Bernhard
Kehrig focused his eyes on the water. He was standing on the rail
as the boat pulled into the English Channel toward its destination
at Southampton in England. Most of the passengers intended to continue
on to the United States. Of all the Germans on board, Bernhard’s
eyes were the only ones averted away from the shoreline as they
pulled away from the Fatherland for perhaps the last time. His young
daughter, Gertrude, looked up to him and asked, “Don’t
you want to look upon Germany and say your last goodbye?”
Bernhard, the German Catholic and master painter, sniffed and muttered,
“What did Germany ever do for me?” The year was 1927,
the very same year the City of Cleveland passed an ordinance setting
aside areas of Rockefeller Park for what would become the German
Cultural Gardens, a celebration of ethnic pride in the heritage
of German-Americans.
The Cleveland Cultural Gardens, of which the German gardens are
a part, are certainly a jewel in the Emerald Necklace of Cleveland,
encircling the city with green space. Running in a generally north-south
direction between the meandering Martin Luther King Boulevard to
the west and East Boulevard on the opposite side, the Cleveland
Cultural Gardens have been a key feature of Rockefeller Park since
1916 when the first garden, the Shakespeare Garden, now known as
the British Cultural Garden, was built. Upon visiting the dedication
of the Shakespeare Garden, the Jewish Leo Weidenthal was inspired
to add a Hebrew Garden nearby. Soon, Weidenthal and his German friend,
Charles Wolfram, envisioned a chain of gardens representing Cleveland’s
rich ethnic background. The Cleveland Cultural Gardens are the result,
a unique creation that many consider to be a national landmark.
For more than two decades, Wolfram served as the president of the
Cleveland Cultural Garden League, promoting ideals of citizenship
and heritage, ethnic pride and brotherhood. But how did this celebration
sit with German-Americans like Bernhard Kehrig, who may have looked
to leave their heritage behind in favor of Americanization in their
new homeland? Decades later, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens’
grand and noble mission of peace and brotherhood amongst American
ethnic groups is still a work in progress, mostly because the mission
Wolfram promoted is an impossible one.
