Looking Back at Old German Hymnals

 

As I looked at hymnals used during World War I, I was reminded how rusty my German is and how fast language changes.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I am currently working on a story about a German-Lutheran girl living in America during World War I. So when a friend offered to let me look at some old German hymnals that had belonged to her mother, I was thrilled.

I haven’t used my German much since I took two years in college, but I can usually get the sense of a written document with the help of a dictionary and Google’s translation program. For the most part, that was also true when I looked at the title pages of Bobbi’s mother’s books, even though some of the German words seem to have fallen out of use. And even though it took more time to translate pages written in the old German script, I mostly managed to do so without human assistance, as in the case of the one at the top of this post.¹

Then I cane across this one.

I had downloaded two charts showing the old German script and providing the modern-day equivalent for each letter (or two-character grouping such as ch). Unfortunately, it didn’t help much with this particular title page. Trying to match up the letters in the red word at the top with the script on my charts, my best guess was “Pans-Buch.” “Buch” is book, but “pans” made no sense.

Fortunately, I have human resources as well. My daughter minored in German in college and has kept up with it much better than I have. She has even read the German versions of the Harry Potter books.

So I admitted my failure and sent it off to her. Although several words puzzled her, she got the gist of it. Turns out that what I thought was a P was an H and what I thought was an s was a d, so the word translated to “Handbook.”

I’m a pretty self-sufficient person, and I don’t like to ask for help.

But sometimes it’s the only way to get it right.

__________

¹ The top five lines read, “Church-Songbook for Evangelical Lutheran Congregations unaltered Augsburg Confession.” Presumably it was written for those congregations that followed the unaltered Augsburg Confession, which is a doctrinal statement adopted in Augsburg, Germany in 1530.

A Good Friday Declaration of War

 

In 1917, President Wilson declared war against Germany on Good Friday. That’s fine, I guess, except it caused me extra work to get history right.

I spent a lot of time on the first chapter of my current work in progress, and I was pretty happy with it as a first draft. Then I was going through some old hymnals, thumbed through the Easter hymns, and realized that two of the important historical events underlying my story had taken place the first week of April, when Easter sometimes falls. Sure enough, Easter fell on April 8 in 1917, meaning that the United States’ April 6 declaration of war against Germany fell on Good Friday.

So why was that a problem? The first chapter couldn’t have happened the way I wrote it. I started with the paperboy crying “Extra! Extra! U.S. declares war on Germany.” That would have been okay, except my protagonist and her friends heard the announcement as they left her Lutheran school that afternoon. No parochial school—and few, if any, public schools in those days—would have been open on Good Friday.

The fix has them leaving the Good Friday service at their church. Unfortunately, doing involves quite of bit of reorganization as well as both additions and subtractions. I can, however, use some of the cut material later in the story. So the work I had already done isn’t a complete waste.

I’m just glad I caught my mistake in time.

__________

The image at the head of this post is a 16^th century painting attributed to Frans Pourbus the Elder. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Paranoia

 

My World War I research found many instances of paranoia, both by and against the German-Americans.

Many Americans with German ancestry, and especially those who were born in Germany, struggled with divided loyalties at the beginning of the Great War. But once the United States entered the war, 99% of them were American first.

Still, not everyone recognized that. One of the most egregious cases of mass paranoia was the lynching of Robert Prager in Collinsville, Illinois on April 5, 1918. The motive for the lynching may have been partly based on his union activities, but that wasn’t the reason given. The lynching party claimed that he was a traitor, and the only evidence of that was his German origin.

Prager’s lynching accelerated the harassment against those with a German background. Prominent men of German descent were tarred and feathered and threatened with lynching. Some were actually strung up but were cut down at the last minute. All things German were banned, including Beethoven’s symphonies, and books written in the language were burned in public bonfires.

The German-American community’s actions showed their own paranoia in reacting to the violence. Churches, businesses, and societies Americanized their names, with St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church becoming St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Verein Vorwaerta changing its name to the New Athens Singing Society, and Dreieinigkeitskirche translating its name to Trinity Church. Most churches dropped their German services even though some of their older members couldn’t understand English, and many parochial schools—which were already teaching most classes in English—stopped using German altogether. German was no longer heard on the streets, either, as neighbors switched to English when holding public conversations.

Those of German descent had some basis for their paranoia, but their persecutors had none. Although there was no evidence of actual disloyalty among the German-American community,  there were plenty of charges. Consider these instances that were reported in the Belleville News-Democrat in the three weeks following the Praeger lynching. One pastor was arrested for obstructing the draft by telling newly enlisted men that it would be easy for them to cross the line at the front and join the German army. Another man was arrested for simply saying that he agreed with statements made by another man who had been arrested for treason. Both men denied the charges. But the worst offense against the First Amendment was the arrest of a woman who called President Wilson a “fat hog.” There was a little more to it than that, but not much. Here is the full article:

Woman Called Wilson Fat Hog; Is Arrested

Mrs. Bertha Smith, 53 years old, of 301-A Locust street, St. Louis, a native of Germany, was arrested yesterday by agents of the Department of Justice. A warrant charging disloyalty will be issued.

“President Wilson looks like a big fat hog,” Mrs. Smith said, according to Mrs. Peter Van Rysel, with whom she roomed. Mrs. Van Rysel, told Federal agents that Mrs. Smith once tore a Red Cross placard from her window and cursed it. Mrs. Smith had expressed a desire, it is charged, to have the American flag that was wrapped around Paul Prager when he was lynched in Collinsville, Ill., that she might tear it up. [Belleville News-Democrat, April 23, 1918 (errors in the original)]

What happened to freedom of speech? Paranoia trampled all over it.

The lesson is simple. Check your facts before you react to what you hear.

Don’t let paranoia win.

__________

The image at the head of this post is a World War I poster, drawn by Henry Raleigh, which was printed in The Sunday Star on September 29, 1919 and mass-produced as a poster. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Researching the Old-Fashioned Way

 

I am preparing to write a middle-grade historical novel about a German-Lutheran girl living in America during World War I. Germany was the enemy, and people of German ancestry living in the U.S. were often treated as enemies even if they were loyal Americans.

One of the most shocking cases of persecution here in the U.S. was the lynching of Robert Prager on April 5, 1918. It took place in Collinsville, Illinois, which is less than twenty miles from St. Louis, Missouri. The nearby Belleville Public Library maintains old copies of The Collinsville Herald on microfilm, and St. Louis is the home of the Concordia Historical Institute, which holds the archives of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Since many LCMS congregations were affected by the suspicions of their non-German neighbors, it made sense to travel to the St. Louis area to search through relevant documents.

That’s what I did last week. I had already done what Internet research I could and had read a number of non-fiction books about the impact of the war on German-Americans, but it wasn’t enough. So I checked into a hotel that would be my home for the next four nights and started at the Belleville, Illinois public library, which carried copies of the weekly Collinsville newspaper as well the daily Belleville News-Democrat. I had already read up on the Prager incident, and The Collinsville Herald gave me those same factual details but not much else. The Belleville News-Democrat carried less about the lynching but was a much better source for the mood and the atmosphere of the time. I was hoping for personal experience stories and didn’t get them, but my time at the Belleville library was still worth-while.

I spent the next two days at the Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis. Most of my time there was spent going through LCMS publications from 1914 through 1919. Again, I didn’t find much in the way of personal experience stories, but the archives were a good source of background information to help me understand the reasoning behind some of the decisions that my protagonist’s father would have made as pastor of a local German-Lutheran congregation.

Although I would have been happier if I had come away with some personal experience stories (memoirs, diaries, letters) or even cites to some I could look up later, it give me a better idea of the flavor of the times. Between that and learning more background, it was a good trip.

If I discover that a historical novel has the important facts wrong, I put it down and walk away. I’m not the only reader who does that, either.

Research is essential to a good historical novel, and I won’t write one without it..

__________

The image at the top of this post is a political cartoon aimed at German-Americans during World War I. I don’t know the creator or the original source, but it is in the public domain because of its age.

Beta Reader Riches

 

My middle-grade historical fiction is aimed at children in the 3^rd to 6^th grades, so I use students from a local school as beta readers. I ask the school for eight volunteers—preferably two from each of those four grades—and rely on the principal and the teachers to select them. They usually manage to come up with all eight, but occasionally it is seven and once it was only six. So I was surprised and pleased when the principal called a week ago and said he had given out all eight copies of my most recent manuscript and had an additional three (later four) students who wanted to be beta readers.

I said that was fine and made more copies. Making those extra copies cost me time and money, and I also give each beta reader a $10 Amazon gift card. This means that too many beta readers could get expensive. On the other hand, beta readers are essential for insuring the quality of the final product, especially because it has been decades since I was the same age as my audience. The questionnaire I ask them to fill out gives me many insights into how well the story works for children that age, including the vocabulary. If there were words they didn’t understand even in context, I strengthen the context, find replacement words, or even discover that I don’t need the passage at all.

Since I write historical fiction, I ask my readers to give me the page numbers of any passages that sound like a boring history lesson. Over the years I’ve gotten much better at avoiding that, and these days the answer is often “none.” But when they do list page numbers, I look at each of those passages to see if it advances the story. If it does, I try to find a better way to say it, which often involves shortening a description or summarizing a quote. If it doesn’t advance the story, I leave it out. I write historical fiction because I want my readers to learn about their country’s past, but telling a good story is always more important than any lesson I want to teach.

Every comment I receive from my beta readers is seriously considered. No, I don’t take all of their suggestions, but I do take many of them—possibly even the majority. When my first group of beta readers said they wanted to know what happened to my main character after she left an internment camp and moved to Chicago, I added an epilogue. A more recent story began with a house fire that kills the protagonist’s parents. She is taken in by a missionary family preparing to travel around Cape Horn to the gold fields in California. After that, the story mostly forgot about the fire. That wasn’t intentional, but it was an oversight. One beta reader suggested I add a small fire on the ship that shows the protagonist’s fears even if nobody gets hurt. I not only did that, but I added other references to show the effect the fire had on her, and the book is much better for it.

Those are just two examples. Over and over, I have incorporated beta reader comments that strengthened the story and made the book better.

Beta readers are invaluable, and I’m grateful for every one.

__________

The image at the top of this post is from the 1925 edition of Little Men by Louisa May Alcott. The illustrator was Clara Miller Burd, and the illustration is in the public domain because of its age.