German - Americans

At the student meeting, I was amazed by many of the new faces. Dietmar Doering enumerated the various activities in which students would be involved.

He turned his topic and was proudly telling about some of the German historical and notable personalities. Some of the Germans and their achievements are forgotten by the majority of German people.

Doering was continuing on Germans and German origin names around the world. Ethnic German minorities live in many countries in all six continents including the former Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Belgium, Italy, the United States, Latin America, Namibia, and Australia. These German minorities, through their ethno-cultural vitality, exhibit an exceptional level of variations.

Amongst them are small groups (such as those in Namibia) and many very large groups (such as the almost 1 million non-evacuated Germans in Russia and Kazakhstan or the near 500,000 Germans in Brazil), groups that have been greatly "folklorised" and almost completely linguistically assimilated (such as the Germans in the USA or Australia), and others, such as the true linguistic minorities (like the German minorities in Argentina and Brazil, in western Siberia or in Romania and Hungary); other groups, which are classified as religio-cultural groups rather than ethnic minorities, (such as the Eastern-Low German speaking Mennonites in Paraguay, Mexico, Belize or in the Altay region of Siberia) and the groups who maintain their status thanks to strong identification with their ethnicity and their religious sentiment (such as the groups in Upper Silesia, Poland or in South Jutland in Denmark).

Dietmar Doering was telling enthusiastically that Frankfurter, Hamburger and other famous fast food names were derived from German places and cities.

He was proud to speak of the well-to-do Americans of German ancestry. While he was telling, the students' faces took on a lively expression. They were talking to each other and nodding and exchanging notes silently among themselves.

Americans of German ancestry are the major European ethnic group in modern America.
As of a 2000 census, more than 45 million Americans claimed they had German ancestry but only 1.5 million of them spoke the language at that time.

German is the second most spoken language in the US states of North Dakota and South Dakota and the third in popular foreign language after Spanish and French in the US.

There are varieties of German dialects in the US. Texas German based in the Texas Hill Country in the vicinity of the town of Fredricksburg is a dying dialect. Hutterite communities speak Hutterite German, an Austro-Bavarian dialect in the US States of Washington, Montana, North and South Dakota and Minnesota and in the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

In Canada there are people of German ancestry throughout the country and especially in the west as well as in Ontario. There is a large and vibrant community in the city of Kitchener, Ontario.

The US state Kansas is having more Mennonites and Volga German communities.
There are German commnuities in Wisconsin and Indiana.

In the early twentieth century immigrants mainly settled in St. Louis, Chicago, New York, and Cincinnati.

The German immigrants after World War II came primarily to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago urban areas and to Florida.

Generally, German immigrant communities in the USA have lost their mother tongue more quickly than those who moved to South America, possibly for the German speakers the Germanic based English was easier to learn than the Latin based Portuguese or Spanish. The strong anti-German sentiment and attacks on German-speakers in the US before and after the major World Wars also contributed to change their mother tongue into English.

The teaching of the German language to latter-age students has given rise to a pidgin variant which combines the German language with the grammar and spelling rules of the English language in the US. This variant is often understandable by the English and the German speakers and is called American German and often referred to as Amerikanisch or Amerikanischdeutsch. However this is a pidgin and not a dialect.

German Americans in the Amana Colonies in the state of Iowa speak Amana German.

The Amish and other Pennsylvania Germans including Mennonites speak a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch also known Pennsylvania Deutsch (a West Central German variety). The eastern Pennsylvania is a remnant of what was once a much larger German-speaking area.

German Memories - Volga Germans Migration Towards Americas

A century after the first Germans had settled in the Volga region, Russia passed legislation that revoked many of the privileges promised to them by Catherine the Great. The sentiment in Russia became decidedly anti-German.

Russia first made changes to the German local government. Then in 1874, a new military law decreed that all male Russian subjects, when they reached the age of 20, were eligible to serve in the military for 6 years. For the German colonists, this law represented a breach of faith.

The Volga German men also had to join in the military and fought in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. One of these men died in the war. In the 1880s Russia began a subtle attack on German schools and other German institutions.

When Russia was reducing the privileges granted to the Germans, several nations in the Americas were attempting to attract settlers by offering inducements reminiscent of those of Catherine the Great.

Soon after the military service bill became law, both Protestant and Catholic Volga Germans gathered and chose delegations to journey across the Atlantic to examine settlement conditions in the United States. They started arriving in the USA in the mid 1870s. Early destinations were in the heartland of the country around Kansas and later spread west to Washington, Oregon and California and East to Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio.

Volga Germans started arriving in Canada in the 1890s, later than other countries. They settled in 3 provinces in Canada: Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. They settled primarily in 2 countries in South America: Argentina and Brazil. Starting in 1876 these countries were settled primarily by Catholic Volga Germans. While Brazil was the first South American country to be settled by them, Argentina ultimately contained a vastly larger population of Volga Germans due in part to better farmlands.

In their new homes overseas, they initially continued their pattern of introverted closed German communities. The people of individual villages tended to travel together and settle together in their new homeland. It was not uncommon to find hundreds of them from one village in one location in the new world. First they primarily settled among people of their own village, then among other Volga Germans, next among other Germans.

There was also emigration to North Caucasus in Russia where a number of colonies were established. In the 1890's when land became scarce there, migration was diverted eastward to Siberia. As the fear of a world war grew among the Volga Germans, it too encouraged emigration. What started as a trickle became a flood after the turn of the century. In spite of the large emigration, the population increased to 345,000 by 1897 and to over 500,000 by 1914.

German Memory in Asia - A Discussion on American and World Affairs

Lionie, a German Praktikum (Internship) student entered the discussion speaking on various interesting issues.


She was sharing her ideas to organise an awareness program on landmine issues between the AGSEP and the PDIP. John Stephen III, a Foreign Affairs Officer at the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement of the Bureau of Political and Military Affairs of the US State Department was so helpful and has taken a personal interest to help us, to make the awareness program a success by sending various materials from the US State Department.


Leonie is from Düsseldorf, a city located in the Western part of Germany close to The Netherlands. She told she had come across various Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka and asked various issues on the region. Though it was her first visit to Asia, she is well-informed on various Asian crises.


She said she is a vegetarian because she couldn't bear the way they are rearing poultry in congested cages, giving no chance for those birds to feel free during those few weeks in the world before they were killed. She was a lover of animals and in Germany many homes have pets such as dogs, cats, guinea pigs and even birds. I found her to be a sincere animal lover when she said, "Even I won't eat eggs if those are from hens which are denied a comfortable living".


She had switched on to a new subject and said, "Number of universities in Sweden especially the University of Uppsala, is offering master degrees without any charges" and came out with the fact that, "The British and the American University Programs are very expensive".


She left Germany to study in The Netherlands and France because of the benefit the International exposure. Sometimes certain universities have more international exposure in their curricula than others. Recently a friend of mine told me that the American education is more American-based than International.


When my friend told me this, what struck me was the statement by Dr. Mahathir Mohammed, the one-time Malaysian Prime Minister: "Most Americans, I think, know very little about East Asia or Southeast Asia. American business people who have been here, they are very knowledgeable about this area, but the average America? No. We are horrified to find most Americans do not know the capitals of foreign countries or even the capitals of American states. I mean, our education system emphasizes knowledge of the outside world. The America education system apparently stresses knowledge of the United States. An American [baseball] tournament, for example, is called a world series, but is confined only to America. It's not a world series at all".



But some time back when I spoke to a friend of mine who was a manager at a firm in the State Minnesota of the USA and then as the head of IBM in Sri Lanka, he said, "There are people in the US, who haven't visited even New York, Los Angeles or other major American cities in their life. So how can we expect they should look or travel into other parts of the world?" The American way of life is more individualistic and achievement-oriented and its life-style is not based on living in common harmony. He pointed out that there was no need to look to other countries if it wouldn't help to earn their daily bread.


Lionie is a student of the popular Maastricht University in The Netherlands and had spent a year at Bordeaux University in France. Her specialization in European studies at Maastricht and Political studies at Bordeaux was well reflected, in her advice to me on various issues. When spoke of the Lebanon crisis, she said that it would become more political and supported my earlier viewpoint on landmine issues.



She said, "I can't understand why people are spending so much of money at the famous Italian Bocconi University for MBA to learn something in a year so much".

She asked me whether I think, we could learn something unique within a year in proportion to the money spent which is more than 30,000 Euros.