Burning Beethoven by Erik Kirschbaum

Author:Erik Kirschbaum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berlinica Publishing LLC
Published: 2014-12-12T05:00:00+00:00

War propaganda poster: German soldier depicted as gigantic, animalistic brute.

CHAPTER 7

WAR ON THE HUN DIALECT: NO GERMAN IN SCHOOLS

Surprising as it may seem today, German was by far the most popular foreign language in American schools before World War I. Taught in public schools in thirty-five states, it was the dominant foreign language learned in primary and secondary schools, as well as at universities. In states with large numbers of German-Americans, such as Texas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and Wisconsin, German-language instruction often began as early as elementary school.

Before World War I, German-language teaching had been widespread in many regions of the United States, in large part a reflection of the millions of Germans who settled in those regions, but also because of the increasingly important role that Germany was playing in the worlds of science, education, music, culture, and commerce. In 1839, the Ohio state legislature even passed a law allowing school districts to establish entirely German-speaking schools in areas where an all-German school was desired by a certain percentage of parents. Cincinnati and Dayton soon set up such German-language schools—in which English was treated as just another subject—as well as bilingual schools, for which the city of Cincinnati became famous at the time.

Some other states, particularly across the Midwest, where many Germans had settled, adopted their own versions of the Ohio law. Thus, after 1840, the German language, which had already been taught in some parochial schools and in German-speaking communities, was being taught in public schools as well, in some cases almost exclusively, as Joshua A. Fishman explained in Language Loyalty in the United States: The Maintenance and Perpetuation of the Non-English Mother Tongues.

The affinity that the United States had for the German university system in the latter half of the nineteenth century also contributed to and deepened American attachment to the German language throughout U.S. school systems. Many of the leading scholarly periodicals of the era were printed in German, the top scientific journals were in German, and many American teachers studied at German universities. Between the Civil War and World War I, an estimated 10,000 Americans spent part of their academic studies at German universities abroad, as historian Richard O’Conner found. “In the United States all things German were particularly admired. The Germans knew how to make things work and that quality has always engaged the attention of the pragmatic American. German scholarship was increasingly imitated by American universities. Harvard adopted much from the German system.” And as far as high schools were concerned, twenty-one percent of American high school students were taking German.

The popularity of German made it a large target for zealously patriotic Americans. And within three years, these figures were drastically reduced. This was mostly due to a campaign against the German language that began with World War I raging in Europe. They were carried out for the most part by two patriotic organizations, the National Security League, founded in 1914 and close to Woodrow Wilson, and its Republican spin-off American Defense Society, founded one year later.

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