Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity - Hardcover
by Russell Kazal (Author)
More Americans trace their ancestry to Germany than to any other country. Arguably, German Americans form America's largest ethnic group. Yet they have a remarkably low profile today, reflecting a dramatic, twentieth-century retreat from German-American identity. In this age of multiculturalism, why have German Americans gone into ethnic eclipse--and where have they ended up? Becoming Old Stock represents the first in-depth exploration of that question. The book describes how German Philadelphians reinvented themselves in the early twentieth century, especially after World War I brought a nationwide anti-German backlash.
Using quantitative methods, oral history, and a cultural analysis of written sources, the book explores how, by the 1920s, many middle-class and Lutheran residents had redefined themselves in "old-stock" terms--as "American" in opposition to southeastern European "new immigrants." It also examines working-class and Catholic Germans, who came to share a common identity with other European immigrants, but not with newly arrived black Southerners."This is a scholarly work par excellence. Prodigiously researched, cogently argued and extremely well written, the book is a richly detailed case study of the shifts in German-American identity in Philadelphia during the early 20th century. A tour de force."--Marilyn Halter, Boston University
Russell A. Kazal is Assistant Professor of History at Arcadia University.
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