German-speaking immigrants formed the largest group of non-English speaking immigrants to the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century. They set up a distinctive German-American cultural environment in various parts of the United States. Among the most prominent German-American areas was the Midwest, and the 1900 census revealed that about one-third of the population of Wisconsin was of “German stock.” Schools shaped that ethnic culture, and teachers who immigrated from Germany, as well as teachers who were daughters and sons of German immigrant families, contributed to the newly established American school systems, both public and private parochial. Studying the contribution of these school teachers to the cultural assimilation of immigrant children offers further insight into the relationship between the German cultural background of the immigrants and the various ways in which immigrants encountered and coped with new educational challenges.

This essay deals with four different groups of teachers among German immigrants that I came across while investigating elementary schools for German immigrants in Wisconsin. Two variables, gender and religious affiliation,divided teachers into four different categories: (1) the female public elementary school teacher, ridiculed as “schoolmarm”; (2) the German-American non-church-affiliated teacher, that is, the Volkserzieher; (3) the Lutheran parochial school teacher, that is, the Kantor; and (4) the Catholic school sister. Separate teacher training institutions were established for the last three of these groups.