In the mid 1850s,
German was taught in all of the German parochial schools, but not in the city’s
public schools. A society to create a
Freier Deutscher Schulverein, or a free German
public school, was therefore instituted in 1855. Picnics, balls, and theatrical performances
were organized to help aid the school society.
On March 2, 1856, the school opened at 63 Green Street. Three years later, the school moved to
Madison Avenue near Franklin Street.
Tuition cost $.06 week for children under nine years old and $.12 per
week for children over nine years old.
Carl A. Meyer was hired as the school teacher for $7.00 per week. Meyer remained in that position until the
school closed in August 1882.
Beginning in the
early 1870s German was now taught in both private and public schools, such as
the elite Albany Academy for Boys, the Albany Academy for Girls, and Albany
High School. By 1873 German citizens had
endowed a yearly prize for German at the Albany High School.
The honor was known as the German Medal and was awarded to both students of German
parentage and also of non-German parentage.
Within Albany High School the Barbarossa Society was founded around
1885. The society nobly and zealously
promoted the German language at the Albany High School. Membership included over one hundred students.
The society was active, awarding the yearly Barbarossa Prize to the student
with the highest standing in German for three years. The prize was worth $5 in gold. The Barbarossa prize was awarded yearly until
1930, except for the years 1918 and 1919 when no awards were given in the
German language department. Furthermore,
the society sponsored an annual evening dance known as Barbarossa
Abend.
The event included a play and a musical program with vocal, piano, and
violin solos from its talented members.
Also, German poems and German compositions usually were read during the
affair.
From 1912 to 1916 the local branch of the DANB annually awarded a student from
the Albany Academy and the Albany High School a silver medal for the best
German essay.
As Joy Becker
states, “By 1893, there was an advantage for the modern language department:
French and German were now taught in the primary grades, so upper class
students had a basic grounding before they began.”
Conversely, according to Reimer, German was not taught in public grade schools,
and in 1908 the local Lutheran ministers organized an unsuccessful campaign to
have German taught in all public schools where the children of German parents
predominated.
However, a bill was later introduced by Nebraska
House of Representative member John H. Mockett, Jr. and after its approval by
Legislature on July 17, 1913, the Mockett Law went into effect. It provided that every school was required to
teach modern European languages in grades above the fourth if it was requested
by at least fifty parents. By this time,
French, Latin, and Spanish were also taught in Albany High School. Meanwhile, Albany High School’s German
language department was the largest of all the foreign language
departments. It had three full-time
teachers and a department head. Over the
years the German language department supervisors included Leo H. Altmayer. He was appointed department head on September
7, 1868, and he was educated at Bonn and Göttingen. The second German language supervisor was
Carl A. Meyer. He was appointed in 1886
and educated at Hamburg, Johanneum.
Meyer died April 30, 1899, and Heinrich Bosch was appointed next in
1901. Frederick Mueller followed Bosch
and was appointed in 1908. He was
educated at Sinsheim Gymnasium in Germany.
Mueller also was pastor of the Fourth
Reformed Church.
After the United
States became a belligerent in World War I, the American government became fearful
of German sympathizers and of German ideologies infiltrating the general
public. According to pro-American attorney
Gustavus Ohlinger, German schools and churches abroad were outposts of her
power. Secret German agents were
introduced into native education to disseminate doubt with regard to the
adequacy of established institutions and to replace national spirit by
fostering an admiration of
Kultur to the disparagement of national
achievements.
As a
result of American entry into the war and nativist anxieties, legislators
succumbed to pressure and enacted new laws restricting the instruction of the
German language. Most laws were phrased
to prohibit all non-English languages, but in Ohio and Louisiana, the laws were
explicitly written to outlaw German.
The Smith-Towner Act, passed by Congress in 1918, at the behest of the National
Education Association, provided that no state was allowed to receive federal
funds unless it enacted and enforced laws requiring the chief language of
instruction in all schools, both, public and private, be English.
As a result, a bill was introduced in the New York State Senate at Albany to
abolish all foreign-language papers in the state of New York.
Fortunately the bill failed.
Furthermore, the Mockett Law mentioned earlier was repealed by the House
in 1918. But its repeal did not forbid
the teaching of foreign languages in public schools, but merely removed the
provision that school districts had to offer such instruction when requested by
the parents of at least fifty pupils in grades above the fourth.
This further reduced the number of students studying the German-language. Meanwhile, there were some voices of reason
among governmental officials, although, unfortunately not many. One such spokesperson was Doctor Philander P.
Claxton, the United States Commissioner of Education. Claxton opposed the elimination of German
language instruction. “The United States is not at war with the German
language,” he wrote in a widely publicized letter.
According to local
city historians, both Thomas Reimer and John J. McEneny, Albany ceased the
teaching of German after American entrance in the war. However, the
SHJ reported that both Superintendent of Schools Jones and Abram
Roy Brubacher, President of the State College for Teachers, declared that German
would continue at both Albany High School and the New York State College for
Teachers. Brubacher noted that
prospective teachers’ interest in German-language courses drastically declined
at the college subsequent to America’s
entrance in the war.
Later, in 1932, Florence Ellen Chase, an
Albany school teacher of German, since 1914, wrote, “Albany represents one of
the few public school systems which did not discontinue the teaching of
German.”
Still, Albany drastically decreased its
expenditures on foreign language textbooks employed in the high school; (see
Table X.) The German-language department
used a total of eighteen books, during the school years of 1913, 1914, and 1915,
but by 1918 the number was significantly reduced to only four textbooks. At the same time, Frederick Mueller, the
Supervisor of German at Albany High School, was discriminated against for
teaching and promoting the German-language.
As Albany resident, David Cook put it, “Mueller was proud that his
students came out of his class with [German] good accents.”
Table X: Textbook Expenditures at Albany High School
Year
|
Amount
|
Source Page
|
1910
|
$13,812.79
|
p. 675
|
1911
|
$12,573.74
|
p. 620
|
1912
|
$13,943.06
|
p. 609
|
1913
|
$14,563.92
|
p. 597
|
1914:
|
$22,108.28
|
p. 795
|
1915:
|
$19,730.05
|
p. 672
|
1916:
|
$18,788.42
|
p. 595
|
1917:
|
$15,899.15
|
p. 587
|
1918:
|
$15,538.75
|
p. 482
|
1919:
|
$16,826.47
|
p. 442
|
1920
|
$15,664.09
|
p. 539
|
To protect and shelter German and
German-American children, Superintendent of Schools C. Edward Jones “called
attention of the principals [of Albany’s schools] to the necessity of seeing
that children of German parents in the schools are not embarrassed in any way
and that it should be assumed they are as loyal as any other American
children.”
In contrast, other
New York State school districts were not as progressive as Albany. The study of German was gradually and quietly
withdrawn from public schools in Buffalo, where German language study was
always optional. The Board of Education
stated that at start of the new school year no new German language classes would
begin. Pupils that already began its
study had the option of continuing it or dropping it.
Finally, the study of foreign-languages in the elementary schools of New York
City was to be discontinued after February 1, 1918, according to a decision by
the New York City Board of Education.
Approximately sixty-five percent of all pupils studying foreign-languages
in New York City elementary schools were studying German.
The New York City Board of Superintendents determined most of the curriculum
taught in its public schools. The Board
demanded that its teachers and principals present a lasting effect on the
ideals and emotions of the pupil regarding the World War. Therefore in 1918, the Board adopted a
handbook,
The World War, A Syllabus for
Use in the High Schools of the City of New York. The pamphlet explained why America entered
the war, expounded Americanism, condemned Germany, and detailed Germany’s guilt
for the war and its atrocities. As
Professor of History Todd Pfannestial put it, “The experiences of New York City
public school teachers during the First World War…stand[s] out as an example of
how patriotic appeal can quickly degenerate into negative stereotypes,
ethnocentrism, and the repression of students.”
According to
The Literary Digest, fewer pupils in
Albany were taking German than in the past.
Chase confirms that statement as she affirms, “Immediately upon our entry into
the World War, German began to decline both in numbers and percentage
relations.”
She
bases her conclusion on the number of Regents papers in New York State. Her figures were acquired from data amassed
by Dr. A. W. Skinner, Director of the Examination Division of the New York
State Department of Education, and from statistics in “German in Our High
Schools” by Curtis C. D. Vail, in the
German
Quarterly, May 1929; (see Table XI.)
Table XI: Study of Modern Languages in High Schools
throughout New York State
Year
|
Number of Students
in NYS High Schools
|
Percentage Relation
|
|
German
|
French
|
Spanish
|
German
|
French
|
Spanish
|
1895
|
5,901
|
2,217
|
|
73
|
27
|
00
|
1900
|
9,795
|
4,293
|
|
69
|
31
|
00
|
1905
|
12,631
|
5,781
|
158
|
68
|
31
|
01
|
1910
|
28,310
|
12,746
|
297
|
69
|
31
|
01
|
1915
|
26,738
|
10,034
|
618
|
71
|
27
|
02
|
1917
|
21,278
|
10,873
|
1,087
|
64
|
32
|
04
|
1918
|
19,509
|
12,232
|
2,014
|
58
|
36
|
06
|
1919
|
13,435
|
12,678
|
3,712
|
45
|
42
|
13
|
1920
|
4,027
|
19,093
|
5,908
|
14
|
65
|
21
|
1925
|
3,894
|
34,338
|
14,686
|
09
|
64
|
27
|
1928
|
5,446
|
43,995
|
15,071
|
09
|
68
|
23
|
1930
|
6,830
|
51,766
|
14,678
|
09
|
71
|
20
|
In September 1918, the Albany
School District had twenty students registered in the first year of German-language
study at the Albany High School, while seventy scholars and fifty-five pupils
were enrolled in the high school’s second and third year of German-language
study, respectively, according to a reporter from the
Albany Argus.
A national
campaign to offset the influence of pro-German propaganda and “
Kultur” would soon be launched in the
schools of Albany according to an April 1917 report from the
Times Union. Plans were being made for students to take a
“Course in Americanism.” The itinerary would teach students the truth about
Germany and the war. Emphasis was to be
laid on the truth that Germany was the aggressor and that the Entente Allies
and the United States were the defenders of civilization. Every student would be required to pass an
examination on the main facts of the war.
Ironically, Americanization courses began, in Buffalo, in 1908, before the word
was coined. In 1914 three thousand non-English
speaking men and women were studying English and the principles of our
government in night schools of Buffalo.
By 1925 Albany had established evening classes in Americanization for the
foreign-born adults of the city, and 525 individuals were enrolled in the classes. The majority of the students were of German
nativity. Eugene D. Holmes, Director of
Americanization, reported to the Albany Board of Education that this year’s
numbers are not as great as preceding years owing to the effect of the new
immigration law.
Rodgers, “The Foreign
Language Issue in Nebraska, 1918-1923,” Nebraska History 39(2): 8-9.
