“Anti-Temperenz”: Water is for Losers
Above is a clipping from the Hermanner Wochenblatt, a weekly newspaper that ran in Gasconade County out of the small town of Hermann, Missouri, between September of 1845 and January of 1855. With a simple rhyme scheme and easy to grasp jokes, it’s a lighthearted jab at American nativists who thought German alcohol culture to be a sign of moral degeneracy and a lack of “temperance”, the movement the poem’s title references.
Written by an author who only identifies themselves as “Kunkel” (meaning something close to “dude” or “guy”, though this could also be a last name), the poem compares those who drink (Germans) and those who do not (Anglo-Americans). The Anglos are compared to animals: bathing in the same water they drink, not thinking for themselves, and being ignorant of the benefits of drinking anything else. Meanwhile, the Germans are smart, quick on their feet, and holy as Martin Luther. As the poem points out, the famous monk appreciated his wine and encouraged others to do so as well. With its simple structure and lyrics, this poem could probably be turned into a drinking song itself.
While this poem does crack jokes, it’s a smile on a pained face. Hermann and the rest of Gasconade County were major wine producers and this movement presented a real threat to the German American way of life. Before the Civil War, discourse among Americans on how to handle German cultural practices was common. The primary difference is that in tone and in the language used. To reach as wide of an audience as possible, English is used, and the tone is as if the author has been patient but can take the German outrages no longer. The German outrages here are that they do not observe many of the “Sunday Laws”, harsh temperance laws that often unfairly targeted new European immigrants from France, Italy, and especially Germany. However, Germans had their own newspapers to turn to.
By the time Anti-Temperenz had been published, German language newspapers had been present in Missouri for nearly two decades. The Missouri-German newspaper tradition began with the Anzeiger des Westens in the early 1830’s though there were many more to come. For instance, the paper that the poem appears in, Hermanner Wochenblatt, ran local news stories for a decade with only one notable gap, that being in 1848, a rather ominous year given what was happening in Germany at that same time. This paper not the last Wochenblatt published in Hermann though, with the uniquely named The Hermanner Wochenblatt beginning publication only a half-decade after its the paper which printed Anti-Temperenz. Aside from a name there does not appear to be any other connection between the two.
Anti Temperenz is an interesting little artifact. It is simultaneously a window into the thoughts of someone irritated enough to put their frustrations to paper but with a good enough sense of humor to make it a joke and sign their name as “Dude”. It never names the explicit target of its ire, but the whole poem is delivered with a wink and a nudge to the audience. And, most interesting of all, the little poem never appears anywhere else. It was not reprinted nor was it borrowed from some larger publication. It appears in a forgotten paper in an often forgotten time, but is nonetheless an incredible insight into daily life as a German American.
