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I 'AMERICA AND 
 GERMANY 
 
 CHARLES W. WENDTE, D.D. 
 
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 AMERICA AND 
 GERMANY 
 
 THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES W. WENDTE, D. D. 
 
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 BOSTON 
 
 25 BEACON STREET 
 
 1910 
 
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TO MY DEAR GERMAN MOTHER 
 
 MADAME JOHANNA WENDTE 
 
 FOR MANY YEARS IN BOSTON A TEACHER OF THE 
 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF HER NATIVE COUNTRY 
 
 numbering among the pupils who honored her 
 with their appreciation and friendship the Rev. 
 Theodore Parker, Mrs. EUza Buckminster Lee, 
 Rev. Charles T. Brooks, Miss Ellen Frothingham, 
 Miss Hannah Stevenson, Frank B. Sanborn, Mr. 
 and Mrs. F. H. Peabody, the Misses Ticknor, 
 Howe, Prescott, Choate, Lowell, Lawrence, 
 Welch, Putnam, Bowditch, Hovey and others 
 
 THIS LITTLE TREATISE IS DEDICATED ON THE 
 ATTAINMENT OF HER NINETIETH BIRTHDAY, 
 BY HER AFFECTIONATE AND GRATEFUL SON. 
 
America and Germany 
 
 THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 
 
 It was in the opening years of the 19th cen- 
 tury that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said to 
 his friend the Counsellor von Mueller, "Ger- 
 many is nothing, but every individual German 
 is much, and yet the Germans mistakenly 
 imagine the reverse. The German people must 
 be transplanted over the face of the whole 
 earth, like the ancient Jews, in order to fully 
 develop the good that is in them for the salva- 
 tion of the nations." 
 
 So contemptuously thought the greatest mind 
 Germany has ever produced of the political 
 aspirations of his countrymen! 
 
 What a suggestive commentary on his opinion 
 is afforded by the spectacle which greets us to- 
 day in that marvel of modern politics the new 
 
2 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 German Empire, whose institution dates back 
 less than forty years. 
 
 The youngest born of the sisterhood of great 
 European states the German Empire has taken 
 her place among them with a conscious dignity 
 and prestige justified by her military, industrial 
 and political importance. 
 
 With a domain of over 200,000 square miles, 
 the population of Germany, in spite of heavy 
 emigration, has increased by over 15 millions 
 in the last 35 years, and now numbers nearly 
 70 millions, making Germany second only to 
 Russia in point of numbers in Europe. Her 
 great cities have doubled and trebled in popula- 
 tion in the same interval of time. Berlin, with 
 over two million inhabitants boasts a more rapid 
 growth than Chicago. Hamburg, the chief sea- 
 port of the Empire, with 1,000,000 population, 
 is larger than Boston. Its docks and commer- 
 cial facilities are incomparably finer, while its 
 ocean-trade is only excelled in Europe by Lon- 
 don and Liverpool. In the same period the 
 volume of Germany's exports has doubled, the 
 bulk of its sea-going commerce twice doubled, 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 3 
 
 and the tonnage of its steamships multiplied by 
 ten. The increase in national wealth during 
 the two decades between 1884- 1904 is put by 
 the colonial Secretary, Herr Dernburg, at 30,- 
 000 million marks, or 7,500 million dollars. 
 The volume of trade (exports and imports) in 
 1908 was 15^ milliards of marks, as against 12^ 
 milliards by the United States, and 21 milliards 
 by Great Britain. Gerrnany is undoubtedly soon 
 to be the wealthiest nation in Europe. 
 
 The industrial expansion of the Empire has 
 been even more remarkable. Aided by an un- 
 surpassed system of industrial and technical 
 education Germany is rapidly becoming the 
 leading manufacturing and commercial nation 
 of the world. Her superiority in the chemical 
 and electrical industries is already acknowl- 
 edged. But she aspires to attain an equal 
 supremacy in every other department of me- 
 chanical production, and to make her familiar 
 trade-mark "Made in Germany" the guarantee 
 of superiority in workmanship and success in 
 competition. Already she is crowding, if not 
 distancing England, as well as our own country, 
 
4 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 in the markets of the world, and has in reaHty 
 but one rival to fear in the race for commercial 
 supremacy, namely, the United States. 
 
 Undertaking great works of internal improve- 
 ment like the railroad tunnel under the St. 
 Gothard Alp, and the North Sea, and Rhine- 
 Danube canals, with a public administration, 
 both national and civic, unequalled for honesty, 
 economy and efficiency; an army which is gen- 
 erally admitted to be the most perfectly equipp- 
 ed, disciplined and officered in Europe, and 
 more recently also a navy which, second in 
 formidableness only to that of Great Britain, is 
 creating apprehension in the heart of that cent- 
 ury-long mistress of the seas; rich in mineral 
 and agricultural wealth; with still greater re- 
 sources of muscle, brain and morale; pre-emi- 
 nent amongst the nations of our time in education 
 and science, in literature and artistic activity — 
 such is the Germany of our day! Such is this 
 baby-giant whose nursery-cap was the spiked 
 helmet, whose strengthening syrups were pow- 
 der andfiron, its infant playthings the sword and 
 needle-gun, but which is rapidly graduating 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 5 
 
 from the rough school of war to devote itself 
 more and more to those peaceful pursuits and 
 altruistic services to mankind to which its 
 maturer life is to be dedicated. For though 
 General Moltke's word come true, and Ger- 
 many must guard with the sword for a century 
 the rights and privileges she won by brilliant 
 military campaigns in a few weeks or months, 
 yet the genius of the German people is for 
 peace, not war. Their true mission to man- 
 kind is not one of menace and exploitation, but 
 of amity and co-operation in the high task of 
 enlightening, upbuilding and civilizing the 
 world. 
 
 This is testified to by two thousand years of 
 German history, by the exigencies of their 
 political situation, and the natural mildness, fair- 
 ness and phlegmatism of the German character. 
 It was with truthfulness that the present Ger- 
 man emperor declared a few years since that 
 during his reign he had been chiefly concerned 
 to preserve peace between the empire and its 
 sister states of Europe. "War-Lord" as he is 
 prone to call himself, it will be his great distinc- 
 
6 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 tion in history that, despite its formidable arma- 
 ment, no war has been waged by Germany 
 during the 40 years which have elapsed since 
 the Franco-Prussian Campaign. Can we say as 
 much of England or our own country ? 
 
 The legitimate ambition of Germany is to 
 become a united, self-reliant and prosperous 
 nation, the greatest manufacturing country in 
 Europe, the leader in international commerce, 
 the richest, most highly educated and contented 
 of peoples, and a dominant influence for civili- 
 zation and fraternity in the world. Now these 
 honorable aims of a high-minded people de- 
 mand as the first condition of their realization 
 a long period of peaceful development. The 
 only excuse for Germany's huge standing army 
 and navy is the defence they afford her domestic 
 industries and national institutions. Unlike 
 Great Britain and the United States, whose 
 fortunate isolation from hostile neighbors makes 
 large military armaments unnecessary, Ger- 
 many is surrounded on every side by powerful 
 and jealous nations of different race, speech 
 and religion, and is incessantly subject to their 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 7 
 
 resentment and hatred and exposed to their 
 attacks. Under such circumstances, and until 
 happily, the era of a general disarmament and 
 peaceful arbitration of national differences shall 
 dawn upon the world, a large standing army 
 would seem to be imperative for Germany. It 
 is not necessary for my purpose to dwell upon 
 the better aspects of this militarism, and to 
 enumerate the various advantages which accrue 
 to Germany from its discipline and service. 
 These may all be granted, and yet the affirma- 
 tion truthfully made that, notwithstanding all 
 that can be said of its necessity and its compen- 
 sation, the German army and navy are a terrible 
 economic burden and moral evil, a hindrance 
 to the higher welfare of the nation, a menace to 
 its political freedom, and ever threaten to em- 
 broil Germany in her relations with the other 
 nations of the earth. To become the greatest 
 manufacturing country in Europe, to live on 
 good terms with other nations, especially with 
 France and Russia, to engage in honorable 
 commercial rivalry with England, Japan and 
 the United States, to extend the sphere of Ger- 
 
8 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 man influence in China, South America, Turkey, 
 Asia Minor and Africa — all this demands, first 
 of all, a continuance of the policy of peace and 
 comity with the nations of the world. 
 
 Even more essential is this policy to the 
 internal development of the German Empire. 
 The unification of the latter is, after all, more 
 external and sentimental than real. Germany 
 remains, as yet, a very heterogeneous political 
 conception. The elimination of certain minor 
 members of its former loose aggregation of 
 states, as a result of the Prussian-Austrian war 
 of 1866, has still left Germany after the lapse 
 of half a century an imperfectly amalgamated 
 federation of twenty-six sovereign and inde- 
 pendent states. It still has its minor Saxon 
 duchies, its elder and junior branches of the 
 illustrious family of Reuss, its Waldeck and 
 Lippe, and other petty principalities. The 
 imperial administration has to contend with a 
 deal of particularist feeling and jealousy, 
 especially in Bavaria. To these elements of 
 weakness may be added the open disloyalty of 
 such undigested elements as the Poles and 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 9 
 
 Alsatians, and the great religious division be- 
 tween the three-fifths of Protestants and two- 
 fifths Roman Catholics in the Empire which so 
 unfortunately disturbs the councils and arrests 
 the unification of the nation. A matter of 
 even graver concern is the growing power and 
 menace to its present institutions of the Social 
 Democrats, in whose demands are uttered the 
 increasing consciousness of the plain people of 
 Germany of their own importance to its pro- 
 ductive power, and their right to a larger share 
 of the rewards of labor, the privileges of life, 
 and the administration of the government. 
 
 With less than one-third of the population of 
 the Empire now engaged in agriculture Ger- 
 many is coming to depend more and more on 
 other countries — Russia, Austria, America, 
 and the Balkan provinces for its food supply. 
 With an annual increase in population of 800,- 
 000, the number of those whose bread must be 
 purchased from other nations increases annu- 
 ally by a million at least. One-fifth of her 
 bread-stuffs are now imported. By 1925 one- 
 half will be. Deficient in raw materials for her 
 
10 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 industrialism Germany must in large degree 
 import the iron, copper, wool, and flax, and 
 altogether the cotton and silk used in her 
 manufactures. German industry, intelligence, 
 inventiveness, and scientific and technical train- 
 ing convert these into valuable products in the 
 markets of the v^orld, and it is this difi^erence in 
 values by which the nation profits and sustains 
 itself. To assure cheap food and constant 
 employment for the army of workers in its 
 industrial hives it must, therefore, cultivate 
 friendly relations with other nations. 
 
 Every consideration of private and domestic 
 welfare, of internal assimilation and develop- 
 ment, and commercial expansion in other coun- 
 tries, would seem to make a continuance of the 
 present policy of peace imperative for Germany. 
 It would be an evil hour for herself and for 
 humanity if, goaded by short-sighted military 
 leaders, or to bolster up feudal institutions and 
 dynastic interests which no longer serve a use- 
 ful purpose, or misled by competitive greed, or 
 from a desire to distract by a foreign war the 
 attention of her people from needed domestic 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 11 
 
 reforms — Germany were to become disloyal to 
 her ideals of peace and fraternity, and engage in 
 what our late Secretary of State, John Hay, 
 justly termed that "most ferocious and futile of 
 human follies" — war. In their prompt and 
 effective recognition of this truth the German 
 Socialist deputies, who not long ago sent a 
 telegram to the labor members of the British 
 House of Commons pledging them their best 
 efforts to avert the threatened increase of naval 
 armaments by Germany, and to maintain a 
 good understanding between the two countries, 
 acted in a patriotic and statesmanlike manner, 
 proving themselves loyal to the best interests of 
 their country and their kind. 
 
 In the light of this and similar action taken 
 by the working-people of various countries, it 
 would appear as if the final and decisive act 
 which is to establish the world's peace may not 
 proceed from governments, or parliaments, or 
 world-congresses, however useful these may be, 
 but from the plain people of the world, the 
 working classes, so-called, who have the most 
 to fear and suffer from war — all of whose 
 
12 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 higher and enduring interests are bound up 
 with the continuance and permanence of inter- 
 national justice and brotherhood. When this 
 numerically predominant element in every nation 
 comes to realize this fully and completely, it 
 will put an end to overgrown military estab- 
 lishments, which not only bring upon the 
 laboring classes the evils of foreign aggression, 
 but keep them in subjection and misery at 
 home, and add enormously to their burdens 
 and their toil. Universal Peace means the 
 redemption of the toilers, the overthrow of 
 tyranny in state and church, the establishment 
 of juster standards of work and wages, the 
 increase of social comforts and privileges, and 
 that growing equality of social conditions which 
 springs from the growth of the spirit of brother- 
 hood among the nations and peoples of the earth. 
 Thus far we have spoken of Germany, and 
 its relations with the other nations of the earth. 
 It remains to treat of the reciprocal sentiments 
 and obligations which it may justly claim from 
 its sister nations, and especially from the United 
 States of America. 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 13 
 
 Any adequate exposition of this matter must 
 begin with the recognition that Americans are 
 themselves very largely of German origin and 
 descent. Without going back to the root- 
 sources of our racial history, and striving to 
 shov^^ that both Anglo- and German-Americans 
 have, for the most part, a common Germanic or 
 Teutonic ancestry, it is sufficient for our pur- 
 pose to cite certain facts from the statistics of 
 German immigration into this country w^hich 
 disclose to w^hat an extent we are correlated as 
 a people with our sister nation across the sea. 
 Since the first settlement of this continent six 
 million German immigrants have landed on our 
 shores, and among all the varied racial elements 
 of which our population is composed there is 
 not one, except the original English stock, which 
 has made so large and beneficent a contribution 
 to our national welfare as the Germans. At 
 first only a few individuals entered the American 
 colonies from Germany, but presently they 
 began to arrive in companies. William Penn, 
 the greatest statesman of our earlier annals, 
 went to Frankfurt on the Mayne and "there 
 
14 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 left the invitation that quickly filled his peace- 
 ful and liberal province of Pennsylvania with 
 the swarms of Teutons, which as early as then 
 gave Benjamin Franklin fears of a German 
 conquest of America." At the outbreak of the 
 Revolutionary War Franklin estimated that 
 100,000 Germans were in Pennsylvania. By 
 the year 1775 there were 225,000 in the United 
 States. The tide of immigration, avoiding 
 Puritan New England, turned to the Carolinas, 
 Maryland and Georgia. Even in New York 
 the Dutch, a closely related branch of the Teu- 
 tonic family, made a notable lodgement, and 
 lent their name as a designation for all the 
 German immigrants in the United States. In 
 those early days there was among native-born 
 Americans no nice discrimination of ethnologi- 
 cal differences. All men and women of Teu- 
 tonic stock were roughly grouped together, and 
 denominated, with ill-concealed contempt, "the 
 Dutch", a people concerning whom our school 
 geographies informed us that they were hope- 
 lessly obtuse and phlegmatic, and given over to 
 beer-drinking, smoking, and other gross and 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 15 
 
 sensuous pleasures. The writer well recalls 
 that fifty years ago in Boston he was subjected 
 to no little scorn and persecution by his play- 
 mates because of his German, or as they termed 
 it, his "Dutch" parentage. When, in the public 
 streets, his mother would address her little son 
 in her native tongue, he would clutch her gown 
 and shamefacedly implore her not to speak 
 in German and expose them to ridicule. But 
 after Sadowa and Sedan it was another story, 
 and every German-American child was proud to 
 acknowledge his lineage, and declare that next 
 to his birth amid the free institutions and glori- 
 ous national ideals of the American republic, he 
 prized most his descent from German parents, 
 and his inheritance of the language, literature, 
 science and art, the domestic virtues and im- 
 pressive history — in a word, the spirit and 
 genius of his German ancestry. 
 
 The one million of Germans in this country 
 at the beginning of the i8th century were re- 
 inforced by millions more when, with the open- 
 ing of the Great West, there began that great 
 hegira to the vast and fertile regions beyond the 
 
16 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 AUeghanies and the Mississippi which redeemed 
 their solitudes to the high uses of civiHzation, 
 and afforded economic comfort, social oppor- 
 tunity and political freedom to great multitudes 
 of Europeans to whom the industrial and politi- 
 cal conditions of their own countries had become 
 intolerable. Among these vast hordes of immi- 
 grants none were better equipped for this colon- 
 izing task than the German settlers. Industri- 
 ous, mild-mannered, frugal and thrifty, devoted 
 to their family life, eager to obtain the best 
 educational advantages for their children, simple 
 in their pleasures, ardently devoted to political 
 and spiritual freedom, it was to the German 
 element in their population that the material 
 prosperity, prevailing intelligence and sturdy 
 civic virtues of our Western States, especially in 
 great centers like Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cin- 
 cinnati and Chicago, have been in large degree 
 owing. It was the German-American vote 
 which assured the first election of Abraham 
 Lincoln, kept Missouri in the Union, and saved 
 us from the worst effects of the free-silver craze. 
 Always when the appeal has been made to its 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 17 
 
 reason and conscience the German elements in 
 our midst have nobly responded, ready with vote 
 and treasure and lifeblood to uphold the insti- 
 tutions and vindicate the ideals of their adopted 
 country. They fought in our great wars, under 
 the leadership of Herkimer and Muhlenberg, 
 Steuben and De Kalb, of Sigel, Osterhaus and 
 Schurz; they bore devoted testimony for human 
 freedom on the prairies of Kansas and the wild- 
 erness in Virginia. General Washington's body 
 guard consisted of Pennsylvania Germans. The 
 first continental troops to arrive for the relief of 
 Boston were a German regiment from Penn- 
 sylvania, which reached that city on the i8th 
 of July, 1775, only 32 days after Congress had 
 called the American colonists to arms. The 
 first troops which the Southern colonists sent to 
 the main army in New England were Germans 
 from Virginia. They marched 600 miles in 54 
 days over bad roads, and General Washington, 
 when he beheld them marching well-armed and 
 with soldierly bearing into his camp at Cam- 
 bridge, sprang from his horse to grasp their 
 hands, while tears of joy and gratitude filled 
 
18 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 his eyes. It was the bravery of the Pennsyl- 
 vania Sharpshooters, a German regiment under 
 the command of Col. John Peter Koechlin, 
 v^hich caused the battle of Long Island to be 
 called "The Thermopylae of the American 
 Revolution." "These men," narrates an Ameri- 
 can historian, "stood fast, and did not waver 
 until 79 men out of one company were killed, 
 and the rest of the army had completed its 
 retreat. Long Island was the Thermopylae of 
 the Revolution, and the Pennsylvania Germans 
 were its Spartans." During our Civil War there 
 were 200,000 Germans enrolled in the Union 
 armies, a larger contingent than was furnished 
 by any other foreign race in our midst. 
 
 To consider only the material advantages 
 which our country derived from this friendly 
 invasion of Teutons, it may be affirmed that no 
 other body of immigrants ever brought so much 
 wealth into the American community or were in 
 themselves such a source of enrichment to it. 
 Friederich Kapp, an eminent authority on this 
 subject, as the outcome of forty years of obser- 
 vation and experience, estimated that each of 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 19 
 
 these German immigrants brought with him to 
 this country on an average, at least ^150. This 
 computation was later confirmed by the United 
 States Immigration Commissioners in New 
 York. Multiply this sum of $1^0 by the 
 millions of arrivals on American soil and the 
 figures grow formidable. But the German 
 emigrant not only brought a fortune into the 
 country, he was a fortune in himself. His 
 muscle and brain power, his sobriety, industry 
 and thrift, estimated by economic standards, 
 were computed by Kapp to be worth from 800 
 to 1300 dollars per capita. The nearly two 
 million and a half of Germans who came to this 
 country during the fifty-two years between 18 19 
 and 1 87 1 represented a money value of at least 
 2250 millions of dollars. These immigrants 
 from Germany belonged almost entirely to the 
 middle-class of society; that is, they represented 
 its best working elements. Already in 1607 
 the aristocracy of Virginia imported German 
 craftsmen to fashion their agricultural imple- 
 ments and make their glass. U. S. Census 
 reports, which we cannot here quote in detail, 
 
20 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 show that of all the immigrants from foreign 
 countries the Germans were the best skilled in 
 trades and handicrafts. The first iron and 
 glass produced in this country were made by 
 Germans. 
 
 As agriculturists they were even more remark- 
 able. In every industry dealing with the ex- 
 ploitation of the soil, in farming, fruit and viti- 
 culture, forestry, sheep and cattle-raising and 
 dairy products, the German settlers were fore- 
 most, and rendered immense service in the 
 development of the material resources of their 
 new home. Such has been the material con- 
 tribution made by our sister nation across the 
 sea to the settlement of our country and its 
 growth and development in good citizenship. 
 
 Those eminent students of German life in 
 America, Profs. Julius Goebel and A. B. Faust, 
 practically agree that in the year 1900 there 
 were between seven and eight million persons in 
 the United States of German parentage. Prof. 
 Faust makes the conservative estimate that 
 between 18 and 19 millions, or about 27% of 
 the total white population of our country is of 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 21 
 
 German descent, as compared with 20^ millions 
 derived from purely English stocks, and 14 
 millions from Scotch-Irish races. One person 
 in every four among us is thus descended in 
 whole or in part from German ancestors. 
 
 Mr. Bryce, in his admirable treatise on our 
 American Republic, is inclined to under-rate 
 the German element in our population because 
 it has not produced more really great names, 
 not over half a dozen in two centuries. It is 
 possible, however, that to have contributed to 
 America's development so many generations of 
 agricultural toilers, skilful artisans, devoted 
 home-builders, and loyal citizens may outweigh a 
 score of geniuses and great men. 
 
 The number of highly-educated Germans — 
 university professors, teachers, lawyers, doctors, 
 artists and the like — who emigrated to this 
 country has been comparatively small. It 
 reached its maximum during the years preced- 
 ing and following the political agitation of 1848 
 in Germany. To the cultivated Germans the 
 United States, had, until recently, little induce- 
 ment to offer. The vast majority who came 
 
22 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 to this country were plain people actuated by 
 a desire to improve their personal condition, 
 enjoy a larger political and religious freedom, 
 and save themselves and their children from a 
 detested military service. 
 
 Yet we may not forget in this review the intel- 
 lectual and moral impulses our country has 
 received from its German immigrants, the 
 important service rendered by great merchants 
 like Jacob Astor, Anthony Drexel and August 
 Belmont; by captains of industry such as the 
 bridge-builder Roebling, who swung the great 
 Brooklyn Bridge across the East River, and 
 spanned the gorge at Niagara with tenuous 
 filaments of wire; by Werner, founder of the 
 great printing establishment at Akron, Ohio, 
 second in size only to that maintained by the 
 national government at Washington; Henry 
 Villard, builder of railroads and upbuilder of 
 commonwealths; Spreckles, sugar king of Hawaii 
 and California; Lux and Miller, cattle and land 
 magnates of the Pacific Coast; Weyerhauser, the 
 largest owner of timber land in the United States; 
 Sutro, who built the tunnel which made the fabu- 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 28 
 
 lous wealth of the Comstock Lode accessible; 
 Frick and Schwab, Carnegie's trusted Heuten- 
 ants in the steel industry; Steinmetz, Edison's 
 co-worker and peer in invention; Studebaker, 
 whose establishment turns out 100,000 vehicles 
 annually, including 10,000 automobiles; Heinz, 
 with his 57 varieties dear to the housewife's 
 heart; the great German Breweries, employing 
 thousands of men; Schumacher, pioneer in the 
 oatmeal industry; Boldt, builder and host of the 
 Waldorf-Astoria and Bellevue-Stratford Hotels; 
 Weber, Knabe and Steinway, representing an 
 army of Germans employed in the manufacture 
 of pianos; Brill, of the electrical works bearing 
 his name. Such are a few only of the German 
 immigrants whose inventive and administrative 
 genius has enriched American Life. Dr. Klo- 
 psch, editor and proprietor of the Christian 
 Herald, by his appeals brought in a return of 
 2^ million dollars for international charity. 
 Henry Bergh, in New York, was the eloquent 
 voice for dumb animals and wrought miracles 
 of mercy. James Lick, a German innkeeper of 
 San Francisco, gave away millions for human- 
 
24 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 itarian causes, and reared the great telescope 
 on Mt. Hamilton that bears his name and at 
 whose foot he lies buried. In like manner other 
 Germans among us have given great sums for 
 education and charity. 
 
 Still more noteworthy are the intellectual and 
 moral treasures with which our German fellow- 
 citizens have enriched the American community. 
 Jacob Leisler, second governor of New York, 
 called together in 1670 the first Continental 
 Congress for mutual conference and co-opera- 
 tion between the American colonies, and died an 
 early martyr for the great principles of self- 
 government and good citizenship. The first 
 public protest against slavery was framed in 
 1688 by German Quakers in Pennsylvania. 
 Jacob Sauer, in 1743, printed at Germantown, 
 Pa., the first Bible which appeared on this con- 
 tinent in a European tongue, John Eliot's earlier 
 version having been in an Indian dialect. 
 2,000 diflTerent German works were printed in 
 the United States during the i8th century. 
 Francis Lieber safely guided our national 
 government during the great civil war through 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 25 
 
 the shoals and quicksands of international law; 
 Commodore Hassler in the Geodetic survey and 
 Fernow in the Forestry Department laid the 
 foundation for the conservation efforts of today. 
 A long list of educators — scientific, philosophi- 
 cal, religious — from Carl Follen, Agassiz, and 
 Beck of an earlier generation to Hilgard, Mun- 
 sterberg, Von Hoist, Francke, Jagemann and 
 Goebel in our own day, have wrought mightily 
 for the intellectual uplift of the nation. Emi- 
 nent physicians like Wister, Pulte, Roelker and 
 Wesselhoeft; artists like Leutze, Bierstadt, 
 Mosler, Carl Marr, Toby Rosenthal, Diehlman 
 and Reinhart, and popularizers of art like Louis 
 Prang, were prophets of the ideal among us. 
 The Dome of the Capitol at Washington, the 
 U. S. Treasury Building and the superb Con- 
 gressional Library, the Waldorf-Astoria in New 
 York and the huge passenger station in St. Louis 
 are among the edifices designed by German 
 architects and adorned by German artists. 
 
 Among the public men whose efforts have 
 been conspicuously devoted to promote the cause 
 of international peace and amity none are better 
 
26 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 worthy of commemoration than the late Freder- 
 ick W. Holls, Secretary of the American dele- 
 gation to the Hague Peace Conference, and one 
 of its leading spirits, and Congressman Richard 
 Bartholdt, President of the Interparliamentary 
 Union. It is interesting to note that in Presi- 
 dent Taft's Cabinet three of the Secretaries, G. 
 von Meyer, Charles Nagel and R. A. Ballinger, 
 are of German descent. 
 
 But it is the art of music in America to which 
 they have made the most important contribu- 
 tion. The names of Carl Bergman, Theodore 
 Thomas, Carl Zerrahn, Anschutz, Damrosch 
 and Kneisel, Seidl and Sousa, among orchestral 
 conductors, may just be cited with those of great 
 histrionic artists like Henrietta Sonntag, Ma- 
 terna, Lucca, Gerster, Gadski and Schuman- 
 Heink. 
 
 Last of all to be named, because the greatest 
 of the sons of Germany in our midst, is Carl 
 Schurz, whose intellectual abilities, personal 
 character and public services remain one of the 
 most inspiring traditions of our American na- 
 tional life — the thinker, student, and author. 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 27 
 
 the patriot and soldier, the ideaHst in poHtics, 
 the eloquent apostle of human rights and the 
 universal brotherhood of man. 
 
 In estimating; the intellectual and moral con- 
 tribution made by the German immigrant to his 
 adopted country we must bear in mind the tre- 
 mendous disadvantages under which he labored 
 in a strange land, amid unfamiliar political and 
 social institutions, and the difficulties of a 
 foreign tongue. These initial trials were of 
 themselves exhausting to body and mind. But 
 to them were added the fierce struggle for exis- 
 tence in new communities, or in the profound 
 isolation of the primitive wilderness, which left 
 him little strength for the higher pursuits of 
 human existence, or even the exercise of his 
 political rights and duties. Above all, his un- 
 familiarity with the English language was a 
 serious handicap. Few, very few, have been 
 able, notwithstanding their years of residence in 
 this country, to acquire such a mastery of its 
 accent and idioms as every American-born 
 child possesses. What consideration could they 
 hope for, to what influence could they attain in 
 
28 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 the social and political world when their broken 
 and blundering speech exposed them to mis- 
 judgment and ridicule ? 
 
 How many, too, found their education, though 
 obtained in the best schools in Europe, of little 
 avail to them in the cruder professional and 
 social life of the land of the reaper and cotton- 
 gin, and the Almighty Dollar! If the story of 
 the physical deprivations, mental anguish, and 
 worldly disappointment and failure of many of 
 the most cultivated of these immigrants could be 
 adequately told, it would form one of the most 
 pathetic and moving chapters in the history of 
 the occupation of America. 
 
 Yet, despite all these disadvantages, what 
 other foreign race has made a larger contribution 
 to the higher interests of our American Repub- 
 lic ? If the Germans among us have not always 
 displayed the energy, self-reliance and self- 
 restraint which characterize the American type 
 of manhood, they have been happily free from 
 the restlessness and recklessness which too often 
 accompany and mar these qualities. The 
 German, with centuries of civilization behind 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 29 
 
 him in his native land, brought to this country 
 very desirable elements of stability, social cul- 
 ture and artistic tastes with v^hich to counter- 
 balance our national impatience and excessive 
 devotion to the material interests of life. 
 
 Von Hoist, an eminent German-American 
 writer on political and social questions, holds 
 that in two other ways the German immigration 
 has helped American society. 
 
 First, by its genial example it mitigated the 
 severity of the Puritan Sabbath, and brought 
 about a more rational and liberal observance of 
 the day. This we admit, and yet, as one who 
 in his earlier days knew something of the bleak- 
 ness and rigor of a New England Sunday, the 
 writer does not hesitate to declare that as com- 
 pared with the present headlong tendency to 
 convert our day of rest, meditation and domestic 
 felicity into a mere opportunity for pleasures 
 and dissipations of a lower order, exhausting to 
 both body and mind, the staid and religious 
 Sabbath of the Puritan and Quaker was more 
 elevating, more refining, and better for the 
 physical health and moral uplift of our people 
 
30 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 than the ever-increasing Hcense and frivolity 
 of the American Sunday as we behold it today. 
 Again, Von Hoist thinks that for bringing 
 about the substitution of beer-drinking for the 
 former use of more ardent spirituous liquors, 
 the German settlers among us deserve the 
 gratitude of the American people. In this also 
 there is truth. Yet that substitution has not 
 been altogether a blessing, since it has led 
 multitudes of Americans who were quite free 
 from the drink-habit to the use of beer as a 
 beverage, to the injury both of their health and 
 their pocket. No one has more eloquently 
 denounced this beer-drinking habit than the 
 Germans themselves. Thus Martin Luther 
 said: "Our country has its devil. Our German 
 devil is a good wine-skin.'' "The man who in- 
 vented beer-brewing was a pest to Germany — 
 I have prayed God that he might destroy the 
 whole beer-brewing industry." His fellow re- 
 former Melancthon wrote: "We Germans are 
 swilling ourselves to poverty, are swilling our- 
 selves to hell." In our day the witnesses in- 
 crease against this national evil. Said Bis- 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 31 
 
 marck: "If it were possible to extend the field 
 of legislation so that protection could be aflForded 
 the workmen against the demon of drink — 
 this Diabolus Germanicus — a large portion of 
 the social question would be solved." Kaiser 
 William II has repeatedly borne similar testi- 
 mony. The voice of the German University 
 teacher also is uplifted against this canker that 
 is eating out the marrow of the German people. 
 Indeed, the scientific arguments against the use 
 of alcohol as a beverage are now largely derived 
 from German chemists and physicians. When 
 the late Professor Otto Pfleiderer returned to 
 his native country from his last American visit 
 he made an address to the student body in 
 Berlin in the course of which he is reported to 
 have said that if Germany was ever distanced 
 in the race for industrial and commercial su- 
 premacy by its great rivals Japan and the 
 United States, it would be because of the great 
 abstemiousness of these nations in the matter 
 of alcoholic drink. Whatever may have been 
 the case in the past, it is not now the Americans 
 who have to learn from their German fellow- 
 
32 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 citizens how to drink; it is the Germans who 
 must learn from the abstemious Americans how 
 not to drink. The comparatively temperate 
 habits of the people of the United States do not 
 arise, in the main, from the use of milder bever- 
 ages, but from the self-restraint and self-denial 
 of the American citizen, and his increasing pre- 
 occupation with higher intellectual and ethical 
 interests. The gospel needed for today is not 
 "personal liberty," which is too often a mere 
 sophistry, but observance of the law, obedience 
 to the will of the majority, and consideration 
 for the welfare of the community as a whole — 
 the foundation principles of our republican 
 institutions. It would be well for the Germans 
 in this country if they realized more keenly how 
 their mistaken identification of "personal lib- 
 erty" with the unlimited gratification of a mere 
 animal appetite lessens the esteem in which they 
 are held by their American fellow citizens, makes 
 them the allies and victims of unscrupulous 
 manufacturers and vendors of alcoholic stimu- 
 lants, and greatly decreases their influence for 
 good in the American community. There are 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 33 
 
 encouraging signs that the German element 
 among us is beginning to appreciate this, and 
 to take higher ground in the discussion and 
 settlement of this question. 
 
 In other departments of American life the 
 influence of German ideas and German senti- 
 ments has been less equivocally exerted. How 
 beautiful is German home and family life, with 
 its strong sense of duty, its tender affections, its 
 simple pleasures, its charming hospitalities, its 
 love of art and song. If the Germans among 
 us had done nothing else than to establish in 
 our homes the delightful Christmas festival, 
 which the Puritan commonwealth looked upon 
 with suspicion as a popish observance, it would 
 deserve our unstinted gratitude. How cheerless 
 was Christmas Day fifty years ago in New 
 England! My father, when shortly after his 
 arrival Christmas Eve approached, hid a hatchet 
 under his coat, and, at nightfall went out into 
 what were then the wilds of Roxbury, cut down 
 a little pine tree, and bore it joyously home to 
 his young wife. Together they trimmed it with 
 lights and spangles, and when the holy hour 
 
34 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 drew near they stood with clasped hands and 
 streaming eyes before their Httle Christmas tree, 
 two lonely exiles and strangers in Puritan Bos- 
 ton, keeping in spiritual sympathy with their 
 kindred in the far-off Fatherland, the sacred 
 festival of their race and their religion. 
 
 But in our day all this has changed, and every 
 home, of whatever race or worship, knows the 
 joy of the German Christmas. 
 
 We should bear in mind, too, what German 
 art and German music have done for the enjoy- 
 ment and culture of the American people. The 
 home songs and chamber music of the old world 
 transplanted to the new, have made glad the 
 hearts and brought harmony into the councils 
 of many an American family. The German 
 choral societies, great and small, with their 
 annual festivals of song and cheer, have given 
 us a new understanding of true social enjoy- 
 ment, and higher standards of musical expres- 
 sion. If some day in America the trumpery 
 ballads of the vaudeville and revival-meeting 
 are displaced by a better, healthier song, it will 
 be the German Folk-song and the German 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 35 
 
 Chorale from which the nobler impulse will 
 have come. In our public schools this has 
 already happened, and on this broad basis of 
 popular instruction we are rearing the temple 
 of our national music. 
 
 Every great city in the American Union now 
 has its chamber concerts, its symphony orches- 
 tra, its German Opera, and it is to the musi- 
 cianly gifts of the Teutonic element among us 
 that this auspicious feature of American culture 
 is chiefly due. German composers, leaders and 
 musicians have made it possible. We still send 
 our most talented youth to Germany to com- 
 plete their artistic education. For a long time 
 to come that country will continue to lead the 
 world in the production of musical masterpieces 
 and in great artists to interpret them to us. 
 
 Consider, also, the vast obligations Ameri- 
 cans are under to Germany in the matter of 
 education and science. Fifty years ago Horace 
 Mann remodelled the public schools of New 
 England after the type of those in Prussia. The 
 kinder-garten in this country is another product 
 of German intelligence and sympathy with child- 
 
36 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 hood. Our great American universities are, 
 one by one, breaking away from their semi- 
 monastic prototypes in England, and adopting 
 the German methods of instruction and dis- 
 cipline. Thousands of American students have 
 received their higher education at German 
 universities and returned to this country laden 
 with the spoils of German learning, literature 
 and science to become in turn disseminators of 
 light to their countrymen. Prof. A. B. Faust, 
 in his book on "The German Element in the 
 United States," gives a list of the Americans who 
 from 1 8 15 to 1850 were students at Goettingen, 
 Leipzig, Halle, Berlin and other German uni- 
 versities. Among them were George Ticknor, 
 Edward Everett, George Bancroft, R. W. Emer- 
 son, H. W. Longfellow, J. L. Motley, F. C. 
 Child, E. T. Harris, G. M. Lane, W. D. Whit- 
 ney, Th. D. Woolsey, G. L. Prentiss, F. H. 
 Hedge, B. A. Gould, George W. Curtis and 
 Timothy Dwight. Of 225 such students 137 
 became professors at American colleges and 
 disseminators of German learning and love of 
 study. More recently still an exchange of pro- 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 37 
 
 fessors between German and American univer- 
 sities is taking place, from which we may expect 
 the most important results, not only in scholar- 
 ship but in promoting a good understanding 
 between these two great nations. 
 
 Space would fail to enumerate all the benefits 
 which have flowed, which are increasingly flow- 
 ing to America from the Germanic genius in 
 both theoretical and applied science, in medi- 
 cine, in the plastic arts, in industrial organiza- 
 tion and civic administration, in historical and 
 biblical criticism, in philosophical and theologi- 
 cal speculation, — imparted directly by teachers, 
 or imbibed from German scientific and literary 
 works. 
 
 The profoundly religious spirit of the German 
 people has been notably displayed in their con- 
 tribution to the moral uplift of the New World. 
 The first immigrants, in the i8th century, were 
 animated in great part by religious motives and 
 desire for freedom in their worship. They 
 founded in their new home religious commun- 
 ities whose virtues of family life, democratic and 
 brotherly spirit and unaflTected piety have re- 
 
38 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 mained a precious legacy to succeeding genera- 
 tions. 
 
 From Germany, again, have come those 
 emancipating ideas and ethical impulses which 
 have profoundly affected American religious 
 opinions, and compelled a re-interpretation of 
 Christianity in the light of modern knowledge 
 and needs. The Transcendental movement in 
 this country, fifty and more years ago, was the 
 child of German rationalism allied with the 
 German conscience. Its discussion would de- 
 mand a whole essay or volume. Lessing, Kant, 
 Schleiermacher, Fichte, Jacobi and Hegel were 
 its spiritual progenitors. Their thought and 
 piety, directly or indirectly, influenced the pro- 
 phets of New England Idealism, R. W. Emer- 
 son, Channing, Theodore Parker, Hedge and 
 others, and became the point of departure for a 
 new proclamation of religious freedom and life. 
 More recently still the exhaustive scholarship of 
 Germany has led to the creation of the historic- 
 critical school of theology, whose great repre- 
 sentatives — Baur, Strauss, DeWette, Haus- 
 rath,"'Holtzman, Pfleiderer, and the rest, have 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 39 
 
 created for us a new Bible, and a Christianity 
 viewed in the Hght of the other rehgions and 
 Scriptures of the world. As Pres. Andrew D. 
 White tells us: "Hardly is there a movement in 
 the higher intellect and life in America that has 
 not been drunk in from German influences." 
 
 We have traced at some length the influence 
 of Germany upon this country, an influence 
 vastly advantageous and beneficent. What we 
 have done in return for Germany is less appre- 
 ciable, though much might be said on this 
 aspect of the matter. There is one return we 
 can make to our sister nation, however, and 
 that is to recognize our manifold obligations to 
 her in the past, and the advantage to both coun- 
 tries of an unbroken continuance of the peace- 
 ful and friendly relation we have borne towards 
 one another throughout American history. "No 
 other nation is so just to foreign talent and 
 performance as Germany. She honors foreign 
 heroes; she studies foreign literature; she treas- 
 ures foreign records." An equal appreciation 
 for our cousins-German should be character- 
 istic of American life. 
 
40 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 We shall need to cultivate this brotherly 
 spirit the more because, day by day, Germany 
 is becoming more and more our formidable rival 
 in the markets of the world. Competitive greed 
 on the part of both nations, incidental outbursts 
 of national hysteria, and the danger arising from 
 overgrov^n military and naval armaments, may 
 easily lead to friction and belligerency between 
 them. But, surely, a more insane and disas- 
 trous folly than war betv/een these two great 
 powers, whose genius and mission to the world 
 are so similar, and who have so many interests 
 in common, cannot be imagined. One great 
 guarantee of international amity is the presence 
 of the German element in this country, whose 
 influence, let us hope, will ever be strongly used 
 to perpetuate peace and goodwill between the 
 two peoples. 
 
 Thus far we have treated of American rela- 
 tions with the German nation across the sea. 
 What should be the spirit and temper of our 
 American-born and German-born citizens to- 
 wards each other .? It ought, surely, to be one 
 of increasing respect, confidence and goodwill! 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 41 
 
 That way only lie honor, safety and peace. 
 Thus alone can we fulfil the reconciling mis- 
 sion to which as a nation we are called, and 
 be true to the lessons of our racial history. 
 
 Fifteen hundred years ago, on the shores of 
 the North Sea, the Germanic tribes, dividing 
 themselves into two great families, separated 
 from each other. The one branch, crossing the 
 silver streak of the British Channel, undertook 
 the conquest of the group of islands known as 
 Britain. Measurably preserved by their isola- 
 tion from the aggression and rapacity of hostile 
 neighbors, they worked out for themselves an 
 Anglo-Saxon civilization, in accordance with 
 their inborn genius for freedom and self-govern- 
 ment. Through struggles and tears and blood- 
 shed they grew to be a mighty nation, the mis- 
 tress of the seas, the conquerors and colonizers 
 of a world. Their sons, twelve centuries later, 
 crossing the Atlantic, founded in this western 
 hemisphere a new realm, pledged to liberty, 
 fraternity and progress. 
 
 The other branch of the original Teutonic 
 family remained in the land of their fathers and 
 
42 AMERICA AND GERMANY 
 
 faced a destiny of struggle, trial and suffering. 
 Entering into the sad inheritance of the deca- 
 dent Greek and Roman civilization, they were 
 for centuries misled by the dream of a Holy 
 Roman Empire under the sway of Germanic 
 princes, and made the tool of the ultramontane 
 politics of the Roman See. Discovering at 
 length the folly and futility of these ambitions, 
 they withdrew to their own soil, there to develop 
 out of their racial consciousness and needs the 
 institutions of Germanic civilization, to bestow 
 upon the modern world the treasures of their 
 religion, philosophy, art and science, and to 
 become at last the mighty nation which greets 
 us in the Germany of today. 
 
 Here, in this new world, the two branches — 
 the Anglo-Saxon and the Germanic — after 
 long separation and estrangement have reunited 
 and form once more a single nation. Their 
 reunion is one of the most significant and im- 
 portant events in the modern history of man- 
 kind.* Henceforth their destiny is one and 
 
 * Judge John B Stallo: Address at the Saengerfest, Sept. 
 8, 1867, at IndianapoHs 
 
THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 43 
 
 inseparable. Brought together by Providential 
 ordering, uniting their various gifts and capa- 
 cities for mutal and combined service, with a 
 common aim, loyalty and endeavor, may they 
 go on together in their world-mission — to build 
 upon this Western Continent a state pledged to 
 righteousness, justice and progress, a reconciling 
 influence among the nations, a fulfilment of the 
 ancient Scripture: 
 
 "Peace on the earth; good-will among men."