We are Largely Farmersâ€™: Landscape Mythology in German American

“‘We are Largely Farmers’: Landscape Mythology in German‐American Culture”

By:

Amber Noecker

New Cultural Bounds The United States in which we find ourselves today is one no longer primarily bound by lines of race, ethnicity, or profession, but instead by patterns of consumption. Consumer activity provides the means through which we define ourselves in relation to other people, the foundation upon which we organize our lives, and a roadmap which guides our everyday and lifelong paths. One of the legacies of such an existence is that conceptions of a past in which consumption was not the primary basis of cultural organization are rarely evoked and less accurately understood. The indisputable centrality of consumption to our historical narrative illustrates the power of myth in the creation of a cultural consciousness. Roots in the Cold War Though the United States had long shared political space with rivals, the rise of the Soviet Union in the postwar period constituted a new sort of threat, based not in national origin but rather around

economic organization. The creation of the American consumer republic arose from the logical progression of capitalism: industrialization completely defined the American economy by the conclusion of the Second World War, necessitating alternative outlets for the excesses of capital and personnel that it had created. The creation of the American consumer economy also enabled the expansion of American economic, social, and political dominance, and the resulting rise in both wealth and global influence legitimized the older myth of American exceptionalism, which had originated in the first wave of national anxiety about the moral implications of consumption at the close of the nineteenth century. The Dunkard‐Brethren Church The shift from rural landscapes and agrarian social organization to urban landscapes and industrial social organization existed in both “nature” and “nature in itself,” a concept visible in the German‐American Brethren’s struggle to maintain traditional practices tied to “nature” against the physically‐changing character of “nature in itself.” At the heart of all of the challenges to traditional Dunker culture in the nineteenth century was the shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, a theme that persisted through the formation of the Dunkard Brethren Church. But the Brethren’s experiences in America were only one half of the story – the other lay in their German roots, deeply influenced by medieval German ideals about nature and landscapes. The dominant theme of founding Dunkard thought was a preoccupation with the recreation of primitive Christianity, a specifically German reaction to the tumultuous atmosphere of war‐torn Germany in the latter decades of the seventeenth century. In this effort, we can see the recreation of a preindustrial culture, reliant on an agrarian‐centered social organization and economic activities firmly tied to elements of the physical landscape. This desire for primitivism constitutes the foundation of the so‐called “reactionary attitudes” of the Dunkard Brethren Church in guarding against American popular culture in the first several decades of the twentieth century, and against any trend, innovation, or idea not in harmony with preindustrial social organization. Alternative Paths German society developed in opposition to the Enlightenment ideology so eagerly embraced by other Western nations, and so responsible for the environmental destruction now apparent in the world we currently inhabit. This destruction was largely effected by the voracious attitudes of consumer capitalism, which was rejected by medieval German mythology in favor of a more natural wilderness and simplicity. Though consumption has always generated a level of moral angst among certain classes of Western society, it is merely a symptom of a deeper problem – Enlightenment ideology’s refusal that nature myths and memory do, in fact, hold significant meaning, and can provide alternative patterns of living to the destructive paradigm characteristic of twentieth century American society.

Amber Noecker

Dr. Dieterich-Ward

Seminar in Global Comparative Environmental History

April 13, 2009

“We Are Largely Farmers:” Landscape Mythology and German-American Culture

Last December, former Vice President Al Gore published an opinion piece in the Wall Street

Journal, in which he decried the financial irresponsibility that has contributed to the current financial

crisis. The article, entitled “We Need Sustainable Capitalism,” claimed that that same attitude was

responsible for the environmental degradation characteristic of the twentieth century. This

assessment is exactly correct. However, Gore’s argument contains a fatal conceptual flaw,

encapsulated in the last few sentences of his article: “We need to return to first principles. We need a

more long-term and responsible form of capitalism. We must develop sustainable capitalism.”1

For anyone familiar with the rhythms of American history, Gore’s article is only a

confirmation of the centrality of consumption to the American cultural identity, one of the most

dominant of American myths and inclusive of both economic and environmental themes. This paper

will discuss the centrality of nature myth and memory to the cultural identity of a people, using the

specific example of the Dunkard Brethren Church in the 1920s and 1930s. In the process, it is my

intention to illuminate the inseparable quality of environmental and economic issues in both

preindustrial and industrial eras, as well as to draw attention to the significant consequences of an

understanding of history organized around empirical research and devoid of moral value and

meaning.

The United States in which we find ourselves today is one in which people are culturally

bound no longer primarily by lines of race, ethnicity, or profession, but instead by patterns of

consumption. Consumer activity provides the means through which we define ourselves in relation

to other people, the foundation upon which we organize our lives, and a roadmap which guides our

1 Al Gore, “We Need Sustainable Capitalism,” Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/

article/SB122584367114799137.html, accessed April 9, 2009.

2

everyday and lifelong paths. One of the legacies of such an existence is that conceptions of a past in

which consumption was not the primary basis of cultural organization are rarely evoked and are even

more rarely accurately understood.

The indisputable centrality of consumption to our historical narrative illustrates the power of

myth in the creation of a cultural consciousness. Though the United States had long shared political

space with rivals, the rise of the Soviet Union in the postwar period constituted a new sort of threat,

based not in national origin but rather around economic organization. The creation of the American

consumer republic arose from the logical progression of capitalism: industrialization completely

defined the American economy by the conclusion of the second World War, necessitating alternative

outlets for the excesses of capital and personnel that it had created. In response to the threat posed by

Soviet socialism, the creation of a new national identity was necessary, and Americans came to

define themselves increasingly according to what sort of car they drove instead of from which

European nation their grandparents had emigrated. The creation of the American consumer economy

also enabled the expansion of American economic (and social and political) dominance, and the

resulting rise in both wealth and global influence legitimized the older myth of American

exceptionalism, which had originated in the first wave of national anxiety about the moral

implications of consumption at the close of the nineteenth century.

Both capitalism and socialism are progeny of the Enlightenment, the foundation upon which

Western thought is constructed. Enlightenment ideology is fundamentally rational, logical, and

scientific, relying upon the use of empirical methods to determine the proper course of action in any

given situation. Enlightenment-era thought is indisputably central to American culture, visible in our

founding documents (“All men are created equal”), our economic structure, and our social propensity

toward statistical evidence. But the Enlightenment is not all that it appears to be, and beneath its

comforting assertions of impartial rationality lay the hidden foundations of a deeper, non-empirical

mythology – or so Simon Schama would have us believe.

3

In Landscape and Memory, Schama disputes the nature and legacy of the Enlightenment,

arguing that it constitutes only another form of mythology to which humanity can cling. As an art

historian and intimately familiar with the significance of global works of art to their respective

culture, Schama unveils an alternative vision of Western intellectual thought: “beneath its pretentions

to have built a culture grounded in reason…lay a powerful residue of mythic unreason.”2 The

Enlightenment would have us believe there is little room in rational society for non-quantifiable

phenomena, including any meaning within the physical attributes of the landscape upon which all

contemporary structures rest. Schama, however, takes issue with this idea: “our entire landscape

tradition…[is] built from a rich deposit of myths, memories, and obsessions…the cultural habits of

humanity have always made room for the sacredness of nature.”3

The significance, and the accuracy, of Schama’s ideas about mythology and memory and the

significance of landscape to cultural identity are jarring in our contemporary social and intellectual

climate. The acknowledgment of such an idea negates the principle of dispassionate objectivity

among professional historians. This cherished ideal, firmly centered in Enlightenment ideas about

empirical analysis, perhaps begins to explain why historians generally lack the moral clarity of social

scientists in other fields, as explained by statesman-historian Jerry H. Bentley: “workaday historians

are poor philosophers. They tend not to think professionally about questions of values because they

devote their attention to a highly technical analysis of past times on the basis of a highly technical

consideration of the surviving evidence.”4 Cultural values are generally difficult to define, and only

recently, with the discipline of environmental history, have attempts by historians to locate such

values been accepted as genuine, legitimate history – and it is this aspect of environmental history

that gives it its urgency, clarity, and contemporary cultural relevancy.

2 Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 18.

3 Ibid., 14-18.

4 Jerry H. Bentley, “Why Study World History?” World History Connected 5, no. 1 (Oct. 2007).

4

If nature and landscape mythology informs the values of modern – and especially American –

society, it is ironic that consumer capitalism is the process most central to American cultural

identification. This irony is located in the concept of “instrumental reason,” defined by august

environmental historian Donald Worster as “thinking carefully and systematically about means while

ignoring the problem of ends. Business employs it regularly, for the end of business is assumed to be

the obvious one of making money and only the methods for accomplishing that goal are worth

bothering about. In technology too, instrumentalism tells the inventor what is needed to make a

machine function more effectively, leaving the ends of innovation unexamined.”5 According to

Worster, instrumental reason functions as the method through which capitalist societies consider the

natural environment – “our source of faith, value, ethics, purpose, and analysis.”6

What makes instrumental reason incompatible with nature mythology, and thus paradoxical,

is that it “destroys traditional religion and value, denigrates all genuine philosophy, recognizes no

transcending purpose, and consequently leaves a deep void in our relationship with nature.”7 One of

the most significant manners in which it severs the connection between human beings and the natural

environment is through the process of commodification, defined by environmental historian Ted

Steinberg as “conceiving of such things as water and trees as commodities, rather than as the face of

nature, and putting a price on them.”8 This “recycling of natural capital” has yielded the domination,

subordination, and exploitation of nature, which has led to an environmental crisis never before

experienced in recorded human history.9 As a product of the Enlightenment obsession with

classification and quantifiability, capitalism’s propensity toward environmental degradation is rooted

in Enlightenment ideology.

5 Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1992), 55.

6 Ibid., 54.

7 Ibid.

8 Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002),

61.

9 Ibid.

5

Processes damaging to the continuity of the natural world have, in the spirit of the

Enlightenment, been sold to generations of people as “progress,” and the societies who perpetrated

unfathomable ecological abuses as “civilized.” Similarly, those societies who resisted the “progress”

of natural domination are “primitive,” the antithesis of the Greco-Roman legacy of cultured and

reasoned society. These themes predate the Enlightenment period, having historical roots in the

much earlier period of Roman cultural dominance, a theme explored throughout Schama’s

Landscape and Memory. In proof of his argument he provides the case study of medieval German

cultural attributes, considered primitive by the Roman invaders in the first century C.E.

According to Roman historian Cornelius Tacticus, German primitivism was centered in its

refusal to properly subjugate the land, as Schama notes: “For a Roman, the sign of a pleasing

landscape was necessarily that…upon which man had left his civilizing and fructifying mark. But

according to Tacticus, the Germans were not disposed to work their land; they would rather take their

subsistence from hunting, gathering, and the spoils of war.”10 The portrait of the Germans painted by

Tacticus’ work is one of a simplistic, decentralized, and above all, primitive people, to whose

existence a “closeness to brute nature” was essential.11 This grounding of German ethnic identity in

landscape mythology has proven to be an enduring theme within the narrative of German century

through the present-day.

In the mid-nineteenth century, as Europe found itself fully in the grip of industrial capitalism,

the significance of nature to German consciousness manifested itself in a vehement opposition to

“industrial capitalism and metropolitan life,” grounded in “horror at the prospect of a society

dominated by the religions of materialism and individualism.”12 The Germany of this period was one

that jealously guarded its links to medieval primitive naturalism, considering its vast forests –

preserved by the country’s “relative economic and social retardation” – as “the heartland of

10

Schama, Landscape and Memory, 81.

11

Ibid., 84.

12

Ibid., 113.

6

[German] folk culture.”13 Moreover, it was a Germany that defined itself in defiant opposition to

Enlightenment socio-political ideology, expressing a “contempt for bourgeois urban materialism”

and “extolling nature, and especially the sublime German portion of it, as of transcendent value.”14

In this German primitivism was the salvation of its landscape heritage: nineteenth-century

German sociologist Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl was successful in protecting Germany’s vast forest

reserves against the voracious appetites of industrial capitalism by invoking medieval themes of

natural identity. As Schama notes, Riehl’s aim was to “bring past and present enthusiasms for the

forest together so that its protection would come to be seen as a priority of state…and he saw ways in

which government might be induced to act, if necessary against private and market interests, as the

protector of the landscape patrimony.”15 Thus it was in its rejection of Enlightenment beliefs – the

denial of the “progress” of industrial capitalism – that Germany’s ancient primitiveness came to the

fore of its modern identity. And it was the centrality of the nature myth to Germany’s primitive

notions of cultural identity that shielded the remnants of the natural world, embodied in its ancient

forests, from unrestrained capitalist exploitation.

These German ethnic values are visible even in those Germans who left the Fatherland in

search of better opportunities throughout the eighteenth century, illustrating the depth and

significance of nature memory to German cultural identity. Particularly good examples of the

persistence of German landscape memory can be seen in the experiences of the visible German

disaporic groups on the North American continent: the Brethren and the Mennonites. The

experiences of these groups in Canada, the United States, and Mexico provide examples of the

persistence of landscape mythology in German ethnic identity in response to the varying pressures

exerted by culturally-dissimilar national structures.

13


14

Ibid., 117.

15

Ibid., 115.

7

Carl F. Bowman’s Brethren Society: The Cultural Transformation of a “Peculiar People”

begins the story of the Brethren, who settled in southeastern Pennsylvania, and contributed heavily to

the internationally-recognized Pennsylvania German culture there. Bowman’s tale emerges in three

parts: “An Overview of Traditional Dunker Culture,” “Pathways beyond Plainness,” and “Analysis:

The Binding and Loosing of Brethren Culture.” The titles themselves are telling, as is Bowman’s

poignant query in the preface: “How is a culture radically transformed?”16 He partially provides an

answer on the following page: “The lessons gleaned about cultural dissent, ambiguity, and

reconstruction…are universal, as are the tensions between community life and individual freedom.”17

Bowman portrays the Brethren as transformed by the cultural changes unleashed by the

American industrial revolution. After the major wave of immigration from Germany to the United

States in the late 18th century, the Dunkers, as they were somewhat disparagingly called by outsiders,

settled into an agricultural existence modeled after their European cultural origins.18 Exhibiting few

immediately visible differences from their non-Brethren neighbors and bound by the common themes

of primitive apostolic Christianity, for the first several decades of the nineteenth century, the

Brethren enjoyed a peaceful and largely undisturbed existence.19

The security of this existence was forever shattered by the diverse social, economic, and

political changes precipitated by the industrialization of the American economy. As surrounding

16

Carl F. Bowman, Brethren Society: The Cultural Transformation of a “Peculiar People” (Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1995), x.

17

Ibid., xi.

18

“Dunkers” is a derivation of the German word Tunken, meaning “to dunk,” a reference to their unusual form of

baptism, in which they immersed applicants three times in a flowing, outdoor body of water. Having emerged as a

protest against what they considered the departures from scriptural Christianity of Lutheranism, the Brethren

eschewed the practice of infant baptism and instead baptized and accepted as church members only those who were

of a sufficient age to make the choice; most Brethren were baptized as adolescents.

19

According to Bowman, “The primary impulse of the early Brethren was to restore the primitive Apostolic

church to the exact condition in which Jesus had left it… Most fundamentally, their careful reading of the New

Testament taught them that the Apostolic Church required its followers (1) to manifest a devout, childlike faith; (2)

to be of one mind in matters of faith and practice; (3) to deny their own selfish wills and submit to the laws of God’s

house; and (4) to separate themselves from the sinful nature of the world around them. These elements – childlike

faith, unity, obedience, and separation – constituted the heart of the Brethren faith.” For more information, see

Brethren Society, 26-27.

8

American culture changed even more rapidly, the Brethren found themselves increasingly divided

between conformity to their historical origins and acceptance of the dominant cultural trends. In the

end, the Church of the Brethren, as the Brethren are known today, abandoned their belief in cultural

separation in favor of the maintenance of the unity of the larger church body, a decision that

Bowman describes as responsible for the “chronic inattention” paid to a theology no longer visibly

distinctive from its more noticeable history.20

Bowman’s work is an expansive and thorough portrayal of the Brethren’s experience in

America. He discusses the effects of industrialization on Brethren society in great detail, placing

significant emphasis on the economic dimensions of social change. However, he only tangentially

mentions the Brethren’s founder, Alexander Mack, and the doctrine of primitive apostolic

Christianity, portraying both as foundational but not necessarily specifically German. The result of

this construction is that the German identity of the Brethren is left largely unconsidered, leaving the

impression that Brethren agrarianism was a coincidence of their chronological existence rather than a

component central to their ancient landscape mythology.

The experience of the Mennonites, who were as culturally German as the Brethren were, in

North America provides a further affirmation of the centrality of nature myth to German cultural

identity. The two major works on the history of the Mennonites in North America are Frank H.

Epp’s Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920: The History of a Separate People and Harry Leonard

Sawatzky’s They Sought a Country: Mennonite Colonization in Mexico. Epp’s primary focus is to

explain the continued cultural distinctiveness of the Mennonites, which he explains in the preface:

“In spite of separation, or perhaps because of it, the Mennonites became an unavoidable sector of the

multi-cultural Canadian mosaic and an essential patch in the multi-coloured quilt of the Christian

20

Bowman, Brethren Society, ix.

9

tradition.”21 Sawatzky’s treatment of his Mennonites is strikingly similar to Epp’s. He picks up the

thread of Epp’s tale in the early twentieth century, describing the dynamics that led some of Epp’s

Mennonites, who had settled in Canada, to emigrate to Mexico in the first half of the twentieth

century.

The primary value of these two accounts is their portrayal of the Mennonites as an agrarian

people, describing the farming prowess of the group as central to their emigration history. According

to both Epp and Sawatzky, a major trend in the history of the Mennonites was the centrality of land

shortages as well as their widely-acknowledged agricultural excellence, an aspect of their German

origins. They were usually invited to colonize various regions by the rulers of those areas, who

desired the agricultural benefits that such settlement would bring to their countries.22 In return, the

Mennonites were provided with certain rights and exceptions so as to allow the preservation of their

cultural way of life.

Though both Epp and Sawatzky provide certain significant chunks of information, the overall

value and legitimacy of their narratives are vastly overshadowed by the convincing accusations

recently levied at their historiographical methodology. In a 2006 article, Canadian historian Ross

Fair argues that when the first wave of anti-German sentiment swept across Canada in the late

nineteenth century, the descendants of the Pennsylvania Germans who had settled there after the

American Revolution deliberately altered the historical reality of their emigration circumstances to

“establish and maintain an identifiable place within the Canadian nation.”23 According to Fair, this

process was enabled by the respected standing in the community of Benjamin Eby, the first architect

21

Frank H. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920: The History of a Separate People (Toronto: Macmillan of

Canada, 1974), 20.

22

According to Epp, the Mennonites were invited to immigrate to Russia by Tsarina Catherine, who had intended

that they would “provide a model for improved agriculture for the native Russians.” (Epp, 168) The terms of

Mexican Mennonite immigration were similar: they were provided with cultural and political concessions in return

for providing an example of efficient agriculture to the broader Mexican community. (Sawatzky, 40)

23

Ross Fair, “‘Theirs was a deeper purpose’: The Pennsylvania Germans of Ontario and the Craft of the

Homemaking Myth.” The Canadian Historical Review 87, no. 4 (Dec. 2006): 656.

10

of what he calls the “Homemaking Myth:” “his collecting of local oral traditions, and the fact that he

was a direct descendant of the settlement’s leader added additional weight to his interpretation.”24

The acceptance of Eby’s account as accurate by generations of historians since then has

yielded a history of questionable accuracy. The accuracy of both Epp and Sawatzky is brought into

question by their extensive use of both Eby specifically as well as the rest of the homemaking myth.

Fair directly refers to Frank Epp’s Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920 toward the end of his article:

“The homemaking myth was in full stride…the Mennonite faith and the loyalist tradition laid the

groundwork for the new multicultural role the Pennsylvania Germans were to play in Canadian

history.”25

These same issues of historical myth and memory are at the center of Schama’s Landscape

and Memory: “It is clear that inherited landscape myths and memories share two common

characteristics: their surprising endurance throughout the centuries and their power to shape

institutions that we still live with.”26 Both of these trends can be seen in the case of the homemaking

myth of the Pennsylvania Germans in Ontario. This myth, initially constructed in the latter decades

of the nineteenth century, was considered “sacrosanct” as recently as 1986, demonstrating the

endurance of historical myth.27 And during the 1920s, the “urban and professional community of

Kitchener – many [of whom] were descendents of German immigrants direct from Europe – co-opted

the myth…to emphasize a character that remained rural and agricultural,” a fact illustrating the

enduring power of myth and memory to shape social institutions.28

Ross Fair’s arguments illuminate particularly brightly the complexities associated with the

construction of history untainted by either deliberate or unintentional distortions. As he notes, “The

case of the Pennsylvania Germans also demonstrates that much of the information used to generate a

24

Fair, “’Theirs was a deeper purpose,’”663.

25

Ibid., 679.

26

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, 15.

27


28

Ibid., 660.

11

homemaking myth is contained in myriad local history sources – even fiction. It highlights the need

to rethink the role that such sources can play… The challenge for professional historians is to

understand the craft of the homemaking myth in order to discern what is checkable historical fact and

what is a well-crafted myth”29

Case Study

“History occurs in space as well as time…Germans distinguish between ‘nature’ (a cultural

projection of human ideas and emotions) and ‘nature in itself’ (the complex of life-forms on earth,

which includes humans).”30 These ideas, as articulated by David Blackbourn in his book about the

German cultural construction of nature and landscapes, are vitally relevant to the history of the

Brethren in America. This history is tied to both space and time: the technological changes triggered

by the industrial revolution irrevocably altered the society and geography of the United States and of

the German-American Brethren who lived within it. The shift from rural landscapes and agrarian

social organization to urban landscapes and industrial social organization existed in both “nature”

and “nature in itself,” a concept visible in the Brethren’s struggle to maintain traditional practices

tied to “nature” against the physically-changing character of “nature in itself.”

At the heart of all of the challenges to traditional Dunker culture in the nineteenth century

was the shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, a theme that persisted through the

formation of the Dunkard Brethren Church. But the Brethren’s experiences in America were only

one half of the story – the other lay in their German roots, deeply influenced by medieval German

ideals about nature and landscapes. The dominant theme of founding Dunkard thought was a

preoccupation with the recreation of primitive Christianity, a specifically German reaction to the

tumultuous atmosphere of war-torn Germany in the latter decades of the seventeenth century. In this

effort, we can see the recreation of a preindustrial culture, reliant on an agrarian-centered social

29


30

David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature, 15.

12

organization and economic activities firmly tied to elements of the physical landscape. This desire

for primitivism constitutes the foundation of the so-called “reactionary attitudes” of the Dunkard

Brethren Church in guarding against American popular culture in the first several decades of the

twentieth century, and against any trend, innovation, or idea not in harmony with preindustrial social

organization.31

The significance of German landscape myth to Brethren theology is visible from the very

beginning of the movement. It was founded outside of the small village of Schwarzenau, Germany,

in 1708 by a man named Alexander Mack, whose ancestors had occupied privileged leadership

positions within the village hierarchy in nearby Schriesheim since the mid-sixteenth century.32

Mack’s early life was marked by the constant social disruptions effected by various invading German

and French armies, and from an early age he questioned both the morality of war and participation in

such endeavors by self-proclaimed Christians.33 Through his mid-twenties, he attended a local

Reformed church, where both the irrelevancy of the academic and intellectual sermon topics and the

“immorality of some of the clergymen and the lack of integrity by many lay persons” led to his

increased disillusionment and eventual embrace of the anti-authoritarian Pietism then an outlying

feature of German society.34

Pietism was, as defined by German historian Mary Fulbrook, a movement centered around

“the by-passing of pastor and institutional church, and the meeting for discussion of one’s own

reading and understanding of the Bible, [which] undoubtedly also contributed to the development of

a new confidence and reason and a new meritocracy, irrespective of rank and birth, in eighteenth-

century German society.”35 Its rejection of institutional authority and commitment to the principle of

31

Roger E. Sappington, Brethren Social Policy (Elgin, IN: The Brethren Press, 1961), __ .

32

William G. Willoughby, “Honors to Alexander Mack,” Church of the Brethren Network, July 26, 1999,

http://www.cob-net.org/mack/honors.htm, accessed April 12, 2009.

33

Ibid.

34

Ibid.

35

Mary Fulbrook, A Concise History of Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 87.

13

intensely personal Christianity likely appealed to Mack, who disliked the abstract and irrelevant

nature of state-run Lutheran and Reformed approaches to Christianity. However, there were

elements of Radical Pietism with which Mack disagreed, of which the principle of church

organization was the strongest.36

Radical Pietists, according to Carl Bowman, “rejected all…vestiges of formal church

membership and organization,” including the rite of baptism.37 Though Mack also rejected the

predominant Protestant practice of infant baptism, he differed from his Pietist brothers in his

acceptance of the necessity of adult baptism, which was a feature of Anabaptist theology.38 Mack

and his followers were committed to a combination of both Radical Pietist and Anabaptist thought,

resulting in a new and unique form of religious identification, emphasizing both the separation from

the world of the Pietists and the church-centered community of the Anabaptists.39 They referred to

this hybrid belief as “primitive apostolic Christianity,” a belief system that Bowman characterized as

an intent “to return the church to the exact condition in which Jesus had left it.”40

The Brethren practiced primitive Christianity by adopting the New Testament, rather than

any artificially-inspired creed, as the foundation of their faith.41 The “heart” of this belief system, as

36

The difference between Pietism and Radical Pietism is that while most Pietists generally remained in

communion with their local congregations and emphasized the concept of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,

a few separated from their congregations and pursued their spiritual lives separately, a decision which placed them

in opposition to a law requiring church membership in state-recognized churches.

37

Bowman, Brethren Society, 4.

38

Ibid., 4-5. Anabaptism and Pietism were very similar religious movements that developed nearly concurrently

in different regions of Germany in sixteenth century. Anabaptism shared with Pietism the belief in a personal,

unadorned, and individually-significant Christianity. The most significant variation between the two was the

complete rejection by the Radical Pietists of any sort of church structure or organization.

39

Bowman described the new concept as inclusive of “radical Pietist understandings of spirituality and the

Christian life, and by Anabaptist understandings of the church. They adopted the view that the church was a

gathered remnant of the faithful, called out from the world. It was neither a haven for sinners nor a sanctuary for

those who were already saved, but rather a community within which Brethren worked together to deepen their

salvation, through faithfulness, obedience, and mutual correction.”See Brethren Society, 5-6.

40


41

According to Bowman, this New Testament creedalism required “unique emphasis upon the outward form of

the Christian ordinances: baptism, communion, feetwashing, anointing, and the holy kiss,” believing that such things

“should be practiced exactly as originally instituted by Christ and his apostles.” (26-27)

14

noted by Bowman, were the four elements of “childlike faith, unity, obedience, and separation.”42

The elements of this belief system are quite similar to religious values embedded in medieval

German mythology. Tacticus’ description of medieval German society was one of “social

simplicity,” characterized by a “natural religion that believed it degrading to confine worship within

masonry walls or to represent gods with human faces.”43 Though medieval German religious

attitudes were not Christian, manifesting themselves instead in pagan tribal nature rituals, the

significance of these values of social and religious simplicity were present in the Brethren’s

determination to restore such primitive simplicity to their adopted Christian faith.

Adding to the significance of landscape to the creation of Brethren culture was the shift that

had taken place in the national identity of Germany in the early sixteenth century. According to

Schama, “it was not just German history that was being reborn in the first decades of the sixteenth

century, but German geography.”44 German nature had, from a very early date, been continually

characterized in terms of negativity in relation to the landscapes of other, dominant empires; Schama

asserts that “it is not too much to say that classical civilization has always defined itself against the

primeval woods.” 45 This negativity toward German landscapes is a theme also explored by

Blackbourn’s The Conquest of Nature: “German rivers, moore, and fens became markers for larger,

more abstract things…beauty and ugliness, abundance and scarcity, harmony and disharmony.”46

Such attitudes were a legacy of the Greco-Roman theology inherent in the burgeoning Enlightenment

ideology of the time, which considered untamed, forested landscapes as the antithesis of civilized

society.

In the early sixteenth century, the German responses to these cultural attitudes constituted an

early rejection to Enlightenment rationality, locating the significance of German culture in its deep

42


43


44

Ibid., 95.

45

Ibid., 82.

46

Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature, 16.

15

connection to the wooded landscape. This concept implied rejected a separation of “the world of

nature” from “the world of culture,” instead arguing that the German forests was not merely “the

setting” for history, it was “history itself.”47 Given Mack’s culturally-German identification and the

extent to which the Brethren exhibited other aspects of German landscape myth, it is entirely likely

that he was influenced by this German cultural renaissance, as it was this intellectual current from

which the theologies of Anabaptism and then Pietism emerged.48

Mack and his Brethren left Germany in the 1720s, emigrating in various stages to the United

States, where they established a distinctly German-American cultural stronghold outside of

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By the 1770s, they constituted what Carl Bowman describes as “a

thriving German-American fellowship of Pietist-Anabaptists commonly called Dunkers, known for

their simplicity, honesty, dissenting doctrines, and religious conviction.”49 As the Brethren, who

were formally known as the German Baptist Brethren Church, moved into the nineteenth century,

their society – based in German ideals of simplicity and primitiveness – was increasingly strained by

the social changes effected by the American industrial revolution. Bowman’s work deals extremely

specifically with the cultural fragmentation that occurs among the Brethren, ultimately attributing

their acculturation to the radical transformation of the American economy over the course of their

history in America.

Interestingly, he characterizes the contemporary attitudes of the Brethren, long since having

discarded their distinctive German heritage, as “the inevitable result of what some call

postmodernity, but maybe it is simply moral myopia.”50 American culture is infused with

Enlightenment social theory, and American capitalism is a direct descendant of Enlightenment

47


48

Anabaptism emerged as a feature of the German Reformation, as noted by Mary Fulbrook in A Concise

History of Germany, 43-44. The German Reformation was followed by the Counter-Reformation and the rise of

Absolutism, to which Pietism emerged in opposition. However, the significance of all three movements is that they

collectively contributed to the creation of a German national consciousness that defined itself in opposition to the

Enlightenment ideology of other European cultures.

49


50


16

ideology. A foundational tenet of this ideology, as discussed earlier, is its insistence on empirical

rationalism and its resulting refusal to acknowledge the significance of non-quantifiable phenomena

like Schama’s landscape myth and memory. Considering that German cultural identity is infused

with nature mythology and rejects the alleged rationality of Enlightenment thought, perhaps the

source of the Brethren’s present-day “moral myopia” is in its abandonment of its German character

and thus of its deeply-rooted landscape mythology.

According to the early leaders of the Dunkard Brethren Church, the problem with the

Brethren, who had rejected their German heritage with finality in 1908 with their name change from

the German Baptist Brethren Church to the more neutral Church of the Brethren, was that in their

rejection of their German identity, they had also rejected the simplicity and primitiveness of apostolic

Christianity. Their intent was to reestablish the traditional culture of the Dunkers and in so doing to

recreate Alexander Mack’s original primitive apostolic Christianity. This intent is visible in their

specific language – they viewed themselves as a movement “to maintain the unity of the faith and

preserve the identity of the church of the New Testament, which Jesus bought with his own precious

blood.”51

They considered themselves the heirs of Mack’s original tradition, an assertion supported by

their deliberate choice of the name “Dunkard Brethren Church.” The Brethren’s name change

decision was preceded by at least a decade of argument and debate about what the new name should

be. According to Bowman, the most prevalent suggestions “were the ones containing the word

‘Dunker’ or ‘Dunkard’…that is what the Brethren had been called as far back as anyone could

remember.”52 By the turn of the nineteenth century, the Brethren – commonly and widely known as

51

Minutes of the General Conference of the Dunkard Brethren Church, 1927-1975, 8, author’s personal

collection.

52


17

“Dunkers” – were a distinct aspect of American, and especially Pennsylvanian, culture.53 The term

“Dunker” had evolved from the German “Tunken,” a reference to their unique form of outdoor,

immersion baptism.54 Their very name linked them with their German heritage, an association that,

according to Bowman, some found distasteful: “Too many outsiders had already written the Dunkard

church off as a peculiar, ‘crazy notion religion’ ever to allow the name Dunkard or Dunker to

become respectable. The only way to shatter this image and the German ethnic tag was to select an

altogether new name, like Church of the Brethren.”55 The Dunkard Brethren’s choice of this label

was an affirmation of its members’ view of themselves as Mack’s descendants: “Neither should this

movement be considered as a new church, but the restoration of an old one, taking of necessity, a

distinguishing name.”56

The formation of the Dunkard Brethren Church in 1926 represented an attempt to establish

premodern society against the backdrop of an industrialized culture. An agricultural connection to

the landscape was a fundamental and assumed part of their cultural narrative, and as a result, early

church discussion rarely centered explicitly on agrarian themes. However, this fundamental agrarian

character is visible in the attention that the church leaders attention focused so intently on economic

issues. The intensive and voluminous debate surrounding economics attests to the alien nature of the

class-based distinctions of industrialized capitalist society to their own agrarian culture. With the

understanding that these explicitly economic sources are linked to an implicit framework of agrarian

concepts, the economic history of the Dunkard Brethren also represents an environmental history

narrative.

53

Evidence of the prominence of Brethren tradition in Pennsylvania can be seen in a 1901 New York Times

article describing the funeral train of martyred President William McKinley: “Then for miles the train ran through

the Dutch settlements of Pennsylvania. It was now after ten o’clock, but many Dunkards, the men uncovered, the

women in their quaint bonnets, were at the track. Others of these simple folk could be seen in the open doorways of

their lighted farm houses. The Dunkards go to bed early usually, but it was apparent that most of them had remained

awake to get a last look at this mournful funeral train.” Full article available at http://query.nytimes.com/mem/

archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9807E0D61730E033A2575BC1A96F9C946097D6CF (accessed March 3, 2009).

54


55

Ibid., 232.

56

Minutes,, 7.

18

The agrarian social organization of the Dunkard Brethren is visible in virtually every aspect

of their culture: it explains their suspicion of recreational activities, their emphasis on traditional,

family-based authority structures, and their strict adherence to traditional modest and simplistic dress

guidelines, all of which are reflective of the state of American society prior to industrialization.

Dunkard Brethren leaders were also aware of the insidious trend of materialism, recognizing it as

perhaps the most dangerous threat to their commitment to the principles of simplicity, nonconformity

with the world, and uniformity among members. Anti-materialism is a virtue typically associated

with premodern societies, and there is a seductive simplicity in categorizing the Dunkard Brethren

within the nineteenth-century American tradition of anti-industrial wilderness preservationists. In

this context, their agrarian social organization is an obvious aspect of their rejection of industrial

society.

Such a classification would, however, overlook the reality of a much deeper, and much more

German, conceptualization of the natural world. To classify the Dunkard Brethren in the American

environmentalist tradition locates them in the “American experience…[in which] wilderness could be

taken as an emblem of democracy rather than its enemy.”57 This description of the Dunkard Brethren

does them a disservice, because it adds them to the existing entanglement of contradictions located

within American nature mythology, and obscures the true moral clarity of their anti-materialist

position.

Though materialism is often characterized as a feature of industrial societies, this depiction is

misleading, because it assumes that the negative morality associated with modern consumer

capitalism did not exist prior to the onset of industrialization. Materialism has, in fact, constituted a

distinct aspect of organized societies since at least the classical era, a fact visible in Tacticus’

57


19

descriptions of medieval German society – with its lack of “corrupting luxury” – with both disgust

and envy.58

America is perhaps a truer product of the Enlightenment than has existed before or within

world history. Founded on the social and political principles of John Locke and the economic

principles of Adam Smith, the United States is the direct result of British Enlightenment ideology.

The result of this ideological heritage is the extreme duality characteristic of the American historical

narrative – the tension between the diametrically opposite ideas that “all men are created equal,” and

that African-American slaves were economically equivalent to “three fifths of all other persons.” A

similar tension existed between the standard of living enabled by industrial capitalism and the

lamentations of the benefactors of that standard of living, of the environmental degradation enabled

by industrial capitalism. The moral tension inherent in these ambiguous cultural dilemmas is fitting,

given the refusal of Enlightenment ideology to acknowledge the significance of non-quantifiable

moral values. As part of such an environmental narrative, the Dunkard Brethren become only

another group of morally-confused Americans, rather than representing the more ancient and more

distinct German heritage of nature mythology.

With this conceptual framework in mind, the attitudes of the Dunkard Brethren in the 1920s

and the 1930s are illustrative of the centrality of medieval nature and landscape mythology to

German ethnic heritage. These attitudes often served several purposes, functioning variously as

methods of cultural identification and as protection against insidious acculturation. Both functions

rested on the basic substructure of German cultural attitudes, whose roots lay deep in medieval

landscape myth.

The first of these attitudes involves the German language. In the German tradition

especially, language is considered central to national identity.59 When the Brethren first came to

58

Schama, Landscape and Memory, 82-86.

20

America, they spoke German (soon referred to by Americans unfamiliar with the German language

as “Dutch” instead of “Deutsch”). By the mid-nineteenth century, as a result of mandatory English-

language public school education, the Brethren had begun to communicate primarily in English.60

The legacy of this language shift, according to Carl Bowman, was “a radical symbolic rupture from

the hymns, oral traditions, prayers, and everyday discourse that comprised the cultural legacy of

previous generations of Dunkers.”61 Although the Dunkard Brethren never communicated solely in

“Dutch,” the language was often spoken among those who knew it, and it was not uncommon for a

minister to deliver all or part of an invocation in Pennsylvania German.62 Though by the early

twentieth century it was “associated with farmers and backwardness,” it was often used, especially

by the older Dunkard Brethren members, as a reminder of the simplicity of Brethren tradition.63

A significant aspect of the Dunkard use of Pennsylvania Dutch is that it enabled the transfer

of German-language concepts not easily definable in English. One of the most significant of these is

the concept of Demut. The closest literal English translation is humility, but the term really refers to

a broader concept of willing service and the acknowledgment both of one’s insignificance in

comparison to God as well as one’s value as a creation and child of God.64 Demut was (and rarely,

59

This attitude can be seen especially well in the work of German philosopher Johann Gottleib Fichte. In his

1806 piece “To the German Nation,” Fichte defined the most central attribute of nationhood as being a commonly

understood language: “Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible

bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of

continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and

an inseparable whole… From this internal boundary, which is drawn by the spiritual nature of man himself, the

marking of the external boundary by dwelling place results as a consequence; and in the natural view of things it is

not because men dwell between certain mountains and rivers that they are a people, but, on the contrary, men dwell

together-and, if their luck has so arranged it, are protected by rivers and mountains-because they were a people

already by a law of nature which is much higher. Thus was the German nation placed-sufficiently united within

itself by a common language and a common way of thinking, and sharply enough severed from the other peoples-in

the middle of Europe, as a wall to divide races not akin…” http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1806fichte.html,

(accessed February 3, 2009).

60


61

Ibid.

62

Author’s personal recollection.

63

Frank Reed, “PA Dutch Language,” author’s personal collection.

64

Frank L. Reed, interview by author, March 7, 2009.

21

still is) often invoked in conjunction with themes of the proper “Christian walk of life” so central to

Dunkard Brethren theology.65

Another significant German-language concept is Gemeinschaft. Its literal English denotation

is “community,” but the more accurate connotation is a concept of an emotionally-bonded,

communally-organized culture.66 This concept informed Brethren attitudes about questions of

individuality and collectivity with German, rather than American, cultural values. Gemeinschaft is

mentioned by Simon Schama in connection with mid-nineteenth century German culture, describing

it as “an organically bonded community,” the opposite of Gesellschaft, defined as “an aggregate of

individuals connected only by material interests.”67

In these concepts, less easily communicated and less readily understood outside of the

framework of German language, is another link between the culture of the Dunkard Brethren and its

mother German culture. Schama describes medieval German society as having a “relative

indifference to property and elaborate distinctions of rank, and [a] marked preference for

spontaneous forms of community: communal feasting and hospitality.”68 This language is strikingly

similar to that contained in a 1991 thesis centered around the Dunkard Brethren church in

Grandview, Missouri, in which the author states that the Dunkard Brethren “overwhelmed [her] with

their openness, warmth, and graciousness” and accepted her into their homes with little prior

interaction.69

A second major category of early Dunkard Brethren concern was the subject of the home.

The separation of work and leisure, and of home and work, was an outgrowth of the mechanization

of the American economy, and therefore alien to the agrarian character of the Dunkers. This division

65

Author’s personal recollection.

66

Frank L. Reed, interview by author, March 7, 2009.

67


68

Ibid., 86.

69

Alyson Lee Greiner, “Geography, Humanism, and ‘Plain People’ in Missouri: The Case of the Dunkard

Brethren,” Master’s thesis, University of Missouri – Columbia, 1991, ii-iii.

22

of work and home lives was strongly denounced by the early Dunkard Brethren, whose reactions

evidence several ideas, the first of which is that a unified home was vital to the proper instruction of

children. This idea is visible in a 1946 article from their church newspaper, the Bible Monitor: “The

institution of the home is very cunningly attacked today by the devil… He takes the parents from

their homes to the shops and lets the children bring themselves up.”70 Whether the author was

referring to the division of home and work or to consumer activity with his mention of “the shops,” it

is clear that he is denouncing any trend that might interfere with traditional methods of child rearing.

Another such denouncement links gendered recreational activities to a negative spiritual

home environment: “We must include in this Christian home the reverence for holy and sacred

things. In the evenings we find the family gathered around the fireside, singing, praying, teaching,

and talking of spiritual things. This is far more to be praised, than the father spending his evenings

down town [sic], mother at the club and the children at their various amusements, or they are left at

home with a nurse, while their parents are our pleasure seeking.”71 These attitudes are linked to

German ethnic concepts, as seen in Schama’s inclusion of Tacticus’ description of medieval German

society: “The hallmark of the innocent vitality of the Germans is that their mothers suckle their own

infants rather than pass them on to wet nurses.”72 This is an attitude also noted in Greiner’s thesis, in

her discussion of the inclusion of children in Dunkard Brethren church services: “The Dunkards…

accept [child-related distractions], are accustomed to this, and even appreciate it not only because the

children are a constant reminder of the potential growth of the church, but also because they enjoy

their company.”73

A third focus of early Dunkard Brethren attention rested on the closely-related concepts of

materialsm and plain dress. Early Dunkard leaders recognized that materialism was an especially

70

“Satan’s Three-Point All-Out Program, Bible Monitor, Jan. 1, 1946, 8-9.

71

Addie Kessler, “The Christian Home,” Bible Monitor, Feb. 15, 1929, 13-14.

72


73

Greiner, “Geography, Humanism, and ‘Plain People’ in Missouri,” 50.

23

insidious trend, and was perhaps the most dangerous threat to their commitment to the principles of

simplicity, nonconformity with the world, and uniformity among members. Admonitions against

materialism were legion within the pages of the Bible Monitor in its early years. “Dollar upon dollar

is spent for display and selfishness and foolishness… Pure religion is to be not conformed to and

spotted by the world. Impure religion is to be defiled with booze, tobacco, pride, fashion, worldly

pleasures and lusts of the flesh in all their glory. These things belong to the world and not to the

church of God.”74 Another article linked the consumption of such goods as tobacco, soft drinks, ice

cream, candy, and chewing gum with “the neglect of church worship, the leaving off of giving thanks

to God for his blessings, and the attendance of worldly amusements by people of all ages,” arguing

that such “ungodly spending” was responsible for the growing crime rates in the United States.75

Plain dress was fundamentally linked to both cultural identification and anti-materialism, as

well as being considered a vital component of primitive Christianity: “In primitive times when all

the people attired themselves in modest apparel…plain dressing then gave the church little concern.

This continued until the goddess of fashion took style into her hands and presumed to dictate as to

how we should clothe our bodies.”76 This linkage provides one of the most profound examples of the

presence of German nature mythology in Dunkard Brethren cultural attitudes. Themes of anti-

materialism and simplistic attire were mentioned by Tacticus in his description of first century

German society: “Since their territories…have no mines bearing silver or gold, the Germans have

been spared this corrupting luxury, forgoing ornament both in their simple dwellings and on their

bodies. For dress they wear nothing but simple cloaks… Only the very richest among them affect

undergarments as a badge of status.”77 This description is closely echoed by what the Dunkard

Brethren have to say about clothing in 1927: “Conforming to the rules and hurtful fashions of the

74

“Two Brothers and Their Sister,” Bible Monitor, July 1, 1946, 19-20.

75

Ruth M. Snyder, “Is America Christian?” Bible Monitor, March 15, 1946, 14-15.

76

“Changes,” Bible Monitor, September 15, 1929, 7.

77


24

world, such as wearing of hats by Christian women, and neckties, gold, rights, bracelets and such

like…in the adornment of the body is contrary to the scripture, and is a token of a proud heart.”78

Early Dunkards linked female consumption of fashion trends to what they saw as the

downward spiral of American morality: “The modern girl is what she is because the worship of

material things is at a fever heat. Her spirituality is nearly gone in the strife of materialism.”79 This

susceptibility of women to the lure of fashion was characterized as the root of American immorality:

“I have been watching with eager eye the last few years to see if I could learn the real cause of the

immodest, immoral dressing of American women… I am convinced the way the mother dresses the

girl as she grows from infancy up to young adulthood is the time when this immodesty is cultivated,

after it has been planted in the little life before it is born by a mother lusting after the immodest

styles.”80 In this attitude, the Dunkard Brethren seem to have differed at least slightly from their

medieval German forebears: “But though the women go about with their arms and much of their

upper body bare, ‘the marriage tie with them is strict…their life is one of fenced-in chastity.’”81

Given the overwhelming correspondence of Dunkard Brethren social attitudes with medieval German

concepts, it is likely that this variation is simply a feature of the different social orientation of the two

societies, rather than the product of any significant ideological dissimilarity.

Industrial labor was also cautioned against in a number of different ways. There was also the

restriction on participation in “unions that are manifestly evil or sinful,” and though the church never

explicitly stated that members were not permitted membership in labor unions, there was a strong

current of discouragement surrounding the subject.82 The church’s attitude toward labor unions was

firmly rooted in its distrust of non-agrarian forms of organization: “Labor unions foster the class

spirit which oftentimes manifests itself in hatred, violence, rioting, and anarchy... Labor unions

78

“Dunkard Brethren Church Polity,” 8, author’s personal collection.

79

“Billy Sunday Has His Say of Girls.” Bible Monitor, March 15, 1928, 19.

80

L.I. Moss, “Who Is To Blame?” Bible Monitor, November 1, 1929, 8-9.

81


82

“Dunkard Brethren Church Polity,” 8.

25

deprive a Christian of that freedom of conscience to follow his convictions and compel him to submit

to the dictates of the majority of the organization to which he belongs whether in hormony [sic] with

Christian principles or not.”83 Here again can be seen echoes of medieval German cultural attitudes.

In the course of a discussion of German houses, Tacticus notes that the separation of German

dwellings “preserves them from an overbearing collective authority,” a concept quite similar to the

1930s-era Dunkard distrust of union membership.

Schama’s work in Landscape and Memory enables a new insight into historical events. As

he explains it, “an understanding of landscape’s past traditions was a source of illumination for the

present and future…so many of our modern concerns – empire, nation, freedom, enterprise, and

dictatorship – have invoked topography to give their ruling ideas a natural form.”84 In all of the

preceding Dunkard Brethren attitudes, a premodern distrust of industrial society is visible. However,

it is clear that some of these cultural values were heavily influenced by their German heritage, which

was rooted in ancient German landscape mythology.

The case study of the Dunkard Brethren illustrates the particular significance of one of

Schama’s arguments: “myths might be highly complex systems of understanding, with the power to

generate and determine social behavior, rather than the other way about.”85 As we have discovered,

German society developed in opposition to the Enlightenment ideology so eagerly embraced by other

Western nations, and so responsible for the environmental destruction now apparent in the world we

currently inhabit. This destruction was largely effected by the voracious attitudes of consumer

capitalism, which was rejected by medieval German mythology in favor of a more natural wilderness

and simplicity. Though consumption has always generated a level of moral angst among certain

classes of Western society, it is merely a symptom of a deeper problem – Enlightenment ideology’s

refusal that nature myths and memory do, in fact, hold significant meaning, and can provide

83

“Labor Unions from a Christian Viewpoint,” Bible Monitor, January 15, 1935, 21.

84


85

Schama, Landscape and Memory, 208-209.

26

alternative patterns of living to the destructive paradigm characteristic of twentieth century American

society.

Al Gore’s call for “a more long-term and responsible form of capitalism” merely underscores

the paradoxical quality of the Enlightenment – it exudes lofty and hopeful rhetoric, yet is reliant on

an economic substructure making the realization of such ideals impossible to achieve.86 We do not

need “sustainable capitalism.” What we do need, desperately, is a true “return to first principles:” the

landscape myth and memory that would provide so much relevance in our freeze-dried, pre-packaged

throwaway society.

86

Gore, “We Need Sustainable Capitalism.”

27

Annotated Bibliography

Blackbourn, David. The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern

Germany. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.

The Conquest of Nature is a cultural history of the German landscape over the course of three

centuries. I used it in my discussion of the German culture of the Brethren.

Bentley, Jerry H. “Why Study World History?” World History Connected 5, no. 1 (Oct. 2007).

This is an article describing reasons for studying world history. I used it to make a point

about the significance of the study of world history.

Bowman, Carl F. Brethren Society: The Cultural Transformation of a “Peculiar People.”

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Brethren Society is a history of the Brethren movement from its beginnings in Germany

through the mid-1990s. I used it in my historiography as well as for background information.

Bible Monitor

The Bible Monitor is the bi-weekly newspaper of the Dunkard Brethren Church. It has been

published since 1922, and served as an early forum in which the conservative members of the Church

of the Brethren could communicate. After the formation of the Dunkard Brethren Church, it

continued as the official communication of the church body. I used several articles in my case study

discussion, all of which I have in my possession.

Epp, Frank H. Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920: The History of a Separate People. Toronto:

Macmillan of Canada, 1974.

Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920, the first installment of an eventual four, chronicles the

experience of the Swiss-German Mennonite diaspora that settled in Canada. I used it in my

historiography.

Fair, Ross. “‘Theirs was a deeper purpose’: The Pennsylvania Germans of Ontario and the Craft of

the Homemaking Myth.” The Canadian Historical Review 87, no. 4 (Dec. 2006): 653-684.

This is a discussion of the use of myth and memory to construct an accepted version of

history. I used it in my historiography.

Fulbrook, Mary. A Concise History of Germany. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

This is a general history of Germany. I used it to discuss the origins of Anabaptism and

Pietism in Germany.

Greiner, Alyson Lee. “Geography, Humanism and ‘Plain People’ in Missouri: The Case of the

Dunkard Brethren.” Master’s thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1991.

28

This is a historical geography case study of the Dunkard Brethren group in Grandview,

Missouri. I used it as a point of comparison for my own study.

Gore, Al. “We Need Sustainable Capitalism.” Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2008,

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584367114799137.html, accessed April 9, 2009.

This is a newspaper article calling for a more environmentally and economically sound form

of capitalism. I used it in my discussion of Enlightenment and nature mythology.

Reed, Frank L. “PA Dutch Language.” Unpublished paper, 2000.

This paper discusses the extent to which Pennsylvania Dutch (German) concepts informed

the ideology and philosophy of the Dunkard Brethren. I used it my discussion of the German-

language culture of the Brethren movement.

Reed, Frank L. Interview by author, March 7, 2009.

This interview centered on the German-language concepts of the Brethren movement. I used

it in my construction of the German-language culture of the Dunkard Brethren.

Roger E. Sappington. Brethren Social Policy. Elgin, IN: The Brethren Press, 1961.

This is a history of Brethren social policy in the United States. I used it in a description of

Dunkard Brethren cultural attitudes.

Sawatzky, Harry Leonard. They Sought a Country: Mennonite Colonization in Mexico.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.

They Sought a Country follows the Swiss-German Mennonite diaspora from Europe to

Canada and then to Mexico. I used in my historiography.

Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.

Landscape and Memory is a cultural history of Western attitudes toward nature and

wilderness. I used Schama’s arguments and information about German nature mythology to shape

my case study.

Steinberg, Ted. Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History. New York: Oxford University

Press, 2002.

This is an environmental history of the United States. I used it to discuss the concept of

commodification.

Willoughby, William G. Willoughby. “Honors to Alexander Mack.” Church of the Brethren

Network, July 26, 1999, http://www.cob-net.org/mack/honors.htm, accessed April 12, 2009.

This is a brief biographical sketch of Brethren founder Alexander Mack. I used it in my

discussion of Brethren theological concepts.

29

Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

The second part of Rivers of Empire contains a definition and discussion of instrumental

reason with regard to American attitudes toward nature. I used this concept in my discussion of

Enlightenment and nature mythology.

Documents

We are Largely Farmersâ€™: Landscape Mythology in German American