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December 1996/Januar 1997 Issue:

The Oder-Neisse Border:
Where German-Polish Prejudices Meet
By John Dornberg

The Oder and Neisse rivers are the frontier between Germany and Poland.

Germany's longest border with any of its nine neighbors--some 294 miles--runs from the Baltic Sea resort of Ahlbeck on the island of Usedom to the picture-postcard town of Zittau in the Oberlausitz, the Lusatian Hills. It is a band of pastoral, at times even romantic, landscape dotted with farming villages where time seems to have stood still. Along and near it are just a few cities. Unlike Germany's much shorter frontier with France, which has more than 60 places where you can cross by car, there are a mere 18 bridges for motor vehicles and pedestrians, six of which only opened since 1994.

For 45 years, from the time the World War II victors drew it in 1945, no other boundary line in Europe was as controversial or freighted with so much bitter history. It was often as much the focus of Cold War propaganda as the Berlin Wall. Not until October 1990, as one of the conditions for reunification, did Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government finally and formally recognize it.

Much has changed in German-Polish relations and along the Oder and Neisse in the six years since then, but many of the problems created over centuries and during the past five decades persist. Moreover, the rivers not only divide two countries but the rich western European Union, with its common and integrated market, from much poorer Eastern Europe.

All those problems come into sharp focus when you travel along the frontier, as I did last summer.

"Politicians in Bonn proclaim that German relations with Poland are as important, and ought to be as friendly, as those with France," says Janusz Tycner, foreign editor of the influential Polish weekly Prawo i Zycie. "But remarkable as the changes in relations with France have been since World War II, Poland is not France. Germany and France are virtually equal partners; Germany and Poland are not. Germans are fascinated by French culture, cuisine, fashions, and life styles. But few Germans have an urge to travel to Poland. A chasm of ignorance, indifference, prejudices, and mutual aversion divides us."

To be sure, commerce is flourishing.

Germany is now Poland's biggest foreign trade partner, accounting for more than $8.25 billion, or 35 percent, of Polish exports and $8. 45 billion, or 26 percent, of imports last year--increases of 20 percent over 1994. The trade, most of which is conducted by trucks, has made each of the four autobahn crossover points like the eye of a needle, with waiting times of up to 72 hours to clear customs. And with each hour tempers and national animosities rise.

One day last July, my first visit along the border since 1990, I counted nearly 600 trucks backed up on the German side at Frankfurt- on-the-Oder. They were from as far away as Italy, Spain, France, Holland, and Belgium. Between them were several hundred cars pulling trailers with scrap automobiles and parts--a way for enterprising Poles to get around Poland's high import duties on used cars but negligible ones on wrecks and components, which are made driveable on the Polish side. The backup of trucks from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and deep in the heart of Russia on the Polish side of the river was just as great.

Visas were abolished in 1990, and border crossings since then have risen tenfold from 7.2 million people to more than 70 million last year. But they do not contribute much to improved people-to-people relations. Most Germans go to Poland for shopping bargains; Poles come to Germany mainly for moonlight jobs at wages one-fourth those paid to German workers but still double what they would earn at home.

Huge market places with hundreds of stalls have mushroomed on the Polish side at virtually every crossing point. You can buy anything and everything from clothing to food to furniture to kitsch. Prices in Poland are about half those in Germany. Thus millions of east Germans, from as far as Leipzig, Chemnitz, Dresden, and Berlin, drive or walk to Poland to shop. They even have their hair cut, go into tanning and fitness studios, and tank up their cars on cheaper gas there. It seems to bother none of them that the queues for automobiles at border stations are usually an hour or more long, sometimes even for pedestrians who park their vehicles on the German side, stroll over, and come back laden with bulging shopping bags.

This informal cross-border trade is worth an additional $2 billion a year to Poland, but means that much less in turnover for shopkeepers in economically depressed eastern Germany.

"It's an intolerable situation for us," says Heidemarie Knoop, mayor of Bad Muskau. The spa town is famed for the hauntingly romantic and bombed-out ruin of a neo-Renaissance castle, built by Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, an eccentric 19th century nobleman, who also laid out the vast English-style landscape garden--the largest of its kind in Europe--that surrounds the chateau. Some 2,000 acres in area--more than double the size of New York's Central Park, it spans the Neisse, with two-thirds of the garden on the Polish side.

The biggest of all those Polish markets, with 400 to 450 vendors, is just across the river in Leknica, which was called Lugknitz in Pückler's days and up to 1945. Last year more than 14 million Germans passed through Bad Muskau, population 3,800, and over the narrow two- lane border bridge in order to shop there. The Polish market has an estimated yearly sales turnover of $430 million.

"But our merchants are going bankrupt and we have de facto unemployment of 60 percent," says Knoop, adding that her town treasury's main revenue source is the $325,000 in fees--$3.30 per hour--for parking at special lots near the border bridge. But Zbigniew Koralevski, the mayor of Leknica, population 2,000, says his town has gotten so rich that it will soon build a municipal swimming pool and finance a luxury hotel.

"You can't blame the Poles for wanting to do business and earn money," adds Heidemarie Knoop. "And you have to keep in mind that during Communist times they were even worse off than we were. But antipathies and animosities are growing, and many of our burghers are saying the border ought to be closed again, at least for cars."

What Germans along the frontier forget or fail to mention is that many Poles also shop on the German side for consumer durables that, though more expensive, are in greater and more diversified supply.

Thousands of Poles also commute to the German border towns each day to work, mainly in the construction sector. They are paid wages far below those of Germans, but when the German marks are converted back into Polish zlotys, those earnings are fabulous.

"I know of a building contractor here who was looking for a master concrete mixer," a spokesman for the municipal information office in Schwedt-on-the-Oder told me. "He interviewed a Pole who had the qualifications and asked him what he expected as a salary. The Pole said he'd want about DM 4 ($2.65) an hour. The contractor 'generously' offered him DM 6 ($4)--less than one-fourth what he would have to pay a German. And this in a city where we have a 22 percent jobless rate. That is not likely to further friendly German feelings for the Poles."

Adds Janusz Tycner: "According to a survey by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, the majority of Germans consider the Poles lazy. But they contradict themselves. We may indeed be lazy, but the Poles who hire on below scale at German building sites are praised as hard workers and prosecuted for moonlighting by the German authorities. The rule seems to be: lazy Poles are bad, industrious Poles are even worse."

Though the Oder-Neisse border was the subject of headlines and controversy only after World War II, Germans and Slavs have actually tussled over the two river valleys and the territories straddling them--Pomerania, Brandenburg, Lusatia (Lausitz), and Silesia--for more than a millennium.

During more recent times, in 1772, Prussia's Frederick the Great, Austria's Maria Theresia, and Russia's Catherine the Great collaborated in the first of four partitions that eventually led to the eradication and carve-up of Poland, until then one of Europe's major powers.

Poland did not reappear on the map as an independent country until 1919--independence that lasted only two decades until September 1939. Then Nazi Germany invaded from the west, the Soviet Union from the east, each taking what had been agreed upon in the secret protocol of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Moscow lost its gains again when Germany invaded the USSR 18 months later.

The complexities of history, geography, ethnic unrest, and the uneasy East-West coalition against Hitler posed a problem for America, Britain, and the Soviet Union about what to do with Poland and how to realign the Central and Eastern European borders after the war.

A plan originally proposed by Winston Churchill went through various adjustments and was finally adopted at the July 1945 Potsdam Conference. It called for putting Poland "on wheels" and "rolling it" westward. As a result, millions of Poles were displaced from territories granted to the USSR and even more millions of Germans were expelled from or fled lands they had inhabited since the 13th century.

The Oder-Neisse border, first described as tentative until a final peace settlement with Germany, turned into one of the biggest political footballs of the Cold War, due in part to Poland and East Germany becoming Communist states.

Initially even East German Communist politicians insisted it was "provisional." But in July 1950 East Germany's and Poland's prime ministers met on the Neisse bridge between the western districts of the city of Görlitz and its eastern part, now called Zgorzelec, to sign a treaty recognizing the "perpetual border of peace." On the whole, except when the rise of Lech Walesa's Solidarnosc movement in Poland prompted East Berlin to seal the border in 1980 because it feared "infection" from Polish democracy, or when masses of Poles came to East Germany to shop for the goods they could not find in their own stores, the border was, if not warmly friendly, at least a peaceful one.

"The frontier and German-Polish relations might have been more friendly had the regime not propagandized them," notes film director Konrad Weiss, one of the leaders of East Germany's dissident movement and from 1990 until 1994 a member of the Bundestag.

The propaganda message in West Germany, where most of the refugees and expellees from the former eastern territories had settled and formed irredentist lobbies, political pressure groups, and radical rightwing parties, was: "Never!" For more than two decades West Germany's relations with Poland were frigid.

The ice did not begin to thaw until December 1970 when Chancellor Willy Brandt made a historic visit to Poland, kneeled at the Warsaw Ghetto memorial, and signed a treaty just shy of formal recognition of the frontier. It described "the present boundary line" as the "legal western border of Poland." A new freeze set in when Helmut Kohl became chancellor in 1982. Kohl, eager to placate the expellee lobby and win rightwing votes, doggedly continued to deny the legality and permanence of the Oder-Neisse boundary until forced to by the U.S., Britain, France, and the Soviet Union as a price for German reunification. Formal treaties recognizing the border and calling for friendship and cooperation between Poland and reunified Germany were signed in November 1990 and ratified by the Bundestag and Poland's parliament, a year later.

But other than the increase in German-Polish trade and small-trader, labor, and junk car market phenomena, relations have not really improved--least of all economically for the border regions on both sides of the frontier.

All of eastern Germany is in economic recession, but villages, towns, and cities along the border are in critical depression. Matters will get worse before they ever get better. Until reunification, it was a border between two countries belonging to the same political and economic blocs: the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, the Communist world's "common market." But reunification brought East Germany into the European Union and extended the EU's frontier, with all economic hurdles, to the Oder-Neisse boundary. Both sides feel the crunch, but Poland remains much poorer and suffers the most.

"For 45 years we were a border region at the edge," says Matthias Lechner, the mayor of Görlitz. "But now we are even more at the edge. The eastern boundary of the EU isolates us from the natural Polish market we used to have, and the Poles on the other side of the river feel just as isolated. At a time when borders everywhere are opening, the one with our next-door neighbor is tighter."

Facts and figures tell the story. Görlitz's population has declined from 79,000 to 70,000 since 1990 and is still dropping. Before reunification, an average of 1,000 babies were born each year, today it is fewer than 250. The official unemployment rate is 18 percent, but in effect it is 40 percent. Others have dropped off compensation rolls.

First mentioned in documents in 1071 by its Slavic name Gorelic, Görlitz is one of Germany's best preserved historic towns. The many fine churches, defensive towers, patrician mansions, and burgher houses, testimonials to its greatness as a clothmaking and trading center in the Middle Ages, all escaped wartime destruction. But most are in a dismal state of decay, and restoration is proceeding slowly.

"If we could get investment for renovation of our architectural heritage we might have a great future," says Wolfgang Michel, manager of the Görlitz Tourist Bureau, "but money is lacking. Besides, being geographically up against a wall, the prospects for tourist visitors are dismal."

Nonetheless, by comparison with other places along the border, Görlitz seems prosperous and booming. A journey along the frontier is one to a poorhouse and to a land where, except for such Communist-era industrial enclaves like Schwedt and Eisenhüttenstadt, time is frozen. All of East Germany suffered urban neglect and decay, but the region along the Oder-Neisse border suffered the most. Six years after reunification many country roads and village streets are still bone- shaking strips of huge, rough cobblestones and crater-like potholes. Except on a few showpiece squares and main streets, the facades of houses, many of them architectural gems, are peeling due to decades of pollution and neglect. Even the prefab shoebox apartment complexes erected in the 1970s and '80s show wear and tear. Scars and reminders of the war are omnipresent. Dozens are the bridges either bombed out by the advancing Red Army or deliberately blown up by the retreating Wehrmacht (German Army). Soviet war memorials and military cemeteries dot the countryside.

It is a route lined by abandoned factories, the skeletons of their machinery rusting away, their windows broken, by the fields of disbanded collective farms lying fallow and overgrown with weeds. Towns that have no road crossings to Poland, like Forst, are worst off. Forst, population 25,000, was once a major textile center. The largest plant has shut and is now a textile-industry museum. Unemployment is nearly 30 percent.

But even cities on the main route between Germany and Poland, between Western and Eastern Europe, like Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, population 82,000, are economically stagnant. The biggest Communist- era employer was its semiconductor plant with more than 8,000 workers. Now called System Microelectronic Innovation Co. Ltd., and owned 51 percent by the State of Brandenburg, it is still the largest but employs only 370 and has been writing losses for six years. Although 12,000 Poles come to Frankfurt each day to shop, the city's only department store closed for lack of trade last June. More than 7,000 people are listed as looking for jobs and on unemployment compensation, another 2,000 are in subsidized make-work projects. The Polish-German Business Society in Gorzow, 60 miles northeast, gets 130 inquiries a month from German companies interested in joint- ventures in Poland, but none are from firms in Frankfurt. Conversely, Michael Hofmann, a Frankfurt business consultant, complains that "it is almost impossible to attract investors to this city."

Xenophobic fears and misgivings prevail on both sides of the frontier.

When a new pedestrian crossing over the Neisse was opened between Ostritz and Krzewina in 1994, several dozen German villagers signed a petition against it, alleging that they would have to double-lock their doors and bar their windows because "the Poles will come over to Ostritz and steal."

The Lower Oder Valley, from the village of Hohensaaten northward to the town of Mechern, is a unique nature preserve with countless sidestreams, backwaters, ponds, lakes, and an abundance of rare fauna and flora. But it took more than five years of negotiation to launch the 60,000 acre German-Polish Lower Oder National Park because of Polish fears that Germans would use the project to "recolonize" and "commercially exploit" areas that used to belong to them. "When we stop to look at or photograph an old house, the Poles living there always ask if it used to belong to us, as if we were eyeing to get it back," said a Schwedt art historian and nature buff who organizes bicycle tours to the Polish side of the park.

Though commerce is flourishing, culture entailing people-to-people exchanges lag.

Görlitz and Zgorzelec are notable exceptions.

The two neighboring cities celebrated their joint 925th anniversary this year with German-Polish music and street-theater festivals, and a binational art exhibition documenting the relations between Silesia and Berlin-Brandenburg since 1740.

Deputy Mayor Ulf Grossmann, who heads the city's cultural affairs department, and Janusz Hajdamowicz of the Zgorzelec city administration hope some day to rebuild the pedestrians-only Old Town bridge, dynamited by retreating German soldiers in 1945. It would stimulate people-to people contacts, but unfortunately it will also cost about $3 million, and there is no money. Meanwhile, a scheduled half-hour bus service operates between the two cities.

Although there is no municipal bus service to Slubice, Frankfurt-on- the-Oder does offer the unique Viadrina European University, opened in 1992, where 400 of the 1,000 students are Poles. The institution is subsidized by the EU and intended to be a "bridge university" between Western and Eastern Europe.

Another unusual program that will benefit relations is in the town of Gartz 16 miles north of Schwedt. There 20 young Poles attend the 11th and 12th grades of a local high school. Some live with German families, the majority at a hostel in Gryfino on the Polish side. From there they take a bus to a bridge at the Oder, open only for them, walk across, and catch a waiting school bus from the village of Mescherin to Gartz. More than 130 Polish kids applied last year. Though Polish high schools offer similar exchanges to German youngsters, there have been no takers. "All the young Poles have a good command of German," says one of the teachers. "We teach Polish as an elective, but very few kids are interested."

Janusz Tycner, the Polish journalist, cautions both Germans and Poles, who want to do more to improve relations, to be very patient.

"Germans who travel to French Alsace-Lorraine will find a very similar ambiance and environment on both sides of the border," he says. "But going to Poland means crossing a line that sharply divides two linguistic families, two fundamentally different mentalities, rich and poor, EU and non-EU. The Oder-Neisse border was originally intended to divide the two peoples, so there is no mixture of languages along this frontier, no place where Germans and Poles live together and intermarry. And there are the rivers. Every new crossing point requires a new bridge, and bridges are expensive.

"Much between Germans and Poles is no longer the way it used to be," he adds, "but little has developed the way it ought to be. We practice coexistence, but we are still worlds apart when it comes to togetherness."

Contributing editor John Dornberg writes from Munich.

Chronology of German-Polish Relations

6th century--Slavic settlement in today's Saxony, Brandenburg, Saxony- Anhalt, and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania up to the Elbe River. Evidence of these "Wends'" (as they are known in German) presence are the hundreds of German place names ending with "itz," "ow," and "au"-- Germanizations of the Slavic suffixes "ice" and "ovo."

8th-10th centuries--Eastward expansion of Saxons and other Germans into Slavic territories, colonization. In 966, Mieszko I converts to Christianity and establishes the first Polish state. Around 1000, the Duchy of Poland, with its capital at Gniezno, extends westward to the present Oder-Neisse line.

11th-13th centuries--Continued German eastward expansion with gradual absorption of Slavic territories. Poland becomes a kingdom in 1025 with the coronation of Boleslaw I. By around 1200, the border between German-Bohemian and Polish territories is already east of the Oder.

14th-15th centuries--Further incursions by the Knights of the Teutonic Order into Slavic and Polish territories. They are defeated by a joint Polish-Lithuanian army in the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg) in July 1410.

16th-17th centuries--Poland regains control of some of Pomerania's coastal regions and expands eastward to become one of Europe's great powers. Relations with the German Holy Roman Empire are stable.

18th-19th centuries--Augustus the Strong, elector and duke of Saxony, also becomes king of Poland in 1699, and is succeeded in that dual position in 1735 by his son, Augustus III, who rules both his German and Polish realm until his death in 1763. 1772--The first partition of Poland by Frederick the Great of Prussia, Maria Theresia of Austria, and Catherine the Great of Russia: Prussia gains control of most of northern Poland, Austria of the south. 1793--The second partition gives Prussia even greater territories in western Poland. 1795--The third partition puts nearly all of western and central Poland under Prussian rule, well beyond the Vistula River, and for all practical purposes Poland disappears as an independent state from the map of Europe throughout the 19th century. With the Russians ruling the eastern part of Poland, Prussia--and as of 1871 the German Reich--and Russia become direct neighbors.

20th century--Poland is reconstituted as an independent state in November 1918. Its boundary with Germany runs well east of the Oder River. All of Silesia at first remains German, but a Versailles Treaty clause requires a plebiscite to determine if Upper Silesia is to remain German or pass to Poland. The results in 1921 were favorable to Germany except in the easternmost part of Upper Silesia, where the Polish population predominated. In 1922, after an armed rising by Poles, the League of Nations agreed to dividing the territory: the larger part, including the city of Katowice, passed to Poland. Tension continued throughout the 1920s and '30s. September 1, 1939--Germany invades Poland, triggering World War II, and after invading the Soviet Union in June 1941, extended its rule over the entire country. The July 1945 Potsdam Conference confirms earlier Allied plans to move Poland westward, with the Oder-Neisse river line as its western frontier. Most Germans living east of it are expelled, if they have not previously fled. July 1950--The Communist East German Democratic Republic (GDR) recognizes the Oder-Neisse line as the German-Polish border, the West German Federal Republic does not. December 1970-- West German Chancellor Willy Brandt visits Poland and de facto but not de jure accepts the western border, though conservative political forces in West Germany do not. November 1990--Reunited Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl signs treaty recognizing Oder-Neisse line as the German-Polish border and a treaty of friendship and cooperation, ratified in 1991.

"America's Most German-American City"
Milwaukee Looks Back on Its Legacy as the Deutsch-Athen
By John Gurda

Milwaukee is different from most American cities. Where else do thousands of residents play a card game called schafskopf? Where else would they order a schneck (sweet roll) with their morning coffee? And what other American phone book boasts 38 pages of names beginning with "Sch," from Schaab down to Schwulst? Milwaukee actually has more Schmidts, in all the variations of that name, than it has Smiths.

The community's Germanism goes far beyond phone listings and colloquialisms. In 1990, a stunning 48 percent of the metro area's residents claimed at least some German heritage. That tops 44 percent for Cincinnati and 41 percent for St. Louis--two other capitals of German settlement--and doesn't even hint at the Teutonic influence just beyond Milwaukee's borders. Citizens of German descent made up 54 percent of Wisconsin's population in 1990, a proportion no other state could match. Milwaukee is without question the most German big city in the most German state in America.

That distinction earned the community a visit from Bill Clinton and Helmut Kohl last May. Departing from standard practice, Clinton met his distinguished guest in Milwaukee, where children from a German immersion school introduced the pair, politicians welcomed them in fractured German, and 14,000 people turned out to hear them speak in a downtown park. President Clinton described Milwaukee as a place where the chancellor could get "some really great bratwurst," a town so Teutonic that "everywhere he turns around there's a sign with a German name on it."

The Germanism noted by Clinton is older than the city. The first sizable contingent of Germans, a group of Old Lutherans fleeing religious persecution in Prussia, arrived in 1839--only four years after the last Indian claims were extinguished and seven years before Milwaukee earned its city charter. The newcomers settled on the west bank of the Milwaukee River, only a block or two from the park where Clinton and Kohl spoke in May. The west side would soon become the local center of German settlement.

The trickle of the 1830s became a flood in the 1840s. By 1846, the year Milwaukee became a city, the community had begun to take on a definite Teutonic aura. When city fathers published the first mayor's inaugural address, they printed 1,000 copies--500 in English and 500 in German. The growth of the 1850s was even more dramatic. By 1860, when two-thirds of the population was foreign-born, German immigrants and their children made up a majority of Milwaukee's 45,000 residents.

Although they were lumped together as "Dutchmen" by other groups, the newcomers had less in common than might be supposed. They differed by dialect and region, first of all; a Bavarian and a Pomeranian seldom viewed the world from the same perspective. They also represented all of the religious denominations present in the homeland. Catholics were most numerous, but Lutherans, Reformed Christians, and Jews all organized congregations almost as soon as they arrived. Economic diversity was another hallmark of the community. Some immigrants arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs; others brought enough money to launch businesses of their own immediately. Frederick Miller, for instance, came to Milwaukee in 1855 with $10,000 in gold. He used his nest egg to buy a brewery that has since become the second-largest in the United States.

One subgroup stood out in particularly bold relief: the fabled Forty- Eighters. As rationalists, Republicans, and failed revolutionaries, they differed sharply from their fellow Germans, but they also acted like the leaven in a loaf of bread. With their penchant for organizing and their tireless pursuit of higher culture, the Acht-und- vierzigers helped the whole community to rise. Working with others who had similar aspirations, they established schools, newspapers, freethinkers' societies, Turnvereine, theater troupes, musical groups, and other cultural institutions. In 1851, when Milwaukee was still a ragtag frontier town, the new Musik Verein staged a full-dress performance of Haydn's Creation, featuring an orchestra of 30 and a chorus of nearly 100. These and other activities earned Milwaukee an enduring reputation as the Deutsch-Athen of America.

At least one immigrant thought he had found a latter-day Athens. In an 1850 letter to an old friend in Reutlingen, John Kerler, Jr. offered an unqualified praise for his adopted hometown:

Milwaukee is the only place in which I found that the Americans concern themselves with learning German, and where the German language and German ways are bold enough to take a foothold. You will find inns, beer cellars, and billiard and bowling alleys, as well as German beer, something you do not find much of in this country. The Dutchman (the Americans call the Germans this name by way of derision) plays a more independent role--has balls, concerts, and theaters--naturally not to be compared to those in Germany, and has even managed to get laws printed in German. His vote carries a heavy weight at election time. You will find no other place in which so much has been given the Germans, and if you value this, you may safely prefer Wisconsin, and especially Milwaukee, to other places.

Germans were not, of course, the only group who found their way to Milwaukee in the mid-1800s. Yankee settlers, most of them from New York and New England, were at the top of the local pecking order. They shared the city with Germans and a host of other Europeans, among them Irish, Bohemian, Scandinavian, Dutch, and British immigrants. As in other American cities, the various groups did not constitute one big, happy family, but they managed to coexist without serious bloodshed as Milwaukee groped its way, by fits and starts, toward urban maturity.

The German community played a unique role in the developing city, and perhaps in urban America. Its sheer size, coupled with its internal diversity, its cultural self-confidence, and its political clout, gave the community a completeness that no other group could match. Kathleen Conzen, the leading scholar of Milwaukee's 19th century Germans, argues persuasively that they formed a society separate from but parallel to the networks of the dominant Yankees. "It was an ethnic and not a class community," writes Conzen, one that offered something for every German on every level. Paradoxically, she maintains, the community's wholeness hastened its demise. By providing a safe haven for its members as they adjusted to the larger world, it made assimilation easier for the Germans than if they had been a maltreated minority.

Signs of assimilation, or perhaps of arrival, multiplied as the 19th century progressed. Emil Wallber, a native of Berlin, became Milwaukee's first German-born mayor in 1884. His constituents included a number of German brewers, tanners, and manufacturers who were becoming millionaires. As their fortunes grew, the Pabsts and Pfisters and Harnischfegers found that they had more in common with wealthy Yankees and Britons than with the Adolfs and Ottos in their shops; residential gold coasts of the late 1800s were ethnically mixed. On the other end of the economic spectrum, working-class Germans provided the backbone for a budding socialist movement. In 1910, Milwaukeeans elected their first socialist mayor: Emil Seidel, an immigrant's son who worked as a patternmaker. Socialists, many of them with German ancestors, would play a major role in city politics for the next 50 years.

German immigration had slowed down dramatically by the time Seidel took office. The number of foreign-born Germans in the city peaked at 55,000 in 1890, when they made up 27 percent of the population, and dropped sharply thereafter. During the same years, new groups were making their homes in Milwaukee, among them the Poles. By 1906, Polish residents constituted nearly 20 percent of the city's population. As they and other "new" immigrants flocked to Milwaukee and the wellsprings of German immigration dried up, the Germans began to feel like old-timers in the community they had done so much to develop.

Their move to the mainstream was entirely natural, but the assimilation of local Germans was hastened, to put it mildly, by World War I. As long as the United States maintained a policy of official neutrality, many actively supported Kaiser Wilhelm, but when America joined the Allies in 1917, a wave of "patriotism" engulfed and soon practically drowned German culture. Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms were banned from the local concert stage. Sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage," and hamburger was rechristened "Salisbury steak." The Brumders, owners of the largest German-language publishing firm in the country, were forced to pull down a statue of Germania from atop their downtown headquarters. The well-heeled Deutscher Club became the Wisconsin Club. In 1919, the Milwaukee Journal won a Pulitzer Prize for its efforts to root out local supporters of the Kaiser. At some point during the war, patriotism crossed over the line to persecution. Older Germans found themselves ducking into doorways to exchange a few words in their native tongue. Milwaukee's long reign as the nation's Deutsch-Athen came to an abrupt and inglorious end.

World War I effectively killed self-conscious Germanism in Milwaukee, and the Depression and World War II did nothing to revive it. What survives today is largely (but not exclusively) the work of postwar immigrants, who form the backbone of more than 40 German organizations based in Milwaukee. For the vast majority of those born in this country, Germanness has become a matter of surnames, favorite foods, and childhood memories. Even the neighborhoods have changed. Teutonia Avenue now runs through the heart of Milwaukee's African- American community, and North Third Street, once a thoroughly German commercial district, is now Martin Luther King Drive.

This is not to say that the German impact on Milwaukee has been completely erased. Far from it. The community is still a showcase for Germanic architecture, beginning with the Rathaus-inspired City Hall. Several breweries, from established giants like Miller and Pabst to youngsters like Sprecher and Klisch, continue to turn out the beverage that made Milwaukee famous. Some of the most celebrated restaurants feature German cuisine, including the "Big Three"--Karl Ratzsch's, John Ernst, and Mader's. Old World Third Street, a picturesque remnant of the old German downtown, still houses businesses like Weissgerber's Restaurant and Usinger's Famous Sausage. And the Schmidts, Schultzes, and Schneiders are still present by the thousands.

The survivals are impressive, but the German influence persists in ways less obvious and a good deal more profound. The Germans, first of all, made Milwaukee safe for ethnicity. The simple fact that a non- English-speaking group came so early and played such a huge role in the city made life easier, relatively speaking, for later ethnic groups, particularly those from Europe. The Yankees were outnumbered; it was acceptable to be something else. In Milwaukee, as in other cities, cultural differences created numerous problems over the years, but ethnic diversity, broadly defined, remains a touchstone of local identity. On the East and West Coasts, "ethnic" tends to describe people of color. In Milwaukee, "ethnic" can describe practically anyone. During the summer months, the major groups--African American, Asian, German, Irish, Italian, Mexican, Native American, and Polish-- take turns hosting elaborate celebrations at the lakefront festival grounds. The combined attendance at those festivals generally tops 60,000--convincing evidence of the continuing appeal of all things ethnic.

The second impact of German culture can be summed up in a single word: Gemütlichkeit. Although Milwaukee has big-city resources (and big-city problems), its people preserve the pace and many of the pleasures of a much smaller community. They display a civic modesty, a lack of pretense that can drive the professional boosters crazy, but local residents wouldn't have it any other way. Given the choice between glamour and good cooking, they'll go for the meat and potatoes every time. That preference arrived on the boat with 19th century Germans, who proudly contrasted their easy-going attitudes with the "stiff Puritanism" of local Yankees. Adopted and amplified by later arrivals, Gemütlichkeit remains perhaps the most durable legacy of Milwaukee's founding German community.

Bill Clinton and Helmut Kohl chose the right place last May. By meeting in a community that Clinton himself called "America's most German-American city," they honored their hosts, the heritage of both their nations, and a transatlantic partnership that continues to bear abundant fruit on both sides.

Born and now based in Milwaukee, writer and historian John Gurda has been studying his hometown for nearly 25 years. He is currently writing a general history of Milwaukee that is scheduled for publication in 1998.

Milwaukee's Legendary German Restaurants
By Carla Waldemar

Milwaukee boasts three of the oldest and finest German restaurants in the country. Mention John Ernst's, Mader's, or Karl Ratzsch's and the eyes of normally stoic citizens are known to fill with tears.

John Ernst is Milwaukee's oldest restaurant, bar none. Back in 1878, it debuted as Mother Heister's Place. In 1938, John Ernst, a recent immigrant, bought and renamed the establishment and lured his wife, Ida, into the kitchen. Their daughter, Marianne, married an employee, Ervin Lindenberg, and as the Ernsts got older, the next generation gradually took over the cafe. Today Marianne's sons Jim and John, now middle-aged, are at the helm. But dad, at 79, is still the "real boss," both sons and customers agree.

Cooking is left to the capable hands of Dietmar Arnholdt, son of a Leipzig baker, who learned the ropes from Ida and Marianne 23 years ago. "If we got off track, they set me straight," he says. "The bits and pieces I'd forgotten went back in the goulash."

Can't take it off the menu. The goulash is a bestseller, in a dead heat with the sauerbraten, marinated for three days with hand-blended spices, the old-fashioned way; a couple of hundred pounds a week walk out the door. The kitchen's schnitzels, roulades, smoked pork chops, and sausage platters are local icons, too. In these days of alternative eating, a vegetarian strudel, plump with broccoli, cabbage, and mushrooms drenched with a spicy zigeuner ("gypsy") sauce, sells well, too. Plates groan with mountains of sauerkraut and red cabbage and, of course, invocations of potatoes in dumpling or pancake form.

Then, when you think you've died and gone to heaven, the dirndl-clad waitresses bring on the apple strudel.

To whet your whistle, the restaurant carries eight imported lines of beer, plus local heroes Pabst and Spreckel. Lots of German labels as well as California rieslings on the wine list, too.

As the cafe expanded over the decades, so have the highlights of its Old World decor. Handpainted murals of cafe society, circa the 1950s, warm wood paneling, a timbered ceiling hung with heavy iron chandeliers amid bucks' antlers, leaded-glass windows, a baronial stone fireplace, and an ornate bar all spell Gemütlichkeit.

John Ernst Cafe, 600 E. Ogden Avenue, Tel. (414) 273-1878.

 

Mader's is indisputably the most famous German restaurant in Milwaukee, if not the nation. German media moguls ate here-- repeatedly--then President Clinton and Chancellor Kohl convened last spring in Milwaukee. The U.S. press corps, trusting to the tastebuds of their German colleagues, gave the place a workout, too. Just about everyone who meanders down the historically preserved German shopping area called Old World Third Street, which Mader's anchors in high style, stops here.

Today it looks like a kaiser's summer castle with turrets and flags and towers. Inside, it's a showroom of medieval armor and weapons of museum quality Gus Mader picked up on his return trips to Europe, and a collection of pre-World War I Metlach steins worth up to $15,000 apiece.

Things weren't so fancy back in 1902 when young immigrant Charles Mader poured his life's savings into a small establishment he named The Comfort, where he dared charge 20 cents for dinner (beer and tip included) and 3 cents for a huge stein of Cream City brew.

Sons George and Gustav stepped into the picture in the 1930s and weathered World War II by downplaying the German theme. As soon as the war ended and the bitterness subsided, fans could once again unabashedly indulge in their lust for sauerkraut balls and spätzle, krautflecken, and liver dumpling soup. Schnitzel comes in several fashions: Count Esterhazy, Black Forest, Innsbruck à la Holstein or Ritter style, as well as on sampler plates that call for Olympic training.

These days Dennis Wegner heads the kitchen; he's been in charge for over 10 years and learned the nuances of the classic recipes from his mentor, who logged 20 years at the kitchen's stove.

A mere nothing in Mader's annals. "The girls"--the trainee waitresses, averaging 15-18 years--all speak fluent German, as does the barman.

For a short time in the 1970s, Mader's foyer became an art gallery. Outgrowing the space in what seemed like a matter of minutes, Mader's Old World Third Street Gallery was launched a few doors down the street. It houses more Hummel ware than anywhere in the Midwest. The newest piece, "Chancellor's Visit," created in honor of Mr. Kohl, has already topped $1 million in sales.

Mader's German Restaurant, 1037--41 N. Old World Third Street, Tel. (414) 271-3377.

 

John Ernst's may be the oldest and Mader's the best known, but Karl Ratzsch's is the one equated with a fine-dining experience, both in food and atmosphere. It's consistently voted Milwaukeeans' favorite restaurant.

In an elegant but cozy room, lights are low, and a piano wafts Viennese waltzes. Below the ceiling's timbered beams, warm wood- paneled walls are hung with oil paintings in ornate golden frames. A beautiful collection of steins, porcelain, and glassware decorate the back bar and plate rails around the room.

They were brought back from Europe by "Mama Ratzsch," as Karl's wife, Helen, was known throughout Milwaukee. Karl had arrived in America just prior to World War I, which left him stranded. He took a job in a cafe owned by the stepfather of Helen, a recent arrival herself, and after a 10-year courtship, they married and bought the cafe.

In 1929 the couple relocated the business to its present downtown site. Despite the grips of the Depression, Karl and Helen managed to establish a loyal following. In the 1950s, their son, Karl Jr., took over managerial duties, and he, in turn, passed the torch to Karl Ratzsch III in 1984. Last year the restaurant became the bailiwick of another Ratzsch, Karl's brother Josef.

The Ratzsch roster may change, but the staff doesn't. The chef's been in position for over 20 years. Waitresses dressed in Old World dirndls boast of 20, 30, and more years of service (Winnie, clocking 40, just retired). And guests are just as loyal.

The extensive list of specialties leads off with käse spätzle, a savory strudel stuffed with smoked pork and cheese, and konigsberger klopse. Choose German potato salad or a stylish Caesar prepared tableside, or maybe the liver dumpling soup. Then proceed to a wurst platter with three kinds of sausages, those popular schnitzels, or a combination plate.

It's virtually impossible to "save room" for desserts when your platter's heaped with trimmings like sauerkraut, red cabbage and potato dumplings. But never mind--just bite the bullet and order it anywaz, or you'll have regrets in the morning. Homemade sweets include strudels of apples or tart Wisconsin cherries, a chocolate or strawberry schaum torte, or puffy German pancake. Besides eight German beers on tap, wines from the Rhine, Mosel, Saar, and Ruhr are represented.

Karl Ratzsch's Old World Restaurant, 320 E. Mason Street, Tel. (414) 276-2720.

Further information on Milwaukee and the surrounding area is available by contacting the Greater Milwaukee Convention and Visitors' Bureau, 510 West Kilbourn Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53203, Tel.: 1-800-231-0903, Fax: (414) 273-5596.

Carla Waldemar is Senior Food Editor at Cuisine magazine.

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