In May 1917, the re-enactment of the 1798 Alien Law required local aliens who worked in or near the Penn Central railroad tracks, Bowser General Electric, or the Post Office, to register as enemy aliens or face arrest and prison. (Enemy aliens were considered residents of foreign birth who had not yet completed the two sets of registration papers required for naturalization.)
A separate edict also required all aliens to surrender any weapons, aircraft, wireless, secret codes, or foreign flags to the local police. A few German-Americans turned in some shotguns, and rifles, but others felt such requests and the registration itself were insults to their loyalty and enacted solely because of their German background.
Few residents of German ancestry initially registered with the authorities, because they already thought of themselves as Americans, having voting privileges granted by the registration of first papers (the official disavowal of allegiance to any foreign power.) Fewer than one-third of the men registered before the December 1917 act, which required alien males to register with the local government, regardless of employment or movement.
Officials estimated more women than men registered. Prior to May 1918, alien females were assigned the status of their husbands and single women were largely ignored. President Wilson's edict of May 1918 brought all alien women under the registration act.
By the end of the war, approximately 80 percent of the 1500 male "enemy aliens" in the city registered with the local government. Overall, local officials only threatened action; no individual German-American was arrested for failing to comply with the registration.
Another action taken against local German-Americans was the effort to ban the German language from everyday usage in schools, churches, clubs, and on the streets. The County Council of Defense, in conjunction with 300 volunteer Liberty Guards, the American Protective League, and the Justice Department, tried to enforce the ban by both verbal and written warnings to local Lutheran and Catholic clergymen. The government also targeted local parochial schools, most of which eventually discontinued using German as the language of instruction.
Other forms of harassment of the local German-Americans included the sometimes forceful persuasion to buy liberty bonds, various reports made against German-American citizens that they were wasting food and gasoline, that they were spies, that they were heard speaking German, or that thay made remarks against America or the flag.
Several local German-Americans faced not only slander but also physical violence. Documented cases include German men beaten at the Courthouse, and at the General Electric plant, when fellow citizens suspected them of disloyalty.
Eventually, local institutions also felt the effects of the ban of German culture. The German-American Bank changed its name to Lincoln National Bank (now Norwest), Republican candidate W. Sherman Cutshall defeated the German Democratic candidate Maurice Niezer, and the local German newspaper eventually ceased publication.
The aim of both the registration and the ban on the German language appeared to be the forced assimilation of local Germans into the American way of life. Although such measures often constituted a violation of civil rights, the outcome was that Fort Wayne's Germans became "Americanized" so that the city could no longer be called a "most German town."
Return to Heritage top page.
Return to Home page.