Pennsylvania Dutch

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Pennsylvania Dutch (also Pennsylvania Germans; pennsylvaniadeutsch: Pennsilfaani Deitsche ) is the English name for a group of German-speaking residents who have settled in Pennsylvania , a later US state , since the 17th century and who originally came as immigrants mainly from the Pfalz came. They were mostly Protestants , especially Mennonites , Amish and members of the Moravian Brethren . The region they colonize is known in America as the Pennsylvania Dutch Country . The cities of Allentown , Hershey , Lancaster , Reading and York belong to the initially populated core area . The language of this group of German-Americans , some of which is still spoken, is called Pennsylvania Deitsch , officially Pennsylvania Dutch . There is hardly any reliable information about their number because the delimitation is unclear. Based on the number of dialect speakers, the latest surveys assume around 390,000 to 420,000 people. 80% of these people belong to the conservative Amish and Old Mennonite groups. The Lutherans and Reformed, who in the past made up the vast majority of the speakers of the Pennsylvania German, only make up 5% of the speakers.

etymology

Blue: Counties with the highest proportion of Pennsylvania-Dutch speakers in the population.
Red: Counties with the most Pennsylvania-Dutch speakers in absolute terms

The designation "Dutch" is an example of the linguistic economic language change , whereby the Pennsylvania German self-name "Deitsch" was pronounced by the English speakers as "Dutch" (usually "Dutch"). In itself, this development was not entirely illogical, since "Dutch" and "Deitsch" (as well as German , Tysk , Duits and Diets ) have a common origin in the ancient Germanic word * þiudiskaz , in addition to phonetic similarities .

Although the German origin of the Pennsylvania Dutch is beyond question in today's Pennsylvania German community, the majority of the Pennsylvania Dutch call themselves "Dutch" instead of "German" in English. The main historical reason for this is the almost non-existent German emigration to America in the period from 1760 to 1830. The Germans who emigrated in the 19th century were viewed by the Pennsylvania Dutch as closely related, but different. The newly immigrated German-Americans felt that the Pennsylvania Dutch were backward, as they had no national consciousness and had little or no command of Standard German. In contrast, the Pennsylvania Dutch believed that the new German-Americans were elitist and condescending. A clear example of this difference are the names “Deitsche” for Pennsylvania Dutch and “Deitschlenner” (literally “Deutschländer”) for Germans, which is now common among German-speaking people in Namibia and Romania for Germans from Germany.

When German-Americans assimilated into American society during the 19th century, this difference disappeared again, and in the contemporary Pennsylvania German language “Deitsche” is both the shorter self-term and the word for German. Another reason for keeping “Dutch” instead of “German” was the hostility towards Germans among Americans during the First World War, which resulted in anti-German hysteria in which German-speaking Americans were attacked and were forced to assimilate. Today, however, it is common for many Pennsylvania Dutch to identify themselves as German-American in addition to Pennsylvania Dutch. The terms Pennsylvania Dutch and Pennsylvania Germans are completely interchangeable.

history

Sticker on Pennsylvania Dutch: "We still speak the mother tongue"

The Quaker William Penn (1644-1718), who wanted to found his own colony on the east coast of the United States, thought the purely rural region of Pennsylvania was a particularly suitable location and made it known to potential German-speaking emigrants through his writings. He advertised his project in German provinces in the 1670s. 1683 founded German Mennonites from the room Krefeld place German Town , which is now a district of Philadelphia is. After 1710, the first major wave of emigrants from the Palatinate arrived in Pennsylvania. Their reports back home attracted further settlers who came from the Palatinate, Baden , Württemberg and the Rhineland . In 1711 six Mennonite families from Switzerland settled in Lancaster , which was officially founded in 1730. Between 1727 and 1775 around 65,000 German emigrants came to Philadelphia. During the American Revolution, several thousand Hessian mercenaries who were in the service of England deserted and settled in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country . In 1790, 40% of the total population of this state were of German descent. Since the Germans mainly settled in southeastern Pennsylvania, up to 80% of the settlers in some townships and counties were of German descent. At first they devoted themselves exclusively to agriculture and the self-sufficiency of their farms.

Even after 1800 German emigrants came to Pennsylvania, mostly from other regions, and some of them were Catholics. Historians generally do not include you in the Pennsylvania Dutch population . The German immigrants who came after 1820 were more likely to settle in New York , Illinois or Wisconsin , as the purchase price for farmland in Pennsylvania had meanwhile risen sharply. The "Pennsylvania Dutch Country" is sometimes referred to by the locals as "Pennsylvania Deitschland" or "Pennsylvania Dutchland".

See also

literature

  • Cynthia G. Falk: Architecture and Artifacts of the Pennsylvania Germans: Constructing Identity in Early America. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 2008, ISBN 978-0-271-03338-9 .
  • Steven M. Nolt: Foreigners in Their Own Land: Pennsylvania Germans in the Early Republic. Pennsylvania State University, University Park 2002, ISBN 978-0-271-03444-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Frank Kessler: The Pennsylvanian Germans and their most important settlement areas in North America in 2012. In: Globus (VDA) 4/2014, pp. 12-17
  2. ^ Hughes Oliphant Old: The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, Volume 6: The Modern Age. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007, p. 606.
  3. ^ Mark L. Louden: Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language. JHU Press, 2006, p. 2.
  4. ^ Irwin Richman: The Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Arcadia Publishing, 2004, p. 16.
  5. ^ W. Haubrichs: "Theodiscus". German and Germanic - three ethnonyms, three research terms. On the question of the instrumentalization and value assignment of German language and popular names. In: H. Beck et al .: On the history of the equation “Germanisch-deutsch” (2004), pp. 199–228.
  6. ^ Etymology Online Dictionary.
  7. ↑ Merriam Webster.
  8. ^ Mark L. Louden: Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language. JHU Press, 2006, pp. 3-4.
  9. ↑ Jürgen Müller: Review of: German-Americans in the First World War . In: sehepunkte , Edition 8 (2008), No. 3, March 15, 2008, accessed on October 27, 2019.
  10. ^ Mark L. Louden: Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language. JHU Press, 2006, p. 255.
  11. ↑ a b German Settlement in Pennsylvania (PDF; 98 kB)