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| Format | Book Whole |
|---|---|
| Author, Monographic | Ziegler-McPherson, Christina A. |
| Title, Monographic | The Great Disappearing Act : Germans in New York City, 1880-1930 |
| Place of Publication | New Brunswick, NJ |
| Publisher | Rutgers University Press |
| Date of Publication | 2021 |
| Extent of Work | x, 224 pages : illustrations, facsimiles, maps ; 24 cm |
| OCLC | 1245959398 |
| Abstract | By the turn of the twentieth century, New York City was one of the largest German-speaking cities in the world and was home to the largest German community in the United States. This community was socio-economically diverse and increasingly geographically dispersed, as upwardly mobile second and third generation German Americans began moving out of the Lower East Side, the location of America's first Kleindeutschland (Little Germany), uptown to Yorkville and other neighborhoods. New York's German American community was already in transition, geographically, socio-economically, and culturally, when the anti-German/One Hundred Percent Americanism of World War I erupted in 1917. This book examines the structure of New York City's German community in terms of its maturity, geographic dispersal from the Lower East Side to other neighborhoods, and its ultimate assimilation to the point of invisibility in the 1920s. It argues that when confronted with the anti-German feelings of World War I, German immigrants and German Americans hid their culture - especially their language and their institutions - behind closed doors and sought to make themselves invisible while still existing as a German community. German Americans adopted visible behaviors of a new, more pluralistic American culture that they themselves had helped to create, although by no means dominated. Just as the meaning of "German" changed in this period, so did the meaning of "American" change as well, due to nearly 100 years of German immigration. |
| Donated by | Kevin Kurdylo, 2024. |
| Call Number | MKI F 128.9.G3 Z54 2022 |
| MKI Terms | German Americans -- Cultural assimilation -- New York (State) -- New York -- History -- 20th century/ Social conditions/ Societies, etc./ Ethnic identity |