First Stop: A Vision of German America

Last night, Matt and I went to the Dakota Inn Rathskeller in Detroit, just south of 8 Mile and Woodward Avenue.  This neighborhood used to be full of immigrant families who worked in the auto industry, and now is in a pretty run-down and scary area.  Most of the families who used to live here have moved to suburban areas, leaving people who can't afford to get out.  Signs of the times are everywhere: urban decay, abandoned homes, abandoned businesses, graffiti, garbage, huge holes in the streets - all in the wake of the city's bankruptcy and the face of the third largest snowfall in Detroit history.  But the Rathskeller remains exactly the same.

Here is the exterior with its original painted sign and Bavarian-style shutters on the windows in the brick facade, although now the parking lot is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire.  The parking attendant is the son of the previous parking attendant, whose father worked for the father of the current owner, Karl E. Kurz, whose grandfather, Karl Kurz, was a German immigrant who at the Highland Park Ford factory. According to the Dakota Inn website "history," grandpa Kurz worked nights and weekends to transform an old laundry into the kind of Rathskeller (city hall basement restaurant/pub) he remembered from his native land. The resulting pub/restaurant has been in existence, run by the same family, since 1933.

So why was this relevant to me, on my quest for Visions of America?  It all started when Michael, one of my seniors, started singing "Ist das Nicht Ein Schnitzelbank?" in the middle of class one day.  I had no idea why or how, but this kid knew a song that I remembered from my own childhood.  My Grandpa Max immigrated from Germany in the late 1920s, later bringing over his three brothers, Ulrich, Bernhard and Hans.  My parents lived in Germany before I was born when my dad was stationed in the Army there, and they used to speak a little German when they didn't want us "kinder" to understand what they were saying.  I learned the song "Schnitzelbank" from a piano roll we had, and even made little drawings to accompany the lyrics, little knowing how similar they were to the pictures on the wall of the Rathskeller in Detroit!

"How on earth do you know that song?" I asked Michael.  He told me that his aunt and uncle own a German restaurant in Detroit, a restaurant his great grandfather had started, and that I absolutely had to visit there the next time I was in Michigan.  

German Immigrants have contributed to this country to such an extent that we consider most of their contributions to be 100% American as apfelstrudel.  Hot dogs and hamburgers at baseball games, or on the Fourth of July. Christmas Trees. Kindergarten.  Budweiser.  ("In Himmel gibt's kein Bier" is a famous German song that has become "In heaven there is no beer; that's why we drink it here!"). We don't even think of most of these cultural icons as German any more, because they are so ingrained into our US culture, ever since Baron von Steuben helped George Washington whip the troops into shape over the winter at Valley Forge, shouting orders at them in his colorful combination of German with English profanity thrown in.  And if you then consider the second huge wave of immigration from Germany (and Austria) when people like my grandfather were fleeing from the Nazis, and others who came here in the 1950s and 60s, you have almost a million more people.

We went to celebrate Karneval (a German Catholic holiday, the Mardi Gras of Bavaria) with beads and chicken hats (part of the tradition, as is the "Chicken Dance.")  These traditions are more American than German these days, as most Germans living in Germany would not know how to do the Chicken Dance, whereas most Americans, German or not, would probably recognize that crazy music immediately, and probably know how to flap their arms and clap their hands along with it.

We listened to Harry Lutz and the Fahrenden Musikanten, danced the Polka, and ate Bratwurst, Knockwurst, Sauerkraut, Potato Pancakes and pretzels.  We did the Chicken Dance until, as one dancer confessed while we flapped and clapped, "I'm going to have nightmares about this!" The couple we sat with had been coming to the Dakota Inn since the 1950s.  "Detroit sure has changed a lot since then," I remarked.  "Yes," they replied, "But this place hasn't changed one bit!"  It was a fabulous evening, and a true Vision of America.  Click here to learn more about the Dakota Inn!