8/7/2008:
It is an American tradition on a summer evening to grill a sausage or two, put it on a bun, and enjoy it with all the fixings. However in 1917, it was not a frankfurter with sauerkraut, but a hotdog with liberty cabbage.
It was WWI, the U.S. was at war, and the enemy was Germany. This resulted in a wave of anti-German sentiment that unjustly affected many US citizens of German heritage. Some changed their names to keep their jobs and the German language ceased to be taught in public schools. In North Dakota, Dickinson Public Schools even changed report cards by crossing out“German” and replacing it with “French,” resulting in students receiving grades in a language they were never even taught.
In 1917 Congress enacted the Espionage and Sedition Acts and a federal committee was formed to spread war propaganda and promote patriotism. During this time any unpatriotic activities or questionable sympathies became suspect. Nationwide 1,900 espionage and sedition cases were tried. In North Dakota, one case involved John Fontana, the German-born pastor of the Deutches Evangelische Friedens Gemeinde, New Salem.
On this day in 1918 Judge C. F. Amidon sentenced Fontana to three years of prison for praying for the “fatherland”, showing sympathy for Germany's “noble fight,” and expressing wishes for an “honorable peace”. Although Fontana had been preaching for nine years in his community without complaint, he was now was found guilty of making statements that threatened the United States in a time of war.
Compared to neighboring states, North Dakota did not give many guilty convictions throughout the sedition trials. Between 1870 and 1920 more than half of the North Dakota’s population was foreign born. This resulted in many small communities sharing former home nations, as well as sharing those customs and languages. In Fontana’s exceptional sentence, the guilt was not aimed at just one man. Judge Amidon’s sentence was published in the Bismarck’s “Palladium”, a politically charged newspaper of the time. Amidon’s lengthy speech found fault not only in Fontana, but his whole community, Amidon states:
You have cherished everything German, prayed German, read German, sung German. Every thought of your mind and every emotion of your heart through all these years have been German....foreign people have thrown a circle about themselves and instead of keeping the oath they took that they would try to grow American souls inside of them, they have studiously striven to exclude everything American...it must be stopped... and begin all over again to cherish American thought, American history, American ideals....
Once the war ended Fontana’s guilty verdict was discharged at a higher court of appeal. However Fontana’s trial and those like it remain significant episodes in United States history. War’s fear can alter thought, word, and deed.
Palladium, August 1st, 8th 1918
“Plains Folk: North Dakota’s Ethnic History” ed. William C. Sherman and Playford V. Thorsen 1986