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Posted Dec 7, 2020, 9:11 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Austin -> San Antonio -> Columbia -> San Antonio -> Chicago -> Austin -> Denver
Posts: 5,303
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Since this thread has turned, partially, into a "Where are Germans in the United States" I will add some further Texas context which I hope shows that Texas is WAY more German culturally than many above posters seem to give it credit for. In fact, I'd argue that Texan as a regional identity is derived almost as much from Germanic immigration as it is from Spanish settlement (later known as Tejanos and then of course subsequent Mexican immigration), predominantly Anglo and Scots-Irish white migrants to Mexican Texas, Texas, and U.S. and Confederate Texas, and the black slaves and the descendants thereof with whom whites brought. French and Native influence are minor, but nevertheless present along with other more minor regional influences.
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/germans
Quote:
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The largest ethnic group in Texas derived directly from Europe was persons of German birth or descent. As early as 1850, they constituted more than 5 percent of the total Texas population, a proportion that remained constant through the remainder of the nineteenth century. Intermarriage has blurred ethnic lines, but the 1990 United States census revealed that 1,175,888 Texans claimed pure and 1,775,838 partial German ancestry, for a total of 2,951,726, or 17½ percent of the total population. By this count, Germans rank behind Hispanics and form the third-largest national-origin group in the state. Most persons of German descent do not regard themselves as ethnic Germans, however. From their first immigration to Texas in the 1830s, the Germans tended to cluster in ethnic enclaves. A majority settled in a broad, fragmented belt across the south central part of the state. This belt stretched from Galveston and Houston on the east to Kerrville, Mason, and Hondo in the west; from the fertile, humid Coastal Plain to the semiarid Hill Country. This German Belt included most of the Teutonic settlements in the state, both rural and urban.
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Much of this immigration actually occurred during the Republic period of Texan history, and would not necessarily be captured by all forms of United States data:
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/adelsverein
Quote:
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The Adelsverein, also known as the Mainzer Verein, the Texas-Verein, and the German Emigration Company, was officially named the Verein zum Schutze deutscher Einwanderer in Texas (Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas). Provisionally organized on April 20, 1842, by twenty-one German noblemen at Biebrich on the Rhine, near Mainz, the society represents a significant effort to establish a new Germany on Texas soil by means of an organized mass emigration. Such German publications as Charles Sealsfield's Das Kajütenbuch, oder Schilderungen aus dem Leben in Texas (1841), Detlef Dunt's Reise nach Texas nebst Nachrichten von diesem Lande (1834), and G. A. Scherpf's Entstehungsgeschichte und gegenwärtiger Zustand des neuen, unabhängigen Staates Texas (1841), which depicted in glowing terms the great personal liberty and the plentiful and productive land to be found in Texas, had served to direct the nobles' attention to the Republic of Texas as the best destination for an increasing German emigration.
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German is actually spoken as a native tongue and a generally recognized dialect of German in Texas, of which Alsatian was a large contributor.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-cul...-to-a-dialect/
Quote:
Over time, however, Texas German speakers have gradually abandoned their original language, resuscitating it only occasionally, at the bakery, the feed store, or the genealogy club. In New Braunfels and many other Texas German communities, outsiders have moved in and locals have moved away, causing speakers to fall out of practice. Today there are only six thousand to eight thousand Texas German speakers remaining, the bulk of whom are senior citizens. Linguists estimate that the dialect will be dead by 2040.
Scheel shook his head as we discussed this fate. In his lifetime, he has witnessed a massive cultural shift in the region, the near disappearance of a language that was spoken exclusively by almost everyone he knew when he was a boy. He can fight it all he wants, but he knows what the outcome will be. “I have eight sisters and two brothers, and between us we have twenty-eight children,” he said. “Of those children, only one really speaks German fluently. So even with my family it’s dying out.”
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https://www.thelocal.de/20180927/tex...-dying-dialect
Quote:
A man walks into a butcher’s in Weimar and asks for ‘zwei Pfunde gemahlte Fleisch, bitte.’ A seemingly mundane, unremarkable encounter. But this isn’t Thuringia, it’s Texas.
Many Texans revel in their German heritage. Similar to many other heritage cultures all across the USA, Texan Germans seek to celebrate and conserve their ancestry. But what’s distinctive about German Texans, however, is that the language, for now, is still spoken in parts of the community.
Germans started arriving in the Republic of Texas in the 1830s, a decade before Texas was absorbed into the United States of America. German immigrants settled broadly in a belt across the central-southern part of the state, founding towns such as New Braunfels, Fredericksburg and Weimar.
Whereas most other immigrant languages, such as Italian, died out after the second or third generations, German in Texas is unusual as it is still being spoken amongst the fifth and sixth generations of Texan Germans.
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Weimar, Texas, mind you, not the former Weimar Republic. German heritage and culture are so important in Texas that political leaders here have kept pressure on our school systems to still offer German as a language option, whereas in many other places German is dropping off of public education course offerings.
Quote:
"From the 1830s, you had many communities in Texas which were completely functioning only in German. You had German schools, German churches, German shops. There were portions of Texas Hill County where up until the 1920s, 97 percent of the population was German speaking. Very few people actually spoke English."
On the eve of the First World War, an estimated 100,000 Texans spoke German, and there were around 90 German-language newspapers and magazines. But the world wars triggered a repression of German language and culture, and the dialect all but died out. Today there are no more than 10,000 Texas German speakers.
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One of the most prosperous communities in San Antonio was founded by German immigrants in the aftermath of Republican independence and was named after Kaiser Wilhelm I. It was re-named King William as a result of anti-German sentiment during WWI (not WWII, as was the case elsewhere in the States with anti-Germanism).
https://www.sanantonio.gov/historic/...ts/KingWilliam
Quote:
The King William Historic District is located south of downtown and bounded by Durango, South St. Mary’s, Eagleland and the San Antonio River. The district encompasses land that was once irrigated farm land belonging to the Mission San Antonio de Valero, commonly known as the Alamo. When the mission was secularized in 1793, the lands were divided among the resident Indian families from the mission or sold at public auction. In the 1860s the area was subdivided into lots and laid out with the present streets.
It was about this time in the mid-nineteenth century that a great many Germans, who had immigrated to Texas in the 1840s, began to settle in this area, and it became known as "Sauerkraut Bend" to the rest of San Antonio. The area developed into an idyllic neighborhood of large, impressive houses designed in the Greek Revival, Victorian, and Italianate styles. The main street into the neighborhood was given the name King William in honor of King Wilhelm I, King of Prussia in the 1870s. During World War I, when America was at war with Germany, the name was changed to Pershing Avenue. A few years after the war ended the King William name was restored.
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https://sanantoniotourist.net/germanheritage/
https://www.mysanantonio.com/lifesty...st-7044456.php
German influence is also a HUGE reason why Texan political leadership has historically been not quite as racist as the rest of the south:
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In the aftermath of this election, zealous Confederate citizens oftentimes antagonized Unionist dissenters, the German community in particular. Common measures of harassment led to accusations on behalf of the minority party of ballot fraud in the election that determined secession (Baum 201). Though these accusations were eventually declared unfounded, they indicated strong remnants of active discord, despite the actual outcome of the vote. Later, this dissension manifested when some German radicals faced with a draft were unwilling to serve and organized widespread desertions, resulting in ostracization of the German community as a whole and angering its less extremist members (Biesele, Fehrenbach). The results of these blanket prejudices on immigration as a whole are likewise clear: during the war, immigration dropped off entirely, though the influx gradually resumed after reconciliation.
The German Forty-Eighters remained an outspoken political force in San Antonio throughout the existence of the Confederacy by utilization of their commonly lauded prowess in journalism and academia. Their initial opposition to the practice of slavery, and maintenance of the ideals by which they immigrated to Bexar, did not win over the mindset of the majority, but maintained a flourishing movement throughout the war and facilitated reconciliation with the Union in following years.
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https://www.uiw.edu/sanantonio/SanAn...Secession.html
LBJ, recall, is from the Texas Hill Country. Although a descendant himself of Anglo/Scots-Irish old stock, he had been exposed to the belief systems of Texas Germans (being a strong majority in the area), which were racially egalitarian and anti-slavery. This is perhaps one of the contributing factors to his relative liberalism on race during his time in the Senate and as President. Other Texans were also some of the only southern Democrats to support racial justice reforms of this era. Some representatives of Tennessee (which also has some local history of anti-slavery sentiment in Appalachia) also voted for racial justice reforms.
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