To add to what Blondie said, historian Stephen Ambrose points out in one of his books about WWII, there were more German-Americans in the American Army than there were actual Gemans in the German army.
Why did/does there appear to be an unusually high number of "Germanic" names in the Governoring Body compared to others?
by StoneWall 21 Replies latest jw friends
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smiddy
Veryyyyyyyyyy interesting
smiddy
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Sic Semper Tyrannis
I agree with Blondie. The US has a huge Germanic population, and add in the fact that in pre-war Weimar Germany the Witnesses were huge, you get a lot of Germans on the GB. However, this is probably a passing trend as the Witnesses expand into Third World countries. In the future you can probably expect more African and Latin American Witnesses on the GB and in leadership positions than before.
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StoneWall
blondie said:
Also, 1 out 4 people in the US have a German background. When WW1 broke out, Milwaukee WI had the largest German speaking group in the world, it became disadvantageous to speak or have a German name...so that declined. German Americans were also put in jail. But they are still one of the largest ethnic group in the US whether they speak German or not.
This maybe why it's harder for me to reconcile the difference because in the area of the U.S. that I live in the majority here have more English,Irish and Scottish heritage than German. There's a few black families but not many.
When you look around at the local congregations here the vast majority of publishers come from one of these other backgrounds and yet most of the over-sight(authority) in the congregations is in the Germanic families even though there are fewer of them. I was a member of three local congregations and it is pretty much the same in all three. Heck I've been googling last names in these congregations and was surprised at how (to me anyhow) it was the same in each K.H.
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Broken Promises
As Blondie said, it's simply a reflection of the Germanic backgrounds of many white Americans. White Americans make up the majority of the GB.
No biggie.
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blondie
Stonewall, that is assuming that they are spread out over the US rather than congregating in larger numbers in a few cities. I was told that the number of Polish people is huge in Chicago, that Chicago is in the top 3 of cities with Polish speakers. That doesn't mean that you will find many in West Virginia perhaps. It all depends on the immigration timelines. Many Germans immigrated around 1848 due to politics and the eastern US was pretty much settled, which explains one reason many settled in the Milwaukee region because Wisconsin became a state in 1848 (and was part of the Northern Territory before that) and secondly, Wisconsin and Minnesota resemble the topography of Germany, similar agriculture features, and had cheap land available (minus the Alps).
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clarity
Seems like there are a lot of similarities here besides the names!
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"The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it" was a Nazi quote, but this concise version did not belong to Adolf Hitler; it was spoken by Josef Goebbels. Hitler had written "...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility...in the primitive simplicity of their (the broad masses') minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie..." in "Mein Kampf" (Vol.I, ch.10, p.252; (c)1925). c
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clarity
Every where I look ....................
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaWAw-XVz0M
Hitler, President of the Watchtower Society
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PaintedToeNail
It's that German Engineering! or should I say, German Pioneering!
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dropoffyourkeylee
I agree with Blondie.
It is a natural tendency to look for (and find) patterns and conspiracies where there aren't any.
The early Watchtower membership ( and 'anointed' leadership) was mostly from the U.S. Furthermore, they came from, nearly always, from areas of the US which were predominantly Protestant (remember all that anti_Catholic rhetoric?), which meant that they were often of either British (England or Scotland) and German heritage. So the common German-sounding names is merely an indication of the early 20th century population of the US who were likely to be attracted to the Watchtower message.