University Place  Stephanie Golightly Lowden German Immigrants and World War I  November 13, 2012 UP809   cc >> Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you to the last History Sandwiched In of this season. We will be resuming again in January, and we have a very special program today. Stephanie Golightly Lowden is the author of a number of books, allegedly for young people, but they are an enhancement to anyone's reading. "Jingo Fever" deals with the period of Wisconsin history when immigration was an issue that was really being dealt with, and it seems as though anything old is new again. These are issues that we're dealing with again, but this is a most remarkable telling about most remarkable incidents. And, without further ado, I would like to welcome Stephanie Golightly Lowden. [APPLAUSE]  >> Thanks, Dale, thank you. Okay, oh, look at all these people here. My goodness. 

Welcome. How many of you are of German ancestry? [LAUGHTER] Oh, I never would have guessed. [LAUGHTER] That's wonderful. So am I, obviously. Well, the title of my program is a little problematic, because I hesitated to use those words, Huns, Krauts, and Hyphenates. They were racial epithets at the time, much like our racial epithets of today, but I wanted to be historically accurate and set the time period and the mood.  This is me. Shortly after opening of the museum. I've been a docent here and, well, now I do other volunteering here now, since 1986. And when we first opened, you may remember there were only two floors here, first and second, and the second floor was all about native people of Wisconsin, and I was doing a lot of research then for my book "Time of the Eagle," but I was starting to get the idea for "Jingo Fever." So, let me set the time period of my novel. 

It is 1917. This is my Aunt Dell and Uncle Albert, who I never knew because he died of influenza in 1918. Fortunately, I just came upon these pictures a year ago. I didn't even know these were in the family. This is my Aunt Nora and Ray in 1917. Cille and Joe at their wedding. All these women are sisters, my mother's sisters. However, my mother was much younger than they. She was only seven years old in 1917. This was one of those big drawn out Catholic families. 

So, she had much older sisters. And here's Joe and Cille at Cedar Lake. I'm not sure if that's a Cedar Lake in Wisconsin or Iowa because they went on holiday in Iowa a lot. This is July 5, 1915, in Stanley, Iowa, and you will notice how dressed up people are for their picnic. [LAUGHTER] And I am betting any dishes on that blanket are China. So, that's the time period. Now, this is my favorite. This is my aunt. This lady here is my aunt, and if you will notice, these scandalous women have beer steins and beer bottles. And this lady, you can't really tell, but she's holding a pipe. 

Whether or not she was smoking it, I don't know. I don't even know if they were drinking all this stuff, but it's such a fun picture. It's my favorite. So, Wisconsin, of course, has been greatly enriched by German immigrants. Most of them settled here in the 19th and 20th century, but, like other immigrants, they were looked down upon by people who were already here. And oftentimes, those people referred to themselves as nativists or Native Americans. Of course, today, the term Native Americans refers to the original inhabitants of the Americas. But when large numbers of immigrants were coming from Europe, then, like now, many people who had been here for a longer period of time were suspicious of these new people. There was fear that these new immigrants would take real American jobs away or pollute the social atmosphere. German and Irish immigrants were particularly accused of this latter charge because drinking alcohol was a part of their social life. 

Many Yankees, people who had moved here from the east coast rather than Europe, prided themselves in their upright, Victorian behavior. Germans, with their beer gardens and breweries, were sure to damage the moral fiber of society. And here's my aunt damaging the moral fiber of society. [LAUGHTER] Right there. There she is. So, this is the atmosphere right before World War I. Okay? Now, Congress declared war on Germany in 1917. America was late in coming to the war. It's interesting because some accounts you read President Wilson really tried to keep us out of the war, but at the same time, behind the scenes, he was really preparing for it. And I'll get more to that later. 

And once it was declared, President Wilson was not at all hesitant to push for and enforce some of the most restrictive laws against free speech of any time in our history. These are some pictures I found at the Wisconsin Historical Society website. It is just a wealth of information. I really like this one. These are African Americans in World War I. This is Oscar Rennebohm. I think we all remember Rennebohm's drugstore with their delicious malts. Now, this one... [INAUDIBLE] Oh, that I don't recall. I was a malt drinker always. 

I find this interesting. The only information that was on this picture was women in uniform, they called this a uniform, women in uniform working for the war effort. If you look at her shoes, though, both these women have high heels on, and I'm wondering if maybe they were given uniforms in these factories to make them really feel like part of the war effort. Now, I'm guessing this is a sewing machine. Does anybody have any information on this because there was none with the picture, and I'm just guessing it's a sewing machine. Does anybody think this looks familiar to them? I usually find these audiences are way more informed than me. No? Well, I think it's a sewing machine because she has her foot on a pedal, and it has these big, you know, whatever you call those things on the side of a sewing machine. So, I'm thinking maybe they're making uniforms for the war or something. Yeah, I'm not sure. So, this all starts, for me, this book all starts way back in 1970-'71. 

I was an undergrad here. I had work-study job with Professor E. David Cronon, and he was researching the political climate in Milwaukee during World War I. So, he sent me to the Wisconsin Historical Society archives, and I had to read, on microfiche, old Milwaukee Sentinels. And some of the stuff I found was just bizarre. Some was just silly. For example, the renaming of sauerkraut liberty cabbage. [LAUGHTER] And hamburgers becoming liberty steak. [LAUGHTER] But other stories were not so funny. A cheesemaker in Monroe had a Molotov cocktail put into his mailbox because he refused to buy war bonds. These are posters from the time, and these I didn't get at the Historical Society. 

These I got offline, I mean online. Somebody was selling the originals for like $200. These were done by famous artists of the time, and they were meant to get people to buy bonds to finance the war. And everybody was expected to buy bonds. You were really suspect if you did not buy war bonds. You'll notice the theme in both of them is the same. There's a woman with a child here, here's the woman with the child. This is the dreaded Hun with his helmet here, and the cross is also indicative of the Kaiser. And this, of course, is the American soldier protecting her. So, you had to buy war bonds. 

There was no way you were going to get away without buying them. Two German professors were tarred and feathered in Ashland, Wisconsin. A German man was actually tracked down and hung in Illinois. Not here but in Illinois. The Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, which is still a lovely, lovely place for entertainment, was a favorite place for German language plays to be held. A machine gun was placed near the theater to keep German people out and their horrible plays. And German dances and gymnastics were canceled. After passage of the Espionage Act, German language newspapers were confiscated by the post office, and people grew afraid to say anything against the war. This is a picture, again, from the Historical Society of registering so-called enemy aliens. This started in 1914. 

And this is what I meant by even though Wilson seemed to be trying to keep us out of the war, this kind of stuff was already going on. So, in 1914, the Justice Department required all Germans who had not completely naturalization papers to register with the Justice Department. After preparing these lists for three years amidst a drumbeat of fear and propaganda, it was fairly easy for Wilson to get a declaration of war from Congress. 480,000 aliens were registered by the beginning of the war, and by the end, 4,000 had been arrested with little concrete evidence. Now, Wisconsin was really suspect because we had people like Bob La Follette. Look at him here. He's being depicted as getting all these German medals from this German soldier guy. Okay? Because he spoke out, he did not believe in the war, and he spoke out against war profiteering by armaments merchants. Okay? So, he got into all kinds of trouble. I could talk two hours on Bob La Follette. 

The sedition map, where disloyalty in Wisconsin chiefly centers. The shaded areas show the districts most infected with pro-Germanism. Okay? So, here we have Marathon County, we have these counties down here, and of course, anywhere near Milwaukee is just really suspect and Green County because of the cheesemakers. All the German cheesemakers and brewers. Okay? So this is another thing that went on, and then we have the many Liberty Loan parades. These parades were held to drum up support for the war and purchase of war bonds. Now, my research as an undergrad found that this kind of propaganda, it was all over the Milwaukee Sentinel, okay? But maybe the most chilling thing I found out was not on microfiche but from my own mother. She was seven years old when the war was declared in 1917. She lived in Milwaukee. Her whole family was German. 

Her grandparents had emigrated from Germany. When I asked her what she remembered about World War I, she said only two things. The first thing was Armistice Day. She was in a grocery store with her mom, and a lady ran up to her and grabbed her and hugged her and said my boy is coming home. The other thing she remembered were the book burnings. And she remembered German language books being burned in Milwaukee. This picture is from Baraboo, and it says here lies the remains of German in BHS, Baraboo High School. But I suspect this went on all over because she wouldn't have remembered it from Baraboo. She lived in Milwaukee. Well, being a fiction writer, there was no way I was ever going to let go of any of this information. 

So, there was more research. I spent many hours in the archives of the Historical Society looking for more stories but mostly pictures. At that time, I didn't know my family pictures existed, but the photographic archives at the Historical Society are just wonderful and you don't have to look at them on microfiche anymore. [LAUGHTER] You can actually look at them on your computer at home. So, I set my novel in Ashland, because that's where the two German professors had been tarred and feathered. But my fictional family is much like my mother's own family. They live in Milwaukee. The mother loves her homeland of Germany even though she hates the Kaiser. Father runs a grocery store. I don't know much about my grandparents. 

I never met them. They were passed away by the time I was born. I don't know if they were for or against the war, but the mother in my novel hates the fact that her son Carl has voluntarily gone off to fight for the allies. As the story begins, he has not written in a long time, and his last letter simply referred to the fact that his Division, the 32nd, was heading towards the front. The front is an ominous word that fills 12-year-old Adele, my main character's head, with fear and worry. And, in fact, the 32nd Division took heavy casualties in May of 1918, and it was made up of Wisconsin men. Because my novel's for kids, the main story is the bullying, the desire to be accepted by one's peers, and making good choices, but all of this happens within the atmosphere of the Jingoistic hysteria of World War I. Adele is a city girl. She feels stuck up north with her mother who decides to spend the entire summer in Ashland taking care of Adele's ailing uncle. Adele soon finds out that just being from Milwaukee makes you suspect. 

When her mother will not buy war bonds when this man comes to the door, she had already bought them in Milwaukee, she said I'm not buying them up here too, all sorts of bad things happen, and, ultimately, her decision leads to a dangerous situation. Now, if you think back to that sedition map that I showed you, you remember there were no German enclaves up in Ashland. That was a lot of Scandinavian people lived up there. So, I went to Ashland, and researching Ashland during the war was illuminating and fun. When I decided to write the novel, it was years after I had done the initial research for Professor Cronon, I wanted to get a feel of what Ashland was like in 1918. So, my husband and I went to Ashland, and I went to the local library to find pictures of what it looked like, mostly because I wanted the setting of my novel to be as accurate as possible. At that time, there was a ferry going from Ashland to Madeline Island, and so, of course, there's that picnic in the book with those fancy people and that fancy China. I just had to get that in there. The men wore suits and ties while the women served a picnic lunch on China dishes. And that is also a picture I found in Ashland of people on Madeline Island on holiday. 

But it was a troubled time in the US. Besides the war, the fall of 1918, right before Armistice was called, a terrible influenza broke out. This, again, is from the Historical Society. It's a picture of sick children, I think, possibly in a makeshift hospital. The flu seems to have hit first in Kansas that spring in training camps all over the US but was largely ignored until the massive outbreaks the following winter. The movement of men and troops all over the world, really, spread the disease. Of all the American men who died in Europe during the war, half of them died of influenza rather than the enemy. My main character and her mother spend the summer in Ashland to care for Uncle Mike, who is recovering from the flu. Uncle Mike lived on after his fishing partner passed away. I recently read that the flu epidemic took hold, when it took hold, health departments found it relatively easy to put restrictions on the movement of people, for example, requiring a certificate of health before getting on a train because their civil rights had largely been restricted during the war. 

So, to conclude then, my book, "Jingo Fever," is largely about growing up and making good choices, but it's also about the fear and intolerance that takes hold of a society during war. And I've recently heard from people of German ancestry that they, again, endured discrimination during World War II. I didn't know that. So, if any of you have those kind of stories, I'd love to hear them. So, I think that just about does it. I would like to save time for questions, comments, stories, whatever. Right here. >> I was originally in Oshkosh doing some genealogy and my grandparents were up there, and my grandfather, who was 38 at the time, had to register for the draft. He was born in Milwaukee. >> Oh, okay. 

>> But I thought that was kind of strange. He was so old. >> Yeah. I don't know. You just never know. [INAUDIBLE] >> The doctor that delivered my dad had an office in the German-American bank which was quickly changed to the American bank during the war. >> The American bank. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, a lot of people took the Ks out of their names. Changed their names, changed their last names, the spellings. 

That went on, I just found tons of stuff like that. The renaming of all the food that had anything in it that was German. Way back here. >> Some of my parents' friends who were children going to school in '14 to '17 in Milwaukee, there was a couple who had been going to public school in Milwaukee, all day German, it wasn't even an English classroom, and instantly when the war was declared they were suddenly thrust into whole English language. They didn't speak it. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> But it was just kind of instantly over night. Plus, the German language newspapers ceased publication. >> Yes. 

Yeah, they did. >> They weren't just the ones that were imported from Germany. The local Milwaukee German newspapers ceased publication. >> Yeah. Oh, by the way, before I forget, when you're done here, if you have time, the fourth floor has an excellent exhibit on this. There's a whole case on World War I, and you'll find that burned book, that picture is up there along with some other war bond posters. Not the ones I have. Go ahead. >> My mother's father was... [INAUDIBLE] He lived in Shawano. 

And so much pressure was put on him because he was German, he looked very German, he almost fought in France. >> Mm-hmm. >> He was gassed. He was gassed. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> Also, it was --. He went blind. >> Oh, my. >> So I remember my grandpa was sitting in the chair waving a hand in front of his eyes to see if he could see anything because what had happened to him, the social pressures against Germans about joining the army, and then in the army he got the gas and the -- caused him to go blind, and I grew up with a blind grandfather. 

>> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, sad story. >> Just one more little anecdote. A citizen of this community, Emma Glens, who lived to be 103 years old, I remember she had a reception, the mayor had a reception for her where people came to shake her hand. But Emma was a German language professor at the University of Wisconsin, and she was transferred immediately to teach business. >> Oh, really? >> They completely eliminated German language studies at the University of Wisconsin during World War I. >> I did read that a lot of universities stopped teaching German. >> Another thing, a question, you didn't mention, or maybe I didn't understand, you said there were aliens that were being registered but you didn't say what the criteria was. 

If you were simply German were you considered an alien who had to register? >> If you hadn't completed the naturalization process. If you had completed that process, you didn't need to register, but there were a lot of new immigrants still here in 1917 who had not completed that. And that's the 480,000, or whatever it was, they registered. Yeah. >> I just find it difficult to understand how a community like Milwaukee that is so heavily German would have a problem. Just the sheer numbers, wouldn't that simply... >> Well, that's what I thought too, but I think they were really trying to prove how patriotic they were. That's what came through in the Sentinel when I read it. Yeah, go ahead. >> They had sheer numbers in Polish and all kind of nationality. 

I grew up in Milwaukee for umpteen years. And my father-in-law got drafted at 29 years old. He was a farmer in South Dakota. He had to sell his farm. >> Uh-huh. >> But then my grandfather, he couldn't work on a federal project until he became a citizen in 1923. >> Oh. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Okay. 

Back here. >> So I live in a house over by Edgewood, and the guy who built it was a German professor. His name was --. >> Oh. >> I read a little bit about him, and there was an editorial in the paper challenging whether or not he was patriotic enough to be working for the University of Wisconsin. >> Oh, my god. >> And then it went on further than that. He was labeled an illegal alien because he didn't have nationalized US citizenship. >> Yeah. >> And all professors were required to wear "Buy Bonds" buttons on their coat lapels. 

>> I didn't know that. >> So, he put it on his butt and wore it. [LAUGHTER] >> Oh, that's a great story. >> And he was deported to Mexico. >> Oh, he was? >> He was deported and spent the next 20 years in Mexico. >> Oh, my gosh. Oh. That's really interesting. Yeah. Back here. 

>> Question, was La Follette of German ancestry or was his opposition to the war much more principle as I think a lot of people think most of his stands were? >> I actually don't know what his ancestry was. I will admit that. But it was policy for him. Yeah. He didn't think, I think he called it the war merchants were making money off young men's blood. Something like that. There's some quote like that. And Victor Berger too, from Milwaukee, who was an avowed socialist, he got into all kinds of trouble because he was against the war. Here. >> I was wondering, I think that the influenza took out the young adults and the younger people and not so much the older people. 

>> Really? I don't know. >> In terms of death. So I was wondering if you had heard that? >> That I don't know. But that could be because so many young people, like my aunt's first husband, he died in 1918 of influenza, and they were all young people. And, of course, the people in the war, most of them were, but I don't really know any statistics on the age groups of people who passed away from that. Back here. >> When I moved into a house in Green Bay, in the garage there was a poster, federal government poster, that said the Americanization of Wisconsin. >> Oh, wow. [LAUGHTER] >> So there must have been some federal money. >> Have you donated that to the museum yet? Or the Historical Society? >> Neville Museum in Green Bay. 

>> Oh, Neville. Oh, good. Good. Oh, wow. >> So there must have been some federal money. >> Mm-hmm. Oh, that's interesting. Right here in front. >> I'm probably one of the few in here, if any, of French ancestry. And I was told long before World War I, my ancestry in this state had a lot of enmity towards Germans. 

There's a long history of Franco-German wars. >> Mm-hmm. >> I just wonder if you found any evidence of roots in terms of the French ancestry in this state, in terms of the anti-German sentiment? >> Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. I don't know. >> That's all right. >> I didn't come across that, but it could be. >> It was there, I can assure you. [LAUGHTER] >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. 

>> I'm not familiar with the word Jingo. Is that a derogatory term? >> Okay, Jingoism, if you look in the dictionary, it gives some convoluted term like, oh I can't even remember. It's basically patriotism run amok. Okay? It's a phrase, I believe it was coined in the 1800s, patriotic chauvinism. That's what the dictionary called it. Patriotic chauvinism. So it's somebody who just takes the patriotic thing to the extreme, like renaming sauerkraut and renaming hot dogs and hamburgers and dachshunds. They renamed the dogs. They renamed everything. Anything that had German in it, they thought up a new word for. 

So, it's just basically patriotism run amok, but Jingo fever is a term her father uses in the book, because she asks him a question about why people are being so mean to German immigrants and German-Americans. She's an American. And he says, well, they've got Jingo fever. So that's something her dad made up. Back here. >> What does the term hyphenates mean in this context? >> Well, because it's German-American like we do now. We still do that with African-American, Irish-American, but to throw that word hyphenate at somebody was an insult. So, you're just a hyphenate. You're not a real American because you've got a different country before the word American. Yeah. 

Back here. >> Oscar Mayer in Madison, if I'm not mistaken, he is originally from Germany too. >> That could be. That could very well be. >> Because it was in Chicago which had major, major German. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> So, I kind of wonder if that company had some... >> Yeah, I didn't run across anything, but that doesn't mean it's not there. Yeah. 

>> Change the name of frankfurter to something else. >> Yeah, right. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, exactly. Back here. >> All these people giving anecdotes, I can't help but give one. University of Wisconsin was the first university in the country to offer Yiddish as a language. In 1916 they dropped the language at the university because they considered it a Germanic language. >> Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. All kinds of crazy stuff. 

And I ran across a picture many years ago that I couldn't find again of a Hammer the Hun Rally on State Street. And I'm going to do some more digging and try and find it. I don't remember where I saw it, which is the problem. But it was huge. It was a huge, huge group of people. They all had signs "Hammer the Hun." And I thought, wow, State Street has changed. [LAUGHTER] Okay. >> Was this kind of activity, the Jingoism, what was it like in World War II which wasn't that long after World War I. >> Well, that's what I found out from some people who, that's really interesting because when I was researching my book, I called, I don't know how many of you are familiar with the CCBC on campus, the Children's Cooperative Book Center, I was talking at that time to Ginny Moore Kruse who used to be the person who ran that library. And I was telling her about my book that I was working on, and she said, oh, my husband remembers World War II, and he lived in Milwaukee. 

And she said very similar things happened. And I didn't know that because I did not hear that from my mother. But maybe it was just, I don't know, in certain circles or something. >> I was about 25 years old. I was born in 1930. In 1965, I learned that we had interned Japanese into concentration camps. >> Oh, yeah. >> And that was kept very, very quiet. >> Right. Yeah. 

>> And if you want to read more about that, you can read "Snow Falling on Cedars." >> Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that one is known about, but there are other groups, smaller groups of people that were rounded up during World War II. And I just read that somewhere too that I didn't know about. There's a lot of stuff we don't know about. Back here. >> The Ku Klux Klan... >> Mm-hmm. >> Was very strong here in Madison, Wisconsin. >> Yeah. 

[INAUDIBLE] I found those pictures too a little bit later. You can find them on the Historical Society archives website. And the Klan pictures I decided not to use because they were from the 1920s and beyond, and I didn't think it fit my program. But that was pretty shocking. Yeah, yeah. Pretty shocking. >> When you talk about World War II, I remember that my uncle changed his last name which was German, he changed the spelling. >> Yeah. >> And when you first asked how many people here are of German ancestry and we raised our hands, I realized it's the first time in my life I'd ever done that because I have never been proud to be German. Hitler took all the fun out of that. 

[LAUGHTER] >> Oh, I know. >> I can't imagine that anyone of German ancestry has a mitigated pleasure in it. I can celebrate more readily my English or Swiss ancestry. Although, the more I learn about my Swiss ancestors, I'm not too happy with that either. But I think if we have a conscience, we realize that World War I and World War II we have a very war-mongering nation. There was a reason to be outraged. It was carried too far. I'm sure there were mean things done to Germans that shouldn't have been done. >> Right. >> But I don't find it easy to celebrate being German. 

>> Yeah. You know what? Neither do I. I'm only half German. My father was of Scottish ancestry, and I enjoy telling people about that a lot more. I know, I know. Yeah. Here. >> I would say I completely disagree. I grew up in a very German family and I take tremendous pride in my German ancestry. >> Well, good. 

You should. We really all should. There's so much that the German culture has given us in America, just tremendous, tremendous things. >> Thank you for recognizing me a second time. During World War II, my oldest sister had to inform the school in Union Grove High School of her nationality and where her parents were born. >> Mm-hmm. >> So, she did that. My parents were born in Russia. What is your nationality? I am German. The teacher said, no, you're not German. 

You are Russian. My sister came home and told my father. >> Uh-oh. >> The teacher says I'm Russian, I'm not German. My father said go back and tell the teacher if a cat has kittens in an oven, are they biscuits? [LAUGHTER] >> That's great. [LAUGHTER] Dale. >> We have some copies of "Jingo Fever," and, Stephanie, if you would sign them. >> I certainly would. >> They're available at the shop. And I encourage you, do not be put off by the fact that it's allegedly a young person's book because they say that about a lot of books now and the flavor and the tenor of this book is worth reading long past your 12 years old. 

>> And, Dale, I suspect some of these people have 12-year-olds in their life somewhere. Some of these people just might. >> Or bright eight-year-olds. >> Yeah, it depends. The publisher put ages 8 to 12 on it. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]    but they are an enhancement