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February/March 1999
German Corporations Learn to Play the Globalization Game
By John Dornberg
When it comes to doing business worldwide, it has often seemed that no matter what German companies did or do, they were doing it wrong.
“Tengelmann's Vietnam" was how Business Week magazine once described the $100 million loss that the Tengelmann Gruppe, Germany's largest supermarket operator, racked up in three years after taking control of America's A & P food chain in 1979. What happened to Tengelmann also happened to other German companies that in the 1970s and early 1980s had ambitions of becoming global players and looked westward, thinking that streets in the United States were paved with gold and profits. They ran into trouble by applying German managerial, marketing, and merchandising techniques. It was not until Erivan Haub, CEO of the family-owned Tengelmann conglomerate, hired James Wood, an American-trained Briton, to head the A & P operation that the German company's American investment began showing a profit and became successful.
Now in the late 1990s German companies are again making news by expanding abroad, but the criticism is of a different kind. Instead of being considered inept ham-fisted duffers, the Germans
are seen as monstrous corporate raiders who are gobbling up national icons of industry around the globe.
Anschluss (annexation) is what The Nation magazine called the March 1998 acquisition of Random House, Inc., by the Bertelsmann media group. Vanity Fair spoke of a "German blitzkrieg of American publishing" and of U.S. book companies being "bought by people who at one point in this century were more famous for burning books than for publishing them." When Volkswagen bought the Rolls-Royce factory and Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) acquired the famous RR brandname last summer, British shareholders called it "betrayal of the national heritage." One of them, Christopher Leeffe, said: "The Germans are now trying to accomplish with business takeovers what they failed to do with weapons."
To be sure, Germany's international corporate presence is phenomenal these days. German industrial direct investments abroad currently total around DM 500 billion (about $300 billion), more
than double the amount of foreign investment in Germany, and that investment has been increasing dramatically: DM 51.5 billion ($32 billion) in 1997 and DM 30 billion ($18.7 billion) during the first six months
of 1998. In the U.S. alone German investment has more than doubled since 1994 and German firms now employ more Americans than companies from any other country.
Nor is there denying that 1997 and 1998 were years of unprecedented foreign megadollar acquisitions and mergers by German corporations.
Consider just some of the biggest headline-making deals:
Allianz A.G., already Europe's largest insurance company, bought Assurances Générales de France (AGF) for $10.3 billion to become the world's biggest insurer.
Frankfurt's Hoechst chemical holding group, after having bought Marion Merell Dow, Inc., for $7.1 billion in 1995, continued its shopping spree in 1997 by acquiring the French Rousel-Uclaf
pharmaceutical manufacturer for $3.5 billion and Cargill Hybrid Seeds of Minneapolis for $650 million last September. Just two months later Hoechst announced de facto merger of its pharmaceuticals and veterinary
chemicals sectors with those of France’s Rhone-Poulenc to create a joint-venture company, called “Aventis,” which will be the world’s biggest chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate—with a projected
pharmaceuticals sales volume of more than $14 billion.
Siemens, the Munich-based electrical engineering and electronics conglomerate, bought Westinghouse's non-nuclear power plant operations for $1.5 billion.
Last May Bertelsmann, which already owned Bantam, Doubleday, and Dell books, RCA and Arista records, and seven American magazines, including McCall's, Family Circle, Parents, and Fitness,
bought Random House for $1.4 billion from S I. Newhouse to become the world's largest publisher of English books and second-biggest media conglomerate after the Walt Disney group. In October in another move that
must have seemed like small change to the company that started in the Westphalian town of Gütersloh as a hymnals and prayer book publisher nearly 165 years ago, Bertelsmann spent $200 million to acquire a
50-percent share in the Barnes & Noble Internet book-selling service. Both partners will invest an additional $100 million each to expand the operation.
There was the months-long rivalry between VW and BMW over Rolls Royce. It was finally settled with Volkswagen getting the outdated Vickers-owned Rolls factory at Crewe and the Bentley brand
for about $900 million, whereas BMW, which already owned Britain's Rover automotive group and is in a joint venture with Rolls Royce aerospace to produce jet turbines, spent about $75 million to acquire the
rights to the RR brand and will start making the famous luxury car as of 2003.
Although it still requires approval by U.S. federal, state, and local regulatory authorities, as well as the shareholders, Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest, has announced that it intends to
take over Bankers Trust Co. of New York at a cost of around $10 billion. The acquisition, targeted for completion by May, will create the world’s biggest banking and financial services conglomerate with a
projected balance-sheet total of more than $865 billion and a worldwide payroll of nearly 96,000 people. Of these, however, an estimated 5,500, mainly in the United States, will become redundant.
And then there was the biggest deal of all—last year's mega-marriage between Daimler-Benz A.G. and Chrysler Corp. to create the world's third biggest automaker, after General Motors and
Ford, with combined revenues of around $130 billion, production of nearly 4 million vehicles of all kinds, and some 410,000 workers worldwide.
The merger, valued at about $40 billion on the stock market, actually entailed only a paper exchange of shares and creation of a new concern called Daimler-Chrysler A.G. But ever
since its announcement the question has been who is taking over whom. Although the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it the "Americanization of Daimler by the back door," the prevailing view in the U.S. seemed to be that it was the "Germanization of Chrysler." Former Michigan Governor Jim Blanchard was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying: "I would not want Chrysler to be headquartered in Stuttgart." But that, precisely is where the new concern is located and registered as a German Aktiengesellschaft (stock corporation). Moreover, the Germans hold the balance of power on the management board: There are ten Daimler-Benz to eight Chrysler directors on the board.
For the time being there are two equally powerful co-chairmen: Chrysler's Robert Eaton and Daimler's Jürgen Schrempp. But despite the fact that Eaton earns nearly six times what Schrempp
gets, the betting in the automotive industry is that Eaton, 58, will bow out of the management in about three years, leaving Schrempp, 53, in sole charge.
What is behind this expansion and internationalization of German industry, and is it really as new as the media coverage of the past year implies?
The motivations for German business to flock and seek opportunities abroad are many. Stifling regulations, high taxes at home, and the world's highest labor costs are paramount.
Germany's industrial labor costs are more than DM 42 or $26.25 per hour, including mandatory non-wage employer contributions to health and unemployment insurance and old age pension plans,
plus 13th-month salaries, a minimum of six weeks vacation time, six weeks' sick leave, and 13 to 16 holidays per year. De facto labor costs are higher than in all other industrial countries and from 45 to 50
percent higher than in France, the United States, Canada, or Great Britain.
Equally persuasive arguments for fleeing abroad are high rates of corporate and other business taxes and mazes of bureaucratic regulations that artificially and needlessly raise
the costs and delay the effectiveness of new investments. As Karl Otto Pöhl, former head of the Bundesbank, Germany's "Federal Reserve," once put it to me: "I wouldn't invest in this
country either, because it would take me at least 10 years from completing the plans for a new plant until it could begin operating."
Though Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's new coalition government no longer faces the legislative paralysis and gridlock of Helmut Kohl's, there is widespread doubt and skepticism in the
business community that these major obstacles to getting Germany, Inc., moving again will be removed in the near future.
Moreover, German companies are looking for larger, more dynamic markets than they have at home or in the European Union (EU), in particular in the United States and Asia; they seek
independence from exchange rate fluctuations, especially in light of the uncertain future of the euro. Lower trade barriers also make it easier for them to enter new markets and trim costs by pooling resources
across borders.
It is all part of the globalization trend. "German firms recognize that they must buy foreign companies—in America or elsewhere—in order to become global players," Jörg
Kramer of LGT Asset Management in Frankfurt recently told Time magazine. "In fact, it would be a problem if they were not doing this." Deutsche Bank’s planned takeover of Bankers Trust, for example, has the aim of acquiring an investment banking facility. “Deutsche has no choice. It is not equipped to succeed in the investment sector without an acquisition,” says Ian McEwen, an analyst of the German branch of Lehmann Brothers.
Another factor is that they have racked up big profits that compel them to go shopping, considering the new "going-public," “shareholder-value," and
"return-on-equity" attitudes that are making the rounds of German boardrooms these days, in contrast to the "play-it-safe" paternalistic philosophy of the past. The days are over when a
company like Siemens AG in the 1970s was proud of DM 20 billion ($12.5) in liquid assets and being called "a bank that engages in electrical engineering and electronics as a sideline" because it lent
more money than it was borrowing.
Gone, too, are the days when a chairman like Peter von Siemens, then 69, considered his 43-year-old son "too young" to succeed him and recommended that "the youngster"
spend at least a dozen more years in other management positions before taking the top slot.
The younger generation of German managers and investors, in their 40s and 50s, is more "equity" oriented than the executives now reaching or past the retirement age of 65. One
indication is that institutional investor portfolios, previously focused mainly on low-risk and low-yield bonds, have increased their stock market holdings from 15 to 50 percent since the early 1990s.
"The Germans are learning what the English learned long ago—commercial interest," adds Stephen Graubard, editor of Daedalus magazine.
On the other hand, much of the discussion is prompted more by the size of the recent German expansion than recognition of the fact that German industry did not just sit on its high export
performance in years and decades past and that some blue-chip German companies have always globalized.
Take Siemens, a majority of whose 380,000 workers are now employed abroad, as an example. Its history goes back to 1847 when 31-year-old Werner von Siemens, a physicist and lieutenant in the
Prussian army, and Johann Georg Halske, a 33-year-old mechanical engineer, set up a small workshop with ten employees in Berlin to produce and market a revolutionary pointer-telegraph on which Siemens had just
been awarded a patent. The startup Siemens & Halske Co. was soon making scientific and technological headlines: Europe's first telegraph system in 1848; the Russian telegraph line that it built between 1852
and 1855 from St. Petersburg to Sevastopol; the world's first ocean cable from Sardinia to North Africa; the electro-dynamic principle and the world's first dynamo; the 7,000-mile telegraph line from London to
Calcutta.
With plants, participations, and joint ventures in Russia, Austria-Hungary, and India in the 19th century, Siemens was a "global player" and a "multinational" some 80
years before those terms were even coined.
In the 1960s and 1970s the company embarked on a worldwide expansion program so that by 1979 it had 100 subsidiaries, branch plants, holdings, and participations in 40 countries on five
continents and was operating in all 50 of the United States.
Or consider the Bayer pharmaceutical and chemical group, founded in 1863 in Wuppertal by Friedrich Bayer and Johann Friedrich Westkott for the purpose of making dyes. The company expanded
rapidly and invested heavily outside Germany; already by 1865 it had a branch in Albany, New York, producing dyes; by 1876 it also had branches in Russia, France, and Britain. Its biggest early success was with
sedatives and painkillers: the morphine derivative heroin, originally a Bayer trademark (1898) but since rejected, and acetylsalicylic acid, which Felix Hoffmann, a Bayer pharmacologist, developed in 1899 and
brand-named "Aspirin."
In 1917 after United States entry into World War I, Bayer's vast American holdings and registered trademarks such as Aspirin were confiscated as enemy property. In 1925 the corporation
became part of the I. G. Farben trust. Bayer was reconstituted as an independent corporation in 1951 and again began expanding abroad in the 1960s. Among the biggest coups were acquisition of Belgium's Gevaert
film company by Bayer-owned Agfa and America's Miles Laboratories, so that Americans who take Alka-Seltzer are in effect taking a German Bayer product. The Leverkusen-based company, Germany's eighth largest
corporation with a current sales volume of DM 55 billion ($34 billion) and some 144,000 employees, bought back the names Bayer and Aspirin and other trademarks in 1994 that had been confiscated during the war.
Today Bayer Corp. of Pittsburgh is the conglomerate's biggest foreign subsidiary with 26,000 employees at 50 production sites in the United States and a 1997 sales volume of about $10
billion. But the German parent company has its sites set on far more. "Our corporate aim is to become a leading chemical player in America," says Manfred Schneider, Bayer's CEO, "and no other
country offers as many opportunities for acquisitions and participations as the United States." The most recent was the diagnostics division of Chiron Corporation, which Bayer bought for $1.1 billion in
October. "But there'll be more," says Schneider, pointing out that he has a war chest of at least DM 20 to DM 30 billion ($12.5 to $18.75 billion) for acquisitions, and that Pittsburgh has a target of
nine percent annual growth for the next five years.
The German expansion and buying spree of the late 1990s is merely the most recent of a series that began in the mid-1970s not long after the start of floating exchange rates in 1973 when the
U.S. dollar fell from a fixed rate of DM 3.65 to a low of DM 1.69 in 1979. While that made German exports to the United States more expensive, and thus less competitive, it made acquisitions in the United States
virtual bargains for German corporations. By buying U.S. companies and production facilities the Germans acquired not only good deals but a form of protection against future drops in the dollar and increases in
the value of the DM. Thus the first German "invasion" began.
It came to a sudden halt in 1981 when the dollar began climbing again dramatically, ultimately reaching a rate of DM 3.50 in 1985. On an exchange-rate basis acquisitions in the Unites States
were no longer bargains, but German products, especially consumer goods, motor vehicles, machine tools, and chemicals again became price-competitive on the U.S. market.
In 1986 the pendulum swung again, and the dollar plummeted once more. A new wave of German acquisitions started, motivated then not only by the bargain opportunities and rising prices for
German products but also by fears of possible U.S. protectionist trade measures that could be evaded by having production facilities on American soil. This was one of the main reasons why both Daimler-Benz and
BMW decided to built factories in the United States.
As a result of some of these earlier buying, takeover, and building sprees, German companies are already omnipresent in the United States. Nearly 60 percent of those $300 billion in German
foreign investments are in the United States, compared to 19 percent in Great Britain, 9 percent in Italy, and about 5 percent in France. An estimated one million Americans now work for more than 3,000
German-owned subsidiaries, and may not even know it. Countless are the brand-name American products and services behind which there are German companies.
If you buy at an A & P you are in effect buying from the same Tengelmann where I do my grocery shopping in Munich. Ride a train or subway car made by Budd Car Co. and you are
riding Thyssen A.G. now merged with Krupp. The trucker who drives one of those big Freightliner semis across the country is de facto driving a Mercedes-Benz, which has owned Freightliner since 1981, now a
Daimler-Chrysler. If you read Scientific American, you are reading a magazine owned since 1985 by the Holtzbrinck publishing company of Stuttgart, which also owns the American book publishers Henry Holt,
St. Martin's Press, and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.
Some of the other big American firms taken over by Germans in the 1970s and 1980s are Chicago's Spiegel mail-order house, which belongs to Otto Versand of Hamburg; Clorox Co. and Loctite
Corp. which were bought up by Düsseldorf's Henkel KgaA; the agricultural equipment division of Allis-Chalmers Corp., which went to Klöckner & Co. of Duisburg in 1985; and Celanese, which was bought for $2.7
billion by Hoechst A.G. in 1987.
But for all the precedents set by and similar motivations of earlier German buying and takeover sprees, the one during the past 18 months is different in both magnitude and quality. German
executives today are less likely to make the mistakes of their predecessors.
To be sure, having a doctorate in law from a venerable German university is still a better ticket to career advancement in a German corporation than having an MBA from an internationally
recognized business school. "In fact, the negative attitude toward an MBA is recognized as a symptom of Germany's provincialism," says Heiner Thorborg, a Frankfurt personnel counselor and president of
the Harvard Business School Alumni Association in Germany.
But in most other respects German companies are becoming more worldly and cosmopolitan. Barely a decade ago executives with foreign experience or desires to serve their corporations abroad
were considered "outsiders" who would never make it up the company ladder, and fluency in a foreign language, especially English, was considered an exotic but hardly necessary managerial skill.
"But today," as the monthly Manager Magazin points out, "internationalism is a trump card and globalization is chic. There is hardly a personnel chief who doesn't assess applicants for their ability to perform abroad, hardly an enterprise that does not consider foreign experience an important asset. Those who want to reach the top must have proven themselves abroad."
Karl-Heinz Barz, personnel director of the German division of Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), the Swedish-Swiss-owned electrical and engineering giant, goes so far as to warn all executives that
foreign experience is a prerequisite for promotion and advancement in that corporation.
As a result, German corporations are less inclined to make the mistakes that, for example, Tengelmann, Bertelsmann, and Hoechst made when they took over American companies in the 1970s and
1980s. They tried to run them from the home offices in Mühlheim-on-the-Ruhr, Gütersloh, or Frankfurt-am-Main, and imposed hierarchical German-style managerial principles, and German marketing and merchandising
concepts.
Tengelmann's early troubles with A & P (meanwhile handsomely turned around) were due to ignorance of the American market, psyche, and shopping habits. It tried to sell groceries to
Americans the same way they sold to Germans. When Bertelsmann took over Doubleday & Co. in 1986 it also acquired the company's book-club division and promptly applied its hitherto successful German book-club
principle: mandatory acceptance of the main selection and three months written cancellation notice. Subscribers dropped out in droves.
"Until well into the 1980s," says Jürgen Dormann, 58, CEO of Hoechst A.G., "we were a German company operating in the United States and running things there just the way I. G.
Farben did in the 1920s and 1930s. But what we need and are trying to instill in a global concern like Hoechst is multiculturalism."
Today many American, British, and French executives whose companies were taken over by German ones have been coopted by the German parents' management boards, like Celanese's Ernest Drew at
Hoechst, or John Craven of Morgan Grenfell when that British investment bank was taken over by Deutsche Bank. The executives in their 40s and 50s who are now at or near the top echelon of German companies have
all spent months and even years working in the countries where they are buying, taking over, or building subsidiaries.
Thomas Middelhoff, 44, who became CEO of Bertelsmann last October, spent more time in New York than Gütersloh in the year before taking the top slot and says: "When we are in America we
are Americans. At companies like Bertelsmann or Daimler-Benz, management today is just as American as at IBM or Coca Cola. There are no German and American companies; only successful and unsuccessful
companies."
When Allianz took over France's AGF, it placed only three Germans on the 12-member board of directors and adopted a hands-off, let-the-French-remain-French policy. "We could have put
German management in there," says Allianz's spokesman Emilio Galli-Zugaro. "We could have changed the brand, calling it 'Allianz-France,' changed all their products and swallowed their Spanish and
South American subsidiaries. But that's exactly what we did not do."
With attitudes and policies like that, Germany, Inc.'s, globalization is unlikely to suffer any more "Vietnams." Nor need Americans, like Michael Korda of Simon & Schuster
publishing, worry about the Germans taking "revenge for the Second World War."
Contributing editor John Dornberg writes from Munich.
A Joyful Madness: Carnival in Basel
By Rich Rubin
Though it's 3:30 in the morning, the streets of Basel are packed. As I stand by the side of the Mittlere Brücke, the Middle Bridge, there's a look of expectation, even longing, in the eyes
of those around me. Lined up on the bridge—the Rhine River in darkness below them—are the residents of a startling bestiary: pink pigs in satin waistcoats, purple rabbits, fuschia cats, bees with pointy white
noses and blinking antennae.
At the stroke of 4 a.m., the town is plunged into darkness. There's a moment—but only a moment—of silence. Then, heeding a centuries-old call, 1,000 fifes fill the air, drums beat a
steady rhythm, and the preposterous creatures, tiny lamps attached to their foreheads and enormous painted lanterns preceding them, begin to parade through the narrow streets and riverside promenades of Basel's Altstadt (Old Town).
Morgestraich (Morning Call) has arrived—and with it Basel's annual Fasnacht, or carnival. This three-day celebration is one of the world's oldest
carnivals (records appear as early as 1376), with roots dating to pagan celebrations of Germanic and Roman origin. It's by far the largest and most famous of the festivities that blanket Switzerland like
February snow—no coincidence in this town perched on the Swiss, French, and German borders, for France and Germany both have long-standing carnival traditions. In Switzerland, however, one finds the practice
prevailing primarily in German-speaking areas.
No one is sure why Basel's carnival begins after the onset of Lent; whereas most such affairs end with Lent on Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), the day before Ash Wednesday ushers in the fast period.
It's thought to have something to do with the city's Protestant nature, a way of thumbing collective noses at the Catholic hierarchy's medieval calendar changes that pushed Lent forward a week. Indeed, Fasnachts
held in primarily Catholic regions of Switzerland follow the traditional calendar observed elsewhere.
But Basel's Fasnacht always starts on the Monday following Ash Wednesday. This year, that places the opening on February 22, and the revelry lasts till the wee hours of Wednesday night.
I stand on the bridge, amazed at the creatures streaming past: pink-haired fifers swathed in white veils, larger-than-life birds topped with kaleidoscopic plumes, green-wigged harlequins. It's
estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 people—almost 10 percent of Basel's population—march in the parades under the aegis of over 150 carnival societies, or "cliques," overseen by the official
Fasnacht Comité.
If it sounds very Swiss, it is; even in the craziness there's a sense of order. At Monday afternoon's parade, the largest single event, the crowds are overwhelming but polite; wandering along the
sides of the road, they're careful not to interfere with the marchers. (Perhaps it's because bleary-eyed in the pre-Morgestraich crowd, we were handed a set of rules for proper spectator behavior). Against the
backdrop of medieval Basel, the cortège proceeds in well-organized tumult, showing off the latest wild creations of the cliques.
An immense white-faced nurse with green hair breaks her stride to hand me a sheet of satirical verses lampooning political figures and other celebrities, a unique Basel tradition. I can't
understand the broadsides, even with a German dictionary; they're written in Basel dialect, and a special Fasnacht version to boot. Judging from the smirks and snorts of the crowd, though, it must be pretty
funny stuff.
Later that evening I visit a pub, and the words spring to life with visiting bands of satirists; this custom of visiting restaurants and bars is known as Schnitzelbängg and dates at
least to the 1830s. Look for the Basler Schnitzelbängg Gesellschaft (BSG) sign, which indicates a location designated for these raucous presentations by the Schnitzelbängg Comité, organizers of the lampoons since 1921. While the performances are for me no more comprehensible than the written satire, the broad gestures and infectious audience response get me laughing as if I understood the ruthless mimicry.
By contrast, innocence reigns at Tuesday's Kinderfasnacht (children's carnival), which presents the budding Fasnachtlers. I watch delightedly as miniature witches and mushroom-headed minors parade by, flashbulb bursts lighting the gray day. Then I head to Münsterplatz, the square in front of the cathedral, where the lanterns that made the early-morning Morgestraich so stunning are displayed. Like most of Basel's Fasnacht traditions, the origins of the lanterns are hazy, but they're thought to have been introduced in the mid-19th century, when open torches were forbidden.
Painted in translucent colors on cloth stretched over frames—like giant slides—the lanterns are veritable works of art, the images astonishing even in repose: a huge clown face seems to burst out
of its frame; a bare-bottomed crone has a green/pink face and pinwheels in her hair; a two-toned lantern depicts an artist whose palette and brushes change, Escher-style, from green to magenta.
As I gaze at the creations, a bulb-nosed and straw-haired Waggis (a favorite country bumpkin figure) ambles by, followed by a seven-foot parrot and two scarlet-bewigged beings of indeterminate gender. I nod and smile; there's nothing surprising about such a sight, is there?
Tuesday evening: Guggenmusik concerts resound throughout the old town. This raucous "music," played on old, dented brass instruments, was given an official spot in
Fasnacht in 1948, though it's still frowned upon by purists and not allowed in Morgestraich. It originated in Basel, but is now more common in Lucerne; in the great Fasnacht, fifes and drums hold sway.
Munching on tangy Zwiebelewähe, the traditional onion pie served during Fasnacht along with Mehlsuppe (burnt flour soup, a rich brown broth that's actually quite good), the crowds thicken under the crazy caterwaul. I watch them watching the performers, in my hand a glass of Glühwein,
hot spiced wine that's another Fasnacht favorite. Half the fun of Fasnacht is simply standing and soaking in the enthusiasm, a swirling eddy of elation that only a truly hopeless case could resist.
If Tuesday is wild, Wednesday's one long celebration, lasting well into the night. The official march in the afternoon is slightly less formal than Monday's, so you have the chance to rove more
freely. I wander among the never-ending cavalcade of quixotic creatures for hours, hardly noticing when night falls.
As I walk down a darkening alleyway, a solitary harlequin in purple cape sits forlornly in a narrow doorway. I'm sure I saw him earlier, strolling down Cinnamon Alley, and again in
front of Tinguely's Fasnacht fountain. It's not unexpected; we're partaking of a time-honored custom known as Gässle (a take-off on the Basler term for alley)—meandering at will and creating your own Fasnacht in whatever way appeals to you.
A Waggis pair slurps greedily from a Freie Strasse fountain, splashing each other playfully before wiping their enormous noses, shaking their stringy hair, and capering arm-in-arm down the street.
A green-faced angel with crimson halo marches up the cobblestones, fife to lips; soon a stately courtesan and grinning lion begin to march alongside her (him?), falling into step as if the
maneuver were prearranged. The trio is joined by a pair of drummers in breeches and tricorn hats, and before my eyes a mini-parade has begun. I fumble for my camera, but by the time I lift it to my eyes, they're
gone, leaving only a faraway tootling through the frigid air.
And in the end, that's exactly how I think of Fasnacht: As a distant tune on the fife, haunting yet inspiring, a memory of a joyful madness so exhilarating that I can't believe I—much less an
entire city—actually surrendered to it. But surrender we did, and the knowledge that we were able to do so makes the rest of the year, somehow, a little easier to bear.
Rich Rubin writes from New York City.
SIDEBAR
A Fasnacht Grand Tour
While you couldn't possibly attend every Fasnacht in Switzerland, with good planning (and a Swiss Rail pass) you can catch several and get an object lesson in the country's regional diversity.
Lucerne's carnival, like Basel's an age-old celebration (records date to 1374), begins at 5 a.m. on Schmutizger Donnerstag (Dirty Thursday, February 11 this year) with the Fritschi Parade, organized by the Saffron Guild and complete with rousing Orangenauswerfen (orange battle). At the afternoon's freewheeling Guggenmusik parade, costumed onlookers (frowned upon in Basel) cavort through the old town.
Skip Lucerne's weekend masked balls and on Friday journey to Wiler, in the stunning Lötschental area about three hours away, for Switzerland's most fascinating Fasnacht. You've
missed Thursday night's parade, but Saturday's equally wild, as the diabolical creatures called Roitschäggättä or Tschäggättä (those smeared with soot) clang cowbells and caper through town clad in
fur and burlap, their wooden masks adorned with cows' teeth and goats' hair. Were they originally creatures to scare off wintry spirits? The very embodiments of those spirits? No one's sure, but some suggest
roots in the area's medieval Alemanic mask cults.
Sunday: Back to Lucerne for a busy Monday, with early morning festivities organized by the Wey Guild. Witness the afternoon parade or head to nearby Zug for an alluring custom (one of
several in Zug's carnival calendar) featuring Greth Schell, an old woman of local myth. You'll see her carrying her drunken husband into Zug's central square, accompanied by seven lööli (fools), who hurl oranges
and cookies as children reach out for the goodies and shout the traditional "Greth Schällebei!" Then the whole affair winds through the old town streets, sweets flying through the air. Only Lucerne's
masked balls and late-night street parties will get the sound of "Greth Schällebei!" out of your head.
Tuesday afternoon: Try Sarnen, a delightful lakeside village less than an hour from Lucerne. The small parade, wonderful music in the Dorfplatz, the village square,
and—Sarnen's main twist—beautifully-painted faces, give you a glimpse of a localized celebration. You'll be back in Lucerne in plenty of time for Tuesday evening's grand Monsterkorso (Parade of Monsters) and frolicking that continues till dawn.
Wednesday you're off to Bern and Protestant post-Ash Wednesday territory. Drop your bags and rush back to the train station for a 45 minute ride to Solothurn. Since Bern's events
don't begin till Thursday, you can spend Ash Wednesday evening witnessing the final event of the Solothurn Fasnacht: the Bööggverbrennen, or burning of the straw man, a symbolic end to carnival (and
winter).
Back in Bern, the celebrations begin Thursday with the lowering of a confetti-hurling "bear," the city symbol, into the square called appropriately enough Bärenplatz. The three-day carnival includes a late-night Häxefasnacht (witches' carnival) at 1:11 Saturday morning, and a parade that afternoon. Though the Fasnacht spirit doesn't overtake the town as in other places (perhaps because it's a newer addition), the international assortment of food on Kramgasse is the best of any.
Sunday you're off to Basel. Run to nearby Liestal for the Kienbesenzug, a pine torch parade that seems ancient but in fact dates to 1924. Robed men accompanied by fifes and
drums make the perfect prelude to Basel's Fasnacht.
Some of Switzerland's many Fasnacht events in February 1999:
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Place/Event
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Date
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Lucerne
Wiler (Lötschental)—Tschäggättä parade
Zug—Greth Schell parade
Sarnen—Parade
Solothurn—Bööggverbrennen
Bern
Liestal—Kienbesenzug
Basel
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11–16
13
15
16
17
18–20
21
22–24
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For information about Fasnacht events, contact
Switzerland Tourism, The Swiss Center,
608 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10020–2303;
Tel.: (212) 757–5944; Fax: (212) 262–6116;
Web: www.switzerlandtourism.com
—Rich Rubin
GERMAN-AMERICAN YESTERYEARS
FEBRUARY/MARCH 1999
1. What Price Freedom?
In the 18th century Leibeigenschaft, or personal servitude, determined the legal status of 5 to 10 percent of the population in southwestern Germany. A Leibeigener was not a slave: He could not be sold, worked his
own land, and could dispose of his personal property as he wished. Financial obligations consisted primarily
of an annual recognition fee. But few Leibeigene had, or wanted to spend, the funds necessary to purchase their freedom.
Servitude primarily restricted mobility: Anyone who wanted to move had to purchase his freedom. Fees
varied, but since the Leibeigenschaft was hereditary through the mother only, women paid more than men. In the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg a woman who wanted to emigrate to America or Hungary paid a minimum of
2 to 3 guilders and up to 15 percent of the value of her property for her Ledigzehlung, the release from
servitude. Men paid a maximum of 10 percent; children were released for free. Because this came on top of a
3-1/2 guilder fee, legal fees, a 5 percent sales tax, a 10 percent emigration tax, and local emigration fees that
could consume 50 percent of an emigrant's capital, many saved themselves the money and left secretly.
2. 18th-Century War Brides
For 200 years the "Hessians," as Britain's German soldiers in the American Revolutionary War were known
collectively, have suffered from bad press. Even today they are often labeled as mercenaries sold by their princes for money, fighting without feelings and mercy, who couldn't be trusted.
But not all Americans were Rebels who feared the Hessians. To the Loyalists they were allies in the struggle
for their rightful ruler King George III. They knew that these soldiers were not the bloodthirsty monsters of patriot propaganda.
For many of their daughters and widows they were just men—a scarce commodity in wartime. Quartered
sometimes for months in either these womens’ homes or in the vicinity of their villages, close contact often
led to friendship, love, and ultimately marriage. Come 1783 these couples had to decide on where they would
live. Not all of the German men wanted to stay in America; most returned home. Dozens of war brides went with them and found their way into German church records, as did Maria, née Bink, the wife of Garnison
Auditor Johannes Hennermann, from Savannah in the Province of Georgia in North America, who gave birth to a son named Wilhelm in Kassel on April 20, 1788.
3. An Austrian in America: Franz Hölzlhuber
In the spring of 1856 a young Austrian from Linz set sail from Bremen for America and Milwaukee, where a
position as conductor of an orchestra was supposedly waiting for him. As it turned out, the job was no longer
available when Hölzlhuber arrived in Milwaukee. Jobless, Hölzlhuber spent the next four years working odd
jobs as a baker—he is credited with introducing the Linzer Torte to America—teaching at American Indian
schools and schools for African-Americans, and travelling across the United States. In 1860 Hölzlhuber returned to Austria where he died as the director of the National Railroad Museum and Library in 1898.
Wherever his travels in America took him, he brought along his sketch pad and drawing pen. Following his
return to Austria, he collected the 144 watercolors of his travels along the western frontier, down the Mississippi into Arkansas and into the American Southwest and exhibited them as a panorama of the New
World. Taken together, these drawings provide fascinating glimpses into pre-Civil War America as seen by a young, inquisitive Austrian.
4. Remembering the Massacre at Gnadenhütten
In early May 1772 Moravian Missionary David Zeisberger moved to Schönbrunn on the Tuscarawas River,
Ohio, and established an Indian Mission station with some 33 Delaware converts. A few years later a second
station was established at nearby Gnadenhütten, and by late 1775 some 400 Native American converts lived in the two villages.
During the Revolutionary War, Zeisberger, being a pacifist, refused to take sides and soon found himself
caught between the British at Fort Detroit and the Americans at Fort Pitt. As the war progressed, most of the
midwestern tribes joined the British. Zeisberger's position as an arbiter became untenable when an American
raiding party destroyed the nearby Delaware capital of Goschachgunk in April 1781. The Delawares joined the British, and Zeisberger was left with a small group of about 150 followers.
Disaster struck in early March 1782. Armed militiamen under the command of Colonel David Williamson had
captured and detained 96 Indians at Gnadenhütten. Thirsting for revenge, they voted to kill their captives and
told them to prepare for death. The next morning, March 8, they led their captives into two houses—men in one house, women and children in the other—and systematically slaughtered 90 Christian Indian men,
women, and children. Today the massacre is remembered in an outdoor play in the Schönbrunn Amphitheater in New Philadelphia, Ohio. For more information contact Tel.: (330) 339–1132.
5. Chicago’s Columbia Club Women
Among the few German (-language) clubs in the United States to survive both World Wars is the Chicago
Columbia Club. Founded in early April 1893 on the eve of the Chicago Columbia Exhibition by a group of German-speaking women as the Deutscher Frauenverein zur Förderung des Erziehungswesens, or the
German Women's Club to Promote Education, it had and has as its goal "to maintain and support German culture, language, and friendship among its members."
Renamed the Columbia Damenclub a few days later, it began with some 40 women on its membership list,
mostly from upper-level society. But membership was, and is, in principle open to all German-speaking women
interested in intellectual pursuits, though its members have always displayed a social conscience as well.
Around the turn of the century they supported efforts to combat child labor abuses and funded relief work in Germany after both wars.
Today the Chicago Columbia Club (since 1942) provides support for academic programs and financial aid for
students of German at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois. It meets every first Thursday of the month for lectures, concerts, or other cultural events in the Chicago Women's Athletic Club.
For more information contact Hedda Hess, President, Chicago Columbia Club, 10614 S. Oakley Avenue, Chicago, IL 60643.
EDITORIAL--February/March 1999
Ethnic Exchanges
Perusing a recent book on multiculturalism in Germany, I found that today’s Germans are “the descendants of
Celts, Romans, Saxons, Franks, Alamans, Obodrites, Polabians, Poles, Mazurians, Sorbs, Kashubians, Pomeranians, Jews, Czechs, Frenchmen, Italians, Croats, Turks, and many more” ethnicities. Moreover, the
book mentions the Protestant/Catholic cultural divide that has at certain times in history affected Germany profoundly.
I won’t profess to know off-hand about the Obodrites, Polabians, or Kashubians—I couldn’t even find the
terms in my American Heritage dictionary (third edition)—but I do know that in past issues of German Life, one feature or another has covered some of the ethnicities mentioned above. Indeed, for all the
cross-culturalism that appears within each individual GL issue, there’s also a lot of cross-referencing between issues.
One of the most obvious forums to view the criss-crossing is the Letters to the Editor column, which also
reflects the diverse background of our readers. For example, the August/September 1998 issue’s feature on Volga Germans—those from the Volga River region of southwestern Russia—generated later correspondence
about Gotschee Germans—those from an area that today is in Slovenia—and about Donau-Schwaben, or Donau-Swabians—ethnic Germans who come from Hungary. Speaking to the interests of the
Donau-Swabians, this current issue’s historical feature on the origins of German settlement in Hungary lays the groundwork for future articles on the Donau-Swabian groups active in the United States today.
And once again the Letters to the Editor department rings with responses to an earlier article on ethnic
German-speakers—this time the Dec. 1998/Jan. 1999 feature about “Pennsylvania-Germans” (or “Pennsylvania-Dutch”) in the United States. In response to these leters, those readers seeking a concise
explanation of Plattdeutsch and how it differentiates itself from High German can look to this issue’s Language department. I don’t expect reader dialogue to stop there, however. For the opinions of the active
Plattdeutsch scholars and speakers in the United States could likely differ from author Professor Eichhoff’s conclusion about Plattdeutsch’s current status here.
Finally, this issue touches on German-speaking Europe’s religious diversity, including the more lighthearted topic of Fasnacht, or carnival, in Basel, Switzerland. One finds that historically, carnival touches on the
Catholic/Protestant divide. When it comes down to it, though, the silliness of the carnival celebration carries a
simple message: For all the history and complexity behind Germans’ lives and cultures, they have never forgotten—nor should we forget—how to have fun.
Heidi L. Whitesell, Editor
Letters to the Editor—February/March 1999
Pennsylvania-Dutch Perceptions
I’d like to point out an egregious error in the article “Kumm Esse (Come Eat): Christmas in Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania” (Dec. 1998/Jan. 1999). The author states that Pennsylvania Dutch is like Plattdeutsch spoken in Northern Germany. It is of course nothing like Plattdeutsch, which is closely
related to English and actual Dutch in Holland. Pennsylvania Dutch is not High German in the sense of being what we call “Schriftdeutsch,” or Scripture German, or proper German like in a newspaper.
Pennsylvania-Dutch is, however, an amalgamation of the Swabian, Rhenish, and Swiss dialects spoken by the settlers who came from those areas to Pennsylvania beginning in 1683. I once went to
Rhineland-Palatinate to preach and was surprised how easy the dialect was to understand, because it was so closely related to the Pennsylvania-Dutch of my formative years in Northampton County,
Pennsylvania, in the Moravian communities there.
Roy Ledbetter
Via Email
The article on Pennsylvania-German food (Dec./Jan. 1999) incorrectly states that th “plain people’s”
dialect of German is similar to “Platt.” I grew up in a home where my parents spoke “Plattdeutsch” and later lived for a time among Amish neighbors and noticed no resemblance in the dialects.
In the Oct./Nov. 1998 issue, the Language article on German dialects clarifies that Pennsylvania-German belongs to the Upper German dialects, whereas Plattdeutsch belongs to the
Northern German dialects.
Heinz Janzen
Via Email
I was generally impressed with Annette Lockwood’s account of the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania’s
“plain people” and their life-style. The feasting traditions segment was especially well done. As a Pennsylvania-German speaking native of Lancaster County with roots in the Church of the Brethren,
however, I disagree on a few points.
The Pennsylvania-German dialect is derived from the Rhineland-Palatinate from where most Pennsylvania-Germans originated. I have no problem communicating with the Palatinates in our
common dialect, but conversing with the North Germans is another matter. Plattdeutsch has a decidedly different vocabulary.
While the author covered most of the religious groups that settled in Lancaster County, one group,
the German Reformed, played an important part in the County’s religious life. They deserve mention in the article.
Finally, the author states that “the Amish and stricter sects of Mennonites and Brethren that are
concentrated in Lancaster County still farm and refuse to mingle with the outer world or adopt to modern conveniences....” While this may be to a certain extent true of the Old Order House Amish
today, it has never been true of the Brethren, including the stricter sects such as the Old Order Brethren. Many of them have become bankers and businessmen, doctors and nurses. They have
always driven cars, used electricity, and telephones. They may have dressed “plain,” eschewed movies, card playing, and other “worldly pleasures” in generations past, but Brethren today are hardly
distinguishable from their “worldly” Lancaster County neighbors.
Donald M. Royer, Ph.D.
Richmond, IN
Editor’s note: The confusionabout PA-Dutch comes, no doubt, from a mistranslation. In the Rhineland “speaking platt” means speaking in dialect; it does not mean “Plattdeutsch.”
Political Disapproval
I am very disappointed in your decision to politicize your magazine. The Dec. 1998/Jan. 1999 editorial’s
reference to the CDU-CSU as “narrow-minded” and appearing “outmoded” leads me to believe that your politics are “wrong-headed” and include the “feel-good” solutions that create problems and do
not solve them. But that is my opinion. I am hopeful that the new German leadership will be successful, nevertheless, because it is important to Germany, Europe, and the world.
Paul A. Hass
Via Email
Revisiting Yesteryears
The June/July 1998 Yesteryears department referred to Swiss Baron Christopher de Graffenried, founder of New Bern, North Carolina (1710), as a “land speculator,” who “wantonly destroyed a
Tuscarora [Indian] village.” I find this serious charge highly objectionable and believe an apology to the American and European de Graffenried families to be in order.
Jo Anne De Graffenreid
Via Email
To correct the misrepresented information, my own research into the events surrounding the outbreak of the Tuscarora War shows that it began with the massacre of about 60 Swiss colonists in
New Bern by the Tuscarora in September 1711. These colonists had been brought over by Christoph de Graffenried in the spring of 1710. Graffenried was taken prisoner, but since he had always taken
pains to treat the Indians well, he was released after six weeks in captivity. Graffenried returned to Europe in the summer of 1713.
—Robert A. Selig, Contributing Editor
ERRATA: Dec. 1998/Jan. 1999
LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT
Plattdeutsch—Niederdeutsch—Low German
By Jürgen Eichhoff
It sounds like bad German—the German of the gutters? Nothing could be less fitting a characterization for the
northern German dialects whose proud ancestry includes Sassisch, the medieval lingua franca used over large
portions of northern Europe, and Old Saxon, a close sister of the Anglo-Saxon language that developed into
modern English. It is only for lack of a better English translation for Niederdeutsch, the German name for those dialects, that the negative connotations arise. “Nethergerman” would be a fine English name, but
unfortunately, the word nether as an alternative to “low” has fallen out of favor and is now only heard in
archaisms such as “the netherworld.” It is also preserved in the name of the Netherlands. As a matter of fact,
most of what today is the Netherlands was part of the Low German dialect area until the country became politically independent at the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648.
Nieder means “lying-low” in a geographical sense, and Niederdeutsch got its name because it is the German
spoken in the low-lying coastal lands of northern Germany. Another name is Plattdeutsch, platt again meaning low-lying or flat but also popular and plain.
All Low German dialects share what distinguishes them from the High German dialects: the Germanic consonants p, t, and k, which in High German changed to (p)f, (t)s, and ch. The Germanic consonants are also
preserved in English, hence a person speaking English will have no problem figuring out what the Low German words Pepper, Plant, Salt, Foot, Book, or Week mean. But that person would have a hard time with Pfeffer, Salz, Fuss, Buch, and Woche—the High German equivalents.
There is no standard Low German, so the dialects come in several varieties. The largest and most original is in
Northern Lower Saxonian. The area in which it is spoken includes the cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck.
During the Late Middle Ages, Lübeck was the administrative and cultural center of the Hanseatic League, a
network of more than 160 cities committed to free trade and protecting their interests against highway robbers
and pirates. All major disputes that arose among cities between Belgium and Russia and around the Baltic Sea
were negotiated in Lübeck. So it comes as no surprise that at no other time did the German language have more influence on another language than during this period when the language of Lübeck heavily influenced
the Scandinavian languages.
Westphalian and Eastphalian are likewise spoken in the original territories of Low German. However, the
dialects to the east were only transplanted there through migrations during the early Middle Ages, in the
process assimilating the native Slavic dialects of these areas. Especially Pomeranian and (outside of the above map) Lower Prussian retained traces of Slavic dialects.
During the 15th century trade and cultural development shifted from the Baltic and North Sea coastal areas to
the southern German cities, and the Hanseatic League lost its power. But already during its heyday, the vocabulary and grammar of Sassisch came under an ever-increasing influence of High German. High German,
rather than Low German, was spoken more and more among the upper classes. That is why we do not call this later period Sassisch but Low German or, among scholars, Middle Low German. Low German became a spoken
language only, a dialect under the umbrella of High German. The last bible in Low German was printed in Goslar in 1621.
During the past 50 or so years, the process of replacing Low German through High German (now called
Standard German) as the medium for everyday communication has accelerated all over the original Low German dialect area. The Low German dialects are dying out rapidly.
They aren’t letting go so easily, though. All over the country, people are expressing a renewed interest in
dialects in general and in Low German in particular. Low German poetry is written, published, and recited—drawing considerable audiences. Short stories are read over radio stations; Bremen Radio even has a
news program in Low German. Low German theater productions appeal to large crowds. More or less banished from the pulpit as Martin Luther’s Reformation took hold in these lands, Low German sermons have
reappeared on special occasions. Only last year the parliament of the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein officially adopted in Article 9 of its constitution the pledge “to protect and further the
Low German language.”
But in spite of some activists speaking of a “dialect renaissance,” all this does not mean that Low German is
re-establishing itself in homes or in public. Rather, it has become an object of cultural interest similar to the
renewed interest in their heritage among members of the various ethnic groups in the United States.
There were considerable numbers among the 19th-century German immigrants whose mother tongue was Low
German. Among them the Pomeranians who in 1839 were the first to establish a German settlement in Wisconsin. Some of their descendants were still able to speak the dialect when it had all but disappeared in
the Old Country after Pomerania became Polish in 1945, and all Germans were expelled. Immigrants speaking Northern Lower Saxonian settled in Iowa as well as Wisconsin where place names such as Holstein or New
Holstein and Kiel testify to their founding of larger settlements. Westphalians in large numbers made their way to Missouri. Recently, a group in Davenport, Iowa, organized to study the area’s German heritage,
including the Low German dialect. In 1989 on the occasion of the sesquicentennial of the city’s founding, citizens of Cole Camp, Missouri, commemorated the city’s history with a publication entitled, Hier Snackt Wi
Plattdütsch (Here We Speak Low German). The volume includes Low German texts and a word list reflecting the early settlers’ origin in northern Lower Saxony between Bremen and Hamburg.
The works of Fritz Reuter, the plattdeutsch author from Mecklenburg, were widely read by German immigrants. There is still today a Fritz Reuter Altenheim (nursing home) in North Bergen, NJ. And there were
newspapers entitled, Plattdeutsche Post and Plattdeutsche Nachrichten (in Chicago) and Plattdütsche Post
(in New York City), the latter existing from 1934 into the 1960s. Although they emphasized news from northern Germany, the language of these papers was Standard German. Low German was relegated to the occasional
poem and funny short story.
“Dat hett allens en End.” (Everything comes to an end.)
Jürgen Eichhoff is professor of German linguistics at Pennsylvania State University.
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