Berlin/Kitchener, Ontario
Kitchener, named Berlin prior to 1916, is located some 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of Toronto in the center of Ontario’s main German settlement area. Founded by Pennsylvania German Mennonites at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Waterloo County with its center Berlin attracted many German immigrants.
As one of the main recipients of German immigrants from Europe, Berlin developed into the cultural, economic, and administrative center of the German settlement area, proudly promoting itself as “Canada’s German capital.” Prior to World War I, German immigrants and their descendants never accounted for less than 70 percent of the local population. Facing strong antiGerman feelings and actions, the community was renamed Kitchener during World War I, and by the end of the war its unique German identity had been destroyed. Kitchener’s strong German ties were reinforced after World War II, when large numbers of ethnic German immigrants who had been expelled from their homelands in Eastern Europe as well as former residents of Germany proper arrived in the community. As a result, the German presence has remained strong in Kitchener to the present day. According to the census of 2001, 47,380 out of a total population of 188,160, or 25 percent of Kitchener residents, consider themselves belonging to the German ethnic group (Statistics Canada, Census of 2001).The village, town, and then city of Berlin grew out of a little hamlet founded by Pennsylvania German pioneers at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Pennsylvania German leaders such as Mennon- ite bishop Benjamin Eby defined the parameters of community life during the early pioneer period, which came to an end shortly after the arrival of the first European Germans during the 1830s. The coming of the European Germans corresponded with the end of Mennonite immigration from Pennsylvania.
German immigrants brought with them to the community their highly diversified trades, which formed the basis for a strong local economy during the second half of the century. They also brought with them their Lutheran faith, the German language, traditions and customs, and forms of organizations. They founded German churches and congregations, choirs, a Turnverein (gymnastics association), a musical society, and theater and drama groups.By 1850 the European German presence was so predominant in Berlin that the community’s earlier Pennsylvania German identity was entirely replaced by a dominating European German character. Only very few Pennsylvania Germans contributed to Berlin’s developing urban lifestyle as entrepreneurs, administrators, merchants, or artisans; most chose to maintain their traditional religiously defined lifestyle instead. Berlin’s development into the urban center of Waterloo County, perpetuated by becoming the seat of that newly founded county in 1852 and its connection to the Grand Trunk Railway only four years later, contributed to the growing lack of understanding for the Mennonites’ traditional agricultural and isolated way of life among Berlin’s mostly European German population.
Berlin’s new European German character manifested itself in local festivities such as a celebration of Alexander von Humboldt’s one hundredth birthday in 1869 and the Friedensfest (Peace Festival) on May 2, 1871. According to contemporary sources, 10,000 Germans and nonGermans from Canada and the northern United States came together in Berlin to celebrate the end of the Franco-Prussian War and the founding of the German Empire. During the second half of the nineteenth century Berlin also hosted several Saengefests, large-scale choir festivals with visiting choirs from as far away as Montreal and Detroit. Berlin’s constructed European German identity culminated in 1897 with the erection of a monument to the late Emperor Wilhelm I in Victoria Park, the town’s public park, making Berlin the only community in Canada honoring a foreign monarch with a monument in a public park.
Under reference to Emperor Wilhelm I’s bust in their park, proponents of the community’s strong “German” identity usually referred to Berlin as Kaiserstadt (imperial city). The “nationalization” of the community’s cultural life was also expressed in the founding of a Schuetzen- verein (hunting club) and two veterans societies in which former soldiers from the German armies performed marches and public drills on official occasions. As late as January 1914, a group of about 100 Berliners, both immigrants and members of the Canadian-born generations, celebrated the German emperor Wilhelm Il’s birthday in one of the local German clubs.Despite the official image of Berlin as “Canada’s German capital” and “Kaiser- stadt Berlin,” local society underwent significant changes during the second half of the nineteenth century as the forces of acculturation went to work in Berlin, just as in other German ethnic neighborhoods. While old immigrants and community leaders held on to their German heritage and perpetuated the community’s official German image, members of the younger generations became more and more Canadian as the century progressed. They started to define themselves not as Germans living in Canada, as their parents and grandparents did, but as Canadians of German heritage. English-language services were introduced in most of Berlin’s churches from the 1890s onward. Although they did not replace German as the main language, these services clearly reflected changing demographics and the processes of acculturation, separating the old immigrants from their Canadian-born children and grandchildren. Regardless of such concessions, ethnic hardliners among the community leaders (pastors, mayors, and industrialists in particular) continued to represent Berlin to the anglophone Canadian community as exclusively German, overemphasizing the links between Berlin, Ontario, and Berlin, Germany, thereby creating the false image that Berlin’s Germans identified with imperial Germany rather than with their adopted homeland, Canada.
During the challenging years of World War I, Berlin was faced with the effects of this false constructed image as well as the consequences of growing anti-German sentiment and action in Canada.
Despite the fact that most Berlin factories were relentlessly contributing to the war effort by producing boots, textiles, and other products for the Canadian and the Allied armies, Berlin, as Canada’s most German community, even bearing the name of the enemy’s capital, was at the center of anti-German feelings in Canada. A loyalty crisis developed that originated both within and outside the community. It was spurred by widespread anti-German hysteria, the presence of military recruits, and local industrialists’ fear that products bearing the label “Made in Berlin” would not be able to sell anymore. Such fears were not entirely unfounded, as Berlin products were boycotted in communities such as Toronto, where signs advertising German beer brewed in Berlin, Ontario, were prohibited. Faced with growing propaganda not just against Germany but against German Canadians and Germanness as such, Berliners tried to express their loyalty to Canada and the cause of the war by any means possible: German-language education in schools, as well as German-language services in local churches, were terminated during the war. Berlin’s previously German-speaking congregations hosted smokers and dinners for the soldiers of the 118th Battalion, which was garrisoned in the community and was responsible for violent attacks on Canadians of German origin not willing to fight against the land of their parents and grandparents. The local German Concordia club closed its doors in 1915 but was nevertheless ransacked and its inventory destroyed by soldiers of the 118th Battalion. As an act of demonstrated loyalty, Berlin and neighboring Waterloo became the two commu-nities in Canada with the highest per capita contributions to the Canadian Patriotic Fund. After a bitter campaign the community changed its name from Berlin to Kitchener in 1916, after the late British minister of war, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener. Although Berlin passed this loyalty test, it failed in many other regards.
As was the case in other Ontario regions, Waterloo County with its center, Berlin, was not able to meet overambitious recruitment numbers for Canada’s overseas forces. Members of the community openly rejected conscription, and when Prime Minister Robert Borden visited Berlin in November 1917 to rally for conscription and his unionist government, he was shouted down by members of the local audience. By electing William D. Euler in the federal elections of December 17, 1917, Berlin and the riding of Waterloo North sent a declared anticon- scriptionist to Ottawa, thereby reinforcing the public perception that the community’s disloyal German spirit had survived the name change.After the experience of World War I, Kitchener developed into a more mainstream Canadian city. In the interwar years German cultural life was revitalized by the founding of new organizations, but German culture did not become predominant again in the life of the community. Attempts by a recent immigrant from Germany to establish a local National Socialist group in 1933 did not meet with wide support in the community. The Deutscher Bund, a militant pro-Nazi group, was established in Kitchener in 1934, but lacking response from within the community, moved its headquarters to Montreal shortly thereafter. The local chapter nevertheless organized a “German reunion” in September 1934 in which the British Union Jack and the swastika were hoisted side by side. Such expressions of loyalty to Nazi Germany were, however, not representative of the community at large. By the outbreak of World War II, most Germans had been assimilated, and Kitchener was spared a repetition of the loyalty crisis that had split the community during World War I. When Canada opened its doors again to German immigrants after the war, thousands of ethnic Germans who had been expelled from their homelands in Eastern Europe made Kitchener their new home and reinforced the German presence in the community. They came from Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, Poland, the Soviet Union, the Baltics, and elsewhere.
Together with post-World War II immigrants from Germany, they continue to contribute greatly to Kitchener’s rich cultural and economic life. At present, Kitchener is home to an annual Christkindl market, German Pioneers day, several German-speaking clubs, and North America’s largest Oktoberfest, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. Successful entrepreneurs and professionals have organized themselves in the German Canadian Business and Professional Organization. Due to a changed immigration pattern since the 1980s, German Canadians have developed into one of many, albeit highly visible, groups within the local ethnic mosaic of Kitchener, Ontario.Ulrich Frisse
See also Humboldt, Alexander von; Ontario; Turner Societies; Waterloo, Ontario; Waterloo County, Ontario
References and Further Reading
English, John, and Kenneth McLaughlin.
Kitchener: An Illustrated History. 2nd ed. Toronto: Robin Brass, 1996.
Frisse, Ulrich. “Through German-Canadian Eyes: A Revisionist Approach to the Historical Identity of Berlin, Ontario.” Waterloo Historical Society 91 (2003): 54-81.
------. Berlin, Ontario (1800-1916): Historische Identitaeten von “Kanadas Deutscher Hauptstadt. ” Ein Beitrag zur Deutsch-Kanadischen Migrations-, Akkulturations- und Perzeptionsgeschichte des 19. und fruehen 20. Jahrhunderts.
Kitchener, ON: Transatlantic Publishing, 2003.
Uttley, W. V. (Ben). A History of Kitchener, Ontario. Waterloo, ON: The Chronicle Press, 1937.