Publisher's Synopsis
Who the millions of German and other middle European immigrants were, who came to the United States between 1880 and 1914, did not really interest the American mainstream of their time. The immigrants were to be a "what", not a "who", that integrated itself as rapidly as possible into the workforce and otherwise knew its place. In many quarters, this active disinterest has continued to the present day, leaving the descendants of this immigration wave with so little idea of their own families' past, that these descendants rank high among the xenophobic groups of the present, easily ignoring the fact that their own families were themselves immigrants. The overwhelming pressure to assimilate into the American mainstream led to the loss of their grandparents' experience, the memory of which the present sorely needs. The story told here deals with the experience of reality based, but fictional, German immigrants, Johanna and Franz Dorfmoeller, who entered the United States in 1913, and follows their lives through the historical situation until 1925. These immigrants encounter the situation in the United States of their era and react to the world into which they have migrated. From this encounter, our contemporary world emerges. The short comments of their granddaughter Caitlyn connect their story to ours. The narrative is meant to give the figures a genuine voice in English. Most German and other similar immigrants learned functional English after many years, but were never able to express themselves meaningfully in this language. To this end, probable German dialogues were turned into fitting English-language conversation, thus using fiction to give immigrants of the early 20th century a voice they never had in the American English-language public sphere. The result is an inside view of people who were similar to the ancestors of the Hoovers, the Eisenhowers or the even the Trumps - people who came from Germany and were very quickly "Americanized", assimilated beyond recognition, right down to the spelling of their names.Franz and Johanna are meant to be prototypes, representing the c. 20 million European immigrants who came to the United States between 1880 and 1920. This work is dedicated to them and their families.
