The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly
VOLUME 66 ?? NUMBER 4 ??
OCTOBER 1957
Ohio's Germans, 1840-1875
By CARL WITTKE*
The great period of German immigration
is long since past, and
the Germans have been diluted and
absorbed, along with other
nationality groups, into a composite
Americanism. A century ago
German immigrants, in number and
quality, constituted one of the
most important elements in the American
population. Most of them
were plain people, peasants, laborers,
or craftsmen, motivated pri-
marily by the desire to get ahead in a
new, free land of opportunity.
But among them also were men of
education, culture, and social
status, political refugees of the
abortive German revolutions of 1830
and 1848, romantic idealists, and
champions of a political and eco-
nomic radicalism that often ran counter
to prevailing American
standards of a century ago.
Ohio attracted a large share of the
German immigration to its
rural areas and into the towns and cities.
Pennsylvania Germans
moved westward to settle in a broad
belt of counties south of New
England's Western Reserve. A much
larger part of the German
immigration, however, came directly
from Germany, and its impact
can be studied best by focusing attention
upon several of the largest
Ohio cities.
The city directory of Cincinnati for
1825 listed only sixty-four
persons born in Germany. By 1850 there
were 30,628, and twenty
years later just under 50,000, in a
total population of 216,239. Into
* Carl Wittke is chairman of the
department of history and dean of the graduate
school at Western Reserve University.
His latest book is The German-Language Press
in America.
340
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the Cincinnati of Daniel Drake, Frances
M. Trollope and Moncure
D. Conway, with its New England and
Virginia elements, flowed
a Teutonic tide which mingled with and
helped reshape the Anglo-
American character of the Queen City of
the West. In 1835 there
were fifteen German families in
Cleveland; the census of 1870
reported a German population of nearly
16,000. In 1843 Columbus
already had three German schools, two
German military companies,
and two German charitable
organizations. Its south side was known
as a "Little Germany,"
inhabited by thrifty, hard-working craftsmen
and storekeepers, who built more homes
than were being constructed
in any other section of the city. In
1850 Ohio had 111,257 Germans,
more than double the number of Irish,
their closest competitor.
Twenty years later the German element
constituted nearly half of
the state's foreign born.
Before the end of the Civil War a
certain German stereotype
became fixed in the minds of many
native Americans. It became
customary to represent the Germans with
heavy beards and mus-
taches, and wearing soft felt hats
rather than the high stiff hats
popular in America at the time. The
native population quickly
recognized that German bakers, tanners,
tailors, and other crafts-
men, trained in the rigid apprentice
system of Europe, made depen-
dable workmen and were making a
substantial contribution to the
economic development of the United
States. German drug stores
were a guarantee of reliability, for
only German pharmacists had
been trained in the fundamentals of
chemistry. In Akron, Ferdinand
Schumacher, as early as 1854, peddled
oatmeal in glass jars, and
developed a company which was one of
the forerunners of the
present-day Quaker Oats Company. In
Cleveland, Koch and Loeb,
in the 1840's, were making suits, linen
dusters, and Alpaca coats,
and laying the foundations for the
Joseph and Feiss Company, one
of the largest clothing manufacturers
in the country.
Dozens of such examples of competence,
thrift, and success can
be cited, but these characteristics
were sometimes submerged in the
popular stereotype which represented
the German as a gemutlich
burgher, sitting in a beer garden with
a stein of foaming lager beer
before him, and a long pipe between his
teeth, and listening to the
music of a German band. Cincinnati's
German community lay north
OHIO'S GERMANS, 1840-1875 341
of the canal and was known as
"Over the Rhine," an area of beer
gardens and concert halls and
flourishing breweries. As late as 1890
a visitor reported that here the air
had "a savory odor of Limburger,
the aroma arising from a wienerwurst
can, [and] the vapors . . .
from . . . sidewalk drains," and
here one heard the "tortured
strains of murdered Strauss, Offenbach,
or other composers" of the
fatherland. "Over the Rhine,"
in Cincinnati, and in the German
sections of other cities, German
craftsmen and storekeepers built
little frame and brick houses flush
with the sidewalks, and planted
their backyards, fenced in with
lattice-work, with flowers and vege-
tables.
In the German household the
hard-working Hausfrau lived in
relative contentment within the four
walls of her home, where she
cleaned and scrubbed and brought up
children, and prepared such
foreign dishes as pigs feet, smoked
sausage, sauerbraten, and sauer-
kraut, or delicacies like cinnamon
kuchen, apple dumplings, and
cheese cake, which long since have
found an honored place in
America's culinary literature.
The men sought recreation in taverns,
where they played pinochle,
skat, and euchre. On Sundays they brought
their families to the beer
gardens, to listen to strains of
familiar music, and to sip their
foaming brew, "ever and again
shaking it round their glasses with
the peculiar circular motion which none
but the German can impart
to the beverage he loves."
Rutherford B. Hayes found it politically
advantageous to stop in regularly for
his Schoppen of beer in one of
Cincinnati's leading beer gardens, and
George B. Cox, notorious Re-
publican boss, was a regular patron of
Wielert's Garden, which was
equally renowned for good music and
good beer. In Columbus,
Volwinkel's beer hall offered its
patrons band music, beer, pretzels,
and "perfect gesellschaft under
gas lights that rivalled the moon."
By 1850 Cincinnati was one of the
nation's great brewing and
distilling centers, and ten years later
it had over two thousand places
where drinks were sold. Highly trained
brewmasters from Germany
practiced their art in other cities,
like Cleveland, Columbus, Sandusky,
and Toledo, and brewing and wine-making
were for decades a
monopoly of the Germans.
Beer, Gemutlichkeit, and the
wide-open Sunday are still asso-
342
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
ciated in the minds of many Americans
with the German stereotype.
Yet there always were Germans who
resented studying the character
of Cincinnati solely through the bottom
of a beer glass. Christian
Esselen, a university-trained young
idealist who published his peri-
odical, the Atlantis, for a
brief period in Cleveland, referred to the
inhabitants "over the Rhine"
as devoid of all interests except free-
dom to drink beer, and believed that
the Germans had sunk to a
lower social scale in the United States
than in their homeland. Many
years later Professor Hugo Munsterberg,
Germany's gift to Harvard's
psychology and philosophy departments,
in an article in the Atlantic
Monthly, described the bulk of his fellow countrymen as
shabbily
dressed, rude sauerkraut eaters whose
life revolved almost wholly
around beer, pipes, and skat playing.
Most Germans have always combated what
they called Puritan
Sabbatarianism. As they contrasted the
pleasures of the Continental
Sunday with the American Sabbath, they
concluded that in the
United States "the rest of
Sunday" is "the rest of the tomb." They
resisted every white-ribboned
temperance crusader, and denounced
them as "narrow-minded
Puritans" and "fanatical Methodists."
"Teetotalism," they insisted,
was utterly incompatible with "personal
liberty."
In the decade before the Civil War a
city like Cincinnati simply ig-
nored local ordinances which provided
for Sunday closing. Its large
German element insisted that "blue
bellied Presbyterians" could
not degrade Americans into "a race
of psalm singers." In Cleve-
land the moral forces of Yankeedom were
locked in battle with the
German voters in several municipal
elections, and in 1872, when the
city administration tried to close the
saloons on Sunday, the Germans
paraded through the town with beer
kegs. At Lied's Garden the flag
was hauled down to half-mast and
wrapped in mourning, and a
German saloonkeeper loaded a table,
which he put up before his
place of business, with pitchers of ice
water, milk, and lemonade
and a Bible.
Interesting and amusing and generally
truthful as such repre-
sentations of the German group may be,
they deal with only one
side of the story, and to confine the
account of life in Ohio's Ger-
man communities to this phase of
German-Americanism would be
OHIO'S GERMANS, 1840-1875 343
to overlook completely the many
intellectual and cultural contribu-
tions which the German immigration made
to America a century
ago. The vast majority of the
newcomers, although plain people
who were attracted to the United States
by cheap homesteads and
good wages in "the common man's
Utopia," nevertheless had im-
bibed much of the culture of the
fatherland. Along with them came
enough intellectuals sufficiently
interested in the things of the mind
and spirit to provide the leadership
necessary to weld their fellow
immigrants into an influential social
group.
The Germans were a social people and
seized upon every oppor-
tunity to arrange outings or picnics.
For a time German communities
made more of the Fourth of July than
native Americans, for to them
Independence Day was more than an
occasion to satisfy their gre-
garious instincts--it was a day to
commemorate because it marked
the establishment of the liberty and
equality which had brought
them to America. In 1844 the Germans of
Columbus celebrated the
Fourth with a cannonade, a parade of
military companies and bands,
games for young and old at the picnic
ground, and a huge banquet,
at which a large picture of Washington
looked down upon the
assembled guests. Ten years later an
effort to get the native Amer-
icans of Columbus to join with the
Germans in a Fourth of July
celebration proved unsucceessful,
although the Germans provided
the food and the Americans the
fireworks. The next year's cele-
bration ended in a bloody street riot.
Two or three dances a week were
regularly advertised by German
societies in the local press, and on
one occasion the Columbus
Westbote carried announcements for six in one week. In 1859 the
Germans celebrated the Schiller
centennial all over America. Col-
umbus marked the event with a two-day
festival, which began with
exercises in Thalia Hall, the first
German theater in the capital city,
decorated for the occasion with
evergreens and portraits of Schiller
and Goethe. There were children's
pageants, speeches by local cele-
brities, and songs by the Columbus Mannerchor,
and the festivities
closed with the Wilhelm Tell overture,
a play, and an elaborate
banquet.
Like other immigrant groups the Germans
loved military com-
panies, which enabled them to parade in
gaudy uniforms and meet
344
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
regularly on drill days devoted as much
to conviviality as to martial
exercises. Several such German
companies from Columbus and
Cincinnati volunteered for the Mexican
War. When Louis Kossuth,
the hero of the Hungarian revolution of
1848, visited Cincinnati,
he was greeted by a military parade,
led by German cavalry, riflemen,
sharpshooters, and the Steuben Guard,
and their bands. In Columbus
the Hungarian liberator was welcomed by
German grenadiers and
a company of artillery, which fired an
artillery salvo at the break of
day, and the day's demonstrations ended
with a midnight serenade
by a German singing society. Lincoln
passed through Cincinnati in
1861 on his way to Washington and was
welcomed by the Steuben
Artillery and a German jager company.
When war came, German
military companies from many Ohio
communities volunteered in
corpore to defend the Union.
One of Ohio's best-known Civil War
outfits was the Ninth Ohio
Volunteers, recruited almost entirely
among the Germans of Cincin-
nati, and commanded by R. L. McCook,
with August Willich, a
German refugee of 1848 who had
published a socialist labor paper
in Cincinnati, the second in command.
The men reported in the
white linen jackets of the German
turner societies, and their com-
mander drilled them while still dressed
in civilian clothes, wearing
a stove-pipe hat and with only a sword
to distinguish him from his
men. Of the nine thousand men who
entered the army from Cuya-
hoga County, the Germans contributed
over twenty-five percent. In
a number of Ohio companies and in
several regiments, all commands
were originally given in German. The
patriotic record of the Ger-
mans in the Civil War need not be
retold here. It greatly modified
the attitude of many native Americans
toward their adopted fellow
citizens.
The German theater owed much to the
intellectuals of the German
immigration of the 1850's who eagerly
tried to lift the level of
theatrical performances from the low
comedy and farces of earlier
years to productions of the great
German masters. In Cincinnati,
Frederick Hassaurek, youthful veteran
of the Vienna revolution,
and Karl Obermann founded a German
theater which gave four
performances a week. On the eve of the
Civil War the Cincinnati
Enquirer commented that the monopoly enjoyed by German drama
OHIO'S GERMANS, 1840-1875 345
in the Queen City was challenged only
by the minstrel shows. The
Enquirer was especially flattering in its comments about the
attention
and interest of the audiences from
"over the Rhine." The German
theater in Cincinnati did not recover
from the effects of the Civil
War until 1879. In their later years
the financial resources of German
theater companies were often
disastrously affected by sporadic en-
forcement of Sunday closing ordinances.
In Columbus and Cleveland
the arrival of the
"Forty-Eighters," political refugees of the German
revolution, raised the standards and
improved the repertoire of the
German theater by insisting on better
stage settings, putting an end
to smoking during the performances, and
abolishing the dances
which had followed the show as an
inducement to get people to
attend.
An unfriendly critic writing from
Gottingen once remarked that
wherever three Germans congregated in
the United States, one
opened a saloon so that the other two
might have a place for their
quarrels. However exaggerated and
slanderous that characterization
may be, there can be no doubt that
wherever Germans settled they
organized singing societies to sing the
folk songs and practice the art
songs of their nation. The first German
singing society of Cincinnati
rehearsed as early as 1838 in the dance
hall of the Rising Sun Tavern,
"over the Rhine." In 1846 a
German workmen's organization of
Cincinnati took the bold step of incorporating
female voices in its
singing society, and thereupon was able
to present Haydn's Creation
in full. In 1856 the German-American
Cecilia Society of Cincinnati
sang Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Haydn
under the direction of F. L.
Ritter.
The first German singing society of
Cleveland dates from 1848
and was directed by a political refugee
who soon left to join the
gold rush to California. In 1850 the
singers had to disband their
organization and the majority joined
the singing section of the local
German Freethinkers' Society. The Mannerchor
of Columbus was
founded in 1848 and is still in
existence. The Columbus Liederkranz
was organized in 1866. Akron had its Liedertafel,
and there were
other German singing societies in the
more important cities of the
state. Today the German singing
societies of Cincinnati and Colum-
bus are among the oldest in the
country.
346
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Before long the number of choral
organizations was sufficient to
support the annual Sangerfeste for
which the Germans became
famous in the United States. At these
gatherings German singers
gathered from a wide area to compete
for prizes, and to enjoy the
convivialities of the occasion. The
first Sangerfest in America was
held in Cincinnati in 1849. Twelve
years later the city had to provide
a special building for the two thousand
singers who attended. Mus-
ical events of this kind were partly
responsible for Cincinnati's
famous May Festival, which Theodore
Thomas brought to a high
level of artistry in the 1870's.
In 1852 Columbus was host to a Sangerfest
which was ushered in
by artillery fire and a parade and
which, in addition to its musical
activities, included a picnic, an
athletic spectacle, and drills by Ger-
man militia companies. Seven years
later in Cleveland twenty-four
singing societies presented Alessandro
Stradella, an operatic favorite
of the Germans, and the program
featured a mass chorus of four
hundred voices. At the close of the
musical activities the singers
paraded to a picnic ground, escorted by
the turner society, German
light dragoons, and an artillery company.
On another occasion a
Cleveland audience of over five
thousand attended a concert directed
by Hans Balatka, a guest conductor from
Milwaukee. The mass
chorus presented parts of Mozart's Magic
Flute and the orchestra
played the overtures from Wilhelm Tell
and Martha. It is not with-
out significance to point out that
German Jews participated in these
musical events, as they did in all the
cultural activities of the German
immigration, and the German-Jewish
press usually carried detailed
accounts of the Sangerfeste.
German singing societies had to be
largely rebuilt after the Civil
War. By 1874, however, the Sangerfest
was in full bloom again.
Cleveland had erected a special
"Temple" for the occasion. The
sessions continued for an entire week;
high-priced soloists and the
New York Philharmonic Orchestra were
engaged; the governor
came to open the music festival; and
the city's streets were decorated
with German and American flags.
Newspaper critics admitted that
the programs were excellent, but
criticized the visitors for manifest-
ing a greater interest in social
activities than in the more serious ob-
jectives of the convention. A bar had
been installed under the orch-
OHIO'S GERMANS, 1840-1875 347
estra pit of the concert hall and after
the conclusion of each concert,
many hours were spent there under the
mellow patronage of Bacchus
and King Gambrinus.
The German Turnfeste and Schutzenfeste
provided another outlet
for the gregarious instincts of the
German population. The turner
movement, founded in 1811 in Berlin,
when Prussia was under the
heel of Napoleon, became an effective
instrument for the develop-
ment of German patriotism and
nationalism. Its original purpose,
to build sound bodies through
systematic physical exercises, was
soon expanded to include the building
of a genuine political liber-
alism. The turner movement was one of
the most important causes
of the German revolution of 1848, and
many turners fought under
Sigel and Hecker in Baden, on the
barricades of Dresden, and in
the streets of Frankfurt.
Political refugees of 1848 revived the
turner movement in the
United States, and put such stress upon
its liberal and radical tradi-
tions that the turner societies became
centers of German radicalism
in America. The first Turngemeinde in
the United States was organ-
ized in Cincinnati in October 1848,
when Friedrich Hecker, the
incurable romantic of the German
revolution, happened to be
visiting friends in that city. Fourteen
Cincinnati Germans responded
to his call and began setting-up
exercises in a vacant lot. Two years
later they dedicated their first little
turner hall; by 1851 the society
was able to support a small library, a
male chorus, and a monthly
publication.
In Columbus the first Turnverein was
established in 1851; the
still prosperous Cleveland Socialer
Turn Verein dates from 1867.
Membership in turner societies was open
to all, and included a con-
glomeration of ardent nationalists,
sober, middle-of-the-road Ger-
man-American burghers, socialists,
avowed infidels, and many who
joined solely for social reasons. But
the original goal of the organi-
zation was to develop a more
"refined humanity," and to insist upon
complete freedom to reform the
political, economic, and religious
patterns of America. Thousands of
turners became radical aboli-
tionists and volunteered in such
numbers for service in the Union
army that in many areas their societies
had to be virtually rebuilt
after the Civil War.
348
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The Turnfeste, which began in
the 1850's, developed into gigantic
festivals, attended by turners who came
from considerable distances
to demonstrate their physical prowess.
These spectacles usually
began with parades in which the
marchers wore the white jackets
and red ties characteristic of the
turner clubs. There were torchlight
processions, lusty renditions of turner
and student songs, gymnastic
competitions that generally ended with
great tableaux, banquets,
with endless toasts, and on the last
day, the presentation of an opera
and a grand ball. Prizes were awarded
not only for physical feats
but also for original essays, poems,
and musical compositions. The
turner organizations of Ohio figured prominently
in the national
Turnfeste. Moreover, in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and
else-
where, the turner, after the Civil War,
became interested in getting
physical education courses and
instruction in the German language
into the curricula of the public
schools. They were so successful in
several Ohio cities that, in German
neighborhoods, instruction in the
first grade was in German and children
of native Americans un-
familiar with the language were
expected to acquire it.
Closely akin to the militia companies
and turner societies were
the organizations of German
sharpshooters (Schutzenvereine),
whose members competed in shooting
galleries for prizes. The
Schutzenverein was a direct importation from Germany, and grew
rapidly after 1848. The competition in
marksmanship sometimes
continued for as much as a week, and
ended, as in Germany, with a
parade, a banquet, oratory, and an
elaborate ceremony to crown a
King of the Sharpshooters. Annual local
competitions were held
in Columbus as early as 1853, and six
years later the Columbus
Schutzenverein started its own building, with ceremonies that began
with the breaking of a bottle of beer
over the cornerstone.
The political refugees of the
revolutions of 1830 and 1848-49
boldly announced that they would not
become mere "culture fer-
tilizer" in a raw, new land,
where, as in the Western Reserve of Ohio,
even a Christmas tree erected in a
German church was regarded
as a "heathenish custom,"
"a plain case of idolatry," and a "grovel-
ing before the shrubs." Many
"Forty-Eighters" stubbornly refused
to discard "the intellectual
achievements of a thousand years . . .
for the culture of the primeval
forest." In the New Germany across
OHIO'S GERMANS, 1840-1875 349
the sea they hoped to introduce and
preserve German art, music,
literature, philosophy, and science to
combat the gloom of Puritans,
"square-headed sectarians, and
temperance fanatics." Above all, they
were committed to disseminating a
spirit of rationalism and enlight-
enment in a land suffering from what
they regarded as the clerical
tyranny of the American churches. The
extremists opposed Sunday
laws, the opening of public gatherings
with prayer, the exemption
of church property from taxation, and
Bible reading in the schools.
For the more radical among them,
separation of church and state
meant the annihilation of the church as
a state within a state.
The vast majority of German immigrants
belonged to the Catholic,
Lutheran, or Reformed churches, and
even the Methodists made
many converts among them. Although the
anti-clerical radicalism
of an able and noisy minority never
fastened its grip upon the masses
of the German immigration, who wanted
no truck with the "beer-
fogged skepticism" of these
"pioneers of heathenism," the German
element remained badly divided because
of the activities of a voci-
ferous minority, and suffered for years
from the hostility and pre-
judices which the radicals aroused
among native Americans.
The foci of freethinking radicalism
were to be found in German
"Free Congregations," or
freethinkers' societies. These organizations
rejected every form of ritual,
clericalism, dogmatism, and super-
naturalism, and upheld the right of men
to be atheists, agnostics,
pantheists, or anything else they
wished--so long as they observed
the basic moralities. In this new Kulturkampf
in America the leaders
fought hard, and often unwisely and
intolerantly, to substitute an
enlightened humanism for the
"dogmas of priestcraft" and super-
stition. They were indiscriminately
labeled as infidels by their Amer-
ican critics.
In their meetings the freethinkers'
clubs developed something of
a ritual of their own, which stressed
lectures and discussions of
morality, science, literature, and
other disciplines calculated to enrich
and liberate the human spirit. They
established private schools in
Cleveland, Cincinnati, and other cities
to make freethinkers of their
children. The group in Cincinnati owned
a hall, supported singing
and dramatic sections, a mutual
insurance society, and a woman's
auxiliary, and met regularly on Sunday
for lectures and debate. The
350
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Cleveland organization in the early
1850's had two hundred mem-
bers, who sponsored dramatics,
gymnastics, a German-English
school, and debates, and annually
celebrated the birthday of Tom
Paine and the martyrdom of Robert Blum,
the hero of 1848. In 1854
ten Ohio cities sent delegates to a
convention in Cincinnati to draw
up a "Platform of the Free Germans
of Ohio." Besides the usual
anti-clerical pronouncements, the
document advocated the abolition
of slavery and the repeal of the
fugitive slave law, a ten-hour day,
free homesteads, public education,
inheritance taxes, a mechanics
lien law, and an end of capital
punishment. A year earlier Cincin-
nati Germans had advocated a primary
democracy for the United
States, and in 1859 German radicals
joined with Negroes in Cincin-
nati to honor John Brown.
The extreme radicalism and intolerant
anti-clericalism of the
German minority explain in part the
nativist reaction against the
heavy European immigration of the
1850's. Political nativism was
a mixture of unadulterated bigotry and
some sound reasons for
objecting to the abuses connected with
completely unrestricted
immigration. The spearhead of its
attack was directed against the
Catholic Irish, but the Germans by no
means escaped unscathed.
In Cincinnati in 1853 the
anti-clericalism of the freethinkers'
society was fanned into violence by
unrelenting attacks in Has-
saurek's Hochwachter upon
Archbishop Gaetano Bedini, a visitor
in the city, whom German radicals
described as the "Bloodhound
of Bologna," because of his
alleged responsibility for the execution
of Italian revolutionary patriots in
1849. On Christmas Day hun-
dreds of German freethinkers and
radicals marched upon the resi-
dence of the archbishop of Cincinnati,
where Bedini was a guest,
carrying an effigy of the noted Italian
clergyman swinging from a
gallows. In the riot that ensued, which
the Germans blamed on
the Irish police and a mayor whom they
described as a "tool of
the priests," one man was killed
and several were injured. Conser-
vative papers, like the Columbus Westbote,
blamed the Germans
for the incident, and the Cleveland Germania
denounced the
"patent reformers" whose
activities were bringing the entire Ger-
man immigration into disrepute.
Incidents of this kind served only
to feed the fires of nativism against
all the foreign-born.
OHIO'S GERMANS, 1840-1875 351
In 1855 members of a Columbus singing
society, returning from
a Sangerfest, were attacked by
nativist rowdies, and several weeks
later, when the Germans were returning
from a Fourth of July
picnic, they were showered with stones,
marchers and bystanders
began to fire revolvers, and a number
of casualties resulted. The
local police searched the German
neighborhood without proper
warrants, and a howling mob shouted
"kill the damn Dutch." In
the same "bloody year"
Cincinnati nativists drove a little band of
German musicians from a tenement house
and then marched, with
fife and drum, to attack the Germans
"over the Rhine." The latter
met their assailants with gunfire from
the windows of their homes,
and threw up barricades in the streets,
behind which the Saarsfield
Guards and other militia companies,
joined by a number of Irish,
rallied to repel the nativist invasion.
Election day riots were com-
mon in Ohio during these unhappy years,
and on several occasions
German saloons were raided and ballot
boxes destroyed. But
nativism soon had its day and was
largely dissolved in the patriotic
response of the foreign-born in defense
of the Union in 1861.
The German vote was too important in
Ohio to be long ignored
by either major party. As early as 1834
the Jacksonians distributed
campaign literature among the
Pennsylvania Germans in Ohio,
and in 1832 Jackson's bank veto was
widely circulated in German
translation. There were special German
meetings during the fam-
ous log-cabin campaign of 1840. In 1844
the Democrats put out a
campaign biography of James K. Polk in
the German language.
In the election of 1860 the German vote
may well have been de-
cisive in the northwestern states.
Hassaurek of Cincinnati spoke
for two and a half hours to the
Cleveland Germans on behalf of
Lincoln, and August Thieme, perhaps
Cleveland's leading German
intellectual, stumped Ohio for the
Republicans. Carl Schurz, whom
Lincoln described as "the foremost
among the Republican orators,"
and whom the Democratic Plain Dealer
of Cleveland denounced as
"a red republican," with a
black heart, came into the state in 1860 to
try to garner the German vote for the
Republican party.
The leaders of the German element were
quick to demand
political plums for services rendered
at the polls, and Lincoln
appointed a number of Ohio Germans to
public office. After the
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THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
war German veterans had the same claim
as other soldiers on the
gratitude of the country. By 1871 both
parties in Ohio were nom-
inating Germans for the office of
lieutenant governor. In 1872
leading Ohio Germans figured
prominently in the proceedings of
the Liberal Republicans, who met in
Cincinnati to plan a revolt
against "Grantism," although
many Germans had difficulty swal-
lowing Horace Greeley, a
"teetotaller," as the party's candidate.
Subsequently, in the long drawn out
controversy over greenbacks,
free silver, and sound money, which
reached a crisis in Ohio in the
gubernatorial contest of 1875 between
Rutherford B. Hayes and
"Fog Horn Bill" Allen, the
German vote again appeared decisive.
Advocates of sound money, such as
Charles Francis Adams, Char-
les Nordhoff, Murat Halstead, and
Whitelaw Reid, thought it
necessary to bring Schurz into Ohio,
following his flattering
reception in Germany, to make nine
speeches to the Ohio Germans
on the money question. His address in
the turner hall in Cincinnati
in 1875 was a notable exposition of the
intricacies of the currency
problem, and the Republicans carried
the state by about five thousand
votes. In 1877 Hayes made Schurz his
secretary of the interior.
The German-language press was the
spokesman and the mirror
for all phases of life in America's
German communities and the
most effective instrument for
maintaining the necessary contact
between the old country and the new in
the critical years of read-
justment. Ohio's German-language press
once ranked among the
most numerous and the most influential
in the nation, and dozens
of Ohio communities were able to
support at least a German
weekly. The first German-language paper
was started in Lancaster
in 1807, to serve the
Pennsylvania-German population of central
Ohio. The Columbus Westbote was
founded in 1843; by 1860
Ohio had twenty-two German-language
papers. Cincinnati in 1849
had four, edited in the next two
decades by a galaxy of brilliant
editors, including such outstanding
"Forty-Eighters" as Frederick
Hassaurek, August Willich, Johann
Rittig, Gustav Tafel, and
others. The Cincinnati Volksblatt, established
in 1836 and pub-
lished until World War I, for a time
was the only German daily
in the United States. The Germania was
Cleveland's first German
paper, but was soon overshadowed by the
Wichter am Erie, founded
OHIO'S GERMANS, 1840-1875 353
in 1852, and launched by a group of
German liberals who called
themselves the "friends of
progress." It was originally printed on
the press of the Cleveland Plain
Dealer. August Thieme, a distin-
guished revolutionary of 1848 with a
doctor's degree from a German
university, an intellectual aristocrat
of independent mind and deep
convictions, served as editor until his
death in 1879.
Various other papers, like the Columbia,
the Deutsche Presse
and the Biene were published in
Cleveland, but only the Wachter
survived. Toledo's first German paper
was the weekly Ohio Staats-
zeitung. Other papers appeared in Dayton, Akron, Mansfield,
Bucy-
rus, and other cities, and while many
were weeklies, some were
dailies with considerable influence in
their areas.
In 1848 Germans in the United States
had welcomed the revolu-
tionary upheavals in the German states
with considerable confidence
that they would result in a fatherland
unified under a republican
form of government. Their high hopes
were trampled under foot
by the heavy tread of Prussian
grenadiers speedily mobilized to
defend monarchy and reaction. The
liberal movement ended in fail-
ure. The events of 1870-71, in contrast
with the disappointments of
1848, brought unadulterated
satisfaction to the great majority of the
German element in the United States.
The Franco-German War had
a tremendous impact upon America's
German population.
The war with France was marked by a
series of brilliant military
victories for the German armies as they
swept on to capture Paris,
and after centuries of struggle for
German unification, the German
Empire was established in 1871. Earlier
dreams of a unified Germany
along more liberal lines were quickly
forgotten in the adulation
poured on Bismarck and the Hohenzollern
Kaiser. During the thril-
ling period of the Franco-German War
the German element in the
United States probably achieved its
greatest unity. Old differences
were forgotten in huge victory parades
and peace celebrations in
Cleveland, Cincinnati, and other Ohio
cities, and throughout the
land. Through all of them sounded a
note of joy and satisfaction that
the unification of Germany had at last
united the Germans of America
also. German-Americans were convinced
that the establishment of
the new national state in Europe would
help dissipate whatever
sense of inferiority they still felt as
adopted citizens, and eradicate
354
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the remaining prejudices of the
nativist period. German-Americans
seized upon the events of 1870-71 to
demonstrate to native Amer-
icans "what Germans could do when
they are united." "Before
long," concluded the editor of the
Columbus Westbote, "the name
'Dutchman' may be changed into
German."
While Ohio cities were being gradually
transformed by the
immigrant tide, Teutons were spreading
over the whole northern
and western map, and creating places as
definitely German as Mil-
waukee, St. Louis, or Grand Island,
Nebraska, and gaining recog-
nition through the triumphs of a
Theodore Thomas and a Hermann
Raster of Chicago, a George Bunsen and
a Friedrich Hecker of
Belleville, the Engelmanns of Milwaukee,
Hermann Kiefer of
Detroit, Konrad Krez of Sheboygan, and
dozens of others who
made their mark upon the intellectual
and cultural life of the
emerging America. Three hundred and
sixty-one men and women
born in Germany proper appear in the Dictionary
of American
Biography.
The blend of Anglo-American and German
cultures proceeded
harmoniously until World War I suddenly
brought immeasurable
tragedy to millions of Americans of
German blood who had never
dreamed of the possibility of a war
between their adopted father-
land and the country of their origin.
In the hysteria against all
things German which seized the United
States in 1917 and 1918,
many of their cherished institutions
and cultural monuments suf-
fered crushing attacks from which they
have found it almost im-
possible to recover.