More than a dozen elders from all walks of life gathered under fluorescent lights in a small room of a historic church at the Pioneer Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas. Laughter filled the space as friends greeted each other, swapping stories of the week, sharing family news and embracing each other with affectionate anecdotes, not in English, but in German. The gathering was part of a conversation group that meets every other week, giving native Texas German speakers a place to practice their fading language.
John Bakke, a native of Fredericksburg and a regular at these groups, arrived with a smile on his face, ready to have a good laugh and to speak the language of his rural Texas childhood.
“We have some cut ups in the group that tell funny stories in German, and those of us that understand it, laugh real hard,” Bakke said.
A historic house on the grounds of the Pioneer Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas. Texas German speakers gather inside every other Wednesday for a conversation group. (Photo by Paul Holm)
Across the Texas Hill Country, gatherings like these keep Texas German on the tongues of those who grew up speaking it, preserving a dialect that connects residents to their history and one another even as fewer families pass it down.
“I’m guilty of it. I married a non-German-speaking gal from Phoenix, and so we didn’t teach our kids German,” Bakke said.
Texas German developed from regional German dialects brought to Texas by immigrants from Central Europe in the 19th century, according to Hans Boas (Ph.D.), director of the Texas German Dialect Project at the University of Texas at Austin. As people from different regions settled together, their dialects mixed and incorporated English words. Rather than tracing back to one region of Germany, Texas German reflects a blend of dialects, with differences even among speakers in the same town, Boas said.
That separate development also shaped words for inventions that appeared after immigrants arrived. Bakke said speakers in Fredericksburg call an airplane a Luftschiff, literally “airship,” rather than the Modern Standard German Flugzeug.
A sign in Fredericksburg, Texas, reads “Auf Wiedersehen” and “Komm mal wieder!” — German for “Goodbye” and “Come back sometime!” (Photo by Paul Holm)
“There are a bunch of words that didn’t exist 175 years ago, so we don’t use them here,” he said.
For speakers such as Bakke, it remains a connection to family memories and the people who share them.
In Central Texas, researchers like Boas are working to record interviews to preserve Texas German and the memories, identity, and connections carried through it. Boas said some speakers have gone years without using the dialect after relatives and neighbors died.
UT Austin’s Texas German Dialect Project estimates that about 5,000 speakers remain, most in their 70s or older. As speakers lose relatives and neighbors who shared the dialect, opportunities to use it shrink.
Finding someone to speak with can bring “a sense of community, a sense of belonging, and also a way to connect to the past and to connect with family thoughts, feelings,” Boas said.
For Wilfred Schlather, that connection began long before local conversation groups or university recording projects. German was the language of childhood in rural Comal County, Texas, a once largely rural county now part of the San Antonio–New Braunfels metropolitan area. Schlather graduated from New Braunfels High School in 1957. His father worked as a store clerk, and the family lived beside a store in Spring Branch, where most local customers spoke German. Travelers stopped for gas, groceries or beer, sometimes requiring translation.
“When I was a child, almost everybody that I talked to spoke German,” he said.
Boas said German once shaped daily life in communities such as Fredericksburg and New Braunfels, where schools, churches, newspapers and businesses operated in the language.
A page from the March 14, 1929, edition of the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung features excerpts from an 1897 speech by Carl Schurz on preserving the German language in America. (Courtesy of Sophienburg Museum & Archives)
Schlather’s shift toward English began when he entered school. His mother helped by speaking English with him at home, and he recalled learning it within a school year.
“Once you got out of that group, like going to school, you almost had to speak English,” he said.
Boas said anti-German sentiment during the world wars also discouraged families from passing down the language.
“If you wanted to be a good American or a good Texan, the expectation has been for a very long time that you speak only English and you speak it like a local,” Boas said.
After his family moved to a farm near New Braunfels, Schlather used German less. He still occasionally speaks it with relatives, but said his vocabulary has suffered from disuse.
At the Fredericksburg group, conversation moves through memories of homemade sausage, German singing groups and celebrations at the community’s former one-room schoolhouses that used to dot the countryside. Participants compare memories, recalling which schools served beer and how those events helped raise money for the community. Recipes written in German were handed out to everyone who attended.
Carol Latta, foreground, attends a Texas German conversation group at the Pioneer Museum in Fredericksburg. Participants meet every other Wednesday to share stories and practice the dialect. (Photo by Paul Holm)
For Carol Latta, the gathering offers the comfort of familiar people and a familiar language.
“I’m more comfortable speaking German than I am in English,” Latta said.
Some participants are people she has known since high school. Bakke, too, finds pleasure in revisiting the past together.
“We tell childhood stories in German. We tell stories of something that our parents did. We laugh a lot,” he said.
Maninder “Mini” Kahlon (Ph.D.), an associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UT Austin’s Dell Medical School whose research examines how regular conversations affect loneliness and mental health, said speaking a familiar language with another person can help build relationships.
“Just the fluidity of using a language that is core to you and using it with someone, we feel like that is fundamental to relationship building,” Kahlon said.
For Boas, language is among a community’s most defining features. Shared words, pronunciations and phrases help people recognize their connection to one another.
“That’s how you identify and how you connect, and how you build community,” he said.
At gatherings like this one, Texas German gives speakers a way to keep making that connection through the stories they tell today.
The disappearance of Texas German in the Hill Country would not mean the extinction of German culture in rural Texas. Boas expects music, food, dancing and social clubs to endure. Gruene Hall, built under the direction of a German immigrant’s son, and Wurstfest, a 10-day celebration of German heritage, remain visible reminders of that heritage in Texas. But speakers would lose a way of recognizing themselves in one another.
“That primary identification mechanism through language will be gone, and that’s one of the most crucial ones,” Boas said. “The words you use, the pronunciations that you have for words. The phrases you use, or coin in your own little subgroup. That’s what binds people together.”
Kahlon described a shared language as a foundation for building relationships. For Texas German speakers, those relationships carry childhood memories, familiar expressions, and humor.
Recordings can preserve their voices and stories, but they cannot replace the relationships sustained through speaking together. As Texas German fades, speakers risk losing a shared source of community, belonging and a reason to gather.
In Fredericksburg, Bakke and Latta still have people to answer them. Latta finds comfort speaking German among people she has known for decades. Bakke invites friends to join the gathering, promising stories and a good time. While researchers work to preserve the dialect for the future, these speakers give it a purpose in the present: another reason to come together.
For Schlather, the loss would include the familiar childhood expressions that once filled the rural house he grew up in. When asked what would disappear with Texas German, his answer was brief.
“A lot of color.”
Paul Holm is a writer, journalist and photographer born and raised in the hills of North Georgia. He now lives in Austin, Texas, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.
The post What Could Disappear With the Texas German Dialect? appeared first on The Daily Yonder.
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