“It would be for the best to suspend publication”: The German–American Press and Anti-German Hysteria During World War I

 

During World War I, the German-American press became a lightning rod for anti-German sentiment. New rules required German-language papers to supply English translations, and many publications faced bankruptcy. Some of the most strident attacks came from English-language journalists. Analysis of content of German-language newspapers reveals how editors of those newspapers positioned their publications during World War I, responded to attacks from other journalists, and how they articulated their professional stance in relation to loyalty to the government. Questions about journalists’ obligations to expressions of patriotism and support of their government have arisen on a regular basis up to the present, and this research helps shed light on how notions of journalistic independence are reconciled with a sense of patriotic obligation.

ENDNOTES

Notes

1 “Ein Lebewohl an die Leser des Correspondenten/A Farewell to the Readers of the Correspondent,” Der Deutsche Correspondent, 28 April 1918, p. 14. University of Maryland via Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress.

2 Eyal Zandberg and Motti Neiger, “Between the Nation and the Profession: Journalists as Members of Contradicting Communities,” Media, Culture & Society 27, no. 1 (2005): 131.

3 Lloyd Chiasson Jr., ed. The Press in Times of Crisis (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995).

4 Russell A. Kazal, Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 20.

5 Roger Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993 [2004]).

6 Howard Palmer, “Ethnic Relations in Wartime: Nationalism and European Minorities in Alberta during the Second World War,” Canadian Ethnic Studies/Etudes Ethniques au Canada 14, no. 3 (1982): 1–23.

7 Terrence G. Wiley, “The Imposition of World War I Era English-Only Policies and the Fate of German in North America,” in Language and Politics in the United States and Canada: Myths and Realities, edited by Thomas K. Ricento and Barbara Burnaby (New York: Routledge, 1998), 220.

8 Chris W. Post and Derek H. Alderman, “‘Wiping New Berlin off the Map’: Political Economy and the de-Germanisation of the Toponymic Landscape in First World War USA,” Area 46, no. 1 (2014): 83–91.

9 Peter C. Weber, “Ethnic Identity During War: The Case of German American Societies during World War I,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 43, no. 1 (2014): 185–206.

10 Alexander Waldenrath, “The German Language Newspress in Pennsylvania During World War I,” Pennsylvania History 42, no. 1 (January 1975): 25–41; A Heritage Deferred: The German-Americans in Minnesota, ed. Clarence A. Glasrud (Moorhead, MN: Concordia College, 1981); Marian Holter Brod, “Montana Staats-Zeitung 1914–1917: A German newspaper in America during World War I,” master’s Thesis, University of Montana (1979); Benjamin Paul Hegi, “‘Old Time Good Germans’: German-Americans in Cooke County, Texas, during World War I,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 109, no. 2 (Oct. 2005): 234–57.

11 Hans Vought, “Division and Reunion: Woodrow Wilson, Immigration, and the Myth of American Unity,” Journal of American Ethnic History 13, no. 3 (Spring, 1994): 42.

12 Mick Mulcrone, “‘Those Miserable Little Hounds’: World War I Postal Censorship of the Irish World,” Journalism History 20, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 15–24.

13 James D. Startt, Woodrow Wilson, the Great War and the Fourth Estate (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2017), 125.

14 Heinrich H. Maurer, “The Earlier German Nationalism in America,” American Journal of Sociology 22, no. 4 (Jan. 1917): 522.

15 Ibid.

16 Carl Wittke, The German-Language Press in America (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1957), 282.

17 G.A. Dobbert, “The Cincinnati Germans, 1870–1920; Disintegration of an Immigrant Community,” Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin 23, no. 4 (1965): 229–42.

18 Wittke, German-Language Press, 265.

19 Carl Wittke, German-Americans and the World War (With Special Emphasis on Ohio’s German-Language Press) (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1936), 237.

20 Wittke, German-Language Press, 241.

21 John C. Teaford, Cities of the Heartland: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Midwest (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 188.

22 Peter Conolly-Smith, “Transforming an Ethnic Readership Through ‘Word and Image’: William Randolph Hearst’s Deutsches Journal and New York’s German-Language Press, 1895–1918,” American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism 19, no. 1 (2009): 79.

23 Wittke, German-Language Press, 243–4.

24 Ibid., 273, 282.

25 Stuart Allen and Barbie Zelizer, eds., Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004); Michael S. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

26 Donald Johnson, “Wilson, Burleson, and Censorship in the First World War,” The Journal of Southern History 28, no. 1 (1962): 46–58; Michael S. Sweeney, “Censorship Missionaries of World War II,” Journalism History 27, no. 1 (2001): 4–13.

27 Wittke, German-Language Press.

28 Karl J. R. Arndt and May E. Olson, German-American Newspapers and Periodicals, 1732–1955: History and Bibliography (New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1965).

29 Henry Geitz, ed., The German-American Press (Madison, WI: Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, 1992).

30 Startt, Woodrow Wilson, the Great War and the Fourth Estate (2017).

31 Klaus Wust, “German Immigrants and their Newspapers in the District of Columbia,” Report of the Society for the History of Germans in Maryland 30 (1959): 36–66; Wittke, German-Americans and the World War.

32 Roland Paul, “The Newspapers Pfälzer in Amerika and Hessische Blätter in World War I,” in The German-American Press, edited by Henry Geitz (Madison, WI: Max Kade Inst. for German-American Studies, 1992), 157–67.

33 Der Deutsche Correspondent, Baltimore, MD; Der Tägliche Demokrat, Davenport, IA; Detroiter Abend-Post, Detroit, MI; Deutscher Herold, Sioux Falls, SD; Hermanner Volksblatt, Hermann, MO; New Ulm Post, New Ulm, MN; Osage County Volksblatt, Westphalia, MO; Scranton Wochenblatt, Scranton, PA; Seguiner Zeitung, Seguin, TX; Tägliche Omaha Tribüne, Omaha, NE (Jan.–Nov. 1918); Warrenton Volksfreund, Warrenton, MO.

34 Either direct references to specific English-language newspaper items or references to events or speeches for which items were located by date and keyword searches. A few items were located by way of secondary sources.

35 Frank Trommler, “The Lusitania Effect: America’s Mobilization against Germany in World War I,” German Studies Review 32, no. 2 (May 2009): 241.

36 Lyle W. Dorsett, “The Ordeal of Colorado’s Germans during World War 1,” Colorado Magazine 51, no. 4 (Fall 1974): 279.

37 Der Deutsche Correspondent, University of Maryland via Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress.

38 Tägliche Omaha Tribüne, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries via Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress.

39 “Der Vierte in New Ulm,” New Ulm Post, July 5, 1918, p. 1. Minnesota Historical Society via Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress.

40 For example, “Fourth of July at Chamois,” Osage County Volksblatt, June 28, 1917, p. 1.

41 For example, “America, My Country,” Tägliche Omaha Tribüne, July 4, 1918, p. 1; “The Glorious Fourth,” Hermanner Volksblatt, June 29, 1917, p. 3.

42 Wittke, German-Language Press, 264–5.

43 Wittke, German-Americans and the World War, 174.

44 “Editorielles,” Seguiner Zeitung, October 18, 1917, p. 2. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Library Consortium.

45 Cited in “To Kill or Use our German Press?” Literary Review 57 (May 1918): 112. University of Pennsylvania Library, http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=literarydigest.

46 “Germany’s Real Purpose,” Albuquerque Morning Journal, June 28, 1917, p. 2.

47 Frank Perry Olds, “Disloyalty of the German Press,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1917): 136, 140.

48 “Bitterness of Germany Col. Roosevelt’s Topic,” (Washington, D.C.) Evening Star, Sept. 25, 1917, p. 5; “Germany Had Plan All Laid To Plunder U.S.,” Topeka State Journal, Sept. 25, 1917, p. 1; “Teddy Lambastes Germans,” Watauga Democrat, Oct. 11, 1917, p.1.; “U.S. is fighting German people declares T.R.,” Omaha Daily Bee, Sept. 25, 1917, p. 1.

49 Wittke, German-Americans and the World War, 23.

50 Startt, Woodrow Wilson, the Great War and the Fourth Estate, 67.

51 Peter Conolly-Smith, “‘Reading Between the Lines’: The Bureau of Investigation, the United States Post Office, and Domestic Surveillance During World War I,” Social Justice 36, no. 1 (2009): 18.

52 “The Menace of the German Press,” Detroit Free Press, Aug. 25, 1917, in Congressional Record 55, part 7 (1917): 7023.

53 “Where the Abendpost Stands,” Detroiter Abend-Post, October 11, 1917, p. 4.

54 “How Patriotic is the German-American Press?” New York Times Magazine, June 24, 1917, p. 64.

55 “Mission of German Language Press,” New Ulm Post (New Ulm, MN), Nov. 2, 1917, p. 10.

56 “To our Readers, Carriers and Agents,” Volksblatt und Freiheits-Freund (Pittsburgh), August 11, 1918, p. 1. Google News Archive. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=kLBgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=WHMNAAAAIBAJ&pg=6323%2C289763

57 Telegraph und Tribüne (Indianapolis), May 27, 1918, quoted in Joseph C. Salmons, “Approaches to English in Some Indiana German Newspapers,” in The German-American Press, edited by Henry Geitz (Madison, WI: Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, 1992), p. 190.

58 Henry Castrop, “Zum Abschied!,” Osage County Volksblatt, July 19, 1917, p. 1.

59 J. and J. Bartholomaeus, “Ein Wort zum Abschied!” Warrenton Volksfreund, April 26, 1918, p. 1. Emphasis in original.

60 “An unsere Leser,” Der tägliche Demokrat, (Davenport, IA), September 7, 1918, p. 1. State Historical Society of Iowa via Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress.

61 Wittke, German-Americans and the World War, 177.

62 Castrop, “Zum Abschied!”

63 Friedrich A. Wagner, “Einstellung der Herausgabe des Scranton Wochenblatt mit der heutigen Nummer,” Scranton Wochenblatt, August 29, 1918, p. 1.

64 “To our Subscribers and Patrons,” Seguiner Zeitung, January 7, 1932, p. 1.

65 See note 59.

66 Castrop, “Zum Abschied!”

67 Mulcrone, “Those Miserable Little Hounds,” 15.

68 Leara D. Rhodes, The Ethnic Press: Shaping the American Dream (New York: Peter Lang, 2010).

69 Vasiliki Fouka, “Backlash: The Unintended Effects of Language Prohibition in US Schools after World War I,” working paper, Stanford Center on Global Poverty and Development, Dec. 2016 (https://globalpoverty.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/591wp_0.pdf).

70 Karl Markus Kreis, Von Einwanderern und Feierabenddeutschen: Forschungsbericht zur Geschichte und Gegenwart der Deutschamerikaner in Buffalo, N.Y. (Dortmund: Fachhochschule Dortmund, 1996), 61.

71 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York: Random House, 2001).

72 Lloyd Chiasson Jr., “The Japanese-American Enigma,” The Press in Times of Crisis, 149.

73 Wittke, German-Americans and the World War, 172.

74 Rhodes, The Ethnic Press, 125–6.

75 See note 63.

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Kevin Grieves

Kevin Grieves is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Whitworth University. He is author of Journalism Across Boundaries: The Promises and Challenges of Transnational and Transborder Journalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).