Vol. 4 · No. 1

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Unicampus, Vienna, Austria

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Abstract

Sadly, three decades later, the events and circumstances of the Great War marginalized Germans, gagged German-Americans and prompted a virtual ban on the German language, the most characteristic manifestation of the national culture. This development caused grave dilemmas for those who tried to retain their autonomous position yet were reduced to silence regarding any affinity formerly experienced with the people in the 'fatherland' where they had followed a course of study and had observed different customs that had appealed to them. On the whole, women had shown more circumspection in expressing such sentiments and had been willing to enter into alliances with representatives of the foreign culture only to be foiled by parental interference. Their more 'enterprising' male counterparts in the field of cultural criticism encountered obstacles at least as difficult which made an assent similarly problematic. For a while at least, circumstances in most cases precluded the expression of dissenting views from the American mainstream by reference to the 'alien' phenomena encountered on journeys to Central Europe. What now became possible was an articulation of dissenting views with reference to Western Europe, with Old England or rural France providing an alternative model.