Ontario, German- Language Press in
Ethnic newspapers were important contributors to German immigrants’ and their descendants’ rich cultural life in Ontario during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Next to churches, choirs, and other ethnic social organizations, the German-language press played a significant role in language maintenance and the retention of a German identity within Ontario’s immigrant society.
Between 1835, when the Canada Museum und Allgemeine Zeitung (Canada Museum and General Newspaper) was launched as the province’s first German paper, and 1918, when German-language publications were prohibited, some thirty German-language papers were published in Ontario. Corresponding with the main German settlement area, most papers appeared in Waterloo County and adjacent counties of southwestern Ontario, but there were papers in other areas (e.g., the Niagara peninsula, Hamilton, and Ottawa) as well. There has been a modest revival of Ontario’s German-language press since the end of World War II.Ontario’s German-language press was very diverse, consisting of both religious and secular papers: Canada Museum und Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Deutsche Canadier und Neuigkeitsbote (The German Canadian and News Messenger), Der Canadische Bauernfreund (The Canadian Farmer’s Friend), Canadische Volkszeitung(Canadian People’s Newspaper), Berliner Journal, and Deutsche Zeitung (German Newspaper), to mention only a few. Most papers were secular, but religious periodicals catering to specific church groups found an interested audience as well. Almost all papers appeared weekly, with an average readership of a couple of thousand readers at the most, and they attracted no interest outside of Ontario’s main German settlement areas. In order to survive economically, the papers had to cater to the widest local German Canadian audience possible, encompassing immigrants as well as their Canadian-born children and grandchildren.
In Ontario’s main German settlement area, Waterloo County, newspapers catered to Pennsylvania German farmers in the countryside and European German artisans and businesspeople in the villages and developing towns alike. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, special pages for children, such as the Kinder Journal (Children’s Journal), published for the first time in 1899 as part of the popular Berliner Journal, addressed the specific needs of Canadian-born children of German immigrants.The German press’s role as a mediator between the Old and the New Worlds, as well as the lack of a homogeneous readership, was clearly reflected in the papers’ content. Detailed information about the old fatherland was accompanied by descriptions of the geographical, political, historical, and social setup of the immigrants’ adopted country. Translations of key legislation such as the British North America Act, provincial school acts, etc., as well as reports about the cultural life and economic development of their new hometown community acquainted newcomers with life in Canada and helped them integrate into the society of their adopted homeland. Prior to the installation of the transatlantic underwater cable in 1866, however, news from Germany was not always available. Ontario publishers often had to rely on information from outdated newspapers that reached Canada by ship and that were often published under the ship’s name. News and poetry were also often drawn from the so-called Wechsel- blaetter; that is, exchanges from the United States, which were distributed for reprinting in local German newspapers all over North America.
Competition between Ontario publishers of German-language newspapers was fierce. They competed not only for a limited readership, mostly consisting of immigrants, but also for printing contracts from the municipal, provincial, and federal governments. A steady decline in the numbers of immigrants during the last quarter of the nineteenth century provided additional challenges to German- language publishers: as the old immigrants passed away, Ontario had to compete for new immigrants, not only with the United States, but also with the Canadian prairies and western provinces.
In this situation, Ontario’s German papers campaigned even more ardently for the retention of the German language among the children and grandchildren of German immigrants.Against the background of their economic constraints, it is not surprising that fabricated reciprocal slander and libel charges among publishers and editors were quite common. Furthermore, most newspaper publishers were politically active, often on opposite sides of the political spectrum, and took on leading roles in local politics and the social life of their respective communities. Their common commitment to the retention of the German language, however, allowed them to cooperate in various forms: in July 1872 several Waterloo County publishers founded the Deutsch-Kanadischer Pressverein (German-Canadian Press Association) to lobby for German-language education in Ontario’s public schools.
As many papers stayed in business only for a number of years, there was little continuity in Ontario’s German-language press; the Berliner Journal, which was published from 1859 to 1918, clearly stands out as an exception. Many publishers and editors came to Ontario from German ethnic neighborhoods in the United States where they had already worked in the ethnic newspaper business. In several cases, they returned to the United States after only a few years in Canada. In the United States, participants of the German revolutions of 1848—1849 acted as intellectual leaders of the German American community; for example, as newspaper publishers and editors. In Ontario’s German newspaper business, however, Forty-Eighters played a rather insignificant role.
Ontario’s German newspapers flourished during the second half of the nineteenth century. By the turn of the century, however, lack of new immigrants combined with a high level of acculturation and English-language adaptation among the Canadian-born generations resulted in a period of amalgamation. Several papers merged, others had to cease publication.
By the beginning of World War I, the Berliner Journal was Ontario’s only remaining German paper. It is safe to conclude that even without the war-inflicted abolition of German-language papers by order in council in 1918, Ontario’s German- language press would not have been continued beyond the 1920s.By the outbreak of World War I, the owner- and editorship of the remaining Berliner Journal had passed into the hands of the Canadian-born generation. Their answer to the challenges presented to Ontario’s German community by World War I was to articulate a specific German Canadian view that was deeply rooted in their upbringing as Canadians and in their undivided loyalty to their home country. At the same time, they dismissed demands by more recent immigrants from Germany to take a pro-German stand during the war. Despite the editors’ attempts to de-escalate and to ease the anti-German feelings so prevalent during the war, the Berliner Journal did not escape its forced abolition. An order in council of October 1918 that prohibited German-language publications of any kind marked the end of eighty-three consecutive years of German newspaper publishing in Ontario.
A modest revival of German newspapers in Ontario has occurred, particularly after World War II, when thousands of expelled ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and emigrants from Germany provided a new readership. Papers such as the Deutsche Presse (German Press), Echo Ger- manica, and Neue Welt (New World) continue the long-standing presence of German newspapers in Ontario.
Ulrich Frisse
See also Canada, Germans in (during World Wars I and II); Forty-Eighters; Newspaper Press, German Language in the United States; Ontario; Printing and Publishing
References and Further Reading
Bausenhart, Werner A. “The Ontario German Language Press and Its Suppression by Order-in-Council in 1918.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 4, 1—2 (1972): 35—48.
Frisse, Ulrich. 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.
Kalbfleisch, Herbert Karl. “Among the Editors of Ontario German Newspapers, 1835—1918.” Canadian-German Folklore 1 (1961): 78-85.
------. The History of the Pioneer German Language Press of Ontario, 1835—1918. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1968.