Kultur1, Norman Lam

Being without any German roots, I still find this article very interesting yet informative. In short, this article made me think about issues such as the preservation of German heritage and the influence of German immigrants on America.

I was curious to read that the next generations of German immigrants into America would gradually become monolingual with English and have their German-American identity submerged. Attempts by institutions such as Grundsow Lodges to preserve Pennsylvania Dutch in communities had failed as a result of greater mobility and the loss of rural isolation across America. It is interesting to see that in other countries such as China where I am more familiar with, different minorities and settlements have been able to preserve their dialects and heritage a little bit better even after the unification of the country and promotion of Mandarin as the official language.

The article improved my knowledge on the huge amount of influence German immigrants had over the history and development of America. Just recently, I have learned that the Brooklyn Bridge in New York was designed by a German immigrant (John Augustus Roebling). In addition to that, I learned from the article that Thomas Nast created and popularized the important American cultural icons such as the Santa Claus, the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey. 

Willkommen!!

Welcome to our class blog!

We will be using this blog throughout the semester for two kinds of assignments:

1. Once per chapter, the homework plan will direct you to post a response to the culture readings for the chapter on the blog.

2. Roughly every other week, the homework plan will direct you to post here for your Abenteuer mit Deutsch (AMD) assignment. First you do a fun activity that involves German, then you post about it. You should spend an hour total on this (maybe 45-55 minutes doing something, 5-15 minutes posting about it). See Was ist ein AMD, AMD Ideen and Beispiele for ideas. This should get you excited about the kinds of things you can do!

Whenever you post something, please include your name and the name of the assignment (e.g. AMD2, Kultur5) as labels. See "Blog: How To" for more details!

These past few days I have had my facebook set to Deutsch. It was definitely very strange in the beginning, trying to adjust to the new words (I used google translate quite a bit). After the first few days i was starting to catch on to the very common words and phrases such as " gefällt das " = like this, and " Schreibe einen Kommentar" = write a comment. I also have gotten much more familiar with smaller, yet still very useful words like "mit" = with, " markiert "= "marked" but is used to express "tag". Over the lat couple of days i haven't had to translate much simply because I had done it so many times before and am just now remembering all of the words i kept having to translate. This little "exercise" was definitely very useful because I, along with a lot of other people, am already familiar with the layout of facebook and its general/common terms, so translating most of it just by using the context wasn't that hard. It also gave me a good look at how some of the grammar is constructed.

Jake Zehnder, Kultur1,

Although I didn't quite get through the entire article, I still found most of what i read to be very interesting. I didn't realize that people of German ancestry account for the largest individual portion of the American population, followed by people of Irish descent, who I personally was under the impression was the largest. I already knew the main reasons why people from Germany or German speaking countries were coming to America: simple economic opportunities and land. I was not; however, aware how much propaganda and resources were used by American businessmen/government to help attract even more immigrants, especially the propaganda used to draw German immigrants to the U.S. by portraying the land they would receive as similar to their home land. I was also very interested to read how fascinated people from German culture were with the Native Americans. I had never heard of this before and I could have missed something while reading, but I don't think the brochure explained why they are so fascinated with the Native Americans. I also thought that the subject of the "Turners", a free-thinking group of German immigrants who had their hand in things from gymnastics to politics, was very interesting. I read more, but from what I've already mentioned to what i read to there did not seem to be anything else of interest to me. I'd like to finish reading the brochure, but as for now, time does not permit it. Before I read this brochure I hadn't really though about how much the German culture influences and is still present in our every day lives. It was definitely an eye-opener as to how much the German culture still has an underlying effect on our "American" culture.

Kultur 1 Erin Osborne

Guten Tag!

Ich finde es amazing that so many Americans are from German descent; however, I find it interesting that as time goes on so many of the descendants from German ancestors don't identify themselves as German-American because I am very proud to be part German. Even though the article says that it isn't necessarily because of the World Wars, I believe that a lot of people don't classify themselves as Germans because they are embarrassed about what did happen a few decades ago. Later in the article it discusses why Germans started coming to America in the 1800s and early 1900s. The reason was for "financial security". I find this ironic because a few years later America went through the great depression and there was hardly any financial security.

The section in the article about German immigrants in America becoming intrigued with Native Americans is funny to me, especially because people who still lived in Germany also became intrigued by Native Americans (considering in Germany over 200 "Indian Clubs" opened).

A good majority of Germans were Lutheran. I think it was amazing that up until the 1990s there was still a church that did a sermon in German. It is said that churches still do choir exchanges or other student exchange programs through churches between Germany and America.

The celebration of Oktoberfest also hit America. In Germany this is a long lasting celebration; however, Americans(whether they are of German descent or not) love celebrating Oktoberfest, at least for a weekend.

Another huge part of America that has been influenced by Germany is our education system. When Germans immigrated to America they helped set up our education systems and made them a very important factor.

It is so amazing to see how German culture has influenced America. For example, breweries, beer gardens, brats, and hard pretzels are huge in America and they originated in Germany. Without German culture and tradition, a lot of what America has become would not be the same because as a country we have adopted and learned so much from the German immigrants that traveled to America so many years ago.

Even thought America adopted so many things from the German culture there are still a ton of differences. For example, as learned from the Brennpunkt Kultur, in America people do not generally shake hands every time they greet each other as Germans do. Americans also usually just say hello or goodbye; however, Germans have many ways of saying hello(hallo, guten tag, guten morgen..) and goodbye(auf wiedersehen, tschuss, gute nacht…). Germans and Americans have different titles to say before names (Herr, Frau, Fraulein, Mr, Mrs, Ms…).

One of the most interesting things that I learned about the German language is that it is the widest spoken European language( I use to think Spanish was). This shows that so many people are of German descent or at least want to learn the language.

Auf Wiedersehen!