美国国家公共电台 NPR During World War I, U.S. Government Propaganda Erased German Culture

 

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

This week marks the centennial of U.S. entry into World War I, a conflict that shattered empires and cost millions of lives. Here's something else it did on the American home front. It made us a less German country - culturally.

Today, when the question of the loyalty¹ of immigrants has again become contentious², what happened a century ago has special relevance³. The first world war inspired an outbreak of nativism and xenophobia that targeted German immigrants, Americans of German descent and even the German language.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Speaking German).

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIEGEL: It was a remarkable⁴ reversal of fortune. Germans were the largest non-English speaking minority group in the U.S. at the time. According to the 1910 census⁵, 1 out of every 11 people in this country was either a first or second-generation German American.

There were still more German American families that had been in the country longer, some since colonial times. They were Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and Mennonites, German Jews and freethinkers of no religion at all.

KENNETH LEDFORD: The German emigration from Germany to the United States was quite significant.

SIEGEL: That's historian Kenneth Ledford of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

LEDFORD: During the 1850s, 900,000, almost a million Germans went to the United States. And that's at a time when the German population was only about 40 million.

SIEGEL: German Americans often worshipped in churches where German was used. They might live on city streets or in towns with German names. And while many immigrants assimilated into the English-speaking mainstream⁶, many others sent their children to German-language public schools.

LEDFORD: Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago all gave parents the option for their children in elementary school to receive all of their tuition in German as well as in English.

SIEGEL: Richard Schade of the University of Cincinnati says those very cities were also home to German-language newspapers and clubs where German was spoken.

RICHARD SCHADE: German was the lingua franca of the literary scene, of the entertainment scene, of the theaters.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Singing) Louie (ph) thought that he ought to be a sport, so he thought...

SIEGEL: The social life of the community was lubricated with the beverage⁸ Germans brought from the old country - lager beer, drunk cold and consumed in beer halls.

SCHADE: They had emporiums where Germans gathered on Sunday to drink beer and be entertained by German stars.

SIEGEL: Beer put them on a collision course with the growing temperance movement. But the biggest collision ahead was over language. Before World War I, German wasn't just an ethnic⁹ minority language, it was the most studied modern foreign language in America.

PAUL FINKELMAN: In 1915, about 25 percent of all high school students in America studied German.

SIEGEL: That changed dramatically. Legal historian Paul Finkelman says German had become so stigmatized¹⁰, only 1 percent of high schools even taught it.

FINKELMAN: During the war, there is an argument that if you learn German, you will become the Hun, of course which was the pejorative¹¹ term for anyone from Germany. And there was this notion that language was somehow organic to your soul. So if you spoke⁷ German, you would think like a German, you would become a totalitarian in favor of the kaiser.

SIEGEL: Bear in mind that for three years, Americans had watched the war in Europe from the sidelines. From 1914 until 1917, the U.S. remained neutral. And the American people were divided over getting involved. When members of minority groups spoke against entering the war in support of Britain, including some but not all German Americans, their patriotism¹² was questioned. They were disparaged¹³ as hyphenated Americans.

Among those who did the disparaging¹⁴ was former President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1915, he declared there is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is American and nothing else.

And after President Woodrow Wilson took the country into the war, he said any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger¹⁵ that he is ready to plunge¹⁶ into the vitals of this Republic when he gets ready. Historian Kenneth Ledford.

LEDFORD: The Office of War Information engaged in mobilization that attacked all forms of hyphenization, attacked anybody who expressed any support for Germany. And local authorities, local super patriots¹⁷ took this cue and pushed it ever farther.

SIEGEL: How much farther? As historian Richard Schade says, during the first world war, it even included internment¹⁸.

SCHADE: Hans Kuhnwald, the concertmeister of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was interned¹⁹. The German language was forbidden. The German American press was heavily censored²⁰. Libraries had to pull German books off the shelves. German American organizations were targeted. And what happened, of course, is the German Americans considered themselves to be good Americans of German extraction several generations removed from the old country.

SIEGEL: And they felt victimized.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: I see you and Otto (ph) not in church yesterday and worried about you.

SIEGEL: That feeling, mentioned in letters and recalled in family stories, is re-enacted²¹ at the German American Heritage Center in Davenport, Iowa.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: We're tired of this war and being called monsters because we are German.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Mein Gott, what would your grandfather say? He did not say he wants Germany to win the war.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: She comes home because she lost her teaching job. She cannot find work anywhere.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #5: But she's such a good teacher.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: Yes, but she teaches German.

SIEGEL: In St. Louis, a letter to the editor - read here by writer Jim Merkel - suggested ways to make that city less German, more American.

JIM MERKEL: (Reading) While we are trying to eliminate everything German from our city and country, why not change the name of Berlin Avenue? I am sure Pershing Boulevard would be a name approved by all. Let's wipe out everything German.

SIEGEL: General John Pershing commanded U.S. forces during World War I. Merkel, who writes about the German community of St. Louis, says the city went ahead and did just what the letter writer suggested and then some.

MERKEL: Hapsburger Avenue is now Cecil Place. Kaiser Street is Gresham. Knappstein Place was Providence²² Place. Von Verson is now Enwright. Berlin Avenue is now Pershing. And Bismarck was named part of 4th St., but it no longer exists.

SIEGEL: Frederick Luebke, the author of "Bonds Of Loyalty: German-Americans and World War I," says the aftermath of the war found this large and diverse ethnic group, many of whose sons served gallantly²³ in the war, dispirited and, as a community, diminished.

FREDERICK LUEBKE: In the immediate²⁴ post-war era, many states enacted laws that forbad instruction in the German language in the public schools below eighth grade. German Americans continued to feel that they were being discriminated²⁵ against. The organizations that were pro-German in the cultural sense were greatly weakened.

SIEGEL: While historians differ on what effect all this had on German Americans, Frederick Luebke says a few reacted by asserting their Germanness with new vigor²⁶, but, he adds, others sought to slough²⁷ off their ethnicity as painlessly as possible. In the anti-German hysteria of World War I, the assimilation of German Americans was accelerated, and being a hyphenated American would mean being suspect in nativist eyes for decades to come.

(SOUNDBITE OF KYLE DIXON AND MICHAEL STEIN SONG, "STRANGER THINGS")

1 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

2 contentious   

adj.好辩的，善争吵的

参考例句：

• She was really not of the contentious fighting sort.她委实不是好吵好闹的人。
• Since then they have tended to steer clear of contentious issues.从那时起，他们总想方设法避开有争议的问题。

3 relevance   

n.中肯，适当，关联，相关性

参考例句：

• Politicians' private lives have no relevance to their public roles.政治家的私生活与他们的公众角色不相关。
• Her ideas have lost all relevance to the modern world.她的想法与现代社会完全脱节。

4 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

5 census   

n.(官方的)人口调查，人口普查

参考例句：

• A census of population is taken every ten years.人口普查每10年进行一次。
• The census is taken one time every four years in our country.我国每四年一次人口普查。

6 mainstream   

n.（思想或行为的）主流；adj.主流的

参考例句：

• Their views lie outside the mainstream of current medical opinion.他们的观点不属于当今医学界观点的主流。
• Polls are still largely reflects the mainstream sentiment.民调还在很大程度上反映了社会主流情绪。

7 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

8 beverage   

n.(水，酒等之外的)饮料

参考例句：

• The beverage is often colored with caramel.这种饮料常用焦糖染色。
• Beer is a beverage of the remotest time.啤酒是一种最古老的饮料。

9 ethnic   

adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的

参考例句：

• This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏，这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
• The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。

10 stigmatized   

v.使受耻辱，指责，污辱( stigmatize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was stigmatized as an ex-convict. 他遭人污辱，说他给判过刑。 来自辞典例句
• Such a view has been stigmatized as mechanical jurisprudence. 蔑称这种观点为机械法学。 来自辞典例句

11 pejorative   

adj.贬低的，轻蔑的

参考例句：

• In the context of ethnic tourism,commercialization often has a pejorative connotation.摘要在民族旅游语境中，商品化经常带有贬义色彩。
• But news organizations also should make every effort to keep the discussion civil and to discourage the dissemination of falsehoods or pejorat

12 patriotism   

n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义

参考例句：

• His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
• They obtained money under the false pretenses of patriotism.他们以虚伪的爱国主义为借口获得金钱。

13 disparaged   

v.轻视( disparage的过去式和过去分词 )；贬低；批评；非难

参考例句：

• French-Canadian fur trappers and Sioux disparaged such country as "bad lands. " 法语的加拿大毛皮捕兽器和苏人的贬低国家作为“坏土地”。 来自互联网
• She disparaged her student's efforts. 她轻视她的学生做出的努力。 来自互联网

14 disparaging   

adj.轻蔑的，毁谤的v.轻视( disparage的现在分词 )；贬低；批评；非难

参考例句：

• Halliday's comments grew daily more and more sparklingly disagreeable and disparaging. 一天天过去，哈里代的评论越来越肆无忌惮，越来越讨人嫌，越来越阴损了。 来自英汉文学 - 败坏赫德莱堡
• Even with favorable items they would usually add some disparaging comments. 即使对好消息，他们也往往要加上几句诋毁的评语。 来自互联网

15 dagger   

n.匕首，短剑，剑号

参考例句：

• The bad news is a dagger to his heart.这条坏消息刺痛了他的心。
• The murderer thrust a dagger into her heart.凶手将匕首刺进她的心脏。

16 plunge   

v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲

参考例句：

• Test pool's water temperature before you plunge in.在你跳入之前你应该测试水温。
• That would plunge them in the broil of the two countries.那将会使他们陷入这两国的争斗之中。

17 patriots   

爱国者，爱国主义者( patriot的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Abraham Lincoln was a fine type of the American patriots. 亚伯拉罕·林肯是美国爱国者的优秀典型。
• These patriots would fight to death before they surrendered. 这些爱国者宁愿战斗到死，也不愿投降。

18 internment   

n.拘留

参考例句：

• Certainly the recent attacks against the internment camps are evidence enough. 很明显，最近营地遭受到的攻击就是一个足好的证明。 来自互联网
• The chapters on the internment are Both readaBle and well researched. 这些关于拘留的章节不仅具可读性而且研究得很透彻。 来自互联网

19 interned   

v.拘留，关押( intern的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was interned but,as he was in no way implicated in war crimes,was released. 他曾被拘留过，但因未曾涉嫌战争罪行而被释放了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• These soldiers were interned in a neutral country until the war was over. 这些士兵被拘留在一个中立国，直到战争结束。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

20 censored   

受审查的，被删剪的

参考例句：

• The news reports had been heavily censored . 这些新闻报道已被大幅删剪。
• The military-backed government has heavily censored the news. 有军方撑腰的政府对新闻进行了严格审查。

21 enacted   

制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• legislation enacted by parliament 由议会通过的法律
• Outside in the little lobby another scene was begin enacted. 外面的小休息室里又是另一番景象。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

22 providence   

n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝

参考例句：

• It is tempting Providence to go in that old boat.乘那艘旧船前往是冒大险。
• To act as you have done is to fly in the face of Providence.照你的所作所为那样去行事，是违背上帝的意志的。

23 gallantly   

adv. 漂亮地，勇敢地，献殷勤地

参考例句：

• He gallantly offered to carry her cases to the car. 他殷勤地要帮她把箱子拎到车子里去。
• The new fighters behave gallantly under fire. 新战士在炮火下表现得很勇敢。

24 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

25 discriminated   

分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的过去式和过去分词 )； 歧视，有差别地对待

参考例句：

• His great size discriminated him from his followers. 他的宽广身材使他不同于他的部下。
• Should be a person that has second liver virus discriminated against? 一个患有乙肝病毒的人是不是就应该被人歧视？

26 vigor   

n.活力，精力，元气

参考例句：

• The choir sang the words out with great vigor.合唱团以极大的热情唱出了歌词。
• She didn't want to be reminded of her beauty or her former vigor.现在，她不愿人们提起她昔日的美丽和以前的精力充沛。

27 slough   

v.蜕皮，脱落，抛弃

参考例句：

• He was not able to slough off the memories of the past.他无法忘记过去。
• A cicada throws its slough.蝉是要蜕皮的。