To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society 9781503604353

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To Belong in Buenos Aires

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To Belong in Buenos Aires Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society

Benjamin Bryce

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stanford university press stanford, california

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2018 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. Stanford University Press acknowledges financial support from the University of Northern British Columbia for this publication. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bryce, Benjamin, author. Title: To belong in Buenos Aires : Germans, Argentines, and the rise of a pluralist society / Benjamin Bryce. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017018403 (print) | LCCN 2017020486 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503601536(cloth :alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503604353 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Germans—Argentina—Buenos Aires—Ethnic identity— History. | Ethnicity—Argentina—Buenos Aires—History. | Nationalism—Argentina—Buenos Aires—History. | Cultural pluralism—Argentina—Buenos Aires—History. | Buenos Aires (Argentina)—Emigration and immigration—History. Classification: LCC F3001.9.G3 (ebook) | LCC F3001.9.G3 B79 2018 (print) | DDC 305.800982/11—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017018403 Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/12 Sabon

Per l’Anna

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Folge mir, lieber Leser nach Süden—nach dem sagenumwobenen Strande des Silberstromes, denn dort, wo die blauen Fluten des Atlantischen Ozeans die grüne Ebene der Pampa küsst, liegt Argentinien, dessen Hauptstadt Buenos Aires ist, meine neue Heimat und das Vaterland meiner Kinder. Follow me, dear reader, to the south—to the fabled shores of the River Plate, for there, where the green plains of the pampas kiss the blue tides of the Atlantic Ocean, lies Argentina, with its capital Buenos Aires, my new homeland and the fatherland of my children. —Leo Mirau, Lieder aus weiter Ferne, 1905.

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Contents

List of Tables List of Figures and Maps Acknowledgments Note on Terms Introduction: The Future of Ethnicity

xi xiii xv xix 1

1 Social Welfare, Paternalism, and the Making of German Buenos Aires

21

2 Children, Language, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society

49

3 The Language of Citizenship: Curriculum and the Argentine State

73

4 An Unbounded Nation? Local Interests and Imperial Aspirations

91

5 Transatlantic Religion and the Boundaries of Community

109

6 The Language of Religion: Children and the Future

137

Conclusion: Citizenship and Ethnicity

161

Notes

167

Bibliography

193

Index

219

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List of Tables

Table 1. Foreign Nationals in Argentina in 1895

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Table 2. Foreign Nationals in Argentina in 1914

17

Table 3. Work Placement Activities of the Association for the Protection of Germanic Immigrants, 1904–1928

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Table 4. Patients at the German Hospital, 1882–1930

36

Table 5. Funding of German Schools in Buenos Aires, 1899–1930

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List of Figures and Maps

Figure 1. The German Hospital of Buenos Aires, 1934

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Figure 2. Promotional Material for 1911 Bazaar at the German Hospital

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Figure 3. Elisabeth von Freeden

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Figure 4. Dr. Petrona Eyle

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Figure 5. A “German” Classroom at the Barracas School, 1911

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Figure 6. Cooking Lessons in the Girls’ School, Belgrano School, 1927

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Figure 7. Cangallo School Festival, 1917

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Figure 8. Argentine Rancho at the Cangallo School Festival, 1916

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Figure 9. Argentine Horse Races at the Cangallo School Festival, 1916

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Figure 10. School Bus Fleet for the Cangallo School, 1933

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Figure 11. Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

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Figure 12. Opening of Baradero Orphanage, 1909

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Figure 13. The German Women’s Home, 1911

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Map 1. Argentina in 1914

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Map 2. Europe in 1914

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Map 3. Major German-speaking Lutheran and Catholic Congregations outside Buenos Aires, 1910

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Acknowledgments

Many people have assisted me with this project, and I have a great deal to thank them for. Jeffrey Lesser read the entire manuscript and my dissertation before that, and he has provided all sorts of intellectual guidance since our shared exploration of Berlin in 2011. Anna Casas Aguilar, David Brandon Dennis, Jacqueline Holler, and Andrew Watson generously read the entire manuscript and pushed me to rethink several themes at crucial stages of the revision process. The external reviewers, Donna Guy, Glenn Penny, and Jeane DeLaney, provided excellent advice about how to broaden the focus of this book and hone its contribution. For all of your insight and feedback on drafts of this manuscript, many thanks! This book grew out of a dissertation that compared German-language education and religion in Argentina and Canada. My co-supervisors Gillian McGillivray and Roberto Perin, committee member Marcel Martel, and external examiner José Moya helped me think through many concepts in this book. I am grateful to all of you. Brittany Luby and Andrew Watson have read almost every word I have ever published, and I am extremely grateful for all of their questions and challenges. What a great idea our SIG writing group was! David Sheinin has given friendly support for my writing, research questions, and ongoing interest in Argentina. David Atkinson, Alejandra Bronfman, Dan Bullard, Jerry Dávila, Pamela Fuentes, Rachel Gordan, Russell Kazal, Alex Lichtenstein, Martín Marimón, Robert Nelson, Grace Peña Delgado, Ian Radforth, Bradley Skopyk, and Chris Stolarski commented on different chapters, and I deeply appreciate their advice, disagreements, and requests for clarity. Participants in the New Ethnic Studies Workshop at Tel Aviv University and two Southern Cone History Workshops at Glendon College provided helpful feedback as well. I also owe many thanks to Paul Axelrod, Colin Coates, Alexander Freund, Christopher Friedrichs, William Jenkins, Robert Kelz, Dana Wessell Lightfoot, Ian Milligan, Anne Rubenstein, and Jonathan Swainger. During my research,

xvi

Acknowledgments

Alicia Bernasconi, María Bjerg, René Krüger, and Regula Rohland were of great assistance in Buenos Aires, as was Stefan Rinke in Berlin. My colleagues Ted Binnema and Jacqueline Holler provided excellent advice on navigating the editorial process, and their guidance helped me avoid many bumps in the road. Ted showed me the ins and outs of index­ ing, which saved me weeks of frustration. Ted also created one of the maps used in this book, and he made the other two maps look presentable. I am most grateful for his generosity. Alex Leamy helped me with Geographic Information Systems data, and Reshaad Durgahee, Nick Hersh, and Nick Melling had great opinions and sharp eyes for historical and geopolitical accuracy. At Stanford, my editors Margo Irvin and Kate Wahl provided excellent guidance throughout the editorial process, and their enthusiasm for this project has motivated me to meet deadlines and make revisions. Stephanie Adams, Marie Deer, Anne Fuzellier, Ariane de Pree-Kajfez, and Nora Spiegel have shepherded this book through production, and I know that they did so much work on the manuscript behind the scenes that I am not sure whom to thank for what. Parts of chapter 1 previously appeared in the Journal of Social History, and I thank the editors and Oxford University Press for allowing me to use that material here. My family has given me important intellectual and emotional support, and I am sure they all see or would have seen their influence on this study of language, religion, and children. Anna Casas Aguilar has shaped this project and shaped me since we first met in Berlin in October 2005. Her love, creativity, and enthusiasm have guided me ever since. Our son Gabriel was born after I completed most of the revisions, but Anna worked very hard to ensure that I had enough time (and an office!) so that this book moved smoothly through production. ¡Muchas gracias! I would like to thank several institutions in Buenos Aires that granted me access to their private archives. The directors of the BonifatiusGemeinde, the Colegio Guadalupe, the Colegio Espíritu Santo, the Colegio Mallinckrodt, the Congregación Evangélica Alemana en Buenos Aires, the Deutsche Wohltätigkeitsgesellschaft, the Editorial Guadalupe, the Escuela Cangallo, the Escuela Goethe, the Hospital Alemán, and the Iglesia Evangélica del Río de la Plata kindly opened their archives to me. The librarians at the Biblioteca Nacional, the Biblioteca Nacional de Maestros, and the Instituto Universitario ISEDET were generous with their time and deserve much praise. The staff at the University of Northern British Columbia Library, the University of Toronto Libraries, and York University Libraries provided great help as well, and librarians at the University of British Columbia, Whitman College, and Wright State University helped me with small but important things at just the right moments.

Acknowledgments

xvii

In Germany, the archivists at the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts stand out for their friendly help and extensive collection. The staff of the Bibliothek für bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung, the Bundesarchiv, the Diakonie library, the Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, the IberoAmerikanisches Institut, and the Staatsbibliothek were all extremely helpful, and it was a great pleasure to carry out research at all of these Berlin institutions. I am also thankful for the impressive collections and pleasant assistance of the staff at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Leipzig, the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen in Stuttgart, and the Deutscher Caritasverband Bibliothek in Freiburg. Enno Haaks in Leipzig generously granted me access to the private archive of the Gustav-Adolf-Werk. Archivists and librarians at the British National Archives and the British Library in London, the Archives diplomatiques in Paris, the Biblioteca de Catalunya in Barcelona, and the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid offered friendly assistance to a young professor whose research might have seemed off topic. The Province of Ontario merits particular praise for funding my doctoral research. I am extremely thankful for the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program and the Sir John A. Macdonald Graduate Fellowship. The province also funded my research through its strong support of public universities and libraries. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Spletzer Family Foundation and the Chair in German-Canadian Studies, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), the Avie Bennett Historica-Dominion Institute, York University, and the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at York have all generously funded my research as well. The Office of Research at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) provided support for two final archival trips that helped make this a very different book. A UNBC publication grant aided with the production of this book. These people and institutions as well as the governments of British Columbia, Ontario, Canada, Germany, and Argentina have had a lasting impact on my professional development, and I would like to repeat my thanks to all of them. My research and writing have benefited from their generosity and from public investment in universities and research. Vancouver, British Columbia December 2016

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Note on Terms

This book* uses the word “Lutheran” as the translation of the German word evangelisch when discussing German speakers in Argentina, even though the standard translation from German to English is “Protestant.” In Argentina, there were (and are) many Protestant denominations, including Anglicans, Baptists, Mennonites, Methodists, and Presbyterians. Given this multidenominational context, simply labeling the German speakers who called themselves evangelisch as “Protestant” would obscure an extreme amount of variation. There may have been rare cases in which German-speaking Protestants who were involved with an evange­ lische Kirche in Argentina in this period would have identified as members of the Reformed Church instead of the Lutheran Church, but the word reformiert does not appear in any of the sources used for this book. The only exception to this translation decision occurs when I am discussing religious organizations in Germany that described themselves as evangelisch. Many Protestant churches in Germany, such as the Prussian State Church, were a union of Lutheran and Reformed denominations. In these instances, the word Protestant was required. This book uses the terms “Germandom” and “Germanness” as two English equivalents of Deutschtum. It is important to distinguish between these two English words, depending on context. Germandom (analogous to collective nouns such as Christendom or officialdom) describes a group, whereas Germanness—from a turn-of-the-twentieth-century point of view—describes the perceived cultural essence of a people. Various groups in Imperial and Weimar Germany, in speaking about or with German speakers who lived elsewhere, typically focused on the collective sense of the word and emphasized the supposed unity of a heterogeneous group of people living outside their country. In contrast, German speakers in Argentina were often more interested in people’s ethnicity (particularly their linguistic abilities or denominational identity). In speaking about political, economic, and imperial belonging, Germans in Europe often focused on a collective Germandom. A discussion of Germanness, however, described affective, voluntary, and cultural connections. * All translations in this book are by the author.

Map 1. Argentina in 1914.

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Map by Benjamin Bryce, with the help of Ted Binnema.

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Map 2. Europe in 1914. Map by Benjamin Bryce, with the help of Ted Binnema.

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To Belong in Buenos Aires

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introduction

The Future of Ethnicity

; In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the self-proclaimed leaders of various immigrant communities in Buenos Aires created ethnic spaces in an effort to maintain the cultural and linguistic pluralism in Argentine society that their own migration had created: community leaders of many European backgrounds built charities, mutual aid societies, schools, and places of worship, and they encouraged people of a common ethnic background to use those institutions. Nevertheless, immigrants’ efforts to assert their belonging in Argentina and to create lasting communities were never entirely successful. In the case of German speakers, in particular, the leaders of community institutions faced off against children, Spanish-speaking spouses, socialists, German-speaking Catholics, and many others who all struck their own balance between community, ethnic heritage, and Argentine belonging. This book analyzes the activities and fantasies of the people who sought to create a German community in Buenos Aires and the behavior of others who challenged that project. It argues that ideas about the future drove German-speaking immigrants to carve out a place for ethnicity and pluralism within the cultural and linguistic landscape of Buenos Aires. At a moment when there was increasing pressure from the Argentine state and new nationalist forces to create a culturally homogeneous citizenry, the leaders of German-language institutions in Buenos Aires promoted a pluralistic vision of national belonging, insisting that it was possible to be both ethnic and Argentine. Between 1880 and 1930, German speakers, other immigrants, and Argentines of various backgrounds were negotiating the terms of citizenship and the nature of cultural pluralism. The efforts of immigrants to create communities led to conflicts between Argentine nationalists and immigrant educators; between children and parents; between parishioners and religious leaders; and between the leaders of community institutions and thousands of other immigrants who remained indifferent to those visions of community.

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The Future of Ethnicity

Underlining the significance of temporality and the future to the social history of migration offers new perspectives on how state institutions developed, how a culturally plural society formed, and how immigrants and families participated in that society. As David Engerman notes, how historical subjects envisioned their future reveals much about those subjects and the period in which they lived.1 Reinhart Koselleck stresses the value of studying not only the experience of historical subjects but also their “horizons of expectation.” According to Koselleck, experience—a key focus of social and cultural historians—can only truly be understood by also analyzing expectation.2 The two are interdependent; “no expectation without experience, no experience without expectation.”3 Revolutionaries do not spring into action, workers do not spend long days in factories, and young people do not rise in protest without having given some thought to the future. Similarly, people did not cross the Atlantic Ocean, parents did not found German-language schools in Buenos Aires, and wealthy men did not donate large sums of money to charity without having some thoughts about the time to come. For the German and Spanish speakers who between 1880 and 1930 produced the sources that are at the core of this study, the future was not a long way off. Their objectives extended beyond the present to include moments anywhere from one year to several decades in their future. As Koselleck writes, “the future, which is anticipated in terms of an expectation, is scattered among an infinity of temporal extensions.”4 The horizon of expectation of German and Spanish speakers in Buenos Aires was often about a decade, the time it would take a child entering elementary school to finish his or her studies or the time it would take young people to become adults and form their own families. In other cases, the timeline was less clearly defined. Argentine school reformers wanted to have a literate and Spanish-speaking citizenry. Devout German-speaking Catholics wanted to have a state that shared its power with their church. Affluent German men wanted newly arrived workers to succeed in Argentina rather than return to Europe. In the study of migration, “origins” are a common point of methodological departure. Scholars glean the word from national censuses and from immigrants’ discussions of their homelands. Yet the future occupied as much space as the past in immigrants’ thoughts about family or community. German-speaking immigrants and people of many other backgrounds in Buenos Aires and throughout the Americas spoke about “preserving” or “maintaining” their language and culture, about the “next generation,” and about children “losing” language or culture. All of those terms reflected an interest in keeping Buenos Aires a culturally plural society long into the future. While some migrants in Argentina may have viewed the country as a brief sojourn in their lifelong trajectories,

The Future of Ethnicity

3

those who were involved in various ethnic organizations, who had children, or who worried about economic, social, and political issues thought about their belonging and their future in Argentina. The case of German-speaking immigrants and their bilingual children illustrates broader themes in the history of migration. As Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein have shown, much can be learned about ethnicity in Latin America by stepping away from the assumptions of any single group’s particularity.5 In Buenos Aires, there were many parallels between ethnic groups in matters of social welfare and education. The Germanlanguage charities, work placement services, and hospital in the city resembled other Italian, Spanish, French, British, and Jewish institutions.6 Argentine children and almost all foreign-born parents were bilingual, regardless of the immigrant generation’s dominant language. The schools that every immigrant group created taught mainly Argentine citizens, and they did so in Spanish and one other European language. German speakers can also serve as a particularly useful case study for analyzing the importance of religion and denominational identity in shaping ethnic communities and identities. Because German-speaking Catholics were part of Argentina’s dominant denomination, German speakers in Buenos Aires—more than most other linguistic groups—can illustrate how denominational and ethnic identities informed one another. Most German speakers in the country were either Lutheran or Catholic, but there were also a significant number of Jewish Germans, though the exact number is difficult to determine. Both Lutherans and Catholics created German-language institutions and sought to preserve their vision of a German community into the future, but for the former, anxiety about the potential loss of their Lutheran faith reinforced the desire to sustain a separate ethnic community, while the latter created Germanlanguage spaces within the city’s Catholic structures. Jewish German immigrants navigated between linguistic and religious identities differently, associating with German-language organizations at times and with Jewish ones at other times. Most of the founders of the city’s Jewish congregation (Congregación Israelita de Buenos Aires, founded 1868) were immigrants from Germany, and some of these leaders were also among the founders of the Chevra Kedusha burial society.7 In addition to their involvement in these Jewish organizations in the final third of the nineteenth century, the same self-appointed leaders of the city’s Jewish community were involved in German-language organizations, and some even sent their children to the Lutheran-run German-Spanish bilingual school (the Gemeindeschule) before secular, German-language schools were opened in the city.8 In the 1880s and 1890s, there existed two important and competing visions of the Argentine nation, one that stemmed from mid-century

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The Future of Ethnicity

liberalism, seeing citizenship and belonging as contractual and voluntary, and another one that, according to Lilia Ana Bertoni, “defined the nation based on ethnic origin, race, language, historical tradition, and ancestral customs.”9 Bertoni dubs the proponents of these two visions cosmopolitan and nationalist patriots. After several decades of high immigration rates, and coinciding with the 1910 celebration of the centennial of the beginning of the independence movement, that tension gave way to a dominant strand of nationalist thinking known as Hispanismo (Hispanism). By this time, as José Moya notes, “a majority of Argentine intellectuals had come to embrace this ‘unassailable faith in the existence of a transatlantic Hispanic family, community, or “raza.” ’ ”10 Prominent Argentines such as Manuel Gálvez, Enrique Larreta, Manuel Ugarte, Ricardo Rojas, and Estanislao Zeballos saw themselves as “defenders of the country’s Spanish legacy against corroding cosmopolitanism.”11 Throughout this period, there was a group—made up of prominent intellectuals and politicians such as Emilio Gouchón, Ponciano Vivanco, and Francisco Barroetaveña—that continued to support the idea of individual liberties and the right of parents to educate children in another language, arguing that this helped the republic.12 Yet the new nationalists “perceived both the old liberal elite and the new immigrant labor activists as cosmopolitan, internationalist foes: the first willing to sacrifice the nation’s cultural integrity and spiritual essence in the name of material progress; the second yearning to do so on the altar of godless and global anarchism and, later, communism.”13 With this hispanophilia, Argentine nationalists articulated a set of ideas about citizenship and belonging that lauded the benefits of the Spanish language and Spanish cultural heritage as well as Spanish immigration while deriding and excluding everything that was not Hispanic. One way that this nationalist thought had an impact on Argentine society in this period was through schools. In the 1880s and 1890s, reformers came to see the emergent system of public and universal education in the city of Buenos Aires as the vehicle that would help them change the cultural and political worldview of subsequent generations.14 The passage of time and expectations about the future were a crucial part of this project. Language was a central feature of this new school system, and reformers’ fears about the widespread use of foreign languages in their society drove their efforts.15 As a result, they attempted to use schools to shape the linguistic and cultural components of the national body, and the Spanish language became a core feature of their evolving definitions of citizenship. It was against the currents of Hispanismo that immigrants of many backgrounds in Buenos Aires were swimming in the early twentieth century. In creating bilingual schools that taught young Argentines German,

The Future of Ethnicity

5

French, English, or Italian alongside Spanish; in offering social welfare services along ethnic lines; and in giving Catholic sermons in a variety of European languages or creating Protestant and Jewish places of worship, immigrants contested these homogenizing ideas about Argentina as a Hispanic nation. The very presence of millions of foreign-born people in Argentina in the early twentieth century undermined Hispanismo. Moreover, the pluralistic vision that German speakers and others had of their own and their children’s belonging in Argentina meant that the nation was by no means clearly defined, culturally or linguistically homogeneous, nor static. People of German heritage in Argentina often spoke about citizenship (using the words ciudadanía and Staatsangehörigkeit). According to Kathleen Canning and Sonya Rose, citizenship, more than being a simple question of voting rights or a synonym for nationality, describes a broad set of relationships and social practices that define the interaction between peoples and states and among peoples in communities.16 As a discursive framework, citizenship gives people the language, rhetoric, and categories “for claims-making, sometimes in the name of national belonging or on behalf of specific rights, duties, or protections, or visions of political participation.”17 For foreign nationals, naturalized immigrants, and Argentines of German heritage, citizenship described civic participation and inclusion, cultural behavior, economic and property protection, political voice, and mobility rights. Immigrants of many backgrounds took a strong interest in citizenship, in the sense that Canning and Rose describe, despite having little voice in formal electoral politics. Until a major electoral reform in 1912 (the Sáenz Peña Law), establishing universal male suffrage and the secret ballot, the Argentine political system, according to Samuel Baily, consisted of “a number of powerful groups . . . competing within a restricted arena to influence decisions of the national, provincial, and city governments. . . . Elections were a mechanism to provide the peaceful rotation of offices among the members of the recognized political groups, not a way for all adult male citizens to express their views and influence governmental actions.”18 In 1914, only 1.4 percent of immigrants in Argentina had become naturalized citizens, and therefore very few could participate in Argentine elections.19 As José Moya explains, these low rates of naturalization followed a certain logic: “Foreigners had all the rights of citizens (except the right to vote in national elections—a dubious advantage, given Argentina’s oligarchical political system . . . ) but were exempted from the most cumbersome civic obligation: military service.”20 Foreign nationals in Argentina benefited from many of the same privileges and had the same duties as citizens. For example, state-funded and

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The Future of Ethnicity

state-regulated education affected Argentine and foreign adults equally because after 1884 almost all child residents of Buenos Aires—­regardless of their parents’ legal status or voting rights—attended elementary schools. Children and families blurred the boundaries between legal and de facto meanings of citizenship in other ways as well. In 1910, 46 percent of the 1,231,698 residents of the city of Buenos Aires were foreign nationals.21 But many of these foreign nationals had children who were among the 54 percent of the city’s population who were Argentine citizens, a demographic fact that gave many noncitizens a vested interest in civic rights, education, politics, and the future definition of the nation. The thoughts and actions of German speakers—alongside other ­immigrants—redefined what it meant to be an Argentine citizen. The role of affluent immigrants in the provision of social welfare services, the involvement of German-speaking Catholics in debates about secularization, the desire of German-speaking Lutherans to make Argentina a more religiously diverse society, and the efforts of parents to educate their children in bilingual schools are all activities connected to people’s interest in citizenship. Despite their country of birth and whatever their nationality, thousands of German speakers in Buenos Aires felt that they belonged in the city and imagined their future there. They participated in the development of social practices in relation to both state authority and the other residents of the capital city, and they wanted to create ethnic communities that would become lasting components of Argentine society.

on ethnicity and community In the study of migration to Argentina and elsewhere in the Americas, the ethnicity of the chosen subjects is often taken as stable; a common research approach is to locate a group (such as Jews, Italians, or Portuguese) and then analyze the group’s activities.22 In studies of German speakers in Argentina in particular, there is a series of implicit assumptions or explicit statements about their inherent unity, and there is a tendency to reproduce the categories applied by community leaders, cultural nationalists in Germany, and Argentine census data.23 However, the category that supposedly defines an ethnic subject or ethnic group also merits attention. Many Germans in Buenos Aires were born in the city and spoke Spanish as a native language, while many others retained their German nationality but devoted a lot of energy to worrying about the economic future of their Argentine children or the place of their church in Argentine society. Ethnic categories are situational, overlapping, and contradictory, and ethnicity is constructed in a dialogue with the surrounding ethno-social

The Future of Ethnicity

7

context.24 People speaking about their own or other people’s ethnicity could try to define it by focusing on important markers of cultural difference such as language or religion. It is worth stressing that language, in this context, may be defined by any combination of linguistic ability, linguistic behavior, and linguistic identity, which can be contradictory forms of measurement. Ethnicity, likewise, may be defined by group identification, categories of citizenship, and/or feelings of belonging. Thus, the supposed members of what is commonly seen as a single ethnic group (Germans in Buenos Aires) held radically different opinions about what it meant to be German. The term “German” (Deutsch or alemán), as it was used in Argentina between 1880 and 1930, often included people born in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Switzerland, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Enthusiastic leaders, eager to increase the size of their communities, embraced the label, as did Spanish speakers and immigrants of other backgrounds who did not see the need to distinguish among Germans, Austrians, German-Brazilians, Saxons, or Bavarians. Multiple nationalities, regional identities, denominational differences, and generational divides led many in Buenos Aires to propound contradictory definitions of German ethnicity. Bilingualism permeated the lives of people of many backgrounds in Buenos Aires; this was not unique to German speakers. Bilingualism can involve an imperfect balance between two languages and can evolve throughout a speaker’s formative years. A three-year-old might speak German as a dominant language, but by the time she is eleven and attends public school, she may have developed a more complex relationship with language. She may be a German speaker, but a native speaker of Spanish might also assess the same child as a Spanish speaker. This eleven-yearold may have mastered the pronunciation of German phonemes and have an advanced proficiency in the language when talking about food or family. However, she may be more comfortable talking about cinema, novels, politics, or finances in Spanish. Every German speaker in Buenos Aires was to some extent also a Spanish speaker. The varying levels of language proficiency that immigrants had and that others worried about are an important but l­ittle-researched topic in the history of migration. In the case of German speakers in the Argentine capital, many people were concerned that others, particularly children, did not or could not use the German language the way they should. These concerns were shaped by adults’ observation that most “German” children in Buenos Aires readily spoke Spanish and that they were Argentine citizens. Some children used German at the GermanSpanish bilingual schools they attended, but they would also speak Spanish at home with one of their parents, a housekeeper, or their siblings. Others spoke German at home and at church while they attended an

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The Future of Ethnicity

entirely Spanish-language Catholic or public school. Many adults worked and socialized in Spanish while they concurrently read or worshiped in German. The term “community” has occupied a large place in the historiography of migration to the Americas. Nonetheless, this category, just like ethno-national categories (such as German, Italian, or French) and those describing religious groups (such as Lutheran, Catholic, or Jewish), needs to be analyzed. As Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper argue, categories based on ethnic identities erroneously impose an idea of “internal sameness” and “bounded groupness.”25 Brubaker and Cooper warn that “group boundaries are considerably more porous and ambiguous than is widely assumed. . . . This categorical code, important though it is as a constituent element of social relations, should not be taken for a faithful description of them.”26 Immigrants and Argentines of many backgrounds often used ethnic labels at the turn of the twentieth century, yet their terms created many overlapping categories that laid different claims to the meaning of ethnicity, the terms of Argentine citizenship, and the feeling of belonging. In a study of French immigrants in Argentina, Hernán Otero contends that an ethnic community “is an element to test and not an a priori fact, justified by the mere presence of people of a common national origin.” He stresses that historians typically study an ethnic core (núcleo étnico) while not always reflecting on “the proportion of people who make up that core.”27 Offering another solution to the study of ethnic communities, Lesser and Rein assert that “the study of ethnicity must include people other than those affiliated with community institutions” and that “unaffiliated ethnics” who are not part of formal institutions and who have exogamous marriage patterns should not be overlooked.28 They suggest that scholars turn to other kinds of sources to find other perspectives on ethnicity. Reading against the grain of the material produced by the self-­ proclaimed leaders of German communities in Buenos Aires can provide another answer to this problem. The records of many formal ethnic institutions dedicated much attention to those who were undermining their community project. Leaders worried about children who had only one German-speaking parent and children who preferred to speak Spanish. These sources also discussed large groups of people who were excluded from the image of the community that leaders fostered. Both Lutheran pastors and Catholic priests claimed to lead a community, which meant that they imagined at least two German communities in Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, their denominational definitions of German communities implicitly suggested that there were also nonpracticing, atheist, and Jewish German communities in the city.

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Like other ethnic communities, a German community in Buenos Aires was aspirational. People linked it to future expectations about the nature of Argentine cultural pluralism and their belonging in the nation. The discussion of a German community in historical sources does not prove that there was a unified community but rather shows that many people wanted to organize parts of their lives along ethnic and community lines. The boundaries of any community are fluid, and one could participate in a German or other immigrant community while also becoming involved in other communities reflecting social class, gender identity, sexuality, profession, hobbies, or neighborhood. From a more critical perspective, gender and class hierarchies shaped the institutions of ethnic communities; leaders used communities to gain social and cultural prestige in Buenos Aires society. The typically male-led community institutions fostered structures that created paternalistic relationships between wealthy and working-class immigrants and patriarchal hierarchies between men and women. At its core, community describes the collective ensemble of people and institutions that self-declared leaders put themselves in charge of and that a variety of people supported with their labor, time, and money. Leaders of immigrant groups in Buenos Aires and across the Americas were “self-declared” or “self-proclaimed” because they rarely stood for election or presented their ideas about community, ethnicity, and national belonging in contrast to other possibilities. With few exceptions, leaders were also among the more affluent German speakers in the Argentine capital. Working-class German speakers who paid monthly membership fees to the German Hospital Association and German-Spanish school associations rarely occupied leadership positions in these organizations, nor did the workers and the children who received services from these institutions. A common theme in the historiography of German speakers in Argentina is the political divide that emerged between monarchist and republican factions after 1918 and then the political divide between pro- and anti-Nazi groups that ruptured the community after 1933.29 Yet this vision of a German community that was supposedly united before the First World War gives exaggerated weight to European events and presumes that transnational influences trumped other forms of identification and affiliation, which in fact had created competing German communities before 1914. Children, spouses of other backgrounds, German-speaking Catholics, workers, and many other groups redefined the meaning of community, and their reasons for staying away from certain kinds of community institutions often had little to do with political events in Germany. There were more people of German heritage in Buenos Aires who were indifferent about Weimar politics than there

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were who took a stand on either the validity of the new republic or the lament for a lost empire.

an unbounded german nation The transnational turn in German historiography has highlighted how people and ideas outside the nation-state influenced conceptions of the nation during the Imperial and Weimar periods, and others have shown a similar story in the case of Italian nationalism before and after the First World War.30 Nonetheless, the European desire to use emigrants to gain economic and political influence in Latin America does not reveal much about how immigrants and their children thought about community, ethnicity, or citizenship. Immigrants’ plans for the future and their sense of belonging in many parts of Latin America often redefined ethnicity in local terms and separated it from European nationalism. German-­ speaking immigrants in Buenos Aires actively embraced the transatlantic relationship that groups in central Europe sought to establish, but they had their own ideas about their relationship with their nation of heritage and their nation of residence. For many German speakers in ­Buenos Aires, Germany mattered, but an interest in Europe coexisted with a strong interest in an ethnic community and Argentine belonging. Indeed, as Glenn Penny notes, transatlantic ties were often established out of self-interest rather than “a desire to promote national agendas.”31 While some German immigrants in Latin America were staunch supporters of Imperial, Weimar, and/or Nazi Germany, Penny points out that many others had hybrid identities and were indifferent to Wilhelmine ­Weltpolitik (world policy or world politics).32 German speakers in Argentina established important transatlantic connections with institutions in Germany in the hope that they would receive small subsidies and get help in recruiting new teachers and pastors. The bureaucrats at the German Foreign Office, leaders of Protestant and Catholic organizations in Germany, and the members of organizations such as the Association for Germandom Abroad (Verein für das Deutsch­ tum im Ausland) happily took up this transatlantic relationship, and they all interacted with and declared the importance of German speakers in the Americas as well as those living in Europe but outside the political boundaries of the German nation-state. According to Roger Chickering, patriotic societies such as the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband) and the German Colonial Society (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft) “helped bring currency to a conception of the German nation that was based on ethnicity and transcended the political frontiers of the Reich.”33 Howard Sargent notes that debates in Imperial Germany about citizenship laws,

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11

pressure from patriotic societies, and the writings of prominent intellectuals in the final decades of the nineteenth century converted the image of overseas emigrants into a “valuable national resource to be jealously preserved for their possible economic, cultural, and military uses.”34 Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, politicians, nationalist thinkers, economic elites, and religious leaders in Germany began to discuss Germans abroad (Auslandsdeutsche) and Germandom abroad (Auslandsdeutschtum).35 Sebastian Conrad points out that in using these two new terms, people in Germany articulated an “uncertainty and anxiety about the durability of national affiliation.”36 The new concepts “emphasized permanent, stable membership of a German nation, conceived of as a cultural and linguistic community.”37 According to Bradley Naranch, while the term “emigrant” (Auswanderer) “implied movement, mobility, and national dispersal, the connotations attached to the idea of the Auslandsdeutsche imparted a sense of timelessness and enduring self. As a word not exclusively associated with transatlantic migration [and that also applied to German-speaking minorities in Europe], Auslandsdeutsche was spatially and temporally more expansive than Auswanderer.”38 A 1913 citizenship law in Germany, replacing previous legislation according to which German citizenship expired after ten years, now allowed emigrants to pass their citizenship on to their children.39 It was, in the words of Rogers Brubaker, “markedly expansive toward ethnocultural Germans” living outside Germany.40 In describing both emigrant citizens and their children as Germans abroad, people in Germany promoted the idea that the German nation transcended not only political but also generational boundaries. They also conflated German ethnicity and German nationality. Against the backdrop of ideologies of Weltpolitik and imperialism, these actors in Germany espoused a belief in a nation that was not territorially bounded and that would supposedly help the country increase its global influence. The shift to Weltpolitik after 1890 influenced the transatlantic relationships that developed between German speakers in Buenos Aires and various organizations in Germany. In this period, when leaders in Germany strove to rival the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Russia on the world stage, Latin America became an important field where Germany could apparently gain influence. Politicians and nationalists in Berlin viewed German speakers in Latin America as a means to help the country achieve these goals.41 While the term Auslandsdeutschtum, “Germandom abroad,” became increasingly common in Germany, German speakers in Buenos Aires more frequently used the term Deutschtum, (“Germandom” or “Germanness”), between 1880 and 1930, a word choice that did not specifically place them abroad or emphasize their peripheral location. In those

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decades, people who used the term Deutschtum, whether they lived in Europe or the Americas, believed that it was something defined by language, religion, culture, biological heritage, and unique mannerisms. From a European perspective, Deutschtum represented an ethno-linguistic definition of the German nation. In the view of German speakers in Buenos Aires, however, being German could coexist with being Argentine, and Deutschtum typically connoted German ethnicity or being of German heritage. Parents, teachers, and religious leaders in Buenos Aires spoke of Deutschtum to express their interest in or concerns about transmitting language or denominational identity to Argentine children. A dominant theme in the history of German speakers in Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America is their relationship to Germany and the impact of major events in that country on people living “abroad.”42 It is often assumed that citizens of Imperial or Weimar Germany living in Latin America took an active interest in German politics or in the country’s imperial aspirations. As a result, the questions that scholars ask have tended to focus on how German speakers in Argentina or elsewhere in Latin America engaged with these European issues. At many times, however, people of German birth or heritage in Buenos Aires thought about their ethnicity without necessarily connecting it to imperial nationalism or major political developments in Europe. When parents took an interest in their children’s economic future in Argentina or their ability to speak Spanish and German at similar levels, when a German-speaking Lutheran became concerned about the growth of a small Protestant denomination in an overwhelmingly Catholic country, or when a German-speaking Catholic worried about the secularizing tendencies of liberal reformers in Buenos Aires, they imagined German ethnicity in an Argentine context. This is not to say that German imperialism or debates about the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic and later about National Socialism did not matter to many in Buenos Aires. Yet as a point of departure, those research questions overlook a vast body of documentary evidence that demonstrates how German ethnicity was constructed locally. As Raanan Rein points out in the case of Zionism and Jews in Latin America, “transnational ethnicity is not a more dominant identity component than national identity [connected to the new country].”43 Rein’s argument has great applicability in the case of German speakers in Argentina. German-speaking immigrants in Buenos Aires and their children (whether they had one or two such parents) sometimes participated in the Argentine labor movement, joined feminist organizations, ran for public office, played sports, or grew vegetables, and the time and energy they devoted to these activities surpassed their interest in central Europe to an astonishing degree. People’s interest in German ethnicity in Argentina

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13

should not, therefore, be read simply as a willingness to connect themselves to the global aspirations of Imperial and Weimar Germany. The First World War and the economic and political realities of Weimar Germany had a significant impact on the transatlantic relationship that had developed up to 1914. German emigration to Argentina increased in the 1920s as a result of economic turmoil in central Europe, and it continued even after the German economy recovered from postwar readjustment and hyperinflation in the second half of the decade.44 An increased awareness of Argentina had set in, and the new immigration quotas imposed by the United States and restrictions by Canada made the Southern Cone of South America a common destination for German and other European emigrants throughout the interwar period. Financial support from the German Foreign Office and from Protestant religious bodies decreased greatly in the 1920s, but people in Germany involved with these organizations actually ramped up their discussions about the importance of Germans in the Southern Cone for the new Weimar Republic. Moreover, ethnic (völkisch) and ­Germandom-oriented thinking increasingly influenced how people in inter­war Germany discussed citizenship and belonging.45 Although these ideas largely pertained to German speakers outside the new borders of Germany and Austria but still within Europe, Germans in the Southern Cone also became more present in many discussions in the public sphere in Germany.46 Although the First World War played a role in how some German speakers in Buenos Aires thought about community, citizenship, and ethnicity, there was far more continuity than disjuncture in the city between 1910 and 1930. As Stefan Rinke and Michael Goebel have both shown, what the war did fundamentally change was how Germans in Germany thought about German speakers living outside the borders of the new Weimar Republic, including in Latin America.47 The outcome of the war radicalized ideas about the nation and infused German nationalism with a much stronger racial component, compared to the decade before 1914. Those points alone, however, should not lead one to assume that changes in Europe became a dominant force in defining German ethnicity from the perspective of the people in Argentina themselves. Bilingual Argentines of German heritage who were born in the Americas did not immediately or fully recast their ethnicity in racial terms simply because many German speakers in Europe suddenly found themselves outside the new political borders of Weimar Germany. Instead, their interactions with other Europeans, indigenous peoples, people of African descent, and people of mixed race—both before and after the war—gave German speakers in Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America many other reasons to hold racialized, linguistic, and cultural

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views of German ethnicity. Just as the new context of Weimar Germany influenced the meaning of the nation, it was also the surrounding context that shaped the meaning of German ethnicity in Buenos Aires.48 These racialized ideas were particularly salient when German speakers in ­Buenos Aires discussed children. Adults cast the ethnicity of young people as, paradoxically, both permanent and in danger. They saw Germanness as something biologically inherited and also as something that adults needed to preserve.

a nation of immigrants Between 1881 and 1930, more than 5.8 million immigrants entered Argentina.49 It was the second most common destination in the Americas, well behind the United States but slightly ahead of both Canada and Brazil.50 Partially as a result of this massive influx, the population of Argentina quadrupled between 1869 and 1914, rising from 1.8 million to 7.9 million.51 Demographic change was most apparent in the city of Buenos Aires, where the population increased more than thirteenfold between 1869 and 1936, from 177,787 inhabitants in 1869 to 1.2 million in 1909 and 2.4 million in 1936.52 In 1895, foreign nationals made up more than a quarter of the total population of the country, and by 1914 that proportion had increased to almost thirty percent. In the city of B ­ uenos Aires, in 1914, 49.4 percent of the residents were foreign nationals.53 German nationals and German speakers represented approximately one hundred thousand of the 5.8 million immigrants who came to Argentina between 1881 and 1930.54 There was a steady trickle of Germanspeaking immigration beginning in the early nineteenth century; the flow picked up steam toward the end of the century, and in the 1920s, it underwent a significant increase due largely to economic circumstances and political changes in Europe.55 German speakers from the Volga region of the Russian Empire began immigrating to the Argentine province of Entre Ríos in the 1870s, and the flow from the Volga to the pampas continued over the next fifty years.56 Although they only made up a small part of the migratory influx transforming Argentina, the ways in which German speakers negotiated the terms of citizenship and the meaning of ethnicity in Buenos Aires illustrate common trends in the evolving ethnic landscape of the city. As Jeffrey Lesser notes in the case of Brazilians of Jewish, Arab, and Japanese heritage, it is often from the margins that the boundaries of belonging and national identity are negotiated.57 By focusing on smaller groups of foreign nationals and ethnic minorities, scholars can also answer important questions about more universal topics of bilingualism, generational

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15

differences, and denominational identity. In addition, recent research on the Southern Cone has highlighted how various ethno-cultural groups actively participated in their surrounding societies and sought to make a place for themselves within the Argentine and Brazilian nations.58 Lesser and Rein argue that immigrants and ethnic minorities are in fact “normative Latin Americans” because, whether in numerically small or large groups, all immigrants contributed to the pluralism on which national identities depend.59 German speakers lived in many parts of Argentina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but they were most concentrated in the city of Buenos Aires. In 1895, 31 percent of Argentina’s German citizens lived in the capital city, and 18 percent lived in the surrounding province of Buenos Aires; another 26 percent lived in Santa Fe and 11 percent in Entre Ríos, so that all told, 86 percent of all German citizens in Argentina lived in those four jurisdictions.60 The provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Ríos, and Santa Fe also attracted significant numbers of German speakers from other parts of Europe, such as Switzerland and the aforementioned Volga region of the Russian Empire. German speakers from Russia and from Brazil settled in the territory of Misiones in the 1920s; it was only after the 1920s that significant numbers of German speakers began to settle in Patagonia.61 From 1880 to 1930, the city of Buenos Aires served as a regional hub for the Río de la Plata region. German-language print culture in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay was anchored in the Argentine capital, as were German-language religious institutions. Vibrant and distinct rural cultures emerged in this period, but they were influenced by people and institutions in Buenos Aires. Rural communities in Argentina were not ethnically homogeneous spaces. In fact, there were Italian, German, Jewish, and French colonias throughout the Argentine interior, and despite their external labels, they were not sites of absolute ethnic homogeneity. Anne Saint Sauveur-Henn found that Argentines and other European immigrants also settled in the colonias to which German speakers gravitated and that Germans were not a majority in any rural township.62 In one of the colonias that was best known for its German-speaking settlers, Esperanza in the province of Santa Fe, Germans represented 30 percent of the population, while Swiss settlers (who spoke either French or German) comprised 50 percent of the residents when the town was founded in 1856. By 1885, however, the Germans and the Swiss each represented only 15 percent of the population.63 In his 1926 study of immigrants on the Argentine pampas, American geographer Mark Jefferson noted that in Esperanza, “the [spatial] division by groups was not absolute. French-speaking settlers were found on both sides and Germans too, and there were intermarriages between the two, which brought about a further intermixture.”64

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Tables 1 and 2 draw from Argentine censuses from 1895 and 1914 to illustrate the number of foreign nationals living in the country. The tables include statistics not only on Germans but also on Swiss and Austrians. A significant proportion of the Swiss were French speakers, and the data on Austrians also include many non-German speakers from the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. Neither the Argentine census data nor immigration statistics include information about the Argentine-born children of German heritage who were the focus of much of the community activity in Buenos Aires. The numbers provided by censuses include and exclude, in various ways, those who were born in the Americas or in Europe outside the boundaries of the German nation-state and people who thought about ethnicity in different ways. Generational differences, denominational identity, varying degrees of bilingualism, and the perceived sense of minority status vis-à-vis the linguistic and denominational surroundings of Buenos Aires are all factors not captured by census data on nationality. Table 1. Foreign Nationals in Argentina in 1895 Nationality

Number

As a Percentage of All Foreign Nationals

Italians

492,636

46.5%

Spaniards

198,685

18.7%

French

94,098

8.9%

English (United Kingdom)

21,788

2.1%

Germans

17,148

1.6%

Swiss

14,789

1.4%

Austrians

12,863

1.2%

Other Europeans

89,825

8.5%

Uruguayans

48,650

4.6%

Brazilians

24,725

2.3%

Chileans

20,594

1.9%

Paraguayans

14,562

1.4%

Bolivians

7,361

0.7%

North Americans (United States)

1,381

0.1%

859

0.1%

Other Americans (from the Americas Total foreign nationals

1,059,964

26.4%

Total Argentines

2,950,884

73.6%

Total population

4,010,848

100%

source : Segundo Censo de la República Argentina, Vol. 2, Población, clxii–clxiii.

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17

Table 2. Foreign Nationals in Argentina in 1914 Nationality

Number

As a Percentage of All Foreign Nationals

Italians

929,863

39.4%

Spaniards

829,701

35.2%

Russians

93,634

4.0%

French

79,491

3.4%

Ottomans

64,369

2.7%

Austro-Hungarians

38,123

1.6%

English (United Kingdom)

27,692

1.2%

Germans

26,995

1.1%

Portuguese

14,143

0.6%

Swiss

14,345

0.6%

Other Europeans

25,286

1.1%

Uruguayans

86,428

3.7%

Brazilians

36,442

1.5%

Chileans

34,217

1.5%

Paraguayans

28,049

1.2%

Bolivians

17,993

0.8%

North Americans (United States)

3,449

0.1%

Other Americans (from the Americas)

3,359

0.1%

Rest of world

3,525

0.1%

Total foreign nationals

2,357,104

29.9%

Total Argentines

5,527,285

70.1%

Total population

7,884,389

100%

source : Tercer censo nacional, Vol. 1, antecedentes y comentarios, 205–206.

Another source of information about how many German speakers lived in Buenos Aires and Argentina is the estimates provided by German speakers themselves. In 1912, the Argentinischer Volksfreund, a Catholic weekly newspaper published in Buenos Aires, stated that it was important to count Austrians, Swiss, and Russians in addition to what its editors claimed were the 43,320 German citizens living in the country. As a result, the “number of merchants and colonists of German stock in Argentina rises to 112,000 people.”65 In 1920, Leo Mirau asserted that “in Argentina there are over 100,000 Germans, and when one includes all German-speaking Austrians, Swiss, Luxembourgers, Russians, and North Americans there are more than 200,000.”66 Rather contradictorily, in a

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letter to the German Foreign Office in 1921, Wilhelm Keiper, a leading figure in German-language education in Buenos Aires, estimated that there could not be more than fifty or sixty thousand people in the country who had German as a “mother tongue and counted themselves as Germans.”67 There was a large statistical imbalance between German-speaking men and women, which was a common phenomenon for many groups of immigrants in Argentina in this period. In 1895, 66 percent of German and Austrian citizens residing in the country were men; in 1914, the disparity was almost the same, at 65 percent.68 Similarly, in 1895, 65 percent of Spanish citizens, 64 percent of Italian citizens, and 60 percent of French citizens in the republic were men.69 In 1914, 62.5 percent of all foreign nationals in Argentina were men.70 This gender difference was one structural factor that created the male-dominated institutions that claimed to form the city’s German, Spanish, Italian, French, and other communities. Between 1882 and 1930, 58 percent of the citizens of Germany who immigrated to Argentina were Lutherans, 33 percent Catholic, and 1 percent Jewish, while 8 percent had no declared religion or were of another religion.71 These data align very closely with the denominational makeup of Imperial Germany.72 In the 1920s, there was a spike in German-speaking Jewish migration to Argentina. Between 1923 and 1930, the proportion of German-speaking Lutherans in Argentina—from all over Europe—was 42 percent, the proportion of Catholics was 45 percent, and the proportion of Jews was almost 10 percent.73 The number of Jewish Germans and Austrians in Argentina erupted in the 1930s as anti-Semitism rose in central Europe: between 1933 and 1945, Argentina received approximately forty thousand Jewish immigrants. 74 These data on denomination are particularly important because many of the core “German” institutions in Buenos Aires had connections to the city’s Lutheran church. Because German-speaking Catholics and Jews often avoided many of the German-language institutions that made up the core of what many others called a German community, they have been largely overlooked in much of the historiography.75

to belong in buenos aires Focusing in particular on social welfare, education, and religion, the chapters of this book analyze the efforts of German-speaking immigrants to carve out a place for themselves in the landscape of an extremely culturally plural society. Chapter 1 analyzes how affluent German-speaking immigrants and Argentines made use of social welfare institutions to establish a community. Through their involvement in social welfare and in negotiation with other social actors such as the Argentine state, the

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19

Catholic Church, and wealthy Spanish-speaking philanthropists, thousands of immigrants and Argentine-born German speakers gave shape to the meaning of citizenship. They tried to create male breadwinners who supported their families, to foster the image of productive and healthy workers, and to ensure that German-speaking female laborers conformed to an ideal of respectability. These community-oriented social welfare programs also created a specific image of the city’s German community in the eyes of outsiders, and through their involvement, affluent German speakers gained access to social, gender, and class power. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 shift the focus to education. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, German, British, French, Jewish, Italian, and many other immigrants founded bilingual schools in the Argentine capital.76 Their projects emerged in the 1880s and 1890s at a moment of change in the country. Fueled by the international circulation of ideas about pedagogy, education in Argentina ceased to be something reserved for a minority of children and became almost universal. Politicians and education reformers believed that they could create a new kind of citizen, equipped with the civic, cultural, and economic knowledge to contribute to society.77 At the same time, immigrants of many backgrounds also became involved in education. Teachers, parents, and self-appointed community leaders navigated between their own cultural identities and the linguistic practices and citizenship of children. They created a network of bilingual schools alongside the expanding system of public elementary schools. Interacting with state reformers and the Catholic Church, German-speaking and other immigrant school promoters carved out a place for themselves in questions of education. Chapter 2 examines the role of family, children, and language in the emerging German-language educational project in Buenos Aires. The teachers and pupils at these schools sought to broaden the definition of citizenship espoused by Argentine nationalists in order to allow a space for cultural pluralism. These schools also modified what it meant to be German in the country as educators took an active interest in Argentine civics and the Spanish language. The teachers and leaders of these schools often spoke about future citizens, and their activities were a prime example of how historical subjects thought about and oriented their activities toward the future. Parents and educators wanted Argentina to be a place where Spanish and other languages were spoken at advanced levels and where young Argentine citizens would learn about their parents’ countries of origin in Europe. These ideas faced off against turn-of-the-century Argentine nationalists who sought to forge a more united, ethnically homogeneous, and Hispanic nation. Chapter 3 takes up the focus on state-community relations. Starting in the 1880s, the Argentine National Council of Education (Consejo Nacional

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de Educación) enacted a series of policies that regulated ­immigrant-run schools, a system that also allowed space for immigrant educators to foster bilingualism and a more plural vision of what they wanted Argentina to be in the decades to come. Chapter 4 maintains the focus on education but shifts to the transatlantic relationships that German-speaking Argentines developed with the Foreign Office and nationalist groups in Germany. The circulation of teachers, financial support from Germany, and a system of offering both Argentine and German diplomas reveal important influences on German-Spanish bilingual schools in Buenos Aires between the 1880s and 1920s. However, German-speaking educators navigated between those transatlantic influences and their own interests in community and belonging in Argentina. Chapter 5 maintains the transatlantic approach taken in chapter 4 and tracks the connections between Lutheran and Catholic groups in Buenos Aires and others in Imperial and Weimar Germany. People, ideas, and finances circulated across the Atlantic and through Buenos Aires to the Argentine interior. Nevertheless, it was religious categories rather than linguistic or national ones that defined these flows. The chapter shows that denominational identities shaped how many people of German heritage in Argentina understood the boundaries of community and their sense of belonging in Argentine society. As was the case with transatlantic educational networks, practicing Lutherans and Catholics accepted transatlantic support while also taking a strong interest in the place of their denominations in Argentina far into the future. Building on the previous chapters on education, chapter 6 further queries how immigrants and bilingual Argentines tried to reconcile cultural pluralism and Argentine belonging in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Looking at German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics, it shows how denominational identities played a central role in many people’s visions of ethnicity and community in Buenos Aires. German speakers in Buenos Aires, together with hundreds of thousands of other immigrants and their children, created a framework between 1880 and 1930 that defined the relationships among the state, the public sphere, religious institutions, ethnic organizations, and family that would then evolve throughout the twentieth century. The definitions of German ethnicity slowly changed in Buenos Aires, as did the nature of the linguistic and cultural pluralism in Argentine society. Ideas about the future drove German-speaking immigrants to build and support a range of institutions. In so doing, however, these immigrants and second-generation bilinguals created overlapping German communities. They navigated among denominational, linguistic, German, and Argentine identities.

chapter 1

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and the Making of German Buenos Aires*

; In the spring of 1905, Richard Petersen, Hermann von Freeden, Carlos Aue, and fifteen other affluent men in Buenos Aires launched a fundraising campaign on behalf of the German Women’s Home. The men stressed the need for the city’s German community to increase its care for the sick, the poor, single women, sailors, and orphans.1 Adele Petersen, Elisabeth von Freeden, Hanna Scheringer, Dr. Petrona Eyle, and more than two hundred other female members of the German Women’s Association of Buenos Aires had been making small contributions to the home since its founding in 1896, but this fundraiser called on the support of men in order to garner larger contributions. All told, the campaign collected almost twenty-five thousand pesos for the nonprofit association, which enabled its female leaders to buy a twenty-room building in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires.2 With this purchase, the Women’s Association intensified its activities of providing affordable and temporary accommodation for working-class women, leading a job placement program for women, offering permanent housing for the elderly, and funding an orphanage.3 The women’s home was part of a much larger network of Germanlanguage social welfare services in the city. Prosperous German speakers also created a hospital and clinic, work placement programs, and other homes offering overnight accommodation, food, and financial support for single men or families. Affluent German-speaking men and women in Buenos Aires often described these institutions and the social welfare services they provided as the cornerstone of their community. These An earlier version of this chapter appeared in the Journal of Social History as “Paternal Communities: Social Welfare and Immigration in Argentina, 1880–1930.” The author and press thank the Journal of Social History and Oxford University Press for permission to republish a revised version of the article in this book.

22

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

self-described leaders situated themselves, through the patron-client relationships that they established with working-class German speakers and through various fundraising campaigns, as the benevolent protectors of an ethnic community. Similar activities could be found at institutions run by immigrants of other backgrounds in the Argentine capital at the turn of the twentieth century. Affluent Italians founded a hospital, mutual aid societies, work placement services, and other organizations that improved working and living conditions for Italian immigrants, and similarly, Spanish immigrants established a hospital, mutual aid societies, and a women’s home.4 Jewish immigrants and Jewish Argentines also became involved in matters of social welfare, charity, and philanthropy.5 The efforts of the selfproclaimed leaders of different immigrant communities resembled those of Argentine elites as well.6 By asserting a place for their own institutions alongside those run by the state, the Catholic Church, and Spanishspeaking elites, affluent immigrants of many backgrounds transcended the individual communities they aspired to care for and helped define the relationship between community and society. This chapter argues that affluent immigrants used various social welfare institutions to shape the meaning of citizenship in Buenos Aires. Through German-language social welfare organizations, thousands of immigrants and second-generation bilinguals also gave form to a certain vision of a German community. The community leaders who offered job placement, health care, and other services to workers promoted idealized notions of male breadwinners who supported their families, of productive and healthy workers, and of respectable female laborers. All of these community actions, however, were also civic actions, and the ideas of obligation to working-class immigrants were also ideas about rights and duties for members of Buenos Aires society. At stake for wealthy German speakers—as for other European immigrants who sought to provide social welfare services along ethnic lines—was their social, gender, and class power, both within their own community and in Argentine society. A belief in community, a sense of social responsibility, and concerns about their own and their community’s respectability drove the leaders and funders of these organizations to become involved. This network of community institutions, like those created by the self-proclaimed leaders of other ethnic communities, claimed a place for immigrant leadership in Argentine social and moral reform movements and a place for a German community in the Buenos Aires of the future. Leaders felt that economically stable men and families would help create a vibrant and lasting German-speaking community. The efforts of German-speaking and other immigrants resembled those found in North American cities such as New York, Chicago, and Toronto

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

23

at the turn of the twentieth century. In those cities, however, ethnic communities, the state, Protestant reformers, the Catholic Church, and labor unions established significantly different relationships with each other compared to those found in Buenos Aires.7 Protestant reformers in North America sought to uplift and assimilate recent immigrants in a way that was less common among Catholic elites in Argentina.8 Various levels of government in the United States—even before the major increase in federal authority in the 1930s—played a larger role in the provision of social welfare than did those in Argentina.9 And because the state and reformers played larger roles in North American cities than their counterparts did in Buenos Aires, leaders of immigrant groups in the United States and Canada played a smaller role, comparatively speaking, in questions of social welfare. In Buenos Aires, wealthy German-speaking men and women financed a range of social services, but in general, it was a group of middle-income people who actually delivered those services. The German Aid Society (founded in 1873), the German Hospital Association (1878), the Association for the Protection of Germanic Immigrants (1882), the German Women’s Association (1896), and the German Charitable Society (1916) had memberships that ranged between one hundred and fifty and two thousand five hundred people each.10 The organizations were independent from one another, although their membership lists reveal some overlap. Based on those lists, the number of people cared for at the German Hospital, and the number of workers who received services from other German-language social welfare organizations, it appears that as many as half of the city’s forty thousand German speakers (whether born in Europe or the Americas) had at least occasional contact with these organizations in the 1920s.11 The male leaders of and main donors to these associations owned bookstores, bakeries, restaurants, import companies, and other businesses in Buenos Aires. Others were directors of companies such as the German Transatlantic Electrical Company (Compañía Alemana Trans­ atlántica de Electricidad) and the Quilmes and Palermo breweries. Wives of businessmen and Lutheran pastors as well as female professionals led the German Women’s Association. Overall, these organizations worked toward the common goal of creating a web of social welfare institutions along ethnic lines that would help German-speaking workers and their families adapt to, succeed in, and stay in Argentina. These institutions were exclusively led and primarily staffed by German speakers. The German Hospital employed German- and Spanish-speaking doctors, and its support staff was similarly diverse. The leaders of these social welfare associations had little ideological competition from other groups of German speakers in the city. There was no German-language labor union in

24

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

the country in this period, and the approximately 270 members of the socialist association Vorwärts (founded in Buenos Aires in 1882) were little match for the large network of paternalistic charities.12 In the second half of the nineteenth century, a growing legal apparatus shaped by liberal ideology emerged in Argentina, and it governed notions of citizenship, the economy, and labor relations.13 This body of legislation included the Constitution of 1853, the Code of Commerce of 1859, the Penal Code of 1886, and a law on universal public education in 1884. The laissez-faire nature of the state apparatus in Argentina allowed space for other actors such as immigrant groups, and these actors in turn helped form the evolving state.14 After reformers separated the city of Buenos Aires from the province of the same name and made it the national capital in 1880, the federal state began to craft new relationships with autonomous provinces. Further government reforms in the 1930s and particularly during Juan Perón’s two presidential terms (1946–1955) did not erase the previous social welfare system, but the relationships among immigrants, the Argentine state, the Catholic Church, Spanish-speaking philanthropists, and other social actors underwent significant changes. The social welfare services in Buenos Aires in this period were provided in a patchwork manner by the state, private philanthropy, the Catholic Church, and immigrant communities. Each group had its own motivations, and despite tensions between secular reformers and Catholic authorities in the late nineteenth century and between private philanthropists and government bureaucrats in the 1930s, each seemed content to complement the services offered by the others. Catholic congregations and orders ran orphanages and charitable services for elderly, disabled, and unemployed people. The other main actor in questions of social welfare was the Society of Beneficence (Sociedad de Beneficencia). Founded in 1823 and run by elite Spanish-speaking women, it primarily operated hospitals and orphanages that were funded through a combination of monthly dues from wealthy women, philanthropy, and public subsidies. Throughout this period, Argentine politicians and bureaucrats gave money to the charities, hospitals, and orphanages run by the Society of Beneficence and the Catholic Church. Politicians and bureaucrats recognized that the Society and the Catholic Church provided many of the social services the state could not or did not want to provide, and by the 1890s this public funding had become a core feature of social policy.15 From the 1890s to the 1940s, financial assistance to the Society of Beneficence slowly increased.16 The government also offered a range of social services on its own. For example, in the second half of the nineteenth century, it began to employ public health officials to combat communicable diseases.17 In 1882, the city of Buenos Aires established an agency called Public Assistance

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

25

(Asistencia Pública) to, in the words of Donna Guy, “centralize and expand medical treatment and to offer free services to the urban poor who registered as indigents.”18 A philanthropic group with some public funding began operating the Hotel of Immigrants (Hotel de Inmigrantes) in the 1850s, which provided recent arrivals with lodging for five days, medical care, and work placement services.19 Pensions, which scholars highlight as important precursors to the welfare state in many countries in the North Atlantic, were a relatively limited part of the system of social welfare in Buenos Aires between 1880 and 1930. There was no extensive program of soldiers’ pensions, and the national government did not create maternity benefits for women in industry, commerce, and domestic work until 1934.20 In the early decades of the twentieth century, Argentine legislators established pension schemes co-funded by employees, but only for those working in sectors such as the civil service (1904), foreign-owned utilities (1921), and banking (1922).21 Immigrant philanthropists interacted with the state and the Catholic Church in several ways. Catholic missionaries from Germany, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere in Europe provided services such as poor relief and work placement to Catholic immigrants of a common background, and they ran orphanages through Catholic congregations or religious orders.22 In addition, immigrant-run organizations began receiving the government subsidies that had previously been earmarked for the Society of Beneficence and Catholic institutions. In the 1890s, German and other immigrant-run hospitals began receiving a small portion of the National Charitable Lottery (Lotería de Beneficencia Nacional), and the German Hospital received between five and ten thousand pesos per year.23 The city of Buenos Aires sometimes exempted the German Charitable Society from paying property taxes and gave irregular support to the German Women’s Home as well.24

charity and paternalism A perceived need to care for downtrodden immigrants led to the rise of several German-language social welfare institutions. These focused on helping workers and were largely run and financed by men. Although the leaders and funders of German-language associations concentrated on a German community and on maintaining their gender and class power within it, their actions also contributed to the promotion of two important notions of citizenship in Argentina. First, they helped workingclass men find good and stable employment so that they could care for themselves and their families. Second, these leaders helped themselves; elite charity constructed a model of social responsibility for those who

26

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

belonged to an elevated social class. Through both of these actions, male leaders fostered a set of masculine ideas about citizenship and proper male behavior. They presented both elite charity and the image of the working-class breadwinner as a man’s responsibility. These men’s vision of what the city’s German community should be was oriented toward the future. They were seeking to both uphold and advance a certain notion of citizenship and belonging and to ensure a place for cultural pluralism in the landscape of the city’s social welfare institutions in the years to come. When they founded the Association for the Protection of Germanic Immigrants in 1882, men such as Francisco Seeber (mayor of Buenos Aires, 1889–1890), Jacobo Peuser (owner of a successful and largely Spanishlanguage publishing house), and the competing newspaper editors Moritz Alemann and Hermann Tjarks sought to connect the skills of immigrants with the needs of businessmen. The association was a charity rather than a mutual aid society, and its work placement program reduced the number of people who would then need to rely on other forms of charity. The association gave German-speaking employers access to workers they deemed to be desirable (men from Germany rather than from Argentina or southern European countries) and helped recent German-speaking immigrants find employment where proficiency in Spanish was less of a requirement. Because work was not particularly difficult to find in Buenos Aires and the Argentine interior during this period, the program can be seen primarily as a tool for fostering the bonds of community. From a more critical perspective, it can also been seen as creating a patron-client relationship between affluent and working-class immigrants.25 Social welfare institutions such as this one emerged against the backdrop of a large and militant labor movement.26 In attempting to establish a dependent relationship between elites and workers of a common ethnicity, well-off men undercut some of the connections that could have developed between workers of different cultural backgrounds. The founders of the association described it as a “product of the truly humanistic attitudes of the sons of Germanic stock who have settled here . . . on the Río de La Plata.”27 They helped recent immigrants clear bureaucratic hurdles and sought to protect them from exploitation.28 These men framed protection as a matter of honor and promoted specific notions of honorable work and behavior. The association’s leaders worried that “every German-speaking immigrant . . . be he with or without means, and even when he was among the most clever in the old homeland, immediately becomes inexperienced, an incapable child who stands before an unintelligible language and completely foreign events and conditions.”29 With small monthly contributions from wealthy men, the association rented an office and hired an employee to meet German speakers from many countries as they arrived in Buenos Aires. 30

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

27

The description of recent immigrants as “incapable children” positioned funders as the benevolent patriarchs of a growing ethnic family, creating a system in which prosperous men were the figurative fathers of a vulnerable working class and working-class men became the breadwinning heads of their households. At the turn of the twentieth century, the association turned solely to work placement.31 Those who supported the work placement program saw it as a way to fulfill obligations to an ethnic community while avoiding the higher costs of charity. Leaders appealed to German-speaking employers to post their vacancies with the association, noting that “a large need for work still reigns and numerous jobseekers make use of the association on a daily basis.”32 In 1926, M. Riester and J. Riecke wrote that job placement was the main goal of the association “because only work is the cure-all that protects people from material need and moral danger.”33 These “moral dangers” included alcoholism, prostitution, and other situations that would lead to a loss of honor. By supporting the association’s work placement program, its leaders argued, German-speaking business owners and self-fashioned community leaders could diminish begging and the need of immigrants to rely on charity. Although there were plenty of working-class German-speaking women in the city, the association focused almost exclusively on men. It placed great weight on the male head of household, and its activities promoted specific notions of the kinds of families that should form the foundation of the city’s German community. In 1915, the leaders estimated that over the previous three decades, they had helped “no fewer than 40,000 Germanics”—a category that included German nationals, German-­ speaking immigrants from elsewhere in Europe, and German speakers born in the Americas—to find work.34 Most of the positions were for manual laborers. Of the people who found work through the association in 1919, there were 1,693 unskilled laborers, 221 male servants, 225 mechanics, 127 carpenters, 69 cooks, 57 cabinetmakers, 51 blacksmiths, 40 gardeners, and 193 people of other professions. In addition, 159 married couples found employment together in a household and 9 women found work as maids. Only 26 professionals found work through the association that year: 25 private teachers and one architect.35 Through their small financial contributions to the association’s operating budget, approximately two hundred wealthy German speakers established a relationship with thousands of working-class immigrants. All members of this association were men; in the ten years from 1887 to 1897 their numbers rose from 125 to 184, and in the six years from 1921 to 1927, they rose from 213 to 258.36 Leaders often encouraged members to make greater financial contributions and to help recruit more paying men. In 1917, M. Riester and Ed. Degenhardt appealed to members,

28

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

writing, “He who supports our association helps to protect against emergency, helps to relieve people’s need, and helps to dry tears.”37 The desire to incorporate workers into a community led by affluent men lurked behind these official objectives of caring for supposedly vulnerable workingclass immigrants. As Table 3 indicates, the association assisted a growing number of immigrants in the early twentieth century. In 1910, it placed 22 people in a job each week, but by 1928 the weekly average had risen to 104. The success rate increased with the number of applicants, showing that German-speaking businessmen generally supported the leaders’ appeals. In 1922, the placement rate exceeded 100 percent, which was statistically possible because the association placed people who had applied in previous years and did not count them as newly registered, or because it placed one person in more than one job in a calendar year. For short periods of time, other male-led German-language organizations engaged in similar work placement programs. At the outbreak of the First World War, the German Sailors’ Home, a Lutheran organization that had previously focused on the moral regulation of German sailors temporarily in port in Buenos Aires, expanded its mandate. Its president, Hermann von Freeden, had been one of the men who organized the 1905 fundraiser for the German Women’s Home that opened this chapter. During the war, the Sailors’ Home often advertised in the German-language press of the city with the words “Give Work!” in bold in an attempt to connect German business owners and directors with working-class immigrants.38 In four and a half months, between September 1915 and January 1916, the Sailors’ Home program placed more than twelve hundred people in jobs and provided almost thirteen thousand free meals, over twelve thousand nights in a dormitory, clothing for 665 people, Table 3. Work Placement Activities of the Association for the Protection of Germanic Immigrants, 1904–1928. Year

New Work-Seeking Immigrants

Successful Placements

Success Rate

1904

52

0

0%

1910

1,908

1,195

62%

1916

2,988

2,305

77%

1922

2,968

3,973

134%

1923

5,696

5,676

99%

1928

5,772

5,390

93%

source : Jahresbericht des Vereins zum Schutze Germanischer Einwanderer, 1904–1928.

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

29

and subsidies for 149 families.39 By blending work placement with free lodging, food, clothing, and charitable support, the home united various forms of social welfare into an overarching strategy that bound wealthy (in this case Lutheran) German speakers to working-class immigrants. The goal of maintaining a respectable community also led to the establishment of other kinds of German-language charitable programs in Buenos Aires. In 1916, the German Aid Society merged with a wartime committee that offered many charitable services in the building owned by the Sailors’ Home to form the German Charitable Society. The new society inherited 30,000 pesos from the two other associations, and its goal was “to be able to fight effectively and successfully against the current emergency [caused by the war in Europe].”40 It provided accommodation, lunch, dinner, and some employment.41 The new charity pledged to “help all truly needy and those Germans in Buenos Aires deserving of support as well as to finally eliminate door-to-door begging.”42 For the duration of the First World War, the society used the goal of ending begging in its appeals for donations and in its calls to businessmen to hire workingclass immigrants.43 The image of the struggling worker of German birth or heritage who relied only on affluent German speakers was one that these leaders manufactured; it seems unlikely that unemployed and hungry men would not have attempted to draw on the support of Spanish-language charities, the Catholic Church, or labor organizations as well. The discussion of begging reflects a bourgeois idea about respectability. As George Mosse writes, respectability “served to legitimize and define the middle classes as against the lower classes and the aristocracy.” 44 In the case of immigrants in Buenos Aires rather than bourgeois members of German society, the respectability of the city’s German community depended—in the eyes of the leaders of these social welfare organizations—on the image that outsiders held and on the ability of self-defined leaders to participate in broader Argentine projects of citizenship. The German Charitable Society’s principal preoccupation was with unemployed or underemployed immigrants, and it sought to “offer support to all Germans who are in a particular state of need.” 45 It helped mainly working-class families with male heads of household, widows, single male professionals, the elderly, and disabled people. It also provided temporary shelter to a small group of working-class men.46 When it was founded in 1916, 1,952 people—almost all of whom were Germanspeaking men—became members. By 1930, much to the chagrin of the directors, membership had plummeted to 266, and the institution was forced to reduce the range of charitable services it offered and to decrease the number of recipients of its services.47 The society had been founded as a response to the wartime context, when nationalist sentiments about

30

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

Germany promoted greater community cohesion in Buenos Aires. Although Argentina remained neutral during the war, German speakers sometimes lost their jobs at firms owned by British and French immigrants or by British or French subsidiaries.48 In the early 1920s, the German Charitable Society began lending money to recent immigrants to enable them to travel to the Argentine interior to take up positions advertised through the Association for the Protection of Germanic Immigrants.49 In 1925, the society began subsidizing travel back to Germany for recent immigrants who were sick or unable to work. In the late 1920s, it helped approximately sixty-five people per year “who would have otherwise perished in misery.”50 The Spanish Patriotic Association (Asociación Patriótica Española), the Spanish Charitable Society (Sociedad Española de Beneficencia), and the Galician Center (Centro Gallego) carried out similar programs of return travel for some Spanish immigrants in Buenos Aires.51 The French Repatriation Fund (Caisse Française de Rapatriement) did the same for “compatriots who, having failed in Argentina, retained relatives or acquaintances in France who will help them find a means of existence once returning.”52 The idea of failed men was a recurring trope at these immigrant-run social welfare institutions. As was the case for Spanish and French immigrants, the services offered by the Association for the Protection of Germanic Immigrants, the German Sailors’ Home, and the German Charitable Society positioned wealthy German-speaking men as the benevolent heads of an ethnic family. These services helped them maintain their class and gender power within the community they were constructing. Although they centered on the goal of creating a supportive and cohesive community in Buenos Aires, they also operated with the surrounding society very much in mind and responded to ideas about civic behavior and social responsibility. The affluent men who ran these charities and the workers who received the services were mainly foreign nationals, but their participation in the system of social welfare in the capital city meant these nonstate actors were interested in Argentine citizenship.

healthy workers Health was also a central component of the immigrant-controlled social welfare services in Buenos Aires. Groups of wealthy Italian, Spanish, British, French, and German immigrants founded five hospitals in Buenos Aires in the mid-nineteenth century. Two other hospitals were founded, respectively, in 1907 by Galician immigrants and in 1921 by Jewish immigrants and Jewish Argentines.53 These hospitals, taken together, made

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

31

up a significant part of the city’s health network; in 1910, hospitals run by Italian, Spanish, British, French, and German groups treated 20.4 percent of all hospitalized patients in Buenos Aires. The federal government and the Society of Beneficence ran the other thirteen hospitals in the city.54 European immigrants and Argentines of various backgrounds created a web of social welfare institutions that supplemented the health care services offered at other hospitals and by the doctors funded by the city’s Public Assistance agency. The push by affluent immigrants to create hospitals and mutual aid societies to care for people of a common ethnic heritage was another way that community-oriented activities also engaged immigrants with questions of Argentine citizenship and belonging. Well-off German speakers—alongside wealthy men of other ­backgrounds—took on the task of raising funds and running a hospital that cared for w ­ orking-class members of Buenos Aires society. These leaders aimed to have lasting ethnic institutions, and their activities were organized around these future expectations. The Argentine state’s approach to health care was an important structural factor that encouraged affluent immigrants to create hospitals and mutual aid societies. As Jonathan Ablard argues, there was a shortage of both hospitals and public funding in Buenos Aires.55 He notes that many previous studies of state health policies are based on official statements by key physicians rather than an assessment of what actually happened in hospitals. In this period, the state failed to regulate hospitals, which was, according to Ablard, a “clear expression of the weakness of the Argentine state’s ability to regulate civil society.”56 As Julia Rodriguez highlights in the case of medical inspections of immigrants at the moment of arrival in Buenos Aires at the turn of the twentieth century, the entire project “was more rhetorical than real, largely a symbolic gesture on the part of the state” and it was “frustrated by a small and weak state.”57 In a study of the history of tuberculosis in Buenos Aires, Diego Armus notes that most people affected by the disease did not have access to hospitals, dispensaries, or sanatoriums, and the medical services in the city “were never sufficient to cope with an increasing demand.”58 The system of liberal governance shaped how the state and other social actors became involved in matters of health. The state’s incomplete control of the system encouraged the leaders of many ethnic communities to play large roles in health matters. The health care network in the Argentine capital was further shaped by immigrant-run mutual aid societies. The primary goal of many of these was to cover the health care costs of members who paid monthly dues. They were voluntary associations like the hospitals, yet ideologically, leaders saw their organizations as something different from the charitable assistance offered by other social welfare institutions. The boundary between mutualism and charity was sometimes blurry because mutual aid

32

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

societies received donations that enabled them to charge lower membership fees.59 Mutual aid societies were most prominent in Buenos Aires from the 1890s to the 1920s, and they were primarily organized by European immigrant groups.60 As José Moya notes, Argentina was home to the largest mutual aid societies in the Americas.61 In 1914, Argentine census takers determined that 16 percent of people living in the country were members of at least one mutual aid society.62 The 1918 Congress of Mutual Aid (Congreso de Mutualidad) in Buenos Aires was attended by representatives from 295 associations, with a combined membership of approximately three hundred thousand.63 The prominent place of the self-appointed leaders of immigrant communities in the health care network of Buenos Aires is particularly relevant in a comparative context. In cities in the United States and Canada, there were proportionally fewer immigrant-run hospitals than in Buenos Aires. German hospitals were founded in Philadelphia in 1860 and in New York in 1869. Jewish hospitals appeared in cities such as Cincinnati in 1847, New York in 1852, Philadelphia in 1867, Boston in 1916, Toronto in 1922, and Montreal in 1934. Cuban and Spanish workers in Tampa founded a hospital in 1905.64 Through the Catholic Church, Irish, German, Italian, and French Canadian immigrants in the United States carved out a place for ethnicity in the provision of health care, but it was subsumed within the structures of the Catholic Church.65 As these examples illustrate, Buenos Aires was not the only place in the Americas where immigrants became involved in matters of health and social welfare. Yet in North American cities, immigrant-run hospitals made up a proportionally smaller part of the overall health network in any given city. The German Hospital of Buenos Aires was structured upon two principles. First, it provided health care in German and Spanish to paying patients of many backgrounds. Members of the Hospital Association and their families received a discount of either 25 or 50 percent on treatment. In this sense, the hospital operated in a way similar to a mutual aid society; all members contributed to and benefited from the services offered. Like the other immigrant-run hospitals in the city, the German Hospital treated patients of many ethnic backgrounds, but the vast majority of its patients were German speakers. The hospital’s often-stated main goal, however, centered on providing charity to German speakers who could not afford to pay. Its directors pledged to offer free care to “povertystricken Germans and German speakers of both sexes.”66 The monthly contributions of wealthy members and revenue from frequent fundraisers financed this charitable objective. The dual practice of charging patients of many ethnic backgrounds and providing free care to workers of a specific ethnic background was common at the hospitals run by various immigrant groups, and the

Figure 1. The German Hospital of Buenos Aires, 1934. source : Jahresbericht 1934. Deutscher Hospitalverein Buenos Aires (n.p., n.d.). The author thanks the board of directors of the Hospital Alemán for permission to reproduce this image.

34

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

practice of providing free health care to poor immigrants also mirrored the policy of the Public Assistance agency.67 While the Argentine state gave immigrant-run hospitals minor subsidies because they treated some patients for free, this financial support was only a fraction of the hospitals’ operating budgets, and it reveals how the state relied on immigrantrun institutions to contribute to the city’s health network. In describing the five immigrant-run hospitals that existed in Buenos Aires in 1904, the authors of the municipal census noted that these institutions “treat poor countrymen and receive for a fee the well-to-do who, for lack of family or for need of treatment, require hospitalization.”68 The main purpose of the Spanish Charitable Society, which ran the Spanish Hospital, was to provide free medical care to Spanish immigrants in need. It too offered both charity and services to fee-paying members.69 It received large donations from affluent Spaniards in Buenos Aires as well as the Banco Español del Río de la Plata, insurance companies (La Seguridad and the Compañía de Seguros), and the newspaper El Correo Español.70 Community histories of the Italian, British, and Jewish Hospitals in Buenos Aires reveal that these hospitals were also partially funded by wealthy men, and they also reminded paying members of the associations that ran these hospitals of their obligations to working-class immigrants.71 The leaders of the German Hospital appealed to middle-income and wealthy men to increase their voluntary contributions so that the hospital could offer free treatment to working-class German speakers. During an 1898 fundraiser, one of the hospital’s leaders pleaded with German speakers in the city to join the hospital association and make monthly contributions “so that the German Hospital [can] maintain its most distinguished and humanitarian purpose, which is to provide every German speaker, without distinction of nationality, who arrives destitute and sick at the doors of the hospital, with free care and medical treatment.” 72 In the same year, E. Ballauf informed the members of the association that “this year the doors of the hospital have stood open to every indigent sick person of Germanic stock who was really in need of care.”73 The monthly membership fees that a male head of a middle-income or wealthy household paid to the hospital meant that not only did he enable the hospital to treat workers for free by contributing to the hospital’s overall revenue, but he and his family also received health care at a discounted rate. The leaders of the hospital viewed health care as a way to ensure that working men could care for themselves and their families by helping them return to the workforce quickly after an illness, instead of relying on charitable services from German-language, Catholic, or public charities for an extended period of time. Urging male heads of household to join the hospital association in 1913, A. Ellinger told members that the

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

35

hospital “brings healing and alleviation every year to hundreds of people of our stock who are not only sick but also in pressing hardship, and it enables them to return to their work.” 74 In statements such as this, Ellinger and other leaders proposed that healthy workers were strong workers who could support themselves and their families. Yet Ellinger also seemed to be staking out a place in projects of Argentine citizenship. Helping immigrant men return to work would also contribute to the Argentine economy. The pronouncements of Ellinger and community leaders like him also suggested that a community made up of families structured according to a patriarchal model would create a positive image of German-speaking immigrants in Argentine society. This family-­ community-nation nexus conformed to a broader ideal of citizenship in the country, in which strong families supported a strong nation.

philanthropy and gender Men controlled the German Hospital, but they depended heavily on female volunteer work. German-speaking women played an important but controlled role in attracting donations for the hospital, so that its male leaders could continue to offer free services to working-class German speakers. Several scholars have stressed the importance of women in child welfare charities as part of a larger argument about the system of economic and social relations in Argentina and other Latin American countries before the rise of publicly funded social welfare services in the mid-twentieth century.75 As Donna Guy argues, the study of social welfare organizations uncovers the efforts of women and the importance of local philanthropic activities, and such an approach shifts the focus away from state-based, male-dominated organizations.76 The case of the German Hospital offers an example of a major institution between the two poles of female and male charity, where both women and men played important roles. Women’s support of the hospital took place under the leadership of men, and women supported an institution organized around the project of helping men return to the workforce and remain the breadwinners of their families. This support helped a group of female philanthropists secure some measure of autonomy, and female-organized fundraisers gave women some clout in what appeared on the surface to be a solely male-run institution. Wealthy German speakers believed that supporting workers was a matter of honor, and the language of honor helped leaders mobilize a large group of prosperous German-speaking men and garner more financial support. During a 1918 fundraiser, the editors of the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung noted that the hospital had only fifteen hundred contributing

36

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

members. They reasoned that “it should also be a matter of duty and honor [Ehrenpflicht] for every German here on the Río de la Plata to contribute to the benefit of the German community and our welfare institutions.”77 A. Dunzelmann added, “It is a matter of duty and honor for us to treat all destitute sick people for free.”78 In 1929, G. Kobelt wrote to the paying members of the association that “with the rapid increase in German immigration, the board of directors of the German Hospital Association considers it to be an obligation to show solidarity to our compatriots who are sick when in a foreign land.”79 With their recurring references to obligation and group cohesion across class lines, affluent men fostered the idea that a community did and should exist. In the context of the increasing rate of German immigration in the 1920s, the hospital’s directors worried that “the majority of the immigrants belong to an economically vulnerable class which must struggle for its mere existence for a long time. Most are not prepared for the high expenses caused by an illness.”80 This desire to protect “vulnerable” workers and enable them to return to the workforce as quickly as possible underscores the objective of creating a stable community with healthy workers. The leaders’ discourse about charity led to tangible results. As Table 4 indicates, the directors of the hospital devoted approximately one-third of their institution’s services to treating patients for free. Because other immigrant-run hospitals in the city appeared to follow a similar model of treating a large number of patients for free, these data point toward a significant feature of the system of social welfare in Buenos Aires between 1880 and 1930.81 The hospital’s leaders began a drop-in clinic in 1896 to complement the long-term care they provided. This type of service was also found at Table 4. Patients at the German Hospital, 1882–1930.

Year

Paying Patients

Non-Paying Patients

Total Patients

Free Patients as a Percentage of Total

1882

143

117

260

45%

1890

767

177

944

19%

1900

370

253

623

41%

1913

889

333

1222

27%

1921

1157

477

1634

29%

1930

1716

830

2546

33%

source : Annual reports of the German Hospital ( Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospital-Vereins in Buenos Aires).

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

37

the Jewish Hospital of Buenos Aires in the 1920s and 1930s.82 At the German clinic, which offered not only general medicine but also eye care and dental care,83 treatment was “completely free, but exclusively reserved for the destitute.”84 In 1901, the clinic treated twenty-four hundred patients (an average of 46 people per week). In 1918, it treated more than seven thousand people for free (an average of 138 patients per week), and in 1928 it had more than twenty-nine thousand German-speaking patients (an average of 567 per week).85 Women played an important role in enabling the male leaders to offer free care to working-class German speakers. Between 1882 and 1925, German-speaking women organized eight major fundraisers for the German Hospital. Two such events during the 1890s raised 48 and 87 percent, respectively, of the hospital’s total annual revenues for the year in which the fundraiser took place, while fundraisers that women organized between 1907 and 1925 contributed between 10 and 28 percent of each year’s revenues.86 The members of the women’s committee that held the events placed announcements in the local press calling for support. The male-run board of directors regularly thanked the “ladies of the German community [Kolonie] as well as those from other friendly communities” such as Austrian, Swiss, and Dutch immigrants for their support in this aspect of hospital affairs.87 The Quilmes brewery donated a large quantity of beer to the festivals, and the women ran a beer hall, with proceeds going to the hospital.88 Female volunteers decorated the space for these weekend events and sold baked goods and other food at pavilions. For the December 1911 fundraiser there was a daytime festival for children, and women also organized a cabaret starting at midnight on the Saturday.89 One of the twelve women operating the flower tent was the wife of the prominent Argentine minister José María Ramos Mejía, which the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung eagerly reported.90 The newspaper also published a picture of Indalecio Gómez, the Argentine minister of the interior, and “ladies of Argentine society” who attended the fest.91 All told, the 1911 event raised fifty thousand pesos, which represented 28 percent of the hospital’s annual operating budget.92 In 1911, the editors of the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung invited people to attend the “splendid festival” and boasted that “the German Hospital, which offers care at any time to all Germans and German speakers without distinguishing between social classes, can surely expect that all circles of our community [Kolonie] and those of our brothers of related stock will attend.”93 As Sandra McGee Deutsch notes in the case of Jewish women in Buenos Aires, “philanthropists addressed the shortcomings of liberal rule, which provided inadequately for the poor, by filling in cracks, rather than advocating broader socioeconomic change.”94

Figure 2. Promotional Material for 1911 Bazaar at the German Hospital. source : Bazarfest zum Besten des Deutschen-Hospitals, 1911 (Buenos Aires: n.p., 1911).

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

39

The December 1925 fundraiser resembled the 1911 event. Women sold tickets in advance for $3 through the city’s German bookstores.95 At the events, there was dancing and a cabaret on both the Friday and Saturday nights, as well as a raffle and other gambling. The female organizers sold off donated items, publishing lists of what was available in the local German-language press in the days before the weekend festival. Women sold crafts, books, clothing, candy, and pastries at several stands. A children’s festival took place during the afternoon, with a $1 entry charge, offering a wheel of fortune, clowns, plays, and grab bags for children.96 Representatives from Germany as well as the envoys from Switzerland and the Netherlands attended this event, and Dutch and Swiss women also served on the women’s committee.97 Similar female activities could be found in Buenos Aires society more broadly. As McGee Deutsch notes, Jewish “women’s organizations united their communities around fundraising. They received dues from members, money and goods and benefactors, and some subsidies from male-run community organizations.”98 The services that the German, Spanish, Italian, French, British, Jewish, and Galician hospitals in Buenos Aires offered—to paying patients of many cultural backgrounds and to workers of just one ethnicity at no cost—created a place for immigrant-run institutions in a central area of social welfare. These institutions grew alongside hospitals run by the Argentine state and the Society of Beneficence, filling a gap that was not covered by those social actors. Driven by masculine ideas of honor and obligation to an ethnic group, they fulfilled duties similar to those that other Argentine organizations also performed. At the same time, the fund­raisers that enabled hospital directors to advance their project fostered bonds of community, encouraging German speakers in Buenos Aires society to think about their obligations to one another. Although the hospital was controlled by men and structured upon ideas about paternalism and patriarchy, women also played a crucial role in its finances. In addition, women helped develop the sense of community that the hospital needed in order to offer social welfare services along ethnic lines.

working women In 1896, well after the creation of several male-run social welfare institutions, the German Women’s Home emerged as the sole Germanlanguage organization controlled by women as well as being the only one dedicated to helping German-speaking female immigrants. It was an elite charity that sought to bring working-class women under the leaders’ ­maternalistic—or paternalistic—care. The efforts of the female leaders

40

Social Welfare, Paternalism, and German Buenos Aires

of the German Women’s Home in the areas of work placement, charity, and moral regulation illustrate how wealthy women supported or were pressured to support gender hierarchies by accepting a small role in community organization and promoting a narrow field of employment for working-class women that reinforced the idea that men were the primary wage earners of their households. These actions were reflective of the broader projects of citizenship taking hold in Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century. A desire to regulate the labor and morality of female workers and concerns about community respectability grew out of the ideas about citizenship, social responsibility, and civic behavior that one could find more generally in the Argentine capital. The tone that was taken by the leaders of the Women’s Home differed from that of the male-run social welfare institutions. The female leaders were particularly interested in the respectability of German working-class women and how the perception of those women would affect the respectability of the city’s entire German community. They worried about the sexual morality of working-class German-speaking women, while the men’s associations took more interest in the image of the noble male breadwinner. In addition, the female leaders often praised members’ sacrifices and spoke of sisterhood, whereas what the men’s associations often reminded men of was their duty. The German Women’s Home created a place where bourgeois women could fulfill self-imposed obligations. The leaders of the home sought to care for “orphaned or needy children and old women incapable of working” and to offer “good and inexpensive lodging to single, workseeking girls and women.”99 From 1897 to 1927, the German Women’s Home provided between one hundred and two hundred women each year with an average of eleven nights of accommodation each, at little or no cost.100 The directors tried to help German-speaking governesses, female teachers, housewives’ helpers, and childcare workers find work.101 In the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, the female directors appealed to “all gentlemen,” asking them to register their labor needs with the association.102 For their 1905 fundraiser, the women asked for support in a local weekly Lutheran periodical. They wrote, “German women can achieve so much . . . if everybody is conscious of the obligation they owe to their fellow sisters!”103 In an appeal for support for the home’s new orphanage, Hanna Scheringer stated that the directors of the home wanted not only to care for orphans but also to raise them, emphasizing that “we need the help and support of all German women in Buenos Aires. You German mothers, whose good fortune it is to wrap your children with loving care, we ask you to help these children as well.”104 In 1908, the directors of the home noted that “by offering a small space to old, tired, and sometimes homeless women, the Women’s Home

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provides a service of Christian charity, which the entire German community should perceive as its highest duty and as a matter of honor.”105 The concerns about respectability, the suggestion that supporting the Women’s Home was a woman’s duty, and a language of sisterhood and motherhood shaped much of the fundraising and organizational culture of the association. The fundraising appeals of the leaders of the German Women’s Home emphasized that providing care for workingclass women and orphans was women’s work, thus creating a space for G ­ erman-speaking women in the creation and maintenance of some social welfare institutions. In some ways, the social welfare institutions that European immigrants created in Buenos Aires in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries relied on a set of bourgeois attitudes that had developed in their countries of origin. The activities of the women who led the German Women’s Home in Buenos Aires were in line with the perceived gender and class obligations of bourgeois women in Germany. At the turn of the twentieth century, such women were concerned with “­social degeneration,” a term that encompassed fears about alcoholism, prostitution, criminality, socialism, and the supposed breakdown of the family.106 Nancy Reagin notes in her study of Hanover that bourgeois women believed they “were particularly suited, by virtue of their maternal and domestic qualities, to counteract this trend.”107 In addition, as Larry Frohman writes, poor relief in Germany in the mid-nineteenth century was “designed to consolidate the new bourgeois social order by molding the lower classes into . . . industrious, disciplined, and providential workers.”108 The German Women’s Home resembled the female-run Patronato Es­ pañol, a home for Spanish immigrant women and orphans. Each served the dual purpose of protecting poor women and orphans and conferring status on women leaders of these institutions.109 Similarly, Jewish women in Buenos Aires founded two orphanages, in 1918 and 1919, and they too sought to provide an example of collective benevolence.110 The ideas of feminine respectability and morality that the leaders of the German Women’s Home espoused resembled the efforts of Spanish-speaking elites in Argentina as well, but in creating their own homes, immigrant women of many backgrounds asserted their interest in participating independently in the project of constructing moral citizens.111 The values promoted at female-run homes in Buenos Aires also bore a resemblance to the settlement house movement that took hold in the United States in the 1880s. Led by a growing group of social reformers such as Jane Addams in Chicago and Lillian Wald in New York, settlement houses offered a range of services to working-class immigrants in order to decrease socioeconomic tensions. The number of settlement

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houses increased from six in the early 1890s to more than four hundred in 1910.112 In the 1890s, the female leaders of Addams’s Hull House in Chicago organized a labor bureau to train young immigrant women in domestic work and then place them in wealthy households.113 In both Argentina and the United States, women sought to establish the boundaries of citizenship by promoting specific moral and social values. There were, nevertheless, some notable differences between Buenos Aires and these U.S. cities. Progressive reformers in the United States viewed cultural pluralism as a sociocultural fact that would slowly dissipate under their leadership.114 In contrast, the efforts of the female leaders of the German Women’s Home in Buenos Aires, like those of their male counterparts in other German-language social welfare institutions, were aimed at carving out a more permanent place for their particular ethnic community within Argentine society. Driven by a desire to gain social status beyond their ethnic community, immigrant women took advantage of the space that the state, religious institutions, and elite philanthropists had not entirely filled. Whereas U.S. social reformers involved in settlement houses pushed the government to enact policies, immigrants of many backgrounds in Argentina instead sought to foster class harmony along ethnic lines. With only a few exceptions, the members of the German Women’s Association were all women. The leadership consisted of businessmen’s wives, such as Elisabeth von Freeden and Adele Petersen; female professionals, such as Dr. Petrona Eyle; and Lutheran pastors’s wives, such as A. Schede, Hanna Scheringer, and Marie Dufft.115 In 1898, the association had 204 members. By 1911, the number had increased to 428, and by 1927, it was 520.116 Any “German-speaking lady” could become a member of the association that ran the home by contributing one peso per month. The home financed its activities with these contributions and with fundraisers.117 As Nancy Reagin notes, “the cult of the small sacrifice was a central component in the self-image of bourgeois women” in Germany. Among German female urban reformers, the ideas of small sacrifices, small efforts, and small savings “were enormously significant to genteel women, far beyond the actual economic contribution they might yield.”118 The involvement of Dr. Petrona Eyle in the home is particularly noteworthy. Born in Argentina to a German father and an Argentine mother, she did her medical training in Zurich. Eyle served as the president of the German Women’s Home from 1901 to 1903.119 At the same time, she was involved in other Argentine feminist projects. In 1902, she became the president of the liberal feminist organization Universitarias Argentinas, and from 1917 to 1928 she was the president of the Argentine National Association against White Slavery (Asociación Nacional Argentina contra

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la Trata de Blancas).120 Eyle’s role in this home and the role of Francisco Seeber, a one-time mayor of Buenos Aires, in the Association for the Protection of Germanic Immigrants demonstrate how participating in ethnic-based social welfare institutions did not preclude German speakers in Buenos Aires from participating in mainstream social and political institutions. In fact, they appeared to view their efforts at the community, municipal, and national levels as part of the same project of developing a system of social welfare in a culturally plural society. This system of social welfare, in turn, sought to create specific kinds of working-class citizens, fathers, and mothers. The fear that prostitution was affecting both the morality of workingclass women and the respectability of the German community of Buenos Aires drove many of the activities of this social welfare institution. This danger was largely a discursive trope, but it had great influence. The suggestion that working-class women could fall into prostitution reveals more about the conservative nature of the home’s leaders than it does about the actual behavior of female migrants. In 1897, Eyle wrote that in addition to the main activities of the home, there was another concern, “one that took place secretly and furtively: the struggle against that shameful trade

Figures 3 and 4. Elisabeth von Freeden (left), President of the German Women’s Home, 1896–1900 and 1903–1909, and Dr. Petrona Eyle (right), President of the German Women’s Home, 1901–1903. source : Franze, Fest-Schrift zur Feier, 10, 13.

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that prospers here in Argentina and that unfortunately takes advantage of mainly inexperienced GERMAN-SPEAKING girls. False impressions, wanderlust, and the search for an easy but high-paying job, etc. are the main causes. Our association wants to be doubly effective: to warn and when possible to rescue the unwarned.”121 This desire to protect unwary working-class women contained more than a small element of paternalism. It also reflected the fear that the broader public would associate prostitution with the German-speaking community. Like begging and the threats it posed to the self-proclaimed leaders’ perceived sense of respectability, prostitution had the capacity to undermine the image of community that well-off German speakers were working to create. In 1908, the leaders of the Women’s Home noted that there were too many temptations for single women and girls in the “hustle and bustle of the big city.” They reasoned with women who were not yet members of their association that “we German women have to reach out to them so that they do not go astray and so that those who have strayed will rise again. Do not forget, you German mothers who raise your beloved daughters in caring shelter, that these young girls were once their mothers’ sunshine and that conditions that are often difficult and sad have obliged them to search for their daily bread in a foreign place.”122 In the 1920s, Johannes Franze wrote that of the many dangers that threatened young German-speaking girls in the 1890s, “white ­slavery was the worst. With the alluring promises and all sorts of false impressions and with the promise of amazing jobs with high wages, young women were lured here every year and they were brought into a long life of misfortune.”123 Similarly, a 1921 article about emigration to Argentina in a Germany-based Catholic periodical worried that “many dangers of moral and material nature threatened [immigrants], particularly single women and girls.”124 In the public sphere at the time and in the historiography since, there has been a strong focus on the role of Jewish and French women in prostitution in Buenos Aires. Indeed, one police source in 1930 claimed that Jewish women made up 38 percent of the registered sex workers in the city, while French and Argentine women each composed 22 percent.125 Yet as Sandra McGee Deutsch notes, “figures on prostitution are notoriously inaccurate.”126 In particular, the assumptions about certain ethnic groups should not be taken at face value. For example, women of several nationalities and ethnic backgrounds in Buenos Aires may have claimed to be French to elicit higher prices. Moreover, just twenty years after the 1930 police report, another source claimed that Jewish prostitution in the city had been eliminated,127 and it seems unlikely that the two claims from 1930 and from the 1950s could both be true. In light of these statistics and the common discourse about Jewish and French women

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in Buenos Aires, it is intriguing that Petrona Eyle asserted in 1897 that prostitution mainly affected German-speaking women, and that Johannes Franze was similarly concerned about the dangers that prostitution posed to German-speaking women in Buenos Aires. Community-based efforts to combat prostitution were common to a variety of groups. The self-defined leaders of the institutions of a given community would present their group as victims of prostitution while simultaneously trying to prevent that from tarnishing the image of their communities. The Spanish consul general wrote to the Foreign Ministry in Madrid in 1922 that the Patronato Español’s main goal was the protection of “the young Spanish women who arrive in this country to earn an honorable living” but who often “succumb and participate in the white slave trade.” The Spanish home helped “avoid the fall of so many naïve young women into the wretchedness of vice and prostitution.”128 Luisa Canale de Cibrián and Elena de Fernández, the president and the secretary of the Patronato, wrote to the Spanish foreign minister in 1922 that the home helps “the young Spanish immigrant woman” so that she “avoids the thousand dangers that lie in wait for her when she disembarks, and the home offers a welcoming and educational space that can appropriately place her in a reputable house where she can earn an honorable living.”129 In her study of Protestant and Jewish moral reformers in New York City, Val Marie Johnson contends that female-led initiatives “used protective work with immigrants and ideas about race and sexual danger as strategies for producing female citizenship.”130 The campaigns of U.S.born women in New York against white slavery helped create, to quote Johnson, “moral citizens.”131 The Jewish American women involved in these projects “reaffirmed their citizenship, and carved out a public space for their citizenship.”132 The German-speaking leaders of the German Women’s Home of Buenos Aires were engaged in a similar process of affirming the boundaries of moral citizenship. The Argentine-born Petrona Eyle participated in a number of liberal feminist activities related to women’s political rights, and Lutheran women such as Hanna Scheringer and Marie Dufft were intent on creating a space for other denominations in Argentine moral reform movements, which in turn would broaden the terms of citizenship as well. These concerns about the sexuality of German-speaking women illustrate the leaders’ ideas about model citizens and the gender and class values that pervaded this form of social welfare. Ideas about community obligation, female sexuality, and ethnic respectability were what drove women to dedicate their labor, time, and money to the efforts of the German Women’s Home. In so doing, they created a space for themselves in a web of German-language social welfare institutions in Buenos Aires.

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conclusion The affluent immigrant men and women who created a range of social welfare institutions in Buenos Aires gave new meaning to citizenship, social responsibility, and Argentine belonging. Driven by an interest in community and gender, they asserted a place for themselves in Argentine social politics. Prosperous immigrant men, with the support of a small group of women, used social welfare institutions to create paternalistic and patriarchal ethnic communities. The language of male honor and female respectability helped them gain access to social prestige within their ethnic communities and in the broader society. Through social welfare and the largely paternalistic system it created, affluent German speakers created a specific image of the German community of Buenos Aires. The ethnic communities that emerged in Buenos Aires between 1880 and 1930 positioned wealthy men as the protectors of working-class immigrants, and the institutions those men created sought to make male workers the breadwinning heads of their households. Repeated calls for financial support and for help to find employment for workers pulled a diverse group of people into a loose network of community institutions and services. This paternalistic project nurtured the growth and stability of an ethnic community by fostering group cohesion and ensuring that people succeeded and remained in Argentina. The preoccupation of welloff men with the image of their community in the eyes of others further fueled their desire to support an ethnic community. Concerned about gender and class hierarchies and the image of their community in the surrounding society, they also played a role in defining the meaning of belonging in Argentina. Despite retaining their foreign nationalities, affluent immigrants had particular ideas about the rights, duties, and privileges of Argentine citizenship. German-speaking and other immigrant philanthropists carved out a space for themselves and for their ethnic communities within a liberal regime in which other actors, such as state bureaucrats and religious leaders, were willing to share power: the system of charity and mutual aid that developed in Buenos Aires against the backdrop of a massive influx of European immigrants situated the Argentine state as only one of several actors, alongside religious bodies, Spanish-speaking philanthropists, and ethnic communities. The social welfare system that wealthy immigrants helped create enabled them to gain social status, fulfill what they perceived to be their obligations, and promote the idea of stratified but united ethnic communities. The broader outcome of these efforts, however, was that the self-declared leaders of various communities helped set the terms of citizenship and belonging in the country. As the system of

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social welfare evolved in the city from 1880 to 1930, people’s expectations about how their society should look in the years to come played a central role. The next chapter turns its attention to a similar set of actors who set out to construct a network of German-Spanish bilingual schools in Buenos Aires. Like the immigrant philanthropists who sought to solidify a place for ethnic communities in the provision of social welfare, those who ran schools carved out a space for themselves in a dialogue with the Argentine state. The educational project also advanced a masculine vision of community. At stake for German-speaking educators, however, was how the Argentine-born children of immigrant parents would relate to a German community and the Argentine nation.

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chapter 2

Children, Language, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society

; In 1898, Max Hopff sent a letter of complaint to the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, the largest German-language daily in Buenos Aires. He very publicly decried the financial and administrative connections between the German Lutheran congregation and the city’s main German-language school.1 Hopff and a group of concerned parents worried that the school “instead of [serving] a broad German community (Gemeinde), only maintains a German Lutheran one. . . . Germans of other denominations are excluded from participating in community affairs.”2 A few days later, Theodor Alemann made a similar argument in the city’s other Germanlanguage daily, the Argentinisches Tageblatt, writing that “only when the German school is completely undenominational and when it stands on the broad and solid foundation of the entire Germanic colony can it finally achieve the importance it deserves.”3 When Hopff, Alemann, and others founded the undenominational (konfessionslos) German School Association of Buenos Aires in August 1898, they announced that “the question of faith should not prevent children from attending a German school and that schools should not meddle with this moral issue.”4 Hopff’s initial letter provoked a dozen responses in the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung and began a debate among German speakers about the role of the Lutheran Church in what they described as the city’s German community. At the core of that discussion was a question about how Germanspeaking adults would ensure that a subsequent generation spoke two languages and how children would participate in a culturally plural society in the future. Hopff and others sought to construct a new kind of German community, anchored in the German language and Argentine citizenship rather than in denominational difference. In the aftermath of this public attack on the leadership of the Lutheran Church

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in German-language education, the number of German-Spanish bilingual schools in the city boomed; some of them catered to a secular community, while others continued to fuse ethnic and denominational identities. This chapter argues that immigrant teachers and their pupils broadened the definition of citizenship in Argentina. German-speaking teachers and parents advanced a vision of community, pluralism, and belonging through a growing network of German-Spanish bilingual schools. At the same time, however, class, gender, and denominational factors led some German-speaking families to become involved in German-language education and deterred others from doing the same. In the view of those who ran these schools and the parents who sent their children to them, pluralism and Argentine belonging could coexist. Parents and teachers wanted children and young adults to grow up in contact with both the German language and German culture and the Spanish language and Argentine civic education. Scholars of education in Argentina have typically taken a top-down approach in examining the imposition of nationalist education policies on immigrant groups.5 They have focused on how Argentine cultural and government elites reacted to immigrants’ efforts to create schools or how these Argentine elites tried to assimilate the children of immigrants through the rapidly growing network of public schools. Yet that historiographic approach overlooks the presence of immigrant-controlled schools outside the public system but which were nonetheless regulated by state authorities at the National Council of Education. The schools illustrate how the goals of bilingual education were both in competition with and complementary to the larger project taking hold in the city. Immigrantrun bilingual schools promoted linguistic and cultural diversity at a moment when Argentine school reformers and politicians were attempting to use public education to create a united, loyal, and culturally homogeneous citizenry.6 Argentine bureaucrats and politicians pushing for public education may have preferred all young Argentines to grow up speaking only Spanish, but in allowing bilingual schools to proliferate between 1880 and 1930, they implicitly accepted the lasting presence of cultural and linguistic pluralism. The struggle to create German-Spanish bilingual schools in Buenos Aires brings to light the competing identities that could be found more broadly among various immigrant groups and their Argentine children. All the immigrant-run schools in Buenos Aires at the turn of the twentieth century had much in common. No matter which foreign language they taught, the schools run by German, British, French, and Italian immigrants also taught the Spanish language and offered a significant

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amount of Argentine content. At all schools, the majority of pupils were Argentine citizens, and parents and educators recognized that most of these children would spend their future in the country. These efforts by immigrant adults—repeated across multiple groups—led to the rise of a pluralist society in Buenos Aires. Those adults worked to create ethnic communities while also firmly believing in their own and their children’s belonging in Argentine society. Many of the ideas behind this bilingual education were shaped by a male vision of family and community, similar to the case of the ­German-language social welfare institutions of the previous chapter. Women played an important role in organizing annual fundraisers for the schools, but it was a contribution subsumed within male-dominated institutions. The schools were run by nonprofit associations that had roughly as many male members as the institutions had pupils. The citizenship that this bilingual education promoted catered to men’s interests, and their efforts to influence families meant that they also sought to modify a core building block of the Argentine nation. Immigrant-run schools in Buenos Aires were labeled “German,” “Italian,” “French,” “British,” and “Jewish,” along with many other national, ethnic, or religious categories, both by immigrants and by Argentine authorities.7 These labels have had a lasting impact on the way that the general public and scholars think about ethnicity and education in Argentina. To label a school “German” masks the bilingualism and the hybrid identities of pupils and teachers as well as the Argentine focus of these institutions’ curricula. Such categories also discursively separate children, parents, and teachers from Argentine society and give weight to the assumption that national belonging and cultural pluralism cannot coexist. As Raanan Rein argues in the case of Jewish Latin Americans, to assimilate to or separate from the surrounding world is a false binary, and one that should be avoided.8 To counteract the implications of such labels, these schools should instead be described as “bilingual” or with terms such as “German-Spanish” or “Italian-Spanish.” Between 1880 and 1930, the children in Buenos Aires whose parents were born in Europe were rarely immigrants themselves. Yet many spoke two languages, and their identities and cultural practices played a crucial role in making Buenos Aires a culturally plural place. German-speaking parents may have sometimes called their children “Germans,” and Argentine nationalists sometimes described second-generation bilinguals as “immigrants” or “foreigners.” However, most children attending German-Spanish schools had been born in Argentina and were therefore citizens. The children at these schools had agency: in the extant materials, children’s voices are largely filtered through the eyes and writing

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of adults, but those adults nonetheless frequently discussed children as autonomous actors. Children chose whether to participate in adults’ conversations in German or Spanish. As they grew up, children decided whether they saw themselves as members of a German community, and they put forth their own ideas about Argentine belonging and the meaning of ethnicity. In 1884, federal law made elementary education compulsory in the city of Buenos Aires and in all territories under direct federal control (at that time called either territorios nacionales or gobernaciones) (see Map 1). This educational project advanced more slowly in the provinces where federal authority was filtered through provincial autonomy. The 1884 legislation made Argentina the fourth country in the Americas to implement a system of universal education; some states and provinces in the United States and Canada as well as Uruguay had done so in the preceding two decades. This educational project in Argentina was partially a response to the growing cultural and linguistic diversity brought about by immigration. Bureaucrats, educators, and politicians believed that schooling would help them craft the cultural character of the national body. It is worth noting that the legislation on education in Argentina, as was the case elsewhere, did not instantly create a system of universal attendance. Into the early twentieth century, the project had only advanced well in the federal capital of Buenos Aires and the province of Buenos Aires.9 The National Council of Education (created in 1882 as an agency within the Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction) was the principal expression of state educational authority in the federal capital of Buenos Aires and in national territories. In all provinces—including the province of Buenos Aires—the council provided some direction and funding to provincial ministries in order to address and improve the dismal enrollment and poor attendance rates. The First World War did not negatively affect German-language education in Argentina to the same degree that it did in Brazil, the United States, and Canada, largely because Argentina remained neutral throughout the war.10 In fact, there was a swelling of nationalist fervor among German speakers in Buenos Aires, and many people made boisterous proclamations about the fatherland and community unity.11 Other A ­ rgentines, however, often perceived Argentines of German heritage in categories of national difference.12 As mentioned in chapter 1, during the war some German speakers lost their jobs at firms owned by British and French immigrants or by British or French subsidiaries.13 These changes, in turn, affected the ability of some affluent German speakers to donate to bilingual schools and the ability of some middleincome families to pay tuition at a private school rather than sending their children to a public school.

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bilingual schools German speakers involved in education were a diverse group who took advantage of the space afforded to them by the Argentine state, benefited from the steadily increasing number of German-speaking immigrants to the city, made use of support from organizations in Germany, and set out to construct a permanently bilingual community within the Argentine national body. The number of those involved in education increased from approximately five hundred in 1890 to three thousand in 1930. They were adamant about having as many children of German heritage as possible attend their schools, even though they faced competition from the free and sometimes more conveniently located public schools as well as hundreds of Catholic schools in the city. The number of German-­ Spanish schools in the Argentine capital rose from four to ten in the same time period, with five more created in the immediate surroundings of the city, in the province of Buenos Aires.14 The number of children who attended German bilingual schools in the city and the nearby towns such as Quilmes in the province of Buenos Aires rose from approximately seven hundred in 1900 to twenty-two hundred in 1930.15 As a group, these school promoters fit into three broad categories. First, several thousand German-speaking fathers and other men financially supported the nonprofit German school associations that sprang up all over the city. The father of each child attending a German-­language school had to become a member of the association, and each of these members was required to make a small monthly membership contribution to the association in addition to the monthly tuition fees that families paid. Second, hundreds of German-speaking women organized massive fundraisers that covered a substantial part of the schools’ annual budgets. Within this informal group, mothers and other women interested in gaining social status through community work joined with those interested in promoting ethnic cohesion and group reproduction. Third, immigrant teachers educated in Germany were also members of this group, working to have their schools succeed in the eyes of both parents and Argentine authorities. Although they made up a heterogeneous group, the adults involved with the schools were of an elevated social class: regardless of wealth, they had been educated in Europe, which garnered a significant amount of social prestige in Argentina. The affluent school promoters who contributed to the schools’ operating budgets were the owners of bakeries, bookstores, import companies, and restaurants. Others were directors of German banks or companies, including the aforementioned Quilmes and Palermo breweries. The female fundraisers were affluent enough to be

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able to donate their time to annual school festivals, and in so doing they acquired prestige both in the community and in Argentine society at large. The requirements and demands of the Argentine state, the children, and the parents gave German-speaking school promoters a unifying goal: to foster the German language and elements of German culture (an objective they described as “preserving Germanness”) and concurrently to prepare pupils for their lives in Argentina. The National Council of Education required that almost one-third of all class hours at these schools be taught in Spanish, and that Argentine citizens teach certain core subjects. The Spanish-speaking teachers at these schools, therefore, played a role in establishing the relationship between German-language and Argentine civic education as well. Parents often applied pressure to ensure that the schools met the needs of the family economy and prepared their children for a future in Argentina. As children navigated between adults’ desires and their own world of bilingualism and Argentine belonging, they, too, forced the school promoters to adjust their goals and to accept the fact that they were running a school that was both German and Argentine. Linguistic and cultural boundaries did not isolate immigrant-run schools from the surrounding society. In the case of German-Spanish schools, approximately 77 percent of pupils were born in Argentina.16 While the children attending these schools spoke German in many situations, they were also fluent in Spanish. They lived in ethnically heterogeneous neighborhoods and even at school, they learned Spanish alongside German. Moreover, a significant proportion of “German” children had only one German-speaking parent. In addition, in the homes of affluent families with two German-speaking parents, the hired help were not always working-class German immigrants (despite the job placement efforts of the German Women’s Home and the German Charitable Society discussed in the previous chapter), in which case there would have been one or more additional adult Spanish speakers in the home. Moreover, approximately 21 percent of all pupils at these schools were not of German heritage at all.17 It is, therefore, worth stressing that a significant portion of the schools’ tuition fees and member contributions came from non-German-speaking parents, who sought to benefit from what they perceived as a positive and prestigious learning environment and to give their children access to a second language. German educators met the needs of this group by striking a balance between German language and culture on the one hand, and knowledge about Argentina on the other. Non-German families boosted the schools’ reputations, and Argentines with money and social status could disseminate information about the quality and value of German education in broader circles of Buenos Aires society. Catering to a significant portion of people outside their ethnic group was one way that German educators sheltered their

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institutions from social and political actors—particularly those in the National Council of Education—seeking to homogenize the city’s educational landscape. German-Spanish schools were not unique in catering to both immigrant and Argentine families. The leaders of the British Scholastic Association of the River Plate estimated that approximately six hundred of the twentyfour hundred pupils enrolled at the British schools within a 45-minute radius of the capital city in 1926 were not of British heritage, noting as well that even of those pupils who were of British heritage, many had only one British parent.18 Malcolm Robertson, the British minister plenipotentiary in Buenos Aires, worried about this transgression of boundaries. He explained in an unofficial report to the Education Department in London that “if the British schools reach a high level of efficiency, more Latin-Argentine parents will wish to send their children to them than at present. This will create an extremely delicate situation, since it is very doubtful whether a free immixture of Latin elements in the British schools will be good either for the British or the Latin pupils.” He added, “Such a situation, however, is unlikely to arise for some years to come, and Latin parents will always be deterred by the fact that the British schools are not free and by British disciplinary methods, which they think severe or even harsh.”19 Robertson’s view represents one point on a spectrum, however; the Scholastic Association’s statistics suggest that many English-speaking educators did not fear the “immixture of Latin elements” as much as Robertson did. French school promoters took a different tack. Of the 1,457 students attending secular French bilingual schools in Buenos Aires in 1912, only 16 percent had French parents.20 While German-speaking school promoters placed more weight on promoting their ethnicity to a new generation of children of German heritage than they did on promoting German culture to people of other backgrounds, French school promoters did the opposite. French-Spanish schools did cater to the children of French immigrants, but they mostly worked to promote the French language and culture to others. Although German, British, and French immigrants all benefited from the prestige of their countries of origin, France in particular occupied a prominent place in Argentine perceptions of the hierarchy of European cultures.21 Denominational concerns about ethnicity drove many of the ideas and activities of German-speaking school promoters. Children from Lutheran families made up the overwhelming majority of pupils. As discussed in the introduction, 58 percent of the German nationals who immigrated to Argentina between 1882 and 1930 were Lutherans, while 33 percent were Catholic, 1 percent were Jewish, and 8 percent had no declared religion or were of another religion.22 Yet on the eve of the First World War, Lutheran students at these schools outnumbered Catholics at a ratio

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of more than three to one.23 For pupils born in Germany, this ratio becomes even greater: of the 142 German-born students at the four largest German-Spanish schools in Buenos Aires on the eve of the war, 82 percent were Lutheran, 15 percent Catholic, and 3 percent Jewish.24 One of the principal goals of German-Spanish bilingual schools was to ensure the generational reproduction of language and culture, and these attendance data suggest that the people who believed that schools filled this role were by and large Lutherans. It is also worth noting that Jewish German children were more likely to attend some German-Spanish bilingual schools in Buenos Aires than others. The Cangallo School, founded by Max Hopff and Theodor Alemann in 1898, was a particularly common choice. Its secularism, interest in fostering the German language and culture, and relatively less interest in Imperial Germany, appear to have appealed to Jewish German parents. German-speaking Catholics were underrepresented at German-­Spanish schools because they had other educational options. The German-­ speaking priests of the Society of the Divine Word founded the Colegio Guadalupe in the city of Buenos Aires in 1901, and they ran other Catholic schools in the provinces of Entre Ríos and Santa Fe as well. In addition, a female German congregation, the Sisters of Christian Charity, founded the Colegio Mallinckrodt in Buenos Aires in 1905. In 1923, the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit, a female order linked to the Society of the Divine Word, founded a school in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores, which taught German to those who requested it. These religious congregations were based in Germany, and Argentina was just one of several places where they carried out missionary activities. At all three of these Catholic schools in the Argentine capital, a considerable number of pupils had German last names. Moreover, the Germanspeaking congregations that ran these schools were closely connected to the city’s German Catholic association and parish.25 These three Catholic schools only taught a small amount of German, but they were run by German speakers. While German-speaking Lutherans only had the choice between Spanish-language public schools and German-Spanish bilingual schools, German-speaking Catholics could also consider Catholic schools (run by German-speaking Catholics or otherwise), which further diverted the children of German-speaking Catholics away from German-Spanish bilingual schools. French religious congregations, similarly, ran schools where the teaching was in French and that attracted the children of some French immigrants.26 Yet, as Hernán Otero notes, French Catholic schools “prioritized a denominational rather than an ethnic line of education” and catered to Catholics of many ethnic backgrounds.27 Italian missionaries also played a central role in Italianlanguage education in Argentina. According to David Aliano, in the first

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third of the twentieth century “nearly half of the schools offering courses in Italian language and culture were run by the Salesian Society and its sister order, the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.”28

language and national belonging Through their educational network, German-speaking school promoters tried to reconcile children’s linguistic practices and citizenship with their own ideas about language and heritage. They realized that every child was fully bilingual, often tending toward Spanish, and that the majority would identify as Argentine, German-Argentine, or German-speaking Argentine. As a result, bilingual schools became sites where immigrant educators attempted to construct their own definition of national belonging. They accepted the civic and linguistic requirements of the National Council of Education and at the same time promoted a linguistically diverse society. Several studies suggest that “German schools” helped German speakers in Argentina promote a degree of cultural isolation.29 Nevertheless, that reasoning overlooks the Spanish-language and Argentine content of these establishments as well as the pupils with one or no German parents. Adriana Brodsky notes that, in the case of Sephardic Jewish schools in Buenos Aires between 1920 and 1970, “the prevailing view of these schools exclusively as sites focused on preserving immigrant identity is perhaps too simplistic.”30 Instead proposing that these schools fostered and reflected multiple and complementary identities, she writes, “by attending these schools, Sephardic children not only learned their prayers but also became part of their communities, their multi-ethnic neighborhoods, and their nation. Close evaluation reveals that Sephardic schools were an integral part of a discursive and ‘performative’ field that allowed for many forms of identification, none contradictory and all valid.”31 German-Spanish bilingual schools were hybrid spaces. Figure 5 shows a classroom at the Barracas School in 1911 decorated with, among other things, a portrait of the independence hero José de San Martín. In the school’s annual reports, sent to all members, pictures of school spaces adorned with Argentine figures such as San Martín or Manuel Belgrano or with the German kaiser, as well as with both the Argentine and German flags, were common. The belief in being both German and Argentine could be seen in a number of other ways. In a commemorative publication from 1899, the directors of the Cangallo School—one of the largest German-­Spanish schools in Buenos Aires—wrote that rather than educating children

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Figure 5. A “German” Classroom at the Barracas School, 1911, including a portrait of the Argentine liberator José de San Martín. source : Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Barracas al Norte (Buenos Aires: J. Peuser, 1912), 11.

“especially for Germany,” they sought to “raise them in a German way for their Argentine fatherland.”32 Max Hopff, the director of the Cangallo School, expressed a similar goal in 1908, informing members and parents that the school’s “primary goal is to maintain in children everything that we see as specifically German. Above all we strive to maintain in children our beautiful, strong, and majestic language along with German knowledge and German activity.” He also noted that “it cannot be ignored that the pupils have a right to demand the knowledge and skills that are necessary for their struggle for survival here. Since with few exceptions all pupils will seek their livelihood in this country, our teaching goals attempt to cater to these needs from the beginning.”33 In a Spanish-­ language article in the same commemorative publication, an anonymous author noted, “It is true that we want to speak to our pupils in the language of their parents so that they know how to express their most intimate feelings with their families. But it is also true that we want them to master with equal perfection the rich and harmonious language of Cervantes and Lope de Vega for the pupils’ civic and patriotic life as well

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as for their future prosperity.”34 In pursuing these two goals, the school promoters asserted a place for both cultural pluralism and national belonging in the city’s education system. They also thought actively about the future by expressing their expectations for children as they grew up. German speakers were not alone in their push for a more culturally plural definition of the nation, and it is instructive to note similar ideas held by many other immigrants. Sandra McGee Deutsch contends that “Jewish women helped build a pluralist nationalism and spread it in schools and other arenas. Argentine Jewish women were foreigners as well as disseminators of national culture, insiders as well as outsiders.”35 Jewish Argentine women had their own ideas about the nation and claimed a space in the Argentine national body, even if nationalist discourse left little space for Jews with racialized or religious arguments. Like Jewish women with diverse regional and national origins, male and female British school promoters embarked on a project to insert themselves and their children into a culturally plural nation. F.R.G. Duckworth, a British school inspector who was invited to Argentina at the behest of local English-speaking educators, reported in 1926 that the teachers he met “claimed that children of British descent, inheriting a distinctive temperament and outlook, will actually become better Argentine citizens by receiving an education specially adapted to that temperament and outlook, than if they attended Latin-Argentine Schools (Government schools) where the training is upon quite different lines.”36 Taking another tack, Presbyterian minister Douglas Bruce told the children of Scottish and other British immigrants in a sermon he delivered to Boy Scouts and Girl Guides in Hurlingham, a town just outside the capital in the province of Buenos Aires, that they were, “by Argentine law, Argentines, and later on the boys will have to serve their year in the Argentine Army. You are growing up as ‘hombres de dos países’—citizens of two countries. How are you going to be the best citizens of both countries?” The solution he recommended was not to choose between them or to say that one was better than the other.37 In Duckworth’s view, children inherited their British temperament from their parents, and as a result this group of Argentine citizens should embrace that difference. Conversely, Bruce believed that children grew up with a certain hybridity, and they needed to embrace both their British and Argentine belonging. These German, Jewish, and British ideas about squaring pluralism with citizenship support Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein’s analysis of ethnic leaders in Brazil and Argentina. Lesser and Rein contend that leaders consistently assert that “their groups represent the best citizens because they combine national and foreign traits.”38 Community leaders did not assert that German, Jewish, or British Argentines were the best kind of Argentines but rather that Argentines whose parents were immigrants

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should embrace their duality. Since they were of German, Jewish, or British heritage, the best way to be good Argentines was to embrace their Germanness, Jewishness, or Britishness. Moreover, German and British immigrants’ embrace of their Europeanness could be read as an appropriation of elite Argentine discourse about preferred immigrant groups. German and British educators emphasized the contributions of their groups to Argentina as a way to situate their cultural heritage and their educational projects in mainstream nationalist thinking in Buenos Aires and to remind others of their elevated position within the ethno-racial hierarchy envisioned by some Argentine nationalists. In 1908, Reinhold Gabert, the soon-to-be director of a school in the Buenos Aires suburb of Belgrano, estimated that approximately one hundred thousand ethnic Germans (Deutsch-Germanen) lived in Argentina, but he lamented, “The number would increase considerably if a great proportion of the descendants of Germanic immigrants had not given up their mother tongue and had they not been submerged into the Latin population (Romanentum).”39 Revealing a great deal about children’s preferences and agency, Gabert argued that it was important to use German in schools because “German is actually only a language used in schools. It is not even a language of the family because most children born in Argentina use it at most with their parents, while siblings almost always speak Spanish with one another. . . . German is limited to a smaller sphere of usage and is, as a result, at a strong disadvantage to Spanish.”40 Similarly, in 1909, after teaching at the Germania School (the city’s oldest Germanlanguage school) for six years, Heinrich Säger published a pedagogical guide proposing several ways to improve German-language schooling in the city. He worried that recently arrived teachers from Germany were not used to the “bilingualism of our pupils” and reasoned that teachers needed to adapt their methods in order to better deal with children who lived in a predominantly Spanish-speaking society.41 Children complicated the meaning of German ethnicity and Argentine belonging in other ways as well. At the German Teachers’ Association’s annual meeting in April 1921, Dr. Wilhelm Ruge, speaking from more than fifteen years of experience as the director of the Germania School, wrote that the “German-Argentine” youth should benefit from the strengths of both German and Argentine curricula in order “to grow up under German discipline and be raised with equal love for both countries.”42 During his tenure as director of the Belgrano School in the 1920s, Wilhelm Keiper—who worked, at different times, for both the Argentine government and the German envoy in Buenos Aires—wrote, “The German schools in Argentina know the goal and the limits of their effectiveness. . . . They will have to demonstrate that they have the strength to complete the task given to them: to find harmony between a German

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education and the requirements and needs of the country on whose soil the schools stand and which is the homeland of their pupils.”43 These ideas were expressed internally to other German speakers rather than to Argentine education officials, and it stands to reason that they reflected a genuine desire to find harmony between German education and the pupils’ Argentine homeland. Similarly, in an article in the short-lived monthly publication of the German Teachers’ Association, Schule und Haus (School and House, 1920–1923), Wilhelm Keiper told fellow educators and parents that in addition to their wishes to teach children about the language, culture, history, and geography of their homeland, the Argentine government had similar requirements that the children, as “future citizens of their own country,” be taught those things about Argentina.44 Because of these conflicting interests, he concluded that “an education in the ‘purely German’ sense is only possible on the rarest occasions. German schools in Argentina, just like the purely Argentine schools, educate future Argentine citizens. But at the same time, German schools give children the inheritance of German intellectual traditions. That is the ‘German education’ that they can offer.”45 Educators were very aware that the children were Argentines and therefore made efforts to prepare this new generation for a future in the country. Nevertheless, these teachers also wanted to offer the children “as much German influence as possible.”46 German speakers’ frequent references to Argentine citizenship are one indication of the educators’ belief that ethnic (German) and civic (Argentine) interests were not mutually exclusive. Malcolm Robertson expressed a similar opinion about British schools in the country in 1926. He wrote to a British member of parliament that “the great majority of the children of British parents in this country will remain and have their livings here. It should be our object to train them in British ideals and give them such a British education as will make them fit and worthy citizens of the country in which they live and work, citizens who will, however, have a close affiliation with the country of origin of their parents.”47 In both this British and the previous German example, immigrant educators explicitly discussed Argentine citizenship. Yet their interest in fostering the English and German languages, respectively, and in teaching children about their parents’ home countries in Europe reveal the importance to the school promoters of pushing for a more pluralist vision of Argentine citizenship. In addition to preparing children for their future in Argentina, ­German-speaking educators, parents, and members of the school associations engaged in a number of civic educational projects, particularly by promoting the commemoration of Argentine holidays. In the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, school promoters publicly invited parents and other

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members of the community to attend these “national celebrations” (National­feier).48 The Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, a Lutheran periodical published in Argentina, proudly reported on the “care” and “skill” with which the pupils spoke Spanish at the July 9, 1896 celebrations and noted that “the impressive event ended with the Argentine national anthem.”49 At the official opening of the Germania School in June 1903, the school was decorated with Argentine and German flags, and a German singing society in Buenos Aires (the Deutscher Männergesangverein) sang both the Argentine and German anthems. Speeches were given in both Spanish and German.50 Many German-language schools took a great interest in the 1910 centennial celebration of the May Revolution, which had begun the Argentine war of independence a hundred years earlier. There was a citywide railway and agricultural show in Buenos Aires that pupils from public, Catholic, and bilingual schools attended. In addition, many schools organized their own festivities with songs and speeches. 51 Similar activities took place during the 1916 centennial celebration of the Congress of Tucumán and the declaration of independence. One of the Argentine teachers at the Cangallo School, Dr. Cadelago, spoke to the children about “their duties as future citizens,” and the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung reported on his speech as a newsworthy event. At this gathering, pupils read patriotic poetry and sang Argentine songs. The German-Spanish schools’ support of these events suggests that schools went far beyond paying lip service to nationalist regulation. Children at the city’s Jewish schools had a similar experience at the turn of the twentieth century.52 Sandra McGee Deutsch contends that the celebration of Argentine holidays at Jewish schools and other Jewish institutions in Argentina “reinforced their [children’s and adults’] links to Argentina and its liberal project.”53 Like Jewish Argentines, German speakers embraced important markers of the Argentine national narrative while fostering the presence of ethnic communities in Argentine society. Lilia Ana Bertoni argues that the Argentine national holidays of May 25 and July 9 emerged as a response to immigrants’ commemorations of the national holidays of their countries of origin.54 Some Argentine nationalists perceived the rise of ethnic festivals in the 1880s as a threat, because these non-Argentine events would supposedly overshadow the national ones. As a result, nationalists focused on children and viewed the celebrations of the Argentine national holidays as an instrument to mobilize popular enthusiasm.55 It was in the 1880s that singing the national anthem and flag-raising ceremonies became part of daily educational rituals.56 Nevertheless, by actively participating in Argentine acts of commemoration as well as some European ones, immigrant school promoters appeared to disagree with these Argentine nationalists.

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Immigrants’ perspectives on commemoration also mattered. These schools promoted an idea of a nation that allowed for ethnic heterogeneity, and due to its repetition at the many bilingual schools run by various groups in Buenos Aires, this idea had an impact on how some of the residents of Buenos Aires and young citizens of Argentina defined the nation. Bilingual schools promoted German language and culture alongside preparing pupils for their future in Argentina; directors described this as their “dual task.” They not only modified ethnic interests to fit with the surrounding society but also pushed for a broader definition of national belonging. German and other immigrant teachers educated tens of thousands of Argentine citizens in two languages and with curricular content that focused, in part, on Europe. This immigrant-led project adds to the historiographic account of Argentine nationalism, particularly the dominant Hispanism of the early decades of the twentieth century, as something that opposed cultural pluralism. While Argentine elites might have made such declarations at some points, many people living in Argentina had ideas that challenged this assimilationist nationalism.

gender and education The goal of immigrant parents and educators of broadening the definition of Argentine citizenship and pushing for a place for cultural pluralism also had an important gender component. Immigrant men controlled these schools, and the promotion of German culture was in many ways structured around masculine ideas about lineage and reproduction. The school associations often explicitly appealed to fathers (rather than both parents) for support, or discussed the homeland of the children’s fathers, specifically. Families were less willing to pay for the private education of their daughters, and boys outnumbered girls at these schools by a ratio of three to two.57 Gender disparities could also be found more widely at schools in Argentina and throughout the Western world in this period. Nevertheless, in the case of immigrants in Buenos Aires, these statistics reveal important ideas about community and ethnicity as well as the way that parents thought about the future. Exogamous marriage patterns and children of mixed ethnic heritage (regardless of whether their parents were married) also had an impact on the cultural background of the pupils at German-Spanish bilingual schools. German and Austrian men in Buenos Aires, like other immigrant groups, outnumbered women by a ratio of almost two to one. This statistical gulf meant that many German-speaking men had children with nonGerman-speaking women. Indeed, in the first decade of the twentieth century, 62 percent of German women in Buenos Aires married German

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men, but only 49 percent of German men married German women. 58 The majority of the remaining marriages were with Argentines, Italians, Spaniards, Britons, and Uruguayans rather than German speakers from elsewhere in Europe or born in the Southern Cone. According to the 1910 municipal census, 35 percent of babies born in 1909 who had a German father did not have a German mother, and 30 percent of babies who had a German mother did not have a German father. All told, of babies born to German parents in the city in 1909, 49 percent had only one German parent and 51 percent had two.59 According to schools’ annual reports, the proportion of “German-Argentine” Catholic pupils was noticeably higher than the proportion of exclusively German-born Catholic children.60 Given the group exogamy noted above, it is likely that this Catholicism came from the non-German-speaking parents. Male school promoters often described their efforts as “preserving Germanness.” However, given the sex ratios among German speakers in Buenos Aires and among pupils at German-Spanish bilingual schools, preserving Germanness through schooling became a tactic to preserve male lineage. In many countries in the Western world, male authority in the home buttressed male authority in society.61 Yet for immigrant men, their relationship to the culture of the home and to the culture of society at large differed. By running their own schools and fostering German language and culture, men created a network of institutions that helped them normalize the relationship between home and society. The language in the following poem, by Arthur Korn, also indicates a belief in the importance of men in transmitting ethnicity. This poem, originally written and published for a German-speaking audience in Hungary, was the first text in the schoolbook for fifth-grade German instruction published by the German Teachers’ Association of Buenos Aires in 1925. The poem warns young readers that if they reject their German ethnicity, they will not honor their father’s name and will not earn their mother’s love. It suggests that a child who wards off this threat and embraces his ethnicity engages in an act of honor specifically organized around paternity. Presumably, no German speaker in Buenos Aires doubted that mothers were crucial in transmitting German ethnicity to their children. However, many believed that a father alone could do so with the help of bilingual schools. “Mahnung”62

“Warning”

Wer sein Vaters Namen nicht ehrt, ist seiner Mutter nicht wert; und wer sein Deutschtum verleugnen kann, der ist ein Wicht, der ist kein Mann. Hör meine Mahnung, die immer ist: Gedenke, daß du ein Deutscher bist.

He who does not honor his father’s name, Is not worthy of his mother; And he who can disown his Germanness, He is a wretch, he is no man. Hear my warning, which is always: Remember that you are a German.

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Female pupils nevertheless occupied an important position in this largely male project of transmitting German ethnicity to children. In promoting its separate female stream in 1907, the directors of the Germania School wrote that “a German education for girls is of utmost importance for the preservation and maintenance of Germandom abroad because the language of the family conforms almost without exception to women. As a result, our girls’ school receives special attention.” These directors added that “it is regrettable that many affluent parents take their daughters out of school before age 14, whereas daughters of the educated classes in Germany attend school until the age of 16 or 17.”63 Similarly, in his 1909 publication, Heinrich Säger wrote that “our female pupils are in fact the bearers of Germanness; they are the future mothers who will speak German with their children. We need to give these mothers the possibility to present themselves as a model to their children.”64 The school promoters’ central focus on equipping children for their future life in Argentina typically made reference to matters of employment. Yet in a society and period in which few women participated in the paid labor market, families also had other motivations. A desire to maintain a sustainable German community in Buenos Aires into the future drove the interest in fostering the German-language education of Argentine girls of German heritage. In his 1909 critique of his former school in Buenos Aires, Heinrich Säger was concerned that the failing of students would discourage attendance in the higher grades, and he thought that young women were in a particularly vulnerable position. Like Keiper, he believed that young women played an especially important role in maintaining a German community in the Buenos Aires of the future. Figure 6 depicts a scene from the Girls’ School, which was part of the Belgrano School. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the school placed boys and girls in separate classes, and the curriculum differed. As the image shows, the girls’ curriculum included cooking lessons. Although this built on international pedagogical trends of taking distinct approaches to men’s and women’s education, the case of an immigrant group doing so at a private school was also part and parcel of Säger’s and Keiper’s interest in training future German-Argentine mothers.

affording ethnicity Constructing a network of German-Spanish schools in Buenos Aires proved to be a costly endeavor, one that excluded a great number of German speakers. However, affluent men and women attempted to incorporate the children of working-class immigrants, by raising funds and offering lower tuition rates to some families. In promoting a

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Figure 6. Cooking Lessons in the Girls’ School, Belgrano School, 1927. source : Keiper, Die Belgrano Schule. The author thanks the Asociación Escolar Goethe for permission to reproduce this image.

German-language space within the city’s educational network, the school promoters fostered the idea that a community should strive to ensure its own longevity. In their view, the future makeup of that community depended on having as many Argentines of German heritage as possible move through the city’s German-Spanish bilingual schools. The revenue for school operating budgets came from tuition fees, donations, monthly member contributions, and small subsidies from the German Foreign Office. The funding models for the schools, in particular the fundraisers that immigrant women organized at each institution’s school festival forged bonds of community for those who chose to participate, and they were occasions where German speakers performed their ethnicity. Theodor Alemann, the secretary of the Cangallo School’s board of directors, reminded members in 1920 that “these festivals not only contribute to the continued prosperity of the school, they also create an ever stronger bond of German unity.”65 At the events, women sold products such as baked goods donated by local German-speaking bakers and beer donated by the Quilmes and Palermo breweries.66 Enrolling a child at a bilingual school was a choice, and it was one that many parents in the target demographic did not make. Tuition fees ranged from 8 to 15 pesos per month, depending on age, in the early

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twentieth century and from 15 to 40 pesos per month in the 1920s, depending on the school.67 To put these numbers in perspective, the monthly cost of a subscription to the daily Deutsche La Plata Zeitung rose from 2 pesos in 1901 to 2.50 pesos in 1930. Teachers’ wages ranged from 40 to 210 pesos per month in 1901 at one German-Spanish school in the city, and their wages had risen to between 165 and 500 pesos per month at that and another school in the early 1920s.68 Pastors of the Buenos Aires Lutheran congregation fared better, earning approximately 500 pesos per month in 1901 and 830 pesos per month in 1930.69 The highest wages paid by book publishers in the city in 1909 were 80 pesos per month for women and 240 pesos for men, and the highest monthly salaries for women in textile factories in the same year were 200 pesos, while men earned as much as 500 pesos.70 A child’s tuition, therefore, cost as much as 20 percent of a young teacher’s salary, 10 percent of a female book publishing worker’s salary, or 2 percent of a pastor’s salary. These costs likely put bilingual schools out of reach for many workers, especially those with more than one or two children, or it made those families reliant on the subsidies offered by the schools. Revenue from member contributions and female-run fundraisers enabled the school promoters to lower tuition fees to a rate that made German-language education more accessible for a larger group of parents, and it gave the schools’ leaders the latitude to offer discounted or free tuition to the children of some workers. Parents had to apply for a fee reduction on an annual basis. At the Germania School in 1911, 1915, and 1919, between 18 and 25 percent of all pupils paid a reduced rate of tuition or nothing at all, and at the Cangallo School in 1916, 18 percent of pupils paid a reduced rate.71 Associations reported regularly on this aspect of charity that they offered to working-class families, and it likely served as an effective tactic in ensuring that the wealthier members of each association made larger annual contributions and generous donations at the schools’ annual festivals. Another component of the schools’ financial model were the fundraisers organized by the wives of the affluent male members of the school associations. The female organizing committees often had an honorary chairwoman, who was typically the wife of a wealthy businessman or the wife of the German envoy or consul. The Cangallo School received 10 to 40 percent of its annual budget, and the Barracas School in the industrial neighborhood of Barracas, in the southern part of the city, often 50 to 70 percent of its funding, from these annual weekend fundraisers. Other German-Spanish schools relied more on tuition fees, but in the 1920s they also adopted the model of female-organized festivals to finance themselves. The 1921 festival at the Germania School, designed to create a reserve fund, was one of the most successful fundraisers of

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any German-language institution in Buenos Aires; the women organizers collected $50,325.72 Unlike the fundraisers for German-language social welfare institutions, school festivals represented the interests of specific neighborhoods rather than attempting to create a single German community across the city. The Cangallo and Germania Schools, located in the neighborhoods of Balvanera and Recoleta, respectively, in the city center, garnered support from different liberal and conservative groups. German-speaking directors of large businesses made large donations to the Barracas School, whose pupils often came from working-class German families in that industrial neighborhood.73 The complementary nature of women’s and men’s involvement in the funding of the schools is noteworthy. The women organized events that brought parents, children, and association members together and thereby fortified members’ voluntary support of the schools. Women worked at a variety of income-generating stands, running games as well as selling baked goods, coffee, and flowers. This labor, the pre-festival organization, and the donations that women solicited from men during the events, demonstrate women’s important contribution. As was the case at the German Hospital, the men on the schools’ boards of directors always took the time to thank the women for their “devoted and tireless work.” After the 1920 festival, the directors of the Cangallo School thanked women for “their masterful service for the benefit of the school.”74 For their part, men ran the school associations, managed the finances, paid membership fees, and chose to donate money to the female-run festivals. Fathers of children had to be members, and all associations had other male members who were not parents of current pupils but who joined voluntarily. Children played an important role in the annual fundraisers. They decorated their schools following a theme, which often involved different variations on an old German town. Figure 7, from an annual school fundraiser at the Cangallo School, illustrates a German village. This quaint town in central Europe was presented to children living in the booming city of Buenos Aires, which by 1914 had almost 1.6 million inhabitants.75 These festivals were a way for parents and other school promoters to present symbols of Europe to a younger generation and have the younger group perform a narrative of cultural heritage. This pageantry constructed ideas and images of a homeland that the children had never seen and that their parents remembered selectively. The caption accompanying the German town in Figure 7 included a “Gypsy corner” (on the lower left). This inclusion—alongside a game stand, post office, cigar and chocolate stand, police station, and prison tower—highlighted to some extent the cultural heterogeneity of central Europe, which was perhaps of particular interest to the organizers who were fostering their own image of Germandom in multiethnic Buenos Aires.

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Figure 7. Cangallo School Festival, 1917. An old German town with post office, police station, prison tower, and “gypsy corner” as well as cigar, chocolate, and game stands for the festival. source : Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires über das Vereinsjahr 1917 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1918).

These festivals could also be sites of hybridity, as seen in Figure 8, depicting the 1916 festival at the Cangallo School. In this picture, which school directors labeled “Argentine Rancho” in the annual report they sent out to members, the teenaged boys are dressed as gauchos, while many of the teenaged girls are dressed either as “chinas” (the women who accompany gauchos) or in traditional Bavarian or Austrian clothing. While the embrace of a symbol of Argentine national identity is noteworthy, so too is the choice of the Bavarian and Austrian dirndl. Rather than reflecting the regional origins of the girls’ parents (given that only a small proportion of the German-speaking immigrants in Buenos Aires came from southern Germany or Austria), the choice transformed a piece of regional clothing into a symbol of Germanness. Figure 9, finally, depicts a group of young men in Argentine cavalry uniforms; it shows both an Argentine and a German flag as well as an Argentine coat of arms on the wall. Much as do the youth in Figure 8, this picture shows the Argentine-­German hybridity that shaped daily experiences at these schools. As Adriana Brodsky notes, Sephardic schools that celebrated both the Argentine Domingo Sarmiento and the Zionist Theodor Herzl, and that

Figure 8. Argentine Rancho at the Cangallo School Festival, 1916. source : Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires über das Vereinsjahr 1916 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1917).

Figure 9. Argentine Horse Races at the Cangallo School Festival, 1916. source : Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires über das Vereinsjahr 1916 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1917).

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had children sing more than one national anthem, were examples of how “Sephardic immigrants constructed and acted out their Argentine and Jewish identities; Sephardic religious schools were instrumental in helping immigrants become Argentines.”76 Through similar acts at these GermanSpanish schools, educators and student participants also navigated between Argentine national belonging and an interest in German heritage. Rather than fostering the preservation of an isolated enclave or revealing ways in which German adults tried to create a sense of Heimat (homeland) abroad, the hybridity of these school festivals indicates an interest in being both Argentine and German. At their school festivals, parents, educators, and members of the associations demonstrated a strong interest in cultural and generational reproduction. German-Spanish bilingual schools relied heavily on people who believed that there was such a thing as a German community in Buenos Aires, and in many ways these institutions helped construct and maintain the idea of the community that supported them. Discussions of community and of children’s Germanness motivated a group of people to construct tangible institutions to which women and men contributed labor, time, and money.

conclusion The German-Spanish schools of Buenos Aires were part of a broader pattern in the city. Taken together, the activities and objectives of immigrant school promoters of many backgrounds helped create a new equilibrium between citizenship and cultural pluralism in Argentina, even if nationalists and nativist elites announced otherwise. The immigrant educators who ran the German-Spanish bilingual schools challenged the meaning of citizenship, striking a balance between their own identity on the one hand and children’s linguistic abilities and legal status in Argentina on the other. While parents and educators may have been thinking about their German heritage, they largely oriented their behavior toward the future. In staking out a place for German culture in a pluralist society, adults and children played a role in shaping the future meaning of Argentine citizenship and belonging. Through these schools, the self-defined community leaders, teachers, and parents attempted to ensure the generational reproduction of ethnicity by drawing on the support of what they called a German community. Denominational identity influenced German-speaking Lutherans more than Catholics to send their children to these schools, and the community that this education fostered was often a Protestant one. School promoters established themselves at the head of a German-speaking community, and

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their endeavors helped them to garner prestige in the surrounding society and to maintain at least partially German-speaking households. Germanspeaking women raised money for the schools and strengthened the sense of community in order to support the institutions. Education, like social welfare, became a way to construct a specific kind of community largely controlled by affluent men and dependent on the support of women. The leaders of schools and social welfare institutions were concerned about the internal workings of families, believing that families were the necessary pillars of their communities. As chapter 1 demonstrated, leaders felt that the male breadwinner would establish stable families. The school promoters of this chapter instead took an interest in the linguistic abilities and cultural identities of the children of immigrants. The histories of immigration and education in Buenos Aires were interwoven. School attendance rose in conjunction with the arrival of millions of immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The emergent system of public education included strategies to shape the cultural and linguistic character of a new generation of citizens. However, public officials also permitted immigrant-run bilingual schools to foster a more pluralist idea of the nation. The next chapter will turn to the state regulation of these schools and immigrant cooperation with Argentine civic nationalism. The power of the National Council of Education set the tone for how German-speaking educators navigated between community interests and Argentine belonging.

chapter 3

The Language of Citizenship Curriculum and the Argentine State

; Margarita Paula Ruge was born in Buenos Aires in 1912. From an early age, she attended the Germania School. When she was fourteen, she successfully passed the sixth-grade exit exam (examen general de enseñanza primaria) and received an Argentine elementary school diploma, like tens of thousands of other children at the city’s public, private, and Catholic schools. She did not, however, end her studies there. She remained at the school, enrolling in a two-year program that would give her a German secondary school (Realschule) diploma.1 Her older brother, Karl Heinz Ruge, followed a different path. After completing the sixth-grade exit exam, he enrolled in the Argentine stream of courses offered by the Germania School so as to be able to receive an Argentine secondary school diploma. In 1923, he took an exam at a nearby public high school (­colegio nacional) affiliated with his school and successfully completed his secondary education.2 For both siblings, the first diploma they received, the elementary school diploma, was from the Argentine National Council of Education. They were then free to study toward a foreign degree completely outside the Argentine system, as Margarita Paula did, or to continue in the national program but under the umbrella of a bilingual private school, as was the case for Karl Heinz. The case of the Ruge siblings sheds light on an important yet overlooked aspect of the history of education in Argentina in the early twentieth century, and one that illustrates how immigrant adults and bilingual Argentines negotiated questions of belonging with government officials. Often using the language of citizenship, Argentine nationalists discussed schooling as a means to attain a united, loyal, and ethnically homogeneous nation. The Ruge siblings’ trajectories demonstrate how parents and educators actively supported Argentine education while simultaneously pushing for linguistic diversity. They did this just as

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Spanish-speaking politicians, bureaucrats, and writers were articulating a linguistic ideology that propounded a cultural definition of national belonging. The proponents of the emergent Hispanic nationalism of Argentina (Hispanismo) viewed language as much more than a means of communication and argued that it was an expression of a nation’s soul. That vision of supposedly innate ethno-racial traits came to supplant the previous liberal version that saw culture in less essentialist terms.3 The increasingly common view of the Argentine nation as an ethnocultural unit (either one that already existed or one that had to be created) was part of an international trend. As Rogers Brubaker notes, over the course of the twentieth century state builders have believed that “polity and culture should be congruent: A distinctive national culture should be diffused throughout the territory of the state, but it should stop at the frontiers of the state. There should be cultural homogeneity within states, but sharp cultural boundaries between them.” The dominant thinking has focused on the idea that “cultural nationality and legal citizenship should be coextensive.” Yet Brubaker also notes that the term nationstate is more aspirational than an accurate description.4 Despite these Argentine and international visions of cultural homogeneity, immigrant educators in Buenos Aires had different ideas about cultural pluralism and Argentine belonging. Drawing from Argentine governmental and German-language sources, this chapter argues that bilingual schools pushed for a pluralist definition of citizenship and undermined many of the assimilationist goals expressed by a small group of Argentine elites. It reveals how both Argentine definitions of belonging and German speakers’ visions of Germanness could be more complex than much of the existing historiography on either education or German immigration to the country suggests. This approach contributes to a broader discussion of education and state authority in Argentina by highlighting how state officials attempted to confront cultural pluralism and how immigrants embraced and modified these efforts. Through a series of policies, the National Council of Education ensured that bilingual schools taught the Spanish language and a number of Argentine subjects that would equip children with civic knowledge for Argentine society. Yet that same system of regulation allowed immigrant educators to teach children a second language and other topics related to their parents’ countries of origins. The educational system of Buenos Aires between 1880 and 1930 involved a spectrum of state control, cooperation, and ethnic autonomy. The goals and activities of bilingual private schools conflicted with official descriptions of the role of schools in assimilating the children of immigrants. Bureaucrats in the National Council of Education ensured

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that immigrant-controlled schools in the city taught a significant number of Spanish-language courses, as well as courses focused on Argentine history and geography. As it happened, immigrant school promoters agreed with these goals, and it was therefore easy for the National Council of Education to assert this control. At the same time, the bureaucrats striving to create a public educational system also appeared willing to let bilingual schools teach in foreign languages and to offer courses that gave ­Argentine-born children additional knowledge about the history, geography, and political system of a European country. Into the 1920s, the goal of universal education—whether at public, Catholic, or bilingual schools—that was espoused by education reformers only applied to elementary schooling (six years); few young people went on to secondary schools (at either a colegio nacional or an escuela normal [normal school]). Although politicians and education reformers spoke about the benefits of public schools, they were also aware that they could not instantly create the infrastructure to serve every child. Even in the prosperous city of Buenos Aires, bureaucrats often complained about the lack of school buildings, certified teachers, blackboards, and desks. These ongoing deficits in the public system were a factor that encouraged state officials to permit immigrant-run bilingual schools. Those institutions undermined the narrow definition of cultural citizenship embedded in the government’s new educational project, but bilingual schools met enough of the general requirements of the National Council of Education to survive. The widespread existence of immigrant-run schools in Buenos Aires had much in common with the bilingual education offered in North America in the same time period. In jurisdictions such as Texas, Ohio, New York, and Ontario, where immigrants or second-generation bilinguals had gained influence, a system of foreign-language public education emerged in the mid-nineteenth century.5 In North America, state or provincial legislation enabled public school boards (led by locally elected trustees of many ethnic backgrounds) to teach in a language other than English or to teach in both English and a second language. Although similarly allowing the promotion of other languages, government bureaucracies in North America had greater control because bilingual ­education—with the exception of Catholic parochial schools in parts of the United States—took place within the public system. By contrast, public schools in Buenos Aires taught exclusively in Spanish, and immigrants were allowed to operate bilingual private schools parallel to rather than within the public system. This point of divergence with North America allowed German-speaking and other immigrants in Buenos Aires more space to foster the long-term existence of cultural pluralism.

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The slow rise of universal public education in Argentina in the late nineteenth century allowed both immigrant educators and the Catholic Church to run autonomous schools that filled holes in the country’s still nascent network of schools. In 1887, 36 percent of the 79,240 children attending elementary schools in the city of Buenos Aires attended Catholic or private schools.6 In 1908, 30 percent of the city’s 139,684 schoolchildren attended Catholic or private schools.7 Of the 326 non-public schools in the city in 1916, 43 were immigrant-run (12 Italian, 14 English, 10 French, and 7 German).8 It is interesting to note that although the number of Italian immigrants in the city was much larger than that of other groups, a comparable number of children studied at Italian, German, British, and French bilingual schools.9 The leaders of the National Council of Education often noted that private schools relieved pressure on an overburdened system.10 In 1893, Benjamín Zorrilla—president of the National Council of Education, former governor of the northwestern province of Salta, and twice the federal minister of the interior—noted that “the goal of the state cannot be to suffocate private initiative with despotic acts.” He instead reasoned that the state’s “superior strength over those who promote cosmopolitanism [cultural pluralism]” would be the key to attracting children to public schools.11 In 1918, Ángel Gallardo—the president of the National Council of Education and later the minister of foreign affairs and the rector of the University of Buenos Aires—noted that private schooling continued to be “an important and positive factor in the country’s education system. While it has progressed slowly, it is now solidifying and improving and reaching the high level of public establishments.”12 The council’s approach to private bilingual schools reveals much about the overarching liberal regime in Argentina. As in matters of social welfare, the state allowed space for other actors. The National Council of Education used school inspectors to ensure that private schools followed its regulations, and these officials seemed content with the level of instruction at German-Spanish bilingual schools.13 Taking an interest only in the courses taught in Spanish that were required by law, the inspectors never complained about the pupils’ level of Spanish; their reports were, in fact, overwhelmingly positive. For example, inspector N. Busico reported in 1925 about his visit to the Belgrano School that “the teachers are conducting methodical and efficient work. . . . The female teachers charged with teaching Spanish, Argentine history and geography, and first-level civics possess degrees from Argentine normal schools.”14 The state’s requirement that bilingual schools provide Spanish-language citizenship education allowed immigrant teachers enough room to meet both ethnic and public interests. In fact, ensuring that children born in Argentina learn the Spanish language

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and other information about the country was an ethnic interest, and the immigrant educators’ support of civic education reveals how they expanded the meaning of national belonging beyond the monolithic image propounded by public education reformers.

a linguistic ideology Argentine politicians and education reformers saw schooling as a tool to help them confront the city’s multiethnic character, and they often spoke of the need to impose national culture on the children of immigrants. At the discursive level, they very much embraced the Hispanist ideas of the early twentieth century, and the increasing appeal of the ethno-cultural vision of the nation shaped their ideas about language and immigrants. In particular, in their discussions of the educational system and the children of immigrants, many Argentine politicians and reformers articulated a linguistic ideology. They asserted that the Argentine nation was Spanishspeaking, and they set out to ensure that all children growing up in the country would conform to this vision. Historians of Argentine education have often contended that the public school system that emerged in the 1880s was aimed at creating political subjects.15 However, the historical actors who discussed political citizenship also expressed many concerns about cultural and linguistic pluralism. Indeed, the linguistic ideology of many politicians and education reformers in Argentina in this time period was shaped by what ­Yasemin Yildiz calls the “monolingual paradigm.” She contends that starting only in the nineteenth century, monolingualism came to be seen as “a key structuring principle that organizes the entire range of modern social life, from the construction of individuals and their proper subjectivities to the formation of disciplines and institutions, as well as imagined collectives such as cultures and nations.” In Yildiz’s view, the monolingual paradigm obscures the widespread existence of multilingualism.16 As Benedict Anderson notes, language and nation became interwoven concepts for many European nationalists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.17 According to Eric Hobsbawm, the concept of ­nation had not been a particularly ethnic or linguistic category in western Europe until the late nineteenth century.18 Indeed, the dictionary of the Real Academia Española did not fuse the definition of nation and country until 1884.19 From the 1870s to the First World War, contends Hobsbawm, “ethnicity and language became the central, increasingly the decisive or even the only criteria of potential nationhood” across Europe, and this change marked a significant shift away from the previously open relationship between cultural and political subjectivity.20 Argentine

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discussions of citizenship in this period expressed concerns about the place of ethnicity in the national body, and they are a prime example of how ideas of cultural and political citizenship had become merged in the Western world by the turn of the twentieth century. Looking at Europe in this period adds insights into many of the ideas that Argentine politicians and education bureaucrats expressed. Indeed, Patrick Eisenlohr argues that linguistic ideologies that developed in Europe were adapted to other parts of the globe.21 Argentine elites looked to Europe on a regular basis in this time period, and this is particularly true of education reformers. In the case of the ideas of language and citizenship in Argentina, many politicians and education bureaucrats adapted European concerns about historic regional vernaculars to the linguistic pluralism brought by immigrants.22 Argentine leaders—like Europeans seeking to confront a different kind of linguistic diversity found within their countries’ borders—developed ideas about the nation and language. They saw citizenship as a cultural and linguistic category in addition to a political one. Another way that European ideas trickled into Argentine debates about language and the nation was through the publication of Luciano Abeille’s Idioma nacional de los argentinos in 1900.23 Abeille, a French linguist who taught Latin and French at a colegio nacional and at the Escuela Superior de Guerra in Buenos Aires, claimed in his influential publication that “the national language of Argentines is not merely Spanish, it is not a dialect, and it is not genuinely Argentine.”24 He contended that “in the Argentine Republic a new race is forming. As a result the Spanish language or the language of the conquerors of this country has to evolve to form a new language.”25 As Alfredo Rubione writes, Abeille’s publication sparked a tremendous debate that spanned decades and included many prominent intellectuals such as Eduardo Wilde, Ernesto Quesada, Carlos Pellegrini (a former president of the country), Miguel Cané, and Francisco Soto y Calvo, and also drew in the Spanish intellectual Miguel de Unamuno.26 That debate—itself an expression of linguistic ­ideologies—is interesting for two reasons. First, it functioned entirely within the monolingual paradigm. Whether the Argentina of the future would speak Spanish or a distinctly Argentine language, all participants believed that the nation should be linguistically homogeneous. Second, the idea that there could be a unique national language had little impact on language policies in schools. From the 1880s to the 1920s, bureaucrats in the National Council of Education very clearly sought to use schools to promote a traditional and prescriptive (rather than descriptive) version of the Spanish language. Reformers from the National Council of Education believed that they could use the schools to impose their linguistic ideology of a monolingual,

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Spanish-speaking nation. In 1888, for example, Benjamín Zorrilla, the president of the National Council of Education, described Argentina as a country that “accumulates and assimilates diverse elements and incorporates them into national life.” He added, “We will teach in our schools and put in our curriculum the knowledge that is indispensable to all Argentine citizens. This will accentuate our character as such and give cohesion to the nation.”27 Zorrilla also proposed that the school system devote more attention to subjects such as Spanish, geography, civic instruction, and Argentine history (historia patria), so that they would “fill a preferential and larger place in the mind and heart of the Argentine youth.” In his view, teaching these specific subjects was enough to create “a completely national character.”28 In the early twentieth century, after three decades of sustained immigration and amid growing elite fears of cultural pluralism and labor unrest, there was a noticeable shift in the tone of the leaders of the National Council of Education. In 1910, José María Ramos Mejía, president of the council and previously active in public health initiatives, wrote that “the power of the state to harness the people and achieve their unity and strength resides, as I have said before, in the school. . . . It is within this familial core, where the first ideas germinate, that the immigrant communities [colectividades] will later be united. It is here that we can find the necessary strength to melt and amalgamate the different races that are constantly flooding the country.”29 Both Zorrilla and Ramos Mejía believed that ethno-linguistic diversity and national belonging were incompatible, and they stressed the need to use schools to fuse different ethnic groups into a single, cohesive nation. In 1910, a small school conflict erupted in the province of Entre Ríos, a few hundred kilometers from Buenos Aires (see Map 1). The two main objects of concern were the Russian-German and the “­Hebrew” schools operating in the province. Ernesto Bavio, as the director of the province’s Council of Education (Consejo de Educación), asserted that schools should “sow in the spirit of future generations the ideas and feelings most appropriate for the creation of future Argentine citizens.”30 He continued that “the primary obligation of all schools in Argentina, whatever the nationality of their teachers may be, is to teach the language of the country (language is the strongest link of nationality) along with its history, geography, and the fundamental notions of moral and civic instruction.”31 His idea that language defined “nationality” reveals a cultural element of this nationalism. In Bavio’s view, however, “in the capital of the Republic, in certain departments of Entre Ríos, and in some other regions of the country, there exist schools where solely foreign instruction is imparted, with a total absence of the Spanish language and Argentine history.”32

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Focusing his attention on a town of German speakers who had migrated to Argentina from Russia, Bavio claimed that “not a single word of Spanish is spoken even though this [language] should occupy the most important part of the curriculum. Their textbooks, which should be the most efficient element for nationalization and patriotism, are printed in German, and the subjects addressed are completely foreign to our country.”33 The National Council of Education commissioned an inspection of these schools in 1911. Despite Bavio’s concerns, however, the inspectors Manuel Antequeda and Olegario Maldonado instead reported on the “patriotic value” and “hispanizing” and “argentinizing” contribution of secular bilingual schools.34 The complaint about the non-Argentine content of the schools illustrates how some figures exaggerated the autonomy and unpatriotic goals of bilingual schools; the report by Antequeda and Maldonado and the curricula of these schools reveal that the schools did teach the Spanish language and Argentine content. As Bavio’s statements indicate, many elites and government officials had a particular set of ideas about the requirements of the educational system. Yet when bureaucrats and politicians made such assertions, they revealed both how they wanted to act on the children of immigrants, and that their desire was not reflected in the reality of the educational system. That reality was instead shaped by a negotiation between the state and other social actors, such as the promoters of bilingual schools. Speaking more broadly about foreign-language schools in Buenos Aires in the same year, Ramos Mejía similarly claimed that “the foreign residents of our country . . . keep speaking their own language among themselves and with their children whom they also prefer to send to private schools that are run by compatriots and where little Spanish is spoken.”35 He also emphasized the need to dedicate more time to subjects such as history and geography while adding a “national character.” He proposed that “in all grades, topics with a ‘patriotic character’ should be included: the flag, the coat of arms, monuments, the national anthem, and the great men” and that literature courses teach only “national authors.” Geography classes should teach only about Argentine flora, fauna, and geological formations. The national character of geography and history could be improved, he reasoned, by focusing on patriotic topics such as the independence leader José de San Martín crossing the Andes to liberate Chile. He proposed that math classes could deal with important Argentine dates and data about Argentine rivers, mountains, and territorial extension, as well as statistics on population, railroads, agricultural production, exports, the budget for public services, and the operations of banks. Finally, Ramos Mejía proposed that in art classes, pupils should sketch “national heroes” such as Belgrano, San Martín, Las Heras, and others.36 All of these proposals to “nationalize” schools’

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curricula point to a project aimed at shaping the civic knowledge of a new generation of citizens. Following a certain linguistic ideology, Ramos Mejía stated that “the better we teach our language in schools, the more the child will be bound to his land, even when he is not taught for expressly patriotic purposes.”37 He added, “it is well known that the mastery of a language that is spoken in a country can be a way to ensure that the country is loved and can be something that unites the men who inhabit it. Studying language has so much importance that in terms of patriotic education many feel that it is the only way to cultivate patriotism.”38 In 1926, Alfredo Lanari, then president of the National Council of Education, wrote that “the migratory streams coming from all corners of the earth create different nuclei within Argentine social space. . . . The land, work, and surroundings are not enough to assimilate these elements. We have to give them, now more than ever, a homogeneous soul through national education.”39 Cultural pluralism provoked many fears in education officials such as Bavio, Ramos Mejía, and Lanari. Beginning in the 1880s and over the subsequent decades, their educational project set out to redefine the meaning of citizenship, particularly in cultural terms. These ideas fed off the nationalist discussions of late-nineteenth-century western Europe, but they were also adapted to the local context and in response to European immigration. In many ways, however, the goals of state education authorities and immigrant school promoters were compatible. German-Spanish schools taught Argentine civics, history, geography, and Spanish. And while Argentine elites announced their intentions to use education to assimilate the children of immigrants, particularly by focusing on language, in reality, the National Council of Education focused its attention on ensuring that children at immigrant-run bilingual schools learned Spanish and took a certain set of Argentine courses dealing with history and geography. It also specified how national rituals such as singing anthems and raising flags would be performed at schools. While state regulation determined the exact form of civic belonging transmitted in public and private schools, the entire system also permitted cultural diversity.

curriculum and autonomy The curriculum of the German-Spanish bilingual schools of Buenos Aires reveals a disjuncture between Argentine bureaucratic discourse and the reality in the classroom. In fact, both state regulators and immigrant school promoters had the power to shape the curricular content of these bilingual schools. One reason for this discrepancy was likely the state’s lack of financial control of immigrant-run bilingual schools.

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State regulation required these schools to teach certain classes with an Argentine and Spanish-language focus, but it also allowed the schools the autonomy to advance some of their own goals. State regulation of curriculum linked the German-Spanish schools of Buenos Aires to one of the central features of the nascent educational system: the sixth-grade exit exam. Despite the autonomy bilingual schools enjoyed and even though many subjects could be taught in a foreign language, the schools were streamlined to be part of the state system. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the largest German-Spanish schools in Buenos Aires only offered six years of instruction, and these institutions were, therefore, organized entirely around this diploma and exit exam. The exam was also required for anybody who sought to continue his or her studies at the secondary level. The state flexed its muscle several times in this period, and it often modified the details of its curricular requirements. Nonetheless, in all cases the National Council of Education continued to grant autonomy to bilingual schools. The educator Manuel de Ugarriza Aráoz wrote that between 1884 and 1908, the state’s authority had been “more nominal than effective.”40 New legislation in 1925 made it obligatory for all children attending private schools to take the sixth-grade exit exam.41 However, the new law reinforced what was already the norm; almost without exception, pupils who had finished six years of schooling with obligatory Argentine subjects had taken the exit exam. In 1928, Wilhelm Keiper wrote that in these first six years “there is ever more pressure that all pupils speak and write fluent and correct Spanish and that they know about Argentine history, geography, and civics. German schools have to be bilingual from the first year on. They also have to have several Argentine teachers and they must teach the prescribed materials in Spanish-language classes.”42 In 1930, a new decree from the National Council of Education tightened the requirements for the exit exams. The examinations for history, geography, natural science, and moral and civic instruction were conducted orally in Spanish, while the exams for the Spanish language and mathematics remained written.43 Throughout this period, because of state regulation, all GermanSpanish bilingual schools maintained similar programs with a balance between German and Spanish. Because they had more contact hours than their monolingual public counterparts, these schools could meet the requirements of the National Council of Education as well as promote the German language and offer some Germany-oriented subjects. German was the main language of instruction and was used to teach literature, mathematics, science, and drawing. At schools that taught religion, German was used for that subject as well. At all schools, Spanish was taught as a language and was also used to teach the core subjects of literature,

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history, and geography. In addition to these core Argentine subjects, German history and European geography were taught in German. In the 1890s at the Lutheran congregational school in downtown Buenos Aires, five hours per week were devoted to Spanish language and literature, while two hours were given to history and to geography in Spanish. The remaining twenty-one hours of instruction were in German.44 In the Belgrano School’s newly redesigned curriculum in 1911, Dr. Hermann Bock, the director, explained that the school taught the Spanish and German languages; in addition, Argentine history and civics, arithmetic, and geometry were taught in Spanish, while mathematics and a second history class were offered in German.45 Overall, at the Belgrano School, approximately two-thirds of the weekly instruction was carried out in German.46 Bock’s curriculum described the German lessons as particularly important, stating that the curriculum strove to “maintain the inner bond between the pupils and the intellectual homeland [geistige Heimat].” He added, however, that “given that so many pupils here speak a deficient and spoiled German because of Spanish influence and given that others cannot even speak German, grammar must be taught in the lower grades almost like a foreign language, carefully handled and studiously practiced.”47 At the Barracas School in 1921, 69 percent of the classes of its six-year program were in German. While subjects such as Argentine history and civics were taught in Spanish, the school taught German history and geography in German. The first grade had a total of twenty-four hours of instruction per week, and more hours were added each year, culminating in a thirtyeight-hour instructional week in the sixth grade.48 In their 1928 curriculum, the leaders of the Belgrano School described their institution as both a German school abroad (Auslandsschule) and “an Argentine private school under the supervision of the state.” They believed that “reconciling both goals without blurring them is our difficult task.”49 Wilhelm Keiper, the director of the school, described it as “a bilingual school and as a result a school of two cultures.”50 The leadership hoped to prepare the small minority of children who would return to Germany for success there, but “as an Argentine school, we want to educate the pupils who stay here, 75 percent of whom are Argentine, with the language, civics, history, and culture of their new homeland and to prepare them for their future profession here.”51 Keiper further wrote that “the curriculum of the Belgrano School naturally follows a German model, but in many instances it differs. The school, like all German schools in Argentina, is bilingual. Even the pupils who speak German at home must master Spanish as a second mother tongue. . . . Both German and Argentine Studies (language, history, geography, and civics) are equally represented up to the seventh year.”52 A school that taught “­Argentine Studies,” including civics, was necessarily one with

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some interest in citizenship. That it also taught in German, and taught “German Studies,” means that its teachers and pupils were participating in an educational project that simultaneously promoted other ideas about national belonging in Argentina. Beyond the regular curriculum, these schools often provided extra training in German or Spanish for the pupils who struggled with either language. In its second year of existence, the Cangallo School created special language classes for children with a weak level of German, giving them an extra three or four hours of German instruction per week.53 This class drew pupils from the first three grades and included those who spoke Spanish at home. It also welcomed those who had grown up in bilingual spaces but had not spoken enough German in their early years to be fully immersed in a school that taught two-thirds of all classes in German. By the 1920s, the number of hours of extra German instruction offered to children from non-German-speaking households at the Cangallo School had risen to six. A similar program of extra German instruction was a central part of the curriculum of the Barracas School. In addition, these schools actively promoted the Spanish language: immigrant children who joined the Cangallo School in a higher grade received three weekly Spanish classes beyond the state requirements so as to catch up with their classmates.54 And finally, as noted in the previous chapter, approximately 21 percent of the pupils attending the German-Spanish schools in Buenos Aires were not of German heritage; these demographics also influenced the institutions’ interest in promoting both the German and Spanish languages. The discourse of leaders and bureaucrats at the National Council of Education allowed little space for such a project of bilingualism and of knowledge about Germany, but the nature of state authority in this liberal, hands-off regime permitted it. Educators had a strong interest in teaching German, but they also willingly taught the Spanish language and core Argentine subjects. The curricula of German-Spanish schools—like those of other immigrant-run bilingual schools—illustrate that Germanspeaking educators participated in the project of the National Council of Education but challenged the notion that cultural pluralism and national belonging were mutually exclusive.

incorporation In the years beyond elementary education and the sixth-grade exit exam, bilingual schools in Buenos Aires had the option of becoming integrated into a state-regulated system through “incorporation” into the city’s public secondary schools (colegios nacionales). However, should the leaders

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of a school so desire, they were free to teach whatever they wanted after the sixth grade; the National Council of Education enforced no further curricular content. But if the directors did choose to “incorporate” their school, they subjected their institution to a much stricter Argentine program, leaving far less space for German-language instruction than at the elementary level. The system of incorporation was an important aspect of the educational landscape of Buenos Aires at a time of both growing Argentine nationalism and mass migration. The system that developed illustrates how immigrant educators worked within the boundaries of state regulation while also managing to advance their goals of maintaining a culturally plural society long into the future. The directors of three German-Spanish schools (the Cangallo, Belgrano, and Germania Schools) sought incorporation in order to “fulfill the long-conceived wish of many German parents to have their sons study at a German institution until they are ready for university, so that they remain in a German linguistic and cultural space as long as possible and also enjoy the benefits of German pedagogy and strict discipline.”55 Had there been no partially German secondary school option, children would have been forced to prepare for their futures in Argentina in fully Spanish-language high schools. One of the objectives of Max Hopff’s 1898 reform movement, discussed in the previous chapter, was to create an incorporated German high school.56 In Hopff’s view, the bilingualism that was created through just six years of mainly German education at an elementary school, followed by attendance at a Spanish-language high school and maybe university, was insufficient. What he proposed was to keep pupils under the umbrella of a German-language institution for longer. In the incorporated school, German would still take a back seat to Spanish, but in the view of Hopff and others, and particularly in the 1920s, this was an important compromise between German-language teaching and preparing children for their lives in Argentina. Beginning in 1919, the Cangallo School slowly added five grades of secondary education, completing the process in 1929.57 Its directors proudly announced in the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung that “for the first time in South America, a bachillerato [high school diploma] can be attained at a German institution.”58 They boasted that Argentine school authorities had often reported that the test results of “our colegio ­nacional” are the best of all the incorporated private schools.59 This claim, whether true or not, reveals one way in which German-speaking immigrants thought that they could be better Argentines by embracing their ethnic difference. The addition of secondary schools at these institutions in the 1920s was the result of three larger processes. First, the demand for secondary education had increased in order to meet the changing demands of the

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labor market. Second, the total number of German-Spanish schools in the city of Buenos Aires and the surrounding towns in the province of Buenos Aires had expanded from five to fifteen between 1900 and 1930. With a greater number of pupils attending German-language elementary schools, a small number of schools became able to offer secondary education. Third, in the 1920s and even at the schools that also offered a German diploma, school promoters presented Argentina as the only viable future for the majority of students. This resulted from many factors, including Germany’s troubled economic situation and the growing number of adult Argentines of German heritage. The directors of the Germania School also took an active interest in incorporation in the first decades of the twentieth century. In 1903, when the Lutheran congregational school (Gemeindeschule) moved into a larger building and took on the name Germania, it sought to keep the school “at the same level as similar institutions in Germany,” and it also began to seek incorporation into the Argentine system. The directors announced that they believed that they had addressed their dual task, which was “on the one hand to secure for the pupils, as offspring of German parents, the blessing of a German education and giving them access to the treasures of German culture.” On the other hand, “we want to open the path for their future in this country by incorporating into the local secondary school system. The pupils of the Germania School will be privy to a double culture, and this will be of invaluable importance for their future success in this progressive century.”60 Nonetheless, the Germania School struggled with its administrative duality. In 1909, the leaders reasoned that despite the “practical advantages” of incorporation, it would be better to reject this option. The directors feared that incorporation “would lead to the abandonment of the ideals for which the school has fought over the past sixty-five years. . . . We want to prepare our pupils to attain both German and Argentine certification so that they can continue their studies either here or in Germany.” They also reasoned that it was important “to prepare our pupils to be both good Germans and at the same time able Argentine citizens.”61 They feared that incorporation would tip the scales too much toward the latter. In 1919, despite their previous doubts, the leaders of the Germania School decided to begin incorporation. This was the same year in which the Cangallo School began incorporation, and both schools were linked to a nearby colegio nacional where the annual year-end exams were held.62 The leaders of the Germania School described incorporation as “the logical conclusion of the development of the German schools in Buenos Aires that began at the end of the war and has followed a path shaped by local conditions.” Reconciling the Argentine reality with an interest in the German language, they added that “if we take seriously the

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Figure 10. School Bus Fleet for the Cangallo School, 1933. source : 35 Jahre Deutsche Schule Buenos Aires, 1898–1933. The author thanks the Asociación Escuela Cangallo for permission to reproduce this image.

demands of giving them [the children] an education for their future professions and also a dignified German education along the way, we need a German secondary school that follows the Argentine curriculum. This school has to leave enough space for the German language and culture alongside the rigorous implementation of the Argentine curriculum.”63 As a result, this bilingual school offered an exclusively Argentine curriculum, fully in Spanish, but with extra German language courses. German was taught for eight hours per week in the first three years of the incorporated high school and five hours per week in the final two years.64 So doing ensured that students remained “under the influence of our German school for as long as possible.”65 Standing on the shoulders of an elementary education where German was the language of instruction in approximately two-thirds of all class hours, this limited continuation of German in an incorporated high school was pedagogically productive, but highly limited by state authority. The case of incorporation illustrates one aspect of the National Council of Education’s open regulation. After the sixth-grade exit exam, immigrant school promoters had the freedom to choose between absolute autonomy and deeper integration into the public system, the latter including the ability to prepare students for Argentine secondary school diplomas. The decision by immigrant educators to link their institutions to the public system demonstrates one aspect of the relationship between community autonomy and state authority. Through incorporation, educators sought to prepare the children of immigrants for university and a career in Argentina. In so doing, they played a role in shaping the language of citizenship.

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conclusion The directors of German-Spanish and other immigrant-run schools in Buenos Aires created a pluralist definition of citizenship, particularly by fostering bilingualism. The nature of state regulation created an educational system where the nationalist discourse about assimilation did not always lead to effective policies, and various social actors in Buenos Aires had different ideas about the relationship between language and citizenship. Bilingual schools taught Spanish as well as Argentine civics, geography, and history while also encouraging the use of other European languages in Buenos Aires well into the future. In the view of immigrant educators and parents, fostering civic integration and bilingualism did not undermine the citizenship project of universal elementary education. Both public education reformers and immigrant school promoters often spoke of citizenship, but they held conflicting visions about the role of language in promoting national unity. For the former, citizens spoke Spanish; for the latter, bilingualism created ideal citizens who could navigate between ethnic communities and the Argentine nation. German-Spanish bilingual schools serve as a case study to track the ability of the state to control autonomous school associations. These schools did not subvert state authority, but they did work within the generous confines of the overarching liberal regime. Alongside many other immigrantrun institutions, they helped define the cultural pluralism of Argentine society. Through the autonomy afforded by the state and asserted through their own influence, immigrant school promoters undermined a number of the cultural policies propounded by many at the National Council of Education. Bilingual schools were part of the broader educational system of Buenos Aires. Their success reveals the regulatory mechanisms that the National Council of Education was or was not able to mobilize in order to implement its education policies. The curricula of German-Spanish elementary schools, the sixth-grade exit exam, and the optional incorporation of partially German-language high schools into the Argentine system illustrate how the state maintained its authority and how one group of immigrant school promoters contested, redefined, and legitimated the power of the state’s education bureaucracy. The bilingual education that emerged in Buenos Aires was part of a broader pattern in the Americas. In other societies in the Southern Cone and in North America, parents, teachers, and community leaders wanted children to acquire a reasonable proficiency in the language of one or both parents and in the language of the surrounding society. Yet the way in which the school promoters in Buenos Aires achieved their goals differed significantly from the way bilingual education was conducted in the public

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schools of the United States and Canada. In Buenos Aires, many immigrant educators carved out a place for themselves outside the structures of the state, rather than being subsumed within them. They did not make this decision entirely on their own; instead, it was the nature of the overarching liberal regime that pushed linguistic pluralism out of the public school system and into a parallel system controlled by immigrants themselves. The widespread existence of bilingual schools run by different immigrant groups in Buenos Aires has been left unexplained by studies of education in Argentina.66 German-language schools were part of a more general phenomenon, and many bilingual schools cooperated with state authorities in matters of curriculum, exit exams, and streamlining their teaching to allow children to advance to Argentine high schools and universities. From the very beginning of the public educational system in the 1880s, and regardless of nationalist projects announced by a handful of elites, bilingual schools did not contest the requirements of civic education. Their interest instead centered firmly on fostering bilingualism. Despite elite fears and popular assumptions about loyal citizens, there is little evidence to suggest that German-speaking school promoters had any reason to challenge the Argentine political order. However, immigrantrun schools broadened the definition of cultural citizenship, and the state apparatus that allowed for autonomous bilingual schools did little about this point beyond ensuring that children growing up in Buenos Aires also became proficient in written Spanish and learned core Argentine subjects such as civics, geography, and history. The relationship between immigrant school promoters and state authorities is a crucial yet overlooked aspect of the histories of immigration and education in Argentina. The National Council of Education had influence over immigrant-run bilingual schools, but the autonomy that these institutions possessed and their freedom to teach the vast majority of their courses in a foreign language illustrates that Spanish-speaking bureaucrats were unable to fully impose their ideas about the language and culture of the nation on the children of immigrants. Promoting foreign languages, from the perspective of ethnic minorities, did not exclude children from the national body. The specific demands of the state, its lack of financial control, and the curricula of German schools highlight the importance of the flexibility in state regulation within the educational system of Buenos Aires. The next chapter turns to the transatlantic connections between German-Spanish bilingual schools and various actors in Germany. These external connections further influenced the relationship between state authority and community autonomy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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chapter 4

An Unbounded Nation? Local Interests and Imperial Aspirations

; In 1899, Carl Schüssler sent a letter from Buenos Aires to the Foreign Office in Berlin. Writing on behalf of the board of directors of the city’s oldest German-language school, he asked officials in Germany for an annual subsidy from a fund that the Reichstag had recently made available to schools in Bucharest and Constantinople. “The goal of our schools that are far from the parents’ homeland,” proclaimed Schüssler, “is to give children an education from that homeland.”1 He stressed that almost a quarter of all pupils at his school did not pay tuition fees, while another 37 percent paid a subsidized rate.2 “Only in this way,” he reported, “will these [working-class] children be kept within Germandom.”3 In 1900, Max Hopff, the leader of the Cangallo School, presented a second argument for transatlantic assistance in an article published in the Berlin newspaper Das Echo. Hopff implored the German public to support “schools abroad,” and he complained that while “poorer countries” such as Italy spent millions on international education, Germany spent only three hundred thousand marks, which amounted to mere “drops on a hot stone.”4 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, German-speaking educators in Buenos Aires engaged bureaucrats in the German Foreign Office and the leaders of nationalist associations such as the Association for Germandom Abroad in a transatlantic dialogue. They emphasized the dangers facing Germandom, particularly if children of German heritage could not attend a German-language school. They both stoked and benefited from a growing public debate in Imperial Germany that described emigrants and their children as members of a territorially unbounded German nation.5 Yet their actions shone light on the fact that legal definitions of belonging in Germany and Argentina contradicted one another. By taking an interest not only in emigrants but also in their children,

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German bureaucrats and nationalist groups also articulated a naïve belief in a generationally unbounded German nation, one that conflicted with the local reality in Buenos Aires and in many other parts of the Americas. In this same period, many Argentine intellectuals and politicians began to debate the supposed dangers that mass migration posed for the cultural, social, and political fabric of the nation.6 One fear in particular was that immigrants brought with them the expansionist and imperial nationalism of their European countries of origin. According to Lilia Ana Bertoni, many intellectuals and politicians in Argentina perceived immigrant-run schools and the support they received from Europe as a threat to their own efforts to mold immigrants and their children into a homogeneous nation through a growing apparatus of public schools. They worried that German, Italian, and other immigrant educators called on foreign governments and nationalist groups for help.7 Paradoxically, these Argentine intellectuals and politicians envisioned foreign-language education both as positive and prestigious, on the one hand, and as a subversive force that would perpetuate the existence of foreign enclaves within the national community, on the other. This chapter argues that German-speaking educators in Buenos Aires took advantage of transatlantic support from Germany while navigating between their own interests in community, ethnicity, and belonging in Argentina. Focusing on the circulation of teachers, the flow of financial support from Germany, and a system that offered both Argentine and German diplomas, it offers new perspectives on how constructions of European ethnicity and Argentine belonging developed in a transnational context. The imperial ambitions and local interests that shaped Germanlanguage education in Buenos Aires reveal much about the future. For those in Germany, the idea of maintaining ethnic Germans within a territorially unbounded German nation reflected the nationalist aspiration to compete with other European empires on the global stage. For those in Buenos Aires, however, the same transatlantic relationship was oriented toward another set of expectations about the future. They instead believed that European support of German-Spanish bilingual schools would help educators and families succeed in their goal of pushing for a pluralist, multilingual society. The transatlantic exchange between Germany and Argentina was the result of the particularities of German imperial nationalism. There were a comparable number of British immigrants in Argentina who similarly founded bilingual schools. Those immigrants developed economic connections with the United Kingdom to an even greater extent than the German immigrants did with Germany.8 However, the British Foreign Office and nationalist organizations such as the League of the Empire, the Victoria League, and the National Service League took little interest in

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British subjects in Argentina. Other debates about the boundaries of the nation took place in the United Kingdom, but they rarely included British subjects in Latin America. Rather than seeing emigrants as agents of an informal empire, the British instead relied on formal political structures of colonies and dominions. Before the First World War and throughout the interwar period, many in Britain sought to include people of British birth and descent who lived in Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand within a single cultural community through education exchanges and emigration.9 Germany did not have the same kind of overseas settler colonies, and more Germans emigrated to the Southern Cone between 1880 and 1914 than they did to all German colonies. The loss of colonial possessions and significant territorial changes in central Europe after the First World War led to new discussions about “re-naturalizing former Germans.”10 The new context of the 1920s further motivated a diverse group of people in Germany to foster connections with German speakers in the Southern Cone.

a transatlantic system German-Spanish bilingual schools were influenced by the steady flow of teachers across the Atlantic and had the ability to offer German diplomas alongside Argentine ones. The German Foreign Office selected the teachers who would go abroad. It provided some preparatory training for them, and, according to Stefan Manz, “those selected for service abroad had to subscribe to an affirmative attitude towards Reich and Kaiser.”11 Manz argues that German speakers living in various parts of the world actively fostered connections with Germany. This “diasporic connectedness,” as he calls it, “played out in concrete ways through transnational institutional structures, flows of ideas and money, and participation in pertinent activities.”12 German-Spanish bilingual schools were part of a broader pattern around the world, but those ties supplemented a more central feature, which was their place in the education network of the city of Buenos Aires. Despite the importance of the Foreign Office, any international travel first required the request of a school in Argentina. School directors’ requests came with requirements, specifying gender, denomination (often asking specifically for Lutherans rather than Catholics), and field of specialization. In 1906, for example, the directors of the Belgrano School asked for a teacher of math and science.13 In 1915, the director of the Germania School wrote to the Foreign Office and asked for help in recruiting an experienced teacher (field unspecified), an athletics teacher, and a female teacher (field unspecified), and it offered to subsidize the travel costs of all

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three.14 To pay the subsidy, the schools transferred money to the teacher via the German legation in Buenos Aires and the Foreign Office in ­Berlin.15 In addition to recruiting teachers through the Foreign Office, schools in Buenos Aires sometimes placed advertisements directly in newspapers in Germany.16 The well-documented case of Reinhold Gabert—based on his own writing, school records, and the Foreign Office archives—sheds light on the connections between schools in Argentina and various organizations in Germany. His case was not unique, and many teachers returned to Germany after spending a few years or their entire career in Argentina. In 1898, the 24-year-old Gabert came to Argentina after completing his studies in Erlangen. He worked first as a private teacher and then, in 1901, accepted a job at the German school in Rosario (a large city 300 kilo­meters northwest of Buenos Aires). In 1904, after spending six years in Argentina, he returned to Germany to begin a doctorate in pedagogy and philosophy. The following year he returned to Rosario to work again as a teacher and to carry out field research. In 1906, he became the director of that school, and in 1908, on a brief sojourn in Erlangen, he defended his thesis about German schools in Argentina.17 In 1913, he moved from his position as the director of the school in Rosario to the Belgrano School in Buenos Aires, and he returned permanently to Germany in 1922.18 In Buenos Aires, Gabert came into far greater contact with the German state. The much smaller number of interactions he had while in nearby Rosario reveal a great deal about the centrality of the Argentine capital within this transatlantic exchange. Because his new school granted German diplomas to some of its graduates, Gabert’s appointment in Buenos Aires had to be approved by the German envoy and by Wilhelm Keiper, who at the time worked as an education commissioner for the German legation and concurrently as the director of the National Institute for Secondary School Teacher Training (Instituto Nacional del Profesorado Secundario).19 Keiper and the envoy were not pleased that Gabert was not a certified teacher but instead had a doctorate in pedagogy.20 Ultimately, however, the decision-making power rested in the hands of the school directors in Buenos Aires. They paid Gabert’s salary, and they had invited him to come from Rosario because they were interested in an educator who was aware of the local context, shaped as it was by bilingualism and hybrid identities. The Argentine National Council of Education did not intervene in hiring at private schools, and Germantrained teachers were able to work without needing to be recertified. The council did require that Argentine citizens teach certain core subjects in Spanish, but this was a question of citizenship rather than certification. Foreign-trained teachers could fill those positions if they became naturalized citizens.

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In addition to the Foreign Office, the German Teachers’ Association of Buenos Aires played an important role in recruiting teachers from Germany and in placing them in schools throughout the region. In 1911, a year after its founding, the association received applications from thirty teachers in Germany and eighteen already living in South America. It managed to place six of them in Buenos Aires and four in the Argentine interior.21 In 1919, the German Teachers’ Association of Buenos Aires published a handbook for colleagues in Germany who were contemplating emigration. The leaders of the association were concerned that the postwar climate would create an outpouring of teachers. To control this flow, they encouraged potential applicants to arrange a position through the Foreign Office rather than coming to Argentina without a contract.22 In the late 1920s, when the German economy had recovered, the ­Teachers’ Association changed its tack and sought to attract more teachers.23 Max Wilfert, the association’s president, stated that teachers were wanted “who passably master the Spanish language and already have experience teaching in South America.”24 By 1927, the association reported having placed a total of a thousand teachers in schools or as private tutors in wealthy families in many parts of Argentina.25 At two German schools in the country—the Germania and Belgrano Schools in Buenos Aires—pupils could also receive a German diploma (a Realschule diploma) two years after the Argentine sixth grade exam. Given the regulations of the Argentine government and the economic interests of immigrant families, the integration of these two schools into a German system was only possible because several years of the Germania School’s Argentina-oriented elementary education overlapped with the Realschule (the latter years of the elementary school simultaneously constituted the early years of the Realschule). Although these two schools were engaged in a transatlantic dialogue, they were not simple extensions of the German educational system transplanted to South America. Far more pupils at those two schools received the Argentine diploma. In 1921, the directors of the Germania School wrote that their institution “places the preservation of Germandom in the foreground. . . . But the school also pays full respect to the country we live in, and as a result it gives both a thorough education in German and an extensive training for Spanish subjects to its pupils for the future.”26 In other words, although they were part of a transatlantic system, the school’s leaders were also very interested in their place in Argentina and pupils’ future in the country. The Germania School began offering the Realschule diploma in 1907.27 It was possible to give the children the education they needed to earn two different diplomas because these pupils had more class hours every week than the Argentine public schools did and because a number

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of the subjects provided enough universal education so that in spite of differing languages of instruction, the children could still pass either an Argentine or a German exam. Although the curriculum of the early years of the Real­schule was partially defined by the Argentine state, educators asserted that it “conforms to a six-grade institution in Germany and offers students an academic qualification to enter the one-year voluntary military service [as an officer]. We see the maintenance of the German language as our most distinguished goal, and alongside this, local laws rightly require a thorough mastery of Spanish.”28 The Belgrano School had a different way of navigating between the demands of educational integration in Argentina and transatlantic ties to Germany. Advancing from its 1907 accreditation to host qualifying exams for admission to the German officer corps (in the Realschule), in 1924 the school became the first and only school in South America to become a full Oberrealschule (an accreditation to offer a higher level of secondary education than the previous Realschule status).29 In describing their activities, the educators who ran these bilingual schools presented their institutions as either completely Argentine or completely German, depending on whether they were speaking with Argentine or with German officials. They contended that the duality of Spanish and German and of the Argentine and German curricula did not diminish either one. Keiper described the school as a “complete German Oberrealschule and Mädchenlyzeum [girls’ high school] and at the same time following Argentine law and obligations, a preparatory school for future professions in the country of birth of the majority of pupils.” He maintained that “the school strives to fulfill both German and Argentine requirements until the end of the [sixth] year, which is the local elementary education.”30 Thus, through the movement of teachers and the possibility of offering German diplomas, German-Spanish bilingual schools were engaged in a transatlantic system.

eager interlocutors in germany While the German-Spanish schools of Buenos Aires relied on the help that the Foreign Office offered in hiring teachers, the German government also, in return, depended on these schools. Pushed by nationalist groups in central Europe, the Foreign Office wanted to play a role in German-language education around the world. However, it did not have the resources nor the power to create schools in the Americas, and so instead it supported the schools that immigrants controlled and that other governments regulated. Within Germany, bureaucrats from the Foreign Office were joined by the cultural nationalists leading the

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General German School Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher ­Schulverein, 1881–1908) and its successor, the Association for Germandom Abroad (1908–1933). The bureaucrats at the German Foreign Office, the members of the Association for Germandom Abroad, and the monthly periodical Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande (The German School Abroad ) espoused a belief in a territorially unbounded nation. These three institutions made education a tangible expression of many of the nationalist concerns about Germans abroad. They focused on education as one way to fortify the imagined boundaries of a nation that apparently transcended Germany’s political boundaries. The three organizations often contended that a network of schools, spanning the globe from Japan to Argentina, would preserve “Germandom abroad” (Auslandsdeutschtum). Their goals in engaging with heterogeneous groups of German speakers outside Germany varied, but the three organizations focused primarily on cultural belonging rather than political subjectivity. The German government’s total expenditures on “schools abroad” rose from a hundred and fifty thousand marks in 1898 to five hundred thousand marks in 1904; by 1917, the annual sum had increased to one and a half million marks.31 In 1892, the Foreign Office gave subsidies to 34 schools around the world; in 1913, that number was 511.32 A paper trail in the archives of the Foreign Office in Berlin reveals a growing number of requests for financial support from immigrant educators in Buenos Aires between 1895 and 1905. On the eve of the First World War, this system of financial support was well entrenched, so that annual requests became formalities and the transfer was essentially guaranteed. Subsidies to Argentina rose steadily, and a small group of schools in Buenos Aires received the lion’s share of funds earmarked for the country. The capital city had the largest concentration of German citizens and German speakers, but the urban schools also attracted far more money per pupil than rural schools. The schools in the city benefited from their access to the German envoy and the prestige of a booming metropolis, while schools in rural settlements or other cities did not have the same allure. Responding to requests from people such as Schüssler and Hopff, who began this chapter, the Foreign Office sent 30,000 marks to schools in Argentina in 1903.33 Of that money, 83 percent (25,000 marks) went to just four schools in Buenos Aires. In 1914, 84,600 marks were sent to the country, with 60 percent (50,500 marks) distributed to five schools in Buenos Aires.34 After the First World War, economic trouble and massive inflation in Germany put the system of transatlantic subsidies in a precarious position. The envoy in Buenos Aires wrote to the Foreign Office in 1920 that many schools did not want the subsidy because the new exchange rate

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An Unbounded Nation?

did not make it particularly helpful, and he suggested that if the subsidies were to continue, the rates should be fixed in pesos rather than marks.35 In 1920, the Foreign Office sent 408,000 marks; this number doubled, to 800,000 marks, in 1922.36 From 1924 to 1926, the total subsidies sent to schools in Argentina fluctuated between 13,000 and 43,760 pesos annually.37 In 1930, all schools in the country received a total of 40,000 Reichsmark.38 The real value of these subsidies represented a significant decline compared with the prewar program. The directors of the Germania School lamented that “it is a particular sore point for us to see that our most loyal helper, the German Empire, can no longer manage to support us.”39 German subsidies became a tangible expression of the transatlantic exchanges between Germany and Argentina, alongside other factors such as the circulation of teachers and pedagogical materials. Nevertheless, as Table 5 indicates, several local factors were far more important than the subsidies from Germany in funding German-language schools. The table reveals that transatlantic financial support was not as important as other scholars have assumed, and subsidies should not be taken as evidence of what others have seen as imperial control.40 When looking at the overall funding data, the subsidies in many ways reveal the limited influence of the German state on German-Spanish schools in Buenos Aires. The data in Table 5 highlight the extent to which transatlantic subsidies mattered. These data are drawn from the four largest schools in Buenos Aires, which were the most involved in the transatlantic flow of subsidies, teachers, and degrees. The table shows that the annual fundraisers organized by immigrant women overshadowed the cultural politics of the German Empire to an astounding degree. The labor of women, financial contributions from male members, and tuition fees from parents bankrolled these schools. It would be fruitful to engage in similar studies of the funding and goals of other immigrant-run schools in the city, because scholars have spent a disproportionate amount of time exploring the impact of the European gaze and European subsidies to Italian, French, and other schools in the city.41 European subsidies do illustrate imperial ambition, but as Table 5 indicates, family and community interests played a dominant role in financing bilingual education in Buenos Aires. German-speaking school promoters welcomed the financial support from Germany because it helped them advance their own community interests in Buenos Aires. As the table indicates, before 1918, approximately 11 to 15 percent of the budget for the Cangallo School, 9 to 17 percent for the Germania School, 6.5 percent for the Belgrano School, and 9 to 18.5 percent for the Barracas School came from German subsidies. The loss of the revenue that came from the German state would surely have had negative

Table 5. Funding of German Schools in Buenos Aires, 1899–1930. Cangallo School. Income in pesos from: Female Member Fundraisers Contributions 1899

$9,479

1908 1914 1919 1925 1930

Parents’ Tuition Fees

German Foreign Ministry

Other Revenue

Total Revenue

$9,306

$38,567

$9,474

$10,308

$0

$6,290

$11,950

$44,344

$11,015

$108

$73,707

$9,765

$14,068

$34,859

$8,451

$7,835

$74,978

$27,564

$11,547

$26,443

$727

$2,918

$69,199

$19,704

$13,774

$49,945

$0

$16,279

$99,702

$8,843

$12,533

$63,415

$0

$14,220

$99,011

Germania School. Income in pesos from: Female Member Fundraisers Contributions 1900

Parents’ Tuition Fees

German Foreign Ministry

Other Revenue

Total Revenue

$4,934

$39,049

$0

$13,683

$13,773

$6,659

1911

$0

$22,000

$56,357

$8,397

$7,629

$94,383

1921

$50,326

$16,111

$69,583

$3,333

$1,489

$140,842

1930

$11,557

$5,243

$43,783

$0

$27,554

$88,137

Other Revenue

Total Revenue

Belgrano School. Income in pesos from: Female Member Fundraisers Contributions

Parents’ Tuition Fees

German Foreign Ministry

1903

$0

$3,635

$22,810

$0

$2,787

$29,232

1910

$0

$4,895

$30,036

$2,787

$4,988

$42,706

1919

$0

$7,350

$93,086

$4,802

$1,304

$106,542

1926

$9,473

$8,145

$139,996

$0

$3,255

$160,869

1930

$14,613

$12,765

$155,881

$0

$6,632

$189,891

Barracas School. Income in pesos from:

Female Fundraisers

Parents’ Tuition Fees and Member Contributions

German Foreign Ministry

Other Revenue

Total Revenue

1899

$236

$6,511

$1,531

$0

$8,278

1909

$13,000

$8,009

$2,031

$0

$23,040

1919

$21,495

$8,060

$164

$996

$30,715

1926

$11,434

$19,190

$0

$2,862

$33,486

1930

$14,017

$19,107

$0

$1,441

$34,565

source : Annual reports of these schools, 1899–1930.

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An Unbounded Nation?

consequences, but the elimination of subsidies in the 1920s did not cause a catastrophe. Indeed, the search for the remaining 90 percent played a far greater role in the organization of these schools. Delving into the financial records of the schools themselves rather than relying on information from the Foreign Office or the vague discourse of a select few in Berlin greatly changes the picture of the significance of German subsidies to these schools. The General German School Association and its successor, the Association for Germandom Abroad, also became involved in the system of international educational subsidies. The association spent 96,000 marks in 1903 supporting schools outside Germany in addition to the 300,000 marks that the Foreign Office sent abroad in the same year.42 Founded in Berlin in 1881, the General German School Association stood, according to Gerhard Weidenfelder, “in the center of a widespread movement fueled by nationalist impulse and dedicated to Germans on the other side of [national] borders.”43 The association helped build German schools and libraries, provided those institutions with German books, and placed and supported German teachers.44 In the 1880s, preoccupied with high emigration rates from Germany, the association focused on schooling and therefore had an eye on children growing up in other countries.45 The General German School Association and the Association for Germandom Abroad had commonalities with voluntary associations such as the Pan-German League and the German Colonial Society. In 1908, the leaders of the General German School Association and the Pan-­ German League considered a merger, but they decided that their objectives complemented one another and that they should remain separate.46 Approximately 80 percent of the members of the General German School Association were educated and bourgeois (in other words, part of the Bildungsbürgertum).47 In 1883, the association had 9,016 members; in 1901, that number was 32,000. The renamed Association for Germandom Abroad grew to 45,272 in 1911 and 62,000 in 1918.48 To put these statistics in a broader context, the Pan-German League had only 22,000 members in 1902, and this had declined to 17,000 by 1914.49 Roger Chickering notes that in many ways, it was the political system of Imperial Germany that created these associations, including the Association for Germandom Abroad, which in turn had an impact on GermanSpanish schools in Buenos Aires. The associations did not seek consensus, instead putting “a premium on national issues as an alternative source of cohesion.”50 Geoff Eley contends that a broad group of nationalist pressure groups, particularly the Pan-German League, the Navy League, the Colonial Society, the Society for the Eastern Marches, and the Defense League, represented a right-wing ideology and a “radical nationalism, with a strong populist inflection” that applied pressure to the German

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government from the 1890s until 1914.51 As Stefan Manz notes, the radical right had significant influence on the political mainstream; in its ranks “were members of the Reichstag and other policy makers at national and local levels, middle- and high-ranking civil servants, journalists, and university professors.”52 The goals of the Association for Germandom Abroad changed after the First World War, when its leaders became much more preoccupied with German speakers in central and eastern Europe, who lived beyond the newly redefined boundaries of Germany and Austria. With the perceived national crisis provoked by territorial losses, the Association for Germandom Abroad had grown to two million members by 1930, becoming the largest voluntary association in the country.53 The association moved away from its focus on education; its main goal became, in the words of its leaders in 1919, to “spread the feeling of völkisch [national/ ethnic] togetherness and reciprocal allegiance between Germans within and outside the Empire.”54 Driven by concerns over central Europe, the nationalist vision of Germandom abroad conflated various regions of the world in the discussion of German unity. There were also clear examples of the importance of Latin America shaping some ideas of Germandom abroad in the interwar years. The president of the Association for Germandom Abroad from 1928 to 1931, Baron Hilmar von dem BusscheHaddenhausen, had been the German envoy in Buenos Aires between 1910 and 1913.55 The periodical Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande connected German teachers and others interested in education who were living around the world. It informed readers about the financial support offered by the German government and encouraged schools to apply for the kinds of funding that Schüssler and Hopff requested.56 The editors republished general facts about schools, often taking this information from the annual reports sent to the periodical by the directors of the schools. It also published articles written by German teachers working in different countries, and in this sense it became a forum where migrant educators could exchange ideas about different local contexts. Schools in Buenos Aires subscribed to this publication, which regularly featured articles on those schools.57 Mirroring the way that schools in the capital city received the majority of the subsidies that the Foreign Office sent to Argentina, articles in Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande about a select group of schools in Buenos Aires overshadowed reports about all other schools in the Río de la Plata region. Founded in 1901 by two German educators working in Romania and Belgium (Hans Amrhein in Galatz and Bernhard Gaster in Antwerp) and published, with a few interruptions, until 1938, the periodical’s goal was “to strengthen self-confidence, to fortify pedagogical capabilities, to improve the material conditions of teachers abroad, and to build

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a bridge between the homeland of pedagogy and the pedagogical new country [dem pädagogischen Neulande].”58 An annual subscription to the monthly publication, which contained articles on German-language education in places ranging from Belgium, England, and Bulgaria to Egypt, Mexico, and Japan, cost 5 marks. There were very few references to the United States, something that attests more to the integration of the German language in public schools and universities than to a lack of Germanlanguage education in the country.59 The periodical received funding from a range of sources, one of which was the German Teachers’ Association of Buenos Aires.60 In addition to the fact that its editors were in Romania and Belgium, financial support from places such as Buenos Aires suggests that the periodical was a collaborative, international endeavor. The ideas that were expressed about preserving Germandom abroad and “retaining” children born in the Americas for Germandom reveal broader ideas about nation and territory in Imperial and Weimar Germany and about how interlocutors in distant regions were involved in producing these ideas. Educators in Argentina played off German desires to maintain children within the territorially unbounded nation. They used similar language and emphasized the dangers facing Germandom, particularly if children of German heritage could not attend a German-­language school. Nevertheless, these ideas about Germandom abroad reveal the European side of a transatlantic relationship. German immigrants in Argentina and, to an even greater extent, their Argentine-born children did not see themselves solely as Germans abroad, instead embracing transatlantic connections as a supplement to the local and national contexts in which they found themselves.

imperial visions and local realities Despite the goals of the German Foreign Office and the connections that made Argentina and above all Buenos Aires an important site for the formation of this international German education project, immigrant educators followed their own path. They encouraged the German state to send them pedagogical and financial support, but this assistance did not place any requirements on schools. For Foreign Office officials, the subsidies ensured that a greater number of children grew up with some contact with the German language and culture. For the directors of these bilingual schools, however, help from abroad allowed them to increase the number of pupils who did not pay tuition. With this help, they could include more children of working-class German immigrants in their educational project and strengthen both the idea of community and their leadership of it.

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School directors in Buenos Aires often used the rhetoric of saving working-class immigrants from the danger of assimilation in their justification for financial assistance from the German state. In asking the Foreign Office to support their “school dedicated to Germandom,” Carl Schüssler and J. Plate wrote that “it would be extremely regrettable if we were forced to limit or completely abandon the free education that we offer; in this country, where education is free in all public schools, it would be an example of incapacity for us Germans and moreover very dangerous for the preservation of our nationality. Charging tuition would immediately turn away the children of our poorer countrymen.”61 In 1907, the directors of one school thanked the German government for support and stated that if the school had the financial means to reduce tuition fees, “the community could send twice as many children to the school, the majority of whom currently attend local public schools and are as a result lost to Germandom.”62 Reinhold Gabert noted in 1908 that “when a German goes abroad, it is not that uncommon that we see the abandonment of one’s nationality in the first, immigrant generation. The number of members of the second generation who are completely, even in the linguistic sense, lost to Germandom is quite considerable. Proportionally, only a small part of the third generation can be described as German.”63 German-speaking educators often spoke of the danger of assimilation facing the children of immigrants born in Argentina. On the one hand, these educators were describing a sociocultural reality. On the other hand, it was a discursive strategy aimed at encouraging the German Foreign Office to maintain or increase its support for this bilingual educational project. The leaders of one school worried—both because of their own interest in creating an ethnic community and in an effort to inform their interlocutors in Germany—that when the children of German immigrants attended Argentine schools, “they slip[ped] slowly, imperceptibly away from their German national consciousness [dem deutschen Stammesbewusstsein].”64 The directors of an elementary school in Buenos Aires complained in a letter to the Foreign Office that when a boy attends a Spanish-language school, he “almost always becomes Argentine and completely loses contact with Germandom, particularly when the mother comes from a family that speaks a Romance language.”65 Local observers in Argentina invited the Foreign Office to become engaged with German-language schooling for other reasons as well. Wilhelm Keiper, in an extensive report sent to Berlin in 1916, suggested that “preserving and strengthening Germandom in this country is a task that would be rewarding not only in völkisch terms but also economically. Although the descendants of Germans largely do not retain German citizenship, they can nonetheless form a German-Argentine stratum in the population, one that knows and loves German ways and German culture

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and that can therefore become natural intermediaries to the purely Argentine population.”66 In making such claims, Keiper attempted to justify the program of supporting schools thousands of kilometers away from Germany; the German government’s decision to do precisely that was, therefore, shaped by ideas that came from outside Germany. Speaking about his experience working in Argentina, Dr. W. Hauff told an audience in Berlin in 1911, “The main goal of all teaching must be the preservation of Germandom.” However, he also stressed the need to be sensitive to the local situation, noting that “when one comes over from Germany and begins: Children, we are German, that is magnificent, and we want to stay German! Hurrah! Then the children will shout much louder and in Spanish: And we are Argentine and we want to stay Argentine!” He concluded, “We cannot demand that people whose actual homeland is Argentina feel like German citizens. We also could not blame the Argentine government for immediately closing any school that encouraged such sentiments.”67 The Argentine government was indeed capable of closing private schools, but in the case of German-Spanish ones, that did not happen between 1880 and 1930. During his tenure as the director of the Belgrano School in the 1920s, Wilhelm Keiper wrote, “The German schools in Argentina know the goal and the limits of their effectiveness. . . . They will have to demonstrate that they have the strength to complete the task given to them: Find harmony between a German education and the requirements and needs of the country on whose soil the schools stand and which is the homeland of their pupils.”68 In a paper he delivered to the German Teachers’ Association in 1924, Keiper pointed out that “the position of German schools has been fixed for a long time. They are not German government schools and not purely German schools. Instead they are German-Argentine schools.” Very aware of the economic and political troubles facing the Weimar Republic, he added that these schools “have greater difficulties to overcome. Their relationship to the homeland has changed because of Germany’s new [deteriorated] international stature.”69 He concluded that “German schools should earnestly strive to provide their pupils with a good and dignified education in all subjects that are necessary for future Argentine citizens, but they should also tenaciously protect the German language and culture entrusted to them.”70 In their appeals to the Foreign Office, educators in Argentina stressed the value of their schools in preserving Germandom, yet at the local level, these same figures painted a more complicated picture that separated questions of citizenship and national belonging from Germandom and German ethnicity. They used language such as “future Argentine citizens” and “people whose actual homeland is Argentina,” which highlights how German immigrant educators thought about their own and about children’s belonging in Argentina.

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Writing about their new curriculum at the Belgrano School in 1927, the directors noted that they believed the school “should offer in equal measure a German upbringing and education as well as meet the practical requirements for a future profession here in this country.”71 They informed parents and funders that “it is by no means the intention of the board of directors and directors of the school to strengthen the ‘Argentine stream’ of the school at the expense of the German one. On the contrary, they see it as a matter of duty and honor for the school to provide those pupils who so desire a complete German education, preferably all the way to the Realschule exam.” They “hope therefore to receive the approval of parents so that the Belgrano School can always remain a good German and a good Argentine school.”72 Other schools more explicitly rejected the goal of maintaining a formal duality and instead tended toward Argentina. The Colegio Alemán Incorporado, a bilingual high school run jointly by the Belgrano and Germania Schools, sought to “prepare German-Argentine children for university studies following an Argentine curriculum, but at the same time preserve and expand on the German cultural inheritance that they have received from their ancestors and that the school has also given them. The school wants to be an intermediary between German and Argentine forms of being.”73 The Colegio Alemán Incorporado focused on Argentine certification and fostering German culture while the Belgrano School offered formal Argentine and German certifications and sought to maintain an equal balance between both streams. School promoters in Argentina took full advantage of the support offered by the German state, but they had their own ideas about shaping the cultural and civic identities of children. Moreover, the combined funding from tuition fees, member contributions, and female-organized fundraisers overshadowed the influence of the German Foreign Office. While educators in Argentina took advantage of support from across the Atlantic, it did not oblige them to advance a project of maintaining a German nation that was not territorially bounded.

conclusion German-speaking educators in Buenos Aires had their own agendas in interacting with German imperial nationalism. Their focus on the future and their belonging in Argentina encouraged them to strike a balance between their own ethnic identities and the realization that the children in their community would spend their lives in a Spanish-speaking society. The autonomy that the National Council of Education granted to immigrant-run schools created a system of bilingual education in which

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leaders of many backgrounds could draw on ideas, teachers, and financial resources from Europe. Existing in parallel to public schools and regulated by the National Council, German-Spanish schools could interact freely with the German Foreign Office. The German government supported “schools abroad,” but people of German heritage in Argentina supported and controlled bilingual schools that pursued other objectives. From the perspective of actors in Germany, the educational network that spanned the Atlantic Ocean worked to maintain German emigrants and their children within a territorially unbounded national community. The financial and personnel support that the Foreign Office and nationalist groups could provide to immigrant-run schools encouraged German speakers in Argentina to actively embrace this transatlantic relationship. They took advantage of the imperialist desire to maintain a global nation by using similar language about the dangers facing Germandom. Ultimately, people on both sides of the Atlantic were satisfied with the arrangement. Cultural nationalists in the Association for Germandom Abroad and bureaucrats in the Foreign Office gained more influence than they otherwise would have had they not maintained any connections whatsoever. Their driving belief that Germans and their children in Latin America were part of a territorially unbounded ethno-cultural community of Germandom abroad was apparently not contradicted by the fact that these people spoke Spanish and planned to continue living in another country. From the perspective of those who controlled the German-­Spanish bilingual schools in Argentina, maintaining good relations with Germany was part of their broader pedagogical project. They wanted to have skilled, German-speaking teachers and to receive a small but significant amount of money with few strings attached. They also wanted to describe their institutions as “German schools,” even when their curricular content meant that they actually ran German-Spanish schools. The transatlantic relationship between German speakers in Buenos Aires and the Foreign Office in Berlin was frequently driven by the efforts of parents and educators in Buenos Aires. They propounded a different meaning for the ethno-cultural category of Germandom, creating space for the idea that being German and being Argentine were not mutually exclusive. In so doing, they challenged the idea that national cultures— either German or Argentine—were monolithic. Through their words and their actions, parents and teachers created and supported schools that expanded the boundaries of Argentine citizenship. They also undermined the emerging idea in central Europe that viewed the German nation as something that extended across not only political but also generational boundaries. The next chapter maintains the focus on transatlantic exchanges, but it shifts the focus to the Catholic and Lutheran connections.

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As was the case with education, the circulation of people, finances, and ideas across the Atlantic had an impact on religious German speakers’ understanding of ethnicity and community in Argentina and on the ideas held by various groups in Imperial and Weimar Germany about a territorially unbounded nation.

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chapter 5

Transatlantic Religion and the Boundaries of Community

; In 1899, Julius Scheringer and his wife Hanna disembarked in Buenos Aires. The young Lutheran pastor had been sent by the Protestant High Consistory (Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat) in Berlin to found a German sailors’ home. The home, it was hoped, would lure German mariners temporarily in port into a morally appropriate environment and away from the supposedly seductive dangers of Buenos Aires.1 In 1903, when the city’s main pastor, E.W. Bussmann, returned to Germany, Scheringer left his post as a minister to sailors and became a pastor of the German Lutheran congregation of Buenos Aires.2 Three years later, Scheringer became the most experienced Lutheran clergyman in the city when Paul Kaetzke, his superior, also returned to Germany.3 From 1906 until his own departure in 1912, Scheringer was the leading figure of Argentine Lutheranism, both as the main pastor of the country’s largest congregation and as the president of the German Lutheran La Plata Synod (Deutsche Evangelische La Plata-Synode). In 1912, Leo Mirau traveled from Buenos Aires to Europe for the first time in more than two decades. During his six-month visit, he mailed a series of articles to the Argentinischer Volksfreund, explaining to Germanspeaking Catholic readers the changes he encountered in the “homeland,” a term he applied broadly to the major cities he visited in Germany, Austria, and Hungary.4 For many years, Mirau served as the Buenos Aires representative of the Germany-based St. Raphael Society, and he helped Germanspeaking Catholics with bureaucratic hurdles and work placement when they arrived in the city.5 In 1919, Mirau again returned to Germany. While there, he spoke at a Catholic conference in Mainz, with over ten thousand attendees, about the economic opportunities that Argentina could offer to German emigrants. The next year, he published a successful Germanlanguage immigration guide that he sold in both Europe and Argentina.6

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Scheringer’s and Mirau’s transatlantic movements were part of a broader pattern of activities that influenced German-speaking Lutheran and Catholic communities in Argentina. Scheringer spent thirteen years in Argentina and then returned to Germany, while Mirau immigrated and stayed in Argentina, only returning to central Europe for short visits. Although few German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics in Argentina crossed the Atlantic with the same frequency as did their religious leaders, the religious networks established by people such as Scheringer and Mirau shaped the contours of German-language religious communities in the city and the country. Indeed, Buenos Aires served as a regional hub through which transatlantic connections spread to different groups of German speakers in the Argentine interior. Denominational rather than linguistic or national categories defined these networks, and they created competing Lutheran and Catholic communities. This chapter argues that denominational identities influenced how German speakers in Argentina understood the boundaries of community and their sense of belonging in Argentine society. It charts the efforts of Lutheran and Catholic organizations in Germany to promote Germanlanguage religion in Buenos Aires and the Río de la Plata region, and it examines how these transatlantic ties helped shape some of the core German-language institutions of Argentina. German speakers maintained relations with various religious organizations in Imperial and Weimar Germany, but they drew selectively on this support to foster both religious and linguistic pluralism in Argentina. Ultimately, as was the case with education, support from Germany came with few strings attached, and it gave German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics access to Germanspeaking pastors and priests and extra financial resources. Groups in both Germany and Argentina were particularly interested in preserving a place for German-language religion into the future, and that goal drove them to establish and foster transatlantic ties. Several historians have pointed out how a range of people in Imperial and Weimar Germany sought to use Germans in Latin America as a tool for economic and political influence on the world stage.7 Yet Lutherans and Catholics in Germany were also highly interested in German speakers in Latin America, and it was religious rather than economic or political concerns that motivated their involvement. They were concerned about the religious implications of German speakers severing transatlantic ties. These religious networks were shaped by the emergent ideas of Germandom abroad that also influenced the transatlantic education networks, and the discussion about coreligionists needing to be saved and preserved was similarly an example of the imperial nationalism of Wilhelmine Germany. The perceived threat of conversion to Catholicism was a crucial factor that encouraged Protestants in Germany to become involved with

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coreligionists in the Southern Cone, and as chapter 6 will show, a similar concern about Argentina’s largest denomination influenced the ideas and behavior of German-speaking Lutherans in Buenos Aires. Conversely, Catholic groups in Germany mixed their own nationalist concerns about a territorially unbounded German nation with a larger, international Catholic discussion about the need to strengthen or revive their church in the face of industrial society and liberal ideologies. Stefan Manz argues that Protestant organizations in Germany were particularly important in disseminating nationalist ideas and constructing a sense of belonging to a “greater German Empire.”8 Protestant leaders believed that they had both a religious and a national task in their work abroad; Catholic efforts, however, “did not act as the same motor of diasporic nationalism.”9 German Catholics did, though, seek to ensure that Catholic emigrants remained members of their church, and leaders believed that offering services in German would be one way to achieve that goal. The religious networks that connected German speakers in Buenos Aires to both Europe and the Argentine interior were not unique to this group. British immigrants and religious leaders established Englishlanguage Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Catholic churches in Buenos Aires and elsewhere in the country.10 Catholic missionaries from Italy and France played active roles in creating schools, hospitals, and other social services.11 In fact, between 1860 and 1910, sixty new Catholic congregations with their motherhouses in Europe began work in Argentina.12 A number of transnational connections influenced the lives of Jewish Argentines as well, including agricultural settlement schemes and anti-prostitution societies based in London; the circulation of ideas about anarchism, socialism, and communism between Europe and Argentina; the arrival of Jews from different countries in Europe; and some Jewish Argentines’ support of Zionism.13 The influence of organizations in Germany on Lutherans and Catholics in Argentina is particularly relevant in a comparative context. Lutherans in North America had fewer ties to Lutherans in Germany. The General Council served as an umbrella organization for several German-language Lutheran synods in the United States and Canada.14 And while that institutional structure resembled the relationship between the La Plata Synod and the Berlin-based Protestant High Consistory, the La Plata Synod was a distant and junior partner of a European institution whereas a number of German-language congregations in North America created their own religious bodies, separate from Germany. German-speaking Lutherans in the Southern Cone did not find hundreds of thousands of their brethren waiting for them, the way that Lutherans did when they arrived in New York, Ohio, Ontario, or Nebraska. Conversely, German-speaking Catholics in the Argentine capital encountered a well-established religious body.

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As in North America, the Catholic Church in Argentina was open to the idea of catering to growing immigrant populations in foreign languages by recruiting priests from many parts of Europe.15

lutheran and catholic institutions German-language Lutheran and Catholic institutions began to emerge in Buenos Aires alongside the influx of German-speaking immigrants. Lutheran congregations sprang up in the capital city as the result of the concerted efforts of religious groups in Germany in the 1840s, and German-language Catholicism began to take shape in the 1880s. Two distinct denominational structures shaped the kinds of German-language religious bodies that emerged in Argentina: German-speaking Catholics were joining a well-established church, while German-speaking Lutherans had to start from scratch. German-speaking Catholics also heeded local ecclesiastical structures in a way that did not apply to the Lutheran members of the La Plata Synod. This difference had a significant impact on the way in which the members of these two denominations created transatlantic networks. Until 1899, when the La Plata Synod was founded, Lutheran congregations in Buenos Aires and elsewhere in Argentina had been partially controlled by a central church body in Berlin, in a way that was similar to the relationship between Berlin and a congregation anywhere in Prussia. Although for practical and geographic reasons the congregations in different parts of Argentina did communicate with one another, they shared no formal institutional structure in the Southern Cone, having instead common bilateral relationships with the High Consistory in Germany. The statutes of the congregation in the Argentine capital declared in 1875 that “the German Lutheran congregation in Buenos Aires represents a branch of the United Church of Prussia” and that “the Protestant High Consistory in Berlin has the right to name the pastor of the congregation and to call him into service. In the case of a vacancy, the congregation and the board of directors have to request a replacement from the High Consistory. They may not dismiss their pastor without permission from this body.”16 Even in 1920, the pastors maintained that their congregations were “a branch of the German Protestant Church, more specifically a part of the Prussian State Church. [Nevertheless, they were] founded based on the religious needs of Lutheran Germans abroad rather than a planting from above and outside.”17 The congregations’ lay and clerical leadership noted their natural connection to Germany and their own power in creating a German-language Argentine institution. The German-language Lutheran congregations in

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Argentina and in most other countries that became involved with Protestant bodies in Germany most often associated themselves with the Prussian State Church. It was the largest and most powerful Protestant church in Germany, and it was also formally a union between both the Lutheran and Reformed denominations (whereas the Saxon and Hanoverian churches were only Lutheran), thus allowing for a certain amount of doctrinal flexibility.18 The process of establishing an autonomous Lutheran synod in Argentina began in 1895, under the leadership of the congregation in the capital city.19 The main pastor in the city, E.W. Bussmann, began publishing the Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt in the same year. The synodical periodical offered a mix of biblical teachings, news about different congregations in the region, and news from Argentina and Europe. In 1899, twelve congregations in Argentina and one in Uruguay came together to form the German Lutheran La Plata Synod. At the time of its founding, the synod’s leaders claimed to have thirty thousand baptized Lutheran members, but active participation was noticeably lower.20 Despite the move toward unity in the Río de la Plata region, ties to Germany remained strong. Bussmann contended in 1897 that all of the congregations in Argentina benefited from the protection of the German Empire.21 He described the High Consistory in Berlin as a “stronghold for the brothers of faith scattered in the Roman Catholic world.”22 The creation of a synod reconstituted but did not end the institutional union with the Protestant High Consistory in Berlin, and the synod replaced individual congregations as a constituent member of the consistory. German-speaking Catholics also engaged in a transatlantic dialogue with the Catholic Church in Germany, but they did so as members of the Catholic Church in Argentina and not as a separate and autonomous institution. German-speaking Catholic priests in Argentina greatly outnumbered Lutheran pastors. In 1912, an article in the Argentinischer Volksfreund estimated that there were between two hundred and two hundred and fifty German priests in Argentina.23 In the same year, there were approximately twenty German Lutheran pastors in the country.24 Nonetheless, these priests were not part of any autonomous institution that could be compared to the La Plata Synod, and creating German-language places of worship within Catholic parishes was the extent of these priests’ German-language activities. They worked within an Argentine institution and often used Spanish and Latin to promote Catholicism to people of many linguistic backgrounds. The establishment of German-language Catholic services in Argentina took place in conjunction with a broader transformation of the Church in the country. There was a noteworthy lack of clergy in Argentina in the mid-nineteenth century, a problem exacerbated by the influx of millions

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of immigrants and a general population boom in the final third of the century.25 The Church also faced a number of secularizing state reforms. However, as Lilia Ana Bertoni highlights, the dichotomy between Catholicism and the secular state is often overstated. For example, Catholic leaders and Catholic thinking played an important role in voting down a national law permitting divorce in Argentina in 1902.26 In the final third of the nineteenth century, the national government also gave subsidies to Catholic authorities to build, renovate, and maintain churches, convents, and schools.27 Starting in 1897, religious congregations gained the power to train primary school teachers, who had received their teacher training in state normal schools since the education reforms of the 1880s.28 Speaking more broadly about the Catholic Church in Europe and the Americas, the final third of the nineteenth century was marked by a growing Ultramontane pressure to standardize practice and assert Vatican authority. As Roberto Di Stefano and Loris Zanatta contend, the twentieth-century Catholic Church in Argentina was “born in the shadow and climate of Romanization.”29 Three German-language Catholic congregations in particular—the male Society of the Divine Word, the Sisters of Christian Charity, and the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit—were among the many new European congregations in Argentina, and they played a role in the Catholic Church’s transformation. Yet their participation also carved out a distinct German-language space within Argentine Catholicism. The motherhouses of these congregations were in Germany, and the priests and nuns of these congregations who came to Argentina in this period came from Germany. The male congregation published the Argentinischer Volksfreund. These three congregations ran schools in Buenos Aires and elsewhere in Argentina.30 German-language services were dispersed within Argentine Catholic ecclesiastical structures. In addition to the three congregations just mentioned, which were cohesive German-language organizations, other German priests worked in Catholic congregations that were not directly connected to Germany. The German origins of these other priests represent a form of transatlantic circulation similar to that of the Lutheran pastors of the La Plata Synod, but these priests were members of larger religious congregations that did not focus on preserving the German language or German Catholic communities. Priests from the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists) gave sermons and offered other religious services in German in Buenos Aires starting in 1883.31 In 1912, the Volksfreund identified five different churches in the city of Buenos Aires as sites with masses that included German-language sermons, which outnumbered the three places of German Lutheran worship in the city center, Belgrano, and Barracas in the same period.32 In his

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1920 immigration guide, Leo Mirau identified churches in Buenos Aires run by Redemptorists, Jesuits, Salesians, and the Divine Word as sites where German-speaking priests worked. These four churches existed in addition to the German Catholic Congregation, which held services in the chapel in the mainly Spanish-language Catholic school run by the Sisters of Christian Charity, the Colegio Mallinckrodt.33 In a similar vein, there were three Catholic Churches in Buenos Aires run by English-speaking priests from the congregation of Passionate Fathers (Passionists).34 Although some Argentines linked Catholicism to their definition of the nation, German, British, Italian, French, and other immigrants also made Catholicism a diverse category. Figure 11 further illustrates the dispersed nature of the German language within Argentine Catholicism. The image depicts the Nuestra ­Señora de Guadalupe church on the Plaza Güemes in Buenos Aires. It was inaugurated in 1907 and was built on land belonging to the (Germanlanguage) Society of the Divine Word, adjacent to the school run by that congregation, and a stone’s throw from the press where the congregation published the weekly Argentinischer Volksfreund. The architect of the building was J. Beckert, a German priest belonging to the congregation.35 While the church offered sermons and sacraments in German, it was primarily a Spanish-language space, serving the parish of Las Heras. The Society of the Divine Word was a member of the church, but it did not run the parish alone. At the inaugural mass, the choir of the German Catholic Society performed, yet the sermon given to the six thousand attendees was in Spanish.36 German-language Lutheran and Catholic institutions in the Argentine capital benefited from the active interest that religious groups in Germany took in German speakers living far from central Europe. Yet the nature of the Protestant and Catholic Churches on both sides of the Atlantic led to the rise of two different German-language religious spaces in Buenos Aires. Most notably, Lutherans were starting from scratch while Germanspeaking Catholics worked within the already existing structures of an Argentine institution.

promoting lutheranism abroad Three Protestant bodies in Germany supported the La Plata Synod and its congregations. The Protestant High Consistory, based in Berlin; the Protestant Association for the La Plata States (Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata Staaten), based in Bremen; and the Gustav Adolf Association (Gustav-Adolf-Verein), based in Leipzig, all actively established a relationship with the institutions of practicing Lutherans in Argentina. These

Figure 11. Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Photograph by author.

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three organizations made up the core of the Protestant efforts in Germany to maintain “Germandom abroad” in the decades prior to the First World War. It is important to recognize the polycentrism of the country and to note that the interests of religious leaders in either Saxony or Bremen did not necessarily mirror those of actors in Prussia.37 The German state played a crucial role in facilitating financial exchanges between the High Consistory and the La Plata Synod. Money was transferred via the diplomatic network of the Foreign Office and the German envoy in Buenos Aires. The High Consistory in Berlin deposited the money into a general state account in Berlin, and from there it was put into the account of the Buenos Aires legation, which then passed the money on to the synod or the congregation in question.38 At the same time, the complete absence of comparable state support for the connections between Catholic organizations in Germany and in Buenos Aires reveals an important feature of this transatlantic dialogue. Catholic networks existed as well, but the German state did not support them. The Protestant High Consistory, the Protestant Association for the La Plata States, and the Gustav Adolf Association cooperated with one another but often fulfilled distinct functions. They were in basic agreement on their common mission of promoting Lutheranism in Argentina among German speakers of Lutheran heritage, but they were not particularly interested in spreading Lutheranism to German- or Spanish-speaking Catholics or to other religious groups. The three organizations collaborated to finance the travel of Lutheran pastors from Germany to Buenos Aires.39 The High Consistory and the Gustav Adolf Association also sent small subsidies to newly founded congregations. As was the case for GermanSpanish schools in Buenos Aires, these religious connections required the participation of German speakers in Argentina. Immigrants and adult Argentines of German heritage were not simply passive imperial subjects accepting ideas, money, and pastors, even if groups in Germany considered them to be part of a global and unchangeable German nation. From the founding of the La Plata Synod through the end of the First World War, the flow of small financial contributions was a central aspect of the institutional connections between Buenos Aires and the High Consistory in Berlin. The High Consistory partially subsidized the synod’s ­periodical (the Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt), it paid a portion of the wages of the itinerant pastor working in the Argentine interior, it donated money to the synod’s orphanage in Baradero, and it sometimes gave small sums for general expenditures. While a comprehensive overview of all funding in each year has been difficult to assemble, it appears that the total value of all support ranged between three thousand and five thousand marks per year (between 1,700 and 2,900 pesos) before the outbreak of war. The editors of the Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt regularly thanked

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the High Consistory and other Lutheran bodies, such as the ­Gustav Adolf Association in Leipzig and occasionally the Protestant Church Aid Society in Switzerland (Protestantisch-Kirchlicher Hilfsverein), for contributions of five hundred to a thousand marks to specific congregations. In 1909, for example, a total of 3,365 marks was transferred to the synod to partially subsidize a number of activities.40 On occasion, the High Consistory would make larger contributions to meet specific needs. In 1914, for example, it sent just over thirteen thousand marks to the congregation in Rosario to help build a church.41 Similarly, it donated nine thousand marks (approximately five thousand pesos) in the same year to help establish the orphanage in Baradero.42 In these cases, the money was simply an extra subsidy for activities that the contributing members of different congregations of the Argentine synod covered, by and large, on their own. For example, while the High Consistory contributed 5,000 pesos to the Baradero orphanage in 1914, the members of the congregation in Buenos Aires donated 11,146 pesos, and the family of Hermann Frers, who had immigrated to Argentina in the 1840s, donated an additional 10,000 pesos.43 In the case of this orphanage, therefore, German-speaking Lutherans in Argentina paid for 82 percent of the cost while the High Consistory gave 18 percent.44 The flow of this money to Lutheran congregations represents a tangible facet of the transatlantic relationship, but the total value reveals that the synod and Argentine congregations had a great deal of financial autonomy. A core element of these transatlantic Lutheran networks was the circulation of pastors, such as Julius Scheringer, who began this chapter. Between 1880 and 1930, pastors invariably came from Germany, and a great majority of them spent between five and ten years in Argentina before returning to Germany.45 Pastors came at the request of the local congregations, while church authorities in Germany selected the specific candidate. In November 1911, for example, the La Plata Synod wrote on behalf of the Buenos Aires congregation to ask the High Consistory to find one or two new pastors. The congregation further stipulated that the pastor already be married and asked the High Consistory to find suitable candidates among the current or former pastors working abroad (Aus­ landspastoren).46 The pastors and the congregations’ lay boards of directors that ran the synod had the power to maintain this flow of pastors. However, they also had the power to establish an Argentine seminary, to partner with synods in Brazil or Chile, or even to send young Lutherans from Argentina to pursue theological studies in Germany. A relatively constant transatlantic circulation of pastors between Germany and Buenos Aires emerged in this period, further supported by the willingness of Protestant organizations in Germany to send pastors to serve in “congregations abroad” (Auslandsgemeinden). E.W. Bussmann,

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who came to Buenos Aires in 1895, moved to Jerusalem in 1903 to lead the Lutheran congregation there.47 Richard Wick, a pastor in Buenos Aires from 1912 to 1926, was a superintendent northeast of Berlin by the late 1920s.48 Oskar Dettenborn worked in General Alvear, in the province of Buenos Aires, and then Ramírez, Entre Ríos for two decades before returning to Germany.49 By the late 1920s, he was working in a rural part of present-day Brandenburg, west of Berlin.50 When pastors’ contracts with their congregations in Argentina were extended, the High Consistory would sometimes finance a temporary visit to Germany.51 In 1908, the synod asked the High Consistory to send a second itinerant pastor so that the first one could concentrate on a smaller region. Authorities in Berlin agreed, and they pledged to contribute a thousand marks toward the pastor’s salary for each of the next three years.52 At the same time, the Protestant Association for the La Plata States agreed to cover this new pastor’s travel costs to Argentina and pledged an additional four hundred marks per year toward his salary.53 In 1911 and 1912, the Gustav Adolf Association pledged one thousand five hundred marks, and in 1913, five hundred marks, to subsidize the salary of the itinerant pastor as well.54 Even in 1916, during the First World War, the Gustav Adolf Association sent a thousand marks to the synod in neutral Argentina to help pay part of the itinerant pastor’s wages.55 The Protestant High Consistory, the Protestant Association for the La Plata States, and the Gustav Adolf Association actively sought to establish relationships with Lutheran groups in Argentina. Their goals formed the core of the Germany-based efforts to carve out a place for religion within the broader national discussion of Germans abroad. Those efforts influenced the La Plata Synod by giving its congregations a steady flow of pastors and access to a small amount of financial support.

a protestant diaspora in a sea of catholicism Protestant leaders in Germany often described German speakers who lived in eastern Europe or the Americas as a “diaspora,” and they often used the term as another name for “Protestant Germandom abroad” (evangelisches Auslandsdeutschtum);56 in both cases, they were using the terms to describe a collective whole with supposedly innate characteristics. Although the word “diaspora” is now common, and popular, in academia, its biblical undertones and its use by religious leaders in this period reveal the religious ideas that encouraged Protestants in central Europe to take an interest in their coreligionists living elsewhere. In applying a biblical term to a specific denominational group, leaders presented Protestants living in predominantly Catholic regions of Europe

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and the Americas as something similar to biblical dispersion. In particular, they used the term “diaspora” to discuss Protestants in Catholic or Orthodox countries, rather than those living in the predominantly Protestant United States. The Protestant Association for the La Plata States was founded in 1902 in Bremen.57 Its creation reflects the reciprocal nature of the transatlantic dialogue. In their call for support in Germany, the leaders of the association wrote that “the board of directors of the German Lutheran La Plata Synod extends the urgent request to Lutheran brothers in the homeland who are friends of Protestant Germandom in the La Plata states. These men are asked to join the synod’s aid society.”58 Another reason for creating the Protestant Association was that, according to its leaders, the growing size of the “German diaspora” (ausländische Diaspora) strained the High Consistory’s resources, and the High Consistory would have difficulty continuing its support of the congregations of Argentina. As a result, the Bremen-based leaders strove to create a benevolent society specifically for the Río de La Plata region.59 They modeled their association on preexisting groups that supported German Protestants in North America, Chile, Brazil, Jerusalem, and parts of Africa.60 Its primary goal was “to stand beside and support the Protestant High Consistory in Berlin in its care for the Lutheran congregations of the German Lutheran La Plata Synod.”61 The leaders of the Protestant Association for the La Plata States appealed to “everybody to join the association who is in contact with our countrymen there or who has himself lived there as well as everybody who has a heart for the preservation of the national traditions [Volk­ stum] and the faith of our Lutheran brothers abroad. It will help the synod fulfill its national and Lutheran tasks.”62 They further reasoned that German speakers in Argentina were “uncoupled from their past, their family, their people [Volk], their homeland.” They added, “Our diaspora congregations, even people living far from the social life of their congregation, should not forget the homeland; they should not disavow their Germanness, and they should abide by their Lutheran faith. . . . They have the obligation and task, as patriots and Protestants, to bring recognition and honor to the German essence and Protestant spirit around the world.”63 The new association described its members as men who wanted to support “Germandom in Argentina” and others who thought more generally about Germandom and about “the preservation of German Lutheran values in the diaspora.”64 Among its leadership we find several men who had previously lived in Argentina, and two founding members of the Bremen association, Wilhelm Fremery and Heinrich Lahusen, had been members of the church council in Buenos Aires in the 1880s and 1890s.65

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The Protestant Association existed until 1921, when it transferred its assets and “duties” to the Bremen branch of the Gustav Adolf Association.66 The association had 133 members in 1903, a number that remained relatively constant until the war, when numbers began to drop off quickly.67 In 1915, the association had 79 members, and at the time of its dissolution, membership was even lower.68 Ultimately, the Protestant Association was a philanthropic body, and its dissolution was directly linked to the wartime and postwar context in Germany. The number of people in Germany interested in preserving Lutheranism in Argentina declined during the war, as more pressing financial demands emerged closer to home. The association raised awareness about German-speaking Lutherans in Argentina in certain circles in Germany, and it supported the synod’s itinerant pastor working in the Argentine interior among German speakers from many parts of Europe.69 The association was the principal recruiter in Germany of this special pastor and the main funder of his travel, but it also collaborated with the High Consistory.70 When the association sent the first itinerant pastor, Wilhelm Nelke, a year after its foundation in 1903, it told members in Germany that the new pastor would revive the “dormant interest” that rural settlers often had in the church and that “the awakening of religious needs and the opportunity to meet them also strengthens the feeling of Germanness and of belonging to the beloved fatherland. Agricultural settlers have to make a new home thousands of miles away from the fatherland. Yet the love of the homeland and the proud feeling remain: we are also members of the great German Volk.”71 They worried that their feeling of belonging to the German Volk “can be easily lost in the difficult linguistic and religious conditions of a distant land if we do not hold tightly to the twine that binds us to those brothers and if we do not make those ties ever stronger.”72 Nelke reported back that he provided education and religious services for young people’s confirmations and sold subscriptions to the Evangel­ isches Gemeindeblatt. He also performed marriages, baptisms, and Sunday church services. He complained that he encountered Lutherans who had been married by a Catholic priest or who “lived without the church,”73 and such concerns seemed to drive many of his activities. Between 1903 and 1905, Nelke estimated that he traveled forty-one thousand kilometers back and forth between different places where German speakers lived, and he reported that he had performed 436 baptisms and 144 confirmations (in other words, one such act for every seventy kilometers traveled).74 Nelke presented these statistics to members in Germany as evidence that their support served as “an effective means to preserve our Lutheran faith, to restore estranged members to our church, and to preserve the Germanness of our brothers in the diaspora.”75 In 1908, the

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association reported that the work of Nelke’s replacement, Arnold Richter, not only served “interests of religious care for Germans, but helped with the preservation of their Germanness.”76 The Gustav Adolf Association, founded in 1832, collected money from large congregations in Germany to support Protestants living in minority situations in predominantly Catholic regions of German-speaking Europe, such as Bavaria, the Rhineland, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It strove to preserve the Lutheranism of German speakers immersed in a sea of Catholicism, describing them as the “diaspora.” The Gustav Adolf Association shared with the High Consistory and the Protestant Association the common goal of ensuring the development of a German-language Lutheran church in Argentina, but the Gustav Adolf Association also strove to prevent conversion to Catholicism, much more adamantly than did the High Consistory or the Protestant Association. The Gustav Adolf Association emerged as part of the nineteenthcentury German nationalism that looked to historical events such as the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) for the nation’s antecedents. Kevin Cramer argues that the denominational identity of nineteenth-century actors highly informed these narratives. For nineteenth-century German-­ speaking Protestants in central Europe, the seventeenth-century Gustavus Adolphus appeared as a visionary who had attempted to found a Protestant German state.77 The vast majority of people who wrote histories, poems, plays, and novels about him or erected monuments to him overlooked the fact that he was Swedish and that he was expanding the Swedish Empire southwards. Instead, they emphasized his role as a leader of Protestantism in a war of national liberation from the Catholic Hapsburg monarchy in Vienna, supposedly subordinate to anti-German interests in Rome. According to Cramer, “the mythogenesis of Gustavus Adolphus as a German national hero in the early nineteenth century illustrates a significant blurring of the boundaries between religion and nationalism in German intellectual and cultural life.”78 The Gustav Adolf Association’s annual contributions to the German Lutheran “diaspora” increased steadily during the nineteenth century. Between 1832 and 1912, the association distributed 58.4 million marks to Protestant congregations in Catholic areas; in 1912 alone the association funneled 1.9 million marks to congregations in Europe and around the world.79 Over the association’s first eighty years, 56 percent of all its financial support was spent within the boundaries of what became Imperial Germany in 1871, 32 percent in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and 10 percent in the rest of the world.80 Activities remained strong during the war: in 1915 the association spent 1.76 million marks and in 1916 another 1.63 million.81 In the 1920s, massive inflation and financial crisis in Germany caused the funds sent to South America to plummet, and the

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association concentrated its support solely on central and eastern Europe. It stopped sending money to Argentina altogether, and its annual projects in Brazil decreased from an average of two dozen to approximately five.82 While influencing the religious makeup of central and eastern Europe was a greater priority for the leaders of the Gustav Adolf Association, the support offered to the congregations of the La Plata Synod and synods in Brazil before 1918 highlights how Protestant groups in Germany took an active interest in developing a territorially unbounded ethnoreligious community. While the German Foreign Office, the General German School Association, and the Association for Germandom Abroad hoped to extend the territorial and generational boundaries of the nation through education, Lutheran groups emphasized the importance of denomination to the definition of Germandom. The transatlantic relationship between the Gustav Adolf Association and Argentina began in 1845, just two years after the Buenos Aires congregation was founded. The congregation in the capital city was the first in the Southern Cone to receive such funding, and that year marked the inception of the idea that German-speaking immigrants in the region were a part of the Protestant diaspora in the same way as German speakers in central and eastern Europe.83 In the decades that followed, most support from this association would be directed to the establishment of new congregations. In total, between 1845 and 1909, the congregations of the La Plata Synod received 64,483 marks, with 40 percent going to the congregation in Montevideo, Uruguay.84 While receiving only a small fraction of the total budget of the Gustav Adolf Association, the editors of the Evan­ gelisches Gemeindeblatt in Buenos Aires and the authors of the synod’s annual reports frequently praised these small donations from Germany. In the Gustav Adolf Association’s periodical in Germany, writers mixed fears of children being lost to Germandom with similar fears of children being lost to Lutheranism. In an 1898 article about Brazil, a pastor in rural São Paulo informed German donors and church leaders about “blue-eyed and blond-haired” children “who are not only lost to Germandom but also, immersed in this Catholic country, lost to the Protestant faith.”85 In another 1898 article, pastors tried to rally support in Germany for a Lutheran orphanage in Chile. The article warned that children “forget their mother tongue and with it their native customs and habits, loyalty and honesty. Every relationship with the dear homeland is lost. Believe me, there remains a spark of love for the fatherland in everybody, even the poorest German. It is our duty to fan this spark so that it does not go out.”86 Protestant authors in Germany based their statements on a vague understanding of assimilation in the Americas, fears about Lutherans living in Catholic parts of Europe, and unclear ideas about the local reality in

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the Southern Cone. Another report about German-speaking Lutherans in Brazil cautioned that “over the course of the years, those who live among Catholics are slowly lost to the Lutheran Church and as a result in most cases also to Germandom; is it then not our holy duty to help them?”87 Lutheran voices in Germany and in the La Plata Synod often described the goal of their activities as preserving Germanness, but since a foundational component of this Germanness was the Lutheran denomination, religion played a crucial role in these visions of ethnicity. Denominational identity did not matter to everybody, but for a significant group of people in Germany who maintained transatlantic relationships, ideas about preserving Lutheranism intermingled with ideas about supporting “Germandom abroad.” In the 1920s, the leaders of the Gustav Adolf Association, like the directors of the Association for Germandom Abroad, became convinced that Germandom in North America had “no future prospects,” and as a result, the association became a large proponent of emigration to Brazil and Argentina.88 Much of the German gaze was blind both to the possibility that German speakers in South America could acculturate into these societies and to the existence of German culture in the United States and Canada.89 Children in both Argentina and North America took less interest in Germany than their parents, and in both cases many adults retained some interest in their country of birth. The new German discourse in the 1920s also overlooked the other primary goal of the Gustav Adolf Association, which was to ensure that Protestants did not become Catholics, something they were far less likely to do in North America than in the Southern Cone. Richard Wick, a pastor in Buenos Aires who returned to Germany in the mid-1920s, tried to counter the emerging German idea that South America offered ideal conditions for the pristine perpetuation of Germandom. Once in Germany, he warned the readers of the Gustav Adolf Association’s monthly periodical of the dangers of “de-­Germanization” in South America, highlighting the influence of the state regulation of schools. He emphasized that it was hard to detect that “losses” were taking place in Argentina while there was a continual increase of German immigration. He added that “losses of Germanness are with few exceptions also losses for the Lutheran Church.”90 The Gustav Adolf Association co-financed the travel costs of pastors with the Protestant High Consistory, each contributing between five hundred and a thousand marks. The association also occasionally made larger donations to specific projects, such as building a new house for a pastor, paying down the construction debts of a congregation, subsidizing the itinerant pastor’s salary, or donating to the building fund for a new church.91 In 1909, the La Plata Synod formed its own branch of the Gustav Adolf Association, a common occurrence for congregations

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in Germany. The pastors in Buenos Aires expressed their thanks for the association’s support in the congregation’s early years and declared that they wanted to follow in the association’s footsteps, supporting the Germany-based organization in future efforts to help congregations in need.92 However, the projects that the Buenos Aires branch supported were the synod’s regional ones rather than the association’s international ones.93 The German-speaking Lutheran use of the word “diaspora” reveals the intersection of ideas about national belonging, ethnicity, and religion. It was a concept used by the Lutheran leadership in Argentina and by different Lutheran groups in Germany trying to support them. Rather than serving as evidence of a diasporic identity, this usage reveals much about the sense of self and the other that shaped the behavior of many Lutheran leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. The term shows Lutheranism’s perceived relationship to Catholicism in Argentina and Latin America and illustrates the importance of the Argentine context in shaping the ideas and activities of German-speaking Lutherans.

promoting catholicism abroad Catholic organizations in Germany also took an active interest in their brethren in the Americas. The St. Raphael Society for the Protection of Catholic German Emigrants (St. Raphaelsverein zum Schutze katholischer deutscher Auswanderer) took the lead, but it was joined by other organizations such as missionary societies, the Caritas Federation for Catholic Germany (Caritasverband für das katholische Deutschland), the Association for Catholic Germans Abroad (Verein für die katholischen Deutschen im Ausland), and after 1918 the Imperial Federation for Catholic Germans Abroad (Reichsverband für die katholischen Auslandsdeutschen).94 The leaders and supporters of these organizations approached the idea of maintaining an extraterritorial ethno-religious community in noticeably different ways than did Lutheran groups. They believed that language and religion were mutually dependent, but they more often saw the German language as a tool to help them encourage people of Catholic heritage to become active participants in their local parishes. According to statutes of the St. Raphael Society, the leaders were concerned about “caring for the needs of emigrants, particularly in religious-moral terms” and they pledged to create “places for spiritual care for emigrants in their ports of departure.”95 Peter Paul Cahensly—the founder of the St. Raphael Society, its main leader for its first four decades, a member of the Prussian parliament (1886–1916), and a member of the Reichstag (1898–1903)—worried about the moral dangers facing “inexperienced arrivals” in Bremen and Hamburg en route to the

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Americas.96 Leaders also tried to meet migrants’ material needs. Beginning in the 1870s, local representatives of the society in Bremen, Hamburg, Antwerp, and Rotterdam met migrants before they departed for many destinations, including Buenos Aires, helping them buy tickets at the lowest rate, find appropriate lodging, exchange money, and find their way to Catholic mass.97 In these major European ports, Catholic priests and laypeople interacted with an astonishingly large number of migrants. From 1873 to 1899, the representatives in Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, and Rotterdam helped 651,357 migrants in some way. Of these, 98,359 took communion and 93,731 requested (and received) information by mail. In the 1920s, as another major wave of German emigration began, the society took on the extra task of discouraging potential emigrants “who had no prospects abroad.”98 The society set up a total of sixty-six information centers in the Weimar Republic as well as one in Danzig and four in “German-Austria” to dissuade some from leaving.99 In 1923, the station in Hamburg gave advice to 17,661 people, half of them by mail.100 By the turn of the twentieth century, men affiliated with the St. Raphael Society in ports such as Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, southern Brazil, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Cape Town greeted immigrants upon arrival, brought them to reputable guesthouses, and sought to protect them from agents, innkeepers, and money changers apparently eager to overcharge them.101 The U.S. branch of the St. Raphael Society worried about German maids whose “industriousness” and “modesty” was valued but who “let themselves be misguided by dazzling gold and prefer to take up jobs where they earn money but where they lose virtues and good mores.”102 In Buenos Aires, in 1909–10, Leo Mirau answered three hundred letters from people seeking information about immigrating to Argentina. He helped many find work; the editors of the society’s periodical described Mirau as working “in the service of Christian charity.”103 Through its quarterly periodical, the St. Raphaels-Blatt: Organ des St. Raphaels-Vereins zum Schutze katholischer deutscher Auswanderer (1886–1923), and its successor, Die Getreuen: Zeitschrift für die Katho­ liken deutscher Zunge in aller Welt (1924–1941), the leaders of the society published information on the economic and political conditions of several countries in the Americas. In addition to the strong focus on the United States, Brazil, Canada, and Argentina, other articles spoke about the general conditions of German-speaking communities in Latin America. In many articles about Argentina (far more so than in articles about Brazil or North America), the editors sounded words of warning, writing statements such as “those who now emigrate to Argentina in order to be independent settlers must move far out into the countryside. They must accept hardship, misery, and solitude as well as insecurity for life

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and property.”104 In 1888, after praising the amount of available land and the climate of the country, the clerical editors of the St. RaphaelsBlatt warned German-speaking Catholic emigrants that “the politics and administration of the country lie entirely in the hands of the liberal Freemason party, which means that for Catholics a lot is really left to be desired.”105 In 1893, similarly, they cautioned, “We cannot really advise emigrating to Argentina until the political and social conditions have been resolved. In any case, we strongly recommend seeking advice from our representative before emigrating.”106 In 1921, Hedwig Seubert, a recent returnee from Argentina, asked rhetorically, “who should emigrate to Argentina?” He replied, “in any case nobody who lives in the illusion that he can become wealthy in a short time or without effort. Hard work, sacrifice, and long and conscientious savings are also needed in order to achieve a modest fortune. Those who have at least some knowledge of Spanish will naturally and quickly settle in and find their way.”107 In 1926, as a way to deter some from migrating to Argentina, the editors of Die Getreuen warned about high levels of unemployment. They wrote, “the number of unemployed Germans in Buenos Aires and all of Argentina is appallingly large. After the harvest, people stream into cities in droves and nowhere near all find work.” They further cautioned, “the limited means of most immigrants are quickly used up and the number of hungry and unemployed who wander the streets of Buenos Aires increases. They hope to return to Germany as soon as possible. But there is not a location with resources that can help them do so.”108 The German society helped create other St. Raphael Societies, in Belgium, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland, in the 1880s and 1890s.109 The St. Raphael Society’s web of activities in many countries greatly resembled the efforts of the Italian Catholic association Italica Gens, a federation of religious congregations that helped people leaving Italy and arriving in many countries with information on travel, customs fees, and work placement as well as providing details about the local labor market to prospective emigrants in Italy.110 Italica Gens advanced a nationalist program that embraced the country’s imperial ambitions in Africa as well as seeking to gain political, economic, and cultural influence in the Americas.111 Its leaders claimed that they pursued “the reconstruction of the national consciousness among our Italians overseas.”112 The activities and goals of the St. Raphael Society were influenced by an emerging anxiety in late-nineteenth-century Germany and Europe that the religiosity of emigrants to the United States would decline due to the lack of linguistic diversity in the Catholic Church in that country. Led by Peter Paul Cahensly, a group of prominent European Catholics lobbied the Vatican to permit separate parishes, schools, and when possible, bishops for each linguistic group in the United States.113 Reminiscing about

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his visit to many German Catholic communities in the United States, ­Cahensly wrote, “I became convinced that the only immigrants who, along with their children, remain loyal followers of the Catholic Church are those who preserve the German mother tongue.” He added, “I also became convinced that a great number of European Catholic immigrants had only lost their faith because on arrival they found no priests who could pronounce the word of God in their language and none who could teach their children the catechism in their language.”114 These concerns about language and denominational decline in North America greatly resembled the German Protestant fears regarding German speakers in Latin America. They employed the same discursive trope about the interdependence of language and faith, and in both cases these were fears about a religious minority vis-à-vis the surrounding society (European Catholics in North America; European Protestants in Latin America). Advertisements in the Argentinischer Volksfreund invited Germanspeaking Catholics to approach the St. Raphael Society’s local representative, Leo Mirau, directly in his German bookstore. The editors of the Volksfreund informed Catholic immigrants that the society offered free assistance to people who had recently arrived and that it would also help bring family members to Argentina. In addition, the St. Raphael Society would “provide travel opportunities, assist with money transfers, meet new immigrants upon arrival, and help people to continue their voyage into the interior of the country.”115 This German-language organization offered a Catholic alternative to the Lutheran and secular social welfare institutions in Buenos Aires. The leaders of Catholic organizations in Germany believed that they could foster a territorially unbounded national community along religious lines by engaging in a transatlantic dialogue with German speakers in Argentina and elsewhere in the Americas. In a 1912 article, the editors of the Volksfreund discussed the rise of several Catholic emigrant aid societies in Germany, adding that Catholics in Germany had noticed that their “care for fellow believers and members of the German stock [Glaubens- und Stammesgenossen] abroad lags well behind the Protestants.”116 The Federation for Catholic Germandom Abroad (Vereinigung für das katholische Deutschtum im Ausland) was founded in 1911 at the Caritas Federation convention in Dresden. Its primary goal was the “preservation and promotion of the German language, customs, culture, and religion for Germans who are separated from their fellow brothers of faith and from the German motherland” and to help older Catholic organizations, such as the St. Raphael Society.117 It also sought to “foster lively spiritual relations between the motherland and German Catholics abroad.”118 It appealed to all German Catholics in Germany and abroad “who want to apply themselves to the care and promotion of Catholic

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Germandom abroad.”119 Lorenz Werthmann, the president of the Caritas Federation and briefly also of the St. Raphael Society, praised the extensive network of Protestant organizations in Germany aimed at supporting “Protestant Germans abroad,” using that as a rationale for the foundation of the Federation for Catholic Germandom Abroad.120 In Buenos Aires, the Germany-based organization found partners in lay leaders such as Leo Mirau and several German-speaking priests. In their periodical, the leaders of the St. Raphael Society sometimes expressed concern about a language shift and threats to Catholicism that resembled German Lutheran ideas about Germandom abroad. In an 1893 article about the “decline of Germandom” in Brazil, editors wrote that “despite the tenacity of the German race, whose members hold on to their language and habits, it is not surprising that Germans born in Brazil little by little get used to the conditions and the language of their adoptive fatherland.”121 In 1898, editors commented on the society’s “protection of the German language and of Germandom in the face of Yankee-ization [Yankeesirung]” in the United States.122 At the 1909 meeting of the ­Caritas Federation in Erfurt, pastor José Marzoratti spoke about his extensive experience in Central and South America between 1891 and 1904; he claimed, much as Lutherans in Germany did, that “our countrymen are typically lost to Germandom in the second generation, so long as they are isolated and marry locals; in big cities, where German priests (mainly Jesuits, Benedictines, Franciscans, Pallottines, and Steyler missionaries) have established themselves, some German schools work against denationalization.” He added that “Germandom has strong support from priests from religious orders.”123 Like Protestant organizations, Catholics took a strong interest in German speakers outside the boundaries of Germany. Denominational difference delineated the boundaries of these Catholic networks, but concerns about the future of Catholicism in Argentina and the Americas encouraged groups in Imperial and Weimar Germany to foster connections with the Río de la Plata region. Though they operated without the support of the German state and did not, in general, espouse the same kind of imperial nationalism, these Catholic networks nevertheless did maintain deep transatlantic connections.

a regional hub While networks spanning the Atlantic Ocean connected Lutherans and Catholics in Buenos Aires with several nodes in Germany, there was another set of networks that ran between Buenos Aires and the Argentine interior and, to a lesser extent, sites in Uruguay and Paraguay. These were

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deeply connected to the transatlantic ones. The Lutheran La Plata Synod and the Catholic Society of the Divine Word were anchored in Buenos Aires but served as a hub in a larger German-language religious world in the Southern Cone. Yet these denominational networks created separate German-speaking Catholic and Lutheran communities. In studies of German-speaking settlements in the interior of Argentina, many of which examine religious mores, the country of origin is typically the category of analysis.124 Such a historiographic approach is nurtured by contemporary constructions of the personal identity of the descendants of these people. As Argentine identities emerged, being of German, Austrian, Swiss, or Volga (Russian) origin—let alone Czech, Brazilian, or anything else—surely mattered. However, those who regularly or occasionally attended Catholic or Lutheran churches, who were involved in other religious institutions such as Catholic schools or Lutheran orphanages, or who relied on the news in the Argentinischer Volksfreund or the Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, invariably participated in institutions engaged in a transatlantic dialogue with religious groups in Imperial and Weimar Germany. The pastors and priests who irregularly served Volga, Swiss, and other rural German-speaking communities between 1880 and 1930 were immigrants from Germany. People in rural communities did not need to agree with the pastors’ idea that they were part of a Lutheran diaspora or that their language and cultural origins linked them to Catholic Germandom abroad. The decision to send children to a school run by a Lutheran or Catholic congregation did not necessarily mean that parents actively supported a project aimed at preventing their children from being lost to Germandom and the Church. Nonetheless, the religious leaders of these communities had those goals. The itinerant pastors—intimately linked to the activities of the Protestant Association for the La Plata States, the Protestant High Consistory, and the Gustav Adolf Association—played an important role in the spatial network that bound German-speaking Lutherans living in the Argentine interior to a transatlantic dialogue via Buenos Aires. The first such pastor arrived in 1903. When a second position was created soon after, the two pastors’ activities were divided into northern and southern districts, with one concentrating on the settlements in Entre Ríos and Santa Fe and the other in the province of Buenos Aires. Each pastor also made trips to more distant places, such as Misiones, Santiago del Estero, or Tucumán to the north and northern Patagonia to the southwest.125 Richard Wick reasoned that the itinerant pastor traveled “in order to preserve the loyalty to faith and homeland of the many Lutheran Germans who live in the ports and in the interior.” He added that “the work of our German Lutheran Church abroad, beyond its actual goal of caring for the

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highest values of Lutheran Christian faith, has the other task of caring for and promoting the German language and the historical cultural heritage of the German national community [Volksgemeinschaft].”126 Despite this interest in a German national community, the itinerant pastor sought to attend to all German-speaking Lutherans, irrespective of their country of origin. In the reports that they sent back to the Protestant Association for the La Plata States, itinerant pastors such as Wilhelm Nelke were careful to note if an agricultural settlement had German speakers from Germany, the Volga, or elsewhere.127 Yet Nelke and his colleagues also targeted all of these groups, and their goal was the “uncompromised retention of the gospel and Germandom.”128 The itinerant pastor sought to bring together all German speakers of one denomination under the umbrella of the La Plata Synod. The spread of congregations belonging to the La Plata Synod reveals a great deal about the spatial dimensions of the German-language world that radiated out from Buenos Aires. The number of congregations rose from thirteen in 1900 to twenty-eight in 1931.129 Congregations from the provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Ríos, and Santa Fe, as well as from Uruguay, were founding members, and congregations in Asunción, Paraguay, the Argentine territory of Misiones, and new ones in the aforementioned provinces later joined them.130 Small news items from these congregations appeared on a regular basis in the Buenos Aires-based Evangelisches ­Gemeindeblatt. The circulation of this information bound people together in this ethno-religious network. The city of Buenos Aires served as the hub from which the denominational networks extended. Map 3 depicts the major German-speaking Lutheran and Catholic congregations in the Argentine interior and in Uruguay and Paraguay that relied on institutions in Buenos Aires. The Lutheran congregation in the Argentine capital also served as an anchor for many of the activities in the large province of Buenos Aires. The two and later three pastors serving the city expanded their offerings from the main church downtown to neighborhoods in Barracas and Belgrano starting in 1907.131 These services took place only once or twice per month, while the services in the main Lutheran church in the city center took place every Sunday and often even five or six times per month. The services in Barracas were moved to the nearby town of Temperley, just outside the city in the province of Buenos Aires, in 1913.132 Two small congregations in the province of Buenos Aires—Quilmes, 20 kilometers southeast of the city, and Baradero, 150 kilometers northwest of the city—were officially part of the congregation of Buenos Aires throughout this period. Before the arrival of an itinerant pastor in 1903 and even occasionally after that, the pastors in Buenos Aires would also make special trips to distant places in the southwestern part of the province of Buenos

Map 3. Major German-speaking Lutheran and Catholic Congregations outside Buenos Aires, 1910. Map by Ted Binnema, with the support of Alex Leamy.

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Aires such as Olavarría, Hinojo, and Azul (clustered together between 320 and 350 kilometers away from the city), Coronel Suárez (530 kilometers from the city), and Bahía Blanca (650 kilometers away).133 Denominational and linguistic concerns transcended the importance of country of origin. The majority of the German-speaking Lutherans who lived in Barracas, Temperley, and Quilmes were working-class immigrants from Germany. In Belgrano, there was a mix of socioeconomic classes, and a majority of these Lutherans were from Germany. In the rural areas of Olavarría, Hinojo, Azul, and Coronel Suárez, however, a great number of the German-speaking Lutherans had immigrated from the Volga region of the Russian Empire or were descended from those immigrants. Yet in all cases, German-trained pastors based in the city of Buenos Aires were the ones who provided religious services. The agricultural settlements of Volga Germans in Entre Ríos and in southwestern Buenos Aires also contained many Catholics. Priests from the Society of the Divine Word served the German speakers in both of these provinces. In 1928, when the German-born priest Ludger Grüter commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of Volga Germans in Argentina, he commented on the persistence of the “language, habits, and customs” of the Volga Germans and their children.134 Grüter concluded his commemorative history by praising the Volga Germans and wrote that “national character and religion are tightly linked, and we see this in the German settlers on the Volga . . . if the Volga colonies here remain German, that would not challenge the [Catholic] Church nor the state but rather be advantageous for both. If the colonies do not firmly retain the German character of their schools—where Spanish naturally stands in the foreground—then they clog one of the important sources of their strength.”135 Resembling an argument made by both Catholics and Lutherans on both sides of the Atlantic, Grüter suggested that the best way to remain a devout Catholic was to also remain German. Mirroring the point made by German-speaking educators in Buenos Aires, Grüter also asserted that German Catholics would make the best Argentine citizens by embracing their German heritage. Differences between Lutheran and Catholic institutional structures shaped the experience of German-speaking settlers in the Argentine interior. Six German-speaking priests from the Society of the Divine Word began to serve the region in the 1890s; at the same time, there were only two itinerant Lutheran pastors.136 It would not have been financially viable to station six German Lutheran pastors in these small agricultural settlements because they could only have served a small group of people in these ethnically heterogeneous places. German-speaking Catholic priests, however, took over the pastoral requirements of a larger region in Entre Ríos and southwestern Buenos Aires, where German speakers

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and other groups lived. They preached, ran schools, and offered other religious services to a much larger Catholic population, using German, Spanish, and Latin. The Volga Germans in Entre Ríos and the province of Buenos Aires were connected to German speakers in the Argentine capital not only through the services offered by Catholic priests but also through a weekly newspaper. The Argentinischer Volksfreund bound German-speaking Catholics into a single imagined community, defined by denomination and language rather than by nationality or regional heritage. The newspaper reported on the associational life of mainly German-born people in the capital city, and it contained news from the German-speaking parishes in the interior. The advertisements in the Volksfreund offered products to urban consumers and to rural farmers. News about Argentina that focused on the secularizing efforts of the liberal Argentine state, moreover, presented a message to readers that put their Catholic and civic identities at the forefront. Similarly, when the German priests in Buenos Aires told rural readers that Volga Germans were ethnic Germans who diligently maintained “the familiar sounds of the mother tongue and good German habits,”137 they were expressing an idea with clear origins in the cultural nationalism of Imperial Germany.

conclusion Religious identities helped define the boundaries of community for ­German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics in Buenos Aires and the Argentine interior. Following denominational lines, people and finances circulated across the Atlantic Ocean and connected religious institutions in Argentina with various organizations in Imperial and Weimar Germany. Such ties emerged, however, out of self-interest, and practicing Lutherans and Catholics in Argentina often developed their own ideas about ethnicity, community, and belonging that contrasted with the views held by the leaders of Lutheran and Catholic organizations in Germany. Practicing Lutherans emphasized the threat of children being lost to Lutheranism and to Germandom, and in so doing they both fed off and fostered the emerging idea of a territorially unbounded German nation. Concerns about language loss and religious decline motivated several Catholic and Protestant groups in Imperial and Weimar Germany to try to preserve a German-speaking religious presence in countries thousands of kilometers away. In particular, Protestant fears about the minority status of German speakers living in predominantly Catholic Latin America and the perceived threat of conversion to Catholicism were crucial factors that led Protestants in Germany to be such active supporters of

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transatlantic connections. Denominational differences among German speakers played a decisive role in the institutions that emerged in Argentina and the dialogue that they pursued with partners in Germany between 1880 and 1930. The nature of these connections influenced the German-language religious institutions that developed in Argentina. Catholic and Lutheran institutions transcended nationality and region of origin and bound groups of people living in a large area into two denominational communities. Because of denomination, German speakers born in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, and Austria-Hungary shared places of worship and religious news periodicals. Yet it was consistently pastors who had received their theological training in Germany who led those German-speaking Catholic and Lutheran congregations. By engaging in transatlantic relationships, German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic articulated their expectations about the future. Yet while Lutherans and Catholics in Argentina saw Germanness and the German language as something that would help them ensure that their denominations thrived in the Southern Cone, Lutherans in Germany hoped that the children and grandchildren of ­German-speaking migrants (and of their non-German-speaking partners) would remain members of a global German Protestant nation. Catholics in central Europe envisioned another future, one where governments in the Americas and Europe would share power with their Church. The next chapter turns to the debates about language use that emerged between children, parents, and lay and clerical leaders in Lutheran and Catholic churches in Buenos Aires. For those involved in organized religion, the competing visions of bilingualism and the place of language and denomination in the construction of German ethnicity were shaped by their religious institutions.

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chapter 6

The Language of Religion Children and the Future

; In October 1928, J. Böhringer and Wilhelm Nelke sparked a debate among the leaders of the German Lutheran La Plata Synod. Böhringer worried that “Germandom was declining” in Esperanza, Santa Fe, and he attributed this to the public schools that had sprung up in the region. He also reported that over half the Lutherans in his region were marrying Catholics, and that many of these spouses were of Spanish, Italian, or French heritage.1 Nelke joined his colleague in highlighting the changes facing the synod as the children and in some cases grandchildren of immigrants became a larger force in the country’s Lutheran churches in the 1920s. Building on Böhringer’s presentation at the synod’s meeting, Nelke proposed that he and his fellow pastors should ask church authorities in Germany “to oblige candidates for the religious offices of our synod to learn the Spanish language.” So doing would allow the Lutheran congregations of the synod to adapt to the changing linguistic situation of their multigenerational religious communities.2 Other pastors strongly opposed Böhringer’s and Nelke’s idea of turning the synod into a partially Spanish-language church in Argentina. D. Rahlwes argued that “it is a fantasy to be able to believe in two languages and to become natively familiar with two spiritual worlds. Our work has certain and absolute limits. We work in German Lutheran congregations. It is therefore completely necessary to hand over the families of German congregations who no longer speak German to a spiritually kindred church community.”3 G. Heidenreich, the synod’s president, contended that, “In my personal view, it is both desirable and urgent that we drive Spanish from our German-Lutheran Church as much as possible, and then, through intensive work with our youth, we will be able to maintain the glorious heritage that we describe as ‘German-Lutheran’ for much longer.”4 In the end, the pastors reached a compromise. They ruled

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out allowing any Spanish-language congregations in the synod, agreeing that the synod should serve only German Lutherans. Aware, however, of the linguistic behavior of many practicing Lutherans in the country and particularly of the youth, the pastors also decided that when no other possibility existed, they would serve “German Lutherans” who “no longer speak German.”5 Although a variety of religious leaders voiced concerns over language “loss” and the “de-Germanization” of children, they also, contradictorily, discussed language and ethnicity as something permanent and needing to be preserved. German speakers’ anxieties drew from the fear that children would be “lost to Germandom” and—in the case of L ­ utherans— lost to their religious denomination. These notions about ethnicity were not limited to religion nor children. However, children’s frequent preference for Spanish seemed to pose a particular dilemma for pastors and lay leaders. Ideas about the permanence of ethnicity transcended this specific discourse and motivated middle-class women to run German-language orphanages, largely upper-class women to organize fundraisers, and ­middle- and upper-class men to donate generously to the cause. This chapter argues that concerns about children and Argentine belonging shaped German-language religious communities in Buenos Aires. Immigrant adults who participated in organized religion—whether only occasionally or on a daily basis—were fundamentally concerned with their own and their church’s place in Argentina. For German-speaking Catholic priests and laypeople, that often meant using the German language to strengthen the place of their Church in the face of a secularizing state. Some Lutherans were particularly concerned that a shift from German to Spanish in religious practices would prevent a new generation from remaining involved with their parents’ denomination. Despite those fears, other parents and children nonetheless remained involved in religious communities while also demanding services in Spanish. In striking a balance between German and Spanish in order to create a united ethno-religious community, Lutheran and Catholic leaders also excluded many German speakers from their vision of community. They kept out not only people of other denominations but also anybody not interested in organized religion. Despite the debates between religious leaders and the discussions in the Lutheran Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt and the Catholic Argentinischer Volksfreund, tens of thousands of German speakers in Buenos Aires had a variety of viewpoints, which they expressed through everyday actions. Many adults crossed the boundaries being promoted by pastoral and lay leaders, marrying people of other denominational backgrounds and involving their children in the rites and sacraments of another denomination. It is also worth noting that German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics did not frequently discuss

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German speakers of the other denomination. German-speaking Lutherans worried about Catholicism in general, rather than about Germanspeaking Catholics in Argentina, while German-speaking Catholics gave little thought to Lutherans and focused instead on the Catholic Church in relation to a secularizing Argentine state. The involvement of families in German-language religious communities in Buenos Aires relied, to an extent, on the existence of German-language schools and children’s attendance at those schools. German-Spanish bilingual schools and Catholic schools where German was taught provided some children with the linguistic competencies required to participate in religious spaces. However, other children’s poor proficiency in German indicates that not all churchgoing children attended such schools. While educators were often willing to accept bilingualism—and indeed were required to do so by the National Council of Education—religious ­leaders, particularly Lutherans, were more intent on keeping their places of worship as German-language spaces. Nevertheless, in both education and religion, people stood on a spectrum advocating for a range of linguistic behaviors. Practicing German-speaking Lutherans believed that they belonged in Argentina, yet their vision clashed with an emergent idea about Argentina as a Catholic nation.6 German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics, therefore, navigated questions of denomination and ethnicity differently. As Susana Bianchi argues, the link between the nation and Catholicism emerged in the late nineteenth century as a response to the influx of non-Catholic immigrants and the growing presence of other denominations.7 Argentine Catholics often lumped Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and Orthodox Christians into a single category of religious Others.8 If elite Argentine constructions of the nation recast belonging as something inherently Catholic, then many Lutherans’ efforts to have children grow up as members of a Lutheran church and speaking German contested this process. Alongside other groups, practicing Lutherans attempted to make Argentina a more religiously plural society. The existing sources on German-language religion in Buenos Aires require a careful reading in order to uncover generational conflicts and competing ideas about language, denomination, and ethnicity. Pastors and lay leaders typically reported on progress, maintenance, and their overall success in imposing their views about religion and language on others. Nevertheless, in repeatedly expressing concerns about the threats to their denomination, religious leaders in fact described the success that children, youth, and non-German spouses had in contesting those ideas and questioning the importance given to the German language for the preservation of either Lutheranism or Catholicism. In the sources produced by a select few, leaders discussed the people who frustrated their

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goals. Although children’s voices remain largely out of reach, adults’ discussions of children demonstrate some of the behavior and ideas of these children. German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics discussed at length how their children spoke Spanish, and this fact undermines the blackand-white ethnic categories applied by the people themselves, the society surrounding them, and historians. Many of the debates among German speakers over ethnicity and the “mother tongue” were shaped by the pervasive presence of Spanish in people’s everyday activities in Buenos Aires, and efforts to promote German represent an implicit acceptance of bilingualism. As Yasemin Yildiz notes, the monolingual paradigm that emerged in Europe in the late nineteenth century based its logic on the concept of the mother tongue; according to this paradigm, people and social groups were “organically linked to an exclusive, clearly demarcated ethnicity, culture, and ­nation.”9 The mother “stands in for the allegedly organic nature of this structure by supplying it with notions of maternal origin, affective and corporeal intimacy, and natural kinship.”10 Yildiz contends that the focus on the “mother” as a predetermined transmitter of language presents this biological figure—rather than social surroundings—as “the single locus of affect and attachment.”11 As both Yildiz and the case of German speakers in Buenos Aires demonstrate, the concept of mother tongue as one and the same with linguistic behavior and abilities oversimplifies human relations in culturally plural societies. Moreover, despite German speakers’ use of the terms Muttersprache or lengua materna in Buenos Aires, German was, for some children, not the language of their mothers. In their daily actions, children—despite the protestations of adults—also rejected the idea that a supposedly biological language had to be their dominant language or the language of emotional meaning.

conflicted lutheranism German-speaking immigrants of Lutheran heritage had many ideas about their religion, which they expressed with active participation in, indifference toward, or occasional attendance at either Lutheran or Catholic religious services, the latter not necessarily in German. However, the many German-speaking Lutherans in Buenos Aires who were intent on distinguishing themselves and their children from Catholicism and on involving themselves in an ethno-religious community asserted a place for German-language Lutheranism in the larger civil society. For them, denomination and language were two parts of ethnicity. As Alejandro Zorzin notes, many of the ideas that German-speaking Lutherans in Argentina had about Germanness grew out of a pre-migratory belief in the Protestant

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nature of the German nation.12 Nonetheless, a tension existed between leaders’ desires and the actual linguistic behavior of the bilingual people that leaders labeled as “Germans.” A large group of people affiliated with organized Lutheranism contradicted the unidimensional goals of pastors and lay leaders, and many people frequently crossed ethno-religious boundaries. Clergymen and laypeople attempted to ensure that Lutheran Argentines spoke German and remained Protestants. At the same time, many children and non-German-speaking spouses pushed for bilingualism, thus constructing a new balance between language and denomination. Many German speakers married non-Germans, and Spanish was present in many “German” households. Between 1900 and 1910, only 49 percent of all marriages of German-born men in the city were to ­German-born women, whereas 62 percent of all marriages of Germanborn women in the city were to German-born men.13 Marriages to nonGermans (of European or Argentine birth) would in most cases also have meant unions with non-Lutherans. German-born men outnumbered ­German-born women in the country at a ratio of two to one in both 1895 and 1914, and the most common spouses in these exogamous marriages were Argentine Catholic women.14 A child born in Argentina to a Catholic, Spanish-speaking mother and a German Lutheran father would have understood Lutheranism differently than did his or her father. He or she would not necessarily reject Lutheranism, but the views and behavior of these Argentine-born children did not exactly mirror the ideas and activities of their immigrant parents. The lay and ordained leadership of the Lutheran congregation in ­Buenos Aires constantly sought to increase the size of its membership. Members were almost exclusively the male heads of household, and they voted on certain decisions and made small monthly financial contributions. Leaders used this money to strengthen the congregation’s institutional network, which grew between 1895 and 1914 to include five parishes, an orphanage, a sailors’ home, a women’s home, a charitable aid society, and a weekly periodical.15 In 1896, O. Straube, the congregation’s secretary, complained that “membership numbers have not reached a level that corresponds to the Germandom [in the city]. The colony grows daily, and it is hardly incorrect to say that half of the Lutheran German speakers who should belong to the congregation actually do.” Straube added, “It is, if we may say so, a national [emphasis in German original] obligation to support our German church and school.”16 In 1901, the congregation’s directors, led by layman H. von Bernard and pastor Wilhelm Bussmann, similarly noted that “the number of members has increased slightly, but it is far from the increase in the size of the German colony.”17 In 1904, pastors Paul Kaetzke, Julius Scheringer, and Fritz Olbricht took a different tack. They wrote that “one and two

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generations ago, it was considered both a national and Christian obliga­ tion [emphasis in German original]: The care, maintenance, and promotion of real Germandom [echten Deutschtums], such as that which has always been carried out by the German Lutheran congregation here, is today often overlooked.”18 They asked members for help in recruiting others, and noted that since the German “colony” in Buenos Aires had fifteen thousand members (Zugehörige), the congregation should also have more members.19 Those interested in increasing membership numbers framed their project as a way to promote the reproduction of ethnicity in the future rather than as a question of improved religiosity. In the 1920s, pastors and lay leaders maintained their prewar goal of having more male heads of household become formal members of the congregation. In 1926, laymen E. Schärer and E. Nienstedt regretted that “the 504 members unfortunately represent quite poorly the strength of the Lutheran part of the German colony, which has grown considerably in recent years.”20 In 1928, G. Heidenreich, the president of the synod and the main pastor of the Buenos Aires congregation, complained that “the German colony in Buenos Aires has grown greatly. This can be seen most clearly in the development of German schools. . . . Recent immigrants, who may have been regular churchgoers back home or even faithful members of a congregation, here often do not come to church nor do they become members of a congregation.”21 While he recognized that many German-speaking workers lived far from the church, he also proposed that too many had fallen to the “temptation of materialism.”22 Pastors and lay leaders repeatedly asserted that the congregation was a fundamental component of Germandom on the Río de la Plata and also that German-speaking Lutherans needed to strengthen the place of the congregation at the core of a larger community.23 In 1899, pastors Wilhelm Bussmann and Paul Kaetzke wrote that they hoped that all Germans in Argentina “recognize the core concerns as well as the cornerstone of German life on the Río de la Plata. With their support, they participate in our efforts to bring the congregation to the level that it deserves as the biggest and oldest German Lutheran congregation of South America!”24 They also stressed that “many who now actively remember their denomination are ready to preserve the Lutheran Church, which is an inheritance from our fathers. It is indeed the true cornerstone of our Germandom abroad.”25 Many Lutheran voices in Buenos Aires in this period described their denomination in terms of paternal inheritance. Wilhelm Bussmann and Paul Kaetzke told their membership in 1896 that all children (both sons and daughters) should be enrolled in the confirmation classes so that they would “be able to render account of their faith and the faith of their fathers.”26 In addition to ideas about paternal inheritance, this gendered vision grew out of the demographic imbalance in male and female

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immigration to the city, which in turn made Lutheranism more often the father’s than the mother’s religion. By the late 1920s, the lay and pastoral leaders of the La Plata Synod showed through their actions that they were in fact willing to abandon their preference for German if it meant preventing an Argentine-born generation of Lutherans from switching to Catholicism. However, those same leaders also hoped that Spanish-speaking Lutherans would find Spanish-language services in another Protestant congregation so that the La Plata Synod could focus solely on German-language religion.27 In Buenos Aires, Heidenreich felt that the pastors of the Lutheran Missouri Synod who were running a mission in the neighborhood of Villa del Parque could serve the “fellow believers who no longer speak German.”28 The Missouri Synod was a U.S.-based church that established missionary districts throughout the Americas as well as in Europe, Asia, and Australia.29 It started as a German-language church, but by 1900 in the United States it had both English- and German-language congregations. As a result of those language politics in North America, the Missouri Synod’s missionaries in Argentina were open to using Spanish if it helped the spread of their church. The La Plata Synod’s Heidenreich wrote that “with complete joyfulness, we can turn over those fellow believers who no longer speak our language to this church [the Missouri Synod].”30 Yet he also noted that places without a comparable Protestant church, such as Esperanza, in the province of Santa Fe, or Nueva Helvecia, in Uruguay, faced a problem.31 Heidenreich and the other pastors of the La Plata Synod resolved that they would have to make an exception to their German-language preference and offer more services in Spanish.32 Religion permeated German speakers’ social relations and shaped their understandings of gender and morality, but pastors and lay leaders often focused on formal membership in their congregations and on regular church attendance. Lay and pastoral leaders oriented the growth of a Lutheran community toward the broader goals of preserving ethnicity among immigrants and reproducing it in their children. The practicing Lutherans who supported the leadership’s ideas constructed their community around denomination. However, this religious community did not create a united German community but, rather, excluded people of other denominations and those who remained uninvolved in religion.

the language of lutheranism Lutheran leaders often spoke about the need to combat religious and linguistic “decline,” which for them described not only indifference to organized religion but also a shift to Spanish or to Catholicism. The logic

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behind their struggle was that Lutheranism in Argentina depended on the German language. Individuals had the power to overlook or reinterpret such a stance on their own terms, but these ideas extended beyond the discursive realm of religious leaders and shaped how German immigrants of many socio-economic backgrounds engaged with the city’s congregation for occasional and frequent church services, baptisms, confirmations, and marriages. Many German immigrants, their Lutheran or non-­Lutheran partners, and their Argentine children had their own ideas about the language of religion. Their interests were exhibited in the Spanish-language rites and sacraments that congregations’ pastors performed despite the official fixation on the interdependence of the German language and their denomination. In many discussions, children took center stage, because they, unlike at least one of their parents, grew up speaking Spanish. For example, in talking about the lack of German-language education in Coronel Suárez in the southwestern part of the province of Buenos Aires, the Evangel­ isches Gemeindeblatt wrote that the children in the town “in most cases are slowly but surely lost to Germandom. But there is little doubt that in this Catholic country, with its foreign customs, surrendering Germandom also poses a threat to Protestant Christendom.”33 Similarly, the statutes of the Buenos Aires congregation declared that “the goal of the congregation is the maintenance of a Christian lifestyle and raising children on a Lutheran foundation,”34 a statement that put children front and center. The transition in the confirmation classes from being a German-­ language activity to one that was also open to children who did not speak the language took place slowly. After the turn of the century, the congregation had begun to offer Spanish-language confirmations, but in 1914, J.C. Fuchs reported that the congregation would abandon the project, simply because so few children had been attending.35 Fuchs reasoned that because there were many more bilingual schools in the city and “since our religious teachings in Spanish will always have shortcomings, all children should in fact be able to attend German confirmation classes. We therefore send the urgent request to all parents to make a special effort to care for the German language with their children.” At the same time, however, he noted that “if there is enough interest, Spanish confirmation classes will also begin again this year if children are not capable of following the German teachings.”36 Two years later, in 1916, the Spanish-language classes returned, and in 1918, 17 of the 126 confirmations were carried out in Spanish.37 In 1924, 18 of the 108 confirmations performed in the city’s Lutheran parishes were in Spanish.38 In 1927, 16 of the 72 girls confirmed were confirmed in Spanish.39 Confirmations in Spanish offer a tangible example of a significant group of people who did not believe that the German language

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and the Lutheran denomination were mutually dependent. The congregation’s leaders remained uneasy with the idea that they could remove the ­German-language pillar supporting their Church and still hope to promote the adult generation’s minority denomination in the future, but children and parents who chose to receive such services in Spanish had a different vision about the connections between language and denomination. Despite the trend toward using Spanish in Lutheran confirmation classes, in 1928 G. Heidenreich took a strong stand against the replacement of the old duality of Lutheranism and Germanness with a new duality of the German and Spanish languages under the umbrella of Lutheranism. He reported that Spanish confirmation classes had been canceled, but he stressed that this was a welcome change because “we have no right to offer such teachings as long as our worship, Sunday after Sunday, is only in German.” He worried that Spanish classes would “wreak havoc” and they would “promote the estrangement from the Church [Entkirch­ lichung]: those who were taught in Spanish in our church must become homeless for they feel at home in the Roman Church; and those who were confirmed in our church [in Spanish] must also become homeless because it [our Church] does not speak their language!”40 In making this statement about the Roman Church, Heidenreich asserted that Spanish and Catholicism were one and the same, discursively eliminating the existence of German-language Catholicism from both Argentina and central Europe. Heidenreich further contended that “the retention of Spanish confirmation classes can only be justified if we also regularly offer Spanish services in our church. Of course this would raise many other concerns.” He felt that the three pastors in Buenos Aires were not capable enough to give sermons in Spanish, and the whole process would lead to “fragmentation, and fragmentation is Godlessness.”41 The local context, in which the Spanish language was associated with Catholicism, informed this Lutheran religious project. The growing acceptance of bilingualism (in spite of stands such as Heidenreich’s) was not limited to German-speaking Protestants. In 1932, St. Andrews Presbyterian church in Buenos Aires had two streams in its Sunday schools, with five hundred children learning in English and four hundred in Spanish.42 Their minister, Douglas Bruce, had a solution to the duality of being “by Argentine law, Argentines” and of having British names and growing up speaking about “England or Scotland or Ireland as ‘home.’”43 He advised these young people that they did not need to choose between the two, stating “I want your Argentine eye and your British eye to meet at a point where the whole world’s first Gentleman stands—Jesus Christ. Focus your two eyes on Him if you want to be the best citizens of here and home.”44 Bruce concluded, “We began our Service by singing [the Argentine anthem] Oid Mortales [sic], and when, at

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the close, we sing [the British anthem] God save the King, we’ll all try to remember whom to follow first if we are to be the best Argentines and the best Britons. Jesus Christ our Lord.”45 Bruce argued that hybrid identities or even shared political allegiances did not take away from young Presbyterian Argentines’ citizenship and belonging. Instead, it was by affirming their Christian religiosity that they would be “the best Argentines.” The adult generation of practicing Lutherans in the city—and particularly the lay and pastoral leadership of the Lutheran c­ ongregation— undertook other activities to promote the transmission of their denomination to their children, all the while conflating the definitions of Lutheranism and Germandom. Through the creation of youth groups in the late 1890s and early 1900s, pastors and other leaders strove to create a space to strengthen both Lutheranism and the German language. When Wilhelm Bussmann founded the congregation’s first youth group, he declared that “this will help young people with the maintenance of their Germanness and it will keep them in the German congregation that they entered into upon their confirmation.” 46 Bussmann founded a second association for young women later in the same year, and he declared in the Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt that as many youth as possible should join because “this is a very important aspect of the preservation of Germandom and the continuation and growth of our Lutheran congregation.”47 In 1927, soon after leaving Buenos Aires, pastor Richard Wick published many of his views about ethnicity and religion in Argentina in a periodical in Germany. He wrote, “Germandom is the principle and unifying strength of our congregations abroad.”48 Asserting that “the majority of the descendants of German emigrants are lost to Germandom,” Wick lamented that over the previous thirty years, the number of annual baptisms and confirmations in Buenos Aires had remained constant, while the number of Germans in the city had steadily increased.49 While this may suggest a declining religiosity, it more likely indicates that many people had left his denomination and used Catholic services. He added that such statistical evidence then “begs the question of what would happen to the Lutheran faith. . . . Losses to Germandom abroad are typically also losses to the Lutheran Church.”50 Because this was particularly a problem in Catholic countries such as Argentina, Wick concluded that the churches there should offer Spanish services, 51 lending weight to Böhringer and Nelke’s proposal a year later. The city’s practicing Lutherans did not base their fears simply on the hypothetical assumption that not speaking German would lead to the abandonment of Lutheranism. They witnessed stagnating membership numbers, and within their church they saw many interdenominational marriages and Spanish-language baptisms. That is not to say that all

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children of German immigrants who grew up speaking Spanish would become Catholic; many people, in fact, received Lutheran sacraments and rites in Spanish. Children and parents could also reject religion wholly or retain a loose, imaginary affiliation to Lutheranism while avoiding organized religion. In their annual reports, church leaders provided detailed evidence about how many Catholics were involved in marriages and about how many Catholics were one of the parents of a baptized child. This evidence reveals some concrete factors that motivated practicing Lutherans to focus so much of their attention on the triad of language, denomination, and children. Moving beyond the discourse of religious leaders, data on baptisms and marriages reveal the actions and decisions of many adults regarding linguistic and denominational identities. In 1898, Wilhelm Bussmann appealed to people’s “Christian duty and patriotic practice” in order to encourage early baptism at a Lutheran church rather than in a church of another denomination.52 In that year, Bussmann and his colleague Paul Kaetzke performed 219 baptisms in German, 31 in Spanish, 13 in Dutch, 8 in French, and 1 in English. In 250 of the 272 cases, both parents were Protestants, while in 14 cases the father, and in 8 cases the mother, was Catholic.53 It seems likely that the 22 baptisms in French, English, and Dutch served Protestants of other denominations. Moreover, there were more children baptized in Spanish than there were Catholic parents, which suggests that some Protestant families, perhaps composed of one German Lutheran and a Protestant of another denomination and linguistic group, disagreed with church leaders’ idea that to preserve Protestantism, people had to unwaveringly insist on the use of German at all times. The mix of languages, nationalities, and denominations shows that despite the rhetoric about maintaining ethnic and denominational homogeneity, many people followed other paths. Lutherans married Catholics, Germans married non-Germans, and some families had their children baptized in Spanish. For example, in 1901, of the 192 children baptized in the Buenos Aires congregation, in 30 cases the father was German and the mother Argentine, while in 2 cases the mother was German and the father Argentine. In the same year, 8 of the 34 marriages that Wilhelm Bussmann, Paul Kaetzke, and Julius Scheringer performed were to unite a Lutheran with a Catholic.54 Marriages between Lutherans and Catholics—in a great majority of cases—involved a Lutheran man and a Catholic woman rather than a Catholic man and a Lutheran woman; of the 8 Lutheran–Catholic marriages mentioned above, 6 involved a Catholic woman and only 2 a Catholic man.55 The 1901 statistics were part of a broader pattern of people crossing the strict boundaries of preserving Lutheran Germandom that were announced by religious leaders. In 1910, 25 percent of the 154 children that Julius Scheringer and Max

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Dufft baptized in the city’s Lutheran church were from interdenominational marriages, and in 1921 19 percent came from mixed denominational families.56 These data on baptisms and marriages contradict the flattening discourse and unidimensional goals of ensuring that a child’s Lutheran Germanness be preserved at all costs: many people stepped outside ethnoreligious boundaries. German immigrants of various socio-economic backgrounds, with varying degrees of religious conviction and varying amounts of interest in promoting their language and ethnicity in Argentine society, did not reject these goals but rather reconstituted them to create a new equilibrium among denominational, linguistic, and cultural identities. The data reveal that many German-speaking Lutherans convinced their Catholic and Spanish-speaking wives or husbands to baptize their children in a Lutheran church, yet they also accepted having the service performed in Spanish. Likewise, many Lutherans joining in an interdenominational union managed to have their partners agree to do so in a Lutheran church, but in Spanish. The interest of practicing Lutherans in reproducing both language and denomination was a gendered matter. If both parents were Lutheran, there was likely little danger that their Argentine children would become Catholic in their early years of life. However, because interdenominational marriages tended to take place between German-born Lutheran men and Catholic women born in either Argentina or Europe, the preservation of Germanness infused with a Lutheran religious identity implied the reproduction of male lineage. Concerns over the language of religion were supported by a system of social relations that relied on embedded ideas of patriarchy and male lineage. In addition, the demographic imbalance between immigrant men and women was surely a factor that shaped the discourse of lay and ordained Lutheran leaders. They recognized the Catholic and Spanish-speaking society in which they found themselves, and they knew that marriage with women of this society was a common occurrence. The attempts to ensure that children took on their fathers’ linguistic and denominational identity implied that in many cases, German immigrant men tried to assert their cultural heritage over that of their wives. One aspect that is absent from the statistical evidence is the behavior of German-speaking Lutherans in Buenos Aires who crossed porous ethnic boundaries and who married Catholics and baptized their children in a Catholic church. When faced with a choice about where to get married and where to baptize their children—for those who felt either of these were worthwhile activities—the Catholic partner surely could present strong arguments in favor of a Catholic ceremony. Because many would have perceived that Catholicism offered greater access to mainstream

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Argentine culture, it is likely that the Lutheran-Catholic marriages in Lutheran churches represent fewer than half of all Lutheran-Catholic marriages that took place in the city. Moreover, because the city had many German-language Catholic options, some Protestants could have ceded to their partner’s denominational identity while still succeeding in having a German-language or bilingual ceremony.

the language of catholicism As was done in various Lutheran institutions, the German-speaking leaders of Catholic bodies in Buenos Aires actively promoted the German language. The German Catholic Association (Deutscher Katholik­enverein) and the Congregation of German-speaking Catholics (Gemeinde deutsch­ redender Katholiken) were two important German-language spaces.57 They provided children with points of contact with a language that did not permeate all aspects of everyday life in the Argentine capital. Catholic priests and lay organizers used these German-language spaces to promote bilingualism among children and to construct a community organized around religious and linguistic practices. Nevertheless, they did not fear dire consequences if these two goals were not carried out, and Germanspeaking Catholics did not construct these spaces in relation to the society’s dominant denomination in the way Lutherans did. They instead took an interest in the concerns facing the Catholic Church in Argentina and sought to foster the retention and spread of Catholicism among Catholic emigrants. German-speaking priests began giving sermons and performing sacraments at many churches in Buenos Aires in the 1880s and 1890s, but German-language Catholicism in the city solidified in 1897, when a number of German-speaking Catholics created the lay Catholic German Men’s Association in Leo Mirau’s bookstore.58 The association, which took the name German Catholic Association in 1900,59 often placed announcements in the Argentinischer Volksfreund, and it tried to forge a community organized around both the German language and Catholicism. The association aimed to be a “gathering place for German-­speaking Catholics in Buenos Aires,” to serve as a center for similar clubs in the rest of Argentina, to promote the Catholic faith and a Catholic press, and to help newly arrived Catholic immigrants.60 In 1902, the association announced that “while German-speaking Catholics in North America are tightly connected to one another through hundreds of associations that host annual general meetings, in Buenos Aires no single organization keeps all German-speaking Catholics together.”61 The association regularly organized special masses for holidays, which it announced in

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the Volksfreund; it coordinated monthly social gatherings; and it hosted presentations on current events.62 In 1911, the lay German Catholic Association founded the Congregation of German-speaking Catholics.63 Both before and after this, German priests from different religious congregations gave German sermons and performed sacraments in a number of other churches in the city.64 Nevertheless, the leaders of the German-language congregation believed that they could more clearly advance the goal of the “preservation of worship in our mother tongue” and the “implementation of the religious education of our children.”65 The new congregation created an autonomous place for German-language worship within local ecclesiastical structures.66 The new congregation’s leaders reasoned that German-language services would promote the “preservation of religion” of recent immigrants.67 The congregation shared the German Catholic Association’s goal of community building and even codified this in its 1929 statutes, writing that they sought to bring German-speaking Catholics of the city and the surrounding areas together and “provide them with pastoral care and worship in their mother tongue. The reason for this is primarily the difficulties that many German-speaking Catholics have in correctly understanding the Spanish language and to be understood and comprehended. The consequence of this could be their estrangement from practical Christianity.”68 These goals reveal that the congregation’s leaders viewed the German language more as a tool to promote religious participation, in contrast to practicing Lutherans, who framed language as a way to maintain ethnicity. Soon after the congregation’s founding, its priest, J. Wagner, insisted that it was needed because otherwise “the ideals that they [the immigrants] brought with them from the homeland will fade. Religious sensibility will dwindle and ultimately a memory will be the only thing that remains from the precious heirloom of faith that a fine Catholic family handed down.” He further maintained that to avoid this, “we must offer to the immigrating Catholics the possibility to confess their faith in their mother tongue, at least in the first generation.”69 In many ways, the ­German-speaking Catholic space that Wagner wanted to create was oriented toward adults rather than children. Wagner’s argument about the importance of linguistic pluralism within the Catholic Church in Argentina suggests that he was also engaged in a dialogue with men higher up in the local ecclesiastical hierarchy and that he wanted to emphasize the benefits of a German-language congregation in the city for the Catholic Church. Through the Argentinischer Volksfreund, the priests of the Society of the Divine Word (or Steyler missionaries) used a rhetoric about language and ethnicity that was comparable to that used by Lutheran leaders.

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However, from its foundation in 1895 and into the late 1920s, the editors of the Volksfreund also worried about debates central to the Catholic Church. The paper railed against secularizing tendencies in Argentina and offered the German speakers who chose to participate in a German Catholic space a variety of opinions about this process. The paper warned of the “anti-faith and anti-church press here in Argentina” that “steered many away from the path of truth.”70 The distributing agents for the Volksfreund were charged with the task of increasing subscriptions, with the logic that “this will be for the preservation and support of our holy Catholic faith and Christian values among the populace of our country.”71 The editors often discussed the growing network of public schools and the implications of liberal reforms for the place of the Catholic Church in society. These German priests feared that “godless public schools” (Staatsschulen ohne Gott) threatened the social order and were causing the rise of militant labor groups in the city.72 In 1903, the Divine Word priests criticized a new law about public school reform, writing in the Volksfreund that the proposed law would give teachers “more money and even more privileges,” and the priests told readers that they should “vote this disgrace of a state (or better said, our liberal school reformers whose idols are tailless apes) out of office.”73 In 1907, the priests criticized the standardizing tendencies of the National Council of Education, fearing that this would lead to “confusion and great disorder.”74 Through the Volksfreund, Catholic leaders strove to incorporate their readers into Argentine religious debates while using the German language, thereby promoting both linguistic pluralism and civic integration. In 1912, Theodor Alemann, in the liberal and secular daily Argen­ tinisches Tageblatt, criticized the tax privileges that the Catholic Church in Argentina enjoyed, writing that “while all other citizens pay every tax and every business pays high duties, monks’ enormous urban properties are free from all charges. And the constitution claims that all citizens are equal before the law! Yet again, the empire of the fat monks is not of this world! Here we can see how our Creole rulers remain stuck in the rut of Spanish tradition.”75 Alemann was not targeting the city’s Germanspeaking Catholics but rather the entire Church’s relationship with the state. The Volksfreund countered, “Does Alemann not even know how many socialist children learned to read and write in Catholic schools? Does he not know that Protestant schools enjoy the same tax exemptions as Catholic ones? . . . With horror, every person should avoid such an inflammatory paper. It would be regrettable if any Catholic supported such effronteries with his money.”76 Although the priests who published the Volksfreund participated in these debates in German, they focused on denomination rather than an ethnic group. They engaged in a national Argentine debate, but at the community level.

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German-speaking practicing Catholics and their leaders often engaged in debates and activities more central to Catholicism than to German ethnicity. Joining a larger group of Catholics in the city, they tried to ensure that the modernizing, liberal state would allow a significant space for the Catholic Church. The Catholic focus on secularization and the Lutheran fears of a language shift to Spanish and a denominational shift to Catholicism reveal the importance of denominational difference in discussions of language and ethnicity. Catholic sources did not express the same anxiety as Lutherans did about the consequences of ethnic “decline” and children being “de-Germanized.” Whereas the Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt typically sought the preservation and promotion of a Germanness infused with Lutheran religiosity, the Volksfreund sought to promote Catholicism in the face of secularizing tendencies. In a 1912 article about schooling and Argentine pressures to learn Spanish, the editors of the Volksfreund told readers that “we want to hold on to our mother tongue. We want to cultivate it in our school, for a great deal depends on the preservation of our mother tongue: the preservation of our holy religion and our German culture.” The editors added that religion and culture were “tightly linked” with language but warned that “those Germans who abandon their mother tongue are neither Germans nor Argentines. . . . They are half-people who benefit the individual community and the whole state very little.” They also reasoned that “we Germans can only be good subjects of our Argentine fatherland as true Germans. If we are taken away from Germandom, to which our religion and our entire being is bound, we will be no less than anarchists, who are a menace to the state.”77 The image of the “half-people” that these priests evoked was an ambiguous group of hyphenated German-Argentines, who were not proficient in either Spanish or German nor integrated in either Argentine or German civil society. The “full” people the priests thought should emerge instead corresponded to an idealized image of a group whose members would be completely German in terms of ethnicity, religious faith, and linguistic abilities and also completely Argentine in terms of civic belonging and supporting the state as good citizens. The priests wanted the fully civic Argentines to speak Spanish fluently and to be practicing Catholics. The priests’ idea that Germans who abandon their mother tongue are neither Germans nor Argentines echoes Lesser and Rein’s argument, discussed in chapter 2.78 According to the editors of the Volksfreund, the best way for German Catholics to be good Argentines was to embrace the German language and to remain “true Germans.” Commenting on the social upheaval in Buenos Aires in January 1919 (later dubbed the Semana Trágica or Tragic Week), the Volksfreund took a stand on the side of state repression and nationalist groups. The editors informed readers that the struggle was not one to improve the

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material conditions of the workers but rather a “struggle for the materialist worldview, something that seeks the destruction of every positive religion.”79 The Divine Word priests complained that workers were attacking churches and Catholic schools, and the priests attributed this to the prevalence of “irreligious schools” in Buenos Aires.80 The paper toed the line of the Catholic Church in Argentina, and it involved Germanspeaking readers in the city and the country’s interior in a debate central to their denomination rather than ethno-religious community. Catholic religious bodies fostered the use of the German language in Buenos Aires. The attention that German-speaking Catholic leaders paid to secularization and their ideas about the intersection of language and denomination demonstrate how immigrants integrated into Argentine society through religion. The Volksfreund and various German-Catholic organizations promoted the German language while also engaging German speakers in a local debate about the relationship between church and state.

racialized ethnicity The discussions by practicing Lutherans and Catholics about denominational and ethnic decline revolved around a paradoxical idea. German ethnicity in Argentina was both in danger and something permanent. The children of German speakers could be lost to Germandom, but they were apparently Germans all the same. Ideas about permanent, biologically inherited ethnicity were especially salient when German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics discussed orphans. Nevertheless, Lutherans and Catholics had two distinct positions on orphans of German heritage in Buenos Aires, and these stances offer particularly revealing information about the importance that many people placed on children and denomination in the construction of German ethnicity. While German-speaking Catholics were happy to leave this task in the hands of Spanish-language organizations, German-speaking Lutherans adamantly believed that running orphanages was an important task of their ethno-religious community. They saw it as a major problem if the orphaned children of Lutherans were to be baptized and raised by Catholic communities. As a response to the Spanish-speaking and predominantly Catholic context, female philanthropists and Lutheran leaders created a space for German-language child welfare institutions in Buenos Aires. Both Donna Guy and Sandra McGee Deutsch have documented the importance of religious identity in motivating many Jewish Argentines to provide child welfare services rather than turning control over to Catholic organizations such as the Society of Beneficence.81 For German-speaking

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Lutherans, similarly, the protection of religious identity and the concern that children would be raised in Catholic orphanages was a driving force. Language also motivated German speakers, as it would have for many other European immigrants, although this was not necessarily a central concern in the goals of those who organized around Jewish institutions and who spoke Yiddish, German, Spanish, or another language. For German speakers, denominational identity and language worked together to encourage Lutheran women and men to support orphanages with their labor, time, and money. The leaders of the German Women’s Home founded an orphanage in 1903, and the male leadership of the La Plata Synod founded a boys’ orphanage in the town of Baradero in 1909. Young boys and girls of all ages lived at the Women’s Home; at the boys’ orphanage, the children, most of whom were from the city of Buenos Aires, were raised on a rural farmstead northwest of the city. The orphanage of the Women’s Home—for orphans, abandoned children, and “half-orphans”—aimed to “heal much unmentionable misfortune and carry out much beneficial work for the preservation of Germanness among the youngest generation, which would have otherwise hopelessly fallen into neglect and denationalization.”82 The size of the orphanage rose steadily: in 1905, the home cared for 11 children; by 1908, this number had risen to 23;83 and by 1927, the German Women’s Home lodged on average 103 children at any one time.84 The Baradero boys’ orphanage had 24 boys in its care in 1912.85 One of the reasons the La Plata Synod pushed to create this boys’ orphanage was that the German Women’s Home, which cared for both girls and boys, was overcrowded. The synod chose to found the orphanage in Baradero, 150 kilometers northwest of the city of Buenos Aires in the province of Buenos Aires, because they believed that the rural setting would “prepare the children for future work as agricultural settlers in healthy and rural surroundings, which are the safest place to protect them from denationalization.”86 In the official goals of both orphanages, the female and male leaders used the terms “denationalization” and “deGermanization” to describe the core threat to these children, yet part of that process included preventing a shift from Lutheranism to Catholicism. Johannes Franze, in describing the services the Women’s Home provided in the early 1920s, added that “apart from these practical goals, the home gives the children entrusted to it the ideal tools for their journey through life, something which is all too easily lost here in Argentina: the consciousness of their Germanness.” He worried that most children “hardly understand a word of their mother tongue when they arrive at the home.” To remedy this, “daily and hourly they are encouraged to speak German. The conversational language of the home is only German. Signs hang in all rooms with the reminder ‘Speak German’ and every child

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Figure 12. Opening of Baradero Orphanage, 1909. The main building of the orphanage, with (from left to right) the German, Argentine, and Swiss flags. source : Bericht über die sechste ordentliche Synode der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinden in den La Plata-Staaten, 1909 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La Plata-Synode, 1909), 80.

learns this language in the home and at school to a level of complete proficiency.” Franze nonetheless noted that the Spanish language was occasionally preferred. In his view, Spanish had “such a strong, absorbing strength that German resists only with difficulty. Nonetheless, all of these children would have been hopelessly lost to Germandom had they not received a dignified and solid upbringing in the home and had they not at all times in their lives been reminded of their real ethnicity [eigentliches Volkstum]!”87 In many of these cases, preservation in fact implied the promotion of bilingualism. The idea of children being lost to Germandom extended beyond a discursive fear and motivated many middle- and upper-class women to dedicate their labor, energy, and money to this project of social welfare. Language maintenance was one aspect of these women’s goals, and they also worked to ensure that children of Lutheran immigrants be raised as Lutherans. Children and youth of German heritage demonstrated through their actions that they were very willing to be “absorbed” into a Spanish-speaking society, despite the attitudes and activities of the adult generation. These ethnic perspectives on the permanence of ethnicity add an interesting dimension to what Matthew Jacobson, a historian of immigration and race in the United States, writes about whiteness. The distinctions among the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Hebrew, Slavic, Alpine, Mediterranean,

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and Nordic “races” that U.S.-born people of European ancestry commonly spoke about in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries have been, according to Jacobson, “too conveniently passed over simply as misuses of the word ‘race.’” He adds that “American scholarship on immigration has generally conflated race and color, and so has transported a late-twentieth-century understanding of ‘difference’ into a period whose inhabitants recognized biologically based ‘races’ rather than culturally based ‘ethnicities.’”88 In Argentina, many German speakers’ assertions that their children had only one “real ethnicity” and that their Germanness was biologically inherited falls in line with Jacobson’s discussions of race. As in the case of the United States, these German speakers in Buenos Aires articulated a racialized understanding of themselves and their children, one that should not be overlooked nor simply subsumed into the overarching category of whiteness. It is worth noting that these German speakers also never used the word “white.” In their view, Germanness was a biologically inherited trait. Yet these adults did not understand themselves as participating in the construction of a white Argentina. Just as Jacobson warns of the tendency to assume that people in the United States in the nineteenth century actually meant “culture” and “ethnicity” when they said “race,” one should also reflect on the concept of whiteness in early-twentieth-century Buenos Aires. For at least one group of European immigrants in the Argentine capital, it was Germanness that informed their racialized understanding of ethnicity, not whiteness. The leaders of the German Women’s Home regularly appealed to the community for support. Sophie Wolff described charitable work as a matter of duty and honor.89 Hanna Scheringer appealed to members to increase their annual contributions beyond the obligatory one peso and to encourage more women to join the association. She declared that “if we women stand faithfully together, if we work hand in hand toward the same goal, then it will be easy for us to fulfill this beautiful duty of love that awaits us.”90 In the Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, Scheringer appealed to a broader public for support to raise children. She argued, “To accomplish this we need the help and support of all German women in Buenos Aires. You, German mothers who are fortunate enough to lovingly care for your children, we ask you to help the children who lack motherly and fatherly love. Help us establish a friendly home where these children can also enjoy love, cheerfulness, and childhood happiness.”91 Taking a different tack, the male leaders of the Lutheran synod often spoke of their concerns about conversion to Catholicism. At a synodical meeting in 1909, Max Dufft discussed caring for orphans as a “moral obligation” of a Christian community. Praising the orphanages run by the Sociedad de Beneficencia, Dufft stressed the value of the synod’s new project to build its own Lutheran orphanage in Baradero. He contended,

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Figure 13. The German Women’s Home, 1911. source : Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Frauen-Vereins in Buenos Aires über das fünfzehnte Vereinsjahr vom 1. Oktober 1910 bis 30. September 1911 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La PlataSynode, 1911), inside cover.

“We would like to discourage lodging in the local orphanages and limit their use only to extreme emergencies. For even when those orphanages look out for the children’s best interests and want to educate them as useful members of human society, the children inherently lose two things that are of utmost value to us, namely their Germanness and their Lutheran faith. They even lose their German language.” In Dufft’s view, “with the German language, German attitudes and German disposition disappear as well. Germandom loses not only a child but along with him an entire generation. It is equally understandable that the children in local institutions become Catholic. We regret this even more so when we consider the state of local Catholicism.” Dufft concluded that it was everybody’s duty to support the synod’s new orphanage in Baradero to prevent these losses.92 He, and likely others who took an interest in creating an orphanage along ethno-religious lines, stressed that being lost to Germandom threatened the generational reproduction of Lutheranism in the country. As a result, these activities were an effort less to create an isolated enclave and more to carve out a space for another denomination in Argentine society. Leo Mirau, the leader of the German Catholic Association, thought differently about orphanages. In his 1920 immigration guide, he discussed religion in Argentina, among other things. Emphasizing that the

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country was Roman Catholic and that this was even in the constitution, he praised the charitable work of Argentine women. Among the many “works of Christian love,” Mirau highlighted the Spanish-language Catholic orphanages and other charitable services such as assistance to the poor and girls’ homes. From this discussion of Catholic but Spanishlanguage orphanages, Mirau proceeded to discuss the German-language sermons and sacraments offered by Jesuits, Redemptorists, Salesians, the priests of the Society of the Divine Word, and the German Catholic Congregation.93 Mirau and others involved in German-language Catholicism felt that they could rely on the institutional network of Spanish-language Catholic social services in Buenos Aires while concentrating their support of German Catholicism solely on German-language worship and sacraments. Conversely, German-speaking Lutherans, informed by their double minority status of language and denomination, sought to offer social welfare in German in addition to worship and rites of passage. The Catholic Mirau also worried about a generational language shift to Spanish, but he had fewer concerns about the consequences. He informed new immigrants that “German parents [should] insist that their children speak German to each other. They will learn Spanish in Argentina by themselves and properly in school, but outside the paternal home (Vaterhaus) they will not always have the opportunity to speak German.”94 He also warned, “You, German women who live in Argentina or who are married to a non-German, do not disavow your Germanness! . . . With your love and disposition to the German homeland, remain guardians of Germandom and of all good German customs and habits.” He added, “Insist that your children speak German with the family and among themselves, and you will pay a service to the German homeland as great as the German heroes who sacrificed their lives [in the First World War] for the lovely German fatherland!”95 Mirau’s notions of language maintenance indicate that Lutherans were not the only ones interested in promoting language and other markers of German ethnicity to children. Yet his concerns were limited to language; he did not believe that linguistic changes would encourage Catholics to switch to another denomination in the same way that German-speaking Lutherans feared a shift to Spanish would affect Lutheranism.

conclusion Children’s linguistic abilities and adults’ ideas about Argentine belonging shaped German-language Lutheran and Catholic communities in ­Buenos Aires. Language and denomination formed central pillars in the construction of ethnicity, and German-speaking immigrants were particularly

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adamant about these two pillars when discussing children. Lutheran adults in the city placed greater weight on the interdependence of the two than did German-speaking Catholics. However, children’s relationship with language contested many adults’ definitions of German ethnicity. Many children successfully demanded Spanish-language services while they remained members of their parents’ German-language congregations. German-speaking Lutherans in Buenos Aires constructed their ethnicity in a reciprocal dialogue with the surrounding Catholic, Spanishlanguage society. In their discussions and organizational activities, many people regularly referred to that context and to the implications that joining it would have for children. Lutheran constructions of ethnicity were complicated by the competing ideas about language and denomination that their children could have, by the many German speakers who chose to marry Catholics, and by adults who did not involve their children in a Lutheran community. Practicing Lutherans took an interest in the language used in baptisms and confirmations, and middle- and upper-class women and Lutheran pastors went to great lengths to create and fund two German-language Lutheran orphanages. When contrasted with the views and activities of German-speaking Catholics, however, Lutheran behavior requires deeper analysis. Practicing German-speaking Catholics in Buenos Aires also took a strong interest in the German language. Many argued that the creation of a lay Catholic association and later a German congregation would encourage German-speaking Catholic immigrants, through language, to strengthen their religious involvement. However, Catholic lay leaders and priests did not frame their discussion of children with the threat of a linguisticdenominational catastrophe, and for German-speaking Catholics, religion and language did not hold the same value for the reproduction of ethnicity in a multilingual and multidenominational society. Both Lutherans and Catholics took an interest in debates centrally important to their denominations, and the activities of both groups were driven by their expectations for the future. For Lutherans, concerns typically centered on maintaining their minority denomination in Argentine society. Interdenominational marriages, children speaking Spanish, and the possibility that German immigrants with some degree of religious conviction might make use of the city’s extensive Catholic services fueled their concerns. For German-speaking Catholics, however, the debates central to their denomination overlapped with the debates central to the Catholic Church in Argentina. As a result, promoting the German language or worrying about children’s personal negotiation between language and denominational identity was less important, and they instead took an interest in the secularizing tendencies of the society in which they lived. For those convinced of the value of Catholic services that extended

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beyond places of worship and into education, child welfare, and workers’ aid, the increasing interventionism of the Argentine state attracted the lion’s share of their attention. Through their participation in mainstream debates about secularization and their provision of child welfare services, German-speaking Catholics and Lutherans integrated into Argentine society. The establishment of German-language religious institutions meant that practicing Catholics and Lutherans participated in the creation of a pluralist society. Some people’s use of German to create a more devout Catholic city and country meant that religion integrated some immigrants into one stream of mainstream society. The use of German to promote the growth of a Protestant denomination, however, also integrated immigrants into their society. Organized Lutheranism in Buenos Aires promoted cultural diversity, but the directors, supporters, and parishioners of the Lutheran congregation of Buenos Aires and the supporters of social welfare institutions such as the German Women’s Home and the Baradero orphanage did not do so in order to create an isolated church unaware of its place in Argentine civil society. Despite the religious, linguistic, and cultural pluralism that all of these activities fostered, German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics believed that they belonged in Argentina. They actively carved out a space for their vision of belonging, and alongside other groups of immigrants they broadened the meaning of citizenship in Argentina.

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; In pushing for a more culturally plural vision of society between 1880 and 1930, German-speaking immigrants in Buenos Aires thought deeply about Argentine belonging. Driven by their expectations about family and community, German speakers and immigrants of other backgrounds provided social welfare services along ethnic lines, educated children in bilingual schools, and created places of worship that fostered linguistic and religious diversity. At stake was the nature of the pluralist society that would develop in the decades to come, and immigrants, children, and Argentine authorities all wanted to influence that process. Immigrant school promoters and officials in the National Council of Education tried to establish a balance between the cultural and political meaning of citizenship. German-speaking Lutherans and Catholics as well as Catholics of other backgrounds sought to create a Christian Argentina in the present and the future, whether that meant a society with a range of Protestant denominations or one where the state and the Catholic Church shared power. Immigrants, bilingual Argentines, and public authorities negotiated and gave meaning to the terms of civic inclusion. In providing social welfare services to out-of-work men, in fostering the idea that men should be the primary breadwinners for their families, and in educating thousands of Argentine-born children in bilingual schools, the self-appointed leaders of German and other ethnic communities invoked the language of citizenship and participated in many of the citizenship activities led by the Argentine state. When dealing with children who were legal citizens, such practices involved equipping them with the civic and linguistic knowledge needed to advance in Argentine society. The help that affluent immigrants provided to working-class immigrants in a range of social welfare institutions fostered a specific image of a proper citizen. The act of helping workers was a response to the duties expected of wealthy male citizens. Creating an ethnic community that involved

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itself in issues of citizenship—particularly when repeated across groups in the Argentine capital—expanded the very meaning of that citizenship. Even if many cultural nationalists who lauded the Hispanic nature of the nation would have dismissed the idea, hundreds of thousands of immigrants in Buenos Aires were creating a more pluralist vision of citizenship and belonging. Nevertheless, the hundreds of self-proclaimed leaders of a German community in the Argentine capital met many stumbling blocks. Children had other views about what it meant to be German in Argentina. By no means did they step fully into the camp of the assimilationist nationalism espoused by some Argentine politicians and education bureaucrats, but children put forth other ideas about citizenship and ethnicity. Hundreds of working-class German-speaking women undermined the image of a model citizen promoted by the male-dominated work placement and aid societies, and the affluent liberal feminists who led the German Women’s Home also challenged this male view of citizenship. The members of many German-speaking households also disagreed with several of the goals of community leaders. As statistics on exogamous marriage patterns and the discussions of baptisms of children with parents from two denominations or two linguistic backgrounds demonstrate, one of the two adults (more frequently the woman) who lived in a “German-speaking” household was on occasion not a German speaker. The children from such a household, even if they attended a bilingual German-Spanish school, did not fit perfectly into the image of community that the leaders envisioned. Organizing around ethnic communities integrated immigrants into Argentine society rather than isolating them. Despite the plans of public education authorities, Argentine children and their immigrant parents believed that they could belong in Argentina while speaking two languages instead of one. Similarly, the Catholic Church accepted multilingualism while fostering a more Catholic society, and German-language Lutheran bodies promoted the German language while seeking to strengthen the religiosity of Argentina. The role of Catholic congregations and Lutheran religious bodies in creating social welfare institutions and in running or supporting elementary schools meant that they integrated German speakers into the broader society in other ways as well. These religious structures filled a gap left open by the liberal state, and—in the case of Lutherans—asserted a place for their denomination in the country. The institutions that German-speaking and other immigrants created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Buenos Aires had a significant impact on how other social actors such as the Argentine state, the Catholic Church, and Spanish-speaking philanthropists involved themselves with citizens and residents in the city. Although the focus of

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self-declared ethnic leaders was the community, the outcome of their actions was to foster a place for themselves alongside other social actors. Immigrant-run social welfare institutions and schools were not unique to Argentina, and similar examples existed throughout the Americas in countries affected by even modest levels of immigration.1 Yet in each local and national context, different relationships emerged. In Argentina, public reformers, Catholic organizations, Spanish-speaking philanthropists, and self-appointed immigrant leaders all staked out a space for themselves and seemed content to share power. The success of immigrants in Buenos Aires in asserting a place for ethnic communities alongside other social actors established another pole of power that existed parallel to the state and the Catholic Church from 1880 to 1930. German ethnicity in Buenos Aires had many meanings. Clerical and lay leaders of Catholic and Lutheran congregations promoted an inclusive understanding of German ethnicity to a wide group of people with a variety of linguistic abilities and national origins, but they excluded the German speakers of other denominations from the ethno-religious communities they were trying to forge. Mothers and fathers thought about the ethnicity of their daughters and sons in different ways when one parent was not of German heritage. An Argentine, Spanish-speaking, Catholic mother or father thought about the thousands of (somewhat) German-speaking children in Buenos Aires differently than did her or his German Lutheran partner. Argentine children reconciled their own ethnicity with their citizenship, linguistic abilities, and religious denomination on their own terms as well. Through the nexus of lineage, ideas about gender and ethnicity overlapped. Much of the discussion of preserving Germanness reflected an interest in strengthening families and reproducing parents’ (often the father’s) ethnicity. A great number of German speakers in Buenos Aires spoke about and participated in communities. There was no single German community in Buenos Aires nor in the small towns in the surrounding province of Buenos Aires. The communities that people talked about or engaged with were not defined by the numbers presented in Argentine censuses nor in the assertions of self-proclaimed community leaders. Nonetheless, in going to church, funding a school, or running an orphanage, people were involved with communities. Concerned parents, Catholic or Lutheran clergy and laypeople, German-speaking newspaper editors, and small clubs of cultural nationalists defined community in different ways, placing different emphases on language, denomination, and citizenship. Language played an important role in Argentine debates about citizenship and belonging, and participants often propounded competing opinions about the languages that citizens should speak. For many people in Buenos Aires, linguistic abilities and linguistic behaviors existed in a

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relational manner. The bilingualism of German speakers, particularly of the “German” children who had a Spanish-speaking parent, underscores a fundamental yet often overlooked aspect of how German speakers and various other groups constructed ethnic categories in Buenos Aires. Nationality, oral and/or written linguistic proficiency, denomination, and biological heritage can all define the human subjects that historians of migration study, and yet each category would include some people and exclude others. Understanding how ethnic labels are created, by whom, and for what purposes adds depth to what it meant to be German, Italian, or Ukrainian in Argentina and, more broadly, the Americas. Religion also shaped the meaning of ethnicity in Buenos Aires. Denominational identities influenced community formation and fueled many German speakers’ desire to reproduce ethnicity in a future generation. Religious institutions provided autonomous control to many people who sought to use foreign languages in their new society or who wanted to equip their children with a balanced proficiency in two languages. Parents made decisions about the education of their children and people engaged in social welfare projects because of their loose affiliation with either Catholicism or Lutheranism. The people who were most concerned about the consequences of children growing up with only a limited proficiency in German were by and large Lutherans. They translated religious arguments about the interdependence of language and denomination into their own secular ideas about language, ethnicity, and reproduction. Practicing Lutherans and Catholics in Buenos Aires contradicted the vision that many external observers had about a single or united ethnic community. In the eyes of most Argentines, the city’s German community consisted of Lutherans and those who were strong supporters of Imperial Germany. The average Spanish-speaking Catholic priest, however, thought of another German community in the city, one that was anchored in a neighboring German-language parish. Between 1880 and 1930, Lutherans and Catholics constructed and participated in denominational communities. Other German immigrants took only a mild interest in such social and spiritual relations, and they attributed less importance to religion within their definition of ethnicity. The competing or overlapping German communities in Buenos Aires that people created reveal much about the meaning of being German in the Americas. The social welfare institutions, schools, and places of worship that German-speaking immigrants and bilingual Argentines built and supported fostered a sense of community and helped carve out a more permanent place for German ethnicity in Buenos Aires society. Yet this was a European ethnicity reconciled with a new citizenship, bilingualism, and a sense of belonging in Argentina. The multiple meanings that people

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attributed to German ethnicity, the efforts that immigrant leaders and educators made to broaden the meaning of civic inclusion, and the bilingualism of “German speakers” were not unique to this group. European immigrants of many backgrounds and their Argentine children carved out a place for different cultural, linguistic, and religious identities in Argentine society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cultural pluralism had a significant impact on how Argentina developed in the twentieth century. The autonomy that immigrant school promoters negotiated with the National Council of Education and the projects of affluent immigrant philanthropists in matters of social welfare influenced how the liberal state interacted with citizens in the first third of the century, and this set the tone for the evolving relationship between citizens and the Argentine state in the decades that followed. The relationships that existed by the 1920s became the framework out of which government policies and social actions of the 1930s and 1940s developed. The kind of culturally plural society that Buenos Aires became between 1880 and 1930 set the terms of belonging that took hold in the middle third of the twentieth century. The city continued to be a place where the children of many immigrants were proficient in two languages and where immigrant adults ran hospitals and other social welfare institutions and used places of worship to foster both denominational and linguistic pluralism. The kind of cultural pluralism that evolved from 1930 to the 1960s through dictatorship, limited democracy, and populism depended on the struggles and activities of immigrants of many backgrounds between 1880 and 1930. In the second half of the twentieth century, and as immigration rates declined, the monolingual mission of education in Argentina lost many of its opponents. European immigrant parents in Buenos Aires had successfully expanded the boundaries of the nation into the 1920s by asserting that bilingualism and national belonging could coexist. However, as the century wore on, the negotiations among children, parents, bureaucrats, and politicians slowly shifted. Some of the institutions that Germanspeaking and other immigrant school promoters built continue to exist in Buenos Aires today, but they have long since ceased to be a significant group that can challenge the dominant idea of a unilingual nation. In societies across the Americas and now also in Europe, debates about bilingual education continue. They stand upon the foundations that children, parents, educators, religious leaders, bureaucrats, and politicians built in the early twentieth century in Argentina and across the Americas. Throughout the Americas for most of the twentieth century, there was a single language that the young citizens of any given nation learned to speak and write—be it English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French—and perhaps, if the dominant speech community so desired, other languages were

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taught in supplemental hours, or in immersion programs for small groups of children. New fields for bilingual education have opened up in many countries in Europe while old sites of multilingualism in the Americas continue to evolve. Current perspectives on multilingualism, integration, and citizenship feed off debates that have floated around the north and south Atlantic for the past century.

Notes

introduction 1.  Engerman, “Introduction,” 1402. 2. Koselleck, Futures Past, 268. 3. Ibid., 270. 4. Ibid., 272. 5.  Lesser and Rein, “Challenging Particularity.” 6. Moya, Cousins and Strangers; Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise; Deutsch, Crossing Borders; Jakubs, “A Community of Interests.” 7.  Böhm, “Judíos alemanes,” 475. 8. Ibid. 9. Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas, 191. 10. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 350. 11. Ibid. 12. Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas, 192. 13. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 365. 14. Carli, Niñez, pedagogía y política, 39; Lionetti, La misión política. 15. Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas. 16.  Canning and Rose, “Gender, Citizenship and Subjectivity,” 427. 17. Ibid., 431. 18. Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise, 74. 19. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 489. 20. Ibid. 21.  Censo general, 1910, 17. 22.  McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders; Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise. 23. Newton, German Buenos Aires; Newton, The “Nazi Menace”; Groth, Das Argentinische Tageblatt; Schnorbach, Für ein “anderes Deutschland”; Ismar, Der Pressekrieg; Saint Sauveur-Henn, Un siècle d’émigration allemande; Bindernagel, “Migration und Erinnerung.” 24. Sollors, The Invention of Ethnicity; Conzen et al., “The Invention of Ethnicity”; Lesser, Negotiating National Identity; Lesser, Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity.

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25.  Brubaker and Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity,’” 14. 26. Ibid., 27. 27. Otero, Historia de los franceses, 20–21. 28.  Lesser and Rein, “Challenging Particularity,” 251, 256. 29. Newton, German Buenos Aires; Saint Sauveur-Henn, Un siècle d’émigration allemande; Newton, The “Nazi Menace”; Groth, Das Argentinische Tageblatt; Kelz, “Competing Germanies”; Schnorbach, Für ein “anderes Deutsch­ land”; Ismar, Der Pressekrieg. 30.  Conrad, “Transnational Germany”; Conrad, Globalisation and the ­Nation; Conrad, “Rethinking German Colonialism”; “Forum: The German Colonial Imagination”; Dennis, “Seduction on the Waterfront”; O’Donnell, Bridenthal, and Reagin, The Heimat Abroad; Conrad and Osterhammel, Das Kaiserreich transnational; Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora; Choate, Emigrant Nation; Aliano, Mussolini’s National Project; Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism. 31.  Glenn Penny, “Latin American Connections,” 364. 32. Ibid. 33. Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German, 44. 34.  Sargent, “Diasporic Citizens,” 23–24. 35. Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 11. 36. Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation, 279. 37. Ibid. 38.  Naranch, “Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche,” 26. 39. Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation, 386. 40. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood, 114. 41. Kloosterhuis, Friedliche Imperialisten; vom Bruch, Weltpolitik als Kultur­ mission; Rinke, “Der Letzte Freie Kontinent”; Mitchell, The Danger of Dreams; Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation. 42. Newton, German Buenos Aires; Newton, The “Nazi Menace”; Groth, Das Argentinische Tageblatt; Schnorbach, Für ein “anderes Deutschland”; Ismar, Der Pressekrieg; Saint Sauveur-Henn, Un siècle d’émigration allemande; Bindernagel, “Migration und Erinnerung”; Mitchell, The Danger of Dreams; Herwig, Germany’s Vision of Empire; Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora; Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation. 43.  Rein, “Ethnicity and Diaspora,” 11. 44. Weitz, Weimar Germany, 145–47. 45. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood, 13. 46. Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschließen, 353; Rinke, “Der Letzte Freie Kontinent.” 47. Rinke, “Der letzte freie Kontinent”; Goebel, “Decentring the German Spirit.” 48. Baranowski, Nazi Empire; Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschließen. 49.  Resumen estadístico del movimiento migratorio, 3; Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 56. In these same five decades, 2.6 million people left the country, but not all those who left were immigrants. 50. Nugent, Crossings.

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51.  Segundo censo, Vol. II, xviii; Tercer censo, Vol. I, 65. 52. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 149. 53.  Tercer censo, Vol. I, 202. 54.  Base de datos, Bernasconi; Resumen estadístico del movimiento migrato­ rio. Between 1857 and 1914, 62,006 Germans, 136,079 Austro-Hungarians, and 33,057 Swiss entered Argentina, but only a portion of the Austro-Hungarians and Swiss were German speakers (Tercer censo nacional, Vol. 1, antecedentes y comentarios, 201). 55.  Saint Sauveur-Henn, Un siècle d’émigration, 256–57. 56. Weyne, El último puerto, 33; Riffel, Die Rußlanddeutschen, 54. 57. Lesser, Negotiating National Identity; Lesser, A Discontented Diaspora; Lesser, Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity. 58.  Brodsky, “Educating Argentine Jews,” 33–51; Lesser, Immigration, Ethnic­ ity, and National Identity; Lesser, Negotiating National Identity; Lewis Nouwen, Oy, My Buenos Aires; McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders. 59.  Lesser and Rein, “Motherlands of Choice,” 156. 60.  Segundo censo, Vol. II, clxiii. 61.  Meding, “Procesos de integración retardados”; Bjerg, Historías de la inmigración. 62.  Saint Sauveur-Henn, Un siècle d’émigration allemande, 345. 63. Ibid. 64. Jefferson, Peopling the Argentine Pampa, 66. 65.  “Ueber die Zahl der Deutschredenden in Argentinien,” Argentinischer Volksfreund, 3 April 1912, 7. 66. Mirau, Argentinien von heute, 119. 67.  “Deutschtum in Argentinien, 1920–1934,” 21 July 1921, R 78796, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin. 68.  Segundo censo, Vol. II, clxiii; Tercer censo, Vol. I, 205, 206. 69.  Segundo censo, Vol. II, clxiii. 70.  Tercer censo, Vol. I, 206. 71.  Base de datos, Bernasconi. 72. In 1890, 62.8 percent of people in that country were nominally Protestant, 35.8 percent Catholic, and 0.3 percent of other Christian denominations. Of the 49.4 million people in Imperial Germany, 567,884 (1.1 percent) were Jewish (Craig, Germany, 181). 73.  Base de datos, Bernasconi. 74.  Lesser and Rein, “Motherlands of Choice,” 149; Saint Sauveur-Henn, “Die deutsche Einwanderung,” 13; Groth, Das Argentinische Tageblatt; Saint SauveurHenn, Un siècle d’émigration allemande, 258. 75. Newton, German Buenos Aires; Saint Sauveur-Henn, Un siècle d’émigration allemande; Rohland de Lanbehn and Vedda, Anuario Argentino de Germanística IV. 76.  Jakubs, “A Community of Interests,” 230; McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders; Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas; Otero, Historia de los franceses; Favero, “Las escuelas de las sociedades italianas.” 77. Carli, Niñez, pedagogía y política.

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Notes to Chapter 1

chapter 1 1. “Aufruf!” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung (Buenos Aires), 2 September 1905, 1. 2.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Frauenvereins über das zehnte Vereinsjahr, 1905–1906 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von G. Kraft, 1906), 5–7. 3. Franze, Fest-Schrift zur Feier, 7–20. 4. Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise, 172; Moya, Cousins and Strang­ ers, 279–91. 5.  McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, 207–11. 6. Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires; Guy, White Slavery and Mothers. 7. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse; Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State; Tuennerman-Kaplan, Helping Others, Helping Ourselves; Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion; Fitzgerald, Habits of Compassion. 8. Lissak, Pluralism and Progressives; McGerr, A Fierce Discontent; Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap, and Water; Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work. 9. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers; Katz, In the Shadow of the Poor­ house; Cohen, Making a New Deal; Guy, Women Build the Welfare State. 10.  Bazarfest zum Besten des Deutschen-Hospitals, 44–51; Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1921 (Buenos Aires, 1922); JahresBericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1926 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Mercur, 1927). 11.  Heidenreich, “Synodalbericht,” 17. 12.  Zeller, “Der Beitrag deutscher Sozialisten,” 40, 44. 13. Zimmermann, Los liberales reformistas; Nállim, Transformations and Cri­ sis of Liberalism. I first discussed these ideas in Bryce, “Paternal Communities.” 14. Zimmermann, Los liberales reformistas. 15. Guy, Women Build the Welfare State, 10, 19. 16.  González, “Niñez y beneficencia,” 136; Moreno, La política social, 13; Guy, Women Build the Welfare State, 55; Moreno, Éramos tan pobres, 42. 17. Moreno, Éramos tan pobres, 42; Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires; Moreno, Éramos tan pobres, 79–81. 18. Guy, Women Build the Welfare State, 43. 19. Alsina, La inmigración en el primer siglo, 167–69. 20. Mesa-Lago, Social Security in Latin America, 166, 170. 21. Ibid., 161–63. 22.  Ceva, “La Itálica Gens,” 585–602; Bernasconi, “Los Misioneros scalabrinianos”; Bryce, “Making Ethnic Space,” 85–87. 23.  Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1896 (Buenos Aires, 1897), 3; Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1908 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von Oscar B. Mengen, 1909), 6; Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1910 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von O.B. Mengen, 1910), 11; Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1920 (Buenos Aires, 1921), 11. 24.  Bericht und Rechnungsablage. Deutsche Wohltätigkeits-Gesellschaft, 1930 (Buenos Aires, 1931), 9; Franze, Fest-Schrift zur Feier, 22; Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Frauen-Vereins in Buenos Aires über das vierzehnte Vereinsjahr

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vom 1. Oktober 1909 bis 30. September 1910 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La Plata Synode, 1910), 9; Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Frauen-Vereins in Buenos Aires, 1910–1911 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La Plata-Synode, 1911), 16–17. 25. Guy, Women Build the Welfare State, 58. 26.  Munck, Falcón, and Galitelli, Argentina: From Anarchism to Peronism; Adelman, “State and Labour in Argentina”; Horowitz, “Argentina’s Failed General Strike.” 27.  “Verein zum Schutze germanischer Einwanderer,” Deutsche La Plata Zeit­ ung, 12 March 1882, 1. 28.  “Entwurf der Statuten des Vereins zum Schutze germanischer Einwanderer,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 27 May 1882, 1; “Verein für Einwanderung und Colonisation,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 14 February 1882, 1. 29.  “Verein zum Schutze deutschredender Einwanderer,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 15 June 1882, 1. 30. Ibid. 31.  Verein zum Schutze germanischer Einwanderer. 35. Jahresbericht über das Vereinsjahr 1917 (Buenos Aires: Mengen, 1918), 3; Verein zum Schutze ger­ manischer Einwanderer. 37. Jahresbericht über das Vereinsjahr 1919 (Buenos Aires, 1920), 3. 32. “Vereins-Nachrichten,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 28 November 1914, 4. 33.  Verein zum Schutze germanischer Einwanderer. 46. Jahresbericht über das Vereinsjahr 1928 (Buenos Aires, 1929), 4–5. 34.  “Generalversammlung des Vereins zum Schutze germanischer Einwanderer,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 10 October 1915, 5. 35.  Verein zum Schutze germanischer Einwanderer. 37. Jahresbericht über das Vereinsjahr 1919 (Buenos Aires, 1920), 9–10. 36.  Censo general de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1904, 216; “Verein zum Schutze deutschredender Einwanderer,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 29 January 1887, 1; Jahresbericht des Vereins zum Schutze Germanischer Einwanderer für das Jahr 1897 (Buenos Aires, 1898), 1; Verein zum Schutze germanischer Einwanderer. 39. Jahresbericht über das Vereinsjahr 1921 (Buenos Aires, 1922), 10; Verein zum Schutze germanischer Einwanderer. 45. Jahresbericht über das Vereinsjahr 1927 (Buenos Aires, 1928), 20–23. 37.  Verein zum Schutze germanischer Einwanderer. 35. Jahresbericht über das Vereinsjahr 1917 (Buenos Aires: Mengen, 1918), 8. 38.  “Gebt Arbeit!” (advertisement), Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 2 September 1915, 8. 39.  “Deutsche Wohlfahrtsbestrebungen in Buenos Aires,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 15 January 1916, 3. 40.  “Deutsche Wohltätigkeits-Gesellschaft Buenos Aires,” Argentinisches Tage­ blatt, 2 March 1916, 4. 41.  “Gesellschaftliches Leben,” Argentinisches Tageblatt, 1 May 1917, 6. 42.  “An die gesamte deutsche Kolonie!” (advertisement), Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 11 February 1916, 3. 43.  “Deutsche Wohltätigkeits-Gesellschaft Buenos Aires: Gegen das Hausbettlei!” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 10 September 1916, 8, and 5 November 1916, 6. 44. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, 9.

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45.  Satzungen der Deutschen Wohltätigkeits-Gesellschaft, 1916 (Buenos Aires, 1916), 1. 46.  Bericht und Rechungsablage. Deutsche Wohltätigkeits-Gesellschaft (Socie­ dad Alemana de Beneficencia), 1916–1930 (Buenos Aires, 1917–1931). 47.  Bericht und Rechungsablage. Deutsche Wohltätigkeits-Gesellschaft (Socie­ dad Alemana de Beneficencia), 1916 (Buenos Aires, 1917), 12; Bericht und Rech­ nungsablage. Deutsche Wohltätigkeits-Gesellschaft, 1930 (Buenos Aires, 1931), 17–19. 48. Newton, German Buenos Aires, 33. 49.  Verein zum Schutze germanischer Einwanderer. 43. Jahresbericht über das Vereinsjahr 1925 (Buenos Aires, 1926), 11; Verein zum Schutze germanischer Ein­ wanderer. 44. Jahresbericht über das Vereinsjahr 1926 (Buenos Aires, 1927), 12. 50.  Bericht und Rechnungsablage. Deutsche Wohltätigkeits-Gesellschaft, 1926 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Mercur, 1927), 7; Bericht und Rechnungsablage. Deutsche Wohltätigkeits-Gesellschaft, 1927 (Buenos Aires, 1928), 7. 51. “Repatriación,” Centro Gallego. Boletín Oficial (Buenos Aires, 1913), 6; Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 294; Memoria del directorio de la Sociedad Espa­ ñola de Beneficencia, 36. 52.  29 February 1928, letter from Georges Picot (embassy in Buenos Aires) to Aristide Briand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, “Propagande, Argentine, 1923–29,” 8CPCOM/16, Archives diplomatiques, Paris. 53. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 291; Guy, “La beneficencia judía,” 217. 54.  Censo general de población 1910, Vol. II, 269. 55. Ablard, Madness in Buenos Aires, 5. 56. Ibid., 93. 57.  Rodriguez, “Inoculating against Barbarism?” 366. 58. Armus, The Ailing City, 22. 59.  “El Banco Español y la asociación,” Revista de la Asociación Española de Socorros Mútuos, 1 August 1912; “El Banco de Galicia y Buenos Aires,” Revista de la Asociación Española de Socorros Mútuos, 1 May 1913; “Nuestra memoria anual,” Revista de la Asociación Española de Socorros Mútuos, 1 March 1913; “Memoria,” Revista de la Asociación Española de Socorros Mútuos, March 1938, 3. 60.  González, “El ‘momento mutualista,’” 159. 61.  Moya, “A Continent of Immigrants,” 27. 62.  González, “El ‘momento mutualista,’” 161–62. 63.  Boletín mensual del Museo Social Argentino 73–74 (1918): 6. 64.  Klotz, “A Brief History” ; Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers, 109, 112; Kenny, Illustrated Cincinnati; Detsky and Ross, “Comparison of the US and Canadian Health Care Systems”; Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State, 170. 65. In 1885, the 154 Catholic hospitals in the United States were more than the total number of hospitals that had existed in the country twenty years before; the country’s rising foreign-born Catholic population played a role in this boom. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers, 111. 66.  “Deutsches Hospital” (advertisement), Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 18 February 1896, 3. See also Mirau, Argentinien von heute, 121. 67. Guy, Women Build the Welfare State, 43; Moreno, Éramos tan pobres, 89.

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68.  Censo general de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1904, 330. 69. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 285. 70.  Memoria del directorio, 4; “La Memoria del Banco Español: Brillantes Resultados,” Revista mensual de la asociación española de socorros mutuos de Buenos Aires, 17 (1 August 1913). 71.  Buenos Aires British Hospital: 125 Years of Service (1969), n.p.; ­Warneford-Thompson, British Hospital, 69, 77; Loyudice, Hospital Italiano, 55; Libro del cincuentenario; Guy, “La beneficencia judía,” 217. 72.  “Das Hospitalfest,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 14 August 1898, 1. 73.  Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospital-Vereins in Buenos Aires, 1898 (­Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von Fessel & Mengen, 1899), 5. 74.  Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1913 (­Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von Oskar B. Mengen, 1914), 5. 75.  Guy, “Rise of the Welfare State”; Blum, “Conspicuous Benevolence”; ­Ehrick, “Affectionate Mothers.” 76. Guy, Women Build the Welfare State, 6. 77.  “Das Deutsche Hospital in Buenos Aires,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 22 December 1918, 8. 78.  Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1918 (­Buenos Aires, 1919), 12. 79.  Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1929 (­Buenos Aires: Imprenta Mercur, 1930), 12. 80.  Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1921 (­Buenos Aires, 1922), 9–10. 81. Warneford-Thompson, British Hospital, 69, 77; Loyudice, Hospital Ital­ iano, 55; Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 285; Guy, “La beneficencia judía.” 82.  Memoria y balance general. Asociación Israelita de Beneficencia y Socorros Mútuos (Buenos Aires: Talleres gráficos A.I.A., 1941), 43. 83.  “Deutsches Hospital,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 20 January 1917, 6; Mirau, Argentinien von heute, 121. 84. Mirau, Argentinien von heute, 121. The hospital frequently stated that the clinics were only for working-class German speakers; “Deutsches Hospital” (advertisement), Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 8 May 1919, 6; “Deutsches Hospital” (advertisement), Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 9 September 1922, 10; “Deutsches Hospital” (advertisement), Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 22 February 1930, 7. 85.  Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospital-Vereins in Buenos Aires, 1901 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von Fessel & Mengen, 1902), 4; Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1918, 11; Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires, 1928 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Mercur, 1929), 10. 86.  Major fundraisers were held in 1881, 1892, 1896, 1898, 1907, 1912, 1917, and 1925; Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Hospital-Vereins in Buenos Aires, 1880–1930. 87.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Hospitalvereins in Buenos Aires 1922, 7. 88.  Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 21 November 1896, 1. 89.  Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 2 December 1911, 3. 90.  Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 3 December 1911, 1.

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91.  Ibid., 3. 92. “Tageschronik,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 6 December 1911, 5. 93.  “Bazar zum Besten des Deutschen Hospitals,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 28 November 1911, 1. 94.  McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, 206. 95.  Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 1 December 1925, 3. 96.  Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 2 December 1925, 14. 97.  Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 6 December 1925, 8. 98.  McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, 212. 99.  “Statuten des Deutschen Frauenvereins,” Jahresbericht des Deutschen Frauen-Vereins über das neunte Vereins-Jahr, 1904–1905 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1905); “Deutscher Frauenverein,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 5 March 1916, 18. 100.  Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Frauen-Vereins in Buenos Aires, 1904–1919. 101. Ibid. 102.  “Heim. Internationaler Verein der Freundinnen junger Mädchen” (advertisement), Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 25 November 1896, 3. 103.  “Etwas mehr vom Deutschen Frauen-Verein in Buenos Aires,” Evange­ lisches Gemeindeblatt, 25 January 1905, 5. 104.  “Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Frauenvereins,” Evangelisches Gemeinde­ blatt, 7 June 1905, 2. 105.  “Aus unseren Gemeinden. Buenos Aires,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 6 May 1908, 226. 106. Reagin, A German Women’s Movement, 71. 107. Ibid., 90. 108. Frohman, Poor Relief and Welfare in Germany, 141. 109. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 284–85, 294. 110. Guy, Women Build the Welfare State, 49, 73. 111. Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires; Barrancos, Mujeres en la sociedad argentina, 148–54. 112. McGerr, A Fierce Discontent, xv, 100. 113. Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work, 177. 114. Lissak, Pluralism and Progressives, 173–80. 115. Franze, Fest-Schrift zur Feier, 8–13; Jahresbericht des Deutschen Frauen­ vereins über das achte Vereinsjahr, 1903–1904 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von Herpig & Stoeveken, 1904), 14–17; Jahresbericht des Deutschen Frauenvereins über das zehnte Vereinsjahr, 1905–1906, 16. 116. Franze, Fest-Schrift zur Feier, 11; Jahresbericht des Deutschen Frauen­ vereins über das zehnte Vereinsjahr, 1905–1906, 20–25; Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Frauen-Vereins in Buenos Aires, 1910–1911 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La Plata-Synode, 1911), 20–28; Jahresbericht des Deutschen Frauen-Vereins in Buenos Aires, 1926–1927 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei Mercur, 1927), 28–38. 117.  “Statuten des Deutschen Frauenvereins,” Jahresbericht des Deutschen Frauen-Vereins über das neunte Vereins-Jahr, 1904–1905. 118. Reagin, A German Women’s Movement, 74–75. 119.  Barrancos, “Eyle, Petrona,” 231; Franze, Fest-Schrift zur Feier, 13.

Notes to Chapters 1 and 2

175

120. Ehrick, Shield of the Weak, 96; Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires, 95. 121.  “Bericht über das erste Vereinsjahr 1896/97 des Deutschen Frauenvereins,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 1897, 952. 122.  “Aus unseren Gemeinden. Buenos Aires,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 6 May 1908, 226. 123. Franze, Fest-Schrift zur Feier, 7. 124.  “Zur Auswanderung nach Argentinien,” St. Raphaelsblatt 1–2 (October– November 1921), 8. 125.  McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, 108. 126. Ibid., 109. 127. Ibid. 128.  14 March 1922, Consulado general de España en Buenos Aires, letter to Madrid, “Correspondencia,” H 1357, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid. 129.  1 February 1922, Luisa Canale de Cibrián and Elena de Fernández, letter to Señor Ministro de Estado, “Correspondencia,” H 1357, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid. 130.  Johnson, “Protection, Virtue, and the ‘Power to Detain,’” 655. 131. Ibid., 657. 132. Ibid., 661.

chapter 2 1.  Max Hopff, “Eingesandt: Deutsche Schule und Kirche,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 20 April 1898, 1. 2.  M.O., “Deutsche Schule und Kirche,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 30 April 1898, 1. 3.  “Zum Jahresbericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde in Buenos Aires,” Argentinisches Tageblatt, 25 April 1898, 1. 4.  “Aufruf zur Gründung eines deutschen Schul-Vereins,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 13 August 1898, 1. 5. Puiggrós, Sujeto, disciplina y curriculum; Lionetti, “Ciudadanas útiles”; Lionetti, La misión política; Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas; Solberg, Immigration and Nationalism. 6. Lionetti, La misión política; Puiggrós, Sujeto, disciplina y curriculum; Lionetti, “Ciudadanas útiles.” 7.  Favero, “Las escuelas de las sociedades italianas”; Bertoni, Patriotas, cos­ mopolitas y nacionalistas; Jakubs, “A Community of Interests,” 230. 8.  Rein, “Ethnicity and Diaspora,” 3. 9. Tedesco, Educación y sociedad, 131. 10. Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty; Luebke, Germans in Brazil; Toth, GermanEnglish Bilingual Schools; Grenke, The German Community. Recent research on the United States and Canada also highlights the persistence of the language during and after the First World War in a number of domains beyond public schools, while other work has pointed to significant changes that severely limited the teaching of German in North American schools even before the outbreak of war. See, for example, Boas, Life and Death; Kazal, Becoming Old Stock;

176

Notes to Chapter 2

Blanton, Strange Career; Conolly-Smith, Translating America; Bryce, “Linguistic Ideology”; Zimmerman, “Ethnics against Ethnicity.” 11.  Bryce, “La etnicidad”; Rinke, “Reconstruction,” 162. 12.  Rinke, “Reconstruction,” 177. 13. Newton, German Buenos Aires, 33; Rinke, “Reconstruction,” 171. 14.  Bryce, “Making Ethnic Space,” 285. 15. Ibid., 268, 285. 16. Ibid., 268. 17. Ibid. 18.  23 June 1926, British Scholastic Association of the River Plate, letter to Sir Malcolm Robertson, “Education Argentina,” ED 121/108, The National Archives, London. 19.  “Suggestions for a Covering Letter for Report on Visit to British Schools in Argentina,” “Education Argentina,” ED 121/108, The National Archives, London. 20. Otero, Historia de los franceses, 276. 21.  Daughton, “When Argentina Was ‘French.’” 22.  Base de datos, Bernasconi. 23.  Bryce, “Making Ethnic Space,” 268. 24. Ibid. 25.  The last names shown in the annual records of pupils’ grades in the schools’ archives make it clear that a large proportion of the students were of German heritage. In addition, the Argentinischer Volksfreund heavily publicized the German Catholic Association (Deutscher Katholikenverein), whose first headquarters were just around the corner from the office of the Volksfreund and the Colegio Guadalupe. The chapel in the Colegio Mallinckrodt served as the chapel for the city’s German-language Catholic congregation for several years starting in 1916. 26.  “Situation générale des Français établis dans la circonscription du consulat de France à Rosario: Situation des établissements français d’enseignement, d’assistance et de bienfaisance, etc. dans la même circonscription,” 8CPCOM/85, Autorisations des Français en Argentine, Archives diplomatiques, Paris, 39–42. 27. Otero, Historia de los franceses, 269. 28. Aliano, Mussolini’s National Project, 75. 29. Newton, German Buenos Aires, 150–68; Saint Sauveur-Henn, Un siècle d’émigration allemande, 332–33; Schnorbach, Für ein “anderes Deutschland.” 30.  Brodsky, “Educating Argentine Jews,” 35. 31. Ibid., 36. 32.  Festzeitung zum ersten Jahrestage der Gründung des Deutschen Schulv­ ereins Buenos Aires, 1899, 3, in “Buenos Aires,” EZA 5/2091, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin. 33.  “Zur inneren Entwicklung der Deutschen Schule Buenos Aires,” in Denk­ schrift zum 10jährigen Bestande. 34.  A.S., “Cáracter y Mission de las Escuelas Germano-Argentinas,” in Denk­ schrift zum 10jährigen Bestande. 35.  McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, 12. 36.  “Suggestions for a Covering Letter for Report on Visit to British Schools in Argentina,” “Education Argentina,” ED 121/108, The National Archives, London.

Notes to Chapter 2

177

37. Bruce, To Scots in Argentina, 179. 38.  Lesser and Rein, “Motherlands of Choice,” 258. 39. Gabert, Das Deutsche Bildungswesen, 12. 40. Ibid., 62. 41. Säger, Aus meiner Auslandsschulzeit, 10. 42.  Ruge, “Aufbau der deutschen Schule,” 126. 43.  Keiper, “Die inneren Fragen,” 385. 44.  Keiper, “Ziele und Grenzen,” 17–18. 45. Ibid., 19. 46.  Ruge, “Aufbau der deutschen Schule,” 127. 47.  11 January 1928, Letter from Sir Malcolm Robertson to Sir Austen Chamberlain, “British Education in Argentina,” “Political, America, Argentina, 1928” FO 371/12736, The National Archives, London. 48.  See for example “Vereins-Nachrichten: Deutscher Schulverein Buenos Aires,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 23 May 1917, 4; and “Die Feier des 25. Mai,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 27 May 1919, 2; Jahresbericht der Deutschen Schulvereinigung (Belgrano und Germaniaschule), 1927 (Buenos Aires: Buch- und Steindruckerei von Oscar A. Mengen, 1928), 30. 49.  “Nachrichten vom La Plata,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 1896–1897, 293–94. 50.  “Die Einweihung der Germania-Schule,” Argentinisches Tageblatt, 30 June 1903. 51.  See, for example, Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Belgrano 1910 (Buenos Aires: Buch- u. Steindruckerei von O.B. Mengen, 1911), 15. 52.  McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, 70–71; Brodsky, “Educating Argentine Jews,” 48–49. 53.  McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, 70–71. 54. Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas, 86–89. 55. Ibid., 89. 56. Ibid., 109. 57.  Bryce, “Making Ethnic Space,” 275. 58.  Censo general de población, 1910, Vol. 2, 84–86. 59. In 1910, 128 babies were born to a German father and German mother. Another 68 were born to a German father and an Argentine mother (though she could herself have been of German heritage but born in Argentina). In addition, 54 babies had a German mother but not a German father. Censo general de población, 1910, Vol. 2, 59–61. 60.  Bryce, “Making Ethnic Space,” 268. 61. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, 19–20; Tosh, A Man’s Place, 4; Casas Aguilar, “Fathers to a Fatherless Nation.” 62.  Lesebuch für die Deutschen Schulen. 5. Schuljahr, 3. 63.  Jahres-Bericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 64. Schul­ jahr 1907 (Buenos Aires: H. Herpig, 1908), 9–12. 64. Säger, Aus meiner Auslandsschulzeit, 14. 65.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins 1919 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1920), 16. 66.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires 1906 (Buenos

178

Notes to Chapters 2 and 3

Aires: H. Herpig, 1907), 8; Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires 1910 (Buenos Aires: Herpig, 1911), 9–10; Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Barracas 1904 (Buenos Aires: J. Peuser, 1905), 21; Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Barracas 1907 (Buenos Aires: J. Peuser, 1908), 18; Jahresbericht der Germania-Schule 1921 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1922), 4. 67.  See, for example, Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires, 1908 (Buenos Aires: Herpig, 1909), 9; Jahresbericht der Germania-Schule zu Bue­ nos Aires, 1925 (n.p.), 43. 68.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1901 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1902), 19; “Schulunterstützungsgesuch 1922, Deutscher Schulverein Belgrano,” R 62473, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin; “Schulunterstützungsgesuch 1922, Germania Schule,” R 62478, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin. 69.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1901 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1902), 17; Memoria de la Congregación Evangélica Alemana Buenos Aires/Jahresbericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Ge­ meinde zu Buenos Aires, 1930 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Mercur, 1931), 25. 70. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 251. 71.  Jahres-Bericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 67. Schul­ jahr 1911 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1912), 13; Jahresbericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 71. Schuljahr 1915 (Buenos Aires: Herpig, 1916), 11; Jahresbericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 76. Schuljahr 1919 (Buenos Aires: Herpig, 1920), 10; Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires über das Vereinsjahr 1916 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1917), 5. 72.  Jahresbericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 78. Schuljahr 1921 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1922), 36. 73.  Bryce, “Making Ethnic Space,” 292. 74.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires 1920 (Buenos Aires: Herpig, 1921), 19–20. 75.  Tercer censo nacional, Vol. 1, 65. 76.  Brodsky, “Educating Argentine Jews,” 51.

chapter 3 1.  Wilhelm Keiper, “Schlußprüfung, 1927,” in “Germania Schule Buenos Aires, 1920–1930,” R 62478, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin. 2.  Jahresbericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 80. Schuljahr 1923 (n.p.), 9–10. 3. Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas, 196, 316; Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 350–52. 4.  Brubaker, “Migration, Membership, and the Modern Nation-State,” 63. 5. Blanton, Strange Career; Ramsey, “In the Region of Babel”; Bryce, “Linguistic Ideology”; Toth, German-English Bilingual Schools. 6. Gutiérrez, Informe sobre la educación común, 31.

Notes to Chapter 3

179

7.  Ramos Mejía, La educación común, 144; Lanari, Educación común, 527, 530. 8. Gallardo, Educación común, 47. 9.  Favero, “Las escuelas de las sociedades italianas,” 170. 10. Gallardo, Educación común, 43. 11. Zorrilla, Educación común, 232–33. 12. Gallardo, Educación común, 43. 13. Ibid.; 11ter Jahres-Bericht 1904. Deutscher Schulverein Barracas al Norte (Buenos Aires: J. Peuser, 1905), 3; 14ter Jahres-Bericht 1907. Deutscher Schulverein Barracas al Norte (Buenos Aires: J. Peuser, 1908), 7; Sechsundzwanzigster Jahresberi­ cht 1919. Deutscher Schulverein Barracas al Norte (Buenos Aires, 1920), 9; Jahresb­ ericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires über das Vereinsjahr 1927 (n.p.), 10. 14.  Jahresbericht der Deutsch-Argentinischen Volksschule Belgrano 1925 (Buenos Aires: Schenker & Pommer, 1926), 14. 15. Tedesco, Educación y sociedad, 35; Puiggrós, Sujeto, disciplina y curricu­ lum, 32–33; Lionetti, La misión política, 26–27; Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas, 24, 308; Villavicencio, “Ciudadanos para una nación,” 21. 16. Yildiz, Beyond the Mother Tongue, 2. 17. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 67. 18. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 20. 19. Ibid., 14–15. 20. Ibid., 102. 21.  Eisenlohr, “Creole Publics,” 970. 22. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 68. 23. Abeille, Idioma nacional. 24. Ibid., 1. 25. Ibid., 35. 26. Rubione, En torno al criollismo,10. 27. Zorrilla, Educación común, ii. 28.  Ibid., iii. 29.  Ramos Mejía, La educación común, 7. 30.  Bavio, “Las escuelas extranjeras,” 324. 31. Ibid., 325. 32. Ibid., 326–27. 33. Ibid. 34.  Efron, “La obra escolar.” 35.  Ramos Mejía, La educación común, 14. 36. Ibid., 11–18. 37. Ibid., 13. 38. Ibid., 14. 39. Lanari, Educación común, 226. 40.  Ugarriza Aráoz, Celebración del cincuentenario, 313. 41.  35 Jahre Kulturarbeit. 42.  Keiper, “Die inneren Fragen,” 374. 43.  Jahresbericht der Deutschen Schulvereinigung, 1930 (Buenos Aires: Buchund Steindruckerei von Oscar A. Mengen, 1931), 52. 44.  Unterrichts-Plan, 6–8.

180

Notes to Chapters 3 and 4

45. Bock, Lehrplan, 6–7. 46. Ibid., 8. 47. Ibid., 9. 48.  Deutscher Schulverein Barracas al Norte. Achtundzwanzigster Jahresberi­ cht 1921 (n.p.), 15. 49.  Lehrplan der Belgrano-Schule (Oberrealschule und Lyzeum), 8. 50. Ibid., 9. 51. Ibid., 8. 52. Keiper, Die Belgrano Schule. 53.  “Zur inneren Entwicklung der Deutschen Schule Buenos Aires,” in Denk­ schrift zum 10jährigen Bestande. 54.  Deutsche Schule Buenos Aires. Escuela Graduada Alemana, 6. 55.  “Schulnachrichten: Deutsche Schule Buenos Aires,” Deutsche La Plata Zei­ tung, 7 March 1928, 4. 56.  Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von Herpig & Stoeveken, 1899), 4; “Nachrichten vom La Plata,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 1896–1897, 1029. 57.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires über das Verein­ sjahr 1924 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1925), 15. 58.  “Schulnachrichten: Deutsche Schule Buenos Aires,” Deutsche La Plata Zei­ tung, 7 March 1928, 4. 59. Ibid. 60.  “Die Einweihung der Germania-Schule,” Argentinisches Tageblatt, 30 June 1903. 61.  Jahres-Bericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 65. Schul­ jahr 1909 (Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1910), 6. 62.  Jahresbericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 76. Schuljahr 1919 (Buenos Aires: Herpig, 1920), 13. 63.  Jahresbericht der Deutschen Schulvereinigung (Belgrano und Germani­ aschule), 1929 (Buenos Aires: Buch- und Steindruckerei von Oscar B. Mengen, 1930), 52. 64. Ibid., 54; “Schulnachrichten,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 21 February 1930, 4. 65.  Jahresbericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 76. Schuljahr 1919 (Buenos Aires: Herpig, 1920), 13. 66. Lionetti, La misión política; Puiggrós, Sujeto, disciplina y curriculum; Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas.

chapter 4 1.  8 June 1899, “Geistliche, Schul- u. Stift-S, 1896–1902,” R 901 63543, Bundesarchiv, Berlin. 2. Ibid.; Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1899 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von Herpig & Stoeveken, 1900), 14. 3.  8 June 1899, “Geistliche, Schul- u. Stift-S, 1896–1902,” R 901 63543, Bundesarchiv, Berlin.

Notes to Chapter 4

181

4.  Max Hopff, “Sprechsaal,” Das Echo, 20 September 1900, in “Geistliche, Schul- u. Stift-S., 1896–1902,” R 901 63543, Bundesarchiv Berlin. 5. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood; Nathans, Politics of Citizenship; Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschließen. 6. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 347–53. 7. Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas, 24–29. 8.  9 August 1926, Sir Malcolm Robertson, letter to Lord Eustace Percy, “Education Argentina,” ED 121/108, The National Archives, London. 9.  Bryce, “Citizens of Empire”; Gorman, Imperial Citizenship; Pickles, Fe­ male Imperialism; Chilton, Agents of Empire; Beloff, Dream of Commonwealth; Barnes, “Bringing Another Empire Alive?”; Hendley, Organized Patriotism; Pietsch, Empire of Scholars; Pietsch, “Rethinking the British World.” 10. Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschließen, 353. 11. Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 238–39. 12. Ibid., 14. 13.  13 August 1906, “Belgrano 1905–1906,” R 901 38655, Bundesarchiv Berlin. 14.  3 March and 19 June 1915, “Germania Schule, 1915–1920,” R 62467, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin. 15.  19 June 1915, “Germania Schule, 1915–1920,” R 62467, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin. 16.  Tägliche Rundschau, 7 January 1909, in “Germania Schule, 1909,” R 901 38667, Bundesarchiv Berlin. 17. Gabert, Das Deutsche Bildungswesen, back cover. 18.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins in Belgrano 1922 (Buenos Aires: Buch- und Steindruckerei von O.B. Mengen, 1923), 4. 19.  28 August 1912, “Belgrano Schule 1912–1913,” R 901 38658, Bundesarchiv Berlin, 62; Keiper, La cuestión del profesorado, i. 20.  16 October 1912, “Belgrano Schule 1912–1913,” R 901 38658, Bundesarchiv Berlin, 84; 23 January 1913, “Belgrano Schule 1912–1913,” R 901 38658, Bundesarchiv Berlin, 93. 21.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Lehrervereins Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1912), 9. 22.  Deutscher Lehrerverein Buenos Aires, Winke für den deutschen Lehrer, 10. 23. Weitz, Weimar Germany, 147. 24.  Wilfert, “Zum 25jährigen Bestehen,” 18. 25. Ibid. 26.  Jahresbericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 78. Schuljahr 1921 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1922), 5–6. 27.  90 Jahre Germania-Schule, 18. 28.  Jahres-Bericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 64. Schul­ jahr 1907 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1908), 9–12. 29. Keiper, Die Belgrano Schule. 30. Ibid. 31.  “Die deutschen Schulen im Ausland,” National-Zeitung, 20 March 1898, in EZA 5/51428, “Auslandsdiaspora Generalia,” fiche 1, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv; “Aus dem Reichshaushalt für 1904,” Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande, no. 12,

182

Notes to Chapter 4

December 1903, 570; “Schulen in Argentinien,” R 901 38644–6, Bundesarchiv Berlin; “Schulen Argentinien,” R 62367–71, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts. 32. Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 237. 33.  “Schulen in Argentinien, 1877–1906,” R 901 38644, Bundesarchiv Berlin, 68. 34.  “Schulen Argentinien,” R 62367–71, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts; Wilfert, Die deutsche Auslandsschule, 9–10. 35.  29 July 1920, “Schulen Argentinien, 1915–1919,” R 62368, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts. 36.  “Barracas Schule, 1911–1922,” R 62471, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts; “Schulen Argentinien, 1921–1923,” R 62369, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts. 37.  “Schulsachen Argentinien 4b, 1924–1926,” R 62370, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts; “Schulen Argentinien, 1927–1932,” R 62371, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts. 38.  5 May 1930, “Schulen Argentinien, 1927–1932,” R 62371, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts. The mark was replaced with the Rentenmark in late 1923. The Reichsmark was introduced in August 1924. 39.  Jahresbericht der Germania-Schule zu Buenos Aires über das 82. Schuljahr 1925 (n.p.), 3–4. 40. Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora; Newton, German Buenos Aires; Saint Sauveur-Henn, Un siècle d’émigration allemande. 41. Choate, Emigrant Nation, 5, 103–4, 117; Aliano, Mussolini’s National Project, 74–76; Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas; Favero, “Las escuelas de las sociedades italianas;” Otero, Historia de los franceses, 272–73; Matthieu, Une ambition sud-américaine, 76. 42.  “Aus aller Welt: Der allgemeine Deutsche Schulverein,” Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande, September/October 1903; Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande, no. 3, March 1903, 111. 43. Weidenfelder, VDA, 1. 44. Chickering, We Men, 33. 45. Weidenfelder, VDA, 146. 46. Chickering, We Men, 190. 47.  vom Bruch, Weltpolitik, 30. 48. Weidenfelder, VDA, 506. 49. Chickering, We Men, 323. 50. Chickering, We Men, 25. 51. Eley, Reshaping the German Right, vii–viii. 52. Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 88. 53. Weidenfelder, VDA, 2; O’Donnell et al., The Heimat Abroad, 9. 54. Weiser, Der nationale Wiederaufbau, 1. 55. Becker, Frederic von Rosenberg, 269. (Note that Stefan Rinke gives the years in which von dem Bussche-Haddenhausen was the envoy in Buenos Aires as 1910 to 1914. Rinke, “Der Letzte Freie Kontinent,” 329.) 56.  “Erhöhung des Reichszuschusses für deutsche Auslandsschulen,” Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande, no. 3, March 1903, 111.

Notes to Chapters 4 and 5

183

57.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins in Belgrano, 1903 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von Jacob Peuser, 1904); Jahresbericht des Deutschen Schulvereins Buenos Aires über das Vereinsjahr 1928 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1926), 14. 58.  Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande, no. 1, January 1903. 59. Lorenzkowski, Sounds of Ethnicity. 60.  Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande, January 1923, 1. 61.  28 November 1903, “Germania Schule, 1904–1905,” R 901 38660, Bundesarchiv. 62.  Jahresbericht des Deutschenschulvereins Belgrano, 1907 (Buenos Aires: Fessel & Mengen, 1908), 5. 63. Gabert, Das Deutsche Bildungswesen, 12. 64.  Colegio Alemán Incorporado. Werbeschrift. 65.  “Belgrano Schule 1907,” R 901 38654, Bundesarchiv Berlin. 66.  Keiper, “Bericht über das deutsche Schulwesen.” 67.  Hauff, “Deutsche Schulverhältnisse in Argentinien,” 115. 68.  Keiper, “Die inneren Fragen,” 385. 69.  Keiper, “Die deutschen Schulen in Argentinien,” 38. 70. Ibid., 40. 71.  Jahresbericht der Deutschen Schulvereinigung (Belgrano und Germani­ aschule), 1927 (Buenos Aires: Buch- und Steindruckerei von Oscar A. Mengen, 1928), 18. 72. Ibid., 20. 73.  Die Brücke 6 (1930), Buenos Aires, 123.

chapter 5 1.  Dennis, “Seduction on the Waterfront.” 2.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1903 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1904), 3. 3.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1906 (Buenos Aires: Herpig, 1907), 3. 4.  Mirau, “Wie ich die Heimat fand.” 5. Mirau, Argentinien von heute, 4; “Vertrauensmänner des St. Raphaels-­ Vereins,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 3, July 1903, 53. 6. Mirau, Argentinien von heute, 4. 7. Mitchell, The Danger of Dreams; Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation; Kloosterhuis, “Friedliche Imperialisten”; Rinke, “Der Letzte Freie Kontinent.” 8. Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 177. 9. Ibid., 185. 10.  The English Address Book, 49–55; Bruce, To Scots in Argentina. 11.  Di Stefano and Zanatta, Historia de la Iglesia argentina, 329; Otero, His­ toria de los franceses, 267–72; Rosoli, “Las organizaciones católicas,” 215–20. 12.  Bertoni, “¿Estado confesional o estado laico?,” 50. 13.  McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders; Ruggiero, The Jewish Diaspora. 14.  Bryce, “Entangled Communities.”

184

Notes to Chapter 5

15.  Ceva, “La Itálica Gens”; Bernasconi, “Los Misioneros scalabrinianos”; Di Stefano and Zanatta, Historia de la Iglesia argentina, 321–29; Perin, Rome in Canada; Savard, Jules-Paul Tardivel; Zucchi, Italians in Toronto, 118–40; Laperrière, Les congrégations religieuses; Choquette, The Oblate Assault. 16.  Kirchen- und Schulordnung, 3–4. 17.  Schiller, “Welche Aufgaben?,” 32. 18. Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 180. 19.  Bericht über die Vorsynode, 1899, 3. 20.  Bericht über die Synode, 1900, 12. 21.  “Nachrichten vom La Plata,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 1896–1897, 1030. 22. “Notizen,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 1897–1898, 254. 23.  “Kaisers Geburtstag und die deutschen Katholiken,” Argentinischer Volks­ freund, 31 January 1912, 3; Festschrift der Gemeinde, 32. 24.  Bericht über die achte ordentliche Synode der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinden in den La Plata-Staaten, 1913 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La PlataSynode, 1913) 7–8. 25.  Di Stefano and Zanatta, Historia de la Iglesia argentina, 319; Rosoli, “Las organizaciones católicas,” 212. 26.  Bertoni, “¿Estado confesional o estado laico?,” 45. 27. Ibid., 49. 28. Ibid., 56. 29.  Di Stefano and Zanatta, Historia de la Iglesia argentina, 333. 30. Adverstisement, Argentinischer Volksfreund, 24 January 1907, 32; Advertisement, Argentinischer Volksfreund, 12 March 1924, 80. 31.  Die Katholiken deutscher Zunge, 7. 32.  Argentinischer Volksfreund, 12 March 1912, 16. 33. Mirau, Argentinien von heute, 74. 34.  The English Address Book, 54–55. 35. Grüter, Festaufgabe des Argentinischen Volksfreundes, 73. 36. “Sonntagsblumen,” Argentinischer Volksfreund, 22 May 1907, 25–32. 37.  Penny, “German Polycentrism”; Green, Fatherlands; Applegate, A Nation of Provincials; Retallack, Saxony in German History. 38.  “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata Staaten,” R 901 38643, Bundesarchiv Berlin. 39.  Max Dufft, who worked in Buenos Aires, was sponsored with 2,000 marks in 1907 (“Evangelische Angelegenheiten. Buenos Aires 1885–1933,” 29 June 1907, R 61705, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin). Arnold Richter, who replaced Wilhelm Nelke as the synod’s itinerant pastor in 1907, was sponsored with 2,642 marks and selected by the High Consistory (Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Vereins für die La Plata-Staaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1906 [Bremen: A. Guthe, 1907], 3, 9). 40.  “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata Staaten,” R 901 38643, Bundes­ archiv Berlin. 41.  “Deutsche Evangelische Gemeinde Rosario. Jahresbericht 1913/1914,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 19 August 1914, 468.

Notes to Chapter 5

185

42.  “Waisenhaus Baradero,” 19 March 1914, EZA 5/2076, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin. 43.  Dufft, “Waisenpflege.” 44. Ibid., 69; “Waisenhaus Baradero,” EZA 5/2076, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin. 45.  Even Rakob Riffel, a Lutheran pastor who worked with and published extensively on German speakers from Russia in Argentina, did his theological training in Germany. Riffel was born in Russia in 1893 and completed high school in Moscow. He started studying theology in Germany in 1918 and migrated to Argentina in 1923. Beros, Heimat für Heimatlose, 97–100. 46.  “Gemeinde Buenos Aires, 1912–1921,” 17 November 1911, EZA 5/2095, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin. 47.  “Ein Jubiläum,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 25 January 1905, 1. 48.  “Gemeinde Buenos Aires, 1912–1921,” 22 May 1912, EZA 5/2095, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin; Richard Wick, “Die deutsche evangelische La Plata Synode,” Bundeskalender 1925; Richard Wick, “Die Gefahr der Entdeutschung unserer Gemeinden in Südamerika,” Die evangelische Diaspora, 1927, 56–62. 49.  Bericht über die vierte ausserordentliche Synode der Deutschen Evange­ lischen Gemeinde in den La Plata Staaten, 1906 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von H. Herpig, 1906), 9; Oskar Dettenborn, “Eine Gustav Adolf-Reise in Argentinien,” Die evangelische Diaspora, 1923, 36–38. 50.  Oskar Dettenborn, “Fünfzig Jahre Deutsch-Evangelisch in Entre Rios (Argentinien),” Die evangelische Diaspora, 1928, 92–93 51.  The itinerant pastor, Richter, received a thousand marks for such a trip in 1909. “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata-Staaten 1909–1916,” Feburary 24, 1909, R 901 38643, Bundesarchiv Berlin. 52.  “Aus unseren Gemeinden,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 25 March 1908, 154; “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata-Staaten 1909–1916,” 24 June 1909, R 901 38643, Bundesarchiv Berlin. 53.  “Aus unseren Gemeinden,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 13 May 1908, 238. 54.  “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata-Staaten 1909–1916,” 15 December 1911, 29 June 1912, and 15 May 1913, R 901 38643, Bundesarchiv Berlin. 55.  “Auslandsdiaspora Argentinien 1914–1928,” 28 February 1916, EZA 5/2072, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin. 56.  See, for example, Erich Meyer, “Die Vorbildung der Auslandspfarrer in der Heimat,” Die evangelische Diaspora, 1919/1920, 88. 57.  Statuten des Evangelischen Vereins. 58.  “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata Staaten. 1901–1923,” 1, EZA 5/2063, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin. 59.  “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata Staaten. 1899–1908,” 1 March 1902, p. 16, R 901 38642, Bundesarchiv Berlin. 60.  Bericht über die Synode, 1900, 39. 61.  Statuten des Evangelischen Vereins. 62.  “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata Staaten. 1899–1908,” “Aufruf zum Beitritt zum Evangelischen Verein für die La Plata Staaten in Deutschland,” 20, R 901 38642, Bundesarchiv Berlin.

186

Notes to Chapter 5

63.  “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata Staaten. 1899–1908,” 1 March 1902, 16, R 901 38642, Bundesarchiv Berlin. 64.  Bericht über die Synode, 1900, 40. 65.  Statuten des Evangelischen Vereins; Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen evange­ lischen Kirche und der deutschen Schule zu Buenos Aires, 1887 (Buenos Aires: J. Peuser, 1888); Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen evangelischen Kirche und der deutschen Schule zu Buenos Aires, 1888 (Buenos Aires: J. Peuser, 1889); JahresBericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche und der Deutschen Schule zu ­Buenos Aires, 1892 (n.p.); Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu ­Buenos Aires, 1896 (Buenos Aires: H. Herpig, 1897). 66.  “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata Staaten. 1901–1923,” 26 May 1921, EZA 5/2063, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin. 67.  Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Vereins für die La Plata-Staaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1903 (Bremen: A. Guthe Buchdruckerei, 1904), 4. 68. “Kassenbericht,” Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Verein für die La PlataStaaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1915 (Bremen: A. Guthe, 1916). 69.  Max Dufft, “Die Lage in den La Plata-Staaten,” Die evangelische Dias­ pora, 1921/22, 116. 70.  Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Vereins für die La Plata-Staaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1906 (Bremen: A. Guthe, 1907), 9. 71.  Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Vereins für die La Plata-Staaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1903 (Bremen: A. Guthe Buchdruckerei, 1904), 3. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid., 5. 74.  Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Vereins für die La Plata-Staaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1905 (Bremen: A. Guthe Buchdruckerei, 1906), 3, 7. 75.  Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Vereins für die La Plata-Staaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1903 (Bremen: A. Guthe Buchdruckerei, 1904), 7. 76.  Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Vereins für die La Plata-Staaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1907 (Bremen: A. Guthe, Buchdruckerei, 1908), 3. 77. Cramer, The Thirty Years’ War, 3, 57. 78.  Cramer, “The Cult of Gustavus Adolphus,” 97. 79.  “Der Gustav Adolf-Verein,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 29 July 1914, 428. 80.  In the article, the percentages only add up to 98. Ibid. 81.  “Bericht über die Tätigkeit des Gustav Adolf-Vereins für die La Plata-­ Staaten in den Jahren 1914, 1915 u. 1916,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 6 December 1916, 676. 82.  Auszüge aus den eingegangenen Unterstützungsgesuchen, 1919–1930. 83.  The first contribution to a congregation in Brazil was made in 1853. Felix Gabler, “Kirche und Schule bei den Deutschen in Südamerika,” Die evangelische Diaspora, 1926, 116. 84.  Bericht über die sechste ordentliche Synode der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinden in den La Plata-Staaten, 1909 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La PlataSynode, 1909), 22–26; “Von der diesjährigen Hauptversammlung des Gustav Adolf-Vereins,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 1908, 536. 85.  Pfarrer Kölle, “Aus Brasilien,” Der Bote, 15 April 1898, 123–24.

Notes to Chapter 5

187

86.  “Eine evangelische Waisenanstalt in Chile,” Der Bote, 1 May 1898, 141. 87.  “Die evangelische Diaspora in Brasilien,” Der Bote, June 1899, 138. 88.  “Zur Auswanderungsfrage,” Die evangelische Diaspora, 1926, 183. 89.  Bryce, “Entangled Communities”; Kazal, Becoming Old Stock; Lorenzkowski, Sounds of Ethnicity. 90.  Richard Wick, “Die Gefahr der Entdeutschung unserer Gemeinden in Süd­ amerika,” Die evangelische Diaspora, 1927, 57–58. 91.  Bericht über die dritte ordentliche Synode der Deutschen Evangelischen Ge­ meinden in den La Plata Staaten, 1905 (Rosario: Druckerei der La Plata Synode, 1905), 21; “Aus unseren Gemeinden,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 6 May 1908, 225; “Jahresbericht der Evangelischen Gemeinde in Esperanza,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 13 April 1911, 184; Auszüge aus den eingegangenen Unterstüt­ zungsgesuchen 1912 (Leipzig: G. Kreysing, 1912), 184–86; “Jahresbericht der Gemeinde in Montevideo,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 18 October 1916, 581. 92.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1910 (Buenos Aires: H. Herpig, 1911), 11. 93. “Chronik,” Die evangelische Diaspora, 1923, 46. 94.  “Reichsverband für die katholischen Auslandsdeutschen,” Raphaels-Blatt, July-August 1919, no. 1–2, 27. 95. Cahensly, Der St. Raphaelsverein, 65. 96. Ibid., 20. 97.  “Vermischtes: Der St. Raphaels-Verein zum Schutze katholischer deutscher Auswanderer,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 1, January 1886, 16; Grüter, Festschrift zum Fünfzig-Jahr-Jubiläum, 32–33; Ostoyich, “Emigration, Nationalism and Church Identity.” 98. Stauf, Der St. Raphaels-Verein, 5. 99.  “Jahresbericht des St. Raphaels-Vereins über das Jahr 1925,” St. Raphaels­ blatt, no. 3, May–June 1926, 10, in Die Getreuen. 100.  “Jahresbericht des St. Raphaelsvereins für das Jahr 1923,” Die Getreuen, no. 2, March–April 1924, 5. 101. Cahensly, Der St. Raphaelsverein, 58; Cahensly, Die deutschen Auswan­ derer, 7. 102.  “Aus dem Berichte des amerikanischen St. Raphaels-Verein zum Schutze der Ein- und Auswanderer für das Jahr 1886,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 1, January 1887, 3. 103.  “St. Raphaelsverein,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 4, October 1910, 82. 104.  “Ansiedlung in Argentinien,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 3, July 1909, 44. 105.  “Zur Auswanderung nach Argentinien, II,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 3, July 1888, 34. 106.  “Die Verhältnisse in Argentinien,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 2, April 1893, 38. 107.  Hedwig Seubert, “An der Schwelle von Argentinien,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 4, January 1921, 28. 108.  “Auswanderung nach Argentinen,” St. Raphaelsblatt, no. 2, March–April 1926, 6, in Die Getreuen. 109. Cahensly, Der St. Raphaelsverein, 38–39. 110.  Ceva, “La Itálica Gens”; Rosoli, “Las organizaciones católicas,” 209. 111.  Venditto, “Nation-Building,” 121–40.

188

Notes to Chapter 5

112.  Rosoli, “Las organizaciones católicas,” 223. 113. Savard, Jules-Paul Tardivel, 238; Perin, Rome in Canada, 162; Cahensly, Der St. Raphaelsverein, 35–40; “Stimmen aus Amerika für die Denkschrift der europäischen Raphaels-Vereine an den hl. Vater,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 1, January 1893, 2; “Die Sprachenfrage und die Verluste der katholischen Kirche in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 3, July 1900, 39, 48. 114. Cahensly, Der St. Raphaelsverein, 29–30. 115. Advertisement, Argentinischer Volksfreund, 3 January 1907, 20. 116.  “Vereinigung für das katholische Deutschtum im Ausland,” Argen­ tinischer Volksfreund, 31 January 1912, 7. 117. Ibid., 8; goals also stated in Werthmann, Das katholische Deutschtum, 5. 118. Werthmann, Das katholische Deutschtum, 7. 119. Ibid., 8. 120. Ibid., 6. 121.  “Der Rückgang des Deutschthums in Brasilien,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 3, July 1893, 55–56. 122.  “Der St. Raphaelsverein vom deutschnationalen Sinne aus betrachtet,” St. Raphaels-Blatt, no. 2, April 1898, 18. 123.  José Marzoratti, “Die deutschen Katholiken in Südamerika,” St. Rapha­ els-Blatt, no. 2, May 1910, 25–26. 124.  See, for example, Beros, Heimat für Heimatlose; Weyne, El último puerto; Graefe, Zur Volkskunde der Rußlanddeutschen; Micolis, Une communauté al­ lemande; Saint Sauveur-Henn, Un siècle d’émigration allemande. 125.  Richard Wick, “Die deutsche evangelische La Plata Synode,” Bundeskal­ ender 1925, 47–48. 126. Ibid., 48. 127.  Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Vereins für die La Plata-Staaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1904 (Bremen: A. Guthe, Buchdruckerei, 1904), 3–5; Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Vereins für die La Plata-Staaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1905 (Bremen: A. Guthe Buchdruckerei, 1906), 3–6; Jahresbericht des Evangelischen Vereins für die La Plata-Staaten in Deutschland für das Jahr 1907 (Bremen: A. Guthe, Buchdruckerei, 1908), 8–9. 128.  Bericht über die dritte ordentliche Synode der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinden in den La Plata Staaten, 1905 (Rosario: Druckerei der La Plata Synode, 1905), 35. 129.  Bericht über die Synode, 1900, 12; Bericht über die zwölfte ordentliche Tagung der Deutschen Evangelischen La Plata-Synode (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Mercur, 1931), 18. 130.  The Asunción congregation had joined the synod by the 1905 synodical meeting. The itinerant pastor was serving Lutherans in Misiones as early as 1911, but formal congregations were not founded until the 1920s. Bericht über die achte ordentliche Synode der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinden in den La Plata-Staaten, 1913 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La Plata-Synode, 1913), 37. 131.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1907 (Buenos Aires: H. Herpig, 1908), 7. 132.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde, 1913 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La Plata-Synode, 1914), 9.

Notes to Chapters 5 and 6

189

133.  These services were mentioned repeatedly in the “Gemeinde-Nachrichten” of the Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt and also appeared in the “Kirchenzettel” of the Deutsche La Plata Zeitung. See, for example, “Deutsche Evangelische Gemeinde,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 29 January 1882, 2; “Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 22 April 1898, 1. 134. Grüter, Festschrift zum Fünfzig-Jahr-Jubiläum, 90. 135. Ibid., 113. 136. Ibid., 99–105. 137.  “Zum Besuch des deutschen Gesandten in den deutschsprechenden Kolonien von Entre Rios,” Argentinischer Volksfreund, 8 May 1912, 3.

chapter 6 1.  Böhringer, “Bedienung.” 2.  Nelke, “Bedienung.” 3.  Rahlwes, “Bedienung.” 4.  Heidenreich, “Synodalbericht,” 17. 5.  “Die Bedienung der nicht mehr deutschsprechenden Protestanten.” 6. Zanatta, Del estado liberal a la nación católica; Bertoni, “¿Estado confesional o estado laico?” 7. Bianchi, Historia de las religiones, 9. 8. Ibid., 11. 9. Yildiz, Beyond the Mother Tongue, 2. 10. Ibid., 10. 11. Ibid., 13. 12. Zorzin, Memorias, visiones y testimonio, 99; Alejandro Zorzin, “Pastor Wilhelm Nelke,” 38. 13.  Tercer Censo Nacional, Vol. I, 84–86. 14.  Segundo censo, Vol. II, clxiii; Tercer censo, Vol. I, 205, 206. 15.  See the annual reports of the congregation (Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires). 16.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1896 (Buenos Aires: H. Herpig, 1897), 5–6. 17.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1901 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1902), 3. 18.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1904 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1905), 9. 19. Ibid., 9–10. 20.  Memoria de la Congregación Evangélica Alemana Buenos Aires/Jahres­ bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1926 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Mercur, 1927), 13. 21.  Heidenreich, “Synodalbericht,” 13–14. 22. Ibid., 14. 23.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1901 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1902), 3.

190

Notes to Chapter 6

24.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1898 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1899), 9. 25. Ibid., 10. 26.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1896 (Buenos Aires: H. Herpig, 1897), 8. 27.  Rahlwes, “Bedienung.” 28.  Heidenreich, “Synodalbericht,” 16. 29. Riffel, Die Rußlanddeutschen, 77. 30.  Heidenreich, “Synodalbericht,” 16. 31. Ibid., 17. 32.  “Die Bedienung der nicht mehr deutschsprechenden Protestanten.” 33.  “Aus unseren Gemeinden. Die Feier der Einführung des zweiten Reisepredigers,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 15 July 1908, 346. 34.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1898 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1899), 36. 35.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde, 1913 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La Plata-Synode, 1914), 10. 36. Ibid. 37.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1916 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La Plata-Synode, 1917), 6; Jahresbericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1918 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei der La Plata-Synode, 1919), 6. 38.  Memoria de la Congregación Evangélica Alemana Buenos Aires/Jahres­ bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1924 (Buenos Aires, 1925), 23. 39.  Heidenreich, “Synodalbericht,” 16. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Bruce, To Scots in Argentina, 122. 43. Ibid., 180. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 182. 46.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1898 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1899), 15. 47. “Notizen,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 1897–1898, 647. 48.  Richard Wick, “Die Gefahr der Entdeutschung unserer Gemeinden in Südamerika,” Die evangelische Diaspora, 1927, 57. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., 58. 51. Ibid., 59. 52.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1898 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1899), 11. 53. Ibid. 54.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1901 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1902), 9. 55. Ibid. 56.  Jahres-Bericht der Deutschen Evangelischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires,

Notes to Chapter 6

191

1910 (Buenos Aires: H. Herpig, 1911), 9; Jahresbericht der Deutschen Evange­ lischen Gemeinde zu Buenos Aires, 1921 (Buenos Aires, 1922), 16. 57.  The congregation was originally named the Gemeinde deutschredender Katholiken. It changed its name to Gemeinde deutschsprechender Katholiken in the 1920s. It then took on the name Sankt Bonifatius in 1935–1936, becoming the Gemeinde deutschsprechender Katholiken St. Bonifatius. 58.  Gemeinde deutschredender Katholiken. Bericht 1911/1912, n.p.; Leo Mirau, “Tagechronik,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 8 June 1897, 2. 59.  Die Katholiken deutscher Zunge,14. 60.  “Aufruf an die Deutschredenden Katholiken in Buenos Aires,” Argen­ tinischer Volksfreund, 19 June 1915, 3. 61.  “Aufruf an die Deutschredenden Katholiken in Buenos Aires,” Argen­ tinischer Volksfreund, 16 October 1902, 3. 62.  See, for example, “Rundschau Buenos Aires,” Argentinischer Volksfreund, 24 December 1903, 4; [No title,] Argentinischer Volksfreund, 24 January 1907, 4; “Vereins-Nachrichten,” Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 6 August 1914, 7. 63. Denninger, 75 Jahre, 6. 64.  Argentinischer Volksfreund, 12 March 1912, 16; Mirau, Argentinien von heute, 74. 65.  “Jahresbericht der Gemeinde deutschsprechender Katholiken Buenos Aires und Umgebung—Gemeindejahr 1934,” in Gemeindebote, March/April 1935, 5. 66. Ibid. 67.  Gemeinde deutschredender Katholiken. Bericht 1911/1912, n.p. 68. Article 1, Statuten der Gemeinde deutschredender Katholiken. 69.  J. Wagner, “Deutschredende Katholiken,” Argentinischer Volksfreund, 6 November 1912, 7. 70.  [No title,] Argentinischer Volksfreund, 25 December 1907, 3. 71.  “Aus Stadt und Land,” Argentinischer Volksfreund, 22 June 1916, 2. 72.  See, for example, Argentinischer Volksfreund, 6 March 1907. 73.  [No title,] Argentinischer Volksfreund, 13 August 1903, 9. 74.  [No title,] Argentinischer Volksfreund, 13 February 1907, 1. 75.  Theodor Alemann, quoted in “Steuerfreiheit für Schulen und Wohltätigkeitsanstalten,” Argentinischer Volksfreund, 13 March 1912, 8. 76.  “Steuerfreiheit für Schulen und Wohltätigkeitsanstalten,” Argentinischer Volksfreund, 13 March 1912, 8. 77.  “Schule und Elternrechte,” Argentinischer Volksfreund, 7 February 1912, 3. 78.  Lesser and Rein, “Motherlands of Choice,” 258. 79.  “Die soziale Revolution,” Argentinischer Volksfreund, 15 January 1919, 3. 80. Ibid. 81. Guy, Women Build the Welfare State; McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders. 82. Franze, Fest-Schrift zur Feier, 14–15. 83. Ibid. 84.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Frauen-Vereins in Buenos Aires, 1926–1927 (Buenos Aires: Druckerei Mercur, 1927), 14. 85. Scheringer, Das deutsche Knaben-Waisenhaus, 11. 86.  [No title,] Das Echo, 28 January 1909, in “Evangelischer Verein für die La Plata Staaten 1909–1916,” R 901 38643, Bundesarchiv Berlin.

192

Notes to Chapter 6 and Conclusion

87. Franze, Fest-Schrift zur Feier, 36. 88. Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 6. 89.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Frauenvereins über das achte Vereinsjahr, 1903–1904 (Buenos Aires: Buchdruckerei von Herpig & Stoeveken, 1904), 3. 90.  Jahresbericht des Deutschen Frauen-Vereins über das neunte Vereins-Jahr, 1904–1905 (Buenos Aires: Herpig & Stoeveken, 1905), 5. 91.  “Jahres-Bericht des Deutschen Frauenvereins,” Evangelisches Gemeinde­ blatt, 7 June 1905, 2. 92.  Dufft, “Waisenpflege,” 60–61. 93. Mirau, Argentinien von heute, 73–74. 94. Ibid., 75. 95. Ibid., 120.

concusion 1.  Moya, “Immigrants and Associations.”

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Index

Ablard, Jonathan, 31 Addams, Jane, 41–42 Adolphus, Gustavus, 122. See also Gustav Adolf Association Alemann, Moritz, 26 Alemann, Theodor, 49, 56, 66, 151 Aliano, David, 56 Allgemeiner Deutscher Schulverein. See General German School Association Amrhein, Hans, 101 Anderson, Benedict, 77 Argentinischer Volksfreund, 17, 109, 113–15, 128, 130, 134, 138, 149–53 Argentinisches Tageblatt, 49, 151 Armus, Diego, 31 Assimilation, concerns about, 103, 123–24, 128–30, 134, 138, 143–44, 146, 153–55, 157, 159 Association for Germandom Abroad, 10, 91, 97, 101, 123–4 Association for the Protection of Germanic Immigrants, 28, 30, 43 Associations, member contributions, 9, 34, 54, 66–68, 105; membership, 9, 11, 23, 29, 32, 34, 53, 68, 121, 141–43 Aue, Carlos, 21 Auslandsdeutsche. See Germans abroad Auslandsdeutschtum. See Germandom abroad Banco Español del Río de la Plata, 34 Baradero, Buenos Aires, 117–18, 131, 154–57, 160 Barracas School, 57–58, 67–68, 83–84, 98–99, 114, 131, 133 Bavio, Ernesto, 79–81

Belgrano School, 60, 65–66, 76, 83, 93–96, 98–99, 104–5 Belonging, citizenship, 4, 13, 26, 46, 88, 146; civic, 81, 152; national, 2–3, 5, 9–10, 20, 46, 50–52, 54, 57, 59, 63, 71–72, 74, 77, 79, 84, 92, 104–5, 110, 125, 158, 161, 164 Bernard, H. von, 141 Bertoni, Lilia Ana, 4, 62, 92, 114 Bianchi, Susana, 139 Bilingualism, 7, 14, 16, 20, 51, 54, 60, 84, 88–89, 94, 135, 139–40, 145, 149, 155, 158–59, 164–65 Böhringer, J., 137, 146 Breweries, Quilmes and Palermo, 23, 37, 53, 66 British Scholastic Association of the River Plate, 55 British immigration, 59–60, 92, 111 Brodsky, Adriana, 57, 69 Brubaker, Rogers, 8, 11, 74 Bruce, Douglas, 59, 145 Bussmann, Wilhelm, 109, 113, 118, 141–42, 146–47 Cahensly, Peter Paul, 125, 127–28 Cangallo School, 56–57, 62, 66–70, 84–87, 91, 99 Caritas Federation for Catholic Germany, 125, 128–29 Catholic Church, 19, 22–24, 29, 32, 76, 112–15, 127–28, 139, 149–53, 159, 161–63; British immigrants, 115; congregations, 24–25, 114, 135, 162–63; ecclesiastical structures, 112, 114, 133, 150; German speakers, 111,

220

Index

115, 128, 133, 152; Italian immigrants, 115; missionaries, 25, 56, 111, 125, 129, 143, 150 Catholic congregations, Congregation of German-speaking Catholics, 149; Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists), 114–15, 158; Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit, 56, 114; Sisters of Christian Charity, 56, 114–15; Society of St. Francis de Sales (Salesians), 57; Society of the Divine Word, 56, 114–15, 129–30, 133, 150–51, 153, 158 Chickering, Roger, 10, 100 Childhood, 156; agency, 68, 104, 154, 158 Citizenship, 5, 19, 50, 75, 77, 89; belonging, 4, 13, 26, 46, 146; boundaries, 6, 42, 59, 77, 97, 145; civic behavior, 30, 40; future, 19, 61–62, 79, 104; laws, 10, 11, 74; nationality, 5, 6, 11, 16, 34, 74, 79, 103, 134–35; pluralist vision, 61, 74, 88, 160, 162 Citizenship, Argentine, 5, 8, 30–31, 46, 61, 63, 71, 89, 106 Citizenship, German, 11, 15, 17, 97, 104; Civic inclusion, 5, 68, 165 Class, begging, 27, 29, 44; bourgeois, 23, 29, 40–42, 100; charity, 2, 3, 24, 29–30, 32, 34–35, 156, 158; paternalism, 9, 25, 36, 39, 46; philanthropy, 19, 22, 24–25, 35, 37, 46–47, 162–63, 165; poor, 21, 25, 34, 37, 41, 123, 158 Colegio Alemán Incorporado, 105 Colegio Guadalupe, 56 Colegio Mallinckrodt, 56, 115 Community, as concept, 8–10, 20, 22, 27, 46, 103, 161, 163–64; described as colony, 15, 37, 141–42; ethnic, 2, 22, 24, 79; financial contributions, 21, 26–27, 32, 34, 42, 60, 67, 98, 117–18, 122, 156 Congress of Mutual Aid, 32 Conrad, Sebastian, 11 Consejo Nacional de Educación. See National Council of Education Cramer, Kevin, 122 Das Echo, 91 Dettenborn, Oskar, 119 Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, 35, 37, 40, 49, 61–62, 67, 85

Diplomas, Argentine, 73, 85, 87, 95; German, 73, 86, 92, 95–96, 105 Di Stefano, Roberto, 114 Diaspora, religious, 119–23, 125, 130 Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande, 97, 101 Duckworth, F.R.G., 59 Dufft, Marie, 42, 45 Education, British schools, 55, 59, 61, 76; Catholic schools, 53, 56, 130, 139, 151, 153, curricular content, 51, 57–58, 61, 63, 65, 75–76, 79–85, 87, 89, 96, 105–6, 138, demographics, 54–55; education reform (Law 1420), 6, 24; French schools, 55–56, 76; gender, 63–65, 96; incorporation, 84–87; Italian schools, 56, 76; Jewish schools, 62; school inspectors, 59, 76; transatlantic connections, 20, 92–93, 95, 98 Engerman, David, 2 Esperanza, Santa Fe, 15, 137, 143 Ethnicity, 52, 123, 164; as unstable, 6; construction of, 7, 12–13, 20, 92, 124, 135, 153, 158–59, 163–64; German, 7, 12, 19, 106, 162, 164; Germanic, 26–27, 34, 49, 60; labels, 7–8, 15, 51, 164; negotiated, 14; social class, 53–54, 65–67, 91, 98, 103, 105; transnational, 12 Ethnicity, preserving, 2, 12, 53, 56, 63–65, 71, 95, 103–4, 120, 128, 142, 148, 152, 154, 157, 159, 164 Ethnicity, racialized, 13–14, 55, 59–60, 74, 101, 103, 129, 138, 153, 155–56 Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat. See Protestant High Consistory Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt, 62, 113, 117, 121, 123, 130–31, 138, 144, 146, 152, 156 Expectation, 2, 4, 9, 31, 59, 92, 159, 161 Eyle, Petrona, 21, 42–43, 45 Family, exogamous marriage, 8, 15, 63–64, 141, 146–49, 158; household, 27, 34, 40, 42, 46, 72, 84, 141, 162 Fatherhood, 27, 29, 34, 43, 53, 63–64, 68, 141–42, 148, 156, 163 Fatherland, Argentina, 58, 152; Brazil, 129; Germany, 52, 121, 123, 158 Federation for Catholic Germandom Abroad, 128–29. See also Imperial Federation for Catholic Germans Abroad

Index Finances, budgets, 34, 37, 53, 66–67, 98, 123; donations, 29, 32, 34–35, 68, 123–24; fundraisers, 21, 28, 34–35, 37, 40, 68 First World War, 9–10, 13, 28–30, 52, 55, 77, 86, 93, 97–98, 101, 117, 119, 121–22, 142, 158 Franze, Johannes, 43–45, 154–55 Freeden, Elisabeth von, 21, 42–43 Freeden, Hermann von, 21, 28 French immigration, 8, 30, 44, 52, 55–56 Frers, Hermann, 118 Fuchs, J.C., 144 Gabert, Reinhold, 60, 94, 103 Galician immigration, 30, 39 Gallardo, Ángel, 76 Gaster, Bernhard, 101 Gender, breadwinner, 19, 22, 26, 35, 40, 72, 161; class, 21, 28, 30, 36, 40–42, 72; education, 65, 96; family, 26, 44, 63, 65, 85, 142, 163 General German School Association, 97, 100 Germania School, 60, 62, 65, 67–68, 73, 85–86, 93, 95, 98–99, 105 German Aid Society, 23, 29 German Catholic Association, 149–50, 157 German Charitable Society, 23, 25, 29–30, 54 German Colonial Society, 10, 100 German Foreign Office, 10, 13, 18, 91, 93, 97, 99, 102, 105–6, 123 German Hospital Association, 9, 23, 36 German Lutheran La Plata Synod, 109, 111–15, 117–20, 123–24, 130–31, 137, 143, 154. See also Lutheran Church German Lutherans, 138 German Sailors’ Home, 28, 30 German Teachers’ Association, 61, 64, 95, 102, 104 German Transatlantic Electrical Company, 23 German Women’s Association, 21, 23, 42 German Women’s Home, 21, 25, 28, 39–43, 54, 154, 156–57, 160, 162 Germandom. See Ethnicity, German Germandom abroad, 11, 65, 97, 101–2, 106, 110, 117, 119, 129–30, 142, 146; religion, 115, 125

221

Germans, from Russian Empire, 14–15, 130–31, 133–34; Jewish, 3, 8, 18, 56; population number in Argentina, 14; relationship to Germany, 10–13, 20, 91–92, 94–96, 98, 102, 106, 110, 113–14, 117–18, 120, 123–24, 128–30, 135 Germans abroad, 11, 97, 102, 112, 119, 125, 129 Germany, Imperial Germany, 10, 18, 56, 91, 98, 100, 111, 113; Imperialism, 11, 92, 96, 98, 106, 127; Nazi Germany, 9–10, 12; Weimar Republic, 9–10, 12–14, 20, 102, 104, 107, 110, 126, 129, 130, 134; Weltpolitik, 10, 11 Goebel, Michael, 13 Gustav Adolf Association, 115, 117–19, 122–24, 130 Guy, Donna, 25, 35, 153 Hauff, W., 104 Health, Argentine state, 31; free care, 32, 34, 36, 37; German Hospital, 9, 23, 25, 32–38; immigrant communities, 19, 22, 30–32, 34–37, 39; mutual aid, 31; philanthropy, 35, 37, 39 Heidenreich, G., 137, 142–43, 145 Hobsbawm, Eric, 77 Homeland, 26, 61, 63, 68, 83, 91, 102, 104, 109, 120–21, 123, 130, 150, 158. See also Fatherland Honor, 26–27, 35–36, 39, 41, 45–46, 64, 105, 120, 156 Hopff, Max, 49, 56, 58, 85, 91, 97, 101 Hybridity, duality, 60, 74, 86, 96, 105, 145; ethnic identity, 10, 51, 94, 146; national identity, 59, 62, 69, 71, 80–81, 86, 145–46 Identity, denominational, 3, 12, 15–16, 20, 50, 55–56, 110, 122, 129, 134–35, 143, 145, 147–49, 153–54, 159; ethnic, 3, 8, 105 Immigration, comparisons to North America, 13–14, 22–23, 32, 41, 45, 52, 75, 89, 93, 111, 124, 126; foreign nationals in Argentina, 5, 6, 14, 16–18, 30; statistics, 14, 16–18, 23 Imperial Federation for Catholic Germans Abroad, 125. See also Federation for Catholic Germandom Abroad

222

Index

Indigenous peoples, 13 Italian immigration, 6, 16–17, 22, 34, 50, 64, 76, 127 Italian nationalism, 10 Italica Gens, 127 Jewish immigration, 6, 12, 18, 22, 30, 37, 41, 44, 59, 62, 111, 139, 153 Jacobson, Matthew, 155–56 Johnson, Val Marie, 45 Kaetzke, Paul, 109, 141–42, 147 Kaiser Wilhelm II, 57 Keiper, Wilhelm, 18, 60–61, 65–66, 82–83, 94, 96, 103–4 Koselleck, Reinhart, 2 Lanari, Alfredo, 81 Language, 7, 19, 57, 71–72, 138, 140–41, 149, 158, 163; ideology, 74, 77–78, 80–81, 163; monolingualism, 77–78, 82, 140, 165; mother tongue, 18, 60, 83, 123, 128, 134, 140–41, 150, 152, 154; proficiency, 7, 164 Lesser, Jeffrey, 3, 8, 14, 59, 152 Liberalism, 24, 31, 37, 46, 62, 76, 88–89, 111, 151; feminists, 42, 45, 162; reformers, 12, 151 Lineage, 14, 59, 61, 64, 105, 142, 148, 153, 156, 163 Lutheran Church, 49, 67, 83, 86, 109, 112–13, 115, 118–20, 124, 130–31, 133, 135, 141–42, 146, 160 Manz, Stefan, 93, 101, 111 Marzoratti, José, 129 McGee Deutsch, Sandra, 37, 39, 44, 59, 62, 153 Mirau, Leo, 17, 109–10, 115, 126, 128–29, 149, 157–58 Missouri Synod, 143 Morality, concerns about, 22, 27–28, 40–45, 49, 79, 82, 125, 143, 156 Motherhood, 40, 43–44, 53, 64–65, 140, 156, 163 Moya, José C., 4–5, 32 Mutual aid, 2, 22, 26, 31–32, 46 Naranch, Bradley, 11 National Council of Education, 19, 50,

52, 54–55, 72, 74–76, 78–82, 84–85, 88–89, 94, 106, 139, 151, 161, 165 Nationalism, alternate conceptions, 59, 72, 161, 165; assimilationist, 2, 5, 55, 63, 73–74, 79, 81, 88, 92; Hispanism, 4; language, 12, 74, 77–79, 81 Nationalism, Argentine, 2, 4, 11, 19, 60, 62–63, 71–73, 77, 79, 85, 92, 162 Nationalism, German, 6, 11–13, 20, 91– 92, 96–97, 100, 102, 105–7, 110–11, 122–23, 128–29, 134–35, 141 Nelke, Wilhelm, 121–22, 131, 137, 146 Networks, community, 22, 46; education, 19–20, 47, 50, 57, 64, 65–66, 76, 93, 106, 110, 151; religious, 15, 110–12, 117–18, 129–31; social welfare, 21–22, 24, 31–32, 34 Nienstedt, E., 142 Nueva Helvecia, Uruguay, 143 Olbricht, Fritz, 141 Otero, Hernán, 8, 56 Pan-German League, 10, 100 Pastors, itinerant, 117, 119, 121, 130–31 Paternalism, 142, 158 Patriarchy, 9, 27, 35, 39, 46, 148 Patronato Español, 41, 45 Penny, H. Glenn, 10 Petersen, Adele, 21, 42 Petersen, Richard, 21 Peuser, Jacobo, 26 Pluralism, cultural, 2, 9, 15, 19–20, 26, 42–43, 49–51, 59, 63, 71, 74–76, 79, 81, 84–85, 88, 140, 160–61, 165 Pluralism, linguistic, 2, 50, 52, 73, 77–78, 89, 110, 127, 150–51, 165 Pluralism, and national belonging, 12, 50–51, 74, 165; religious, 161 Presbyterian Church, 59, 111, 145 Prostitution, 27, 43–45; Argentine National Association against White Slavery, 42; white slavery, 44–45 Protestant Association for the La Plata States, 115, 117, 119–22, 130–31 Protestant High Consistory (Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat), 109, 111–13, 115, 117–22, 124 Quilmes, Buenos Aires, 53, 131, 133

Index Race. See Ethnicity, racialized Rahlwes, D., 137 Ramos Mejía, José María, 37, 79–81 Reagin, Nancy, 41–42 Reformers, Argentine, 2, 19, 50, 75, 77–78, 88 Rein, Raanan, 3, 8, 12, 15, 51, 59, 152 Religion, baptisms, 121, 144, 146–48, 159, 162, confirmation classes, 144–45; demographics, 18; Jewish institutions, 3, 62, 154; sacraments, 115, 138, 144, 147, 150, 158 Religion, preserving, 114, 121–22, 124, 131, 143, 150–52 Respectability, 19–22, 29, 40–41, 43–46 Rinke, Stefan, 13 Robertson, Malcolm, 61 Ruge, Karl Heinz, 73 Ruge, Margarita Paula, 73 Ruge, Wilhelm, 60 Säger, Heinrich, 60, 65 Saint Sauveur-Henn, Anne, 15 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 69 Schärer, E., 142 Schede, A., 42 Scheringer, Hanna, 21, 40, 42, 45 Scheringer, Julius, 109–10, 118, 141, 147 Schule und Haus, 61 Schüssler, Carl, 91, 97, 101, 103 Secularization, 12, 114, 134, 138–39, 151–53, 159, 160 Seeber, Francisco, 26, 43 Settlement house movement, 41–42 Seubert, Hedwig, 127 Social responsibility, 22, 25, 30, 40, 46 Social welfare, 5–6, 18, 21–26, 30–31, 35, 39–43, 45–47, 51, 68, 72, 111, 128, 160–64 Socialism, 2, 24, 41, 111, 151 Society of Beneficence, 24–25, 31, 39, 153 Spanish immigration, 4, 16–17, 22, 30, 34, 41, 45, 64 St. Raphael Society for the Protection of Catholic German Emigrants, 109, 125–29 State authority, education, 54, 57, 59, 73–76, 78, 80–82, 84–89, 94, 104–5, 124 State authority, as a negotiation, 2, 18, 31, 73, 80, 96, 161, 165

223

Subsidies, Argentine state, 24–25, 34, 114; from Europe, 98; from Germany, 66, 91, 97–98, 100–102, 117–19, 122–24; social welfare, 29, 39; tuition, 67, 91 Tjarks, Hermann, 26 Ugarriza Aráoz, Manuel de, 82 Universitarias Argentinas, 42 Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland. See Association for Germandom Abroad Volk, 13, 101, 103 Vorwärts, 24 Wagner, J., 150 Wald, Lillian, 41 Weidenfelder, Gerhard, 100 Werthmann, Lorenz, 129 Whiteness, 155–56. See also Ethnicity, racialized Wick, Richard, 119, 124, 130, 146 Wolff, Sophie, 156 Work, breadwinner, 19, 22, 26–27, 35, 40, 46, 72, 161; labor market, 65, 86, 127; wages, 40, 44, 67, 94, 117, 119; women, 19, 22, 68; work placement, 3, 21–22, 25–29, 40, 54, 109, 162 Yildiz, Yasemin, 77, 140 Zanatta, Loris, 114 Zorrilla, Benjamín, 76, 79