Authenticity, Germanness, cultural DNA and appropriation, and Trumpism and German-Americans

As usual in a blog post like this, I'll tie all the threads in the header together.

Let's get started on that.

Muenster, Texas, has a Germanfest spring “Germania” heritage festival, and has had it for 45 years now, consecutively, minus a COVID interruption a year ago.

I recently saw a person who currently lives in the Metroplex but was born in Germany. He had several comments about the authenticity, or lack thereof in his mind, of the Germanness on display at Germanfest.

That started with the pronunciation of the city, noting that auf Deutsche, to use English values for vowels, it should sound like MOON-ster and not MUN-ster. And, on that one, he’s right, or more right than wrong. I pronounced it that way myself the first few weeks I was here, and quickly realized I was basically a party of one. (It actually should be between MOON-stir and MIN-stir with the first syllable kind of swallowed.

 I have seen places that still do an even deeper dive into German heritage. Having lived in Michigan, the town of Frankenmuth comes immediately to mind. Fredericksburg here in Texas, of course.  That said, we’re not in Michigan or the Hill Country, Toto, and we’re also not in Nordrhein-Westfalen. 

He is right about the number of things Germans have contributed to the world as a whole and to American culture in particular. A couple are even more Texas-specific. He said four Germans died at the Alamo and that the chicken-fried steak is a riff on German schnitzel. I’ll take his word on the Alamo, and I can buy the schnitzel idea, as Texas Germans may have adapted Wiener schnitzel, but this isn’t guaranteed. 

Some other things he aren’t necessarily so authentic themselves, though, or, to rephrase, they’re authentic to some ethnicity, but not necessarily that of Germans. 

Budweiser beer? The original is from the town of Budweis, as its called in German. Nice German name. But, it’s in today’s Czech Republic and Czechs call it České Budějovice. In fact, American Budweiser, though it’s continued to fight trademark battles in the European Union, does not own the “Budweiser” name over there. The Czech town actually had two breweries originally; the larger, which had today’s European Budweiser, was Czech-owned in an area of mixed linguistics. Linguistic divisions do not necessary reflect “ethnic” or “subethnic” divisions. See Switzerland, the North Tyrol and many other places. 

Some of the food items at Germanfest have become authentic but weren’t at one time, because they didn’t even exist, at least not in Germany. Potatoes? Almost as iconic in German culture, with German potato salad and other things, as in Irish lore. (My dad says that my great-grandpa Schneider used to end his saying grace prayer at the start of dinner with an immediate transition to “Kartoffeln bitte.”) More than 500 years ago? Not authentic, of course, because they only existed in the “New World.” 

Ditto on sauerkraut.

Other things? 

To current German residents, quite authentic, though perhaps not to our correspondent. Currywurst comes immediately to mind. It has a specific invention date of 1949, and was inspired by British occupation soldiers in Germany. Since then, under the influence of Turkish immigration, the sausage for currywurst at many locations its halal-pure, the Muslim equivalent of kosher. 

But, doorknob forbid a German-American admit cultural appropriation. In fact, among European white ethnic and subethnic groups, German-Americans voted for Trump more than any other. Maybe, as with Serbians over Kosovo, there is something such as cultural DNA. It got knocked out of Germans in Germany after 1945, but, if anything, flowered yet more strongly here. On the other hand, per our correspondent, maybe it didn't get knocked out of all Germans, either.

As for promoting heritage tourism? Well, neither the city of Muenster nor our correspondent is allowed to have their cake and eat it on my pages. 

Compared to Frankenmuth or Fredericksburg, Muenster is second-class on such heritage tourism, even as a new move-in to the town wants to build a whole German market and biergarten centering condos and shit around it. (That said, for now at least, said idea seems to have bit the dust.) In other words, to use some German words, said person wants to peddle some ersatz schmaltz with a capitalist bullshit smile painted on it. 

But, since cultural appropriation DOES happen (but not in an SJW tsk-tsk way), said Metroplex correspondent doesn’t get to tut-tut everything in Muenster, either. And, as for tut-tutting “German pizza” (I didn’t try it, or even look for what was on it), our correspondent missed out on something from his heimat: Alsatian flammekueche. And, to finish completing the circle? Some varieties of this product have Munster cheese in addition to fromage blanc or crème fraîche for the sauce. 

Well, the circle isn’t quite yet complete. Munster cheese, and yes, that’s the correct spelling, is named after the town of Munster, in Alsace. (Alsace may be part of France today, but for 1871-1918, and before that was part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1648. It has nothing to do with the German town that was the source of Muenster’s founders.

In short, an authenticity that is frozen in amber is no authenticity. I suspect that for many German-Americans, that's part of being frozen in amber in general.

To move to another culture, is somebody going to call flour tortillas inauthentic? Well, pre-Columbus, they are, just like potatoes for German Sunday lunches.

Back to the complainer one last time.

He referenced other inventions or other Germanic contributions to America and the world.

One was the car. But, Wiki says the first steam-powered "horseless carriage" was invented by one of those damned Frenchmen, Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot, back in 1769.

The second, albeit not by name, was Wernher von Braun. How he got to the US, and of course, the degree of his ties with the Nazis, use of slave labor, etc., were overlooked by our correspondent.

Essentially, parts of the complaint looked like they could have been written by a Stalinist claiming the USSR, or Mother Russia, had invented the radio, TV, etc., Or else by a BJP/RSS disciple of Narendra Modi today.