Willkommen!!

Welcome to our class blog!

We will be using this blog throughout the semester for two kinds of assignments:

1. Once per chapter, the homework plan will direct you to post a response to the culture readings for the chapter on the blog.

2. Roughly every other week, the homework plan will direct you to post here for your Abenteuer mit Deutsch (AMD) assignment. First you do a fun activity that involves German, then you post about it. You should spend an hour total on this (maybe 45-55 minutes doing something, 5-15 minutes posting about it). See Was ist ein AMD, AMD Ideen and Beispiele for ideas. This should get you excited about the kinds of things you can do!

Whenever you post something, please include your name and the name of the assignment (e.g. AMD2, Kultur5) as labels. See "Blog: How To" for more details!

Kultur 1

     Reading How German is American by the Max Kade Institute and the three articles in Vorsprung were quite captivating and interesting. Previously, I did not hear very much information on Germans that moved to America, and how they impacted the culture here. Reading these articles gave me some new insight in German culture, and how it shaped American culture as well.
     Initially, I was surprised that most individuals of German descent would live in the Midwest, but upon reading how the environment was similar to Germany, it makes sense why they would want to live there. I was interested how religion was quite a big factor into why Germans were moving to the United States, and also to seek out new opportunities (which is what people mostly hear when they hear about why immigrants move to the United States). I liked reading about how Germans brought some of their "clubs" and institutions to the United States, and how they were implemented here. Reading about the "Milwaukee Turners" was very interesting, and I am surprised I never heard anything about them previously.
     Overall, I really enjoyed reading about German culture was introduced and was implemented into current American culture. It was interesting to read about a topic that I didn't previously know about, and how influential the German culture was on American culture.

Kultur 1

This article made me think about how a lot of times we probably overlook how much of German culture has actually blended with American culture. Some of the words that we use on a very regular basis come straight from the German settlers and it was interesting to read in the article the history of how those people ended up in the United States. I was also wondering why, sort of how it mentioned in the article, German culture has not been better preserved and strongly represented as a prevalent ethnic group. It was cool to read about how the majority of people in the United States claim to be of German descent but I wonder why the specific ethnicity is not more obvious in everyday life even though millions of people identify themselves with German heritage. When I was reading about the different ways that German culture was represented in society it reminded of where I'm from; I live right next to Holland, MI where the vast majority of people are Dutch and many different aspects of the Dutch culture can be found all over Holland, and even during certain times of the year the town can look exactly like the Netherlands just because so many people from the Netherlands settled in Holland. It's interesting to see that culture so strongly represented and I wonder why this doesn't carry over as strongly for the German culture. Or maybe it is and I just don't know about it. Maybe it has to do with the anti-semitist stigma associated with Germans as the article mentioned, and that is why many of them just tried to quickly assimilate to American culture to get away from the stereotype. I think it's also important though to note how the German culture has shaped American culture in a lot of ways from our vocabulary to festivals that we hold every year.

Kultur 1

When I first read the title of this article, I was very confused. I did'nt understand how German could be American. As I read on, I understood what the author mean't and was very suprised to learn about all of the things that Germans did once they came over to America. From the information presented, it seemed like the Germans that came over were the ones that really leaded and pushed America forward to help us grow as a nation. They bought lots of land and began farming, they opened clubs and businesses, and they were some of the first people that opposed ideas such as slavery. It seems like the Germans were the ones that opened America up to a whole new world where things didn't have to be just like England, as our country had been replacated from. Another part of the article I found was interesting was the census. The fact that many German decendants are now just referring to themselves as Americans is both a good thing and a bad thing. One the one hand, it shows that they truly feel that they belong in America and consider themselves more American than German, or they might not even know that they are of German descent, but on the other hand, it shows that they are slowly conforming and losing their German culture and heritage that their ancestors had brought to America and used to open our country to a new culture that helped America grow and prosper. Their progressive ideas contributed to the success and popularity that is now thought of as American, not German. Overall, I liked this article because it really showed how much influence the German people have had on America and how we, as Americans, take for granted how much other countries have contributed to our culture or as we like to call it, our melting pot.

Kultur1

Daniel Won

When I thought about how cultures are submerged into the title “American”, I thought about how everybody, eventually, if they live here, will be submerged. From my background, my parents speak Taiwanese, and their parents speak Taiwanese, and now they have passed down to me, but in the future, I know I am not going to pass down Taiwanese to my children. I do not know it will enough to speak it well myself much less teach it to further generations. But knowing the inevitable, does it make it a terrible thing? Is it bad that I have not passed down true Taiwanese heritage to my children, only the genes to look like one? Should I make extra effort to keep my pride as a Taiwanese person, to be distinct? And if I should, why? It is kind of a puzzling question when you think about it. Because even if I am no longer, culturally, Taiwanese, now American, there will still be other people who immigrate from Taiwan to make influence on American culture, to put their perspective into the picture. But then eventually, their children, and their children’s children like me, will lose their “Taiwanese-ness”. Though America is known as the most diverse in culture on the face of the earth, is it also a black hole for culture? Does America, suck the culture out of all the people who immigrate here, to make them “American”? This seems to me like a problem, but the same would happen if I went to live somewhere else and have my children there. Maybe not my children necessarily would be French or Italian, but maybe their children, if they chose to stay there, would be French or Italian. Like me, my children would be the “transition generation” into a new country and so a new culture as well. So maybe in conclusion it would be ridiculous to think as America as a “black hole for culture”, as any country could be a black hole for culture. And so when we think about German culture being “submerged” into American culture, it is not such a bad thing, only the normal course of events.