well.
ReplyDeleteI had 2 or 3 semesters of German here but don't remember a whole lot of comparing/contrasting of German vs. American culture. But this could very well be my memory and not teh instructors.
I can only imagine that a couple world wars put the kibosh on a lot of German-Americans expressing ethnic pride, speaking German, et al. I tend to think that the paucity of German culture here in Madison has a lot to do with the UW, the middle class nature of the city, and other things as well.
Thanks again.