| A description of St Louis Germans from: "The Great South; A Record of Journeys in Louisiana, Texas, the Indian Territory, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland" by Edward King 1848-1896, Illustrated by James Wells Champney 1843-1903: |
| .....At the more aristocratic and elegant of the German beer gardens, such as "Uhrig's" and "Schneider's," the representatives of many prominent American families may be seen on the concert evenings, drinking the amber fluid, and listening to the music of Strauss, of Gungl, or Meyerbeer. Groups of elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen resort to the gardens in the same manner as do the denizens of Dresden and Berlin, and no longer regard the custom as a dangerous German innovation. The German element in St. Louis is powerful, and has for the last thirty years been merging in the American, giving to it many of the hearty features and graces of European life, which have been emphatically rejected by the native population of the more austere Eastern States. In like manner the German has borrowed many traits from his American fellow-citizens, and in another generation the fusion of races will be pretty thoroughly accomplished. There are more than fifty thousand native Germans now in St. Louis, and the whole Teutonic population, including the children born in the city of German parents, probably exceeds one hundred and fifty thousand. The original emigration from Germany to Missouri was largely from the thinking classes--professional men, politicians condemned to exile, writers, musicians, and philosophers, and these have aided immensely in the development of the State. The emigration began in 1830, but after a few hundreds had come out it fell off again, and was not revived until 1848, when the revolution sent us a new crop of patriots and statesmen, whose mother country was afraid of them. Always a loyal and industrious element, believing in the whole country, and in the principles of freedom, they kept Missouri, in the troublous times preceding and during the war, from many excesses. The working people are a treasure to the State. Arriving, as a rule, with little or nothing, they hoard every penny until they have enough with which to purchase an acre or two of land, and in a few years become well-to-do citizens, orderly and contented. The whole country for miles around St. Louis is dotted with German settlements; the market gardens are mainly controlled by them; and their farms are models of thorough cultivation. In commerce they have mingled liberally with the Americans; names of both nationalities are allied in banking and in all the great wholesale businesses; and the older German residents speak their adopted as well as their native tongue. At the time of my visit, a German was president of the city council, and bank presidents, directors of companies, and men highly distinguished in business and society, who boast German descent, are counted by hundreds. German journalism in St. Louis is noteworthy.....The sturdy intellectual life of the Teuton is well set forth in these papers, which are of great ability. The uselessness of the attempt to maintain a separate national feeling was shown in the case of the famous "Germania" Club, which, in starting, had for its cardinal principle the non-admission of Americans; but at the present time there are 200 American names upon its list of membership. The assimilation goes on even more rapidly than the Germans themselves suppose; it is apparent in the manners of the children, and in the speech of the elders. German social and home life has, of course, kept much of its original flavor. There are whole sections of the city where the Teuton predominates, and takes his ease at evening in the beer garden and the arbor in his own yard. At the summer opera one sees him in his glory. Entering a modest door-way on Fourth street, one is ushered through a long room, in which ladies, with their children, and groups of elegantly dressed men are chatting and drinking beer, into the opera-house, a cheery little hall, where very fashionable audiences assemble to hear the new and old operas throughout a long season. The singing is usually exceedingly good, and the mise en scène quite satisfactory. Between the acts the audience refreshes itself with beer and soda-water, and the hum of conversation lasts until the first notes of the orchestra announce the resumption of the opera. On Sunday evenings the opera-house is crowded, and at the long windows of the hall, which descend to the ground, one can see the German population of half-a-dozen adjacent blocks, tiptoe with delight at the whiff of stolen harmony. The "breweries" scattered through the city are gigantic establishments, for the making of beer ranks third in the productive industries of St. Louis. Iron and flour precede it, but a capital of nearly $4,000,000 is invested in the manufacture, and the annual productive yield from the twenty-five breweries is about the same amount. Attached to many of these breweries are concert gardens, every way scrupulously respectable, and weekly frequented by thousands. The Germania and Harmony Clubs, and a hundred musical and literary organizations use up the time of the city Germans who are well-to-do, while their poorer brethren delve at market gardens, and are one of the chief elements in the commerce of the immense and picturesque St. James Market, whither St. Louis goes to be fed. The Irishman is also prominent in St. Louis, having crept into the hotel service, and driven the negro to another field. The Germans have, as a rule, frankly joined hands with the Americans in the public schools, and have imparted to them many excellent features. The composite system differs largely from that in vogue in other cities. It is wonderful that in a capital where the population is so little gregarious, and where, up to last year, it has been so comparatively indifferent to lecture courses, such an earnest interest should be taken in the schools by all classes. All the powers relating to the management of the schools are vested in a corporate body called "the Board of President and Directors of the St. Louis Public Schools," the members of the board to be elected for terms of three years. The school revenue is derived from rents of property originally donated by the General Government, by the State school fund, and from taxes of four mills on the dollar on city property, the yearly income from these sources averaging perhaps $700,000. The school board has authority to tax to any amount. Between the district and the high schools there is a period of seven years, during which the pupil acquires a symmetrical development admirably fitting him for the solid instruction which the finishing school can offer. But out of forty thousand children enrolled upon the public school list, only about two and a-half per cent. enter the high school. The feature of German-English instruction has become exceedingly popular, and the number of pupils belonging to the classes increased from 450 in 1864-65, to 10,246 in 1871-72. The phonetic system of learning to read was introduced in the primary schools in 1866, and has been attended with the most gratifying results. The city acted wisely in introducing the study of German, as otherwise the Teutonic citizen would doubtless have been tempted to send his child to a private school during his early years. Now native American children take up German reading and oral lessons at the same time as their little German fellow-scholars; and in the high school special stress is laid upon German instruction in the higher grades, that the pupils may be fitted for a thorough examination of German science and literature. (end) |