Title: German and Scandinavian Immigrants in the American Midwest · The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: Student Research Projects · Digital Exhibits
Headings: German and Scandinavian Immigrants in the American Midwest
German and Scandinavian Immigrants in the American Midwest
Content: Because of their large numbers, they were able to establish self-sustaining communities that supported their home languages, which were used in schools, churches and everyday business by the immigrant communities. This was particularly true of the German and Scandinavian Lutherans, who brought the religious traditions of their home countries into the United States. [ 8] The influence of these immigrants’ languages also carried over into the American press. By 1900, there were 613 German language newspapers published in the United States, and 115 in various Scandinavian languages. [ 9]
As America entered the 20 th Century, native born Americans became increasingly more suspicious of the immigrants, particularly those that retained their own cultural traditions. Former president Theodore Roosevelt exemplified this sentiment as he spoke in 1916, saying “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to became a tangled of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.” [ 10] Following Roosevelt’s sentiments, and in the face of America’s entry into World War One, Germans and Scandinavians each experienced hostility and discrimination from native born Americans. As such, the two groups began to assimilate into mainstream American culture, letting go of their language and many of their traditions in the process. Today, German Americans constitute the largest single group within the United States, but they are virtually unidentifiable from other Americans, much like their Scandinavian counterparts. [1] Matti Kaups. “