Kultur-Texte 1

This article turned out to be a pretty eye-opening read to me: despite having spent one and a half years in the country (Illinois, precisely) prior to studying here, I was under the impression that the community surrounding me would to a large extent be composed of Arabians, Mexicans, Irish, and so. To my knowledge, there was a trace amount of Österreicheren (Close enough to Deutscheren, eh?), but was there any Americans with German traits? Ich weiß nicht.

Not until I read this article do I realize and/or recall the evidence of German influence I've found, with the surnames of people (Muller, Bernstein, to name a few) being one example; but their versatility is something new to me, and it seems pretty impressive: they can settle down in a vast variety of locations, from such cold areas as Wisconsin and Illinois to the much-hotter Texas - where everything's bigger - and other Southern states.

Americans, either from this reading or from personal experiences, seem subtly German to me, if not semi-consciously. What I found on an Internet forum is that Milwaukee, WI, once coined the most German city, now has more "Schmidt"s than "Smith"s on the phone book, although the population does not inherit the traditions passed down to them much. On the other hand, there is New Glarus, WI (America's Little Switzerland oder Amerikas wenig der Schweiz) where townspeople perform plays in German annually until now, in spite of a much smaller population with Swiss descent in the town. I think it would be a wise choice for groups to invest on promoting these fading cultures; after all, being assimilated is one thing, but leaving the traditions behind is another thing - and it's sad.