While the U.S. Fought Germans in Europe, Iowa Fought Their Language at Home
One hundred years ago, on May 23, 1918, Gov. William Harding proclaimed a ban on the use of all languages other than English in public conversation, in churches and schools, and in telephone conversations. Just like Henry Ford and his car color options of the time, all Iowans were guaranteed free speech — as long as it was in English.
The year before, when the United States entered the First World War, the Iowa State Council of Defense purged Iowa libraries of pro-German literature and burned German-friendly library books.
At the turn of the century, Iowans of Germans ancestry composed the largest portion of Iowa’s immigrant pool, especially in rural areas. Historian Peter Hoehnle wrote that in 1920, half of all Iowa farmers were of German descent.
But the governor’s so-called “Babel Proclamation” didn’t affect just Germans. It also hit Danes, Norwegians, Dutch and other foreign-speaking immigrants in Iowa. No fewer than 23 non-German ethnic groups protested the decree.
In response, Gov. Harding doubled down and stated that all foreign language aided and abetted espionage. Ironically, the English-only proclamation banned Meskwakis from speaking the Algonquian dialect they had spoken for centuries before Iowa’s first English speakers showed up. Adding to the irony, the proclamation was issued even while Choctaw men were engaged at the front lines of the Great War, using their unique language skills to thwart German attempts to hack into Allied lines of communication.
Many German-Americans got the message. Some altered the spelling of their family names and changed their community place names altogether. In Iowa, Clinton County’s Berlin Township became Grant Township. The Tama County town of Berlin became Lincoln. The voters of Germania in Kossuth County changed their town name to Lakota, and in Muscatine, Hanover Street became Liberty Street and Bismarck Street was sunk in favor of Bond Street.
A Des Moines Register editorial described the order as “ill-considered” and called for its immediate withdrawal. Lawyers weighed in on its constitutionality. The ban was ignored, hailed, condemned and litigated during the remainder of the war and afterward.
One of the hot spots of the debate was Cedar Rapids, where self-identified patriots targeted the city’s large Bohemian population by forming ad hoc “loyalty” or “slacker” courts to punish those who didn’t sufficiently contribute to the war effort. (It’s worth noting that disagreements didn’t always split along straight ethnic lines. Many Germans supported the war and many non-Germans opposed it. Some ministers decided to deliver half of their sermons in German and the other half in English.)
Vigilante efforts to shame those who were deemed insufficiently patriotic spread statewide throughout 1918. In April, a Danish-American farmer named Rasmus Bendixen of Pocahontas County had his barn painted yellow — the color of cowards — due to his perceived lack of support of the war. In August, a mob in the Cedar County town of Clarence painted a furniture store, restaurant, garage and telephone office yellow because of the owners’ pro-German reputation. The Leopold Desk Company of Burlington had a can of yellow paint thrown at its door in September as retribution for not participating in a local parade. In response, the company’s manager told The Burlington Hawk Eye that they were producing goods for the war and saw that as a more important duty.
It should be noted that President Woodrow Wilson asked citizens of foreign birth to include “speeches in foreign tongues” as part of their Fourth of July celebrations during the summer of 1918.
Even so, it was a difficult time for German-Americans and their culture. Americans of German descent had to struggle against the tide, but they persevered and eventually regained their footing alongside other ethnic groups.
Today, Iowa is the proud home of a 17th-century German Hausbarn (a combination home and barn) that was shipped from Germany and re-assembled in Manning, where it is the focal point for the annual Christmas Weinachtsfest. DeWitt is home to another Hausbarn that houses the local chamber of commerce. There are annual German celebrations in the Amana Colonies and, of course, Davenport’s German American Heritage Center, which aims to “preserve and enrich for present and future generations knowledge of the German immigrant experience and its impact on the American Culture.”
Today, it’s worth noting that Cedar Rapids, the city where the English-only debate raged in 1918, now has what is probably the state’s only street named after a former Nazi. Lippisch Place was named after Alexander Martin Lippisch, who was one of 1,600 German scientists who were hustled out of Germany during Operation Paper Clip at the end of World War II. Lippisch eventually settled in the United States and had a productive career both with Collins Radio Company and later a company of his own making. By the end of his career, his earlier work on German rockets and Messerschmitt planes was redeemed by his contributions to American aeronautical engineering and business.
The last century represents a long journey for a state where German measles were renamed Liberty measles and sauerkraut became liberty cabbage.
On December 4, 1918, Gov. Harding repealed the English-only proclamation, but the lingering intolerance had a lasting impact on our cultural heritage.
— Guest blogger Tim Lane was born in Waterloo and graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with a history degree in 1971. Although his career path was in public health, he never lost his passion for history — a passion fueled during 50 bike rides across Iowa that provided countless historical insights and amazing scenery.
