Cincinnati: Our German History

By the early 1900s, the population of Cincinnati was more than 60% German Americans. Fondly called "Zinzinnati" by it's German residents, Cincinnati was home to brewing companies like Christian Morelein, a number of German language printers and newspapers and German speaking schools. The evidence of the German migration was everywhere to be seen, from the brick and stone Bavarian architecture to the names of canals and neighborhoods like Cincinnati's Over the Rhine.

In late 1917, the waves of the anti-German movement fueled by World War I began to hit Cincinnati hard. The Germans of Cincinnati scrambled to hide their heritage out of fear of persecution. German language printings became obsolete, German schools began to close, saloons even took pretzels off their counter as every bit of German was eradicated from the city. Restaurants began to sell "liberty slaw" instead of sauerkraut, doctors diagnosed "liberty measles" instead of German measles. As the war grew more heated, so did the anti-German movement, and Germans were finding themselves unemployed, beaten and on a couple of occasions, lynched.

Cincinnati's German heritage was all but lost as German Americans changed their names to more acceptable variations. "Schmidt" became "Smith," as families attempted to show their patriotism and avoid the masses by denying their history. Streets with German names were changed or flipped backwards, and even today when driving around Cincinnati you can see where "Mueller Avenue" became "Relleum Avenue" and "Kuller" became "Relluk" to keep the neighborhood from having a devaluing German association. The death knell for Cincinnati's Germans came with the passing of Prohibition, forcing the breweries to close.

Cincinnati was, and still is today, a German town. Despite their best efforts, there were some parts of German culture that just couldn't be hidden. Even today you can spot native Cincinnatians by the way they cross a line through the middle of their "z's" and "7's," as in German handwriting. If native Cincinnatians need you to repeat something you've said, you are much more likely to hear them say "please," rather than "excuse me," as the German word bitte can mean both and during the first waves of immigration got a little lost in translation.

Since the end of World War II, Cincinnati has been trying to reclaim its German history piece by piece. Restaurants still serve traditional German foods and in 2003 the famed German brewer Hofbrauhaus opened a brewery and restaurant just over the river in Newport, Kentucky, bringing a great deal of German back to mainstream Cincinnati. Cincinnati is home to the largest Oktoberfest outside Germany, and every year the Germania Society hosts Christkindlmarkt, a German Christmas celebration and market. The German-American Citizens League has opened a German Heritage Museum in Delhi and Cincinnati Public Schools reopened Fairview German Language elementary school where students are taught in German.

In 1917, World War I created Cincinnati's biggest secret, hiding a German heritage behind closed doors and changed names. But thanks to their German American descendants, Cincinnati is bringing that secret back out into the open. If there is any one good thing that has come from the anti-German movement, it's that the German culture has been woven into the fabric of Cincinnati's history and has become not only a German culture but a Cincinnati culture as well. Because of that, everyone who has ever lived in and experienced this great city can call themselves, regardless of their homeland, a "Zinzinnatian."