We should not omit to mention, however, a fact which to a very large degree tends to show that the Americanization of our German citizens is not so rapid as it might be. Intermarriages between Germans, or descendants of Germans, and Americans of other descent are not regarded with favor by the older Germans of the present generation, and such marriages are of rare occurrence. This is to be deplored, especially for the sake of the non-German party. In all the domestic virtues the Germans are richly endowed. The influence of the mother in the family is supreme within certain limits, and this influence is almost always exerted for good. The German husband does not regard his wife as a pretty plaything, a fragile and expensive doll to be dressed in gay raiment and paraded for the gratification of her own and his vanity. On the contrary, the German husband, if at fault at all in this respect, looks upon his wife too much in the light not merely of a helpmeet, but of a servant in whose zeal, industry, and faithfulness he can repose the utmost confidence. Americans too often make useless idols of their wives; the German husband may seem to regard his spouse from too utilitarian a point of view. In the German household, here as in the Fatherland, there is not, as there is too often in American homes, one bread-winner and one or more spenders. The wife, whenever it is needful or expedient, not only manages the domestic affairs of the family with economy, prudence, and good sense, but takes a full share of the burden of providing its income. If one journeys through those portions of the West where the Germans are largely engaged in agricultural pursuits, he will see the wife and daughters working in the fields alongside of the husband and the brothers; in the towns, while the husband is pursuing his trade or laboring in the streets, the wife is keeping a shop or a beer-saloon, or otherwise earning her full share of the family income, and aiding her husband to lay up the nest-eggs of their future fortune. The will of the wife is most frequently supreme in all domestic affairs, and even in matters of business; and this, too, without the husband feeling himself at all “hen-pecked.” His wife is his equal; he shares with her his amusements as well as his toils. Nothing is more pleasant than the spectacle of German families, on fête days or on summer evenings, taking their pleasure together in the beer-gardens. The presence of the women and children does not lessen the gayety of the men; but it prevents them from excess and compels propriety of conversation and deportment. With these habits, and with the gift of living well and wholesomely, on plain but abundant food, without wastefulness, the Germans prosper, and they acquire competences sooner and more generally than other classes. When wealth comes, their frugal and sensible habits of life are not laid aside for extravagant display, nor is the influence and sway of the mother weakened or lessened. The daughters, even of the wealthiest and most cultured German families, are taught how to become good and useful wives to poor men, and are thus prepared for reverses of fortune. By some of our American women these virtues of their German sisters may be regarded with contempt and dislike; but many American men, we are inclined to think, would lead happier lives and escape much pecuniary trouble, if they won for themselves wives from among the daughters of their German neighbors. There are but few such marriages now. The German parents dislike them; and there is, moreover, a little ignorant prejudice on the American side. The next generation or two, we trust, will be wiser.

The limits of our space and the scope of our article forbid us to do more than merely glance at a branch of our subject which is in itself worthy of a separate essay—the influence exerted by our German fellow-citizens upon the rest of us by their works in music and in the fine arts. Here the barrier of language does not exist; the genius of music and of art is universal. A certain degree of cultivation of the ear and eye is necessary, of course; but, this being attained, the music of a German composer, the painting, the sculpture, the architecture, or the decoration of a German artist, is appreciated, admired, and imitated as well by those ignorant of his language as by those of his own nationality. There is reason to believe that American taste in music and in art owes vastly more to German influence than is generally supposed or conceded. Perhaps the strongest evidences of this would result from a critical examination of the extent to which German ideas have modified, enlarged, beautified, and spiritualized our architecture, our dramatic, domestic, and ecclesiastical music, and all those phases of our daily life wherein the fine arts play a part.

Among German-American architects may be mentioned G. F. Himpler, a student at Berlin and Paris, and a thoroughly-educated master of his art—the builder of fine churches in St. Louis, Detroit, Sandusky, Elizabeth, Rome (New York), Atchison, and other places; among historical painters, Leutz—now dead, but whose works at Washington and elsewhere have given him a national fame—Lamprecht and Duvenech (the latter a native of this country), Biermann and Lange; among decorative painters, Thien, Ertle, and Muer; among sculptors and designers, Schroeder, Allard, and Kloster—the latter a very distinguished young artist; among German singers, as well known here as in Germany, Wachtel, Hainamns, Lichtmay, and Tuska; among actors. Seebach, Janauschek, Taneruscheck, Lina Meyer, and Witt.

But we can only hint at these things, and hasten on to remark, in passing, that our German citizens, even more generally and zealously here than in Germany, seek to provide for and to secure the education of their children. “The first thing that a colony of German emigrants settling in America seeks to establish is the school,” said to us a high authority. “If they are Catholics, or even zealous Lutherans, the church is built simultaneously with the school; but in every case the school must be set up, and the children must attend it at whatever cost to the parents.”

Thus far we have written of our German population as a whole. We now turn our attention to that portion of it which belongs to ourselves—i.e., the German Catholics of the United States. United with us by the bond of faith, their welfare is especially dear to us, and in their spiritual and material progress, prosperity, and happiness we have a deep and abiding interest.

Prior to 1845 the German emigration to the United States had been numerically insignificant, and consisted chiefly of the peasant class. The revolution of 1848 had the effect not only of greatly increasing this emigration but of materially changing its character. An official report recently made by Dr. Engel, Director of the Bureau of Statistics at Berlin, states that the number of Germans who emigrated to the United States from 1845 to 1876, both years inclusive, was 2,685,430. Dr. Engel remarks that a very large proportion of these emigrants (considerably more than 1,000,000 of them) were “strong men”; there were few old or infirm people among them; those of them who were not adult males in the vigor of their manhood were chiefly young and middle-aged women and children. A goodly proportion of these emigrants must now be living among us; we know by the census of 1870 that our German-born population even then numbered 1,690,410. The German race is hardy and prolific; its women are good mothers; their thrift, industry, and economical habits enable them to live in comfort upon modest resources; without being teetotalers, they are seldom intemperate. The German-born and German-descended population of the United States at present—including in the latter class only those whose parents on both sides or on one side or the other were natives of Germany, but who were themselves born here—is believed to be about 5,500,000 souls. The great bulk of this population is in the Central, Western, and Northwestern States; the six States of New York, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Missouri contain nearly two-thirds of the whole number.[[86]]

The German Empire as at present constituted contained at the latest census (1875) 42,723,242 people. Of these not quite one-third are Catholics. Had the immigration from the states which now form the German Empire borne this proportion, we should have in the United States a German Catholic population of about 1,800,000 souls. But the immigration was largely from the Protestant states, or from those in which the Protestants were in the majority. We should be satisfied, and more than satisfied, when we learn that the German Catholics in the United States, according to the latest and most accurate computation, numbered 1,237,563 souls. It is a very large number—large enough to establish the fact that the Catholic Germans arriving here have not lost their faith, but have preserved and guarded it for themselves and their children. These 1,237,563 German Catholics in America are not mythical or hypothetical persons; in making up the numeration care was taken to include only those who were known as practical Catholics, frequenters of the sacraments, careful observers of their duties as Catholic parents or Catholic children. In this connection we may add some figures for which we are indebted to the courtesy of a German priest and statistician, and on the accuracy of which our readers may depend. First, however, let us state, upon the best authority, that the church in America loses very few of her German children. We were extremely gratified with the unanimous testimony which rewarded our inquiries on this matter. It very rarely occurs that a young German Catholic of either sex strays or is stolen from the fold. Neither the false philosophy of the infidel or Protestant German schools, nor the seductions and ridicule of their infidel or Protestant American neighbors, lure them from the faith. We have observed in our own visits to the German churches in New York, especially at the early Masses, the large proportion of male adult worshippers. “Our old people, of course, never leave us,” said a learned German priest, “and our young people rarely, very rarely, stray away. They are faithful in their duties, and they appear to love their religion with all their hearts. When they marry and have children, they look after them as Catholic parents should do. Our parochial schools are well attended; our higher schools and academies are prosperous. Our teaching orders, of men and women, have their hands full of work, and they are almost without exception well supported. One of the bishops in a Western diocese, the greater part of whose flock are Germans, has the happiness of knowing that all the children of his people are in attendance either in his parochial schools or in other schools of which the teachers are Catholics.”

Our 1,237,563 German Catholics in America are ministered to in spiritual things by 1,373 German priests. They have 930 church edifices, while there are 173 other congregations of them regularly visited by priests, but as yet without church buildings. The whole number of Catholic priests in the United States, according to the Catholic Directory for this year, is 5,297, of churches 5,292, and of chapels and stations 2,768. Thus it will be seen that the German priests number a little more than one-fourth of our American ecclesiastical army. There is a German priest for every 900 German Catholics. How faithfully they discharge their duties, and how zealously the people, on their part, assist their pastors, may be estimated by the fact that the baptisms by these German priests last year numbered 71,077—an average of more than one each week for each priest; and that the number of children in the German parochial schools was 137,322—an average of almost exactly 100 children for each priest. The following table will show with approximate exactness the number of German Catholic priests and German Catholic laymen in the various States or dioceses:

Priests.Laymen.
New York149134,100
Baltimore10392,700
Pennsylvania7567,500
Ohio200180,000
Indiana132118,800
Michigan3329,700
Kentucky4338,700
Wisconsin163146,700
Kansas1311,700
Illinois135121,500
Missouri8072,000
Minnesota7469,600
Louisiana3834,200
Other localities135120,363
——————
1,3731,237,563

The education of the juvenile portion of this large army of German-American Catholics is partly in the hands of the teaching orders of the church, male and female; partly in the hands of the parish priests; and partly confided to private instructors. The “German Sisters of Notre Dame,” for example, 923 in number, in 79 congregations, have charge of the parochial schools and instruct 25,557 children. They have also 15 academies, in which 1,375 pupils are receiving higher education; and 11 orphan asylums with 1,400 children. Another branch of the same sisters have their houses in 17 congregations, and in these 63 teaching sisters are instructing 9,000 children; they have also 3 academies with 700 pupils. The German Franciscan Sisters, in 19 congregations, have 53 teaching sisters educating 5,700 children; and one academy. The Sisters of the Precious Blood, in 11 congregations, employ 17 of their number in teaching 900 children. The German Dominican Sisters, whose houses are in New York, Williamsburg, and Racine, Wisconsin; and the Sisters of Christian Charity, at Melrose and elsewhere, are among the many religious orders chiefly engaged in educational work among the German Catholics. Prince Bismarck has done us a very good turn without wishing it. The expulsion of the religious orders of men and women caused by the persecution of the church in Germany compelled these servants of God to seek new homes. Many of these orders already had houses in this country; driven from Germany, they found not merely a refuge but a warm welcome and abundant work with their brothers and sisters here. Others of them, not previously established in this country, and being robbed by the paternal government of Prussia of all their property, arrived here in poverty; but they were joyfully received and speedily supplied with means for commencing their work in these new and inviting fields. The German branch of the Christian Brothers—“Christliche Schulbrüder”—has experienced a marvellous growth, and is accomplishing splendid results in the primary and higher education of the German Catholic youth.[[87]]