Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on October 9, 2021

October is rich with German celebrations. Many of us will visit one of the local Oktoberfests in North Texas in the coming weeks. Additionally, Oct. 6 is German-American Day, commemorating the founding of Germantown, Pa., in 1683. But did you know that the holidays origins are connected to Dallas and a man named Gershon Canaan, who had a particularly inspiring vision of what it meant to him?

Far away from Dallas, Gerhard Kohn was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1917. By the 1930s his family was being persecuted by the Nazis, so they fled to Palestine, where Gerhard Kohn became Gershon Canaan. When the war broke out, Canaan joined the British Armys Jewish Brigade, serving on multiple fronts and ultimately helping to liberate concentration camps in 1945.

In 1947, Canaan moved to the United States to study under Frank Lloyd Wright, eventually relocating to Austin to pursue studies at the University of Texas. In 1958 he took a job in Dallas, where he would meet his future wife, Doris, and start his own family.

Canaan worked tirelessly to promote Dallas as a cosmopolitan city with international flair in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. He served as honorary consul for the Federal Republic of Germany from 1962 to 1987 and traveled frequently to West Germany on behalf of the mayor of Dallas and the governor of Texas, facilitating reparations to Holocaust survivors. Despite his wartime experiences, Canaan never felt ashamed of his German background. He felt it was still a part of who he was.

Canaan saw no contradiction between his German and his Jewish identity. When asked about representing Germany as a Jew, according to an obituary in the Dallas Goethe Center archives, he responded: Times change. People change. I find satisfaction in the modest part I play in increasing peace, friendship and increasing understanding between our two countries. The time has come to move ahead.

And Canaan did just that, highlighting what he believed to be the most positive aspects of German cultural identity. Canaan lobbied for a celebration of German culture in Texas, which was made official in 1963. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan made the celebration a nationwide affair, declaring Oct. 6 German-American Day, honoring the contributions of German American immigration.

In 1982, Dallas Mayor Jack Evans proclaimed Sept. 14 Gershon Canaan Day. That same year Germany presented Canaan with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic, one of its highest civilian decorations. These honors were in part a recognition of the ideals that fueled Canaans 1962 plan to build a German Cultural organization that became The Dallas Goethe Center and its language school.

Canaan envisioned an organization that would celebrate not only German culture as represented by Germanys greatest poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but also an organization that through its renewed cultural values would help remedy the chauvinistic, nationalist and racist elements of the past. He and his co-founders often asked themselves how such an organization could promote democracy, tolerance, peace and understanding.

Today the Dallas Goethe Center continues that conciliatory tradition that Canaan wished so fervently to start. As a nonprofit nonpartisan organization it is dedicated to fostering the German language, lifelong learning and cultural dialogue.

During these times of political and social upheaval we would all do well to consider Canaans positive, community-oriented commitment to mutual understanding. This October when you raise a beer in honor of German-American Day, consider also the man who helped inspire it and his wish to celebrate the human spirit that lies within us all, regardless of our backgrounds.

As Goethe once said: We can most safely achieve truly universal tolerance when we respect that which is characteristic in the individual and in nations, clinging, though, to the conviction that the truly meritorious is unique by belonging to all of mankind.

Jacob-Ivan Eidt is president of the Dallas Goethe Center and an associate professor of German at the University of Dallas. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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How a German Jew inspired an annual celebration of German heritage in Texas - The Dallas Morning News

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