The role of nonpublic schools within American society has often been debated and challenged, yet for over three hundred and fifty years such schools have existed within what is now the United States. A significant portion of these nonpublic schools have been parochial schools operated by Lutheran denominations. Lutheran parochial schools were established by most European Lutheran immigrant groups to the United States, but the majority were established by German immigrants. German Lutheran immigrants to the United States initially established and maintained parochial schools to perpetuate their language, their culture, and their doctrinal standards. During World War I, extraordinary pressures from society and from the state came to bear on German Lutheran parochial schools. This study examined the public opinions and state policies within Nebraska from 1915-1925, as applied to German Lutheran parochial schools. The symbolic approach toward organizations was the analytical frame used for this study.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008.

This thesis concerns the study of ethnic minority groups and their national identity formation process as a result of their collective experience during, and understanding of, World War One. The groups observed are Black Americans and German Americans from the United States, as well as the Irish from Great Britain. Each groups’ identity progression and understanding of the war differed from their counterparts, while having still exhibited similarities of which highlight how different forms of nationalism played a role in the lives of ethnic minorities. A Marxist theoretical framework of nationalism and tradition is applied through the works of Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm and Terrance Ranger. The results convey how American nationalism served to further solidify a greater sense of American national identity for the respective ethnic groups, though through a process of apathy and coercion. British nationalism revealed how its version of the phenomena lacked sufficient proximity to the respective group, thus resulting in the Irish rejection of the British nation and its form of identity. These results further illustrate how both nations were in many ways sovereign and limited in their ability to form a political and social community with these groups. Lastly, it is revealed that the internal differences in each group followed a universal trend wherein those group members who served in combat roles during the war, inhibited a greater sense of national identity than those who did not see combat. This result serves as the foundation for my new theory, known as the Fog of War Complex.

“Eating German, the American Way” explores how and why the mayonnaise-based potato salad came to be a staple of American culinary tradition. It examines how native-born Americans and German immigrants in the nineteenth century identified themselves based on their culinary traditions and what they ate and how the interactions between, and accessibility of, those traditions created a new identity based on the sharing of recipes as the two groups mingled and assimilated to each other. It uses food as a way to understand the processes of assimilation by defining the distinctions between the two groups based on their separate repertoire of recipes, looking at the obstacles to the adoption of ingredients or techniques, and engaging with the primary sites of contact that facilitated the mixing of the cuisines to create a shared culinary identity. Cookbooks are used to establish the boundaries which defined German and American cuisine and introduce the first obstacle to be overcome, the language barrier. Magazines removed the language barrier and created the opportunity for more direct interaction between readers from both traditions, but also introduced another obstacle in the perceptions and preconceptions each group had regarding the other. Changes in the understanding of diet and nutrition in the closing decades of the century introduced another obstacle as attempts to standardize and control what Americans ate limited or excluded the contributions of immigrant groups and the language of control and standardizations reinforced preconceptions and the effects of “othering.” Restaurants and ethnic groceries functioned as the sites of direct contact, exposing native-born Americans to the food offerings of German immigrants, and providing direct access to both complete dishes and the ingredients needed to recreate them at home. As native-born Americans and German immigrants interacted and overcame these obstacles, they shared the recipes that defined them and created a new definition of what it meant to eat American food and a new identity as American eaters.

Throughout World War II, the belligerent countries took enemy civilians, as well as soldiers, prisoner. The majority of the camps created to hold these prisoners were located in the European and Asian theaters of battle, but the United States operated prisoner of war camps and civilian internment camps as well. American internment camps, administered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), imprisoned persons from the Axis countries of Japan, Italy, and Germany, deemed a threat to national security and categorized as a group as “enemy aliens.” Generally, these individuals were not threats, and a sizable number were legal U.S. citizens. Crystal City Internment Camp, located in Crystal City, Texas, interned individuals from all three enemy national backgrounds and allowed entire families to reside with the arrested family member. This research will attempt to highlight the daily experience of the internees in the Crystal City Internment Camp through internees’ oral histories and official camp reports, with a focus specifically on the German prisoners. Although scholars have examined these internment camps, little attention has been given to daily life in these camps.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Expressions of German-American culture in Indianapolis reached a high point in the first decade of the twentieth century. Social clubs such as the Socialer Turnverein and the Maennerchor enriched the city’s cultural life through musical performances and athletic classes and provided a social outlet for their members. During this decade, these clubs played a large role in organizing two national festivals held in Indianapolis: a Turnfest (gymnastics festival) in 1905 and a Saengerfest (singing festival) in 1908. Examining the planning and implementation of the Turnfest and Saengerfest sheds light on how club leaders responded to their social and political environment at the beginning of the twentieth century, how the respective clubs’ members conceived of their ethnic and club identities, and how they represented these identities in the festivals.

Historians of the prohibition movement in Texas have assumed that the state's main ethnic minorities-Germans, Mexican Americans and African Americans-strongly opposed restrictions on the production, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. This study focuses on the voting patterns in fifteen counties chosen to represent varying percentages of these ethnic minorities in their populations during three statewide anti-alcohol elections (1997, 1911, and 1919) in an effort to determine exactly the extent of opposition to prohibition on the part of ethnic minorities in Texas. It also examines the actions of the prohibitionists and anti-prohibitionists in courting the vote of ethnic minority groups. This analysis and comparison of election results in fifteen counties confirms overwhelming opposition to prohibition on the part of all three of Texas's ethnic minorities.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In 1901, three German American candidates ran for the office of mayor in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The winner, Henry Berghoff, had emigrated from Germany as a teenager. This thesis examines the election discourse in the partisan press for signs of ethnic tension. The first chapter places Fort Wayne in historical context of German immigration and Indiana history. The second and third chapters investigate the editorial pages for evidence of ethnic tension. I also reference a few articles of an editorial nature outside of the editorial pages. The second chapter provides background information about the election and examines indications of the candidates’ ethnicity and references to the German language papers. The third chapter considers the editorial comment about Germany, the intertwining of ethnicity and the issues, and ethnic name-calling. In order to identify underlying bias for or against Germany and to better understand the context of the references to German ethnicity, the fourth chapter explores the portrayal of Germany in the Fort Wayne papers.