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| Format | Book Whole |
|---|---|
| Author, Monographic | Kazal, Russell A. |
| Title, Monographic | Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity |
| Place of Publication | Princeton, NJ |
| Publisher | Princeton University Press |
| Date of Publication | 2004 |
| Extent of Work | xvii, 383 pp., ill., maps |
| Abstract | More Americans trace their ancestry to Germany than to any other country, yet German Americans have a remarkably low profile today, reflecting a dramatic, twentieth-century retreat from German-American identity. In this age of multiculturalism, why have German Americans gone into ethnic eclipse--and where have they ended up? Becoming Old Stock represents the first in-depth exploration of that question. The book describes how German Philadelphians reinvented themselves in the early twentieth century, especially after World War I brought a nationwide anti-German backlash.Using quantitative methods, oral history, and a cultural analysis of written sources, Kazal explores how, by the 1920s, many middle-class and Lutheran residents had redefined themselves in "old-stock" terms--as "American" in opposition to southeastern European "new immigrants." It also examines working-class and Catholic Germans, who came to share a common identity with other European immigrants, but not with newly arrived black Southerners.Becoming Old Stock sheds light on the way German Americans used race, American nationalism, and mass culture to fashion new identities in place of ethnic ones, presenting a case for historians to rethink the phenomenon of ethnic assimilation and to explore its complex relationship to American pluralism. |
| Notes | Donated by the Friends of the Max Kade Institute |
| Call Number | MKI/WHS F158.9 G3 K39 2004 |
| MKI Terms | German Americans -- Pennsylvania/ Philadelphia (Pa.)/ Ethnic identity/ Assimilation/ Ethnic groups -- German-speaking |