LL-L "History" 2006.03.08 (03) [E]

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 08 February 2006 * Volume 03
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From: Karl Schulte <kschulte01 at alamosapcs.com>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2006.03.07 (05) [D/E]

You may find the following bit of my mother's side family legend of 
interest, as it relates to a similar atmosphere in NYC around 1910 as 
described below. For those who travel to Brooklyn (and in daylight only 
please) there is still a similar Norwegian Sailor's Church (Lutheran) that 
has been around for a bit over 120 years. It has an almost full size copy of 
a Viking ship hanging from the ceiling. My mother's side grandfather (Alf 
Nelsen) met his father there as a fall back plan when they missed each other 
at Ellis Island around 1912 (he had been born in NYC and then returned to 
Stavangerfjord as his mother was cruising along on her husband's ship - he 
was Capt. - and did not realize how close the baby was to arrival and so she 
stayed with relatives in the large Scandinavian area - now mostly gone in 
Brooklyn and returned on his next voyage; thus he was unknowingly an 
American and the immigration folks would not let him off in Ellis Is. where 
his dad was waiting, but carried him to Manhaten). Ironically, he met the 
love of his life at a Scandinavian block party/dance my grandmother, who was 
a beautiful red haired girl from Stavangerfjord as well. She was his 1st 
cousin but no one knew it until later; she came from next town in Norge and 
they had never met! A lucky girl, she had been rescued from an ice floe 
which had broken off a glacier on which she had been doing cross country 
ski/hike and which had broken off. She was found half way to Denmark when 
she was rescued. Amazing folks those Norwegians, whose idea of relaxation 
often involves skiing 50 miles before lunch at 30 below according to those 
I've known.

Regarding Holland islands of culture, I have visited extensively in Holland 
(beautiful and very clean place except for parts of Amsterdam)and can easily 
see the same style of buildings seen in (our) Hoboken and Elizabeth and some 
small Hudson R. areas. The Dutch style influenced much early colonial styles 
in the former Dutch colonies. There were so many Norwegians, Swedes, Dutch 
and NW Germans in NYC that they were able to get along in their areas and 
even at work without English; the earlier groups who had learned English 
became foremen for the new ones who did not. The most important word in 
English, my Grand Dad said, was "Beer", for it was a nickel (5 cents) and 
included all-you-can-eat smorgasboard at taverns, and this is how, at 16, he 
survived until getting a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard (where his boss was a 
Swede and most spoke a N./ W. Germanic LL and they all could understand each 
other.

Sadly, much of that culture is fading fast, except in a few pockets (Minn 
and Wisc. have Norwegian and Swedish and German in classes, there is the 
Sons of Norway and Scandinavian Club system that seeks to preserve some 
culture, and there are pockets of German speakers here and there (far east 
dialects among Amish and Mennonites, a few isolated communities (south 
central Texas for one, Milwaukee and some farm towns, etc.) where older 
folks still remember other German dialects. But in 1917 there were dozens of 
German and Norwegian / Danish (Riksmal mostly) papers in many major cities; 
WW1 ended many, and WW2 finished all but 1 or 2 off. This was not by law, 
which guarantees such things, but of a result of war fever and of 
German-Americans wanting neighbors to not think of them as spies, etc. This 
moving away from the Mother Tongue was also economic and intentional on the 
part of manty immigrant families (you must the english speak, my mother's 
folks said to their kids). Thus we have phone books full of German and 
Scandinavian names and other area derivitives as well such as Polish, with 
only a tiny fraction speaking the language of their forefathers. This is sad 
in my estimation.

Best Regards,

Karl

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: History

Karl, establishing Norwegian sailors' churches, missions and associations 
outside Norway is an old tradition that appears to have gathered momentum in 
the early 19th century.  There are such establishments in many port cities 
all over the world.  The mission became a real international organization 
with the foundation of Den Norske Sjømannsmisjonen (The Norwegian Seamen's 
Mission) in 1864.  As official ones tend to be mentioned those in Amsterdam, 
Antwerp, Buenos Aires, Cardiff, Le Havre, Leith, London, North Shields 
(Newcastle on Tyne), New York, Philadelphia and Port Elisabeth (South 
Africa).  Of these, the oldest is the one in Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland. 
However, there are Norwegian sailors' establishments in other cities as 
well.

Folks, what I wrote yesterday about the old connection between Amsterdam, 
Hamburg and Copenhagen is just a part of such a connection between the 
coastal regions of today's Netherlands and Germany with Denmark in general 
(and the Nordic countries beyond Denmark).  I understand that this 
connection really took off with the Reformation.  It was designed as a 
bollwark against Spanish- and French-led campaigns to purge Europe of the 
"heretic" movement, as a stronghold of commerce-driven "level-headedness," 
and, perhaps incidentally, as a haven for refugees from "Papist tyranny," 
mostly Protestants and (probably as an afterthought) also Jews (as long as 
these did not seriously compete with "Christian commerce").

Many of the refugees brought considerable and welcome wealth with them, 
especially some of the high-society Huguenots (who also established 
themselves in Swedish ruling circles) and successful Jews who could afford 
the travels: Sephardim from Iberia (especially Portugal) and Ashkenazim 
(especially from Catholic-ruled Southern Germany, Lorraine and the Alsace). 
Remember that in most parts of Western Europe even the most established Jews 
were treated as foreigners and were not allowed to own land and to join 
artisans' guilds.  This left them only with commerce, and the strength of 
many of them was international commerce because their migrations had left 
them with family and community connections in many places.  I go as far as 
saying that their contribution to the Amsterdam-Hamburg-Copenhagen 
connection was considerable.  (The Jewish community of Copenhagen began as 
an extension of that of Altona and Hamburg.)  If you read the memoirs of 
Glückel of Hamlin, who was born in the Jewish quarter of late-17th-century 
Hamburg, you will find that Amsterdam was just another city to her family, 
that they didn't think in terms of countries, that their communities tended 
to be so small that they often needed to marry far away, and this was 
easiest within the Protestant world.  Glückel and her first husband married 
off a daughter in Amsterdam, and she herself remarried to the Alsace in her 
advanced years.

Indigeneous cultural connections in conjunction with city connections made 
for a type of cultural continuum between what are now Belgium, the 
Netherlands, Northern Germany and Denmark, aside from considerable medieval 
Saxon influences around the Baltic Sea and along the North Sea coasts.  This 
makes Denmark, like non-Saxon German areas, an important marginal area on 
Lowlands-L.

The borderline is fuzzy, because Jutish-influenced Lowlands North Saxons and 
Saxon-influenced Scandinavian Jutes have been living side-by-side and with 
each other in the general Schleswig area/duchy (Northern Schleswig now being 
in Denmark and Southern Schleswig now being in Germany).  There were times 
when Schleswig was virtually independent, and then there were times when it 
was partly or wholly ruled by Denmark or by Germany.  It had never been a 
part of Germany until after the Second War of Schleswig in 1864, had become 
Danish in 1460.  In 1721, an international treaty determined that all future 
kings of Denmark should automatically be Dukes of Schleswig as well.  Also 
Holstein, situated between Schleswig and the Elbe river, was at times under 
Danish rule, which took the Danish border as far south as to the gates of 
Hamburg.

Copenhagen wasn't so concerned about Holstein, which had been a conservative 
rebelrouser thorn in its side, not only in local politics but obstructing 
legislation in Denmark as a whole and doing all manner of "mischief" in 
Copenhagen.  Schleswig was considered more important and had been Danish for 
a long time, never German.  However, due to the German assertion movement 
following the end of Napoleonic occupation and the eventual formation of 
Germany as a country (which hadn't existed before then), Schleswig 
eventually came to be taken by Prussia with the help of Austria (!) in the 
Second War of Schleswig (the first one--1848-51--having ended in Danish 
victory).  There was supposed to be a referendum in which Schleswig was to 
choose Denmark or Germany, but, probably because Prussia and Austria knew 
from which side the wind was blowing, this legislated act was conveniently 
lost in the shuffle.  Germany's defeat of WW I led to an 
allied-forces-initiated referendum for Schleswig, which had the following 
results (roughly speaking):

Reunification with Denmark:  North 75%, Central 20%
Unification with Germany:  North 20%, Central 80%

For some reason, folks in Southern Schleswig never go to vote.

Northern Schleswig returned to Denmark on 15 June 1920.  Even Hitler never 
challenged this imposed border (despite occupation of Denmark).

Schleswig has long been a multiethnic and multilingual area: traditionally 
North Frisian, Low Saxon and South Jutish, with added administrative and 
elite elements of Danish (proper) and German.  Denmark and Germany signed an 
agreement to protect and support each other's minorities: "Germans" in 
Denmark, and "Danes" in Germany.  This included German education in Denmark 
and Danish education in Germany.

>From my readings of mostly 19th century literature I gather that, while 
there certainly were anti-Danish organziations and individuals (also among 
North Frisians), most people under Danish rule of Schleswig and many under 
Danish rule of Holstein were either satisfied as Danish citizens or they 
didn't care one way or another (what with poor education and Germany not 
existing or being the new kid on the block and being pretty much irrelevant 
to their daily lives).  From what I gather, Danish rule was relatively 
"gentle" as far as pre-20th-century governments could be expected to be. 
While many people did acquire a working knowledge of Danish and 
multi-lingualism was fairly common, the Danish language was not officially 
imposed on the population in the south.  When German encroachment of 
Northern Germany was well established, Copenhagen ruled the south mostly 
bilingually: Danish and German, and local administrators tended to be 
"German," many of them speaking Danish, Low Saxon and German.

Here is where I believe -- seen from a neutral viewpoint -- Denmark 
committed a costly tactical error.  Had Copenhagen enshrined indigenous Low 
Saxon as the language of the south, thus as one of the official languages of 
Denmark, pro-Danish sentiments in all of Schleswig and perhaps even Holstein 
may have been stronger, thus may have helped to retain at least the entirety 
of Schleswig as Danish territory.  By using German -- at that time a foreign 
language to a large portion of the population -- and referring to the local 
ethnicity as _tysk_ (German) they helped to polarize ethnic awareness, 
reducing the choices to _dansk_ versus _tysk_, and thus to take the wind out 
of their own sails when it came to referenda of loyalty.  Interestingly, 
Copenhagen never learned to think outside the box; it kept copying German 
attitudes instead of creating its own, specifically Danish model.  It 
repeated this error in the Danish-German minority agreements.  The only 
educational choices of Low Saxon speakers under Danish rule was and is 
between German schools versus Danish schools.  There was nothing to prevent 
Denmark from earlier or later offering a Low Saxon choice, which would have 
offered an alternative that did not exist in Germany, and the reaction this 
would have created would have been something like "Our Denmark is a very 
benevolent and tolerant country. It recognizes our language, unlike Germany 
and the Netherlands. Aren't we the lucky ones?"  Of course, this would not 
have prevented people from studying German and Danish in addition if they so 
chose.

As mentioned here previously, many ethnic "Germans" in both Northern and 
Southern Schleswig chose to turn themselves into Danish as a result of 
disenchantment with and disgust about Germany following World War II.  It 
was easy for many, for they were of mixed background, already had 
Danish-sounding names and spoke Standard Danish and/or Jutish.  Others 
married ethnic Danes/Jutes and chose to speak only Standard Danish and/or 
Jutish at home.  And, I assume, there were those without those circumstances 
who simply decided to be Danish and to send their children to Danish schools 
(where higher educational standards constituted a major incentive).

However, even prior to the 20th century many "Germans," including those from 
south of Schleswig, chose to be Danish, either just because it appealed to 
them or Denmark offered the opportunities they aspired to -- bearing in mind 
that indigenous North Germans were what we might call "ethnically ambigous."

One of the more famous examples is the Baroque composer Diderik/Dietrich 
Buxtehude.  We are not sure about his family's origin, but his last name 
points to Buxtehude, now a town in the Stade district of Lower Saxony, at 
the border with Hamburg.  It is interesting to note that he is listed either 
as a German composer or as a Danish composer, depending on the bias of the 
compiler.  Lately, many non-German and non-Danish sources list him as 
"German-Danish."  He is believed to have been born in 1637, and most now 
assume that he was born in Helsingborg, Scania (Skåne), now Sweden, then 
under Danish rule, and he spent his childhood in Helsingborg and in 
Helsingør (Shakespear's "Elsinor").  Others claim he was born in Oldesloe, 
Holstein.  According to Danish sources, his father, also an organist and 
composer, was Hans Jensen Buxtehude, and his mother was a Helle 
Jespersdatter (which definitely sounds Danish, if not Faeroese or 
Icelandic).  His life ended 1707 in Holstein's Lübeck, where he had worked 
as the organist of St. Mary's Church (_Marienkark_, _Marienkirche_) and had 
taught many, amongst them Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) who had traveled 
there only to listen to Buxtehude's music.

A contrary case is that of the expressionist painter Emil Nolde, born 1867 
as Emil Hansen of North Frisian parents in Nolde (near today's Danish-German 
border), apparently as a Danish citizen.  He became a Nazi sympathizer, 
turned German and joined the Danish wing of the Nazi party.  His 
anti-Semitism was very thinly disguised, if at all.  However (and some might 
say he got his just deserves), his works ended up being banned as 
"degenerate art" under the Nazis, and he was no longer allowed to paint, not 
even in private.  After World War II, he was not only recognized as a great 
German artist, but he even received the German Order of Merit, the highest 
civilian decoration ...

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron 

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