A Turning Point on Two Continents: German Americans Reconsider Race and Citizenship in 1870

In 1870, German-speaking residents of the United States greeted news of the Franco-Prussian War and the impending consolidation of the German Empire with unmistakable enthusiasm. Several twentieth-century historians recognized the significance of this moment, debating whether Bismarck had so beguiled the immigrants that they embraced an un-American totalitarianism. These scholars effectively pitted American liberalism against German authoritarianism. This paper takes the alternative approach of presenting German Americans as transnational actors who ensured that the histories of North America and Europe would be intertwined. I examine the discussion of state power, nationhood, race, and citizenship in German-language newspaper editorials, public celebrations, religious gatherings, and political meetings. The German-language public sphere, as I term this conceptual space, had always been a forum in which German immigrants argued over what it meant to be German in the United States and, by extension, Germany’s role in world history.

Captivated by the news from Europe, German immigrants did reevaluate the qualities that made a country great in 1870, but their response was also conditioned by American politics. During the late 1860s, the legacy of the unsuccessful German Revolutions of 1848 and the American Civil War generated the powerful image of the “freedom-loving German,” a man who believed that his own acquisition of American citizenship could provide a template for men who had once been enslaved. German immigrants did not repudiate this position when Prussia went to war with France, but just as the ruling Republican Party was tiring of the task of enforcing black rights in the American South, immigrants wondered whether administrative efficiency and an educated Volk were more important than voting rights and racial equality. The very public deliberations of German-American Republicans would amplify trends and tighten transitions in U.S. politics, helping to make 1870 a turning point on two continents.