Assimilation and Dispersion
According to Emma Schwabenland Haynes in her thesis My Mother's People, all of the Volga Germans who settled in Portland became Americanized much more rapidly than did the members of the group who acquired farms in Colorado, California, etc. Since the Portland people were thrown into immediate contact with their American neighbors, they learned to speak English very rapidly and they soon gave up many of the European customs that were continued in other part of the United States.
Declaration of Intention for Johannes Schmidt who immigrated to Portland in 1907 from Brunnental, Samara, Russia
Haynes goes on to say that "The comparatively well-built houses and fine clothes of the Germans in Portland so overcame a certain Berthoud, Colorado farmer, who visited his grand-daughter that he returned home filled with tales of the pride and shocking conceit of the inhabitants."
The following quotation is taken from a letter written March 22, 1929, by a German-Russian woman living in Portland. “Our German people in this city are to be found in all ranks of society. We have a judge, a doctor, a dentist, several law students, five preachers, many businessman, and several lumbermen. Many men work in machine shops, grocery stores, meat markets, show stores, and dry goods stores. Our girls work in banks, offices, laundries, and factories. A rather important number of the men are street cleaners or have scavenger wagons. It would be impossible for me to give an estimate of the percentage of people engaged in each of these different occupations, although the larger number of people perform hard, daily work. On the other hand, each year finds us a little more improved; more of our children are going on to high school and colleges; better homes are being built, and an increasing number of men and women rising out of the laboring classes.”
Wacker family portrait. Front row from left to right: Phillip, Johannes, Christine (nee Schnell) and John. Back row from left to right: George, Emma, Henry and Kate. Photograph contributed by Dee Price.
Richard Sallet in his book Russian-German Settlements in the United States, states that the assimilation of the Russian-German into the American way of life is an irreversible process. The life-giving artery of every non-English speaking group in the United States is the constant stream of new immigrants, which brings fresh blood to the old settlements. When the influx is heavy, then this particular ethnic group flourishes; if it is weak, the ethnic group declines; if immigration ceases altogether, then submergence into the American way of life is but a matter of time. Every nationality of the white race in the United States is subject to this unalterable law even though the Germans are surely not the ones who acclimatize themselves quickly. The Russian-Germans are even more resistant in this respect than the Germans who immigrated from the Reich, for they were accustomed to living as colonists in foreign surroundings, and thus they held tenaciously to their native tongue and tradition. But even at that, they cannot swim against the tide of assimilation in America.
World War I produced a strange paradox for the former Volga villagers. Anti-German sentiment ran deep in Portland but these folks were hybrids. Better, they undoubtedly reasoned, to be a "damned Rooshun" than a hated "Hun". Still they clung to their roots and it wasn't until the beginning of the next Great War that the well-entrenched community began to break down. Financial pressures during the Depression forced widespread splits in the old family cohesion. A society centered on church life suffered as the size of congregations dwindled. Then, the war, which took the young men for military service and brought a huge wave of shipyard workers to the area, dealt the final blow.
Read an article from The Oregonian on social changes in the Albina neighborhood
The offspring of the Volga immigrants disseminated throughout Portland and elsewhere as another group of newcomers began to take their place. Like the Russia Germans, who had been a distinct minority, the blacks that concentrated in Albina, did so not only because of available housing at affordable rent. They, too, had a need for belonging - a sense of community in the midst of the larger, often unfriendly, world. (Source: Klooster, Karl, an undated “Round the Roses” column in This Week Magazine, a supplement to The Oregonian.)