Before we get back to Over the Rhine in Cincinnati, it's worthwhile to look at German and other ethnic enclaves in NYC.

Urban Truisms    As we study the urban scene, two truisms appear: 1) ethnic neighborhoods not replenished with newcomers will tend to dissipate and disappear; 2) entertainment districts have a tendency to plunge into sleaziness, and then die. While losing an ethnic neighborhood might be a wistful change, the other truism is sadder still.

Ethnic neighborhoods where everyone can go to enjoy the culture, festivals, restaurants, and shops, will continue to thrive only as newcomers replace those that dissipate, since younger generations of the ethnic group will feel more assimilated, less bound to the immigrant area, and therefore move to other parts of the city and suburbs. Absent newcomers of the same ethnic group, the neighborhood could merely lose its special flavor, or gentrify, or be replaced by another ethnic group. For instance, the neighborhood that is today Spanish Harlem was Italian Harlem before 1940. In the US, the neighborhoods that are likely to replenish themselves tend to be Asian, Latino, and African, since those regions today supply the most immigrants. European neighborhoods, once the major recipient of immigrants, are the ones most likely to have the fewest newcomers and disappear.

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Two illustrative cases in point: Chinatown in NYC is as lively as ever and is bursting at the seams, spreading out into adjoining areas, while neighboring Little Italy to its north sees fewer and fewer Italian-Americans living locally. Where once Little Italy was about six blocks wide and up to ten blocks long centering on Mulberry Street (see map above), today its tiny remnant runs for just three blocks on Mulberry, and it's not odd to see some Chinese signs there as well, since Chinatown right to its south continues to expand right into it.

But sadly, Little Italy is more typical of what tends to happen to ethnic enclaves, especially those that are ethnically European. Since our main topic is the former German neighborhood of Over the Rhine (OTR) in Cincinnati, I can best compare it to the former German neighborhoods in NYC, such as Kleindeutschland (see below). They're gone, and are not being revived, as Over the Rhine is.

As for the other urban truism, that entertainment areas tend to decline into sleaziness, and then die, we can also cite two notorious NYC examples: the Bowery and West 42nd Street. We only recently discussed both. To review how the Bowery went from country lane to a mid-19C entertainment district, then plunged into infamy, but was later redeemed, in 2018/2 Find (Ctrl-F): "Infamy". To review how that one famous block of West 42nd Street went from a premier theater district to a street of the basest of porno grind houses, but also was redeemed, on that same posting Find (Ctrl-F): "block of 42nd Street". Thus OTR had two ominous precedents at the end of the 19C, being an ethnic European enclave and having its beer halls and beer gardens become a prime entertainment district for Cincinnati.

Kleindeutschland    It will be very worthwhile to compare the history of the former major NYC German-American neighborhood with the former major Cincinnati one. I'm sure if you asked most Manhattanites today where Kleindeutschland (Little Germany) was, they wouldn't know what you were talking about. I will be quite frank and state that, even as a Germanist, I knew nothing about it until now (I was more involved with German Yorkville uptown). Even those history buffs like myself who do know about the General Slocum disaster (below) might not associate it entirely with a neighborhood that was German-American.

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Kleindeutschland, now totally disappeared, was the first major non-anglophone ethnic enclave in New York. It began in the 1850s, had its golden age from the 1870s on, but then declined and disappeared by the 1920s. It started in NYC's 11th Ward (see above map of lower Manhattan wards in 1865), and expanded to three others to fill the area along the East River roughly between 14th Street, the Bowery, and Division & Grand Streets. The southern Germans living in the area called it Deutschländle, using a typical Bavarian diminutive. The map also shows a huge Irish-American neighborhood running river-to-river, now also disappeared. The Irish living here called Kleindeutschland Dutchtown, an example of once again using "Dutch" for "Deutsch", as in "Pennsylvania Dutch".

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We can use this contemporary map to show the approximate borders of Kleindeutschland more precisely. From the East River (click), it ran approximately along 14th Street at the top to 3rd Avenue, where it cut down to the Bowery. Running along the Bowery, between Houston and Canal it cut over to Mott, abutting what would become Little Italy, then came back to the Bowery. At the bottom of the map you'll find Division & Grand Streets.

Kleindeutschland would eventually include 400 city blocks. This map also shows us that this German-American neighborhood was so large that it's since become known by several names. The upper area is now called the East Village, a sub-area of which around Avenues A, B, C, & D is called Alphabet City, and south of this the area is called the Lower East Side. Find the park that fills Tompkins Square, which the community back in the day called der Weiße Garten ("The White Garden, ß=ss). The main commercial artery was Avenue B, sometimes called the German Broadway.

The greatest number of Germans arriving in the US was between 1820 and 1914, when about 6 million arrived. Since many came through Ellis Island, and since many of those just stayed in New York, by 1860 NYC had over 120,000 German-American inhabitants. This total made New York the third largest German-speaking city in the world at the time, after only Berlin and Vienna.

Kleindeutschland had German Biergärten / beer gardens, Sportvereine / sports clubs, Schützenvereine / shooting clubs, as well as German-language libraries, choirs, schools, theaters, churches, and synagogs. This 1876 illustration from Harper's Weekly shows a German street band in New York.

The remnants of Kleindeutschland that remain are architectural. This is Scheffel Hall (Photo by Beyond My Ken), on the west side of Third Avenue (#190) at 17th Street, on the upper outskirts of Kleindeutschland and just three blocks north of our map. It was built in 1894-1895 in the spectacular German Renaissance Revival style (click for detail). It was designated a NYC landmark in 1997. As of 1896, Scheffel Hall catered to German natives living in the upper reaches of Kleindeutschland. Further discussion of it will follow shortly.

This landmarked building was the Vereinshaus / clubhouse of the Deutsch-Amerikanische Schützengesellschaft / German-American Shooting Society at 12 Saint Mark's Place, just east of 3rd Avenue (see contemporary map), built in 1888-89 (Photo by Schreibkraft). You may recall for our recent discussions of the area that Saint Mark's Place is the name of a section of East 8th Street, and it leads to Tompkins Square Park. The huge plaque (click) reads EINIGKEIT MACHT STARK, literally Unity Makes Strong, better translated as Unity is Strength. I don't definitively know what that refers to in this case, but perhaps it refers to the fact that Germany had been unified only 17 years earlier, in 1871.

On the map, "walk" east and turn left around the corner to 2nd Avenue between St Mark's and 9th to find these two landmarked buildings at 135 and 137 2nd Avenue, east side (Photo by Beyond My Ken). They were built as a matched pair in neo-Italian Renaissance style by a German-American architect in 1883-1884, as the Victorian red brick would indicate. The pair of buildings was a gift to the City of New York by the philanthropists Oswald and Anna Ottendorfer, immigrants from Germany. He was publisher of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, NYC's largest German-language paper (more below).

Click to read the text on the left building. It used to be the Freie Bibliothek und Lesehalle / Free Library and Reading Room, dating from an era when not all libraries were free. It's now the Ottendorfer Branch (which makes sense) of the New York Public Library. The Ottendorfer Library opened in 1884 and is the oldest library in NYC that still occupies its original building.

Click on the right-hand building to read that it was originally the Deutsches Dispensary / German Dispensary, a charming mish-mash of a name, since the German word for "dispensary" is actually Krankenhausapotheke, or "hospital pharmacy", which is what a dispensary is. However, this dispensary seems to have operated as a neighborhood clinic, and got its half-English name because it was modeled after the Northern Dispensary in Greenwich Village. The German Dispensary really was part of a hospital, the German Hospital, but that moved uptown in 1905 to East 77th Street between Park & Lex, on the edge of Yorkville, which at the time started receiving people moving out of Kleindeutschland. It had its own dispensary, so the German Dispensary was sold to another medical charity, the Deutsche Polyklinik / German Polyclinic, which also had a name change during WWI (see below).

We mentioned above that Oswald Ottendorfer was the publisher of the biggest German-language newspaper in NYC, at least at the time, and today, in a vastly diminished form, it probably still is. Its name is the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, and the city is mentioned because it wasn't a unique name—I found also the Illinois Staats-Zeitung. The name translates awkwardly as State Newspaper, which is why it's usually just called "the Staats". It claims, even in its present diminished form, to be the leading German-language weekly (it once was daily) newspaper in the US, and is certainly one of the oldest, having been published since 1834. As of its 150th anniversary in 1984 it never missed a publication date, and so it claims to be the longest continuously published paper in any language in the US.

I've found an incredible 19C statistic. In 1886 the Staats was the third-largest paper in NYC, since the daily circulation of the World was 149,000, the Tribune 80,000, the Staats 60,000, the Times 40,000, the German-language Herold 35,000, the Evening Post 17,000, and the German-language Volkszeitung 10,000. Note that the Staats beat the New York Times in circulation, and of the seven leading papers in NYC, four were English-language and three were German-language. In addition there were numerous German-language weeklies, and Brooklyn had the German-language newspaper the Freie Presse.

In 1934, the Staats merged with the Herold (above) and was called the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold until 1991, when it shortened its name back to its original form. The best picture of the paper I could find was from 1965 during this period (click): https://www.historische-zeitungen.de/images/wiki/new-yorker-staats-zeitung5.jpg

My latest data comes from a 2001 article in the New York Times, which reported that the Staats calls itself the world's oldest German newspaper, period. But it had just been priced out of its New York office at Broadway and 71st Street. Its latest owner and publisher, with his wife and the most miniscule of staffs, publish it out of their home in Sarasota FL. It sold an average of 80,000 copies in 1938, but has shrunk since then. Current estimates are 10,000 at most.

But let's go back to the basic topic of Kleindeutschland, which thrived from the mid- to the end of the 19C and into the early 20C, peaking in the 1870s. Although he typical ethnic dispersion of younger generations had already gradually begun as the 20C began, both to uptown and Queens, and the German Hospital (Lenox Hill Hospital) had already moved in 1905 to the southern edge of Yorkville uptown, the neighborhood was still quite healthy as a German-American enclave. So as I've asked more than once recently, what could possibly go wrong?

Disaster    Despite some population losses, the 20C started relatively normally in Kleindeutschland. For 17 years, the local Saint Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church at 325 East 6th Street (see map, between 1st and 2nd Avenues, north side) had organized an annual end-of-school summer picnic, and the fateful one in 1904 took place on 15 June. It was a Wednesday, so most of the men went off to work, while it was the women who accompanied the children on the excursion, all dressed in their Sunday best and carrying picnic hampers. They boarded a passenger ship in the adjacent East River (I have not been able to determine the location of the dock) called the General Slocum for a trip that would take them up the East River and into Long Island Sound, headed for a picnic ground on the North Shore of Long Island called Locust Grove "about two hours away". (I have also not been able to locate this. The only Locust Grove I find is part of Syosset NY, in the Oyster Bay area, but it's not on the shore.)

A German band played on the deck while the children romped and the adults sang along. It was reported to Captain William Van Schaick that close to a thousand tickets had been collected, but that didn't include the 300 children under 10, who didn't need tickets. The ship was licensed to carry 2,500 passengers, and including crew and catering staff, there were about 1,350 on board. The ship carried enough life preservers for the 2,500 maximum passengers, and in the previous month, a fire inspector had said its fire equipment was in "fine working order". Again: What could possibly go wrong?

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The first map above shows the upper East River (which is really a strait) as it turns into the convergence of waters known as the Hell Gate, named for its rough and dangerous currents. (The rail bridge in light gray to the right of the road bridge is the Hell Gate Bridge.) The map also shows Manhattan's Upper East Side and Ward's and Randall's Islands (then separate, now combined into one). The passage between the islands and Astoria, Queens to the right is the water route to the Long Island Sound on the right. There are two tiny islands, here unnamed, just off Port Morris in the Bronx. They are North and South Brother Islands. North Brother Island today is a bird sanctuary for herons and other wading shorebirds, but at the turn of the 20C it housed Riverside Hospital, where those with seriously communicable diseases were quarantined. (Mary Mallon, known infamously as Typhoid Mary, was confined to North Brother Island for over two decades until she died there in 1938.) The second map above labels the island more clearly, and shows it lying on the route to Long Island Sound, past Rikers Island, the site of NYC's main jail, adjacent to LaGuardia Airport. Finally, this view looking south from Port Morris (Photo by Cdogsimmons), shows North Brother Island, South Brother Island, Rikers Island, and LaGuardia Airport.

The General Slocum sailed just before 10:00, and proceeded upriver at 15 knots (17 mph; 27 km/h). As the ship reached the East 90s in Manhattan (see map) some crew members on the lower deck saw puffs of smoke rising up through the floorboards. But not only had the crew never conducted any fire drills, when they turned the ship's fire hoses onto the flames, they found the hoses were rotten, and either burst, or just fell apart.

Onlookers in Manhattan saw the flames and shouted for the captain to dock immediately. But the captain was fearful of the Hell Gate currents and felt his steering gear would break down leaving the ship stranded in the middle of the river, so instead, he plunged full speed ahead. He aimed for Port Morris, where there was a pier at East 134th Street (the Bronx starts at East 132nd) but a tugboat captain warned him off, fearing that the burning ship would set fire to lumber that was stored there.

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But Van Schaick was fanning the flames because of the ship's speed and by the fact that there was a north wind, meaning he was plowing into a headwind. Passengers panicked on deck as mothers screamed for their children. There were lifeboats on board, but they were tied up and inaccessible. Some reports said they had been painted in place. Survivors reported that the life preservers were as rotten as the hoses, and fell apart in their hands. Desperate mothers placed the life jackets on their children and tossed them into the water, only to watch as they didn't float, but immediately sank. The heavy wool clothing fashionable in the day—picture women's long skirts and boys' knickers--absorbed water and weighed victims down in the river.

From Port Morris, Van Schaick made a run for North Brother Island, hoping to beach the Slocum sideways so everyone would have a chance to get off. But as the fire spread, hundreds of passengers jumped overboard, even though most could not swim. Boats that sped to the scene saved a few passengers, but mostly they found children's bodies bobbing in the Hell Gate currents.

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The first picture shows bodies washed ashore at North Brother Island, where nurses and others from the hospital rushed to help. Bodies continued washing ashore for days. There are other pictures and gruesome stories we needn't dwell upon. The second picture shows the New York World fearing a death toll reaching as much as 1,000. It actually surpassed that, reaching 1,021, most of them women and children. There were 321 survivors. Five of the 40 crew members died. The death toll made the General Slocum disaster of 1904 the worst in NYC's history until the Nine Eleven attacks in 2001, just under a century later. It remains the worst maritime disaster in the city's history, and the second worst maritime disaster on US waterways.

Captain Van Schaick was believed to be the last person off the Slocum when he jumped into the water and swam for shore. A federal grand jury indicted the captain and two inspectors, plus four officers of the Knickerbocker Steamship Company: the president, secretary, treasurer, and commodore. You might suspect the company would be particularly liable, and certainly the inspectors for the lack of fire drills, for rotten hoses and life jackets, but surprisingly, only Captain Van Schaick was convicted. There were three charges against him, but he was found guilty on only one: criminal negligence for failing to maintain proper fire drills and fire extinguishers. The other two counts were for manslaughter, but the jury could not reach a verdict on either of them. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, but spent only a third of that in Sing Sing when he was pardoned by President William Howard Taft on Christmas Day, 1912.

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Let this photo represent one of many showing how the community of Kleindeutschland was devastated. Funerals were held for more than a week. The photo illustrates what is described as the "burial of the unidentified", showing numerous horse-drawn hearses at the corner of Avenue A and 6th Street (St Mark's church was 3 ½ blocks west on 6th, between 1st and 2nd). The disaster had enormous repercussions on Saint Mark's parish, which had chartered the ship and which lost most of its congregation. The building stood empty until 1940, into a period when Kleindeutschland no longer existed, but when the area had been filled with Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Saint Marks in that year was brought back to life by being converted into the Sixth Street Community Synagog, which remains today.

Though only about 1% of the population of Kleindeutschland died in the disaster, those lost were members of the most established families, forming the neighborhood's social foundation. Desolate schoolyards were painful reminders of the community's loss. It can safely be said that the disaster broke the spirit of Kleindeutschland. The final indignity was when no one was found guilty of manslaughter for the disaster. Many men in the community were suddenly without families. Some bereaved parents, spouses, children, and friends committed suicide. Many widowers and broken families moved away, often to the growing German-American community of Yorkville uptown. Some returned to Germany.

Kleindeutschland would be led to extinction after the disaster because of the accelerated exodus that was already well underway, plus the future anti-German sentiment—or hysteria—that would occur during WWI (discussed later regarding Over the Rhine). After the early 20C, Kleindeutschland disappeared, to the extent that I, though in the field, was unaware of it until recently.

I say I was unaware of the neighborhood, though in actuality, I was connected for many years with two venues on what I now see were at or near its northern edge. The thing is, I always considered them free-standing German-inspired locations and had no idea at the time that they had earlier been a part of a neighborhood.

Joe King's Rathskeller    I studied for my BA at Queens College of the City University of New York from 1957 to 1961. At one point early on—I don't remember just when or how it started—some guys from QC decided it would be fun to go into Manhattan one evening to Joe King's Rathskeller over on 3rd at 17th, a place I hadn't heard about before, for their sing-alongs. I remember going several times over those years with those friends and thoroughly enjoying a great evening.

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This postcard gives an idea of the convivial atmosphere under its old tin ceiling. The picture shows beer steins, but the venue really had little to nothing of a German atmosphere beyond that. I hardly remember getting a bite to eat there. I just remember our ordering round after round of beer—they sold an off-brand called Sunshine Beer—and singing along all evening with the piano player pounding away. It was old songs, college songs, everything of that sort you could imagine. At one point, when my cousin Gary from Tennessee came with a friend, we went to Joe King's. And I also remember the time I went there with Beverly.

As explained earlier, we had met in the summer of 1961 at the Middlebury German School, and we, along with my QC friend and her roommate Rita were all going for the year in Mainz. At summer's end, she went home to Minneapolis, but then came to NYC before our departure to stay in my parents' house for a few days. On one of those days, we came in from Queens and went all around Manhattan, ending up for a sing-along at Joe King's. (One memory was that she unwisely wore attractive but unsuitable shoes, and slipped them off at Joe King's. Her feet had swollen so much from all the walking in those shoes that she couldn't get them on again, and so we left Joe King's with her walking down 3rd Avenue to the subway in stocking feet.) I suppose that was the last time I was ever at Joe King's.

With those memories in mind, it was a total shock when preparing this posting to find out that the building that Joe King's Rathskeller was located in was Kleindeutschland's landmarked Scheffel Hall as we saw in this picture shown earlier! (Photo by Beyond My Ken) When we were going there those evenings, I suppose we never took a good look at the façade. But now is the time to tell more about the building, and specifically, about our time at Joe King's.

In 1896, a year after it was built, Scheffel Hall, in German Renaissance style, was bought by a German-American intent on turning it into a beer garden. The next date of importance that appears in the literature was 1904, when it changed hands. But now we know of the disaster of that year, so we can understand the timing of such a change. In that year, it became Allaire’s, the name still above the entry (click on photo), a full-fledged restaurant. In its early years, its patrons included a number of leading politicians and writers: H.L. Mencken hung out there, as did O. Henry, who used Scheffel Hall as the setting for a short story in 1909. It then became a German-American music hall. In 1936, a man named Joe King opened a restaurant serving "moderately priced German dishes and imported beers", and this would have been the iteration of the building during "my years" of 1957 to 1961. I now find out that Joe King's closed "in the 1960s", and I just wonder how much time beyond our "shoeless visit" in 1961 that it lasted. The building then became the jazz club Fat Tuesday's until 1995. Today it's a Pilates studio (click on the window). But fortunately, no owners ever touched the façade, and the dark woodwork and detailing in the interior also remains. Sic transit.

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Lüchow's    After we got married in 1962, one notable place in Manhattan to go was to Lüchow's German restaurant on the south side of 14th Street (110 E 14), one block east of Union Square (see map). It was a little out of the way from what were then the more usual dining venues in Midtown (which is what eventually killed it), but it was well worth it, and we went several times. Even for newlyweds, I don't recall it being particularly pricey, despite its old-world elegance. Though it was clearly a German restaurant, I still never connected it with what had been Kleindeutschland, or even with nearby Joe King's for that matter. (I ask myself now "What was I thinking?) While the façade (above) might not have been the most beautiful, the interior was typical-19C lush 'n' plush, as this c 1902 postcard shows. The big arched opening in the back is actually a mirror. Gas lighting fixtures from that era are shown here. There was lots of Baroque elegance, and the waiters were all in tuxes. The food was excellent, though I don't remember details. Well, one exception. Beverly got me to learn to order as an appetizer herring in sour cream on a bed of lettuce, since she was more used to it from her earlier travels in Germany.

I was absolutely livid when I read in the papers in the early 1980s that new owners of Lüchow's, because of slow business "way downtown on 14th Street" were closing it and moving it to Midtown, after 99 years of existence, just missing the century mark. For the short time it existed in Midtown—a couple of years--I refused to step into it, just out of spite. It's now listed as having existed for a bit over a century, 1882 to 1983, but that would include its time in exile in Midtown.

Its location was particularly horrid—it had a modern look on the outside and was down in the sunken plaza of a contemporary building somewhere around 7th and 53rd, it looked so sad and lonely looking down from street level. If they'd held out for the later renaissance of 14th Street and Union Square, a piece of history could have remained. However, the old building burned, then was torn down and replaced with a dormitory for NYU. Sic transit again.

But let's go back to happier times, with new information I've discovered. Lüchow's was established in 1882 by a German immigrant, August Lüchow, when the stretch of 14th Street extending crosstown on either side of Union Square was the heart of the most prestigious part of NYC. The new establishment, located among upscale entertainment venues, quickly became known as "the capital of 14th Street". I've seen the experience referred to as "the last word in epic Teutonic dining". It became a favorite of people in the entertainment world, and Diamond Jim Brady, Lillian Russell, and composer Victor Herbert were regulars. Those were the days.

The name Lüchow was always problematic. Other than August's surname, it's the name of two towns in Germany, one in Lower Saxony and one in Schleswig-Holstein. Though W in German is normally pronounced as a V, in place names (of Slavic origin) ending in-OW (Grabow, Pankow, Bülow), the W is silent. In addition, in Lüchow, the Ü is of course Ü, and the CH is as in the word iCH.

But the original pronunciation never bothered New Yorkers, since they never used it. The name was always pronounced like the name "Lou" and the word "chow", as LOU.chow. It's understandable that many new customers who knew little about Lüchow's might have thought it was a Chinese name. (!!) Apparently the umlaut was left out in the spelling (Ü>U) between 1917 and 1950, which is said to have caused even more of a Chinese look. The New York Times said that "The absence of the umlaut had led many new customers to believe that the place was a Chinese restaurant."

I get a feeling that many people, including Manhattanites, are woefully unaware of the former existence of the fabulous Lüchow's. But they may be more aware of its presence than they realize, at least if they know a little about "Hello Dolly". I saw Carol Channing do Dolly (in Tampa), Barbra Streisand do Dolly in the film, and Bette Midler do Dolly in the recent Broadway revival, and from the very first time, I recognized Lüchow's in disguise: Dolly comes into town from Yonkers and sings "I went away from the lights of 14th Street" and is glad to be back. There's even a parade along 14th Street. And then to celebrate her return she makes her signature spectacular entrance down the huge staircase into the "Harmonia Gardens" where the elegant galloping waiters welcome her with the title song. Though no restaurant would have such a staircase—the restaurant would have to be underground, so I'm sure the staircase is poetic license—is there any doubt that the model for the Harmonia Gardens on 14th Street was Lüchow's? (I also checked online—it is.) And consider this bit of pure speculation: would you imagine that Lillian Russell, the most famous singer-actress of the day, shown here in 1905, might have been greeted similarly at the time at Lüchow's?

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Yorkville    While over the years I'd been unaware of Kleindeutschland, I was very aware of Yorkville, centered on East 86th Street. The above map shows it atilt, to keep north at the top (see 2018/3 "The Tilt"). When I was a German major in high school and college in the mid-20C, if you said you were going to dinner in Yorkville, it was understood you were going to a German restaurant, just as if you'd said you were going for dinner in Chinatown, you were eating Chinese. But today, after extensive gentrification, that Yorkville is gone and there's no longer any ethnic implication. To refer to the ethnic Yorkville of the past, you actually have to now say "German Yorkville", which sounds so odd to me, something akin to redundantly saying "Italian Little Italy".

86th Street was the heart of it. No one said East 86th, since everyone knew it was on the (Upper) East Side. The German atmosphere started at 3rd Avenue, just east of the subway on Lex. The first thing you came across was the Casino Theater showing German films at 210 E 86, south side. I went once or twice, and later Beverly and I both went once. I now read that it was built in 1934 as a movie palace, stopped showing German films in the mid-1960s, and is now the East 86th Street Cinema, a four-screen multiplex.

Continuing east on 86th, one would pass many German bakeries, shops, and restaurants—a Biergarten here, a Konditorei there, and the occasional Verein (club). During our teaching years, Beverly and I would take school trips with our students of German to Yorkville to look at the shops, and have dinner at a restaurant. I remember stopping in a gift shop or two with the kids to see German items for sale, though mostly tourist Kitsch, such as beer steins and cuckoo clocks. We'd eat at the Lorelei, the Café Geiger, the Kleine Konditorei.

But as the 60s turned into the 70s, it all disappeared. Natural dispersion might have been one factor, but what killed German Yorkville was the fact that it was in the center of the posh Upper East Side. Gentrification took over as high-rise apartment buildings replaced walkups and land values rose to beyond what small shops could afford to pay rent on. Today there is absolutely NO trace on 86th Street of its German past. Chain stores moved in; the Café Geiger became a BBQ chicken joint. 86th Street is a handsome NYC boulevard, but is no longer the heart of an ethnic neighborhood. Only if you turn south for a half-block OFF 86th Street on 2nd Avenue will you still find the Heidelberg restaurant, and next to it, the Schaller & Weber meat market. But these remain as outliers, and current visitors surely must see them as stand-alones, and not the remnant of a large ethnic neighborhood.

But doing this current research I found something that really surprised me. German Yorkville started to develop in about 1880, as we said, as people began moving here, and eventually the German Hospital (Lenox Hill Hospital) also moved here. But after the General Slocum disaster, more and more people moved up from Kleindeutschland. I never knew that Yorkville was to a large extent an outgrowth of the older neighborhood. But even more of a surprise for me was the reason many came. The fire had broken out on the ship off the shores of Yorkville, and many people wanted to be closer to the scene of where the disaster had started.

One more point about Yorkville. Look at the map again and find the park on the East River, beyond East End Avenue. In the park, at 88th Street, is Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of the City of New York, which I have toured. But the location is in Carl Schurz Park, whose name is another remnant of German Yorkville. It was named in 1910 for the man who was a German revolutionary in Prussia during the revolutions of 1848-1849, and an American statesman, journalist and reformer. He served as a Union general during the American Civil War, represented Missouri in the US Senate, and was the 13th US Secretary of the Interior.

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This commemorative postage stamp featuring Carl Schurz was issued in West Germany in the US Bicentennial year of 1976. The legend says "For freedom in Germany and America".

Ridgewood & Glendale    Another well-known local former German neighborhood was in the neighboring communities of Ridgewood and Glendale, Queens, adjacent to Brooklyn. Glendale had become a thriving German farming community in the 19C, and the perhaps better-known Ridgewood developed at the beginning of the 20C to house German immigrants who worked in the breweries and knitting factories along the Brooklyn-Queens border. I'm sure at least some of the German-American population there was also due to spillover from Kleindeutschland. But again, most of that is gone. It's estimated that in the 1950s and 1960s, the neighborhood was still over 70% German. In 1980, that was down to about 22%, and a more recent figure brought that down to closer to 6%, with much larger numbers of Italian and Polish heritage. At some point, perhaps in the '90s, Beverly and I heard of a nice German restaurant in the area and drove out for a nice dinner, so yes, I have been to this area, but again, it's just the incidental venue here and there that now stands alone as opposed to being in the heart of a traditional enclave. Thus devolve ethnic communities.

Steuben Day Parade    German neighborhoods are virtually gone in NYC, particularly startling when one considers NYC was in the mid-19C, as we said, the third-largest German-speaking community in the world. But along with other ethnic celebrations, there is one remnant left for those of us interested in German-American culture and heritage, the Steuben Day Parade.

NYC has many parades, in many locations, for varying reasons, including for many ethnicities. If we restrict ourselves to purely ethnic parades held on 5th Avenue, we find the following groups marching uptown between the given streets:

(Irish) Saint Patrick's Day Parade – 17 March - 44th to 79th
Greek Independence Day Parade – end of March - 64th to 79th
Puerto Rican Day Parade – 2nd Sunday in June - 44th to 86th
(German) Steuben Day Parade – 3rd Saturday in September - 64th to 86th
(Italian) Columbus Day Parade – Columbus Day - 68th to 86th
(Polish) Pulaski Day Parade – 1st Sunday in October 39th to 56th

Three of the most notable European military men that served with US forces in the American Revolution are the Marquis de Lafayette from France, Baron von Steuben from Prussia, and Casimir Pulaski from Poland. All of them have numerous places named after them in the US from streets to towns and more: I'll just cite Fayetteville NC, Steubenville OH, and the Pulaski Bridge that connects Brooklyn and Queens. Steuben and Pulaski also have the above parades held on days named for them.

In 1777, Steuben was introduced to Benjamin Franklin in Paris (2018/5). But Franklin was unable to offer him a rank or pay in the American army, since the Continental Congress had grown weary of Europeans asking for them. Steuben would have to go strictly as a volunteer, and present himself to Congress. Steuben refused and returned to Prussia, where he found waiting for him allegations of gay relationships with young men while in the army there. The allegations were never proven, but he realized they would hold him back in Europe, so he returned to Paris and went on to America with a letter from Franklin introducing him to George Washington. The rumors followed him there as well, but there was never an investigation, and he served and got a pension after the war.

When he arrived, he was accompanied by his 17-year-old secretary Pierre Étienne du Ponceau, his young aide-de-camp Louis de Pontière, and two other companions. In February 1778 he reached York PA where the Continental Congress had relocated after being ousted from Philadelphia by the British. Arrangements were made, for him to be paid after the war, based on his accomplishments. He arrived in Valley Forge shortly afterward and reported for duty as a volunteer, where he turned the other volunteers into a great army, teaching soldiers drill, tactics, and disciplines.

At Valley Forge, at age 48, he began close relationships with William North and Benjamin Walker, then both officers in their 20s. Knowledge of their relationship is vague, and limited only to the occasional reference in correspondence. Steuben then became inspector general of the army and served to the end of the war. He was present at the first inauguration of Washington in 1789. He became a US citizen in 1784, resigned from the army and settled down with his longtime companion William North (I found no reference here to Walker) at his retreat in Manhattan called the Louvre Farm, where he became a prominent citizen doing both church and charity work. He was also given an estate in NJ and one in upstate NY.

In today's more open society, it's a little odd to see the contrivances same-sex couples had to go to—even up until recently—such as adoption, to form a family unit. In any case, Steuben formally adopted North and Walker as his sons and made them his heirs, and they received his property upon his death.

I'd always thought the Steuben Day Parade had existed "forever", but now I find out it began only in 1956. Not only that, in its first year, it took place in Ridgewood, Queens, and only the next year, in 1957, did the Parade move to 5th Avenue (Photo by Steu111 at English Wikipedia). For a long time, its route not only went up 5th Avenue, it then turned right and continued down 86th Street, then turned right again down 2nd Avenue, where the Heidelberg still is today. However today, there's no German Yorkville, and no reason to march there, so the parade stops on 5th Avenue when it reaches 86th Street.

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These two pictures show the route on 5th Avenue. I like the first one as the uniforms appropriately remind of General von Steuben during the Revolutionary War days.

There's an odd personal link I have with the parade. I need to remind that Beverly and I met at Middlebury in the summer of 1961, along with my friend Rita who turned out to be Beverly's roommate, there that summer, and then in Mainz as well. Beverly flew home to Minnesota, then came to stay in New York. That's when we went to Joe King's Rathskeller. When we were ready to sail on the Liberté for Paris, then Mainz, family and friends saw us off—you were still allowed to do that then. We left earlier than Rita left, since we allowed time for Paris, so she was able to see us off. I distinctly remember her saying at our departure that, since she'd already come into Manhattan from Queens for us, she was going to spend the afternoon watching the Steuben Day Parade.

That fact added a wonderful link to the departure. We were leaving to study in Germany for a year actually on Steuben Day in New York, with the parade taking place. You couldn't plan symbolism better than that. Beverly and I finally got to go and enjoy the Parade about four decades later, probably in the early 2000's. The 2019 Steuben Day Parade will be held on Saturday, 21 September.

German Language Prestige in the US    It's hard to picture the vast extent to which German culture and language were appreciated in the US, and it wasn't only because there were a lot of German-Americans. Others also had interest in the language, and German was the second most commonly-spoken language in America. Though hard to visualize now, German was then in the US what Spanish is today.

Aside from the large local population, it was that there was general admiration for German scientists and composers. German universities were popular, notably Heidelberg. In the period up to 1915, German was so popular that about 25% of all US high school students studied it. When Middlebury College agreed to start its summer language schools in 1915, there would have been no doubt in anyone's mind that the German School would be the one to start with, with other languages following in later years.

Mark Twain, Student of German    As an indicator of the popularity and ubiquity of German, none other than Mark Twain studied it, first at age 15 in 1850, when he first worked at learning a second language. He went back to studying it in 1878 in preparation for a trip to Europe. Twain being Twain, in his writings, he of course joked about the quirks that come up in any language, such as the oddities of gender, but since it was German he chose for his second language, that's what he talked about, such as its declensions and propensity for writing nouns together as single long words. He also had positive comments to say about German, such as the regularity of its spelling. He summed up this humor in a well-known satirical essay he wrote called The Awful German Language, which was published in 1880 as an annex to the second volume of his A Tramp Abroad.

The book appeared in German translation the very next year under the title Bummel durch Europa ("Tramping Through Europe"), and the essay was called Die schreckliche deutsche Sprache. But the essay was very popular, particularly in Germany, and was promptly also published separately in numerous editions, and is considered to be more famous than the book it appeared in. In any case, Twain utilized German on occasion here and there in his works, and also in his speeches well into the 20C.

On the occasion of the centenary of Twain's death, a leading literary critic in Germany said about the Essay: Es ist ein köstlicher Text, einer der besten Texte, die je über das Lernen einer Fremdsprache geschrieben worden ist. ("It's a delightful text, one of the best texts ever written about the learning of a foreign language.") And Twain showed his sympathy and true, serious feelings for German when his wife Olivia died in 1904 and he included on her gravestone the engraving of this German text: Gott sei Dir gnädig, O meine Wonne ("May God be gracious to you, O my delight").

Over the Rhine: Decline & Devastation    It will be of interest now to compare what happened in Kleindeutschland in NYC with what happened in Over the Rhine in Cincinnati. We saw how Over the Rhine thrived in the 19C as a German-American community, with a number of industries, not the least of which were the many breweries in its north section. Its restaurants and beer gardens attracted people from outside its borders, its architecture was exemplary, its cultural roots were deeply embedded. It was the Golden Age of Over the Rhine.

But alas, it didn't last. Over the Rhine (OTR) didn't do well with the arrival of the 20C. A period of D&D began, decline leading to devastation. It was an apocalyptic downfall. (But unlike Kleindeutschland and other NYC neighborhoods—spoiler alert—it's now enjoying a stirring revival.)

At the turn of the 20C, the population of OTR reached a peak of 45,000 residents, with the proportion of German-Americans estimated at 75%. But as with Kleindeutschland (or any other immigrant community), by 1915, second- and third-generation residents felt much more assimilated, had less of an emotional connection with the language and culture, and moved outward, across the city and also into the suburbs, if not beyond. Unlike NYC, which often continued to attract new immigrants, in Cincinnati, the German-Americans moving out were not replaced in great numbers because Cincinnati had competition in the Great Lakes region, and new arrivals were attracted to other fast-growing industrial cities in the region.

OTR was very severely hit by two things in the early 20C. First it was the virulent anti-German hysteria during WWI, then it got a one-two punch as its many breweries closed during Prohibition. It turned into one of several old, declining neighborhoods forming a ring of slums around the Central Business District (CBD--see maps). Some even thought an expanding CBD would swallow it up, and suggested its demolition. By the end of the 20C, after decades of decline, the boarded-up buildings and empty streets of OTR were an indication of the poverty of the poor residents who had moved in, and of the homeless squatters in its abandoned buildings.

Hysteria    Wartime emotions do strange things to people. The worst 20C reflection of that fact in the US would be the emotions that led to the internment in camps of Japanese-Americans during WWII, when anti-German and anti-Italian emotions were far less severe. But back during the Great War/WWI, anti-German emotions were so incredibly extreme throughout the general US population that that situation is generally referred to as nothing less than hysteria, if not a manic hysteria.

WWI inspired in the US an outbreak of nativism, superpatriotism, and xenophobia that targeted anything in any way associated with Germany and German language and culture. While this might have started as a direct outgrowth of the daily news reports of the sinking of the Lusitania and of allies fighting Germany, much of the feeling was fanned by poster propaganda from official sources. Even now with the distance of a century, these propaganda posters remain horrifying to see.

One tactic to win over the emotions of the public was for Allied propaganda to compare the German army with the pre-medieval Huns that had invaded Europe, especially under Attila the Hun. The term was used in creepy posters like this. While sometimes the reference made was to Huns, plural, it was evidently felt to be even creepier to use it in the singular, and even more so, along with the article, as "The Hun".

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Equally horrifying was using a giant gorilla—a "mad brute"—to depict the German army, shown here as having left Europe in devastation, crossed the Atlantic, and being about to invade the US. His hands are bloody, and his bloody club is labeled in German Kultur, implying that it must have been Beethoven, Goethe, and Kant who sneakily led the gorilla across the ocean. And you can't miss the sexual connotation—and warning--of the gorilla carrying a topless woman with him.

A Demonized Dog    The degree to which such propaganda posters were meant to dehumanize Germany and the Germans is hard to imagine in our times, but the mania, the hysteria, spread way beyond what one might imagine today. Possibly the most incomprehensible is what happened to the dachshund in the US (and in the UK). Up to 1913, the dachshund (Photo by Igor Bredikhin) was one of the ten most popular breeds in the US. It symbolized cuteness, and was jokingly referred to as the sausage dog. But during the WWI hysteria, the popularity of the dachshund declined dramatically. It had a German name and was felt to symbolize Germany and provided a convenient local target for anti-German sentiment.

What happened to dachshunds during WWI was terrible and unforgiveable. The breed was so recognizable and considered a symbol of all things German, that it became an easy target for violence. Dachshunds on the street were routinely stoned to death or kicked to death in the US and in the UK. Owners that dared to venture out into public risked being assaulted and labeled as German sympathizers or having their pet ripped from their arms to be kicked and stomped to death in front of them. The type of propaganda poster we saw above is supposed to creep you out, but these below are unfathomable:

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These posters are actually showing Uncle Sam mistreating dogs—if not worse. In Chicago, a frightened dachshund breeder was harassed and tormented by superpatriots in the street. He then went home and shot every dachshund in his kennel rather than have the harassment continue. Under such duress, the dachshund population of the Allied world crashed during WWI. In 1913, 217 dachshunds were registered in the UK, but in 1919, there were none. In the US, the dachshund went from being one of the ten most popular breeds in 1913 to there being only 12 survivors in 1919.

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Most such posters were horrific, but this illustration—it doesn't seem to be an actual poster, but does illustrate the Zeitgeist of the period—blends gross ugliness with an otherwise pleasant domestic scene. A little boy, with his ball and an American flag, is pointing his toy pistol at his pet dachshund. The shadow behind him compares his action to that of a Minuteman in the American Revolution. This domestic scene goes from cute to disgusting in the twinkling of an eye.

Demonized Headgear    If you check the posters of the Hun, the gorilla, and even the two posters and the illustration of the dachshund, every picture shows the figure very recognizably wearing headgear known as a Pickelhaube—even the dogs!! This is an actual picture of an 1860 Pickelhaube of a Prussian officer (Photo by G.Garitan). It's a form of headgear adopted in 1842-1843 and considered to be quintessentially German in the 19C and early 20C. To be precise, it was worn not only by the German military, but also by police and firefighters, and it was also adopted by the armies of other countries, such as Russia, Sweden, and some South American countries. It may shock some Americans to their core to see this 1892 US Marine Corps dress helmet (Photo by Sebastiensecrets) based on the Prussian Pickelhaube and used for a dozen years (click to read label). This SURELY is another example of the great heights and popularity German culture had reached at the time. But during WWI, the Germans saw that the Pickelhaube was unsuitable for the trench warfare of the day and failed to protect the wearer's head. It was first phased out, then finally dropped in 1918. It can only be found in some countries for ceremonial use: this is a unit of the Swedish cavalry wearing the Pickelhaube at the Royal Palace in Stockholm (Photo by Plastronaut at German Wikipedia).

I've left the name itself for the end. Its official name was always Helm mit Spitze, which is quite simply Helmet with Spike. But its unique shape was immediately kidded about, and the vernacular term became Pickelhaube, and stuck. Haube (HOW.buh) is a head covering, or a large "cap". A Pickel is a pick, pickax, ice-ax, the mild humor being that the spike could poke you like a pick. Still, I don't really see the humor, since the pointed part of a pick (Photo by Hyena), on the left, is very obviously perpendicular to the handle, and is horizontal when in use, while the finial on top of the Pickelhaube is vertical.

There's one last point that I find quite amusing about the Pickelhaube. In American Sign Language, there are two different signs meaning "German" or "Germany". The more fun one is this:

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You rest the knuckle of the index finger of your right hand on your forehead and point upward, indicating the spike of the Pickelhaube! The same sign is used in German Sign Language, but its meaning is instead "policeman", since back in the day, it was also the police who wore them.

Hysteria (continued)    We can now elaborate on the anti-German hysteria during WWI. Some words reflecting on Germany were changed, at least temporarily. Sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage", hamburgers became "liberty sandwiches", German measles (rubella) became "liberty measles" (!!) and in some circles, even dachshunds became "liberty pups".
Pretzels disappeared from bars as being "too Germanic".
Some Americans even advocated ridding orchestras of music by Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart.
The Red Cross barred people with German last names from joining, for fear of sabotage.
Many German-Americans chose to alter their surnames from German to English, such as Schmidt to Smith, and Müller/Mueller/Muller to Miller, and to limit their use of German publicly, especially in churches.
Similarly, owners of businesses with German names altered them.
Books in German were removed from libraries, or even burned, a foreshadowing of what the Nazis would do in Berlin two decades later.
The German-American press was heavily censored.
A bill that, fortunately, failed in Congress would have stopped the Post Office from delivering mail to any city or street named Berlin.
Many schools stopped teaching German-language classes.
German teachers were dismissed from public schools, or perhaps moved to other subjects. German professors were censored.
The City College of New York continued to teach German courses, but, in a particularly petty move, reduced the number of credits that students could receive for them.
We said that up to 1915, about 25% of all US high school students studied German. But by the end of WWI, German had become so stigmatized that only 1% of high schools even taught it.

States React    Fourteen states banned the speaking of German in public schools.

In Iowa, the hysteria was taken further than in any other state. In a totally xenophobic move, on 23 May 1918, Governor William Harding issued an executive order known as the Babel Proclamation, which prohibited ALL foreign languages in schools and public places. The proclamation stated that "only English was legal in public or private schools, in public conversations, on trains, over the telephone, at all meetings, and in all religious services." As for the First Amendment right to free speech, Harding implied that speech was free only if you speak English. As for prayer, Harding said that "I am telling those who insist upon praying in some other language that they are wasting their time, for the good Lord up above is now listening for the voice in English." It was in Iowa, too, where German books were burned, and German-language churches were trashed or torched. So were a couple of Danish churches, because Danish sounded so German!! (Of course it does! Danish is a Germanic language, just as English is!). Harding revoked his executive order on 4 December 1918, three weeks after the Armistice, but continued to feel that other languages should be limited in schools.

While Nebraska also banned instruction in any language except English, the US Supreme Court ruled that the ban was illegal in 1923.

In Indiana, Indianapolis had a substantial German-American population, and in the late 19C up to WWI, in its schools, students could study German starting in the second grade and continue through high school. The schools also offered classes on German fairy tales, and high school students studied famous German writers. But early in 1918, the school board suddenly ended all German-language instruction at the city’s elementary schools. A few months later, the Telegraph und Tribüne newspaper was forced to shut down because, as it wrote in one of its final issues, "a pronounced prejudice has arisen in this country against everything printed or written in the German language." The end of the war didn't stop this impetus. A 1919 state law banned the teaching of German in public, private, or parochial elementary schools statewide, threatening violators with a fine of up to $100 and/or six months in jail.

Names Changed    We just said that they tried to get the Post Office from delivering to any place named Berlin. That didn't work, but New Berlin OH did change its name to North Canton. Berlin OH went back to its original name of Fort Loramie. Berlin IA became Lincoln. Berlin MI was renamed Marne, in honor of those who fought in the Battle of the Marne. Berlin CA became Genevra. Berlin NE became Otoe. In Canada, Berlin ON became Kitchener. In New Orleans, Berlin Street was renamed General Pershing Street in honor of the US general, though the Google Maps shows that Jena Street, also named after a German city, is still there, two blocks away. However, I see in Wikipedia a list of at least 16 towns in the US that are still called Berlin.

Ethnic groups have traditionally cared for the medical needs of their own. For instance Beverly, of Swedish heritage, was born in the former Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis, and I also make reference to Long Island Jewish Hospital. But we already said that, in Manhattan, the former German Hospital, once it moved up to Yorkville, was renamed during WWI Lenox Hill Hospital, and the German Dispensary, after it became the German Polyclinic, was renamed the Stuyvesant Polyclinic (now closed). In Brooklyn in 1887, the Plattdeutscher Volksfest-Verein organized the German Hospital Society to build a hospital. The German Hospital of Brooklyn opened in 1899, but was renamed the Wyckoff Heights Hospital during the hysteria. Once "hospital" became a dirty word in our time, it was eventually renamed the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. In Chicago, German Hospital became Grant Hospital. In New York, the giant Germania Life Insurance Company, founded in 1960 on Wall Street by an immigrant from Germany, became the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. Of its several locations, its former headquarters on Union Square in NYC, built in 1911, are iconic (Photo by Ad Meskens). We used this same picture in 2017/18 (Ctrl-F: Union Square) to illustrate the spread of mansard roofs beyond France.

In Chicago, Lubecks [sic] Street became Dickens, Frankfort Street became Charleston, and Hamburg Street became Shakespeare. In Brooklyn, Hamburg Avenue became Wilson Avenue after the WWI president. In Indianapolis, Bismarck Avenue became Pershing, and Germania Street became Belleview.

Germantown NE was renamed Garland after a local soldier who died in the war. East Germantown IN became Pershing. Germantown CA became Artois. But again, Wikipedia lists two dozen or so places in the US that are still named Germantown.

In June 1918, a Michigan congressman introduced a bill, that fortunately failed, that would have actually required such name changes nationwide.

Cincinnati Street Name Changes    Kleindeutschland in Manhattan had numbered and lettered streets, so there were no German street names to change, but Over the Rhine did have regularly named streets, and many of them reflected the German heritage of the community. These were a target of the hysteria. On 9 April 1918, the Cincinnati City council joined with what other localities had done and changed the following German-related names. Some were in Over the Rhine, and some were in adjacent communities. For reasons that will become clear later, I'm listing all the changes I found into three groups:

My Connection via Middlebury    The only way this history of hysteria a century ago affected Beverly and me is in a very tangential, yet for me in a very memorable, way. It was a matter of academic ceremony. To explain this, I need to extend the history of the founding of the Middlebury Deutsche Schule, which I presented in 2011/23, and which you may wish to look at again (it's short: Ctrl-F: Stroebe).

Lillian Stroebe founded the Middlebury College German Summer School in 1915 as the first of what became eleven summer language schools. You may have once thought it was odd to establish a German School first, but knowing what we now know, it should be perfectly obvious that, given the huge popularity of German at the time, it was the most logical choice. It was quite successful in its first summer.

It returned in 1916, when the French School joined it, having just been founded as the second summer language school at Middlebury. But in 1917, the US declared war on Germany on 6 April, sentiments changed, and everything German became anathema. Still, the 1917 summer session of the German School took place, along with the founding of the Spanish School. But early in 1918, Dr Stroebe was informed by the Middlebury trustees that, due to the changing circumstances, they foresaw low demand and couldn't see how a German School could be profitable that coming summer, so the German School was suspended after existing for only three years, 1915-1916-1917. Such a turnabout would have been inconceivable before the war.

Well after the abatement of the hysteria, after skipping a total of 13 summers (1918-1930), Middlebury reopened its German School in 1931, but in nearby Bristol VT due to the lack of space on campus, now filled by the French and Spanish Schools. German classes were held at the Bristol Inn, and students lived in private houses as paying guests. The German School eventually returned to the Middlebury campus in 1951.

I attended nine summers in Middlebury, mostly in the German School starting in 1959. It's really where I learned to speak and use the language, based on their Language Pledge (a term they've copyrighted) to speak only the language being studied on threat of expulsion. In 1960 I was in the Spanish School, then back to German in 1961, where I met Beverly in her first summer there, before our year abroad in Mainz to get our Master's Degrees.

Leaving Mainz in August 1962, we never got to attend the language school graduation ceremonies for our MAs back in Vermont, since we were still in Europe, and anyway we were flying to Beverly's home in Minnesota to get married, on 25 August 1962, a week to the day before my birthday. We started working then, and there was a hiatus of thirteen years before we went back to Middlebury, this time for doctoral work.

During that hiatus, though we were working, we were not idle as to language study. Though German, French, and Spanish have always been our primary second languages, we also taught ourselves Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, and Russian, but to much lower levels of competency, usually to an introductory or perhaps intermediate level. We continued to travel extensively in North America and Europe, and often blended in language coursework, usually lasting 2-3 weeks, as part of a longish trip. This is our hiatus coursework between 1963 and 1975:

1967 Universidad Iberoamericana (Iberoamerican University), Mexico City, Mexico (Spanish)
1971 Université de Pau (University of Pau), Pau, France (French)
1971 Universität Wien (University of Vienna), Vienna, Austria (German)
1972 College of White Plains, White Plains NY (Italian)
1972 Courses in Unterweissenbach, Austria (Russian [taught in German])
1973 Göteborgs Universitet (University of Gothenburg), Gothenburg, Sweden (Swedish)
1974 California Field Studies/College of Notre Dame, in Germany (German)
1974 Saint Olaf College, Northfield MN (German)

(Note that we were both on sabbatical from our respective schools during the academic year 1971-1972, which would account for the four periods of study done then.) After the long hiatus, from 1975 to 1980 we were both back during the summers in the German School for doctorate work, though part of one summer involved our auditing in the French School. We continued teaching through the '80s, but then there was one last hurrah:

1990 Malaca Instituto, Málaga, Spain (Spanish)

We arranged for this language study to last longer, two full months (July-August). After the academic year in Mainz (11 months), this was our second longest period of living in Europe, and second longest period of language coursework. Beverly, having the slight age advantage, retired from teaching in 1991, as I did in 1992.

At the end of the 1980 session in August, we each received our Doctor of Modern Language degrees at the ceremony in Mead Chapel, as did other degree candidates, mostly receiving Master of Arts degrees in the various languages. But now comes the point I've been making, about that academic ceremony.

For the graduation ceremony, there was a very impressive, grand academic procession into Mead Chapel, with degree candidates in black caps and gowns, including the blue-and-white Middlebury hood colors. In addition, the professors from various universities, many from Europe, were also in their robes, and wearing the varying hood colors of each of their alma maters. All that impressed me, but what was the icing on the cake was that, because the German School had been founded first, despite its suspension of thirteen years centering on the 1920s, it nevertheless led the procession, which brought home the earlier preëminence of the language. First came the professors, then Beverly and I as the Doctoral candidates (I think the only ones that summer in all the schools), then the Masters degree candidates. After the German School came, in the order of their founding, the French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian schools. The German School also was seated in the front pews. All of that was a nice consolation in consideration of past history.

Prohibition    As mentioned, the second ruinous development to hit Over the Rhine was Prohibition, which lasted from 1920 to 1933. As we mentioned about OTR in the last posting, there were all the beer halls and beer gardens throughout, including in what is today called the Brewery District. . . . When the German brewers introduced lager beer in the 1830s, they became the industry leaders as the 8 Cincinnati breweries in 1840 more than quadrupled to 36 in 1860. Brewers such as Christian Moerlein became community leaders.

It strikes me that, when people talk about Prohibition, it's mostly about how it affected people, but little seems to be said about how it affected industry. One interesting way out of the problem—and a route to survival--can be illustrated by what Anheuser-Busch in Saint Louis did, start making alcohol-free beer instead (click to read). Going this route would seem to explain why Annheuser-Busch is still in business today.

In OTR late in the 19C, brewing was at its peak, with 18 large breweries in operation, some operating nationwide. We mentioned above Christian Moerlein becoming a community leader. The Christian Moerlein Brewing Company became the fifth-largest brewery in the US and could have become what Anheuser-Busch or MillerCoors are today. This is the Christian Moerlein Brewery at around the turn of the 20C. But instead they decided to close with the coming of Prohibition. All but one of the pre-Prohibition breweries in OTR eventually closed, and some were demolished. Between 1957 and 2010 there was only one beer company in operation in OTR, with the massive, ornate brick breweries empty and crumbling.

The Bad Years    For decades, OTR languished, becoming a destination for the very poor and homeless. In 2009 it was called the most dangerous neighborhood in America, topping even Compton in Los Angeles. I have two personal references to OTR. I asked friend Leslie about her experience, and she emailed in January: When I was going to graduate school at Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (1986-1992) [in Clifton Heights, just north of OTR], the area [OTR] was quite dangerous. It has changed considerably, from what I gather, and now is a pretty hip place to hang! She's right, but we'll get to that shortly.

The other personal reference is my own. In 1998, when Beverly and I were at that wedding in Covington, I drove our rental car into OTR. I wasn't fully prepared. I didn't have an excellent map of the area, nor did I really know where to go or what to look for. I'm not even sure now what streets I drove up and down. But what I do remember is empty, shabby streets with handsome, but frequently boarded-up buildings. Let's put it this way: as interested as we were in looking around, we did not get out of the car.

As to those handsome buildings: OTR has been praised for its collection of historic architecture. The New York Times said OTR had a scale and grace reminiscent of Greenwich Village in New York. OTR has been architecturally compared to the French Quarter in New Orleans and the historic districts in Savannah GA and Charleston SC. When Arthur Frommer, who founded the Frommer travel guides I often use and make reference to, visited OTR, he said it was the most promising urban area for revitalization in the US, with great tourist potential.

http://www.otrfoundation.org/images/HistoricPreservation2.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e7/f0/e8/e7f0e8f32c741e67be675db2ae35a3e7.jpg

Compare the two above maps, the first showing OTR in 1930 and the second, the amount of infrastructure lost. Since 1930, about half of OTR's historic buildings have been destroyed, illustrating the desperate need to repair currently deteriorating buildings. Between 2001 and 2006, Cincinnati approved more than 50 "emergency demolitions", caused by absentee landlords allowing their buildings to become so dilapidated as to be a danger to the public. Reinvestment could have saved them. In 2006, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, of which I am a member, declared OTR one of the Eleven Most Endangered Places in the US. On both these maps, note the major street cutting due east-west street across OTR. This is Liberty Street, which we discussed in the last posting as a one-time city limit of Cincinnati. Here's a more contemporary map showing the size of the Over the Rhine Historic District (Map by Bike756). The curved route of the former canal is still visible on the west side, as well as the canal's sharp turn to form the south side. For future reference, note that the area south of Liberty Street is now called the Gateway District of OTR because it's adjacent to the CBD, and the area north of Liberty is called the Brewery District of OTR, for obvious reasons. In 1955, the city decided to widen Liberty Street as part of an east-west crosstown connection between interstate highways. To do that, buildings on the south side of the street were torn down and the street went from two to five lanes. Today, efforts are being made to narrow Liberty Street to bring together the two parts of OTR.

Over the last decade since 2009, Over the Rhine has not only been ripe for its R&R, its Renewal & Renaissance, it's been experiencing it quite dizzyingly. We'll get back to that good news shortly, but early last year, we had a break in the narrative for an intermezzo, and, since some interesting information has been piling up that's too long for an add-on, the next posting will be another intermezzo. The posting after that will continue the OTR narrative.

Amtrak Food Service Update    Two postings ago we talked about the following problem and updated it in the last posting. There is now additional news from the Winter 2019 edition of The ESPA Express: News from the Empire State Passengers Association, of which I am a member:

Though normally the dining car on overnight trains is quite a bit superior to the café car on day trains, it seems to me the café car is still probably superior to this new dining-car system. The thing is, the dining car expense is included for sleeping car passengers.