The German Language Press Of The Americas

While Germans, the largest immigration group in the United States, contributed to the shaping of American society and left their mark on many areas from religion and education to food, farming, political and intellectual life, Americans have been instrumental in shaping German democracy after World War II. Both sides can claim to be part of each other's history, and yet the question arises whether this claim indicates more than a historical interlude in the forming of the Atlantic civilization. In this volume some of the leading historians, social scientists and literary scholars from both sides of the Atlantic have come together to investigate, for the first time in a broad interdisciplinary collaboration, the nexus of these interactions in view of current and future challenges to German-American relations.

Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America’s emerging national identity. Instead of thinking about early American culture and literature as evolving continuously as a singular entity, the contributions to this volume conceive of it as an ever-shifting and tangled “web of contact zones.” They present a society with a plurality of different native and colonial cultures interacting not only with one another but also with cultures and traditions from outside the colonies, in a “peculiar mixture” of Old World practices and New World influences. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Rosalind J. Beiler, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Marie Basile McDaniel, Philip Otterness, Liam Riordan, Matthias Schönhofer, and Marianne S. Wokeck.

This is the story of the rise and eventual disappearance of approximately thirty German weekly newspapers during a period of slightly more than eighty years. It describes the successes and difficulties encountered in maintaining a newspaper press directed at a minority group which was being slowly absorbed into the English-dominated pattern of Ontario. The First World War brought the German newspaper press to an abrupt end by government decree and although this prohibition lifted later, the German press in Ontario never completely recovered. It has remained, however, a fascinating tale out of Ontario's early history.

Though it will never be possible to establish an exact number, scholars of the German-American press have estimated that about 5000 newspapers and periodicals have been published in German in more than 300 years of German immigration to the United States. This collection of essays on various aspects of the German-American press shows clearly the role of that press in the process of acculturation of German immigrants on the one hand, and on the other, retention of some of the old institutions, most notably the German language. Bracketed between articles on the press of the colonial period and that of the present is a rich collection of essays on various aspects of the topic. While no one volume can adequately deal with all, or even nearly all, the aspects of the phenomenon, this contribution to the field of German-American Studies does present a rather broad spectrum of topics and, thus, serves as both a source of valuable information and an introduction to further work.

Wilhelm Wagner (1803-1877), son of Peter Wagner, was born in Dürkheim, Germany. He married Friedericke Odenwald (1812-1893). They had nine children. They emigrated and settled in Illinois. His brother, Julius Wagner (1816-1903) married Emilie M. Schneider (1820-1896). They had seven children. They emigrated and settled in Texas.

With the research of German-language children's and youth literature and its media associations in the period from 1900 to 1945 as well as the recording of all data in an online portal for research and visual analysis, an innovative contribution to the historiography of children's and youth literature is available. The introduction provides information on the criteria for inclusion, central sources, theoretical frameworks, and the spectrum of the media associations investigated. Part I assembles three overview articles on the media of radio, film and theater for children and young people as well as a contribution on the conception and development of the online portal. In the second part, 18 selected media alliances are presented, sorted into the categories pioneers conquer the new media - stage children migrate to radio and/or film - fairy tales in film and radio - classics in all media - school stories in the theater, book and on the screen - crime and scandal on the screen - political conquers book and film.