A German newspaper’s battle against prohibition
Prohibition was not a simple issue. I think often when looking back on the “wets” and the “drys” of the early 1900s, it is easy to apply stereotypes to either group. Often wets are boiled down to drunkards, while drys are seen as prudes, protestants, and screeching women. These simplifications ignore a host of complex political, economic, and cultural factors at the heart of the battle over prohibition. One particularly interesting vehicle to examine prohibition with, is the views of and towards German immigrants.
The Hermanner Volksblat (Hermann People’s Paper) was a newspaper published in Hermann Missouri from 1856 until 1928. It is a uniquely interesting paper due to the very pro-American political stance it adopted during WWI. The October 25, 1918 edition of the paper published an entire page from a citizens committee that was opposed to a state constitutional amendment that was to prohibit the “manufacture, sale, and giving away of intoxicating liquors.” The page describes multiple “reasons why prohibition should be defeated,” including but not limited to: substituting state control for personal self-control, effect on many people’s livelihoods, abandoning sources of tax revenue, and designating reasons for prohibition as propaganda. This German pro-American newspaper took a hardline stance against prohibition and felt that the publishing of this document would not cause their readers to find a different paper. These two facts help reveal the attitudes of German Americans in Hermann at the time. This anti-prohibition attitude is not surprising considering Hermann’s large beer and wine industries.
Another reason it is not surprising that the German newspaper came out against prohibition is that part of the push for prohibition was fueled by anti-German sentiment. As outlined in Claire White’s 2018 article World War I Played Key Role in Passage of Prohibition, “World War I allowed prohibitionists to manipulate growing anti-German sentiment. A large percentage of breweries were owned and operated by German Americans. They argued that every dollar put into the brewers’ pockets, and every bushel of grain diverted to a brewery, aided the German war effort.” These attitudes were obviously a cause for concern for German Americans. In a 2021 Article published by the National World War II Museum, the author included a quote from prohibitionist and Lt. Governor of Wisconsin John Strange who said “We have German enemies across the water. We have German enemies in this country, too. And the worst of all our German enemies, the most treacherous, the most menacing, are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz and Miller.” Anti-Germans were fighting to close the breweries, so it was only natural that the German American population fight back at the voting booth, as well as by encouraging others to vote by publishing articles like the one in the Hermanner Volksblat.
