Kolonie-Deutsch: Life and language in Amana By Philip E. Webber (review)

622 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 70, NUMBER 3 (1994) search findings have not been consistent because the context and structure of social interaction have not always been carefully considered . The relationship between gender and speech has been studied and written about a great deal. What is now needed is studies that are sensitive to the contexts in which men, women, or both verbally interact. This collection is a good example of such an approach. [Zdenek Salzmann , Northern Arizona University.] Kolonie-Deutsch: Life and language in Amana. By Philip E. Webber. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1993. Pp. xii, 127. Cloth $19.95. German-language enclaves have a long and impressively durable history in the United States, and an unusually wide geographical distribution as well. Most such enclaves are now nearing the end of a gradual process of shift to English, with Amish and Mennonite settlements in a number of states as the chief exceptions. The seven villages of the Amana settlementcluster in Iowa date to the mid-nineteenth century , when German Pietists founded them as a linked string of villages in which they could practice their theocratic communitarianism. As in many other German-language enclaves in the U.S., the use of German was scarcely challenged until World War I. In the wave of antiGerman sentiment that swept the country at that time, Iowa prohibited the use of foreign languages in public. Elderly Amana residents trace the initial weakening of traditional patterns to this period. A further break with tradition came in 1932, when the original theocracy gave way to a dual system of secular and church governance. Today the Amana villages are a prominent tourist attraction in eastern Iowa. German is still spoken by elderly villagers, but the receding language has left a distinctive German cultural flavor to Amana life quite generally and this is cultivated as part of the attraction for tourists. The Pietists who followed religious leader Christian Metz to Iowa did not all come from a single part of Germany. Saxons, Hessians, and Swabians were well represented, other regional groups less so. One of the fascinating features of the seven Amana villages (Amana, Middle Amana, High Amana, West Amana, South Amana, East Amana, and Homestead) is that the German of each of the villages has developed local features. Webber discusses Amana German generally as a contact language, looking both at distinctive features retained from the German of the settlers and at features that resulted from long-standing influence from English, and he then also sketches the distinguishing features of the various Amana 'microdialects'. His fieldwork in the villages, extending over more than a decade, included a role as interviewer in a project aimed at compiling an archive of taped samples of Amana German , and he draws on this material in characterizing the language of the various villages . Language is very much the focus ofW's book. Although the subtitle mentions life as well as language, the former is seriously slighted, as is external history. It's perhaps unfortunate that an Iowa-based press published the book, since a publisher located anywhere else would probably have insisted on more background material to help orient readers unfamiliar with the Amana 'colony'. Pietism is not discussed, and the dates and place of origin for leader Christian Metz are not supplied; the routines of fully functioning communal living are mentioned only in discussing the richness that shared tasks once lent to song and talk during the work routines of the community. The reader interested in Germanlanguage enclaves in the U.S. but new to the Amana villages would certainly have been helped by at least a brief chapter describing the organization of social and religious life during the heyday of the Amana villages, but Iowabased author and press offer no assistance of that sort. What W does offer is a warm and highly readable account of German language use in Amana life. The charm of the book, and its affection for the German enclave it treats, will draw and hold many readers, especially those with an interest in strong ethnic enclaves in the U.S. and in German settlements in particular. The book is clearly intended for a fairly general readership, and...