|
|
|
GERMAN-AMERICANS
IN NORTHWEST OHIO According to the 1990 US Census, 37.5% of the population of Ohio identify themselves as having German ancestry. A sampling of communities in Northwest Ohio shows that German is by far the dominant ethnic identification, ranging from 23.4% in Toledo to 31.3 % in Bowling Green to 40% in Perrysburg. The Bowling Green area telephone book contains name after name of German origin: Armbruster, Baumgartner, Deidrick, Ernsthausen, Fahle, Gottschalk, Hefflinger, Juergens, Kahlenberg, Ludwig, Meinhardt, Nagel, Ollendorf, Pfeifer, Reiman, Schempf, Thiel, Vogel, Wahl, Yoder, and Ziegler, just to name a few. Area place names reveal German roots as well: Glandorf, Leipsic, New Bavaria, and New Riegel are examples. Many towns such as Pemberville, Haskins, and Luckey, whose names do not betray German background, were populated by a majority of German-Americans in the nineteenth century. The German language was used in churches and schools. German-language newspapers flourished in many Northwest Ohio towns. Wood County cemeteries, including Pemberville Cemetery and Eisenhour Cemetery in Pemberville, and Fish Cemetery near New Rochester (also a German settlement), include numerous German gravestone inscriptions from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Local street names also reflect German settlement: Aufderstrasse Road, Zepernick Road, Klopfenstein Road, and Klotz Road. Despite the prevalence of German heritage in the area, little overt evidence of German culture remains. The German-Americans, being more numerous than any other single ethnic group, including the Irish and English, both influenced mainstream (English) American culture and did very well at adapting to it, not least under pressure to prove their American patriotism when the United States entered the war against Germany in 1917. Hence, German-Americans generally do not show their ethnic origins in day-to-day customs, partly because these customs have become mainstreamed, and partly because they have been forgotten, or at least are observed privately, not publicly. When German Americans do show their origins publicly, it happens at special events like the annual Oktoberfest put on by the German-American Festival Society at Oak Shade Grove in Oregon, or the Hamler Summerfest in Henry County. The version of German culture displayed at these events, however, is a concentration of certain highly marked practices, foods, and clothing, beer drinking, Schuhplattler dancing, bratwurst and sauerkraut, and southern German traditional costumes like dirndls and lederhosen. While such stereotypical customs provide enjoyment, they do not give us much insight into the actual experience of the Germans who came from various regions of Germany, at different times for numerous reasons, to settle in the inhospitable Great Black Swamp. Interest in family history is a step in the direction of such understanding, but unless it is informed by a historical, cultural, and political knowledge of why Germans left their homelands and how they lived in their new home, genealogy is a mere family tree, without reference to the soil that nurtured it or the other trees around it. Want To Know More About German-American Culture in NW Ohio?
|
|
|
SPONSORED
BY
   |
||
