Joshua Brown

Pennsylvania High German in the American Civil War

Joshua Brown (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire)

Among the most educated of eighteenth and nineteenth century Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, European German held strong literary appeal—it was the language of their books, their newspapers, and their schools. Yet being far from the European homeland created a hegemonic shift in the linguistic lives of the early German Americans; they were adopting an American regional identity. Along with their shift in identities and in linguistic hegemony, structural aspects of the languages they used also changed: their literary German was in contact with English and with their spoken German varieties. In addition, the limitations of formal education in German at rural public schools meant that the emphasis among most Pennsylvania Dutch was on the receptive knowledge of European German and not on productive control of the language. In time, a variety of European German called Pennsylvania High German emerged in the publications, writings, and schools of Pennsylvania. It still held literary prestige, but was more easily understood. It infuriated others—like Johann David Schöpf, chief surgeon of the Hessian troops deployed during the American Revolution, who wrote directly against the “pitiful” German he read in Pennsylvania’s newspapers. Moreover, the Speaker of the House of Representatives Frederick Muhlenberg suggested in a speech in Philadelphia that the Pennsylvania Dutch should switch to using just English, as their German was simply not good enough (Louden 2016).

To date very little has been written about Pennsylvania High German. The first and only single scholarly piece devoted to the subject is Ralph Wood’s (1945) article “Pennsylvania ‘High German’,” which appeared in the Germanic Review. Wood’s focus is largely on the phonetics of Pennsylvania High German gleaned from German language textbooks printed for the German Americans. Yet, Pennsylvania High German and, consequently, the verbal repertoire available to the Pennsylvania Dutch thrived elsewhere in their newspapers and other writings. It is characterized by its lexical borrowings from English and Pennsylvania Dutch, its spelling influenced by Pennsylvania Dutch phonetics, and its grammar showing both Pennsylvania Dutch and archaic German forms.

Keller and Valuska (2004), in their work on Pennsylvania Dutch soldiers in the American Civil War, noted that the exclusive language, in which they wrote was English. Indeed, they only cite three letters written in a variety of Pennsylvania High German by a soldier to his family at home; all others writings were in English. Several years later another letter surfaced and was described linguistically by Sauer (2006); however, this letter was drafted by a scribe and meant to be an artistic representation of penmanship. Since that time, careful research has shown that Pennsylvania High German writing among the rurally educated Pennsylvania Dutch was far more common than previously thought. This presentation discusses the linguistic features unique to Pennsylvania High German in a two-year diary and a series of letters recently discovered. Both data sources were written by Pennsylvania Dutch soldiers during the American Civil War and increases the corpus of written Pennsylvania High German by Civil War soldiers in excess of 2700%.

Forms such as the following give us insight into the linguistic repertoire of the Pennsylvania Dutch:

  1. mir hen ader grieg vor zu mertschen
    we have orders gotten for to march*
    ‘We received orders to march.’
  2. auf diesen brief ich möchte auch hören von dir
    on this letter I would like also to hear from you
    ‘I’d like to receive your reply to this letter.’

Pennsylvania High German stands apart from the most recent scholarship in historical sociolinguistics in that its sociolinguistic history “dismantles” a European standard language, rather than focusing on the creation of a standard. The language was an important tool for the formation of Pennsylvania Dutch identities in their new American homeland; it represented a tenacious yet precarious hold on their European roots and a bridge to their new sociocultural and linguistic identities. This presentation discusses both the morphosyntactic and phonological aspects of Pennsylvania High German in these writings and places them within larger conversations of historical sociolinguistics and the negotiation of immigrant identities.

References

  • Louden, Mark L. (2016). Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Sauer, Walter. (2006). “ ‘Ein grus an dig meine liebe frau’: A Civil War Letter from a Pennsylvania German Soldier to his Wife.” In Brown, Joshua R., and Leroy T. Hopkins (eds.),
  • Preserving Heritage: A Festschrift for C. Richard Beam, 67-76. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas—Society for German American Studies.
  • Valuska, David L., and Christian B. Keller. (2004). Damn Dutch: Pennsylvania Germans at Gettysburg. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books.
  • Wood, Ralph Charles. “Pennsylvania ‘High German’.” Germanic Review 20: 299-314.