With the dawn of the Golden Era in the years following the U.S. Civil War, galas and balls sponsored by the wealthy grew in popularity and extravagance. Even the crème de la crème of society generally afforded one grand ball each season, but many other evenings demanded entertainments. Attempting to ensure that their young adult children met only acceptable friends, society matrons introduced afternoon and evening parties called “germans.” The name was likely drawn from the ethnic origins of popular dance music of the day – waltzes, polkas and mazurkas, even though the “Waltz King” was Austrian and mazurkas were Polish in origin, but polkas were Bohemian. All of these dances were introduced to the US before 1830, but because of their nature – a “closed dance” or “arm in arm” – they were not widely accepted for decent American social circles until the mid-19th century. [http://www.dancetimepublications.com/1880-1900-the-victorian-era.html]
Following the Civil War as Americans tried to recoup and regain their pre-War composure, the flirtatious “Cotillion” or dance games involving many of the well-known steps of waltzes, polkas and mazurkas were similar to children’s parlor games and soon became the most sought after events. The German Cotillion introduced a master of ceremonies who directed the dance games with a frequent switching of partners and playful encounters. [Ibid] To the great relief of senior adults, the vulnerable closeness of the waltzes they once knew dissolved into much rushing about and twirling of lively partners. The capital letter “G” in “German” was dropped to lower case by the early 1870s and clippings from a Victorian scrapbook kept by Nan Moale Smith expound on its graces and its drawbacks. The excerpts are quoted from p. 129, N.M. Smith’s scrapbook, Wood Collection at Lewis and Clark College, Special Collections, Portland, OR:
“... On Tuesday night [in] Baltimore a large german was given by Mrs. Solomon Hillen of that city, at Lehman’s hall, which is to Baltimoreans what Delmonico’s is to New Yorkers. Four hundred persons were present, and one hundred couples danced the german. The floral decorations were unequalled in the Monumental City, and the favors were costly, novel and elegant. Mrs. Hillen was assisted in receiving by Miss Winslow of Ohio, Miss Williams of Philadelphia, and her daughter, pretty Miss Hillen, who was here last season visiting Miss Nannie Smith. The german began at one o’clock and lasted until after five. Among the guests we noted Governor Carroll, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Fisher, General and Mrs. [George] McClellan, Mrs. O’Donnel, Mrs. Otho Williams, Mrs. Skip Gordon, Miss May, the Misses French, Mr. and Mrs. De Lancy Kane, who came from New York to do honor to the occasion; Count de Mont Cabrier French consul; Sully Jose de Soura, Brazilian consul, and the English consul, Donahue, with a host of others. Mrs. Hillen is the daughter of the late General Columbus O’Donnel who, living, kept his children with the most limited incomes that, dying, they might be enriched; at least that is the charitable view to take of his penurious disposition. She has been a very beautiful, and is still a most handsome woman – a rigid Catholic, and her life is full of deeds as well as doing. Among a number of Washingtonians who went over were Mrs. General [John Gray] Foster and pretty Nannie [Moale] Smith. Dr. and Mrs. [Nathan] Lincoln did not accompany them on account of the great fatigue Mrs. Lincoln had undergone during the day, when she had held the first reception since her marriage. On this occasion she wore her bridal dress of rich cream-colored grosgrain, covered with rare lace, looped and garlanded with tea roses and orange flowers, and all of rich beauty, half hidden beneath the diaphanous folds of her costly veil of pointe de alencon. There were no jewels but solitaires, which gleamed and glistened like stars. Her assistants, Misses Stanton of New York and her charming step-daughter, Miss [Nan] Smith, were in exquisite toilets. The latter wore two shades of gray silk, with a dash of couleur de rose here and there to light it up. … The reception was quite crowded, and there will be a second next Tuesday, when Mrs. Lincoln will be aided by her mother and sister, who are expected tomorrow from New York.”
From the nation’s capital at Washington, the popular german was scrutinized in a column headed:
“Social Gossip The German”
“The tendency of American society to toot-horns and tee-totums [tops with numbers printed on the sides and used in a game of chance] has been remarked for years. Instead of a reformation in this respect we seem to be getting worse. Our society approaches as near the idiotic as it is possible to do and retain even a semblance of health. Not content with the fact of having houses devoted to stunning upholstery without any show of art or evidence of intellectual refinement, we devote our entertainments to half-fledged boys and girls, who know nothing and can do nothing but whirl around to the lascivious strains of a stringed band. Such a thing as conversation or any sort of intellectual entertainment, if we ever had it, is passing out of sight. If one gets stuck at a dinner party, and can collect after three hours of hearty eating the topics of conversation, he or she will be astonished to find what trivial, dreary, uninteresting stuff it was. Our women devote themselves to dress, varied at times by the troubles of housekeeping and the annoyance of bad servants. The men are fluent on the subject of the weather. After this, the remaining topic, as a general thing, tis the political condition of the country. Deprived of these, our conversationist [sic] drops into a profound silence, in which he is supposed to be thinking – a most violent presumption.
“The most atrocious form of the tee-totum is that which comes under the name of “german.” In this the house, with all its chairs therein, is given up to very young men in swallow-tails with opera hats, and tight-laced girls with very décolleté dresses, so that when you see one of them clasped in the arms of a gentleman, who spins her around, one is painfully impressed with the idea that that opera hat, instead of being plastered to her back, ought to be used in covering her bosom. The style of dress, added to the style of dancing, would be pronounced coarse, vulgar, and indecent but for the fact that it is considered fashionable. The infamous can-can would obtain admission into respectable society on the same terms. We can well understand that all this is delightful to the boys and girls, and that anything we may say will have no effect whatever upon them; but how parents or mothers can look on unmoved, or approvingly, is a mystery to us.”
Lavish favors were distributed but apparently one columnist thought the selection demonstrated very poor taste on the part of the host:
“…The favors distributed on the occasion were apple-jacks, tin horns, bells, and naked babies [! – dolls, we assume]. These gave rise to all sorts of funny comments, that if said in French would have been delicately indelicate, but in our vulgar tongue were simply atrocious. It was common to have a gentleman complimented upon having twins, while others more favored were congratulated on triplets.
“In all this the young ladies were not responsible and of course not to blame. They could not help themselves if their leader and his gallant assistants were silly and indelicate. …the ladies, when they had a choice did not select the infant nudities.
“By the bye, what labor a leader of the ‘german’ is forced to undergo. How he races and chases and worries and works in drilling his forces, suppressing the mutineers [presumably those gents who try to avoid the dance], and bringing the awkward into order, taxes the most able-bodied of the young men around us. And then, the intense earnestness with which the work is done would make the fortunes of a harlequin in a pantomime.”
Younger people cast aside the staid, formal waltzes of older generations and looked for novelty and pleasure at the germans. At least one interesting new musician appeared on the dance scene at the time. In 1872, at age 18, U.S. Marine Corps band apprentice John Philip Sousa published his first composition and it was certain to become a hit in Washington, D.C. because of its title, “Moonlight on the Potomac Waltzes.” By 1875, Sousa was playing his violin, touring the country, and conducting theater orchestras, including the Broadway production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. [http://www.sedentarysousa.com/jps/]
