The German-American Experience
The German-American Experience

Author: Don Heinrich Tolzmann

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13:

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Representing one-fourth of the population, German-Americans constitute the largest ethnic element, according to the U.S. Census, with well over 60 million people claiming German heritage. In twenty-six states, they comprise at least 20 percent of the population, and in five states they number more than 50 percent-important statistics in understanding the role played by German-Americans in U.S. history. The German-American Experience provides a comprehensive record of the essential facts in the history of this group, from its first U.S. settlements in the seventeenth century to the present. Beginning with "The Age of Discovery," this volume explores the earliest contacts between America and Germany, immigration and settlement patterns of Germans, foundations of German-American community life, their major involvement in the American Revolution, and the role German-Americans played in our Civil War. Both world wars are chronicled, including the anti-German sentiment and the internment of German-Americans during both wars. The revival of German heritage and the renaissance of German-American ethnicity since the 1970s is surveyed, along with recent events, including the impact of German unification and the 1990 census. The author also analyzes German-American influences on agriculture, industry, religion, education, music, art, architecture, politics, military service, journalism, literature, and language. In addition, he comments on prominent German-Americans, German names, sister cities, historical statistics, and much more.

The German-American Encounter
The German-American Encounter

Author: Frank Trommler

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9781571812407

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While Germans, the largest immigration group in the United States, contributed to the shaping of American society and left their mark on many areas from religion and education to food, farming, political and intellectual life, Americans have been instrumental in shaping German democracy after World War II. Both sides can claim to be part of each other's history, and yet the question arises whether this claim indicates more than a historical interlude in the forming of the Atlantic civilization. In this volume some of the leading historians, social scientists and literary scholars from both sides of the Atlantic have come together to investigate, for the first time in a broad interdisciplinary collaboration, the nexus of these interactions in view of current and future challenges to German-American relations.

GIs and Fräuleins
GIs and Fräuleins

Author: Maria Höhn

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2003-04-03

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0807860328

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With the outbreak of the Korean War, the poor, rural West German state of Rhineland-Palatinate became home to some of the largest American military installations outside the United States. In GIs and Frauleins, Maria Hohn offers a rich social history of this German-American encounter and provides new insights into how West Germans negotiated their transition from National Socialism to a consumer democracy during the 1950s. Focusing on the conservative reaction to the American military presence, Hohn shows that Germany's Christian Democrats, though eager to be allied politically and militarily with the United States, were appalled by the apparent Americanization of daily life and the decline in morality that accompanied the troops to the provinces. Conservatives condemned the jazz clubs and striptease parlors that Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe opened to cater to the troops, and they expressed scorn toward the German women who eagerly pursued white and black American GIs. While most Germans rejected the conservative effort to punish as prostitutes all women who associated with American GIs, they vilified the sexual relationships between African American men and German women. Hohn demonstrates that German anxieties over widespread Americanization were always debates about proper gender norms and racial boundaries, and that while the American military brought democracy with them to Germany, it also brought Jim Crow.

A Peculiar Mixture
A Peculiar Mixture

Author: Jan Stievermann

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2015-06-26

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0271063009

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Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America’s emerging national identity. Instead of thinking about early American culture and literature as evolving continuously as a singular entity, the contributions to this volume conceive of it as an ever-shifting and tangled “web of contact zones.” They present a society with a plurality of different native and colonial cultures interacting not only with one another but also with cultures and traditions from outside the colonies, in a “peculiar mixture” of Old World practices and New World influences. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Rosalind J. Beiler, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Marie Basile McDaniel, Philip Otterness, Liam Riordan, Matthias Schönhofer, and Marianne S. Wokeck.

Germans in America
Germans in America

Author: Walter D. Kamphoefner

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2021-10-15

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781442264977

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From the first arrivals at Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1763 to the twilight of ethnicity in the twenty-first century, this book surveys the sweep of German American history over 300 years. It presents not only the institutions German immigrants created, but also their individual and collective voices as they established their lives within American society.

Other Witnesses
Other Witnesses

Author: Cora Lee Kluge

Publisher: Max Kade Institute

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13:

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The unique perspective of the "other witnesses" included here--that of immigrant outsiders, foreigners who wrote primarily for a minority-language group in the United States--provides the reader with a new understanding of this important period of America's growth and development. Included are works by Christian Essellen, Reinhold Solger, Mathilde Franziska Anneke, Theodor Kirchhoff, Udo Brachvogel, Robert Reitzel, Julius Gugler, Edna Fern, Lotte Leser, and others: plays, short stories, and poems, as well as selections from novels, essays, and memoirs. Some of the texts have never appeared in book form, and still others are published here for the first time. Introductory essays to each chapter provide background information and point the way for further research. The volume will be a welcome addition to the collections of institutional libraries, historians, and Germanists alike.

The German-Americans and World War II
The German-Americans and World War II

Author: Timothy J. Holian

Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

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The German-Americans and World War II: An Ethnic Experience is a unique study of America's largest ethnic group during one of its most difficult periods. Focusing on Cincinnati, Ohio as a center of German-American life, the author utilizes original source material and first-hand interviews to present the first detailed account of the German-American experience during the years leading up to and through World War II. Topics discussed include the arrest and internment of German legal resident aliens and German-Americans, as enemy aliens; media portrayals of the German-American element during the war era; and an overview of German-American efforts to gain formal recognition of their wartime ordeal.

German-American Immigration and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective
German-American Immigration and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective

Author: Wolfgang Johannes Helbich

Publisher: Max Kade Institute

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13:

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Making comparisons is central to the study of immigration and ethnicity because these fields by their very nature examine patterns of contact and interaction among different groups. By adopting a comparative approach, historians can test traditional stereotypes about various immigrant populations, pointing out the defining characteristics of these groups and explaining why certain cultural patterns persist while others disappear. The essays in this volume include studies on the similarities and differences among German Catholics and other Catholic groups in America, the political activities of nineteenth-century German and Irish immigrants, and German-American responses to the differing policies of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Distributed for the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Invisible Woman
Invisible Woman

Author: Ika Hügel-Marshall

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9781433102783

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"Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany, republished in a new annotated edition, recounts Ika Hügel-Marshall's experiences growing up as the daughter of a white German woman and an African-American man after World War II. As an «occupation baby», born in a small German town in 1947, Ika has a double stigma: Not only has she been born out of wedlock, but she is also Black. Although loved by her mother, Ika's experiences with German society's reaction to her skin color resonate with the insidiousness of racism, thus instilling in her a longing to meet her biological father. When she is seven, the state places her into a church-affiliated orphanage far away from where her mother, sister, and stepfather live. She is exposed to the scorn and cruelty of the nuns entrusted with her care. Despite the institutionalized racism, Ika overcomes these hurdles, and finally, when she is in her forties, she locates her father with the help of a good friend and discovers that she has a loving family in Chicago."--Publisher description.

German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917
German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917

Author: Henry Geitz

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1995-03-31

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780521470834

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This volume summarizes recent scholarship on German-American relations in the field of education until World War I. The articles prove the various influences of German scholarship and institutions on the development of the American system of education from kindergarten to university. The book provides an overview for the benefit of scholars, students and the interested general reader. As a cooperative effort of German and American scholars the volume is intended to stimulate further exploration of these themes on both continents.