Culture and Education

The culture of the German-Canadian mosaic is reflected in its rich legacy of folk customs, art, and artefacts, its pioneers in medicine, music, and the fine arts, its literature, and its press. Relics of eighteenth-century German culture are still noticeable in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and elsewhere in Canada. Although the language of the original settlers vanished nearly a century ago, the so-called Lunenburg Dutch dialect, characterized by a distinct accent and unusual phrasing, is detectable in local English, and elements of German folklore and folk beliefs are also evident in that community. Apart from the artefacts and distinctive designs decorating old furniture, utensils, and fabrics, aspects of the surviving German heritage include such cherished foods as homemade sausages and sauerkraut.

Among the vestiges of folk culture brought to southern Ontario from Pennsylvania is the so-called Pennsylvania German bank barn, a large structure distinguished by its size, earth ramp to the upper floor, mow overhang, and hex signs. German farmers from that area also transplanted their typical log cabin, characterized by a centrally located chimney with fireplace openings to the living and sleeping quarters. The farm layout common in southwestern Ontario – detached residence, barn, and grain elevator – can also be traced to the Pennsylvania German pioneers. It contrasts with the house-barn combination brought to Manitoba by Mennonites from Russia in the 1870s.

The mere fact that “Hessian” soldiers represented 3 to 4 percent of the male population in British North American in 1783 accounts for their significant impact on the society of the day. Among the group were highly skilled professionals, intellectuals, artists, and musicians who as teachers, composers, and performers introduced professional standards of classical music. The thirty or so surgeons who stayed in Lower Canada after 1783, together with the descendants of German physicians who had arrived before 1776, laid the foundation for the province’s medical profession and a medical school that later became part of McGill University.

The tides of pre-Confederation German immigration bequeathed to Canada a rich heritage of folk and decorative art, artistic calligraphy (Fraktur), furniture, and textiles primarily of Pennsylvania Dutch and southwest German origin. Generally acknowledged is the influence of such German artists as William Berczy, Cornelius Krieghoff, William Raphael, Otto Reinhold Jacobi, and Adolph Vogt on Canadian portrait, genre, and landscape painting of the period 1800–70. Similarly, the impact of such musicians as Frederick Glackemeyer, Jean-Chrysostome Brauneis, and Théodore-Frédéric Molt has caused historians to refer to the first half of the nineteenth century as the German period in Canadian musical history.

In the decades preceding World War I, most Canadian cities had their German musicians and choirs. In Toronto, Canadian-born Augustus Stephen Vogt founded the Mendelssohn Choir, the country’s first internationally renowned vocal group. Joseph Hecker started the Winnipeg Philharmonic Society in 1880, the first symphony orchestra in the west. Oscar Telgmann, the founder of the Kingston Symphony Orchestra, also became known as a composer of operettas.

In the post-war era, Carl F. Schaefer’s bold landscape paintings distinguished him as one of the most gifted students of the Group of Seven. Noted for the high quality of their abstract art are Fritz Brandtner, Karl May, and Herbert Siebner, as are Emanuel Otto Hahn, Harry Wohlfarth, and Almuth Luetkenhaus for their sculpture. Silesian-born Eberhard Zeidler, designer of Ontario Place and the Eaton Centre in Toronto and Canada Place in Vancouver, is an internationally acclaimed architect. Opera director Hermann Geiger-Torel established the Canadian Opera Company, the first such organization in this country.

In the realm of literary culture, a significant body of poetry and fiction depicting Canadian and immigrant experience is of fairly recent origin. The history of German-Canadian literature can be traced through Der Neuschottländische Calender (The Nova Scotia Calendar; Halifax, 1788–1801) and nineteenth-century almanacs, travel reports, sermons, church chronicles, clergymen’s tales, and poems with moralistic and didactic overtones. These literary products were generally of low intellectual content and were aimed at local and denominational interests. The prerequisites for literature – an educated, middle-class reading public and an intelligentsia not drawn to the burgeoning German-American urban communities – were long lacking in Canada. Absorption in the daily chores of pioneer farming or community development left little time for creative writing.

The pioneers of twentieth-century German-Canadian literature were Russländer Mennonites who between the world wars wrote about the turmoil of their uprooting in revolutionary Russia, their German heritage, and their migration and settlement in Canada. A strong commitment to German culture and values permeates their writings. The only major non-Mennonite writer before World War II was Felix Paul Berthold Friedrich Greve. Born in Germany, where he published poetry and a novel before immigrating to Canada in 1909, he became a Canadian celebrity claiming Scottish-Swedish descent under the alias Frederick Philip Grove. Between 1922 and 1947 he wrote seven popular novels in English, one volume of essays, and another of short stories, in addition to a fictionalized autobiography, In Search of Myself (1946), for which he received the Governor General’s Literary Award. Credited with introducing realism into Canadian fiction and applying international standards and perspectives to prairie themes, Grove is often considered the founder of modern Canadian literature. Successfully camouflaging his literary and personal background until his death – his true identity was not uncovered until 1972 – he is also credited with pioneering multiculturalism. His novels criticize conformity with British ideals and the rampant prejudice directed against immigrants of non-British background between the wars.

A sudden flowering of remarkably varied and professional German-Canadian literature in the 1950s originated from the post-war influx into Canada of an educated middle class, some of whom had enjoyed well-established reputations as writers before they emigrated. It also reflected a radical break with the past, which World War II represented for Germans everywhere. The experience of chaos and discontinuity gave new meaning to such standard Canadian themes as isolation, alienation, the search for identity, and the challenge of nature. It inspired German-Canadian writers to view their immigrant experience from a deeper, more universal perspective. In her diary, poetry, and short prose, Else Seel immortalized the struggles of a woman, steeped in the metropolitan culture of Berlin, to adapt to pioneer life in the British Columbia wilderness. Central for Walter Bauer was the tension between the grandeur of Canadian nature and what he termed the burden of his European baggage, figuratively bursting with contents from the two world wars. Hermann Boeschenstein, a University of Toronto professor of German, literary critic, and leading figure in the German-Canadian community for almost half a century, wrote novels, short stories, and plays. A theme that fascinated him was the dialectic of emigration and return to one’s homeland.

Unique and intellectually fertile was the group of German-Jewish refugee internees deported to Canada from Britain in 1940. They included the Austrian-born Carl Weiselberger, Henry Kreisel, Charles Wassermann, and Cologne-born Eric Koch. Weiselberger and Wassermann wrote in German and English, while Kreisel and Koch switched entirely to English. Weiselberger’s and Kreisel’s work deals with the trauma of the refugee experience. Wassermann’s eleven books in German and hundreds of television plays and radio broadcasts in English brought Canada to German-speaking Europe and vice versa. Koch produced countless films, television programs, and books, including two futuristic novels and autobiographical accounts of the Nazi period.

Some noteworthy German-Canadian writers are not interested in themes and subjects derived from their own community. Henry Beissel emigrated to Canada in 1951 intending to become a writer and to forget his homeland. Apart from preparing sensitive translations of Walter Bauer’s novels, he became known for his defence of the native peoples. The work of Ulrich Schaffer, who came to Canada in 1953, when he was eleven, transcended the immigrant experience. He wrote more than a dozen books exclusively for audiences in Germany. Inspired by Canadian nature and modern German culture, he experimented with new poetic forms in a search for meaning in today’s world.

The beginnings of the German-language press date to the Neuschoffländer Calender (Halifax, 1788-1801). The first German-language newspaper in Upper Canada, Canada Museum und allgemeine Zeitung (Canada Museum and General Newspaper; Berlin, Ont., 1835–40), was produced with a printing press brought from Pennsylvania. It and Der Deutsche Canadier (The German Canadian; Berlin, 1841–65), as well as the Berliner Journal (Berlin Journal; Berlin, Kitchener, Ont., 1859–1917), published in German and Pennsylvania German, helped to establish the city’s claim as the German capital of Canada. Between 1835 and 1867, eighteen German-language papers were issued in Upper Canada. The proliferation of the local German-language press in Ontario after 1867 and in western Canada after 1900 attests to the vitality of German-Canadian cultural life before World War I.

The majority of German-language papers catered to religious and farmers’ interests. The first labour and socialist-oriented publication was the Deutsche Arbeiter Zeitung (German Worker’s News; Winnipeg, 1930–37), mouthpiece first of the short-lived Central Association of German-Speaking Workers and then of the pro-Communist German Workers and Farmers Association. The organ of the German-Canadian League was briefly called Deutsch-kanadische Volkszeitung (German-Canadian People’s News; Toronto, 1930?–37?) and then Deutsches Volksecho (German People’s Echo; New York). Its post-war successor was Volksstimme (People’s Voice; Toronto, 1944–49). At the other end of the political spectrum appeared the pro-Nazi Deutsche Zeitung für Canada (German Newspaper for Canada; Winnipeg, 1935–39).

Der Nordwestern and Der Courier (The Courier; Regina, 1907–69) became the chief non-denominational papers with a national circulation. They appeared as weeklies, despite wartime interruption, until they merged in 1970 under the name Kanada Kurier (Canada Courier; Winnipeg, 1970– ). With some 24,000 subscribers in the 1970s, the Kurier established itself as Canada’s foremost non-partisan German-language paper. It appears in six regional editions, each with two sections, one containing the same general-interest information and the other specific to the region and focusing on local social and cultural items.

Of the German-language papers that appeared in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s, most were issued monthly and some were directed at specific denominational or regional groups. Among those still being published are the Pazifische Rundschau (Pacific Review; Vancouver, 1969– ) and Echo Germanica (Toronto, 1990– ). In addition, the TCA, the GCC, the consulates general of German-speaking countries, and various clubs and associations publish news bulletins at regular intervals. With the post-war immigrants and special-interest readers as their main targets, many new ventures later suffered from dwindling circulation and in some cases closed. Among those with previously large circulation that have ceased publication include the Torontoer Zeitung (Toronto News; Toronto, 1953– ), with 12,600 readers at its peak, the Montrealer Nachrichten (Montreal News; Montreal, 1961–75) with 16,000, the Montrealer Zeitung (Montreal Newspaper; Winnipeg/Toronto, 1954–?) with 12,000, Kontakt (Toronto, 1968–?), Canada Herald (Ottawa, 1980–?), and the homemakers’ magazine Ihre Brigitte (Your Brigitte; Saint-Jean, Quebec, 1965–71 ).

Radio broadcasts in German have been available since the 1950s and television shows two decades later in the centres of German settlement. The radio broadcasts are of two kinds; some are directed at specific groups, such as the Mennonites in Manitoba, and the others at urban audiences. Sponsored by German-Canadian businesses, they target the post-war newcomers. In 1973 programs totalling up to six hours or, in the case of Oshawa, thirteen hours a week were carried in every province of central and western Canada except Saskatchewan. Television programs have been less frequent, except in areas such as Toronto. In the early 1990s a six-hour show aired on Sundays that consisted largely of advertising and pop music. A combination of factors – lack of reliable financial support, unsatisfactory quality, and dwindling audiences – has left these broadcasts in an uncertain state.

One of the most enduring endeavours to maintain the community’s cultural identity has been the voluntary German-language schools held on Saturdays. As early as the 1760s the Lutherans in Lunenburg organized a school in German. The sizable German presence in early Victoria led to schools for boys and girls that taught the language, together with Spanish, French, Greek, and Latin. By 1851 parochial schools were so widespread in Upper Canada that until 1912 the province recognized German as the language of instruction in districts where the majority of the taxpayers spoke it. Saturday schools opened where churches could not support a parochial school and public schools did not offer German-language instruction. In pre-war Winnipeg, parochial schools were short-lived. The day school maintained by Volga German members of Christ Lutheran Church from 1906 to 1939 was an exception.

After World War I, Saturday schools filled the vacuum when German was abolished as a subject or language of instruction in Canadian public schools. Their purpose was to help school-age children of immigrants attain literacy in their mother tongue. Initiated and funded by churches, clubs, and parents, the schools operated for two and a half to three hours on Saturday mornings with volunteer teachers. Numerous such schools were introduced in the 1930s by immigrants who had arrived in the previous decade, but only the Mennonite and Hutterite schools survived the war.

In the early 1950s the first post-war Saturday schools were launched in German clubs, church basements, and private homes to fill what a leading organizer called “the language hole” in the Canadian educational system. At that time, only a few Ontario high schools still offered German. Latent hostility continued to exist towards things German, and government assistance for what today is called heritage language instruction was not yet available. In 1958–59, 920 students were enrolled in sixteen Saturday schools, all in Ontario. By the early 1970s, the TCA coordinated a network of 106 schools with 10,240 students across the country. Although the number of schools later declined, enrolment levels have remained at 10,000 for almost two decades. Half the schools, primarily in Ontario, were maintained by clubs and the rest, primarily in western Canada, by churches. The TCA directly supported seven Saturday schools in Quebec. Ontario began offering public school facilities and funding to German schools in 1973. Then Manitoba, followed by Alberta, again permitted German instruction in public schools from the primary level on, if requested by at least twenty-three students. Since 1970 the Federal Republic of Germany has donated teaching materials, and between 1977 and 1990 the Canadian government provided some funding under its multicultural program.

Although initially set up to teach immigrant children who were more or less fluent in German, after 1965 the Saturday schools adapted to instruction in German as a second language. Whereas in 1970 the schools registered 80 percent or more native German speakers, a decade later some 80 percent of their students across Canada were non-German-speaking beginners. The changes in teaching approaches, curricula, and teacher qualifications that these developments required generated conflict between the clubs and the TCA. The latter preferred a focus on the mother tongue. The difference of opinion led in 1978 to the creation of a separate Canadian Association of German Language Schools (Verband Deutsch-Kanadischer Sprachschulen). Recognized as the national professional association by virtually all German Saturday schools in Canada, it arranges for regular teachers’ conferences, professional upgrading, and curricular changes.

The number of Canadians reporting German as the mother tongue has fluctuated between 362,000 in 1931, 563,700 in 1961, and 475,700 in 1991. Proportionately, however, it has declined in Canada from 4 percent of the population in 1931 to 3 percent in 1961 and 1.7 percent in 1991. Not all those who reported German as their mother tongue in 1991 were of German ethnic origin: 2,630 Canadians who declared Judaism as their religion indicated German as their first language but not German ethnic origin. Nor was the language acknowledged by more than 39 percent of post-war Canadians of German origin, according to 1961 figures. Ten years later this proportion had declined to 36 percent, and only 14 percent used German as the primary language in the home. In 1981 slightly less than two-thirds of those of German origin claimed English as their mother tongue and 1 percent French; 85 percent indicated English as the language spoken in the home. A decade later English was the home language of 72 percent and French of 0.6 percent of Canadians with German as their mother tongue.

The 1981 census found those of German ethnic origin twice as likely as the Canadian population overall to have less than a grade nine education and one-half as likely to have university or other post-secondary training. That is, the educational level of 40 percent of Germans fifteen years of age and older indicated less than grade nine, another 40 percent grades nine to thirteen, and less than one-fifth university.