Anti-German Hysteria During WWI

Heinz-Dietrich Suppan will be the speaker for the January 23, 2020 meeting at the Bureau County Genealogical Society.  The meeting will be at 7:00 pm at 629 S. Main St., Princeton.

Suppan teaches German and history at Marquette High School in Ottawa and serves as an adjunct instructor at Illinois Valley Community College.  He will give a presentation entitled “Anti-German Hysteria During WWI.”  Many Germans had come over in a migration wave in the late 19^th century.  In the German tradition they built restaurants and guesthouses that had their own brewery.  In 1910, the U.S. had 554 German-language newspapers, as well as German-language school systems that coexisted with English-language schools.  By 1917, because Germany was one of America’s adversaries in the war, many Anglo-Americans began to fear that German Americans were still loyal to the Kaiser.  Suppan will tell us where the “Devil’s Triangle” was located and how social issues changed at the time.