A Comparative History of Protestant Ethnic German Immigrants In
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Integration in Two Cities: A Comparative History of Protestant Ethnic German Immigrants in Winnipeg, Canada and Bielefeld, Germany 1947-1989 by HANS P. WERNER A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba © Hans P. Werner, 2002 Table of Contents ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................v Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 PART ONE: The Setting ...................................................................................................28 Chapter One: The City as Receiving Society: Forming Collective Memories of Immigration.........................................................................................................28 Chapter Two: The Value of Immigrants: Comparing Public Discourse and Immigration Policies in Canada and Germany........................................................................63 PART TWO: Putting Down Roots ..................................................................................100 Chapter Three: Winnipeg: Self Reliance in a Laissez-faire Milieu.............................100 Chapter Four: Bielefeld: Settlement Processes and Welfare State Programs ..............142 PART THREE: Reproducing the Community.................................................................178 Chapter Five: The Family: Strategies of Adaptation and Resistance ..........................178 Chapter Six: Religion: Faith Worlds as Bridges and Barriers to Integration..............216 Chapter Seven: The Paradoxes of Linguistic Assimilation.........................................249 PART FOUR: Participation.............................................................................................284 Chapter Eight: National Citizenship and Community Membership ............................284 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................318 Appendix..........................................................................................................................329 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................337 i Tables and Figures Figure 1. Eastern European Origins of Ethnic German Immigrants..................................22 Table 1. Bielefeld and Winnipeg: Population Growth, 1881-1941 ...................................49 Figure 2. Foreigners in Bielefeld by Country of Origin, 1959 to 1984 .............................58 Figure 3. Annual Total Ethnic German Immigration to Germany.....................................85 Figure 4. Ethnic Neighbourhoods in Winnipeg, 1941 .....................................................125 Figure 5. Distribution of Germans in Winnipeg, 1961 ....................................................127 Figure 6. Distribution of Germans in Winnipeg, 1971 ....................................................138 Figure 7. Bielefeld and Surrounding Area.......................................................................146 Figure 8. Distribution of Foreigners and Ethnic Germans in Bielefeld, 1970s. ..............150 Table 2. Employment by Sector, Winnipeg and Bielefeld. .............................................161 Table 3. Readership of German Language Periodicals in Manitoba, 1986. ....................314 Table A-1. Church Supported Ethnic German Immigration to Canada, 1947 to 1961. ..330 Table A-2. Ethnic Origin of Postwar Immigrants in Winnipeg –1961 Census ...............331 Table A-3. Religion of Postwar Immigrants in Winnipeg –1961 Census .......................331 Table A-4. Winnipeg Ethnic Population..........................................................................332 Table A-5. Ethnic German Immigration to Winnipeg and Canada –1961 Census..........333 Table A-6. Ethnic German Immigration to Winnipeg and Bielefeld...............................333 Table A-7. Religion of Ethnic German Immigrants in Germany, 1970s and Canada, 1950s................................................................................................................................334 Table A-8. Postwar Divorces per 10,000 in Manitoba and Bielefeld..............................335 Table A-9. Cumulative Number of Expellees and Refugees in Bielefeld .......................336 ii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the processes of integration for ethnic German immigrants migrating to Winnipeg, Canada in the 1950s and to Bielefeld, Germany in the 1970s. Ethnic Germans in this study are descendants of German speakers who migrated to Imperial Russia and Poland in the five hundred years before the 20th century. There they developed ethnic German enclaves among Slavic peoples, spoke German dialects, and maintained what they believed were German ways. Their migration came as a result of the dislocations of the 1940s and the subsequent political tensions associated with the Cold War. The concept of integration used here reflects recent scholarly efforts to re- examine the assimilation model attributed to American sociologist Robert E. Park. The Chicago School of the 1920s assumed that immigrants steadily lost their old ways and finally became indistinguishable from others in the host society. In the re-examination of this model in the 1980s and 1990s, integration is understood as a moment or phase in immigrant-host society interaction when the tension between the two is no longer attributable to the immigrant condition but has become part of the host society’s ongoing cultural negotiation with all groups of citizens. This dissertation is a comparative social history. It compares the integrating process of two similar groups in the cities of two countries. Economic activity, spatial integration, family life, religious culture, language reproduction, and participation as citizens are the variables that have been examined as case studies of interaction between the first immigrant generation and its host society in these cities. iii These measures of integration suggest a remarkable irony: ethnic German immigrants in Winnipeg progressed more easily towards being integrated than did their counterparts in Bielefeld. The central reason was the different imagined trajectories of life in the two environments. Bielefeld’s immigrants imagined themselves going home and relieving the ethnic tensions they had experienced in the Soviet Union or Poland, while Winnipeg’s immigrants expected to change in an Anglo-Canadian, North American environment. Ironically, ethnic Germans in Bielefeld encountered greater tensions in their attempts to integrate into German society than did ethnic Germans facing the integrative culture of Winnipeg. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A project such as this incurs many debts. I have received generous financial support in the form of fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the University of Manitoba, and the German-Canadian Studies Foundation. Other support from the Metropolis Project and the University of Manitoba has made possible the required travel to complete research in Germany. I have also benefited from the assistance of the staffs of various archives. In particular Bärbel Sonderbrink and Bernd Wagner at the Bielefeld Stadtarchiv and Lawrence Klippenstein and Alf Redekop at the Mennonite Heritage Centre gave patiently and generously of their time. The staffs of the National Archives in Ottawa and the Provincial Archives of Manitoba were also most helpful. My fellow graduate students in the Winnipeg Immigration History Research Group, a Metropolis Project working group, have contributed their thoughtful comments and questions in the early stages of this project. I am particularly indebted to my advisors, Professors Gerald A. Friesen and Royden K. Loewen who have been supportive, stimulating, and motivating intellectual mentors. Once again I am indebted to my wife, Diana Werner who has been a good listener and supporter for a long time. v INTRODUCTION This is a study of how immigrants integrated into the city. It compares the experiences of approximately six thousand immigrants who arrived in Winnipeg, Canada in the 1950s with the seven thousand of similar background who arrived in Bielefeld, Germany in the 1970s. These newcomers, stepping onto the platform of the train station in Winnipeg or getting off the bus at Bielefeld’s temporary housing facility on Teichsheide Strasse, immediately began the process of coming to terms with their new environment and finding their place in it. Although both cities hosted many different migrants in the twentieth century, this study focuses on the integration experience of just one of the immigrant groups, ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. This thesis argues that ethnic Germans in Bielefeld found it more difficult to integrate than did their Winnipeg counterparts. A number of reasons for this difference will be explored in the following pages. However, differences in the two groups’ perception of the trajectory of their lives, a consequence of both of their own expectations of life in their new homes, and of the expectations of their respective host societies, are the most