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In 1905, the Southern California transportation, electric power, and real estate magnate Henry E. Huntington hired German immigrant William Hertrich as head gardener for his San Marino Ranch. Huntington told Hertrich that he would have the extensive ranch lands “to play with” for as long as he lived, and Hertrich continued to experiment there until his death in 1966. Establishing numerous test plots on the property, he pushed the limits of Huntington’s boosterish claim that almost anything could grow in Southern California. As it turned out, more than a few things could not. Interestingly, Hertrich’s published writings reveal that there was also a social dimension to his experimentation. He tested notions of race and class then popular among the elites of greater Los Angeles. In so doing, he tried to create a structure for his workforce that corresponded in peculiar ways with the composition and layout of his gardens. His management of the ranch employees as well as his landscaping of the gardens served to exoticize and marginalize Asians and Latinos. As with his testing of plants, Hertrich’s experimentation with his workforce was not entirely successful. If read against the grain, his published writings reveal traces of resistance. Hertrich also played a major role in planning and landscaping the suburb of San Marino out of Huntington’s ranch and surrounding properties. This final experiment was perhaps his most successful, resulting in an exclusive garden-centered community that continues to flourish long after his death.

After examining the concept of festivals as ethnic practice and the scholarship on ethnic and heritage festivals among various ethnic groups in the US, including Cajuns and Czech, Scottish and German Americans, this paper utilizes a survey of Polish American festival organizers as well as public descriptions of Polish American festivals to determine why festival activists organize their events, what image of Polish American identity they try to project through their festivals, and how they account for issues of authenticity as Polish American neighborhoods continue to decline and the community becomes more diffused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from interviews with twenty-five German citizens, this paper aims to shed some light on the migration experience of contemporary middle-class Germans who migrated to the United States. The interview data suggest that while these individuals have achieved successful socioeconomic integration and do not encounter discrimination or negative prejudices, they exhibit a strong sense of their German identity, rejecting such common labels such as "immigrant," "expatriate," or "German American." Instead, they continue to negotiate their identity as "Germans living in America." Like most immigrants, they engage in "transnational activities"; however, in contrast to the transnational activities sought out by unskilled migrants and global elites, these migrants tend to favor personal, social, or cultural activities over economic or political activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of Operation Rubicon provides a 'missing link' in the history signals intelligence. It connects the period of the Second World War, dominated by Bletchley Park and Arlington Hall, with the Snowden era. This special section examines signals intelligence in the latter decades of the twentieth century, arguing that the processes of covert interference that were used help us to understand sources and methods in our present times. It examines new material that has emerged in Europe that expands our comprehension of the intelligence co-operation between the United States, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden, focusing on the control of technology corporations, especially Crypto AG. It argues that, as a result of Operation Rubicon, all states with high-grade computing, even the Soviet Union, were probably secret beneficiaries of this process and derived substantial flow of intelligence as a result, mostly from the global south. However, the task of exploring the material generated by Operation Rubicon has only just begun, since most of the product remains classified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the German-speaking merchant community that arose in mid-eighteenth-century Philadelphia, and its members' efforts to integrate themselves and fellow Central European immigrants into British systems of commerce, credit, law, and politics. These naturalized merchants developed commercial ties around the Atlantic--in Great Britain, Iberia, and the Caribbean--and worked to align their largely colinguistic customer bases with British tastes and goods. They also sought to assist new arrivals through their civic and political engagement, especially through the newly formed German Society of Pennsylvania. After decades of striving to integrate themselves into the British Empire, Philadelphia's German merchants emerged as vocal critics of Parliament's imperial reforms in the late 1760s. They feared that the new laws subverted their economic gains and equality as naturalized subjects. By the 1770s German merchants financed the Patriot war effort and served within the newly independent Pennsylvania government. The merchants' activities reveal how Central Europeans, despite originating beyond Europe's metropoles, became transformative figures in the eighteenth-century Atlantic economy as well as in Great Britain's empire and its fracturing in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the 1933–1934 World's Fair in Chicago the local German American population was able to organize some resistance to minimize the Nazi presence on the fairgrounds, while Italian Americans, for their part, were held in check by the close oversight of Fascist Italy's representatives at the Fair. Neither the Fairs organizing committee nor the U.S. State Department offered any objection to either governments presence. The history of the event shows that these differences were fundamentally due to international regulations surrounding international expositions, suggesting that our existing approaches toward meaning‐making and political action at mega‐events need to take better account of larger regulatory structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neglected-but-popular Yiddish humorist Tashrak (penname of Yisroel-Yoysef Zevin) offers not just an opportunity to discover understudied aspects of the Jewish urban experience and modern Yiddish culture, but also allows us to tap into a less refined level of beliefs, behavior, judgments and attitudes of Yiddish-speaking Jews in America. Tashrak wittily conveyed to his readers a comforting image of the New World: New York City was just an enlarged shtetl, whose Jewish residents clashed over a host of issues, while encountering a number of stereotypical non-Jews. In his representation of internal Jewish divisions and disputes, relations with non-Jews, and the trials of modernity and assimilation, Tashrak followed, to some extent, the literary paths of earlier Yiddish and Hebrew writers. Yet critics often frowned upon his politics as either conservative or apolitical, and considered his literary style as lowbrow, thus they disregarded his work altogether, or referred to it as worthless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper illustrates the extensive influence of Spanish on the Mexicanero language of Durango, Mexico, with comparisons with Spanish influence on other varieties of Nawa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on presence of Federal troops in Texas could provide safety for German Texans who were being persecuted for their Unionists inclinations and resistance to the Confederate draft. It mentions auburn-haired sergeant in Company E of the 13th Maine Infantry named Nelson Howard and Federal soldiers on the Mexican border or the Texas coast during this crucial period of the Civil War.

The article focuses on realities of German-American relations, particularly, the sexual economy created by martial rule and Germany's economic distress. It mentions exploring American-German sexual interactions within the power imbalances of martial rule, patriarchal structures, and the economic and social upheaval sweeping Germany. It also mentions Occupation of the Rhineland was an Allied condition of the cease-fire and a precondition for beginning the formal peace negotiations.

Profiles Frederick Kurt Kirsten, a German immigrant who became famous for aeronautical engineering education in the Pacific Northwest. Decision to become a midshipman aboard the ship Elfrieda; Start as an illegal immigrant; Education at the University of Washington; Family life; Career in the academe and industry; Inventions; Establishment of his own company.

In Reading, churches formed during the colonial period gradually transitioned to using the English language in worship services, while new congregations were established to serve the religious needs of the newer German immigrants. St. John's German Lutheran Church, St. Paul's United Evangelical Church, and Zion's German Reformed Church all held German language services when the First World War began, but by the end of the war, the use of the German language in worship services and parochial education led to questions about patriotism. At the same time, institutions with German names came under attack, and prominent industrialists who were German immigrants and members of these congregations were suspected of disloyalty. This article explores the impact of the First World War on Reading's German churches and their members, particularly examining questions of patriotism and military service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the dynamics of bicultural German-U.S. families, specifically how parents promote their cultures with their children, maintain their children's interest in belonging to both cultures, and what they expect their bicultural children's academic achievements to be. Results showed that most values, norms, and traditions largely align across the German and American cultures. However, cultural differences also surface in the level of parental control, concerns over the environment, and the need to compromise in celebrating traditions. For parents, bilingualism represents the main access to the minority culture (i.e. German). While the level of children's proficiency in minority language varies across families, parents' commitment to raise bilingual children is consistently high. This study summarizes successful and unsuccessful techniques parents employ to promote biculturalism and bilingualism in their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the anti-German sentiment in Kansas during World War I. Topics include the history of German immigrants in Kansas, the efforts to imprison or deport German spies, sympathizers, and slackers, Germans as the largest immigrant group in Kansas, and the leadership of Arthur Capper as the state's governor. Also discussed are newspaper articles on German Americans, and German Americans' efforts to prove their loyalty to the U.S.

IN 2012 THE GERMAN Historical Institute Washington launched Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present, an online project that explores three centuries of immigrant entrepreneurship in the United [...]

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the German Americans, one of the largest immigrant groups at the time, were actively involved in the process of re-negotiating their linguistic and ethnic identities in the American environment. Consequently, particularly after 1850, they started setting up German-language schools in order to maintain their language and cultural heritage. Between 1870 and 1910, the Catholic schools for Germans in the United States used textbooks/readers in German to help their students to acculturate successfully to the American mainstream, while also maintaining their ethnic, linguistic and religious ties. This essay explores the ways in which the secular and religious information in a set of four fourth-level Catholic readers/textbooks reflects issues related both to the German Catholic education and to the Americanization trend at the turn into the twentieth century, from a synchronic perspective, as same-level readers, and from a diachronic one, by looking at their progression in time - 1870, 1874, 1897, and 1910. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes how Nazi Germany used its intelligence agencies to target and recruit the Volksdeutsche in America to further the goals of German leader Adolf Hitler of establishing an Aryan empire. Topics discussed include the history of German immigration to the U.S., the German-American community during World War I and World War II, and the attempt of Nazi spymasters such as Doctor Ignatz T. Greibl to recruit German-Americans employed in sensitive positions of trust.

Gottfried Samuel Fraenkel (1901-1984) was a famous entomologist, not a music scholar, nor a professional musician. Nevertheless, he was a knowledgeable collector and sometimes a shrewd dealer. The University of Illinois Library acquired Gottfried S. Fraenkel's collection thirty years ago. In 2014, the collection was finally fully cataloged and made available for scholars. It comprises over 1,300 works of first and early editions by standard Western European composers from baroque, classical, and romantic eras. His collection is a result of someone who genuinely loved collecting, delighted in finding musical treasure, and appreciated music. This article is a tribute to Fraenkel, the music collector, and his story is one worth telling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the evolution of German American singing festivals with thousands of participants and visitors having acted as a changing element in the cultural landscape of the U.S. between 1849 and 1914. The festivals acted as one of the chief means to construct and maintain a German American ethnicity, having been organized to impress Anglo-Americans. The organizers of the festivals included further lowbrow elements like humorous theater scenes or comedies.

While it is one thing to read about communication and work styles in other countries, experiencing it while also having to meet expected requirements of your own culture is something different altogether. We took two very similar classes, both comprised of working adults in Germany and in the US, and joined the students into a project with a purposely vague deliverable. We wanted them to move beyond a textbook understanding of working interculturally, to experience working with people from another country and to present points via technology with presenters who were delivering information simultaneously from both sides of the Atlantic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hemodynamic instability is frequent and outcome-relevant in critical illness. The understanding of complex hemodynamic disturbances and their monitoring and management plays an important role in treatment of intensive care patients. An increasing number of treatment recommendations and guidelines in intensive care medicine emphasize hemodynamic goals, which go beyond the measurement of blood pressures. Yet, it is not known to which extent the infrastructural prerequisites for extended hemodynamic monitoring are given in intensive care units (ICUs) and how hemodynamic management is performed in clinical practice. Further, it is still unclear which factors trigger the use of extended hemodynamic monitoring. Methods: In this multicenter, 1-day (November 7, 2013, and the preceding 24 h) cross-sectional study, we retrieved data on patient monitoring from ICUs in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland by means of a web-based case report form. One hundred and sixty-one intensive care units contributed detailed information on availability of hemodynamic monitoring. In addition, detailed information on hemodynamic monitoring of 1789 patients that were treated on due date was collected, and independent factors triggering the use of extended hemodynamic monitoring were identified by multivariate analysis. Results: Besides basic monitoring with electrocardiography (ECG), pulse oximetry, and blood pressure monitoring, the majority of patients received invasive arterial (77.9 %) and central venous catheterization (55.2 %). All over, additional extended hemodynamic monitoring for assessment of cardiac output was only performed in 12.3 % of patients, while echocardiographic examination was used in only 1.9 %. The strongest independent predictors for the use of extended hemodynamic monitoring of any kind were mechanical ventilation, the need for catecholamine therapy, and treatment backed by protocols. In 71.6 % of patients in whom extended hemodynamic monitoring was added during the study period, this extension led to changes in treatment. Conclusions: Extended hemodynamic monitoring, which goes beyond the measurement of blood pressures, to date plays a minor role in the surveillance of critically ill patients in German, Austrian, and Swiss ICUs. This includes also consensus-based recommended diagnostic and monitoring applications, such as echocardiography and cardiac output monitoring. Mechanical ventilation, the use of catecholamines, and treatment backed by protocol could be identified as factors independently associated with higher use of extended hemodynamic monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces the Kaiser Prize-the most coveted award in the German American world of Lieder-and the man who won it twice, Eugen Klee. Klee arrived in Philadelphia in the 1890s and quickly established himself as the preeminent German choirmaster in the country-a true German American Apollo. In 1912 Klee won the Kaiser Prize and started a brief collaboration with Leopold Stokowski. In 1915 Klee won the Kaiser Prize again. Given that this second victory came during the First World War-and within three weeks of the sinking of the Lusitania-Klee had to content himself with a photograph of the prize. The actual prize did not arrive in America until 1927, by which time Klee's life-like the music he conducted-was tracing a perdendo in America. In Eugen Klee's personal story one hears the sound and silence within the score of German cultural influence in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]