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| Format | Dissertation |
|---|---|
| Creator | Faires, Nora Helen |
| Title | Ethnicity in Evolution: The German Community in Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, 1845-1885 |
| Dissertation Note (type -- academic institution) | Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Pittsburgh |
| Date | 1981 |
| Extent of Work | xiii, 631 pp. : illustrations, maps |
| Abstract | Employing a dynamic concept of ethnicity to analyze the evolution of the German community in the rapidly industrializing, contiguous cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, Pennsylvania in the second half of the nineteenth century, the dissertation examines the relationship between the formation and transformation of an ethnic group and the process of economic development. The historical and social scientific literature portray the Germans as the most easily assimilated, yet institutionally most separate ethnic group in the nineteenth-century America. This study resolves this paradox by relating internal variation in the German community to the changing social structure of the larger society. The main sources used are the computerized manuscript population schedules of the federal census for 1850 and 1870, city directories, parish histories, and approximately 5000 parish records. Chapter 1 demonstrates the inadequacy of current analyses to explain ethnic group change and outlines a view of ethnicity that stresses analysis of the diversity of immigrant groups, the variation within ethnic groups, the transformation of immigrant cultures, and the interactions between ethnic groups and the larger society. Chapter 2 places the case study in the context of the economic restructuring of Germany and the United States in the nineteenth century. Separate sections describe the massive emigration of Germans to America, compare Pittsburgh and Allegheny to other locations of German settlement, and detail the economic transformation of both cities. Given this analytical and empirical background, Chapters 3 and 4 assess the two facets of the paradox separately. The third chapter analyzes the degree of similarity between Germans and native-born whites in their patterns of residence, wealth, and occupation in cities, in order to measure the extent of the Germans' assimilation into the social structure. The fourth chapter focuses on institutional separateness in the immigrant community; specifically, it examines the development of eight German churches in Pittsburgh and Allegheny. The Conclusion brings together the analyses of the two facets of the paradox. German religious organizations were not merely preserves of old world traditions nor simply agencies of assimilation. Their evolution reflected the immigrant group's experience in Pittsburgh and Allegheny. Institutional separateness, then, cannot in this instance be taken as evidence of cultural persistence or cultural decline. Rather, the flourishing of these religious institutions indicates the transformation of immigrant group culture; the creation of a new ethnic structure in the German community. This transformation in turn brought some segments of the immigrant community into closer contact and greater harmony with mainstream American society and pushed other segments further away, broadening the diversity of the group. Similarly, the social structural analysis reveals that as of 1870 Germans had not experienced uniform upward mobility. They comprised no simple second-layers between an impoverished Irish laboring-class and a prospering native-born middle-class. Instead, immigrants and native-borns inhabited a complex and changing social structure in Pittsburgh and Allegheny. Moreover, the developing economy altered the German immigrant community. The cities' Germans experienced industrialization differently, thriving, faltering and failing, depending on their occupation. Nonetheless, Germans as a group shared social structural characteristics which distinguished them from both the Irish and the native-born. The evolution of the German community in Pittsburgh and Allegheny reveals the intricate, contradictory, and shifting bonds of culture and society within an immigrant group and demonstrates the importance of links forged between members of the ethnic group and sectors of the larger society. Moreover, the study indicates the fundamental reorganization of social life brought about by economic transformation. In sum, the case study shows the complexity of ethnicity in American society. |
| Notes | UMI, printed in 1988 |
| Call Number | MKI F160 G3 F350; shelved with MKI dissertations/ SHS microfilm |
| MKI Terms | Economy (Pa.)/ Immigrants, German/Ethnicity/ Pennsylvania/ 19th century |