The 1920s Office

Office machinery from "Meyers Lexicon" vol. II, 1925.

Monsters! And light bulbs

From "Meyers Lexikon", 7th edition, 1928.

(Follow-up to these.)

On the cliquishness of minorities

Two quotes, out of what I assume is a huge number of similar examples. The first is Frederick the Great surveying his new Polish territory, quoted in Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present (Oxford, 2009), pp.37-8:

In 1772, he wrote to Voltaire of the Poles as the 'last people in Europe'. Likewise, he expressed dissatisfaction with the Jewish presence in the towns of the frontier provinces, concluding however that they were necessary 'on the Polish border because in these areas the Hebrews alone perform trade. As soon as you get away from the frontier, the Jews become a disadvantage, they form cliques'.

The second is from David Cameron's recent speech on immigration (which I blogged about at the time, here). The full text of this is on the BBC website:

In one case, an applicant applied as an 'Elite Chef' for a fried chicken shop. The main qualifying criterion was the rate of pay. So in this case, his sister, who owned the shop decided to pay him exactly the amount that allowed him to qualify. There was nothing the authorities could do and he was allowed in.

So it has fallen to this government to sort out the system - and we are completely changing the way it works so it is truly geared to the needs of our economy.

Rather than suggesting that Cameron is the reincarnation of Frederick the Great, the point I'm trying to make is this: Minorities have often been attacked on the basis that they band together to help each other, excluding the majority population, and therefore securing advantages for themselves. If this does happen it's because the majority, especially in boom times, don't need to forge such close networks to deal with problems. It makes more sense to move away from home to somewhere you can find a job you want to do, which you stand a good chance of getting because you're fluent in the right language and fit in with the dominant culture there. You may not need to be around to take care of parents, elderly relatives, younger siblings and cousins, because they have full access to state services. Immigrant communities have stronger bonds because they need them. Partly as a consequence of this, and in turn causing it, groups of such workers can be very useful to the national economy, as shown by both of the above quotes.

No resemblance: David the Great and "Just Call Me" Freddy

The problem comes when the economy contracts again, and everyone needs to fall back on their support network. Minorities may then seem to have an unfair advantage, because they are used to dealing with hardship and have informal systems in place for helping everyone in their community to scrape by. Similar to people failing means tests because they have spent twenty years in work carefully putting a little money aside each month, minority communities may end up punished for their previous organisation, thrift and hard work.*

The best historical example of this would be the fate of Jewish communities in Europe. Legally barred from other professions, they came to specialise in finance and in the trade in second-hand goods. During the economic crisis following the depression, most people existed in a world of torture and deprivation, defined by these two industries. On the one hand life-savings became worthless and interest on new loans was crippling. On the other, possessions had to be sold off cheap, and essentials such as clothes and shoes bought after a lot of haggling and pleading. Because of the ways they had had to deal with previous discrimination and hardship, Jewish communities seemed to be easily profiting from Germans' misfortune. Coupled with the pervasive myth that it was a worldwide Jewish conspiracy that had caused the crash in the first place, this was a very toxic mix.

Immigrants and other minorities make naturally easy targets. Politicians should be wary of criticising them, however subtly, for those same patterns of behaviour they have been forced to adopt. When stuck between a rock and a hard place, it's natural to want to give each other a leg-up.

*That isn't to say that majority white communities in Britain have not undergone extended periods of hardship. There are countless examples, particularly in former industrial or mining towns. My focus here is on communities who are easily distinguishable from a majority population who consider themselves to have been in that area longer.

"Little Folks in England"

A mere slip of a book for you today. It's a collection of 'easy' reading material from 1925 which, according to the editors, could be used after just one year of English lessons. All texts are taken from other volumes of reading material and centre around the 'typical' daily life of English children; how they play, what they do at school (especially the sports they play), and the stories they read.
The foreword explains the necessity of teaching with texts that introduce learners to the characteristics and culture of foreign peoples, not only to the language. The second book in the series is (was to be?) "England and the English".
Here are a few scans, a list of texts used, and my favourite text: "A Jolly Cricket Match".

Collection English Life, Part I: Little Folks in England
A. Schwieker & Dr. F. Schwieker
Otto Meissners Verlag, Hamburg

The following text is the only one in the collection which isn't credited. The text after it is from Tom Brown's School Days but I'm reasonably sure that this one isn't.

9. A Jolly Cricket Match

1. "I am sure you must be very stiff, Frank, after your hard work yesterday," said Mrs. Langham, when the family met in the breakfast-room on the Saturday morning following a grand cricket match; "yet I am very pleased indeed to see that you have made the effort to be down in good time for breakfast this morning."
2. "Now, Frank, tell us all about the match yesterday," said Bella, when they were all seated at table.
"There's not much to tell," said Frank. "our side won, as you know, and they played very fairly on the other."
"Our side smashed the other fellows all to bits," exclaimed Jack, "and old Frank scored the greatest number of runs on either side; I heard several say he was the best batsman by far on the field."
"You shut up, old fellow," replied his brother; "That's all stuff; there was plenty of good batting on the other side; it was a jolly match altogether."
3. "I do wish I could play in a real match," said Ben.
"You play!" said Frank, "Why such a bit of a chap as you would be mistaken for one of the wickets and get continually bowled down. how would you like that?"
"Never mind, Ben," said his mother, "go on growing, and some day you will be really the 'Big Ben' you are now called in fun, and then you will play with as much spirit as any boy."

The sources (exactly as they appear under each text):

Longman's British Empire Readers (Game of Leap-frog, Playing at Horses, Little John Going to the War, Jack and Jill)
Mc.Dougall's Suggestive Lessons in English, Book I (An Unlucky Drive, A Children's Party
Mc.Dougall's Suggestive Lessons in English, Book VI (A Letter telling about a Pet Canary)
Collins' Second Story Primer (A Tug of War, Roy and Toby at the Sea-side)
Waddy, The English Echo (On the Heath)
Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays (Football, A Jolly Cricket Match[?], At Rugby School)
Mrs Hawtrey (The Holiday)
A Day on the Sands - Nelson's Picture Readers (The Little Sailors, Oh, What Fun!, Crabs for Tea, Sand Castles)
Little Dots (Willie's Fishing)
Daily Chronicle, July 1924 (The Pierrots appeared, Afloat on the Rolling Deep, Man Overboard)
The Child's Companion (The Schoolboys are snow-balling)
Standard American Series. Third Reader (A Brave Boy)
Baret, The First English Lessons (Santa Claus)
E.M. Towle (School Life)
Oliver and Boyd's Excelsior Readers, Book I (The Flower Castle, A Flower Story: St.Leonard and the Dragon)
Chamber's Stepping-Stones to Literature, Book I: Stories from Near and Far (The Story of Catskin, Lazy Jack, How Maize Came)

English Life and Thought

This post originally appeared on one of my other blogs, Violetta Crisis.

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I bought a wonderful book at the Schanze Flea-market a a few weeks ago; Learning English: English Life and Thought, by Dr. Karl Eckermann. It’s “Ein kulturkundliches Lesebuch” (a cultural-studies reader) from 1927 and a rather interesting insight into language teaching in Germany between the wars.

It’s written in the traditional children’s book style: quite conversational, very paternal and 100% steadfast in its view of the world, a bit like going on an educational forest walk with a great uncle (in an age when that didn’t suggest anything untoward). It also has that enthusiastic praise of modernity which is so wonderful to look back on 80 years later. Like this passage, in the chapter, “From Berlin to London by Air”:

Our machine rises gently, in spite of a violent west wind. I am not nervous, and I am not sick. We are gliding along with the utmost comfort. Some one says: We are going too slowly,- so I put out my hand to see. The wind bends my fingers back till I fear it will break them. We are really shooting through the air - though we do not notice it.
We are flying against the wind. The pilot has a difficult trip before him. Yet he takes the trouble to write down for me on a card the names of the chief places we pass. I wish I could write as good a hand at my desk as he does in this storm, holding on to his steering wheel. (p.93)

On the one hand, I’m glad that the ‘machines’ no longer have windows you can open. On the other hand, personal service seems to have gone downhill since then.

Dr.Eckermann seems to have a genuine love of England, its customs and history. But he also strikes me as one of the inter-war xenophiles who enthusiastically adopted the some of the more negative aspects of their subject’s character (see Houston Stewart Chamberlain). The chapters on Scotland and Ireland are terrible - this is very much a book in praise of England, not Britain. He includes a passage from Andrew Carnegie, entitled “Why Scotchmen succeed”:

Scotch children are reared right: they are fortunate in being born poor. They have as a guide and model their father, and for their nurse, seamstress, cook and saint, their mother. Oh, how I pity the boy who is born the son of a millionaire! (p.63)

The rest of the passage talks about Scottish pride and other virtues (apparently this theme was also very popular in language textbooks in the late 1930s) but any positive effect is immediately negated by the three “Englishman, Irishman, Scotchman” jokes which follow. And there’s worse to come in “A letter about Ireland”, from a fictional tourist to his friend:

Mr. Mackinder himself is of Scotch descent, and I hear him very often speak of the Irish and especially of the Irish peasants with an undertone of contempt. "If the Irish peasant", Mr Mackinder once said to me, "is so poor, it is in most cases his own fault. It is true, he is clever and witty, but he is awfully backward as regards the tilling of the soil, the use of tools [...] He does not send his children to school, under the pretence that they have no decent clothes to put on [...]". Well, at first I thought Mr. Mackinder's words too sharp, but when I saw the first real old Irish village, I found them true. (p.67)

Again, the passage is followed by a couple of anecdotes, this time about the Irish "reputation for an apt retort". Not only does this show how normal this kind of contempt must have been at the time, it's scary to think that this probably formed countless German children's lasting opinion of Scotland and Ireland. Little wonder that the inferiority complex of both countries has proven difficult to shake off, despite being completely unfounded.

For the sake of completeness, here's the title page and a section from the glossary at the back:

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Links

• If you're interested in the history of language teaching in Germany, this essay gives an interesting overview, complete with some amusing example English dialogue from the early 19th century: "Drink, pray, my love, it grows late and we have half a mile to make."


• More from Andrew Carnegie here