The Handwriting on the Wall: The Klan, Language Issues, and Prohibition in the German 
Settlements of Eastern Texas

Kamphoefner, Walter D.

doi:10.1353/swh.2008.0019

swh

2008

DOI: 10.1353/swh.2008.0019

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The Handwriting on the Wall: The Klan, Language Issues, and Prohibition in the German Settlements of Eastern Texas

Walter D. Kamphoefner¹

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Cited by 2 publications

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“…The Agricultural Society was further protected by the fact that it still kept its minutes in German down to 1942. 50 Although a Houston Klan newspaper trumpeted, "It's the KKK versus Jews, Jug, and Jesuits," German Protestants and freethinkers were equal opportunity targets if they insisted on speaking their ancestral language. A threatening notice warning parishioners to "[s]peak the English language or move out of this city and county" was posted by the Klan on the door of a Lutheran church at Berlin, Texas, just outside the county seat of Brenham.…”

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German-Americans: Still Divided by the Reformation 500 Years Later?

Kamphoefner¹

2022

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German-Americans: Still Divided by the Reformation 500 Years Later?My first year in Germany-a life-changing experience in many ways-I spent in Münster, in 1975 still a profoundly Catholic city that was the subject of various jokes: "In Münster it's either raining or the bells are ringing; if it's both, it must be Sunday." Or in political parlance, with "Schwarz" or Black signifying Catholic Conservatives: "What is the comparative and superlative of the adjective 'Schwarz'? Schwarz, Münster, Paderborn" (each the seat of a Catholic diocese). As someone of staunch Protestant heritage, a refitted Lutheran theology student no less, it was a bit sobering to walk along the Prinzipalmarkt and see the Lamberti Kirche still sporting the iron cages where the drawn and quartered remains of three radical Anabaptist leaders were hung on the steeple as a warning after their execution when Catholics reconquered the city in 1536. Even as late as my Münster days, one of the Anabaptist rebels provided the name and inspiration for an underground newspaper, Knipperdolling (Münsteraner Generalanzweifler). 1 However, upon further reflection, I realized that Martin Luther was hardly any more sympathetic to these "Ketzer und Schwärmer" of the "left wing of the Reformation." For Catholics, it was an "I told you so" moment; for Lutherans came the sobering realization, similar to what the Confederates experienced when West Virginia seceded from secession and the Free State of Jones tried to, that once you start unraveling an institution, there is no telling where it will stop. Thus we see Protestants splitting into Lutheran and Reformed branches, a breach which took three hundred years to mend, and then only partially. But more importantly for Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, the Reformation resulted in a broad array of "Sektendeutsche" as well: various radical Pietist groupings. It is to them that Germantown and Philadelphia owe their claim as "ground zero" of German America, whose Tricentennial in 1983 was occasion for celebra-

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German-Americans: Still Divided by the Reformation 500 Years Later?

Kamphoefner¹

2022

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Making Sense of Texas and Its History

Buenger¹

2017

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

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The Handwriting on the Wall: The Klan, Language Issues, and Prohibition in the German Settlements of Eastern Texas

Cited by 2 publications

References 6 publications

German-Americans: Still Divided by the Reformation 500 Years Later?

German-Americans: Still Divided by the Reformation 500 Years Later?

Making Sense of Texas and Its History

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