The Germans have long enjoyed and revered alcohol. When the Irish missionary Columbanus first met the Germans at the beginning of the seventh century, he made a ritual sacrifice of beer.
Even after the Germans became Christians, most religious leaders followed the biblical view of alcohol as part of God's generosity. Martin Luther loved beer and wine: he sometimes got drunk, and he used the melodies of popular drinkers for some of his hymns.
Such was the tradition of missionary pastor Frederick Schmid, who came to Michigan in 1833 to plant congregations among state immigrants. But Schmid, who founded both the Zion Lutheran Church and the Bethlehem United Church of Christ, quickly learned that other local ministers are much more rigid about alcohol. Based on a wide preference for strong alcohol and the habit of walking on drunken spreads, many advocated a direct ban on drinking.
In June 1834, Schmid addressed the local Presbyterian minister. Will Schmid use his powers to convince the Germans of Ann Arbor to follow the principles of Presbyterian domination, which forbade not only alcohol, but even coffee and tea?
Schmid replied that a Christian does not need to submit to such a yoke. People with the Holy Spirit within them will not drink too much or abuse the gifts of God. Jesus, added Schmid, drank the wine.
The clash of cultures that began on this day will last almost a century. The Germans arrived in Ann Arbor amid the great moderation movement among American-born Americans, who would have reached the climax of a nationwide ban in 1920.
Most German settlers saw things like Schmid. Their attitude is enshrined in the constitution of the Church of the Bethel Liberty Church, in which only heavy drinking is condemned. There is a gravestone with the date "February 31" in the cemetery. According to former pastor Roman Reinek, families of farmers will visit with a bricklayer when he worked. They bring some cider or wine, and by the end of the day, the date doesn't matter.
In the villages where the majority were Germans, such communication was of little interest. But the German love of alcohol was a much more serious problem in Ann Arbor. In the period from 1868 to 1918, city guides record 221 different places for the distribution of alcohol, more than half of which belong to German Americans.
Edith Stabler Kempf (1898-1993) told stories about a nineteenth-century salon led by Charlie Behr. Professors, lawyers and wealthy German farmers arrived there. Behr also served as a meal, and Kempf never counted a penny.
The Yankee-Michigan, whose families came from New England or the state of New York, may have ignored the Germans selling beer to other Germans. But the student population of Ann Arbor was another matter. Most of the students from this era came from the Yankee families and grew up in Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian homes that used theototarism. Some of them revealed in their newfound freedoms, including the freedom to drink.
Initially, the University of Michigan closely followed the students. They lived on campus, had a curve of 9 pm and demanded to attend the obligatory chapel twice a day to hear the sermons given by teachers, who were mostly ordained to the Protestant clergy.
This changed when Henry Philippe Tappan took over as president of the university in 1852. Tappan visited research universities in Prussia, and he began to attract teachers on the basis of scholarships, not church affiliation. Tappan also canceled the university dorm because he wanted students to be more independent and live off campus, like students in Europe.
Tappan himself drank wine with food, and he didn’t care if students drank beer. He opposed distilled spirits, but this greatly satisfied the more conservative abilities and regents.
Freed from the power of their parents and the university, the students turned to alcoholism. In 1856, student mobs attacked German drinking places in the “Dutch War”. The conflict began when Jacob Hangsterfer expelled two noisy students from his beer hall. The next day, they returned with friends armed with knives and clubs. When the Hangsterfer refused to serve them free drinks, students broke open kegs and barrels, destroyed furniture and glass.
Shortly thereafter, six students climbed through the window into the hotel and the Henry Binder lounge and helped themselves to a drink at a German ball. Binder could only grab one of the students and hold him hostage. Others received reinforcements from campus. When Binder demanded $ 10 for stolen drinks, the students attacked with buttons. With brick walls giving way, Binder put his huge dog on the students. But the pupils of the dog killed the dog binder. Then the students went to get the muskets that they used in military exercises - at this point Binder wisely freed his prisoner.
Tappan, called carpet regents, emphasized the university’s constant demands on the daily chapel and Sunday church attendance, as well as other evidence of the student’s moral body. He also called for the implementation of a new resolution of the city prohibiting the sale of alcohol to minors and people who were drunk. But the following year, a former student died after drinking in the Binder saloon and in a friend's room.
Tappan joined the moderate-minded citizens, putting pressure on the city council to informally agree that the licenses for drinks would not be granted east of Street, creating a “dry line” to protect the campus. But Tappan lost points with the regents when he refused to take a personal arrest. Despite the fact that he raised the university to the national school of promotion 10 times, laying the foundations of the law and engineering schools, and much more, the regents cared more about his perceived moral shortcomings. They fired him in 1863.
In the town of Tappan, the Regents appointed a Methodist Minister and Professor of Latin Erastus Haven. The Presbyterian Church accepted the inauguration in Haven. At the ceremony, the regent dwelled on Tappan’s “sinful” behavior.
However, President Haven was unlucky to bury the students of the city. In 1867, he told the Women's Library Association that Ann Arbor was "disgraced all over the country" as a "place of revelation and extortion." By 1871, shocked by the fights, nightlife and destructive pranks, the voters of Ann Arbor chose one of the university professors as mayor. Silas Douglas promptly forced the city’s marshal to warn the salons that a prolonged disregard of the order to close Sunday would be respected.
Anna Arbor’s conflict over alcohol has ever become a concern throughout the country. The Michigan branch of the Union of the Christian Faith of women issued a flyer in 1881, condemning city salons for making men "herders". The flyer lists thirty-seven shopkeepers by name, the vast majority of whom are Germans, and asserts that “Ann Arbor will be better morally, socially, intellectually, and in any way, if this disgusting long list of people will die every single one of them pox over the next week. ”
In 1887, Michigan voted in favor of a proposed amendment to the state constitution prohibiting the production and sale of alcohol. Ann Arbor lagged far behind the German Second Chamber (today the “West Side”) rejected her ten to one. The Sixth Ward, led by Yankees and the University, voted in favor of three. He lost narrowly statewide.
In 1902, Ann Arbor's forces achieved some success when the unofficial dry observatory became part of the city charter. By 1908, eleven Michigan districts activated local prohibitive ordinances, and every year more and more districts joined them. In 1916, Michigan voters again considered banning the state constitution. The second chamber still voted “no” almost twice, but Ann Arbor as a whole voted in favor of the ban, as did the state.
The late Ernie Splitt reminded the government inspectors who arrived at the brewery of the Union of Michigan on Fourth Street on the day when the state came down on May 1, 1918. According to Split, everyone drank, even the inspectors. Then, “the rest of the beer was famous down the drain. It was the saddest day of my life. ”
The hordes of Michigan's went to Ohio to get a drink, leading the governor of Michigan to order full-time soldiers to patrol the frontier. Cars ignoring their checkpoints were fired upon, and the governor was forced to declare a limited martial law. The passenger was shot in the neck when the driver was unable to stop for the soldiers on the highway outside Ann Arbor. But there was no liquor in search of the car.
In 1918, the Congress approved the Eighth Amendment, prohibiting the production, sale or transportation of toxic beverages. It was estimated by the states in early 1919 and entered into force in January 1920.
The ban reduced alcohol consumption, especially among the working class, in rural areas and on campuses. But it had the opposite effect among wealthy angles.
Bootleggers and illegal pubs largely ignored beer and wine, concentrating instead on a more profitable strong liquor. Cocktails are getting chic.
It was estimated that between 400 and 600 cases of whiskey were bought from Canada across the Detroit River at night. Much of this was sent to Chicago, usually passing through Ustenau along the route.
One cold April night in 1927, the policemen Ann Arbor William Marz and Erwin Kibler stopped the car in the center of the city. The driver didn’t have registration, so Marz was standing on the footboard of the car to send him to the police headquarters, and Kibler followed them in the patrol car. Near the headquarters of one of the passengers rolled out a gun and fired five times out of the window, blowing Martz on the sidewalk. The car slipped away. Fortunately, Kibler inherited marz on a bulletproof vest.
When the police exacerbated their coercive measures, the gangsters simply used their aggressive profits to buy faster cars and more guns. Ordinary citizens were afraid of being caught in crossfire. They put American flag stickers on their windshields with the words “Don't shoot, I'm not a bootlegger.”
They were stuck with a little man in Ann Arbor, the German restaurant Metzger, with law enforcement officers who were upset by the bootglers. In 1929, Bill Metzger’s owner was named for selling hard cider and placed on probation for five years. He was fined $ 100 and could not leave the state without the consent of the court. His, his vehicles, his business and his house could be searched at any time without a warrant. To prevent any future cases of his cider fermentation, he could no longer sell cider.
During the 1920s, not even the Germans began to question the Prohibition. They came to understand that they replaced only the hating saloon, and the blind pig, and began to think that a moderate German approach, beer, beer and wine, might be in order.
In the 1932 presidential election, Franklin Roosevelt ran as a wet candidate. As one of his first actions, the new congress adopted the Twenty-first Amendment, lifting the ban. In April of this year, Michigan became the first state to ratify it. By May, sales and consumption of alcohol had become legal again in Ann Arbor.
The Michigan Union Brewery reopened the Ann Arbor brewery. Kurt Neumann, a long-time resident of Cabbage Town, was known to be known in the Old West Side, recalled how people from the neighborhood stopped, filled the ends right from the rations and sat talking and drinking. Unfortunately, other locations were not as loyal to Ann Arbor Old Tyme, Creme Top or Town Club - perhaps because it was still a beer, only with different labels. The brewery closed forever in 1949.
In 1960, local voters finally allowed the bars to serve alcohol. In 1964, they replaced the centenary dry line with a small dry island around the university, and in 1969 even this was eliminated. Ann Arborit abolished the last remnants of the Yankee crusade against alcohol.
This article originally appeared in the Ann Arbor Observer in September 2009. More information about the history of Ann Arbor, including photographs, films and other materials, can be found on the website: http://www.celticgerman.com
