Germany

In Mary Antin's memoir, Germany is not a destination but a passage—the indispensable corridor through which the Antin family and thousands like them moved from the locked world of the Russian Pale of Settlement toward America. It is the country where the abstract dream of "America" first touched solid ground, where bureaucratic obstacles were overcome by human kindness, and where the emigrants first saw themselves as part of a great westward movement. Germany stands in the narrative as the threshold between two worlds: the place where the old life's restrictions ended and the new life's possibilities began, even before the family ever set foot on American soil.

The Route Through Germany

The family's route lay over the German border, with Hamburg as their port of embarkation. On the way to the frontier they stopped for a farewell visit in Vilna, where Mary's mother had a brother—a visit Mary's account slighted, mentioning only the horse-cars and the bookstores. Then, on a gray wet morning in early April, they set out for the frontier itself. This was the real beginning of their journey, and Mary's faculties of observation were fully alert; she took note of everything—the weather, the trains, the bustle of railroad stations, their fellow passengers, and the family mood at every stage of progress. The bags and bundles that composed their traveling outfit were much more bulky than valuable; a trifling sum of money, the steamer ticket, and the foreign passport were the magic agents by which they hoped to span the five thousand miles of earth and water between them and Mary's father, who had already emigrated to Boston.

The Schidorsky Brothers and the Frontier Crossing

The crossing into Germany was made possible by the intervention of Herr Schidorsky, who became the agent of the family's salvation. He procured Mary's mother a pass to Eidtkuhnen, the German frontier station, where his older brother, as chairman of a well-known emigrant aid association, arranged for their admission into Germany. During the negotiations, which took several days, the good man of Kibart entertained the family in his own house, shabby emigrants though they were. The Schidorsky brothers were Jews, but Mary notes that it was not on that account that their name was lovingly remembered for fifteen years in her family—it was for their disinterested kindness to strangers in need. On the German side, the family's course joined that of many other emigrant groups on their way to Hamburg and other ports. They were a clumsy enough crowd, with wide, unsophisticated eyes, with awkward bundles hugged in their arms, and their hearts set on America.

The Meaning of Germany in the Emigrant Imagination

Germany's significance in the narrative is bound up with the transformation of "America" from a vague name into the center of all Mary's dreams. She recalls the day when "America" as a world entirely unlike Polotzk lodged in her brain: she was in bed, sharing the measles with some of the other children, when her mother brought a thick letter from her father, written just before boarding the ship. The letter was full of excitement—not merely descriptions of travel or pictures of crowds and foreign cities, but something more. Her father was traveling at the expense of a charitable organization, without means of his own, without plans, to a strange world where he had no friends, and yet he wrote with the confidence of a well-equipped soldier going into battle. Mary heard in the letter an elation, a hint of triumph, such as had never been in her father's letters before. It was this "America" that became her dream—and Germany was the first country on the road to that dream, the place where the journey ceased to be a flight and became a passage.

The German transit also marked the moment when the emigrants' status changed. Within the Pale, Jews were confined by law; the Czar commanded them to stay within the Pale of Settlement, and they must not be found outside it because they were Jews. Germany, by contrast, admitted them through organized channels—emigrant aid associations, passes, and the hospitality of private citizens. The contrast between the Russian system of taxes, conscription, and police surveillance and the German system of organized assistance was not lost on the family. In Russia, the Czar always got his dues, even if it ruined a family; a poor locksmith could have his household goods attached, including his young bride's trousseau, for a fine of three hundred rubles owed because his brother had escaped before serving his term in the army. In Germany, the Schidorsky brothers asked nothing and gave everything. The difference was the first taste of the freedom that America would offer in full.

Germany as the Threshold of Americanization

The journey through Germany prepared the family for the Americanization that would begin with their first step on the new soil. When they finally arrived in Boston, Mary's father found occasion to instruct or correct them even on the way from the pier to Wall Street, which journey they made crowded together in a rickety cab. He told them not to lean out of the windows, not to point, and explained the word "greenhorn." They did not want to be "greenhorns," and gave the strictest attention to his instructions. But the process of becoming American had already begun in Germany, where the family had learned to trust strangers, to navigate bureaucratic systems, and to see themselves as part of a larger movement of people all headed the same way. The German interlude was the bridge between the helplessness of the Pale and the self-possession of the new world—a brief, crowded, hopeful passage that Mary would remember with gratitude for the rest of her life.