By Kathleen Doane
Enquirer contributor
With America’s entry into the Great War 95 years ago this month, a sudden and ferocious hatred of all things German swept the country.
Cincinnati was not immune despite the fact that more than half of its citizens were German immigrants or removed from the Vaterland by no more than one or two generations. Many aspects of anti-German hysteria here have been well-documented:
More than a dozen streets with German names were changed: Bremen in Over-the-Rhine became Republic and Hamburg at the top of OTR was changed to Stonewall; German and Berlin streets in the West End became English and Woodward, respectively.
Dr. Ernst Kunwald, former conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, enters the Federal Building in Cincinnati in 1917 as a prisoner of war. Provided
German language books were removed from local libraries. A months-long controversy erupted as to whether the German language should be dropped from the curriculum of Cincinnati public schools, and in February 1918, the school board voted to remove it from elementary schools. It pretty much died a natural death in area high schools as the war continued and fewer and fewer students elected to take it.
Textbooks presenting positive portrayals of Germany or German life were censored at local universities.
In an attempt to prove their patriotism, a number of German families anglicized their names: Reiss became Rice, Hüll changed to Hill, Schmidt to Smith, etc.
Some recorded actions to eradicate all-things German were laughable: The reported removal of pretzels from bar counters and the renaming of sauerkraut to liberty slaw on local restaurant menus.
The far more damaging response came in the constant harassment of Cincinnati’s German citizens or individuals suspected of being German sympathizers. School children with German names were bullied and beaten up. Individuals suspected of pro-German opinions or activities were suspended from their jobs while under investigation or fired based on suspicion. Opposing the war was tantamount to being a traitor.
All of this played out daily in local newspapers, and as 1917 drew to an end, harassment turned into a witch hunt.
The afternoon of Oct. 6, federal agents, local law enforcement and post office authorities raided the downtown offices of the city’s most influential German language newspaper, Tägliches Cincinnatier Volksblatt (The People’s Daily News).
At the same time, the homes of the paper’s editor, Henry Danziger, city editor, Carl Pletz and business manager, Gerhard Huelsmann, also were searched. According to a New York Times article published the next day, authorities were looking for anything that would prove that the paper and its employees were violating espionage and sedition laws. Although they seized correspondence, account books and other papers, there is no record that anyone was convicted or even charged with breaking any laws.
Similar action had occurred the night before at the local headquarters of the People’s Council of America for Democracy and Peace, a national pacifist organization. The Council’s aim was to rally Americans, especially trade union workers and intellectuals, against the war by holding meetings, public demonstrations and publishing and distributing anti-war literature.
That agenda, and the organization’s identification with socialist ideas and individuals, made them a prime target across the country, and as in the newspaper raid that would follow the next day, local Council members were questioned, papers, anti-war materials and meeting minutes seized and participants’ homes and offices searched.
About a dozen men and women who had attended the meeting or were suspected of being members had their photos splashed across the newspapers the following day, including a local minister, Henry Bigelow, who, several years later, would serve on Cincinnati City Council before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Again, there is no record of criminal convictions for anyone targeted that night.
Wooden stocks located in Fountain Square, 1917.
Without a doubt, the saddest case of all was the arrest, imprisonment and eventual deportation of Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conductor Ernst Kunwald.
Austrian-born Kunwald, who had succeeded Leopold Stokowski as CSO conductor in 1912, was popular with his musicians and audiences. His programs of standard classical works were weighted toward German repertoire. That wasn’t unusual, given the makeup of his audiences.
His troubles first surfaced in late October 1917 when local papers announced that, under pressure, Kunwald had agreed to play The Star Spangled Banner and America at each CSO concert. At that time, he also had been advised by the CSO board not to talk politics after making candid comments to musicians and audiences about his sympathetic feelings toward Germany and his homeland.
In the same article, orchestra manager Kline Roberts assured audiences that the CSO would continue to play German music despite the fact that several major U.S. orchestras had banned it. Rumors also began to circulate here that the 50-year-old Kunwald was a reservist in the Austrian Army, an accusation that he vehemently denied.
In late November, while on tour with the CSO, Kunwald was not allowed to conduct in Pittsburgh after its local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution protested his appearance. By this time, he also was on the radar of the U.S. Justice Department and the head of it Enemy Aliens Registration Section, 22-year-old J. Edgar Hoover.
A couple of weeks later, Kunwald was arrested and held overnight in a federal jail in Dayton. Two days after his release, he resigned as CSO conductor.
In January 1918, Kunwald was rearrested under the Alien Enemies Act and sent to Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia, where he and his wife, Lina, were held for more than a year before deportation. No evidence against Kunwald was ever released, though it is generally assumed his vocal pride and sympathy for Germany and Austria were the basis for his imprisonment.
Kunwald died in Vienna in 1939, just as another great war with Germany was getting under way.
World War I info
Dates: July 28, 1914-Nov. 11, 1918
Catalyst: The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian-Serb student.
U.S. enters war: After a German U-boat sank the British liner, Lusitania, with 128 Americans onboard, President Woodrow Wilson demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships. Germany agreed until January 1917. After the sinking of seven US merchant ships by German submarines, Wilson called for war on Germany and the US Congress agreed on April 6, 1917.
First chemical weapon in warfare: Mustard gas
Casualties: 35 million military and civilian (117,000 US military deaths)
Posted in: Uncategorized
Tags: anti-German, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Ernst Kunwald, German, German language, German-American, prejudice, war, World War I, WWI
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