The Little Review, May 1914 (Vol. 1., No. 3)Various
General
The Little Review, May 1914 (Vol. 1., No. 3)
Various
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
glamour of his "Frenchness" was an aureole compared to the stigma of my
"Dutchness." That is still something of a mystery to me, but the article
in the Century explains in part the cause of this attitude among
unthinking Americans. Prof. Ross says:
"Between 1839 and 1845 numerous old Lutherans, resenting the attempt of
their king to unite Lutheran and Reformed faiths, migrated hither....
The political reaction in the German states after the revolution of
1830, and again after the revolution of 1848, brought tens of thousands
of liberty-lovers." And again he says of these political exiles that
they "included many men of unusual attainments and character.... These
university professors, physicians, journalists, and even aristocrats
aroused many of their fellow-countrymen to feel a pride in German
culture, and they left a stamp of political idealism, social radicalism
and religious skepticism which is slow to be effaced."
Possibly one reason for American antagonism to these earlier, superior
settlers was the fact that they did somewhat despise American culture
and hold rather closely to their own German ways of thinking. I remember
in my childhood, in my own home, that although we had Harper's Young
People and St. Nicholas, we also had English Chatterbox--I rather fancy
as a corrective to Americanisms to be found in the other magazines. You
know Germans in their own land today do not wish for American
governesses to teach their children English; it must be Englishwomen.
All our toys were sent for from the beloved Fatherland, and beautiful
toys they were, too. We had a system of Froebel with all his methods
established in our own home, long before the middle western cities
dreamed of a public kindergarten. This deep distrust of American methods
and culture could not help but impress Americans unfavorably; they would
retaliate with the cry of Dutchman, perhaps. Prof. Ross goes on to say:
"Germans brought a language, literature, and social customs of their
own, so that although when scattered they Americanized with great
rapidity wherever they were strong enough to maintain church and schools
in their own tongue they were slow to take the American stamp." So much
for those earlier immigrants. The case is vastly different with the
later tides of immigration. "After 1870," he writes, "the Teutonic
overflow was prompted by economic motives, and such a migration shows
little persistence in flying the flag of its national culture. Numbers
came, little instructed." In the words of a German-American, Knortz,
"nine-tenths of all German immigrants come from humble circumstances and
have had only an indifferent schooling. Whoever, therefore, expects
pride in their German descent from these people who owe everything to
their new country and nothing to their fatherland, simply expects too
much."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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