oldenburg-l - Nachricht 2008-01 00167

[W. Fred Rump <fredrump(a)gmail.com>]

On Jan 24, 2008 7:35 PM,  <JWR184(a)aol.com> wrote:

> I have to agree with Mary C.(below).
> Cincinnati has a Deutscher Tag (German day). There is a parade with a band.
> There are several good German restaurants in Cinti and N Kentucky.
> There is a German language school and German spoken on a radio station.
> There are three German social groups, Kolping Society, Germannia,
> Donauschawben(sp).

Folks,
you need to keep things in perspective. The German element in the USA
is dying day by day as no new immigrants are coming in to keep it
alive with new blood. What you are seeing are nostalgic festivals of a
partial commercial nature to bring people to downtown or revive an
area. The Donauschwaben will be gone as their grandchildren will have
forgotten what it was all about. The occasional remaining singing
group will no longer be speaking German or be able to sing all the old
folk songs as they woný have any meaning to them. The Kolping Society
remains in a few cities as it is now a Catholic social group rather
then the original Gesellenverein which took care of single young men
and gave them a home away from home.

In the good old days, there were dozens, maybe hundreds of clubs
founded by German immigrants in many metropolitan areas. They've all
gone. The German immigrant assimilated too quickly and moved out into
the suburbs and their children simply have no interest in Bratwurst
and Beer festivals. It is the way it is sad though it may be.

In my time here in this country since the early 50s monumental changes
have taken place. I used to be very active in the German club scene in
Philadelphia. I can list some of the organizations I was spart of: The
German-American Kinderchor, the Jugendchor, the Liedertafel
Sängerbund, the Philadephia Quartett Club, the Schwarzwald Quartett
Club, the Kolping Society, the Erzgebirge singing and carneval group,
the German Group of the International Volkfest. In many of these I was
an officer and hard worker to keep things going but all have died
except the Erzgebirge and the Kolping is now renting space with the
Donauschwaben but are but a semblance of what used to be. I am still a
Life member in the German Society of Pennsylvania which is about the
only Philadephia German group which may continue to exist over time.
That organization is older then the USA and despite difficulties in
maintaining its library and home in downtown Philadelphia seems to
have enough Americans of German descent to sustain it over the long
run because they actually write checks.

Being a lifelong student of history the integration of the German
community over time (starting with the purchase of 15,000 acres by
Frances Pastorius in 1683 to found Germantown outside of Philadelphia)
reveals a very interesting sociological phenomena of generational
movement. One can study the history of Philadelphia and see how
neighborhoods moved as the children and grandchildren were no longer
happy where their parents lived. They wanted something better. The
Germans never settled very long in any one neighborhood as they were
always upward and outward bound. They became American very quickly and
did not settle into an everlasting Italian or Polish type
neighborhood. They moved on. Their clubs died behind them as did their
neighborhoods and churches. The wars only helped to speed this
process.

If I may digress, anybody who knows Philadelphia also knows Spring
Garden, Girard, Lehigh, Erie and Allegheny Avenues. Each was in its
time a boundary of sorts. Today there are no Germans left in Philly
:-) The German Society stands on Spring Garden street. It moved there
when that area was still considered to be on the outside of a busy
center city in 1887. There were several dozen other clubs in the area.
They are all gone. Some later on moved to Girard or Lehigh but
eventually died from a lack of membership. The church of Saint John
Neumann was St Peters at 5th and Girard. He is buried there and it was
a German Redemptorist community. I used to sing in the choir there
under a Dr Leopold Syree even though hardly anty Germans ever came
there anymore. But it had been the custom to have a really good choir
for over a hundred years and lack of an audience didn't phase anybody
but obviously it too ended. Point being that there was a huge
clubhouse almost across the street which in its hayday was home to a
socialist German mens club. It still had a handful of members all of
whom were in quite advance age and who lived in what was now a
veritable ghetto. We went over there on occasion to sing some
folksongs and entertain these oldsters. They must not have had any
family as we never saw any young people there. But here was this huge
building with all kinds of history, pictures, flags and various awards
in cases but no takers. The old folks had tears in their eyes when we
sang for them. The scenario repeated itself at the old Liedertafel
building and the Quartett Club nearer to Lehigh as these buildings
eventaully were shuttered and sooner or later burned to the ground.
They could not be sold and who would pay the taxes. To see this happen
was always very sad as people spent their lives there and it all went
away.

The Kolping Society was very dear to me as I my dad had been a
lifelong member starting as a Geselle or journeyman in Germany. We had
a wonderful park, a whole city block way up in an area called
Feltonville. The Felton mansion was our home and the turn of the
century carved oak dining room is now in my possession. I bought it
when the society decided to sell the place as they thought the offer
of $500,000 for the a block was a lot of money. It was razed for yet
another drug store.

And so it goes folks. Time moves on and history is another Walgreen.
The giant Bayernverein is no more, selling out to a developer to build
new homes. The Cannstatter http://www.cvvphilly.com/ is still around
but it has become an American club just as the old Schützenverein
became the Rifleclub, the German heritage forgotten. The German
newspaper, the Philadelphia Gazette-Demokrat died years ago for lack
of subscribers. Even the New York Staatszeitung is but a few pages of
German written for a few national subscribers.
http://www.germancorner.com/NYStaatsZ

We live in a different world today. There are some remnants if one
looks hard enough but the people can't fill the shoes of what was.
Herman, MO was founded as a German city by expatriate German
Philadelphians who thought they were becoming too Americanized. They
wanted to save their Germanness away from the big city and its
influences. The buildings still exist. The old school house were all
teaching was in German has been restored by local history buffs and a
classroom was set up just as they thought it was way back then. They
even copied some text from books they found onto the blackboard. My
wife started singing this text and the curator lady was totally amazed
that someone even recognized what was written.
Little did they know that those kids of Missouri once sang the same
songs as are still being sung in Germany today:

Wollt ihr wissen, wollt ihr wissen,
wie's die kleinen Mädchen machen?
Püppchen wiegen, Püppchen wiegen,
alles dreht sich herum.

or

http://www.labbe.de/liederbaum/index.asp?themaid=23&titelid=853

Yes, it is sad that all that is gone here but at least those parents
tried and succeeded in giving their children some of what they brought
with them from the old country. When Missouri banned the teaching of
German and later the Federal government wiped out all the wineries it
was all over.

Fred










-- 
Fred Rump,
730 5th St. NW Naples, FL 34120
fredrump(a)gmail.com
http://fredrump.phanfare.com
We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to
tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
Jefferson (1820)