A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Texas German dying out February 14, 2013

Before I met my wife, a story like this would not have held much interest.  But my wife hails from one of the great Texas German families – two of them, actually.  Her father is a Lange, which name is very frequently seen around Fredericksburg on road signs and mailboxes. But her mother was a Hoelscher, a huge family which bills itself as the largest family in Texas, with over 5000 families descending from the original 2 German immigrants.  Strong Catholics, these, they have for the most part instilled the Faith in each succeeding generation, and many of these families are very large.  My father-in-law has, I think, 68 grandchildren and 5 (or 6?) great-grandchildren.  Ach, it’s easy to lose count!  Family reunions are awesome!  My brother-in-law who comments here sometimes has 18 kids!  Fantastic family.

Prior to WWII, almost all these families lived in primarily German communties scattered around central and south Texas from Shriner and other points in the east to Floresville and other places in the south, up to Fredericksburg in the north and west out to Uvalde and Ozona.  San Antonio used to have a huge German presence but that has all largely melted away.  But for a very long period of Texas history, German – mostly Catholic German – culture was very influential.  But with the melting pot effect and urbanization which has occurred since WWII, these unique communities have scattered and fragmented, and are no longer the cohesive bodies they used to be.  Which, is kind of sad, because there was and is a lot of very cool culture in the Texas German community. It’s where we got much of our Texas food, from barbeque to chicken fried steak.    That’s one thing I like about traveling through the Hill Country extensively – finding little small town food gems.

My father-in-law grew up speaking a German dialect unique to Texas.  This Texas German was very widely spoken when he was a kid, and he grew up knowing no English at their ranch outside Harper. He even refused to attend school for a year or two because he didn’t want to learn no stinkin’ English!  Finally, he had to go, he and his brothers riding a horse to school every day.  I kid you not.  That’s so awesome.

But for many reasons, my father-in-law’s generation failed to pass on Texas German to their children, and the dialect is dying out.  I know many of my wife’s older family members do still speak at least some Texas German, but none of my wife’s generation does.

Since the language is slowly dying, a linguistics professor at UT is trying to record as much as he can for posterity before it finally goes kaput:

It was easy for Dorothy Schneider to get in touch with her European roots growing up in the tiny farming community of Galle, Texas, in the 1930s and 1940s.

“There was German spoken everywhere,” the now 75-year-old said recently. “It was our first language in my family. You could speak it at the church, at the butcher shop, all over the place.”

Today, though she doesn’t live far from her girlhood community, it is almost impossible for Schneider to find people who will speak her native tongue with her. She knows it is dying, and she can’t do anything about it.

“It’s terrible, but I just have to accept this,” she said.

As the obscure dialect of Texas German nears extinction, an entire culture and way of life that deeply shaped Texas is about to disappear.

A century ago, more than 100,000 people in a large swathe of south central Texas spoke the dialect. To the uninitiated, it sounds like a strange mishmash of English and German.

Today, perhaps 8,000 people can speak it, the youngest of whom are in their 60s, according to Hans Boas, a University of Texas at Austin professor who studies Texas German. Few have passed it on to their children and grandchildren, so the dialect is now impossible to save, Boas said.

All that can be done now is catalogue its characteristics for posterity. Boas’ Texas German Dialect Project is racing to conduct interviews with the last remaining speakers for the benefit of future genealogists, linguists and historians.

I’ve come to hold a great deal of respect for my wife’s family.  I think it’s very impressive that they have so successfully transmitted the Faith to each succeeding generation, although in the past 50 years that trend has weakened a great deal.  Except for my father-in-law, he was almost entirely successful in keeping his kids not just in the Faith, but quite passionate about it. Pretty impressive in this day and age, to raise 9 kids and every single one of them is a practicing Catholic, and most have large families.  He’s a gruff old guy, a tough, wiry German even at 83.  About 12 years ago, he got attacked by a wild javalina that put its tusk through his hand – all the way! – and he killed it by bashing its head in with a hammer.  He can field dress a deer in about 3 minutes. Tough.  Country.  Catholic.  That’s alright by me.