The implication, when it’s not stated outright, is that there are shades of Americanness. In recent years, certain elements in this country have once again tried to define the term “American” according to their terms. The United States has a long and ugly history of persecuting “outsiders”-a term that should be virtually meaningless in a land founded by immigrants. Prager’s last words? “Wrap me in the flag when you bury me.” In Maryville, MO, a young German drifter who’d come to town looking for work was stripped to his underwear and forced to march down Main Street wrapped in an American flag while singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The young German, whose name was Robert Paul Prager, insisted that he was a loyal American. Sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage” and German measles became known as “liberty measles.”Īs Kirschbaum recounts in Burning Beethoven, in the late years of the Great War, German-Americans across the U.S. However, upon America’s entry into the conflict, German-Americans began to be ostracized and villainized. At that time, there were many communities across the United States where German was more commonly spoken than English. remained uninvolved during the early years of the Great War. At that time-as now-German-Americans made up the biggest single ethnic group in America. The United States remained uninvolved during the early years of World War I. As Erik Kirschbaum notes in Burning Beethoven, this renaming tendency is part of an old tradition in America. The Congressional cafeteria in Washington even began serving freedom fries-as well as freedom toast, in lieu of french toast. In those days, after the French Government declined to support American efforts in Iraq, freedom fries became a big deal in certain regions of the country. I simply couldn’t bring myself to say the words “freedom fries.”
I ordered my New York Strip, but I hesitated about ordering fries. invasion of Iraq, eating at a steak joint out on the Claude Highway near the Palo Duro Canyon. The book is subtitled The Eradication of German Culture in the United States during World War I, and it contains a multitude of scary echoes for 21 st century America. I’m Jonathan Baker, a writer in Canyon, Texas, and I’ve been asked to talk a little about this month’s Radio Readers Book Club selection, Burning Beethoven by Erik Kirschbaum.
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