Since the founding of the USA, more than seven and a half million "Germans" have left their homeland to lead a better life across the Atlantic. The majority of them came from lower and middle-class backgrounds, sought social advancement, and often found it in an independent existence as farmers, craftsmen, or traders. German immigrants created a broad middle-class foundation of the US economy in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to the prevailing image significantly shaped by migration research, but the entrepreneurial elites primarily came from "Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, native-born, well-to-do families" [1]. A brief reflection leads to skepticism regarding this success story from the ranks of the colonists, predominantly of the 18th century: Pfizer, Merck, Heinz, Levi Strauss, Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Pabst, Steinway, Studebaker, Boeing – these are ten quickly thrown out and easily supplemented names of significant American companies founded by German immigrants of the first or second generation. In the Washington German Historical Institute, our research in 2009 yielded a by no means complete list of more than eight hundred "significant" German-American entrepreneurs. Analogous directories of immigrant entrepreneurs from Scandinavia and Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia, China and Mexico are likely to be extensive as well.
This was the occasion to start the project "Immigrant Entrepreneurship. German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present" in 2010. It aimed to analyze, using the example of German-American immigrants, what significance they had for the education and establishment of the USA as a leading economic power in the world. [2] The project, which lasted until 2015, certainly fell short of its self-imposed expectations, but the freely accessible website [https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org] offers nearly 180 biographical and numerous other thematic articles, providing a unique and particularly empirically grounded insight into German-American migration and business history. Nevertheless, the core question regarding the specific "German" contribution to US economic and business history had to remain open. Although the myth of an economy superpower USA primarily shaped and dominated by traditional Anglo-Saxon colonists could be falsified, the immigrants from German lands formed a too heterogeneous and often internally contradictory group that cannot serve as a clearly configured counter-image to the establishment of the respective "American" entrepreneurs. [3]
Claus Spreckels (1828-1908) (San Francisco Newsletter 26, 1877, December 29, n. 16 (l.); Phelbs, 1881, before 449)
From farm laborer to sugar king? The career of Claus Spreckels
All the more important remain case studies. The history of the Californian family Spreckels is well suited for this. It is one of the – after the Astors – certainly most successful German-descended immigrant families; only the Uihleins based in Milwaukee and Detroit may have played a similarly important economic and social role in the USA around 1900.
Families like the Spreckels allow for a long-term analysis not only of entrepreneurial success or failure but also provide quite accurate insights into acculturation, integration, and the changing identity of immigrants.
This is especially true when the immense wealth in this case hardly allows the usually applicable barriers of material constraints, experiences of foreignness, and relative isolation in the ethnic or religious niche to come into play: Claus Spreckels ranked 40th in a methodologically quite questionable list of the richest Americans of all time in 1998, and his sons were able to further increase the family's total wealth.
Visualized Stations in the Life of a Successful Immigrant Entrepreneur (Sugar in the Making, ed. by the Western Sugar Refinery San Francisco, 2nd ed., San Francisco 1932, p. n.)
Claus Spreckels was born in 1828 as the oldest of seven children of a long-established peasant family in Lamstedt, near Cuxhaven. [6] He grew up under cramped conditions and without further schooling and worked as a farm laborer since 1843. In 1846, he emigrated to the USA via Bremen, although he had neither capital nor knowledge of the English language. In his destination Charleston, South Carolina, he found employment with a German-American grocery and liquor dealer, whose business he took over after a few years. Spreckels' further career was based on a chain migration from Lamstedt to the USA. [7] He married his schoolmate Anna Christina Mangels (1830-1910), who came from a neighboring village of Lamstedt, in 1852; she had recently emigrated to New York and worked there as a maid. With the help of his brother-in-law Claus Mangels (1832-1891), later a millionaire in San Francisco, Spreckels acquired a wholesale and retail business in New York in 1855, which quickly became profitable. A year later, he followed his brother Bernhard (1830-1861) to San Francisco and expanded his wholesale and retail business with his capital. [8]
Industrial beginnings in the family association – Advertisement of the Albany Brewery (San Francisco Directory 1861, 533)
In San Francisco, Claus Spreckels strategically invested in growth markets. Together with his brother Peter (1839-1922) and his brother-in-law, he founded the Albany Brewery in 1857, which quickly became one of the leading local companies through modern technology and innovative products. [9] Within a few years of achieving prosperity, Spreckels aimed for further maximization of his wealth. In the later self- and external stylization, the founding of two sugar refineries, the Bay Sugar Refinery in 1863 and the California Sugar Refinery in 1867, is interpreted as the actual breakthrough to the later sugar empire. However, for Spreckels, the sugar industry at that time was only one field of a broadly diversified activity as a venture capitalist. In the 1860s and 1870s, he invested in another brewery (Lyons Brewery), gold and silver mines (Virginia Hill Gold and Silver Mining Company, Kennedy Mining Company), the diamond business (Diamond Match Company), silk production (Union Pacific Silk Manufacturing Company), local gas supply, canal construction (Mission Creek Canal Company), the insurance industry (Fireman’ Fund Insurance Company, Commercial Insurance Company of California), real estate, and banking (German Savings and Loan Society). [10]
Nevertheless, the sugar industry became Spreckels' main domain. From the very beginning, he employed modern machines, which he first purchased on the American East Coast and then also in Germany. He consistently utilized economies of scale and synergies: The California Sugar Refinery was expanded five times between 1867 and 1881, equipped with the latest machines, some of which were patented in Spreckels' name. [11] The competition was driven out of the market with aggressive pricing. Standardized qualities and new product innovations tailored to the end consumers, as well as small packages of granulated sugar, were part of the success concept. In parallel, Spreckels established direct trade relations with the Philippines, Hawaii, and Central America to ensure a secure and extended supply of raw sugar. Since the mid-1870s, Spreckels dominated the production and increasingly also the foreign trade of cane sugar in the western USA.
California Sugar Refinery, San Francisco 1881 (San Francisco News Letter 1881, Christmas-Issue.)
This position seemed to be threatened when a reciprocity treaty was concluded between the USA and the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1876, which not only provided for no tariffs on sugar imports from Hawaii but also a subsidy of two cents per pound. [12] Spreckels initially exerted his political influence to sabotage this treaty. However, after its conclusion, he was the first to adapt to the new conditions. After a short start-up period, he began massive investments in sugar cane cultivation. He acquired 40,000 acres of land in Maui, corrupted the king and government, covered the island with a network of irrigation canals, roads, and railways with the help of German engineers, and founded several refineries in the newly established Spreckelsville. [13] Spreckels settled thousands of workers from Portugal, China, Japan, but initially also hundreds from Norway and Germany in Maui and numerous other plantations in Big Island. [14] He set standards for the fundamental change of Hawaii's economic and social structure and prepared the ground for the later annexation of the island group by the USA with his investments – even though he himself may have been an advocate of Hawaii's independence for economic reasons.
From a corporate historical perspective, the rapid establishment of a vertically integrated sugar corporation was more important. The Oceanic Steamship Company, managed together with his oldest sons, dominated the transport, passenger, and postal business with Hawaii for decades. Newly founded wholesale organizations marketed the raw sugar from the growing number of Hawaiian sugar plantations. Banks controlled by Spreckels financed the capital-intensive business with the sweet raw material. By the early 1880s, Spreckels was a billionaire (by today's standards), a quasi-power in Hawaii, whose political influence in California and Washington enabled the extension of the Reciprocity Treaty in 1883 even against fierce public opposition. [15] At that time, Spreckels' name stood as a synonym for the dangers of Big Business, the subversive and corrupting power of large corporations: The working conditions in his plantation system were the subject of numerous government investigations, he was constantly criticized for the high monopoly prices for sugar, and his political influence in the Republican Party seemed to undermine U.S. politics. [16] The tariff policy of the major railroads, which protected Spreckels' sugar monopoly in the West with special rates, made the danger of trusts evident to the public once again. [17]
Trust regulation as a neglected state task (Puck 24, 1888, 137)
Since the mid-1880s, however, the power of the sugar king eroded. This was true for Hawaii, where competitors gained ground and the power of King Kalakaua (1836-1891), who was dependent on Spreckels, waned at the latest since the revolution of 1887. [18] The political framework also changed, the tariff policy of the democratic president Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) was just a precursor to this. More importantly, the founding of the American Sugar Refinery Company, the so-called sugar trust, took place in 1887. All of this led to a fundamental realignment of the Spreckels companies:
First, he shifted his activities more back to California, where he became a pioneer in beet sugar production since 1887. After a seven-month study stay in Germany in 1865, Spreckels had already started experimental cultivation of beet sugar since 1872, but the labor-intensive sugar beet cultivation was not yet competitive due to a lack of farmers or laborers. [19] This changed due to the price decline of relevant cash crops, along with subsidies from the U.S. government, which aimed to reduce dependence on sugar imports. Spreckels informed himself in 1887 during a five-month trip through Austria, France, Belgium, and Germany about the current state of the beet sugar industry, subsequently imported patents and technology mainly from Germany, and built the largest sugar refineries in the USA at that time, first in Watsonville in 1887, then since 1898 in Salinas and the newly founded city of Spreckels, according to his own, incorrect statements, also the world. [20]
Secondly, Spreckels publicly took on the sugar trust. He had long harbored the idea of offering sugar on the East Coast; and he consistently implemented it after the sugar trust bought a smaller competing refinery in San Francisco in 1888 and began a price war. Spreckels then moved east, negotiated with several cities for subsidies, and established the then world's largest sugar refinery in Philadelphia since 1889. [21] Operated by his sons, it enabled an intense price war that temporarily led to a halving of sugar prices in the USA. The much larger and more capital-rich sugar trust eventually backed down in 1891, leaving Spreckels the western USA and buying the factory in Philadelphia for double the investment amount. [22] West monopolist Claus Spreckels became a popular public figure with this coup, defending the position and values of the sole proprietor against the trusts.
Spreckels Sugar Refinery in Philadelphia, PA, 1893 (Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper 1890, No. 1821 of September 8, 576)
Thirdly, Claus Spreckels, who had unofficially withdrawn from operational business since 1893, began diversifying his entrepreneurial activities. He connected this to the earlier phase of the venture capitalist. Keywords must suffice, even if they involved (from today's perspective) billion-dollar deals. Spreckels invested in various railroad companies to support his beet sugar production (Pajaro Valley Railroad; Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railway), to attack the quasi-monopoly of the Southern Pacific Railway Co. (San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railroad Company; Bakersfield and Los Angeles Railway Company), as well as to advance the infrastructure development of Southern California (National City & Otay Railroad). [23] His public image as a monopoly breaker allowed him lucrative investments in the infrastructure sector, where he acted as a price breaker in the gas and electricity business (Independent Light and Power Company), to sell his shares after a few years at a high profit [24]. Finally, he increasingly invested in real estate, including the first skyscraper in the western USA, the Claus Spreckels Building, which opened in 1897, a symbol of the rising San Francisco. [25]
The construction of the San Joaquin Valley Road as a remedy for the region – Advertising motif for the Spreckels Railway Line, 1896 (Valley Road, 1896, 67)
Origin as a Resource: Success Factors of a Multibillionaire
One can read this career as an American success story, as the transition from farm worker to sugar king. However, this does not do justice to the peculiarities of the USA in the 19th century nor to the status of an immigrant entrepreneur.
Claus Spreckels had been a citizen of the USA since 1855. He quickly learned English, although he spoke it with a distinct German, more precisely Low German, accent until the end of his life. He was proud of his new homeland, praised its promise of freedom and the independence of its citizens, and increasingly turned against US imperialism and the rampant corruption in politics – even though he had systematically engaged in this for decades. [26] He was a member, partly a founding member, of the most important American associations on the West Coast, active in the National Guard, and a leading representative of the Republicans in California. He promoted local patriotism with donations for the statutes of James A. Garfield (1831-1881), Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), George Dewey (1837-1917), Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), and William McKinley (1843-1901). At the same time, he supported his Lutheran St. Mark's congregation throughout his life, was a member of the San Francisco Association and the Arion Association, promoted German Days and Weeks, the German Old Age Home, and the Goethe-Schiller Monument. In 1899, he gifted his hometown a Temple of Music, not least for the promotion of German music.
A place of German and American melodies: Spreckels Temple of Music (Mark Hopkins Review of Art 1, 1899/1900, No. 3, 10)
Spreckels was often perceived as an immigrant until the 1890s. His business practices were denounced as those of a "greedy Prussian" [27] or a "German Jew" [28]. Due to his advocacy for Chinese contract laborers or his insistence on Hawaii's independence, he was often regarded as a nationally insecure Cantonist. In the German Empire and also among German-American associations, he was often nationally appropriated, whether as a jovial Low German speaker or as the "German sugar king". [29] However, German visitors increasingly noted critically that he "had no interests other than purely American ones"; and it did little good that his pastor compared him at the grave to a German oak. [30] In the German-language US press, it was lamented that he "had not much left for the local Germanness and Germanness in general [not, US]" [31]. This was incorrect, but Claus Spreckels always paid attention to the public impact and the social binding power of his contributions even beyond the German niche.
In the USA, he was increasingly seen since the early 1890s as a representative first of the rising California, then also of the American nation and its promise of individual development. Nevertheless, his career is hardly explainable without his origins from Germany. German immigrants enabled him to start in Charleston, New York, and San Francisco. German-American engineers and architects planned the plantation economy in Hawaii and the refinery in Philadelphia. Spreckels employed numerous skilled workers from Germany and repeatedly gave family members the chance to work and advance in his companies. His eldest son was also educated in Germany from 1869 to 1871 at the Polytechnic School in Hanover. [32] German visitors and politicians were received and entertained by him in Hawaii and San Francisco.
Sedan celebration in San Francisco under the direction of Claus Spreckels (San Francisco Evening Post 1871, August 30, 2)
He himself traveled several times for longer stays in Germany to study sugar production on site. Since 1867, he imported machines from Germany, his sugar beet factories were almost entirely equipped with German technology, and German beet seeds were planted in Californian fields. And yet: The reason for these close relationships lay in the quality of know-how and products. Spreckels followed an economic logic, not a national one. If seeds were offered cheaper in France or Denmark, he would buy them there. At the same time, he skillfully exploited his German origins to gain advantages, especially in negotiations over customs tariffs; after all, he was an American who claimed to know the Germans. In Hawaii, he positioned himself as a guarantor of American interests against British and German competition. He instrumentalized the danger of growing German sugar imports to subsidize the US beet sugar industry.
View into St. Bartholomew's Church, Lamstedt, baptismal font of Claus Spreckels (Uwe Spiekermann, 2018)
Spreckels remained closely connected to his homeland: He financed not only his sister's house in Lamstedt, but also, a year before his death, the organ of his home community. However, at the latest since the early 1890s, his regular transatlantic travels increasingly took him to London, then often to Paris and the Bohemian spas. His pompous villa in San Francisco was furnished with French artworks, and not only German maids worked there, but also English butlers and gardeners. [33] The German immigrant in America was also a friend of French cuisine – and thus matched the taste of the emerging international smart set.
On the way to the richest and most influential family in California? The second generation of entrepreneurs of the Spreckels
Even these few hints clearly underline the artificiality of national identities in the late 19th century. Claus Spreckels was born in the Kingdom of Hanover; and a German citizenship only formally existed from 1913, that is, after his death. Since 1855, he had been a naturalized citizen of the USA, but this was a rapidly expanding state with unclear borders: California became part of the USA in 1850. California itself was not yet the state it is today with about the population that the German Confederation had in 1850. For Claus Spreckels, however, it was the most important reference and also design space, while he always understood the Hawaii he had long dominated as an informal sphere of influence, but not as an independent state to which he never had an inner bond.
Questions about the acculturation and integration of such a representative of a transnational functional elite already indicate multiple, parallel lived and utilized identities in a person. However, the real test case is certainly the second generation of immigrants. In the case of the Spreckels family, this is particularly fruitful, as the hard school of the sugar king not only led to internal family disputes but also to the development of four entrepreneurial talents, all of whom developed their own careers based on the work and capital of the father and further increased the wealth of the entire family until the mid-1920s. Sketchy characterizations must suffice.
John D. Spreckels (1853-1926) (Austin, 1924, n. 74 (l.); ebd., n. 162; Coshocton Tribune 1922, 3. September, 3 (r.))
John Diederich Spreckels, the oldest son born in 1853 in Charleston, was perhaps the greatest entrepreneurial talent of the four brothers. [34] He was entrusted by his father early on with the management of the Hawaiian estate – and, together with his younger brother Adolph B., led the California sugar operations since the 1890s. In parallel, he built up the Oceanic Steamship Company since 1878, which was not only active in freight and mail transport to Hawaii but also offered the first regular trips to New Zealand, Australia, Samoa, and later to Asia since the 1880s. The holding company Spreckels & Bros., founded together with his brothers Adolph B. and Claus A., acted as an agency for many smaller U.S. shipowners and numerous European lines in Pacific and shipping traffic from the East Coast to the West Coast. Large parts of the supply of the West Coast with coal, coke, fertilizers, and metals – from Australia, but also from Great Britain – were carried out in charter business by Spreckels & Bros.
Economic and tourist development of the Pacific region by J.D. Spreckels & Bros. (Ports, 1889, 62 (l.); Oceanic Steamship Company 1902, s.p.)
John Diederich Spreckels emancipated himself from his father with systematic investments starting in 1887 in San Diego; even though the old gentleman financially supported this and only transferred his rights to the two older sons around the turn of the century. John D. Spreckels was committed to expanding the port infrastructure, built a streetcar network in the 1890s that was far beyond demand, founded electricity and water works, and also bought up the most important local daily newspapers. This served to establish San Diego and the offshore island of Coronado as a tourist center and retirement residence [35] , and also led to immense profits in real estate in the medium term, as John D. Spreckels had purchased a large part of the future building land at a low price. After the earthquake in 1906, he permanently moved to San Diego and invested in central office buildings, while also building oversized theaters, music venues, and amusement parks. At the same time, he secured the water supply of the region through a network of dams and canal systems.
Acquisition and expansion of existing infrastructure: Coronado and San Diego 1888 (Coronado Beach Company, 1888, s.p.)
With the Spreckels Savage Tire Company, the first American tire company west of the production center Akron, he simultaneously laid the foundations for the industrial development of San Diego and the Southwest of California. As an investor similarly diversified as his father, John D. was also involved in the railroad business (National City & Otay Railroad, Coquile River Road, San Diego & Southeastern Railway Company, Coos Bay, Roseburg and Eastern Railway). The San Diego and Arizona Railroad completed in 1919 connected San Diego to the transnational railroad network of the USA and formed a keystone in the transportation development of Southern California. John D.'s lifestyle was extravagant; he owned the largest and fastest yachts on the West Coast, showed interest in boxing, polo, and auto racing, and was in the 1890s not only due to his money the dominant political force of the Republican Party of California. Nevertheless, after the death of his father, he stood at the top of California's income pyramid for a long time with an annual income of over a million dollars and left behind a fortune of 25 million dollars at his death in 1926, which today would be worth billions.
Adolph B. Spreckels (1857-1924) (San Francisco Call 1896, September 17, 7; Men of the Pacific Coast 1902, 188; Jockey Club, 1923, s.p.)
Adolph Bernhard Spreckels, born in 1857 in San Francisco, often stood in the shadow of his great brother; and yet he financed most of his ventures on a 50-percent basis, being a capitalist in the true sense of the word. After he shot Michel De Young, the owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, due to his one-sided reporting about his father and especially his mother in 1881, but was ultimately acquitted, he led a rather reclusive life for a long time. [37] His passion was horse racing. He was one of the most important, but above all the long-time economically most successful California horse breeders and founded several racetracks in Northern California and also – after the prohibition of both horse betting and then alcohol consumption in California – in Mexico. [38]
Tanforan Racecourse before the reopening 1923 (Jockey Club, 1923, s.p.)
Adolph B. Spreckels served for many years as a volunteer Park Commissioner, responsible for Golden Gate Park. [39] As the only Spreckels of this generation, he was involved in the booming oil business but could not hold his own against the competition from the Standard Oil Company in the medium term. [40] Although a significant part of his fortune was invested at the urging of his wife Alma des Bretteville Spreckels (1881-1968) in the francophone California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the most important art museum on the West Coast, which opened in the year of his death in 1924, he still left his heirs 15 million dollars. [41]
Drilling rigs and processing industry of the Sunset Monarch Oil Company, 1910 (Sunset 25, 1910, 243)
While John D. and Adolph B. endured their father's autocratic attitude for life, the two younger brothers Claus Augustus and Rudolph rebelled against Claus Spreckels in the early 1890s. In years of legal proceedings, they managed to wrest millions in assets from their father, which they then used for their own businesses. [42]
Disruptions in the Spreckels House: Cartoon about the series of court proceedings between Claus Spreckels and his sons Rudolph and Claus A., 1892-1896 (Oakland Tribune 1908, January 10, 1)
Both had managed their father's sugar refinery in Philadelphia, both were disillusioned by its sale to the sugar trust, which they actually wanted to fight and defeat. Claus A. and Rudolph received a million capital as compensation, but above all the control over the heart of the Spreckels sugar business in Hawaii, the Hawaiian Commercial Sugar Company. They navigated this through a financial crisis in the early 1890s, only to sell it in 1898 with million-dollar profits, of course against their will. [43]
Claus A. Spreckels (1858-1946) (New York Journal 1897, July 4, 24 (l.); Evening Telegram New York 1911, July 22, s.p.; Kansas City Sun 1918, January 26, 3 (r.))
Claus A. Spreckels used this capital to establish the Federal Sugar Refinery in 1902 in Yonkers, north of New York City, which quickly developed into not only the largest independent sugar refinery in the USA due to novel production methods, but by the early 1920s, with more than 3,000 employees, it was also the largest sugar factory in the USA. [44] Before he withdrew from active business in the mid-1920s, he acted – a potent financier of the Democratic Party – as a politically influential opponent of the sugar trust and also of the US war food economy under Herbert Hoover (1874-1964).
Federal Sugar Refining Co. – Leading company of the "Independents" in the USA, 1922 (Postcard, private ownership)
Claus A. Spreckels, who was also active in banking, retired in France at that time. His fortune is not precisely assessable. In the early 1920s, certainly still (by today's standards) a simple billionaire, he lost his fortune with the bankruptcy of the Federal Sugar Refinery in 1932 and died in 1946 in Paris in secure, yet rather moderate circumstances. [45]
Rudolph Spreckels (1872-1958) (San Francisco Call 1895, March 7, 2 (l.); Los Angeles Times 1906, October 27, I1; Who’s who in California, 1929, 33 (r.))
This fate was also shared by the youngest of the four brothers, Rudolph Spreckels, born in 1872. In 1928, with temporarily more than 30 million dollars, he was the wealthiest member of the second generation, but his newly restructured business empire spectacularly collapsed during the Great Depression. Rudolph had retired in 1898 at the age of 26 with a fortune of four million dollars, and nothing indicated that he would perhaps become the most colorful, certainly the best-known Spreckels offspring in the USA. The reason for this was his commitment first to combating corruption in San Francisco, then his active advocacy for the Progressives in the USA. [46] In the metropolis of California, Rudolph Spreckels financed from 1906-1909 with - in today's value - almost 20 million dollars the spectacular indictment against the city government, the Union Labor, and the Republican Party. His announcement to also bring to court the primarily business-world-based corruption providers led to a division of society in San Francisco.
Rudolph Spreckels as a clean man and "dictator" of San Francisco after the earthquake 1906 (New York Times 1907, July 7, SM10)
The Graft Prosecution ultimately did not achieve its self-imposed goals, but San Francisco and also Rudolph Spreckels became a symbol for a necessary reform of American politics and also of the entrepreneurial ethos. Rudolph Spreckels, meanwhile successfully established as a banker, investor, and real estate speculator [47], became a leading representative of the Progressive Republicans for several years. During and after World War I, he conceived ambitious infrastructure projects in California, which included the nationalization of railroads, the construction of modern highways, as well as the complete takeover of the water and electricity business by the state of California. All these projects failed at the time, but several were addressed and implemented in the 1930s as part of the New Deal. Rudolph Spreckels reorganized his business activities in the mid-1920s, withdrew from banking, and invested his considerable resources in the future markets of the radio and TV industry (Federal Telegraph Company, Kolster Radio) as well as in the reorganization of the Spreckels sugar empire in New York (Spreckels Sugar Corporation). [48] Initially, he benefited from the stock market boom, but then his expansion-oriented businesses were hard hit by the Great Depression and the price collapse in the sugar market. In 1930, the radio business had to be shut down first, followed by the sugar business. Rudolph Spreckels refused to sell the family business to General Foods on acceptable terms, but the planned reorganization failed due to a lack of capital. In 1936, the former billionaire made a revelation oath. [49]
Reminiscence and Burden: "Germanness" in the Second Generation
It seems difficult to extract the commonalities of their position as second-generation American immigrant entrepreneurs from these four cursory life portraits. There is no doubt that all four brothers understood themselves as American citizens, whose German origin became increasingly fragile and irrelevant. Like their father, the sons were already presented and perceived in the 1890s as showcase entrepreneurs of the American West – and they in turn used the press, which they partly controlled, to paint such an image.
The almost twenty-year age difference between John D. and Rudolph already points to a changing socialization. While the older one attended vocational school in Germany for two years, was introduced to American and German-American clubs on site, advanced to Colonel of the National Guard, and regularly participated in both festivities at the San Francisco Schuetzenpark and mass gatherings of Germans in San Francisco [50], the home education of the asthmatic Rudolph focused solely on basic knowledge of the German language, culture, and history. He stayed away from the German-American clubs, and English was spoken with him at home. His father offered him a study at Yale, but Rudolph preferred the responsibility in the business.
German-descended National Guardsmen in San Francisco (Wasp 3, 1878, 64)
Parallel schwand die Bindekraft kultureller Faktoren. Die zweite Generation nahm Abstand vom deutsch-lutherischen Glauben des Claus Spreckels, auch wenn die Brüder Mitglieder protestantischer Kirchen blieben. John D. und Adolph B. wurden führende Repräsentanten der kalifornischen Freimaurer, standen ansonsten der episkopalen Kirche nahe. Claus D. brach im Heiligen Jahr 1924 zu einer Pilgerfahrt nach Rom auf, während Rudolph die methodistische Kirche unterstützte. Musik war für alle Spreckelssöhne wichtig, doch nur John D. blieb als passionierter Orgelspieler der deutschen Tradition des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts verhaftet, während seine Brüder die zeitgenössische europäische und amerikanische Musik zu schätzen wussten. Das zeigte sich analog bei vielen, in der Oberschicht üblichen Spenden: John D. Spreckels ermöglichte der University of Berkeley 1904/05 den Ankauf der bis heute renommierten Bibliothek des Berliner Philologen Karl Weinhold (1823-1901) mit mehr als 6000 Büchern und knapp 2.300 Manuskripten, die einen wichtigen Grundstock für die Germanistik an der Westküste bildete. [51] He followed the donation tradition of his father, who laid the foundation for the legal and political sciences there. Rudolph had already laid the groundwork in 1902/03 by financing a physiological laboratory required for the appointment of the German-born physiologist Jacques Loeb (1859-1924), who was then working in Chicago, at Berkeley. [52]
Representative Californians in the 1890s: John D. Spreckels and Adolph B. Spreckels, second generation immigrants (San Francisco Call 1896, September 27, 1 (l.); Kirk, 2000, 21)
In the business sector, Claus Spreckels was a strict advocate of entrepreneurial paternalism, accordingly, he felt personally committed to the vast majority of his skilled workers and leading employees. This also applied to John D., whose company recorded hardly any labor disputes in the first decades due to the significantly above-average wages – which was to change in the manager-led companies in San Diego. Claus A. on the other hand relied on a strictly anti-union course and had his nephew and general manager Louis Spreckels (1869-1929) temporarily close his factory in 1913 in light of union wage demands. [53] On the other hand, Rudolph acted as a socially engaged entrepreneur, who voluntarily raised wages during the inflation of the World War to meet his social responsibility. [54] However, this was for him an expression of a functional-technocratic basic attitude, which provided for fair payment, but denied a personal relationship between employer and employee. For the sons, Germany was less the former homeland and more a competitor for market shares in the sugar industry and foreign policy. In various Senate hearings, Germany was always presented by them as a competitor, in order to influence the tariff and subsidy policy in their favor. John D. repeatedly took sides in the imperial competition in the Pacific against the world politics of Wilhelm II and Great Britain and supported US policy in South America and the Philippines with his steamship fleet. [55]
John D. Spreckels private yacht “Venetia” as USS Venetia (SP 431) 1919 (U.S. Navy NH 85180-A)
The dwindling significance of German heritage was particularly evident in the wives of the brothers. They all came from American families, none of which had German-American roots, while two had Irish-American (and Catholic) backgrounds. They oriented themselves to the cultural standards of New York and Western European societies, their mostly annual trips abroad took them to London and especially Paris, to Monte Carlo, the Bohemian spas, and Italy. Their conception of art, culture, and fashion was primarily influenced by Francophone culture, where they owned villas and apartments, and where they were part of high society. [56] This was explicitly denied to certain members of the Spreckels family in the German Empire. When Rudolph Spreckels was nominated by Wilson as U.S. Ambassador in Berlin in 1913, not only did German-American associations protest, but the German government also remained discreet. The Spreckels were seen not only as competitors in the sugar business and Rudolph as a covert social democrat, but they were simply not socially acceptable as descendants of North German small farmers. [57]
Rudolph Spreckels as a critic of the saturated establishment (Salt Lake Telegram 1924, September 20, 3)
Nevertheless, it would be misguided to assume a complete integration of immigrant entrepreneurs into US society. "Germanness" was repeatedly presented to the sons as a foreign interpretation. In disputes over Hawaii, in advocating for the immigration of Asian workers, in the fight against corruption in San Francisco and elsewhere – accusations of "un-American" behavior were repeatedly voiced by the press and many opponents. John D. and Adolph B. compensated for this with special patriotism and established close ties to the War Department and the Navy. This was especially true during World War I, when they emphasized their patriotism long before the US entered the war. Mrs. Adolph B. Spreckels, who was closely familiar with French government officials, seemed to German authorities since her engagement in 1915 for the Belgian Relief Fund as a determined opponent of the Empire. John D.'s yacht Venetia, converted into a torpedo boat, successfully fought against German U-boats in the Mediterranean in 1918, and the owner even popularized the false legend that it had destroyed U-20, the boat that sank the Lusitania in 1915. [58] Rudolph, on the other hand, fell victim to the mills of the Red Scare during World War I. As a war opponent, he was not only denounced as part of hostile "pro-German elements" but was also associated with anarchism after the bombing attack on Preparedness Day 1916 in San Francisco. [59] In Yonkers, NY, the non-naturalized Walter P. Spreckels (1888-1976) had to give up his position as deputy manager of the Federal Sugar Refinery in 1918 as an undesirable foreigner [60]; the direct contact of three of the brothers with President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) could not counteract this. Rudolph Spreckels' advocacy for increased regulation and higher taxes led to his denunciation as an agent of the Soviet Union during the Great Depression. [61] Even American showcase entrepreneurs were treated like the vast majority of immigrants from Eastern Europe if they did not adhere to the rules of the US mainstream.
Mask play and duplicity of an established foreigner – Caricature 1908 (Oakland Tribune 1908, January 8, 1)
German Origin and American Reality: A Midterm Conclusion
A short case study can only provide hints. However, when condensed into theses, it is important for comparative studies, can provide stimuli for reflection on the fragile identity of German immigrant entrepreneurs, and at the same time stimulate questions about the rigid categorizations in everyday research.
In the present case, Americanization was initially the consequence of emigration decisions and early success. Family and ethnic networks were used to achieve success in the new American environment. They were complemented by newly established business networks, especially in the immigrant city of San Francisco. For these, capital was crucial, less so the origin. The openness of a borderland situation also required active political shaping at the local, regional, and state levels. An entrepreneur, especially in the sugar industry dependent on political framework conditions, could not close himself off from this. In a democratic society without a strong state, this was an important integration moment. The social recognition as an American, which was already early negotiated in the mass media, had correspondingly high significance for these elite emigrants. It was not just about possession, but also about the acceptance of entrepreneurial action. Offensive press work and targeted patronage had been the result at least since the 1880s.
The simple dichotomy of German-American overlooks the diverse identity structures of this time. The respective place of residence was as important as the country of origin. California stood alongside the United States of America and was overshadowed by new transnational identities of the western smart set, a global oligarchy of the rich and super-rich. The view of the second generation points to constantly changing socializations and cultural certainties – albeit to varying degrees. The reference to Germanness was for the Spreckels, at least since the 1880s, merely a sentiment, no longer decisive for everyday life. This was not a loss for them, but a transition to other identity offerings.
The reference to _German_land was broken for the Spreckels because the homeland was both a center of competition and ideas and technology. This led to a rationalization of the relationship with the former homeland from the perspective of the associated opportunities in the American environment.
The Spreckels were Americans from the first generation. Nevertheless, the German background was repeatedly addressed by other Americans – and also Germans. The Spreckels, especially from the third generation onwards, could afford any extravagances in the social sphere without being questioned as Americans. They practiced different forms of entrepreneurship, all of which had their place in the economic constitution of the USA. However, as soon as they questioned the political mainstream, they were repeatedly reduced to the status of immigrants.
Uwe Spiekermann, June 14, 2022
Literature and Notes
[61] Spreckels' Panacea, WP 1930, September 25, 6.