Nicholas Kumanoff’s “Born German, Made American” in The Atlantic Times reveals how “to demonstrate their patriotism, immigrants abandoned their old identities.” In the wake of “virulent anti-German sentiment” that spread to several states, German classes were banned in schools, German books were burned in the streets, frankfurters were turned into hot dogs, and sauerkraut was became “liberty cabbage”.
Anyone with a German name was suspicious and subject to harassment. The American Defense Society announced that a German-American, “unless known by years of association to be absolutely loyal, should be treated as a potential spy.”
This reminds me that when I was 18, I told my grandmother Vivian Hoover that I was going to the German-American Festival. She was visiting Grandpa and Grandma (Arthur and Vivian Hoover) on our farm in Risingsun, Ohio. She said: “Why are you going? You are not German.” I said that our name was German (although it has been anglicised). She blurted out, “You’re English. Your grandfather has a father of pure English descent” and something to the effect that his family also had English ties (and we’re clearly traced back to England and Ireland, as well as Scotland on my mother’s side). . I replied that you don’t have to be German to attend the German-American Festival anyway.
My grandfather Arthur Hoover’s mother, Hattie Mervin, was born in England. My great-great-grandfather, John Mervin, arrived in the United States a year before his wife and children joined him (after being shipwrecked three times on the way).
I mentioned this incident to my great aunt, Neva Scoviac, Grandma Hoover’s sister, during a visit to her home in Hudson, Michigan several years ago (grandma died in 1980) and she said we are German. Grandma and Aunt Neva’s maiden name is Ort, Pennsylvania Dutch, German. (I vaguely remember Grandma saying something about Pennsylvania Dutch a long time ago, but then I thought it just meant Dutch, not Deutsche.)
Aunt Neva served as a nurse during World War II and her brothers, my great-uncles, served in the Philippines. Aunt Neva said that after the war, especially when “we heard all the horrible stories” about what happened during the war, the Holocaust, you didn’t want to be known as German or associated with Germany. He feels that this is why Grandma was so insistent that we are English.
As someone who believes in the Israelite origins of the West, the Hebrew roots of the Anglo-Saxons, and the white peoples of northwestern Europe, I can see the hand of God in this dissociation from Gentile Germany. I can perceive Divine Providence playing its prophetic role in having sifted the Israelite tribes, specifically Manasseh, the son of Joseph, through Germany and separated us from those who are truly Assyro-Germans, literally distancing us from those Germans left behind. , taking us to this Promised Land of the United States, taking on a new identity, an American one, restoring our identity as Manasseh with our brothers – the “Ten Lost Tribes” – who emigrated from other countries where they had resided, through great works like United States and Great Britain in prophecy by Herbert W. Armstrong.
May God bless the United States of America, the Biblical heritage of the Tribe of Manasseh. And God bless Germany for working with us (not against us) as they lead the European Union.
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John Mervin