Chronology of Germany and the Americas

1507 Martin Waldseemuller publishes a col­lection entitled Cosmographiae Introduc- tio (Introduction to Cosmography) with a world map, in which he suggests naming the newly discovered continent America.

1519 Ulrich von Hutten publishes his book De Guaiaci Medicina et morbo gallicus liber unus (Of the Wood Called Gua- iacum). It confirms his status as the most prominent early European victim of syphilis, which was introduced to Eu­rope by Spanish sailors returning from the New World after 1492.

1525 The printer Jacob Cromberger and his son-in-law Lazarus Nurnberger are the first Germans to receive permission to enter the American trade, which has until now been exclusively reserved for Spaniards.

1527 Representatives of the Welser firm of Augsburg contract with the Spanish crown to transport fifty miners from Saxony to the American continent, where they are to extract precious met­als on the island of Santo Domingo and in other provinces.

1528 Heinrich Ehinger and Hieronymus Sailer, acting for the Augsburg firm of Bartholomaus Welser, conclude a treaty with Emperor Charles V of Spain that gives them jurisdiction over the territory that will become known as Venezuela.

1557 Hans Staden publishes his Wahrhaftige Historia und Beschreibung eines Landes der wilden, nackten und grimmigen Menschenfresser, in der Neuen Welt Amerika gelegen (True History and De­scription of a Country of Wild, Naked, Terrible Man-eaters Who Dwell in the New World Called America) in Mar­burg. Staden’s Wahrhaftige Historia rep­resents one of the earliest American In­dian captivity narratives—if not the earliest captivity narrative of all.

1567 Ulrich (Utz) Schmidel from Straubing publishes a description of his trip and twenty-year sojourn in the La Plata re­gion of Argentina under the title Wahrhafftige Historien einer Wunder- baren Schiffart (True Stories from a Marvelous Journey).

c. 1598 The first German Jesuit to serve as a missionary overseas appears to be Peter de Gouveia from Edister, who is made coadjutor of the village of San Bernabe in Brazil.

1683 Thirteen Dutch Quaker families from Crefeld arrive in Philadelphia and settle in what is to become the first self-con­scious attempt to create a German set­tlement in North America. Francis Daniel Pastorius, the agent of the Ger­man settlers, envisions this community as a “Germanopolis” or “little German city.”

1691 German Jesuit Samuel Fritz produces the first accurate map of the Amazon River.

Eusebius Franciscus Kino makes the first of many expeditions to what will become modern Arizona, and by locat­ing the source of the Colorado River he definitively proves that (Baja) California is not an island.

1710 Samuel Guldin is the first ordained German Reformed minister to arrive in Pennsylvania.

The first-known significant German immigrant group from the Palatinate arrives in New York City.

1720 John Law, a Scottish emigrant to France and the founder of the Compagnie des Indoes (Company of the Indies), brings the first German settlers to Louisiana.

c. 1728 Conrad Beissel founds a monastic com­munity of Sabbatarians in northern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which he names Ephrata.

1731 German-speaking Silesian Schwenk- felders immigrate to Pennsylvania in six waves of migration between 1731 and 1737.

1732 Benjamin Franklin is the first to print a

German-language newspaper, the

Philadelphische Zeitung (Philadelphia News), in Britain’s North American colonies. The paper, however, soon fails.

1734 German Lutherans living in the Tyrol region are forced into exile by the arch­bishop of Salzburg. These “Salzburg Germans” cross the Atlantic and arrive in Charleston, South Carolina, before continuing on to Savannah, Georgia. Their arrival marks the beginning of German settlement in Georgia. They call their new town “Ebenezer.”

1735 German American printer John Peter Zenger is charged with libel for criti­cism of New York governor William Cosby published in the New York Weekly Journal, which was printed in Zenger’s establishment.

1737 The Pennsylvania German Indian agent Conrad Weiser develops a pacifist colo­nial policy for dealing with the Iroquois Confederacy. His successful negotia­tions on behalf of the Pennsylvania provincial government with the Iro­quois authority in Pennsylvania avoid military confrontation between settlers and Indians.

1738 The German printer Christoph Sauer of Germantown, Pennsylvania, begins publishing the Hoch-Deutsch Pennsyl- vanische Geschichts-Schreiber (High Ger­man Pennsylvania Chronicle), later known as the Pennsylvanische Berichte (Pennsylvania Reports).

1741 Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf

founds the Pennsylvania Synod, a pre- ecumenical gathering of pietists.

1748 Pennsylvania German Lutheran clergy­man Henry Melchior Muhlenberg or­ganizes the Lutheran churches into the first Lutheran Church synod in the American colonies, officially known as the Ministerium of Pennsylvania.

1750 The first significant German-speaking settler groups arrive in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They come from the German Palatinate, Switzerland, the Nether­lands, and other German-speaking areas.

1753 The British establish the predominantly German settlement of Lunenburg in Nova Scotia.

1764 The German Society of Pennsylvania is founded with the purpose of protecting new immigrants.

1776 Pennsylvania German minister John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg delivers his famous farewell sermon to his parish. According to legend, he concludes with the phrase: “There is a time to pray and a time to fight, and that time has now come!” With that statement, he throws off his gown at the pulpit, revealing the uniform of a Continental Army colonel.

Prince Friedrich II of Hesse-Cassel en­ters into a treaty with his brother-in­law, George III of England, according to which Hesse-Cassel promises to sup­ply about 12,000 troops annually for military duty in Britain’s North Ameri­can colonies.

1777 Benjamin Franklin, the American am­bassador to Paris, offers Friedrich Steuben a place in the Continental Army as a drillmaster. Franklin liberally exaggerates his qualifications to George Washington, promoting Steuben to major general and emphasizing the “von” title, which the Steuben family had never used. After Steuben arrives in Britain’s North American colonies, he trains a “model company” in European- style military drill in order for them to train the remaining rebel forces.

1778 The brothers Johann Anton and Peter Paul (von) Obwexer of Augsburg estab­lish a trading house on the Caribbean island of Curasao, where their represen­tative Pierre Brion markets central Eu­ropean textiles imported via Amsterdam and purchases tropical goods.

1779 August Ludwig von Schlozer publishes his Vertrauliche Briefe aus Kanada und Neu-England vom Jahre 1777 und 1778 (Confidential Letters from Canada and New England, 1777 and 1778).

1781 The decisive battle at Yorktown, Vir­ginia, becomes the most “German” of all battles during the American War of Independence as both sides, Americans as well as the British, rely on German support.

1784 The German Society of the City of New York is formed after the model of the German Society of Philadelphia. Its goal is to aid German immigrants to New York City.

1785 The United States and Prussia conclude their first commercial treaty.

1786 The first Mennonite settlements are es­tablished in Ontario, Canada.

1788 German immigrant Anton Heinrich publishes Canada’s first German news­paper, the Neu-Schottlaendischer Kalen- der (Nova-Scotian Calendar) in Halifax.

1789 Pennsylvania German politician Freder­ick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg is elected the first Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives.

1793 The Reformed Coetus formally severs its European connection and consti­tutes itself as the Synod of the German Reformed Church in the United States of America.

1799 Alexander von Humboldt, together

with the French botanist Aime Bon- pland, embarks on his South American expedition.

1804 George Rapp brings a group of German religious dissenters from Wurttemberg to Pennsylvania, where they found one of the most successful communal soci­eties in nineteenth-century America— the Harmony Society.

1806 Pennsylvania German immigrant Abra­ham Erb founds Waterloo, Ontario. Lo­cated in the center of a large Pennsylva­nia German colony, Waterloo over the years develops into Waterloo County’s agricultural center.

1806 German linguists Johann Christoph

(cont.) Adelung and Johann Severin Vater

begin publication of the Mithridates. This eminent work of comparative lin­guistics includes the first comprehensive analysis and reference work of the known American Indian languages.

1807 The Mennonite bishop Benjamin Eby leads members from his community in Pennsylvania to settle in Ontario, Upper Canada. The hamlet is estab­lished under the name Ebytown and later renamed Berlin.

1815 Prince Maximilian von Wied-Neuwied embarks on his expedition to Brazil. After a stay in Rio de Janeiro he sets out for the coastal region north of Rio, to­gether with the ornithologist Georg Wilhelm Freyreiss and the botanist Friedrich Sellow. Although only a few miles from the coast, this jungle area had scarcely been explored. The Indian peoples of the Coropo, Coroado, Puri, Pataxo, and Camacan live here largely untouched by European civilization. Prince Maximilian spends several months among the Botokude before reaching Bahia (Salvador) in April 1817. The detailed ethnological obser­vations that he publishes in his travel account (Reise nach Brasilien in den Jahren 1815 bis 1817 [Journey to Brazil in the years 1815 to 1817], 2 vols., 1820-1821) provide the first compre­hensive description of this area. The ex­pedition to Brazil makes Maximilian fa­mous, and his home at Neuwied becomes a meeting place for numerous learned visitors.

1817 The marriage of Princess Leopoldine, the daughter of Emperor Francis I, with Portuguese crown prince Dom Pedro sparks a large-scale Austrian expedition into Brazil.

The Hessian nobleman Wilhelm Lud­wig von Eschwege becomes general di­rector of Brazil’s gold mines.

1818 The first German settlements are estab­lished in southern Bahia and Nova Friburgo in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

1821 German globetrotter and Russian con­sul general to Brazil Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff publishes his book Be- merkungen uber Brasilien. Mit gewis- senhafter Belehrung fur auswandernde Deutsche (Remarks on Brazil: With Careful Advice for Germans Who Are Considering Emigration) to promote German emigration to Brazil.

1823 Harvard professor George Ticknor pre­sents his reform of Harvard University, which is inspired by his experiences at the University of Gottingen. Ticknor proposes two major reorganizations. First, the students are to be grouped by ability. Second, traditional classes will be abolished and the college organized by departments. As at Gottingen, stu­dents may advance at their own pace through examination, rather than as a group by recitation.

1824 A group of Rhenish and Westphalian merchants and manufacturers in Elber­feld creates the Deutsch-Mexikanischer Bergwerks-Verein (German-Mexican Mining Society), later renamed Deutsch-Amerikanischer Bergwerksverein (German-American Mining Society).

1825 The first theological seminary of the German Reformed Church in the United States is opened in Carlisle.

1826 Prussia and Mexico conclude their first trade treaty based on the principle of mutual preferential treatment.

1827 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe writes his famous poem “Den Vereinigten Staaten” (To the United States).

1828 German American scholar Charles Follen publishes his German grammar. It is the first to be used widely in Amer­ican schools and eventually appears in over twenty editions in the next three decades. In addition, he publishes his Deutsches Lesebuch fur Anfanger (A Ger­man Reading Book for Beginners) in the United States, which includes selec­tions from the writings of numerous au­thors, including Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Christoph Martin Wieland, Novalis, and Friedrich Schiller. This textbook is used for several decades in American colleges.

1829 Gottfried Duden publishes his famous Bericht uber eine Reise nach den west­lichen Staaten Nordamerikas und einen mehrjahrigen Aufenthalt am Missouri in den Jahren 1824, 25, 26 und 27. In Bezug auf Auswanderung und Uber- bevolkerung (Report on a Journey to the Western States of America and a Stay of Several Years Along the Missouri during the Years 1824, 1825, 1826, and 1827).

Bremerhaven is opened and facilitates much of German immigration to North America.

Francis Lieber begins the publication of the famous thirteen-volume Encyclopae­dia Americana, Popular Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, History, Politics and Biography, Brought Down to the Present Time; Including a Copious Collec­tion of Original Articles in American Biography; On the Basis of the Seventh Edition of the German Conversations- Lexicon in Philadelphia. This encyclope­dia represents the successful transfer and adaptation of the German type of encyclopedia, namely Brockhaus’s twelve-volume Allgemeine deutsche Real- Encyclopaedie fur die gebildeten Stande or Conversations-Lexikon (Universal Ger­man Encyclopedia for the Educated Classes, 1827-1829).

The Vienna-based Leopoldine Founda­tion, which will support the develop­ment of the Catholic Church in North America during the nineteenth century, is founded. The goal of the society is to support Catholics in North America through the donation of funds and spir­itual articles.

German writer Charles Sealsfield, after Karl May the most popular German novelist using American settings, pub­lishes his first novel Tokeah and the White Rose, which is apparently written first in English.

1830 German American philologist Johann Gottfried Flugel publishes his Complete Dictionary of the English and German Languages, which also contains a great number of americanisms. Enlarged, up­dated, and newly edited by his son Felix, it becomes a standard work, ap­pearing in its fifteenth edition in 1891.

Karl C. Satorius brings German settlers to Veracruz, Mexico, and assembles a small colony of Germans in the tropics.

1833 The Frankfurt banker August Belmont moves to New York City, where he rep­resents the banking house of the Roth­schilds.

1834 Detlef Dunt publishes one of the earli­est German guidebooks to Texas enti­tled Reise nach Texas, nebst Nachrichten von diesem Lande; fur Deutsche, welche nach Amerika zu gehen beabsichtigen (Journey to Texas: With Information about This Land for Germans Planning to Go to America).

1834 German Jacksonian Democrats estab- (cont.) lish the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung (New

York Public News), which becomes the most important German-language pub­lication in the city and by far the most successful German newspaper in the United States after the American Civil War. Its circulation rises above 50,000 in the 1880s, making it the sixth-largest newspaper in the United States. It will become the longest-lasting German newspaper in America and, by the end of the nineteenth century, the largest and most powerful. It is the oldest Ger­man-language newspaper still operating in the United States.

1835 The Anzeiger des Westens (Western In­former) in St. Louis, Missouri, is the first German-language newspaper to be published west of the Mississippi River.

The first German immigrants arrive in Jamaica and settle around Seaford Town.

The Canada Museum und Allgemeine Zeitung (Canada Museum and General Newspaper) is launched as Ontario’s first German-language paper.

1836 John Jacob Astor opens the Astor House in New York City as the finest hotel in the United States.

1837 Hermann, Missouri, is founded by a group of Philadelphia Germans. It at­tracts freethinkers, left-liberals, and eventually Forty-Eighters.

1838 The Ludwig-Missionsverein is formed with the permission of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and directed by the arch­bishop of Munich-Freising. It is charged with promotion of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.

1839 Prince Maximilian von Wied-Neuwied publishes his Reise in das innere Nord- Amerika (Travels in the Interior of North America), which is illustrated by Karl Bodmer.

John Lothrop Motley publishes his first novel, Mortons Hope. Its main character is the dueling, drunken, and rebellious Otto von Rabenmarck, who represents Otto von Bismarck with whom Motley is befriended from their student days at Gottingen and Berlin.

c. 1840 From the 1840s on, the Little Germany on Manhattan Island becomes the largest residential area and most impor­tant settlement of German immigrants in New York City.

1840 The Sons of Hermann is founded in New York City as a German American fraternal order. It works for solidarity among German immigrants in the United States through the promotion of their common heritage and traditions.

1842 Twenty-one German noblemen inter­ested in founding a German colony in Texas create the Verein zum Schutze deutscher Einwanderer in Texas (Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas) at Biebrich on the Rhine.

The first Jewish Reform congregation in the United States, the Har Sinai Verein (Har Sinai Association), is established in Baltimore by a group of German Jewish laymen and modeled after the Hamburg Temple.

1843 Twelve German Jews establish the Jew­ish fraternal order B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant) in New York City.

1844 The German American brewer Jacob Best establishes the Pabst Brewing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1845 Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels estab­lishes the hamlet of New Braunfels in Texas. A few weeks later, Baron Otfried Hans Freiherr von Meusebach founds Fredericksburg in Texas.

1846 The Bavarian monk Boniface Wimmer founds St. Vincent Archabbey, near La­trobe, Pennsylvania, as the first Bene­dictine monastery in the United States and one of the first Roman Catholic in­stitutions in the United States to see to the needs of German Catholic immi­

grants. The monastery, located in the Diocese of Greensburg (formerly part of the Diocese of Pittsburgh), forms a col­lege and sends out missions to establish many of the early Benedictine monastic communities in the country.

American travel writer Bayard Taylor publishes his widely popular travel ac­count of Germany Views A-Foot, or, Eu­rope Seen with Knapsack and Staff.

A group of young German Jewish women of the newly founded Temple Emanu-El in New York City, guided by Henriette Bruckman, the wife of a Ger­man Jewish medical doctor in New York’s Little Germany, establish the Un- abhangiger Orden Treuer Schwestern (UOTS). This American Jewish sororal order is supposedly the first such orga­nization exclusively for women in the United States.

1847 The Darmstaedters or “The Forty,” a group of thirty-four young men from the duchy of Baden, immigrate to Texas to form a utopian communistic settlement.

A group of Hamburg ship owners comes together to form a shipping line, christening it the Hamburg- Amerikanische-Paketfahrt-Aktien- Gesellschaft (Hapag).

Die Deutsche Evangelisch-Lutherische Synode von Missouri, Ohio und an- deren Staaten (The German Evangeli- cal-Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States) is founded.

The Deutsche Gesellschaft (German Society) of New Orleans is established with the goal of providing support for the numerous German immigrants in the New Orleans area by arranging for housing, helping them to find employ­ment, and assisting them in reaching their ultimate destinations.

1848 In his last will German American mer­chant John Jacob Astor gives orders to build the Astor Library, which will be­come at the end of the nineteenth cen­tury, together with two other libraries, the New York Public Library.

Frankfurt citizens found the Frank­furter Verein zum Schutz der Auswan- derer (Frankfurt Association for the Protection of Emigrants). Its purpose is to organize individual, as well as group, emigration in a safe and modest way.

The Illinois Staatszeitung (Illinois Pub­lic News) is founded. It will become one of the leading German American daily newspapers during the nineteenth century.

1848—1849 The failure of the national liberal revo­lutions in central Europe forces many liberal intellectuals to flee the German­speaking countries. These Forty- Eighters settle mostly in the United States and Brazil.

German refugees of the failed German revolutions found the first Turner soci­eties in the United States.

1849 German American painter Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze begins working on his famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware in Dusseldorf.

Moravian brothers (Herrnhuter Brudergemeine) establish their first mis­sion in Bluefields (Mosquito Coast).

The Wendish migration to Texas be­gins.

1850 Blumenau, Santa Catarina (Brazil), is founded by seventeen German immi­grants. The city will be dominated by German architecture and culture into the twenty-first century.

1851 The Brummer, German mercenaries who had fought in the war of inde­pendence for the two duchies of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark in 1848 and 1849, emigrate to Brazil where they will serve in the army in ex­change for land to be given to them upon completion of their four years of military service.

1851 German immigrants begin to settle (cont.) around Lake Llanquique in Chile. By

1861, several communities will have de­veloped around the lake.

The Socialistischer Turnerbund von Nordamerika (Socialist Turner Union of North America) is founded.

German socialist Wilhelm Weitling cre­ates his Socialist colony Communia in County Clayton, Iowa.

1852 The German translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin sets the paradigm for a German discussion of slavery. A point of reference for exposi­tory texts and an influential model for many novels on slavery, it will have a vital impact on German attitudes toward slavery during the nineteenth century.

Cincinnati businessman Robert B. Bowler, an avid horticulturalist, hires German landscape architect Adolph Strauch to design the landscape of his new seventy-three-acre estate, Mount Storm (a public park in 2005) in the picturesque hilltop village of Clifton, newly incorporated just north of the old city of Cincinnati. Strauch also “im­proves” the landscapes of Robert Buchanan’s forty-three-acre Greenhills, George Neff’s twenty-five-acre The Windings, Henry Probasco’s thirty-acre Oakwood, William Resor’s Greendale, and George Schoenberger’s forty-seven- acre Scarlet Oaks—all without walls or fences so that the whole neighborhood looks like a large, unified park reached by sinuous drives through undulating terrain for a processional revealing “a se­quence of carefully designed, gradually unfolding views.” Clifton, one of the first picturesque designed suburbs, is ac­claimed the “Eden of Cincinnati Aris­tocracy” by Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil and the prince of Wales.

1853 The German American politician Gus­tave Koerner is elected lieutenant gover­nor of Illinois.

1854 A group of prominent Germans in Philadelphia founds Egg Harbor as a pure German hamlet outside the city. Envisioned as “a new German home in America. A refuge for all German coun­trymen who want to combine and enjoy American freedom with German Gemutlichkeit” it has the distinction of being the most “German” town in America. As late as 1900 virtually every­one in Egg Harbor will still be speaking German.

Wendish immigrants found the settle­ment of Serbin in Texas.

1855 The Amana Society establishes the Amana Colonies in Amana, East Amana, Middle Amana, High Amana, West Amana, South Amana, and Homestead located in the Iowa River valley in Iowa County in east-central Iowa.

Chicago witnesses the so-called Beer Riot, a violent protest of German and Irish immigrants against a ban on the public sale and consumption of alcohol by the city.

The German Catholic Central-Verein is founded in Baltimore. Originally organ­ized as a confederation of parish-based mutual aid societies, it is at first oriented to the social, economic, and religious needs of first-generation immigrants.

Roman Catholic missionary priest Francis Xavier Pierz publishes his book Die Indianer in Nord-Amerika (The In­dians of North America). This book is intended to encourage Catholic immi­grants to come to Minnesota (Min­nesota Holy Land).

1856 One of the very first German Brazilian almanacs, Der neue hinkende Teufel. Deutscher Volkskalender fur das Jahr 1856 fur die Provinz S. Pedro do Sul (The New Limping Devil. German Popular Calendar for the Year 1856 for the Province of S. Pedro do Sul, 1856—1858) is published.

Margarethe A. Schurz opens the first kindergarten in the United States in Milwaukee.

1857 Two Bremen shippers, Carl Eduard Crusemann and Hermann Henrich Meier, form the Norddeutscher Lloyd (North German Lloyd). It will become one of the world’s largest shipping firms before World War I. Its main route cov­ers the Atlantic and it serves as a major tie between the United States and Eu­rope as it takes out emigrants and brings back staple goods. Luxury liners ferry elite passengers between Germany and America.

1858 New York City’s Central Park opens. This first landscaped public park in the United States could not have been envi­sioned, let alone built, without a pro­found knowledge of German garden theory and German garden design.

Heinrich Balduin Mollhausen (the “German James Fenimore Cooper”) publishes his first book Tagebuch einer Reise vom Mississippi nach den Kusten der Sudsee (Diary of a Journey from the Mississippi to the Coasts of the Pacific).

1859 Friedrich Rittinger and John Motz found the weekly German-language newspaper Berliner Journal that will be published every Thursday, without in­terruption, from now until 1918 in Berlin (Kitchener), Ontario.

Robert Ave-Lallemant, a physician from Lubeck returning from Brazil, reports about the horrible conditions of Ger­man colonists at the Mucury River in Minas Gerais, who have been deprived of their rights and are being exploited by lack of sufficient nourishment and medical care as well as rising indebted­ness. Ave-Lallemant speaks of “human butchery” and labels any further immi­gration to Brazil as “unsafe and danger­ous.” Prussian authorities react immedi­ately. An edict is issued that revokes all concessions permitting recruitment granted previously and forbids all fur­ther recruitment for emigration to Brazil. The edict soon becomes known as the von-der-Heydt’sches Rescript (Heydt Edict) after Baron August von der Heydt, the Prussian minister for trade and industry whose department handles emigration.

1861 Frankfurt banking houses financially support the Union in the American Civil War, holding nearly 40 percent of the North’s debts, which will rise from $90 million to $2.74 billion between 1860 and 1865.

Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutze receives a government commission for a painting to be called Westward the Course of Em­pire Takes Its Way (popularly Westward Ho!). After an excursion into the Rocky Mountains, Leutze paints the mural di­rectly upon the wall of the great stair­way in the U.S. House of Representa­tives in Washington, D.C.

1862 The 82nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which includes numerous German volunteers, is mustered into service for fighting in the American Civil War.

In the Battle of the Nueces, German militiamen from Texas who want to join the Union army are massacred by Texas Confederate troops at the Nueces River, near where the town of Comfort will be established.

1863 With U.S. aid, the first German Protes­tant church in Chile is built in Osorno.

1864 Austrian-born Emperor Maximilian ends discriminatory legislation in Mex­ico that had discouraged immigration. Enticed by the prospect of living under the rule of Maximilian, thousands of German-speaking immigrants flock to Mexico. The vast majority of these im­migrants are young, male, and single, and many of them will return home after Maximilian’s execution in 1867.

1864 For his role in the capture of Atlanta, Georgia, German American Peter J. Os- terhaus is promoted to major general of the Union army. He is one of five Ger­man Americans (the others being Au­gust Willich, Franz Sigel, Carl Schurz, and Edward S. Salomon) to reach the rank of major general in the American Civil War.

1865 German American Mathilde Franziska Anneke, together with Cecilia Kapp, opens her Tochter Institut (Daughters Institute) in Milwaukee.

Henry Wirz, a German-speaking Swiss immigrant to America who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and commanded the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp from April 1864 to the end of the war in April 1865, is put on trial for war crimes. Arrested by Union military forces, he is questioned, released, rearrested, and sent to Wash­ington for a war crimes trial relating to his treatment of prisoners at the Ander­sonville camp. He is convicted and exe­cuted for “murder in violation of the laws and customs of war.”

1867 German American engineers John Au­gustus and Washington Augustus Roebling begin planning the construc­tion of the suspension bridge that will link Manhattan with Brooklyn across the East River.

1870 U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant ap­points Edward S. Salomon, the highest- ranking German Jewish officer in the Union army during the American Civil War, to the position of territorial gover­nor of the Washington Territory.

1871 Simon Peter Paul Cahensly founds the St. Raphaels-Verein zum Schutz der katholischen deutschen Auswanderer (St. Raphael’s Association for the Pro­tection of German Catholic Emigrants) in Mainz.

c. 1871 Brazil’s government propagates the

perigo alemao (German scare) that will continue until World War I. German Brazilians living in the southern provinces of Brazil are feared to be a fifth column of the German Empire that might eventually help Wilhelm I to establish colonies in Brazil.

1872 German Brazilians in Porto Alegre or­ganize the first Kaiserfeier to celebrate the birthday of Wilhelm I.

German priest John Joseph Jessing es­tablishes the Ohio Waisenfreund (Ohio Orphan’s Friend), which quickly gains a significant voice in the German Ameri­can Catholic press of Ohio.

Several Waterloo County, Ontario, publishers found the Deutsch-Kana- discher Pressverein (German-Canadian Press Association) to lobby for German- language education in Ontario’s public schools.

St. Louis’s daily Catholic newspaper, Die Amerika, begins publication. It will become the largest and most successful German Catholic daily in the United States.

The Canadian government adopts a proactive immigration policy, resulting in a system of immigration agencies in Europe. Jakob Emil Klotz of Preston becomes Canadian emigration agent in Hamburg, while Wilhelm Hespeler of Waterloo is appointed Canadian immi­gration agent in charge of all German­speaking territories in Europe and takes up his post in Straβburg, Alsace. Berlin industrialist Jacob Yost Shantz becomes a leading organizer and activist for the settlement of several thousand German­speaking Russian Mennonites in Mani­toba, and later establishes his own colony in Didsbury, Alberta, which at­tracts many descendants of German pi­oneers from Waterloo County.

1873 Reform Jewish congregations of the West and South launch the formation of a national lay union of Jewish con­gregations in the United States, the Union of American Hebrew Congrega­tions (UAHC), in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1874 James Morgan Hart publishes his book German Universities: A Narrative of Per­sonal Experiences. Together with Recent Statistical Information, Practical Sugges­tions, and a Comparison of the German, English and American Systems of Higher Education.

1875 Philip Becker and Henry Overstolz are the first German immigrants to serve as mayors of major American cities—Buf­falo (New York) and St. Louis (Mis­souri).

The Hebrew Union College (HUC) is founded in Cincinnati and begins train­ing American rabbinical students.

1876 Johns Hopkins University is founded. It will come to be considered the most “German” of all American universities.

German American educator Karl Gott­fried Maeser is appointed principal of the Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Utah.

Karl May begins publishing his famous Winnetou in three volumes.

An average of 30,000 Volga Germans from Russia per year begin arriving in the United States and settling in Kansas, the Dakotas, and Oregon along the lines of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Aided by the U.S. Homestead Act and subsidized loans from the railroads, Volga German communities spread across the upper Midwest. The influx will continue at these levels until 1914.

1877 U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes ap­points Carl Schurz secretary of the inte­rior. Schurz effectively reorganizes the Indian affairs administration and intro­duces many civil service reforms.

The Socialist Labor Party of the United States is founded. The party has a pre­dominantly German working-class membership.

1878 The German parliament passes the Anti-Socialist Laws, which force many Social Democrats to leave Germany and emigrate to North America.

1881 The two first German assemblymen are elected to the provincial assembly in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Henry Higginson founds the Boston Symphony and puts the German George Henshel in charge of the new orchestra, which is staffed heavily by German and Austrian players.

Jacobo Schaerer builds the first perma­nent German colony in Paraguay at San Bernardino.

Several German-speaking colonies are established in Paraguay in the late 1800s, of which Nueva Germania, San Bernardino, and Hohenau are the largest.

1882 Johann Most moves Freiheit (Freedom), one of the longest-running anarchist pe­riodicals, from London to New York City.

1884 Karl von den Steinen embarks on his first South American expedition. His expedition will find the source of the Rio Xingu, and a member of his team, the physicist Otto Clauss, will produce the first map of the Rio Xingu river system.

1885 At the Pittsburgh Conference, Reform rabbis agree upon the “Pittsburgh Plat­form” that becomes the basis for “Classi­cal Reform.” This movement stresses the Reform principle (i.e., that Judaism’s basis is spirit, not law, so that continu­ous religious progress can be achieved) over communal unity. In Pittsburgh, Re­form Jews define themselves as a com­munity of belief. They give up the idea of Jewish nationhood and instead stress their identity as American Jews. The conference decides to use David Ein­horn’s prayer book Olat Tamid as a model for the Union Prayer Book of the American Reform movement.

1886 An alliance of Chicago factory owners, media concerns, and members of the political establishment seize the oppor­tunity of the Haymarket bombing to destroy Chicago’s popular (and mostly German American) radical left, espe­cially the anarcho-syndicalist groups.

The German antisemite Bernard Forster establishes his settlement Nueva Germania in Paraguay. Together with his wife, Elizabeth Nietzsche (sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche), Forster attempts to establish a “pure” racial living space of Aryans.

Wilhelm Rotermund creates the Synod of Rio Grande do Sul, which will serve as a model for the creation of three other synods: the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Santa Catarina, Parana and Other States (1905); the Evangelical Synod of Santa Catarina and Parana (1911); and the Synod of Central Brazil (1912).

The first English translation of August Bebel’s influential book Woman and So­cialism appears in the United States. The original German book, first published in 1879, will go through over fifty reprint­ings and new editions in German by 1913 and achieve translation into more than twenty languages. It will rank among the world’s first best-sellers. Cer­tainly, it will inspire many women throughout the world to rethink their social situation and some to join the So­cialist or women’s movements. Its main point is that “[t]he freedom of humanity is not possible without the establish­ment of the social independence and equality of the genders.”

1888 The International Council of Women (ICW) is founded in Washington, D.C. Its intention is not merely to bring to­gether women from across the globe, but also to provide coordination for na­tional women’s movements. As such, the ICW is intended as a federation of national organizations.

1889 Richard Sapper, a wealthy German cof­fee planter, becomes president of the German Society of Guatemala.

1890 German Canadian publisher and jour­nalist John Adam Rittinger begins writ­ing his “Briefe vun Joe Klotzkopp, Esq.” (Letters of Joe Klotzkopp, Esq.). These letters, 120 of which he will write until his death in 1915, will all be published in the Ontario Glocke and the Berliner Journal. The letters are composed in the Pennsylvania German dialect.

1890—1891 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show goes to Germany. By the end of its travels it will have performed in the German cities of Munich, Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Brunswick, Hanover, Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frank­furt, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Strassburg, Dortmund, Duisburg, Baden-Baden, Mannheim, Darmstadt, Koblenz, and Aachen. It also visits the Austrian cities of Innsbruck and Vienna.

1891 German American conductor Thedore Thomas founds the Chicago Symphony.

German geologist and explorer in South America Moritz Alphons Stubel offers the city council of Leipzig to present his collections to the city in return for a suitable museum space. The city council agrees to this, and when a new building for the Museum of Ethnology is opened in 1896 the Stubel Collections find a home as the Department of Compara­tive Regional Geography in a separate room. Stubel’s donation includes 82 oil paintings, 100 drawings (including more than 30 large-format Andean panoramas), about 2,000 photographs, and 3,000 geological samples, as well as ethnological artifacts. He develops this unique geographical museum with his own funds, including a library with a map collection—also deriving from his private collection. His expedition notes will form the basis of an Archiv fur Forschungsreisende (Archives of Explo­ration) that will open in 1902.

1892 German American politician John Peter Altgeld is elected governor of Illinois.

German priest John Joseph Jessing cre­ates the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, which will become a leading educational center for Ger­man American Catholic priests during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Instruction is provided in both English and German.

1894 The Deutsche Schule von Mexico/ Colegio Aleman de Mexico opens its doors in Mexico City.

On March 29, the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF, or Federation of German Women’s Clubs) is founded in Berlin. It is the first umbrella organiza­tion with the specific aim of connecting and centralizing the broad spectrum of women’s interests and concerns.

1895 German parliament revokes the von- der-HeydtSches Rescript (Heydt Edict) for the three southern states (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Parana), but not for the rest of Brazil.

1897 The Hermann monument in New

Ulm, Minnesota, financed by contribu­tions from the Sons of Hermann lodges, is opened to the public.

1898 Herrmann Meyer creates his colony Neu-Wurttemberg in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Victor L. Berger cofounds the Social Democratic Party of the United States, Branch 1, and is soon recognized as the unchallenged leader of the Socialist movement in the most German city in the United States, Milwaukee, Wiscon­sin, at the turn of the twentieth century.

1899 Charles Hexamer founds the German- American Central Alliance of Pennsyl­vania and becomes its first president. The stated goal of the organization is to preserve German culture in America and to establish a national organization for German Americans.

1901 Booker T Washington agrees to help the German government to improve the cotton output of the German colony of Togo in West Africa from 1901 to 1909. For this purpose he sends an expedition consisting of three Tuskegee graduates, Allen L. Burks, Shepherd L. Harris, and John W. Robinson, led by a German­speaking Tuskegee faculty member, James N. Calloway, to Togoland. The four establish a model plantation at Tove that will operate throughout the Ger­man colonial period.

The Deutsch-Amerikanische National Bund (National German-American Al­liance, NGAA) is founded, and Charles Hexamer is elected president. The NGAA focuses on promoting the teach­ing of the German language in public schools, preserving German culture, praising the achievements of German Americans, and fostering closer ties be­tween the United States and Germany.

1902-1903 The clash of German and American in­terests in Venezuela leads to the Venezuela Crisis.

1904 Richard Wagner’s Parsifal premieres at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, violating the Wagner family’s wishes that it not be performed outside of Germany.

1905 U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt me­diates between Germany and France in resolving the First Moroccan Crisis peacefully.

1908 Georg von Bosse publishes his history of Germans in the United States, Das deutsche Element in den Vereinigten Staaten (The German Element in the United States, 1908), which becomes a standard work.

1910 German American leading academic Hugo Munsterberg organizes the Amerika Institut in Berlin for the pur­pose of maintaining and furthering aca­demic relations and cooperation be­tween Germany and the United States.

1910 Victor Berger, a German American

(cont.) politician from Milwaukee, is the first

member of the Socialist Party elected to the U.S. Congress.

Due in large part to efforts by the Na­tional German-American Alliance, a statue of Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben is unveiled in Washington, D.C.

1911 The Waterloo Lutheran Seminary is founded as Canada’s first institution to train pastors for Lutheran congregations within the country. Prior to this, Canada’s Lutheran clergy has been ex­clusively trained in Germany and the United States. Placed in the midst of a predominantly Lutheran and German community, the seminary contributes greatly to Waterloo’s German Canadian identity. It later becomes integrated into Wilfrid Laurier University.

1912 German conductor Ernst Kunwald is hired by the Cincinnati Symphony Or­chestra.

German conductor Karl Muck, one of history’s greatest Wagnerians, is engaged as the conductor of the Boston Sym­phony Orchestra.

1913 B’nai B’rith founds the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to fight antisemitism.

The Nebraska legislature passes the Mockett Law. This law calls for instruc­tion in modern European languages for students in the fifth grade and higher if requested by the parents of fifty or more pupils. Given the large percentage of German Americans in Nebraska, the legislation results in German becoming an “official” second language.

1914 Following Great Britain, Canada de­clares war on Germany.

The War Measures Act gives the Cana­dian government powers of “arrest, de­tention, exclusion and deportation” of individuals, and specifically denies the rights of bail and habeas corpus to any­one arrested “upon suspicion that he is an alien enemy.” The Canadian government begins to in­tern Germans. During the war about 8,000 enemy aliens, mostly Ukrainians but also Germans and Austro-Hungari­ans are held at 24 locations (e.g., at Amherst and in the national parks at Banff, Jasper, Yoho, and Mount Revel­stoke).

Kuno Meyer, professor of Celtic Philol­ogy at Berlin University, embarks on a propaganda tour throughout the United States to facilitate the collabora­tion between German American and Irish American organizations with the goal of ensuring American neutrality in World War I.

Felix Moritz Warburg and Jacob H. Schiff are instrumental in creating the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). The JDC is origi­nally conceived as a short-term project. It originates as a war-relief committee aiming to assist its overseas brethren during the Great War. In the interwar period, following the Russian Revolu­tion, Warburg and the JDC will assist Soviet Jewry by creating the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation (the “Agro-Joint”). Following the Nazi rise to power, Jews from Germany and later from Nazi-occupied Europe will receive the JDC’s assistance in emigra­tion and absorption elsewhere. The JDC will help persecuted Jews during World War II and assist displaced per­sons and Holocaust survivors in its af­termath.

1915 The German-born Carl Laemmle opens one of the first film studios, Uni­versal City, thus contributing to the rapid growth of the film industry in Hollywood.

Mexican revolutionary Victoniano Huerta meets with German representa­tives in New York City. The Germans promise to provide Huerta and Pascual Orozco with $895,000, along with ri­fles and ammunition. In return, Ger­many hopes that Orozco and Huerta

will overthrow the Mexican government and set up a pro-German government, thus giving them an ally geographically close to the United States.

The German Admiralty issues a declara­tion announcing all waters around the United Kingdom to be a war zone and threatening any merchant vessels found within the zone with destruction. Im­portantly, the declaration indicates that no guarantee can be given as to the safety of the crew and passengers. Neu­tral shipping will be treated the same as that from combatant nations. This in­cludes American merchant vessels. For the first time, German submarines are directly threatening American ships and American lives.

The German policy of unrestricted war­fare soon makes itself clear when the William P Frye, an American vessel car­rying a shipment of wheat to England, is sunk in the South Atlantic. This is the first loss of an American ship, and U. S. president Woodrow Wilson’s reaction is to warn Germany that it will be held re­sponsible for the safety of American lives.

The sinking of the liner Lusitania by torpedo off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 128 American lives and of the British passenger liner Arabic inflames public opinion in the United States, with Wilson threatening to break diplo­matic relations with Germany.

1916 In a show of patriotism, Berlin, On­tario, is renamed Kitchener after the late British minister of war, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener.

Torontonians form an Anti-German League, aiming at the dismissal of all Canadians of German heritage from public office and the administration, as well as taking measures considered nec­essary against German Canadians.

Bilingual schools (English and German) are abolished in Manitoba, Canada.

German American Catholic women form the Catholic Women’s Union (CWU) in St. Louis, Missouri, which is modeled after the Katholischer deutscher Frauenbund (Catholic Ger­man Women’s Organization, KDF).

Since the Chilean Allied Statutory or Black Lists interrupted German Chilean and German businesses, the German Chamber of Commerce (now Camara Chileno Alemana de Comercio e Industria) is established.

The Liga Chilena Alemana (DCB, Ger­man-Chilean Association) is created as an umbrella organization in response to Allied propaganda and black lists to protect German Chilean institutions (especially the schools), to lobby for Chilean neutrality, and to protect the interests of German citizens.

The Lafayette Escadrille (initially known as the Escadrille Americaine) is formed under the command of a French officer, Captain Georges Thenault. This unit is made up of American volunteer pilots. Although the U.S. government granted the vol­unteers’ petition to undertake military service abroad, the United States still maintains its neutrality.

1917 After Germany returns to unrestricted submarine warfare, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson breaks off diplomatic relations and begins to arm American merchant vessels. This “armed neutral­ity” is the final step before American entry into the war.

The German navy torpedoes the Brazil­ian ship Parand.

Brazil declares war on Germany.

The Brazilian government prohibits the circulation of German newspapers and orders the closing of German schools. A state of siege is declared in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Parana, Sao Paulo, and the Federal District.

1917 The Canadian War-Times Election Act (cont.) disfranchises all Germans (and other “enemy aliens”) who were naturalized but had arrived after 1898, which in­cludes the vast majority of Germans in western Canada. All Mennonites lose the vote without exception. Both groups are also exempted from the draft.

In the Zimmermann Telegram, Ger­many offers Mexico an alliance. Ger­many asks that Mexico attack the United States should it attack Germany. In return, Germany, after winning the war, will make sure that Mexico receives back lands that the United States had taken from it in the nineteenth century.

The Zimmermann Telegram and the unrestricted submarine warfare prac­ticed by Germany force the United States to enter World War I.

The American Expeditionary Force (AEF) arrives at Saint-Nazaire, France.

U.S. president Woodrow Wilson creates the Committee on Public Information (CPI) to disseminate American propa­ganda about World War I.

U.S. president Woodrow Wilson signs the Espionage Act. This act is intended to catch and punish German spies and to stop the subversive activities of enemies.

The U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act requires that foreign-language papers file translations with proper officials of any article dealing with the Red Cross, the Liberty Loan program, the draft, or the war in general. It also gives A. Mitchell Palmer, the alien property cus­todian, the authority to confiscate tan­gible or intangible property in the form of land, patents, money, and securities that belong to the enemy. The term enemy applies to any citizen of Germany or person residing in Germany even if American-born who owns property in the United States.

The selective internment of Germans in the United States begins. In the begin­ning nonnaturalized male Germans are interned in local jails and at Ellis Island. During the war between 8,500 and 10,000 nonnaturalized German civil­ians will be interned in camps at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia; Fort Douglas, Utah; Fort McPherson, Georgia; and Hot Springs, North Carolina.

1918 Bilingual schools (English and German) are abolished in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada.

Woodrow Wilson presents his famous Fourteen Points to Congress and to the world. Promising “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at” and national self-determination, his speech is to give the first democratically elected German government some hope for a just peace.

In an extreme instance of violence di­rected against German Americans dur­ing World War I, a lynch mob murders a German American worker, Robert Prager, in Collinsville, Illinois.

1919 The Treaty of Versailles is concluded be­tween Germany and the four Allies (the United States, France, Great Britain, and Italy). It ends World War I and im­poses harsh conditions on Germany (limitation of armed forces, territorial and population losses, loss of industrial facilities, colonial losses, acknowledge­ment of war guilt, and reparation pay­ments). The U.S. Senate refuses to rat­ify the treaty.

The enactment of Prohibition forces German brewers to fold or retool to produce flavored soda, “near beer,” cheese, and candy and to close down the traditional beer gardens.

German and Colombian businessmen found the Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transportes Aereos (SCADTA, Colombian German Air Transport Company) in Barranquilla, Colombia. It is one of the earliest and, for more than a decade, will be one of the most successful ventures in civil aviation in Latin America.

A small group of German Americans in New York City that suffered from con­siderable anti-German sentiment fol­lowing World War I creates the Steuben Society of America, which is named after the hero of the American War of Independence, Frederick von Steuben. The organization’s goal is to combat anti-German sentiment by celebrating the numerous social, cultural, political, and scientific contributions of German Americans to American society.

1921 The Treaty of Berlin formally ends the war between Germany and the United States.

Henry Ford’s blatantly antisemitic Der Internationale Jude (The International Jew), is published in Germany. Ford’s book, which will still be praised and published by antisemites worldwide on the Internet in 2005, also catches the at­tention of men like Adolf Hitler, who comes to deeply respect and admire Ford as an industrialist and fellow anti­semite.

The Germanic Collection at Harvard University, housed in the Adolphus Busch Hall is opened. It combines Re­naissance, Gothic, and Romanesque styles to highlight the history of Ger­man architectural achievements.

1922 The position of Germans living in South and Central America taken in the

Flaggenstreit (debate over the German flag) displays their predominantly con­servative attitude. The official flag of the Weimar Republic is black, red, and gold—since the Napoleonic Wars the flag of German democrats. The vast ma­jority of Germans in Latin America re­fuse to recognize these colors, preferring the black, white, and red flag of the Em­pire. A poll taken by the Verband Deutscher Reichsangehoriger (Confed­eration of Citizens of the German Reich) in Mexico favors the imperial over the republican flag by a vote of 1,800 to 2.

German American brewer Frank X. Schwab is elected mayor of Buffalo, New York. Schwab acquires national publicity in the 1920s for his open hos­tility to both Prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan.

Peter Jonas Weissmueller, descendent of a Donauschwaben (Danube Swabian) family, swims to his first world record: the 200-meter in 2:15.5 minutes, and thus beats the three-time Olympic gold medalist Norman Ross.

1923 The Heidelberger Austauschstelle (Hei­delberg Exchange Center) is founded as an institution to further academic con­tacts between the United States and Germany and especially to further Ger­man American student exchange.

1924 The U.S. government introduces a quota system to limit immigration (25,957 German immigrants per year).

An Allied Reparations Commission headed by the American financier Charles G. Dawes calls for lower repara­tions payments as part of a comprehen­sive reform of the German economy (Dawes Plan).

Hugo Eckener pilots the zeppelin (LZ 126) from Friedrichshafen across the Atlantic to Lakehurst, New Jersey. Eck- ener receives a ticker tape parade through Manhattan and is praised as the “modern Columbus” by U.S. presi­dent Calvin Coolidge.

The crossing of the Atlantic by LZ 126 leads to the founding of Goodyear-Zep­pelin in Akron, Ohio. This new enter­prise employs thirteen German engi­neers and begins construction of American airships in 1928. Ten of these ships were to be employed in the cross­ing of the Pacific.

German Brazilians celebrate Der 25. Juli. Unser Tag (The 25th of July. Our Day) for the first time. It commemo­rates the arrival of the first German im­migrants in Sao Leopoldo in 1824.

1925 Wrigley’s establishes its first German production facility in Frankfurt am Main, where it produces the P. K. gum­ball.

The Akademischer Austauschdienst (Academic Exchange Service, AAD) is founded to increase academic contacts between Germany and the United States.

1926 The German American Gertrud Ederle is the first woman to swim the English Channel.

Concordia University at Austin is founded by thirteen Lutheran congrega­tions in central Texas, the majority membership of which is of Wendish de­scent. The university regards itself as the only university in the world founded largely by people of Wendish ancestry and will continue to have strong per­centages of Wends among its student body, faculty, and staff.

1927 Fritz Lang releases his film Metropolis. Lang had the idea for this film back in 1924, while arriving on a ship in New York City. The vision of the skyscrapers seen in the sunrise inspired him to write a story about an inhuman, gigantic city of the future.

1929 The first Coca-Cola vending machines are installed in Germany.

The Young Plan, a new American-led effort to reduce Germany’s reparations burden after World War I, is published.

The German Protestant Church in Rio Grande do Sul enters into an affiliation with the German Federation of Protes­tant Churches, which becomes part of the German Protestant Church in 1933.

The Great Depression spreads from the United States to Germany because of close connections in the financial market.

Leonhard Sigmund Schultze-Jena em­barks on his research trip to Central America during which he records the everyday speech of the Indian peoples. He first stays in the Mexican provinces of Guerrero and Oaxaca among the Tla- paneca, Mixteca, and Aztec language groups. Subsequently he travels to the western highlands of Guatemala to study the Mayan language of the Quiche; his last project is to record the language of the Pipil in Salvador.

1930 The German branch of the Coca-Cola Company is founded in Essen.

Marlene Dietrich moves to Hollywood to become one of its most glamorous and provocative stars.

1931 The Austrian Creditanstalt is the first major European bank to fail as the Great Depression spreads to Europe. It causes a chain reaction, and a run at all major German banks ensues.

The Hoover Moratorium effectively cancels all German reparation pay­ments.

The National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) opens its first Latin American branch in Paraguay.

American journalist Dorothy Thomp­son publishes her interview with Adolf Hitler (I Saw Hitler!). In a somewhat sensational lapse, Thompson emerges convinced of the insignificance and ridiculousness of the fuhrer, but she also introduces him as the “apotheosis of the little man,” thus shifting attention to the sociopolitical problem of the masses that will continue to cheer and support him.

1932 Albert Einstein accepts an appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Adolf Hitler appoints his friend Ernst Hanfstaengl, the heir of a prominent German art publishing firm and closely connected with American upper society, to be foreign press chief of the NSDAP. The novelist Plιnio Salgado founds the Aςao Integralista Brasileira, which rep­resents the Brazilian version of fascism.

The former swimmer Peter Jonas Weiss- mueller begins his movie career as Tarzan in Hollywood. Within sixteen years he will play in twelve Tarzan movies and act in another sixteen films as the star of the Jungle Jim series. With his well-trained body and innocent looks, he is considered to be the ideal person to play the role of Tarzan.

1933 After the Nazi seizure of power, the German Parliament passes the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Heredi­tary Diseases. It states that anyone with a hereditary illness may be sterilized against his or her will if a medical expert determines that he or she is likely to produce children with a serious heredi­tary defect. This law is based on several state laws in the United States.

The Friends of the New Germany (FONG) is founded as a Nazi organiza­tion in the United States.

1934 The journal Aufbau (Construction) is founded in New York City by the Ger­man Jewish Club. This German Jewish periodical will achieve considerable in­fluence and standing in the years around World War II.

The Frankfurt School moves to New York where it becomes affiliated with Columbia University. It continues as the Institute for Social Research.

The pro-Nazi Deutscher Bund Kanada (German Association Canada), thinly disguised as a cultural and social club, is founded.

The U.S. Congress creates the Special House Committee to Investigate the Extent, Character, and Objects of Nazi Propaganda in the United States. This is the predecessor for the Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities that will become infamous in the 1940s and 1950s for excesses in its hunt for alleged Communists in the United States.

The Austrian composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold goes to Hollywood, where his film music—written in the tradition of Wagner, Puccini, and Strauss—con- tributes to the power of the pictures and becomes the prototype of American film music. His musical style becomes the style of Hollywood.

1935 Inspired by current events in Germany, Sinclair Lewis publishes his warning novel, It Cant Happen Here, in which he depicts his own country in the iron grip of a 100 percent American dictator.

1936 The African American Jesse Owens wins the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and the 4 x100-meter relay at the Olympic Games in Berlin. His success spoils Nazi ambitions to showcase its notion of Aryan racial su­periority on the athletic field. After con­gratulating the Finnish medal winners in the 10,000 meters, German leader Adolf Hitler refuses to congratulate black American Cornelius Johnson, who had won the high jump. Hitler re­frains from congratulating medal win­ners after the IOC informs him that he must congratulate all or none.

Fritz Kuhn founds the German Ameri­can Bund (GAB) in Buffalo, New York, as the successor to the Friends of the New Germany. In contrast to its prede­cessor, which had many German na­tionals among its members, the GAB insists that members must be American citizens of German origin.

Max Schmeling travels to New York City for a boxing match with African American Jesse Jones.

1937 After the Nazi seizure of power, the Bauhaus is closed and its members leave Germany for the United States. Indus­trialists succeed in bringing Laszlo Mo­holy-Nagy to Chicago to head the New Bauhaus, soon to be reorganized as the School of Design.

1937 Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (cont.) offers Walter Gropius a professorship of

architecture and then the departmental chair from 1938 to 1952, positions through which he makes modernism the dominant international style for a generation of students and emulators, breaking the American architectural es­tablishment away from the Beaux-Arts style.

Brazil introduces a system of immigra­tion quotas. According to this system, immigration is reduced to an annual maximal number of 2 percent of the total number of immigrants of a certain nationality that had immigrated in the previous fifty years.

The Brazilian constitution prohibits all political activities and in the beginning of 1938 all foreign political parties, in­cluding the NSDAP.

The zeppelin LZ 129, christened Hin­denburg, explodes over Lakehurst, New Jersey. It is the largest and last zeppelin used to transport passengers from Ger­many to North and South America.

1938 James Mooney, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and Benito Mussolini re­ceive the Verdienstkreuz Deutscher Adler (Grand Cross of the German Eagle), the highest award available to foreigners to reward invaluable service to the Third Reich.

The Ford Motor Company’s German subsidiary Ford-Werke AG begins pro­ducing troop transport trucks for the German military.

The McCormack Act, which requires the registration of “Agents of Foreign Principals” and outlaws alien political activists in the United States, is passed by the U.S. Congress.

1939 The S.S. St. Louis, a German passenger ship with Jewish refugees, is denied entry to Havana and thus forced to re­turn to Europe.

One week after Great Britain, Canada declares war on Germany.

Canada introduces the Defence of

Canada Regulations (DCR) under the War Measures Act. Under the DCR, the justice minister may detain without charge anyone who might act “in any manner prejudicial to the public safety or the safety of the state.”

1940 With the passage of the Alien Registra­tion Act in the United States, the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 are reacti­vated and aliens have to register with government authorities.

Charlie Chaplin produces the only full­length anti-Nazi movie, The Great Dic­tator, before the U.S. declares war on Germany.

1941 Stefan Zweig publishes his book Brasilien. Ein Land der Zukunft (Brazil: A Land of the Future), which praises and romanticizes Brazil. The book is seen as an homage to Brazilian dictator

Getulio Vargas and is even considered to have been commissioned by him.

The U.S. government issues the Trading with the Enemy Act that sets legal pro­hibitions on trade with Axis nations.

A group of German-speaking exiles in Mexico that includes Egon Erwin Kisch and Anna Seghers founds the political and cultural monthly Freies Deutsch­land (Free Germany).

Germany declares war on the United States.

The U.S. government, fearing Nazi sub­version in Latin America, organizes the expulsion of over 4,000 German resi­dents from 15 Latin American countries and their internment in U.S. camps in Texas, Louisiana, and other states.

1942 Stefan Zweig and his wife commit sui­cide in Brazil and receive a pompous state funeral.

In “Operation Pastorius” German Nazis use recently remigrated German Ameri­cans and Nazi sympathizers as agents for acts of sabotage in the United States and land them in two groups by sub­marine on the shores of Long Island and Florida.

Franz L. Neumann publishes his book Behemoth: The Spirit and Structure of National Socialism, which makes him widely known both within and outside academic circles as an expert on con­temporary Germany.

Canadian forces engage in a disastrous raid on Dieppe in France. In a matter of hours, the 5,000 Canadian soldiers who composed the bulk of the 6,000- man attacking force were decimated— with more than 900 killed and another 2,000 taken prisoner, most of them wounded, more prisoners than the Canadian army would suffer in the en­tire 10-month-long Northwest Europe campaign.

American forces land in French Mo­rocco and Algeria as the initial part of the North African campaign.

1943 At the end of the British American con­ference in Casablanca, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Winston Churchill at his side, explains that the elimination of Axis war power means their uncondi­tional surrender.

The enforced ban on all political parties and the prohibition of political activi­ties of foreigners in Brazil leads to the end of exile groups such as the Movi- mento dos Alemaes Antinazis (Move­ment of German Anti-Fascists), the committee Das Andere Deutschland (The Other Germany), and the Movi- mento dos Alemaes Livres (Movement for a Free Germany), which was related to the Communist Bewegung Freies Deutschland (Movement for a Free Germany) in Mexico.

Mildred Fish Harnack is executed for her involvement in the German resis­tance group known as the Red Orches­tra. She is the only U.S. civilian the Nazi government will execute during World War II.

At the Tehran Conference, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin decide key points of their grand strategy in the European theater and the treatment of defeated Nazi Ger­many (occupation, division).

Canadian soldiers participate in the in­vasion of Sicily and subsequent libera­tion of Italy. During the Christmas Bat­tle of Ortona—“Little Stalingrad” as the exhausted Canadian infantry rue­fully names it—vicious house-to-house fighting against fanatic German para­troopers wins the enemy more respect than hatred.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) and the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF) bomb Hamburg. Incendiary bombs, filled with phosphorus or petroleum jelly (na­palm), create a firestorm that kills over 44,000 people. In addition to the heavy civilian casualties, the bombing reduces half the city to rubble and the remain­der must be evacuated.

1944 Nineteen left-liberal political and cul­tural representatives (among them Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Budzislawski, and Paul Hagen) under the chairman­ship of the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich establish the Council for a Democratic Germany (CDG) in New York City to add an organized voice of the “other Germany” to the American public wartime debate and in the hope of influencing the official U.S. planning for postwar Germany.

Henry Morgenthau publishes his pam­phlet Program to Prevent Germany from Starting a World War III (commonly known as the Morgenthau Plan). It is

1944 the most comprehensive scheme for the (cont.) reconstruction of German society. Mor-

genthau argues that a powerful, indus­trialized Germany would inevitably at­tempt to wage war on its neighbors and the world again. He postulates that Adolf Hitler’s rise to power was the log­ical consequence of the German na­tional character that had earlier pro­duced Prussian authoritarianism and militarism. Only the country’s territo­rial dismemberment and its political and economic impotence would assure future peace.

At the conference of Yalta the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain agree to establish an Allied Con­trol Council (ACC), comprised of the Allied commanders in chief.

The American government drafts JCS 1067, a postsurrender interim occupa­tion directive. It prohibits any steps to­ward Germany’s economic rehabilita­tion and clarifies that the country had not been liberated but defeated. Yet, the same text gives the U.S. military com­mander substantial leeway to determine actual occupation policies, further en­hanced through provisions granting him the explicit authority to ensure the production of goods and services essen­tial for the prevention of disease and civil unrest.

American and Canadian troops partici­pate in the Normandy (D-Day) landing on the coast of France. Altogether 57,500 American troops and 75,215 British and Canadian troops are landed on D-Day and the assaulting forces suf­fer 6,000 American casualties and 4,300 British and Canadian ones on the first day of the operation.

1945 The Royal Air Force (RAF) and the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF) bomb Dresden. Some 650,000 bombs fall on the city from February 13 to 15, 1945, and Dresden is almost totally destroyed as a result of the ensuing firestorm. Es­timates vary as to the number of civilian casualties caused by the bombing from 40,000 to 50,000.

American, British, and Russian troops cross the rivers Rhine in the west and Oder in the east, thus advancing deeply into the German heartland. At the end of April, Russian troops encircle Berlin and American and Russian troops meet at the river Elbe.

On May 7 and 8 the remaining Ger­man military leadership uncondition­ally surrenders to the American and Russian forces.

American military forces establish the American Occupation Zone in the ter­ritories of the German states of Bavaria and parts of Wurttemberg, Baden, the former Prussian province of Hesse, the U.S. enclave in the city of Bremen with Bremen’s port at Bremerhaven, and a sector of western Berlin.

American occupation forces enforce a strict denazification policy by request­ing that every adult German complete a lengthy questionnaire (Fragebogen), de­tailing the subject’s personal, profes­sional, and political past.

The Conference of Potsdam, with Harry S. Truman as the new U.S. president, leads to the creation of an additional zone of occupation for the French and accommodates the Soviets on the repara­tions issue. Germany is to be treated as an economic and administrative unity under the supervision of the Allied Con­trol Council. It is to be subjected to a policy of democratization, decarteliza­tion, demobilization, and denazification.

American military forces move into the six districts that will become part of the American sector of occupation in the city of Berlin (Kreuzberg, Neukolln, Schoneberg, Steglitz, Tempelhof, and Zehlendorf) in the middle of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, later to become the German Democratic Republic.

The Nuremberg Trials start. They are a series of thirteen trials that begin on November 20, 1945, and last until April 1949. Indictments are brought against 207 Nazis, who are charged with conspiracy to wage war, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes. The trials are held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, because this was one of the few courthouses that had not been damaged during the air raids and because the city of Nuremberg had been the site for all the NSDAP rallies. The International Military Tribunal (IMT), directed by France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States against major Nazi war criminals, leads the first trial. The IMT not only sentences individuals but also bans organizations such as the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, Secret Political Police), the SS (Schutzstaffel, Protective Squadron), and the SS Totenkopfver- bande (SS Death Head Special Units).

The German colony Neu-Wurttemberg in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, is re­named Panambi.

Chicago entrepreneur Walter Paul Paepcke develops Aspen, Colorado, into a modern ski resort with the longest ski lift in the world to create a successful economic basis for his wider schemes: to establish a modern Weimar (the city the famous Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived in from 1775 until his death in 1832) in America together with his friend Walter Gropius.

1946 Margaret Boveri publishes her anti­American America Primer for Grown-up Germans. An Attempt to Explain What Has Not Been Understood.

The Council of Relief Agencies Li­censed for Operation in Germany (CRALOG) is founded. It collects do­nations in the United States for the pur­pose of humanitarian aid to Germany.

The first German American club in West Germany, the Bad Kissingen Cos­mopolitan Club, is founded by Captain Merle Potter, a local military governor who sees the need for friendly interac­tion between Germans and Americans.

Aloisius Munch, bishop of the diocese of Fargo and apostolic visitor to Ger­many, publishes his controversial pas­toral letter One World in Charity, in which he rejects the notions of “collec­tive” guilt and responsibility for Ger­many’s population during the Nazi dic­tatorship.

The Radio Inside the American Sector (RIAS) is created in West Berlin.

1947 Siegfried Kracauer publishes his famous book From Caligari to Hitler: A Psycho­logical History of the German Film with Princeton University Press. This study purports to find the ideological roots of National Socialism in some silent films from the Weimar Republic. For Kra- cauer, the German films produced be­tween 1915 and 1933 already included many of the ideological values that un­consciously prepared German society for Nazism, such as a “collective com­plex of inferiority,” the cult of authority, and the awaiting of a strong chief.

The U.S. secretary of state, George C. Marshall, announces the European Re­covery Program (ERP, or Marshall Plan) at Harvard University.

1948 Conflict over currency reform in West Berlin leads the Soviets to block all ac­cess into West Berlin sectors by land or on water. In response, the U.S. Air Force and the British Royal Air Force organize the Berlin Airlift that will sup­port the population and military gar­risons in West Berlin during the eleven months that the blockade will last be­fore it is suspended after successful U.S.-Soviet negotiations in May 1949. These eleven months will achieve leg­endary status for German American re­lations and will strengthen the U.S. commitment to West Berlin.

1949 German nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs is sentenced to prison for espionage. He participated in the British and Ameri­can projects to produce an atomic bomb and is convicted of relating some of the information to the Soviet Union.

The Petersberg Agreement restricts the dismantling of German industrial plants and gives West Germany the right to establish consular relations with foreign nations and to join international organizations. At the same time, West Germany concludes a bilateral eco­nomic agreement with the United States on Marshall Plan aid and joins the Council of Europe as an associate member.

1950 Radio Free Europe (RFE) is created with headquarters in Munich as part of the National Committee for a Free Eu­rope. It is secretly funded and con­trolled by the CIA.

West Berlin’s government receives a replica of Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell, which is installed in the City Hall of Schoneberg following an extensive fundraising drive across the United States. This move symbolizes the mu­tual identification of America and West Berlin with the cause of freedom and strengthens emotional ties.

George Nauman Shuster is named land commissioner of Bavaria, presiding over the continuing denazification program and preparing for home rule at the close of the American occupation.

West Germany and the United States sign the Marshall Plan agreement.

1951 East German author Liselotte Wel- skopf-Henrich begins to publish her three-volume epic novel that begins with Die Sδhne der grossen Barin (The Sons of Great Mother Bear), which deals with Dakota Indians.

A comprehensive revision of the Occu­pation Statute not only brings virtually complete internal self-government but also permits the establishment of a for­eign ministry for West Germany.

1952 The German American Fulbright Pro­gram is established to facilitate the bi­lateral exchange of German and Ameri­can students, instructors, professors, researchers, and professionals.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin offers in his famous Stalin Note the reunification of Germany to the former Western Allies. The Stalin Note proposes an end to the “abnormal situation” in Germany by (1) a peace treaty between the Four Powers and Germany, (2) administrative unifi­cation of the four occupied zones of Germany, and (3) holding of all-Ger­man elections (in that order). The pro­posal also asserts the right of a sovereign Germany to arm itself, with the con­spicuous proviso that it is to remain neutral. The Stalin Note is finally re­jected by the Western powers and the West German government.

The Volkswagen Company opens its Volkswagen Canada, Ltd., division with headquarters in Toronto.

1953 The Volkswagen Company opens its Volkswagen do Brasil S.A. in Sao Bernardo do Campo near Sao Paulo. In the same year the Verkaufsgesellschaft Volkswagen of America, Inc. (Volkswa­gen Marketing Company of America) is established with its seat in Inglewood, New Jersey.

1954 Alfredo Stroessner, the son of German Paraguayan parents, becomes president of Paraguay and creates a dictatorship that will last until 1989.

1955 The High Commissioner for Germany is dissolved and West Germany receives full sovereignty from the Allies.

The Convention on Relations between the Three Powers (United States, Great Britain, and France) and the Federal Re­public of Germany lays out the ratio­nale and circumstances of the deploy­ment of Allied troops in West Germany. The document declares that the Allied powers have the right to station troops in West Germany, and, although the Americans often state that they will re­turn a property if the Germans insist, such events rarely occur.

The Leo Baeck Institute is founded to document, research, and publish the distinct history of German Jewry and its impact on German society from the En­lightenment to the Holocaust. It is es­tablished in the three main centers of German Jewish immigration and Ger­man Jewish life after the Holocaust: London, New York, and Jerusalem.

West Germany is admitted to NATO and introduces general male conscrip­tion.

1956 German political scientist and Harvard professor Carl Joachim Friedrich pub­lishes, together with Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. This book is best known for its exposition of the conservative theory of totalitarianism that postulates that the similarities between Nazi Ger­many and Stalinist Russia far outweigh the differences.

1958 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev de­clares the 1944 London Protocol in­valid. The Western powers of France, Great Britain, and the United States had forfeited their rights to stay in West Berlin, he says, and the latter should be­come an “independent political unit, a free city.”

The rock legend Elvis Presley lands by boat in Bremerhaven to serve with the U. S. Army in Germany. When he ar­rives, he is greeted by hundreds of Ger­man fans eager to catch a glimpse of the young rock ’n’ roll star.

1959 The Paraguayan government issues a Paraguayan identification certificate to war criminal Josef Mengele, who is also known as the “Angel of Death.” He is awarded full citizenship under the thinly disguised pseudonym “Jose Mengele.”

I960 Ex-Nazi Wernher von Braun becomes director at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, a part of the Na­tional Aeronautics and Space Adminis­tration (NASA).

Israeli secret service agents find the Nazi war criminal and organizer of the Holo­caust, Adolf Eichmann, living on Garibaldi Street in Buenos Aires. The spectacular kidnapping of Eichmann and his secret abduction to Israel result in his trial in Jerusalem.

Following the equipping of the West German army with tactical nuclear weapons (1958), the West German peace movement initiates the Easter Marches.

1963 American president John E Kennedy visits West Berlin and gives his famous speech in which he declares “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

1964 The Volkswagen Company establishes a production facility in Puebla, Mexico, where it produces the VW Beetle.

The Neue Heimat, an organization that is concerned with good relations of East Germans with citizens of German de­scent in non-Socialist countries, is founded in East Berlin. This society takes full control of East German activ­ities in the United States and provides assistance for Americans in the German Democratic Republic.

1965 The Group 47, a loose organization of West German poets and writers, dis­tances itself publicly from Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s assurance to President Lyndon B. Johnson that West Germany fully supports U.S. policy in Vietnam. The Group 47 denounces the American Vietnam War as a “scorched-earth” tac­tic and tantamount to genocide.

1966 Canadian folk singer Perry Friedman founds the Hootenanny-Klub Berlin in East Germany, which is later renamed the Oktoberklub.

1966 The East German Deutsche Film Ak- (cont.) tiengesellschaft (DEFA) starts to pro­duce a cycle of fourteen highly popular films featuring American Indians as the main characters.

1968 The West German extraparliamentary opposition organizes an international conference on the Vietnam War.

1971 The first German McDonald’s restau­rant is opened in Munich.

Encouraged and organized by the East German government, thousands of East Germans write protest letters to the U.S. government demanding the release of civil rights activist and Marxist An­gela Davis from prison.

1972 American singer-songwriter, actor, film director, and peace activist Dean Reed, the “Red Elvis,” decides to move to East Germany.

1973 German-born Henry Kissinger is ap­pointed secretary of state by President Richard M. Nixon.

1974 German Brazilian Ernesto Geisel be­comes president of Brazil.

The United States government estab­lishes diplomatic relations with the Ger­man Democratic Republic and opens an embassy in East Berlin.

1975 The International Research and Ex­changes Board (IREX), which was founded in 1968 by the American Council of Learned Societies to negoti­ate exchanges with Socialist and other countries, begins to support study trips of American scholars to the German Democratic Republic.

1979 The NATO “dual-track” decision, which calls for modernization of the nuclear arsenal in Western Europe and simultaneous offers of negotiations, causes peace demonstrations in both East and West Germany that will con­tinue for years to come.

Petra Kelly, influenced by the American antiwar and civil rights movements, plays a vital role in the founding of the West German Green Party.

1982 The Easter Marches in West Germany are resumed to protest the dual-track strategy of NATO.

1983 Peru extradites Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie to France.

The German Democratic Studies Asso­ciation of the USA is founded.

An agreement between the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX) in Washington, D.C., fa­cilitates the exchange of academics be­tween both countries, but is clouded by the GDR’s intention to send primarily natural and engineering scientists to ob­tain technological knowledge banned from trade with Western countries.

1985 American president Ronald Reagan vis­its Bitburg War Cemetery to honor Ger­man soldiers who died in World War II. Intended as a symbolic act of German American reconciliation, the ceremony provokes strong protests from U.S. vet­erans of World War II and the American Jewish community after approximately forty-eight graves of Waffen-SS soldiers are discovered and Reagan equates vic­tims of the concentration camps with fallen German soldiers.

Gunther Walraff publishes his book Ganz unten (Totally Down Under). After having worked under the disguise of a Turkish national at a McDonald’s restaurant, Walraff details McDonald’s mistreatment of employees. His book becomes a big success and results in high losses for the West German Mc­Donald’s.

1986 German American writer and scholar Richard Plant publishes his study of the fate of homosexuals under the Nazis, The Pink Triangle.

1987 The German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., is founded to fur­ther German American academic and intellectual exchange.

1989 Visa requirements to enter West and East Berlin are waived on December 22. Farcically, passport checks remained in place until June 30, 1990.

1990 The Two-Plus-Four Accord, involving the four World War II Allies (the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union) and the two Ger­manies, pave the way for the Second German Unification.

1997 German legal expert Christian To- muschat is appointed head of the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification (Comision para el Es- clarecimiento Historico, CEH). Its mandate is to undertake the clarifica­tion of human rights violations and acts of violence that occurred during over thirty years of armed confrontation be­tween government forces and guerilla insurgents. Based on its findings, the CEH is supposed to formulate recom­mendations with the objective of pro­moting peace and national harmony in Guatemala.

1999 McDonald’s opens its 1,000th restau­rant in Berlin-Treptow (former East Berlin).

2002 German chancellor Gerhard Schroder distances himself from the war-monger­ing policy of U.S. president George W Bush. Struggling for his reelection, Schroder refuses to support any military action against Iraq. After his reelection, Schroder steers Germany closer to France and Russia who also oppose an American invasion in Iraq.

2003 The last VW Beetle (No. 21,529,464) rolls off the assembly line in Puebla, Mexico, after an unexpected and un­precedented lifespan of fifty-eight years. Sold in the United States until 1978, the VW Beetle and VW Bus became the symbols of an alternative counterculture during and after the 1968 student revo­lutions. No longer just a car, the Beetle has become the center of a cult since the 1960s and its association with the hip­pie movement. It still has a very strong fellowship of believers worldwide. It even became the star, “Herbie,” of a Walt Disney movie The Love Bug (1968), followed by three sequential movies: Herbie Rides Again (1974); Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977); and Herbie Goes Bananas (1980).

Austrian American world-champion bodybuilder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected governor of California.