For the 400 German-Americans crowded into their own Phoenix Club in Anaheim last Nov. 10, the night was the most joyous celebration of their lives. They cheered, toasted and cried at every image that flashed across the television screens. To them, every scene of the thousands of Germans milling around the just-opened Berlin Wall was an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime sight.
They cheered again when other Phoenix members unfurled a huge banner in German, reading "Finally, Freedom for East Germany," across one dance-floor wall. They shouted once more when Phoenix president Hans Klein announced club plans to sponsor the resettlement in America of five East German families.
And the media, including Los Angeles television stations, were there in full force, making the celebration the most visible gathering in the history of Orange County's large German-American community.
The euphoria of that night has yet to die down.
"No one expected it (the opening of East German borders) to happen like this--so suddenly, so completely. The wave of freedom has finally reached that part of Germany," said club member Erwin Simons.
And Gunter Kunkel, a past Phoenix president, saw yet another impact from the Nov. 10 drama. "You're going to see more people (in America) showing their pride at being German-Americans," he said. "You're going to see them coming out of the closet."
Such public displays of German-American pride are still rare in Orange County, even though the German-American population here is one of the largest in the United States.
The county has roughly 140,000 residents of direct German ancestry--German immigrants or their immediate American-born descendants--a total second only to Los Angeles County in California, according to Phoenix Club officials. Another 320,000 Orange County residents are believed to be of part-German ancestry.
And German immigrants have played a pivotal role in Orange County history, dating back to 1857 when a band of German immigrants established the vineyard colony that was incorporated 21 years later as the town of Anaheim.
Yet established German-American organizations--such as the 30-year-old Phoenix Club, the biggest social-cultural organization of its kind in Southern California--have long kept a low, noncontroversial, rather innocuous profile.
Before the monumental upheavals in East Germany and Eastern Europe, and the current high-diplomacy talks over reunifying West and East Germany, the German-American community in Orange County--like those in many other American regions--was usually ignored.
Or taken for granted.
"There has not been a clear-cut German ethnic identity or opinion bloc in America for generations--not like there is, say, for the Italian or the Polish communities," said Robert Henry Billigmeier, a UC Santa Barbara sociologist and specialist on German-American history.
Indeed, the Phoenix Club, which has a membership of 3,500 families, most of whom are from Orange County, has for decades been the only German-American organization of any importance in the county.
The already small number of private German-language schools has shrunk even further--three schools in Orange County with overall enrollment of only 130 children. The only Orange County church that still offers regular German-language services is the tiny Old World Community Church in Huntington Beach.
This lack of all-out ethnic activism, social scientists have argued, is due in large part to an obvious phenomenon--the swift and thorough assimilation of most German-Americans. In that sense, German immigrants--whose overall numbers since colonial times have been surpassed only by English settlers--are among the quintessential melting-pot success sagas.
But the stigma of two world wars in which Germany was America's enemy is another crucial reason for the low profile of most German-American organizations. The fears of being thought of as foreign-culture militants or promoters of German nationalism are strong even today, social scientists and German-American organizers say.
"We are not talking about people denying or being ashamed of their German heritage. But we are talking about people who have found that for political or emotional reasons, you do not go around proclaiming it," explained historian Henry Cord Meyer of UC Irvine, himself the son of German immigrants.
Yet German-American organizers hope the events surrounding the opening of the Berlin Wall will bolster what amounts to an ethnic-roots movement for their communities.
"No matter how assimilated we are, no matter how much we have been absorbed, we need to recognize our cultural past as much as any other group," said Elsbeth Seewald, president of the 30,000-member German-American National Congress, a Chicago-based cultural and civic affairs organization.
"We need more than ever to reaffirm the great cultural, scientific and economic contributions of German-Americans in building America," Seewald added. "We must not be so reticent about such things."
