The Discrimination of German Immigrants in America

**simplesimon** · 08-25-2024, 03:37 PM

German Immigrant Robert Prager from Dresden, Germany lynched by mob in Illinois. Others beaten, tarred, and feathered.

https://shorturl.at/6792N The lynchmen of Robert Prager who were found not guilty by a jury

https://www.history.com/news/anti-german-sentiment-wwi

https://shorturl.at/gnZQg A US Government poster showing a refugee with a baby fleeing from a shadowy and threatening figure of a German soldier, 1918.

https://shorturl.at/V77C0 Anti-German poster

Because Germany was one of America’s adversaries in the war, many Anglo-Americans began to fear that German Americans were still loyal to the Kaiser, or German emperor. President Woodrow Wilson once admonished: “Any man who carries a hyphen about with him, carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic when he gets ready.”

“The number one American term for Germans in the first world war was ‘the Huns,’” Schade says. “The Huns in the Middle Ages swept into the plains of what is now Russia and invaded Europe, and that term became associated with the Germans.” According to this stereotype, German Americans were “a race of barbaric raiders” who spoke a language other Americans couldn’t understand.

States banned German-language schools and removed German books from libraries. Some German Americans were interned, and one German American man, who was also targeted for being socialist, was killed by a mob.

Secondly, in response to this, German Americans began intentionally “assimilating” to avoid becoming targets. They changed their names to English-sounding ones, renamed German streets, and began to speak German only in private. In public, they spoke English.