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The 1901 Fort Wayne, Indiana City Election: A Political Dialogue of Ethnic Tension

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.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:IUPUI/oai:scholarworks.iupui.edu:1805/3658
Date January 2013
CreatorsBrown, Nancy Eileen
ContributorsWokeck, Marianne Sophia, Snodgrass, Michael, Monroe, Elizabeth Brand, 1947-
Source SetsIndiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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