German Cincinnati. Images of America Series by Don Heinrich Tolzmann (review)

BOOK REVIEWS many other professions did not. Miller's history of osteopathy is capped by a final compelling photograph of Barbara RossLee , D.0., an African American who was named dean of OUCOM in 1993. But again, Lee' s sto.ry is treated as a fact rather than something requiring historical interpretation. Miller's book should not be the final woril about the history of osteopathy in Ohio or in the U.S. Rather, it should be used as a springboard and an indication that a ri,sher story about the relationship between women, minorities , and the osteopathic profession during the twentieth century still remains to be written. Beth Linker Yale University Don Heinrich iblzmann. German Cincinnati. Images of America Series. Charleston,South Carolina:Arcadia Publishing ,2005. 128 p]). ISBN 0738540048 ( softcover), $ 19.99. n recent years, a nationwide historileal phenomenon has captured the attention of ordinary readers: a dynamic revival of interest in local and regional people, places, and events. To meet this new demand, pub.[ ishers like Arcadia have produced short, affordable works documenting the visual histories of communities throughout the United States. Joining this repertoire is Don Heinrich Tolzmann' s German Cincinnati. Tolzmann is curator of the GermanAmeri cana Collection and director of the German American Studies Program at the University of Cincinnati. Tolzmann' s book is arranged thematically ,examining images, immigration, religion , social life, education, business and industry,culture, literature,war and polities , and other topics. He covers the metropolitan Cincinnati area, including the heavily German suburbs of Covington and Newport, Kentucky, remarking that Cincinnati was one of the points of the German Triangle," which included Cincinnati ,Milwaukee,and St. Louis. What Cincinnatians often tal< e for granted as part of the American way of life" ( 7), he suggests, is actually deeply rooted in the city's German heritage. Even Cincinnati' s principal landmarks, the Tyler Davidson Fountain and the John Roebling Bridge, have historic German ties. The fountain was cast in Munich, and the bridge was designed by German dmigrd Johann August Roebling. One of Tolzmann' s specialties is immigration history,and hence, his second chapter, entitled " Immigration and Settlement , contains many historical gems. Germans constituted the largest single immigrant group iii Greater Cincinnati 23), thereby leaving their stamp on everything that the book' s subsequent chapters describe,from religion and education to culture and business. Early German settlers included Johannes Tanner, who established Tanner's Station in Boone County, Kentucky in 1785, and Major David Ziegler, commandant at Cincinnati 's Fort Washington and the city' s first mayor. Tolzmann delineates the largescale German immigration of the nineteenth century, including succinct but insightful descriptions of the passage in steerage ( Zwischendeck) across the At76 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY lantic, chain migration, and the principal areas feeding German immigradon to metropolitan Cincinnati, " north-and southwestern Germany,as well as parts of the AustroHungarian Empire ( 29). The latter included Danube Swabians, or Donauschwaben, whose descendants still operate an organization ofthe same name in Cincinnati. Cincinnatis German immigrants gravitated to the Overthe Rhine area of the city,once encompassing as many as 75,000 residents. This vast immigrant ghetto ranged from tenements to housing for the middle and upper classes. It included German shops,beer gardens,social organizations like the Turners ( Turnverein ), and Roman Catholic,Protestant, and Jewish houses of worship. German Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and Jews built beautiful architectural monuments that continue to crown the Queen City of the West and its suburbs in Covington and Newport. Tolzmann' s inclusion of nineteenthcentury illustrations of German sausage and wienerwurst men of Overthe Rhine add character to the book, as do his marvelous lithographs ofbuildings. The German contribution to Cincinnati ' s education and culture is welldocu mented by Tolzmann. The city's public school system became the first in the nation to offer " bilingual instruction" in German and English, and " at its height counted" 250 teachers and close to 20,000 students" ( 65). German singing societies inaugurated the first Sdngerfest ( Singing Festival) in Cincinnati in 1849. German philanthropists were instrumental in building Cincinnati' s historic Music Hall, as well as Pike's Opera House, Heuck's Opera House, and the Cincinnati Zoo. GermanAmerican artists like Frank Duveneck, Johann Schmitt, and John Hauser enriched the cultural life of the region. The city was home to some two hundred GermanAmerican newspapers and journals including the Volksblatt, the Freie Presse, and the GermanCatholic publication, the WaiyrbeitsFreund . World War I,Prohibition, and World t. War II all took their toll on GermanAmerican culture in the region, as well as nationwide. ' Ihe patriotism of nineteenth century German immigrants, refiected in four Cincinnati German Civil War regiments ( including the famous Turner regiment, the Ninth Ohio), was forgotten in the antiGerman hysteria of the twentieth century With the nation' s bicentennial in 1976, a renaissance of interest in ethnicity emerged. In that year, Cincinnati held its first Oktoberfest, now SUMMER 2006 77 BOOK REVIEWS the secondlargest in the world, second only to that ofMunkh. Likewise, neighboring Covington sponsors a popular Maifest and Oktoberfest of its own, and its MainStrasse hi. itoric district includes shops and sidewalk cafes. Tolzmann' s German Cincinnati earns its rightful place airiong his other regional works,including Cincinnati' s German Heritage ( 1994), Couington ' s German Heritage 1998), and German Heritage Guide to the Greater Cincinnati Area 2003).Also of value is Kevin Grace' s and Tom White' s Cincinnati' s O' uerthe Rbinc 2003), part of the same Arcadia Publishing's " Images ofAmerica" series. The enchanting lithographs and photographs of Tolzmann' s German Cincinnati serve as a visual repository of the memory of a proud and influential immigrant community. Paul A. Tenkotte Ihomas More College 78 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ...