Germany and the Germans

Germany and the Germans, by
Price Collier

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Title: Germany and the Germans From an American Point of View
(1913)
Author: Price Collier
Release Date: August 12, 2006 [EBook #19036]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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AND THE GERMANS ***

Produced by Jeffrey Kraus-yao

GERMANY AND THE GERMANS
FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW

GERMANY AND THE GERMANS FROM AN AMERICAN POINT
OF VIEW
BY PRICE COLLIER
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK 1913

Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
Published May, 1913

To MY WIFE KATHARINE whose deserving far outstrips my giving

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
I. THE CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY
II. FREDERICK THE GREAT TO BISMARCK
III. THE INDISCREET
IV. GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE PRESS
V. BERLIN
VI. "A LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS"
VII. THE DISTAFF SIDE

VIII. "OHNE ARMEE KEIN DEUTSCHLAND"
IX. GERMAN PROBLEMS
X. "FROM ENVY, HATRED, AND MALICE"
XI. CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION
The first printed suggestion that America should be called America
came from a German. Martin Waldseemüller, of Freiburg, in his
Cosmographiae Introductio, published in 1507, wrote: "I do not see
why any one may justly forbid it to be named after Americus, its
discoverer, a man of sagacious mind, Amerige, that is the land of
Americus or America, since both Europe and Asia derived their names
from women."
The first complete ship-load of Germans left Gravesend July the 24th,
1683, and arrived in Philadelphia October the 6th, 1683. They settled in
Germantown, or, as it was then called, on account of the poverty of the
settlers, Armentown.
Up to within the last few years the majority of our settlers have been
Teutonic in blood and Protestant in religion. The English, Dutch,
Swedes, Germans, Scotch-Irish, who settled in America, were all, less
than two thousand years ago, one Germanic race from the country
surrounding the North Sea.
Since 1820 more than 5,200,000 Germans have settled in America.
This immigration of Germans has practically ceased, and it is a serious
loss to America, for it has been replaced by a much less desirable type
of settler. In 1882 western Europe sent us 563,174 settlers, or 87 per
cent., while southern and eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey sent
83,637, or 13 per cent. In 1905 western Europe sent 215,863, or 21.7
per cent., and southern and eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey, 808,856,
or 78.9 per cent. of our new population. In 1910 there were 8,282,618

white persons of German origin in the United States; 2,501,181 were
born in Germany; 3,911,847 were born in the United States, both of
whose parents were born in Germany; 1,869,590 were born in the
United States, one parent born in the United States and one in
Germany.
Not only have we been enriched by this mass of sober and industrious
people in the past, but Peter Mühlenberg, Christopher Ludwig, Steuben,
John Kalb, George Herkimer, and later Francis Lieber, Carl Schurz,
Sigel, Osterhaus, Abraham Jacobi, Herman Ridder, Oswald Ottendorfer,
Adolphus Busch, Isidor, Nathan, and Oscar Straus, Jacob Schiff, Otto
Kahn, Frederick Weyerheuser, Charles P. Steinmetz, Claus Spreckels,
Hugo Münsterberg, and a catalogue of others, have been leaders in
finance, in industry, in war, in politics, in educational and philanthropic
enterprises, and in patriotism.
The framework of our republican institutions, as I have tried to outline
in this volume, came from the "Woods of Germany." Professor H. A. L.
Fisher, of Oxford, writes: "European republicanism, which ever since
the French Revolution has been in the main a phenomenon of the Latin
races, was a creature of Teutonic civilization in the age of the
sea-beggars and the Roundheads. The half-Latin city of Geneva was the
source of that stream of democratic opinion in church and state, which,
flowing to England under Queen Elizabeth, was repelled by persecution
to Holland, and thence directed to the continent of North America."
In these later days Goethe, in a letter to Eckermann, prophesied the
building of the Panama Canal by the Americans, and also the
prodigious growth of the United States toward the West.
In a private collection in New York, is an autograph letter of George
Washington to Frederick the Great, asking that Frederick should use his
influence to protect that French friend of America, Lafayette.
In Schiller’s house in Weimar there still hangs an engraving of the
battle of Bunker Hill, by Müller, a German, and a friend of the poet.
Bismarck’s intimate friend as a student at Göttingen, and