Mareike König. Deutsche Handwerker, Arbeiter und Dienstmädchen in Paris: Eine vergessene Migration im 19. Jahrhundert. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2003. 204 S. EUR 34.80 (broschiert), ISBN 978-3-486-56761-8.

Stefan Manz. Migranten und Internierte: Deutsche in Glasgow, 1864-1918. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003. 317 S. EUR 62.00 (paper), ISBN 978-3-515-08427-7.

Reviewed by Eric H. Limbach (Department of History, Michigan State University)
Published on H-German (February, 2007)

Two Forgotten Migrations: German Communities in Glasgow and Paris during

Much recent research on migration suggests that Germans were among the most mobile populations in Europe, migrating through, temporarily residing and even settling themselves across Europe and North America. Both of these works, while structurally very different, are very much a part of this tradition, and complement each other well. Each is interested in the establishment and maintenance of German migrant communities in a major European urban-industrial center: Glasgow for Stefan Manz, Paris for Mareike König and her collaborators. Both works also seek to fill lacunae in the existing literature on German migrations and provide models for further research on specific historical migrant communities.

Manz's work is a German edition of his recent dissertation, and traces the development of the small, yet influential, German community in Glasgow from the 1860s through the First World War. His intention is to analyze the slow growth and rapid dissolution of this community, all while maintaining a micro-historical focus that contrasts well with the more general approach of scholars like Klaus Bade, Dirk Hoerder and Panikos Panayi. This approach allows Manz to provide some sense of the occupational and social breadth of the German community, from leading merchants, industrial managers and the professional classes of teachers, musicians and brewers, through industrial laborers and even the unemployed. Based on his archival research in Germany and the United Kingdom, Manz estimates that the German community contained only a few thousand people at its height around the turn of the century. Individual continuity was limited, as most migrants only stayed a short time before returning to Germany or leaving for elsewhere, either within Great Britain or to North America. Faced with this constant flux, Manz argues that the German community in Glasgow was an integral part of a wider transatlantic migration system that saw most individuals move multiple times over a working lifetime. Occasionally, migrants chose to settle in the city, either for personal or business reasons, and some of them pursued naturalization. This choice was normally made for business-related reasons, however, rather than as any signal of adaptation or assimilation.

Manz opens with case studies of four long-term German residents of Glasgow, all highly placed within the city's business community. Johannes Kiep, a native of Hamburg, joined an older brother in Glasgow in 1867 and eventually became a leading wholesaler in wood. He was appointed an honorary consul of the German Empire in 1898. Otto Ernst Philippi, another Hamburger, rose to the position of national sales director for J. & P. Coats. Paul Rottenburg, a native of Danzig who dealt in chemicals, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow and served a term as president of the Chamber of Commerce. Lastly, Henry Dubs, from Darmstadt, was the founder of Britain's second-largest locomotive works. This group was clearly well integrated into the city's mercantile elite, but Manz also uncovers the stories of other lesser-known German migrants who were still visible to the majority of Glaswegians. Following the example of Queen Victoria, many leading families employed German governesses and tutors for their children, a trend even more pronounced among the German immigrant elite. Children raised by German governesses also had the advantage of learning German from an early age, while others had to make do with learning the language, at the time the second most popular foreign language in Britain, from schoolteachers and university professors. Germans were also in demand as musicians, waiters, hairdressers and bakers. Of particular interest to those fond of fermented malt and hops might be Manz's research on the influence of German brewers on the Scottish brewing industry. Tennent's, in particular, benefited from German knowledge and brewing equipment when it first began producing lager in the late nineteenth century.

Manz's discussion of the occupations held by German migrants leads into his section on the maintenance of German community ties. As it was for other Germans around the world, the late nineteenth century was an age of associations for those in Glasgow. Some groups were organized along occupational lines, as with orchestras or waiters' clubs. Others were concerned with education or the creation and maintenance of social and commercial relationships. In addition, two German Protestant congregations operated in the city, of which only one, the second founded, had a relationship with the Prussian state church. Manz argues that most, if not all, of these groups were organized with some concept of shared German ethnicity in mind, building not only upon a shared language and culture but also on ethnic and national bonds. Of course, most of those involved had vastly differing ideas of what ethnicity and nation actually meant, which added to the complexity of the situation. As for German nationalism, it is interesting to note that the migrant community maintained a local branch of the Naval League, and many attended a memorial service for Kaiser Wilhelm I held at Glasgow Cathedral in 1888.

After the outbreak of war in 1914, most German-born residents of Glasgow found themselves under suspicion. All were forced to register with the authorities; while some were quickly repatriated, many others were interned, first at Leeman Road, near York, and then later in a camp at Stobs, near Hawick. The leading naturalized British subjects among the German community, including Paul Rottenburg, attempted to assure the mayor of Glasgow that they intended to remain loyal to the king, but even this overture, in addition to monetary contributions to the British war effort, was not enough to prevent the loss of social position and business. The measures did have their intended effect: the German community that remained never regained the numbers or the dynamism evident before the war.

The volume edited by König covers much of the same ground, though in a much less comprehensive manner, as is the nature of edited collections. Five of the eight papers included are written in German and the remainder in French, while each is accompanied by an abstract in the opposite language. Unlike Manz, König has made a conscious effort to have her contributors concentrate on the 90 percent of the migrant population comprised of skilled and unskilled workers and domestics, without including the upper levels of business leaders and professionals. Of course, given the greater size of Paris compared to Glasgow, and its proximity to Germany, the migrant population was much larger: around 60,000 in the later nineteenth century, enough to make Paris the "third major German city" (p. 9). König is careful to note, in the initial essay, that this is not to say that there was ever a single German community in Paris. Instead, many Germans migrants to the city tended to congregate with others who shared their regional identification or occupation. Thus, migrants from the Palatinate settled in Fontainebleau, and later in Gentilly and Ivry, while those from Hesse preferred the Twelfth Arrondissement, Batignolles and La Villette. Such differences meant very little, though, during the Franco-Prussian war and the siege of Paris, when German schools were closed and church services suspended. After the war, anti-German sentiment was so common among the French that Germans claimed to be Austrian or Swiss to avoid trouble. The war and its aftermath also made life difficult for workers, who were limited to seeking jobs offered by German bosses. This experience, though, paled in comparison to that of the First World War and its aftermath, which saw the German population of Paris diminished by over 90 percent, neatly bringing to an end this period of German migration.

The other articles in the volume each take up particular aspects of the German migrant community in Paris during this period. The second and third chapters, by Sven Steffens and Sigrid Wadauer, both examine the autobiographical writings of German migrants in and on their way to Paris. Steffens argues that the migration system centered on Paris was geared towards providing occupational training that migrants could then practice elsewhere. Such vocational instruction was of particular importance in luxury trades like gold-working and various forms of furniture-making, as well as tanning, bookbinding and a number of mechanical fields. Wadauer's interest is in Paris as a destination for apprentices and how they wrote about their experiences on the way there. She argues for the importance of recovering the original voices of the writers, which have, more often than not, been lost through editing and textual revision; this recovery is intended to allow researchers to gain some insight into the meaning of their migration.

König's second chapter, the fourth overall, deals with German maidservants in turn-of-the-century Paris. German women were very much in demand for domestic work, though this did not mean that they had any more control over their labor situation than any other migrant workers. Indeed, as König argues, such women were less likely to be qualified for their jobs and did not enjoy the same protections or privileges as workers in other fields. In addition, the lack of suitable sources has prevented scholarly research in this significant area of nineteenth-century migration. Of particular interest may be König's findings on the organizations and relationships that brought German domestics together in their rare free time.

In contrast to the other articles in the volume, Pierre-Jacques Derainne's contribution deals with the interaction between native French workers and primarily German migrants during the period of the July Monarchy. He argues that attempts by French workers to limit employment to natives, while largely unsuccessful in the long run, did contribute to the growth of national self-identification among both French and foreign migrant workers. These conflicts also contributed to the tendency of workers to organize themselves into nationality-based groups, a subject that both Gaël Cheptou and Marie-Louise Goergen take up in the following chapters. Cheptou notes that, during the Exposition Universelle of 1900, which provided employment for large numbers of German migrants, these workers had organized German-language sections of French trade unions to advocate for their rights as German-speakers. Not surprisingly, this step led to antagonism between the different union sections; eventually the various German-language groups organized among themselves, independently of the existing French union structure. Goergen is interested in the close relationship between French and German Socialist groups in pre-World War I Paris. Despite the numerous contacts between the groups, each represented a different model for socialist development and they competed for supremacy in international meetings and in the socialist press. Goergen argues that this proximity benefited both groups, not only because they could keep a close watch on each other but also because each could adapt the other's practices for its own use.

Of the essays included by König, Michael G. Esch's work on the use of social morphology and network analysis to study the integration of eastern European Jews in Paris is perhaps the only puzzling inclusion. While interesting, it has very little in common with the other chapters in the volume, either in methodology or choice of subjects. However, his work does contribute to wider themes of integration and inclusion, as well as the formation of migrant networks and organizations.

Both books will be of significant interest to H-German subscribers, particularly those who study the migration of Germans and the formation of migrant German communities throughout the world. The essays in König's volume might also be of interest, in a comparative sense, for those who study other migrant communities in nineteenth-century Paris or German migrants in other European cities. The contributions of Steffens and Wadauer should be of interest to those studying migrants' writings, while the articles by König, Cheptou and Goergen all deal with various aspects of migrant labor organization. As for Manz's book, one hopes, for the sake of our colleagues in British and Scottish history, that it will someday appear in English translation. Given that Glasgow has a reputation for being a city of migrants, particularly the Irish, but also of rural Scots, scholars of immigration to and migration within Great Britain might also consider brushing up on their German. The same goes for anyone researching the internment of enemy nationals during wartime: Manz's section on the First World War should provide an excellent model.

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-german.

Citation: Eric H. Limbach. Review of König, Mareike, Deutsche Handwerker, Arbeiter und Dienstmädchen in Paris: Eine vergessene Migration im 19. Jahrhundert and Manz, Stefan, Migranten und Internierte: Deutsche in Glasgow, 1864-1918. H-German, H-Net Reviews. February, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12849

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