As for any immigrant population, the development of a foreign-language press helped immigrants more easily learn about their new home, maintain connections to their native land, and unite immigrant communities. By the late 19th century, Germania published over 800 regular publications. The most prestigious daily newspapers, such as the
New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, the
Anzeiger des Westens in St. Louis, and the
Illinois Staats-Zeitung in Chicago, promoted middle-class values and encouraged German ethnic loyalty among their readership. The Germans were proud of their language, supported many German-language public and private schools, and conducted their church services in German. They published at least two-thirds of all foreign language newspapers in the U.S. The papers were owned and operated in the U.S., with no control from Germany. As Wittke emphasizes, the German-American press was "essentially an American press published in a foreign tongue." The papers reported on major political and diplomatic events involving Germany, with pride but from the viewpoint of its American readers. For example, during the latter half of the 19th century, at least 176 different German-language publications began operations in the city of Cincinnati alone. Many of these publications folded within a year, while a select few, such as the
Cincinnati Freie Presse, lasted nearly a century. Other cities experienced similar turnover among immigrant publications, especially from opinion press, which published little news and focused instead on editorial commentary. German Americans in many cities, such as
Milwaukee, brought their strong support of education, establishing German-language schools and teacher training seminaries (
Töchter-Institut) to prepare students and teachers in German language training. By the late 19th century, the Germania Publishing Company was established in Milwaukee; it was a publisher of books, magazines, and newspapers in German. Nicholas E. Gonner (1835-1892), a Catholic immigrant from Luxembourg, founded the Catholic Publishing Company of Dubuque, Iowa. His son Nicholas E. Gonner, Jr., (1870-1922) took over in 1892, editing two German language weeklies, an English language weekly, and the
Daily Tribune, the only Catholic daily newspaper ever published in the United States. Germany was a large country with many diverse subregions which contributed immigrants. Dubuque was the base of the
Ostfriesische Nachrichten ("East Fresian News") from 1881 to 1971. It connected the 20,000 immigrants from East Friesland (Ostfriesland), Germany, to each other across the Midwest, and to their old homeland. In Germany East Friesland was often a topic of ridicule regarding backward rustics, but editor Leupke Hündling shrewdly combined stories of proud memories of Ostfriesland. By mixing local American and local German news, letters, poetry, fiction, and dialogue, the German-language newspaper allowed immigrants to honor their origins and celebrate their new life as highly prosperous farmers with much larger farms than were possible back in Ostfriesland. During both world wars, when Germany came under heavy attack, the paper stressed its humanitarian role, mobilizing readers to help the people of East Friesland with relief funds. Younger generations could usually speak German but not read it, so the subscription base dwindled away as the target audience Americanized itself. Tens of thousands of German families immigrated directly to the Dakotas. They patronized 64 papers that operated between the 1870s and 1969, when the last German-language newspaper closed. The papers' roles evolved from preserving the language, heritage, and links to the old country, to promoting assimilation and Americanization. ==20th century==