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Hermann the German: Settler Colonial Inscription in Minnesota

What does Hermann’s watchful position over New Ulm—stolen Dakota homelands— reveal about settler colonialism and the geography of memory?

Inscribing Minnesota with German-ness

In New Ulm, the heroic narratives around Arminius and German nationalism speak to settler colonial logics of memory. German settlers drew upon the heroism of Arminius and the German nationalism he represents to solidify their identity as heirs of that European legacy in the United States. German settlers sought to define their place in nineteenth-century American society by borrowing models from the homeland they had left. The heroic unification of the German Reich under Bismarck, emerging triumphantly from the chaos of war, would have been a point of pride to German settlers defining their place in nineteenth-century America. With their monument in New Ulm, the Sons of Hermann connect their story to those of Arminius, a unifying hero, and of Siegfried, the legendary dragon-slayer. They thereby insist on the importance and relevance of German heritage in the face of anti-immigrant hostilities from American nativists.

These heroic settler stories, however, obscure the fact that Minnesota is Dakota homeland. The violent dispossession of Dakota homelands made it possible for Germans to settle here, which ultimately led to the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War and the largest mass execution in American history: thirty-eight Dakota men were hanged in Mankato on December 26, 1862 for their part in the war. In 2005, a group of horseback riders began the annual Dakota 38+2 Wokiksuye Ride to remember the event. Since then, riders set out from present-day reservations in South Dakota and arrive at Reconciliation Park in Mankato every year on the 26th of December. Many of the riders belong to families of those executed. 

When the Sons of Hermann unveiled their statue on the prairie in 1889, they advanced their own claim to belonging in Minnesota. As an expression of German “heritage” on the Minnesota prairie, the Hermann monument is an example of of settler colonial inscription. Settler colonialism is a form of oppression in which settlers make space for themselves by “permanently and ecologically inscrib[ing] homelands of their own onto Indigenous homelands.” Territory can become a meaningful homeland for settlers when they write their stories, cultural narratives, and systems into the environmental dimensions of a place. Thus, the Hermann monument perpetuates cultural erasure and the appropriation of Indigenous homelands by asserting a German claim to them.