Page - 17 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Horst Pöttker | Successful Integration? 17 local section City and District Recklinghausen. To cite an example, news from January 18th can be briefly quoted here: Waltrop, January 18th. At the coal mine Waltrop, miner Karl Zicharski had an accident at work yesterday. He broke his leg and had to be hospitalized. The sources show no journalistic coverage of problems related to the Polish minority, nor is even the presence of the minority a topic. In the same issue, the reader could learn from the local part of the newspaper: König Ludwig, January 19th. Sources have said that on Sunday, January 21st, there will be a large gathering of adherents of the Ro- man Catholic faith in the hall of “Haus Hartmann” (guesthouse “Glückauf”). Information will be presented on the most pressing social problems. There will also be a discussion on how underprivi- leged families can achieve success, prosperity, and personal fulfilment. A competent guest speaker has been engaged for this occasion. As these issues are especially significant, it is expected that no Roman Catholic man, woman or girl will miss this important meeting. Since four fifths of all miners at the coal mine “König Ludwig” were of Polish descent, some readers will have presumed from this news that this was a gathering of Polish people (regardless of whether this was actually the case). It seems that here the description “Roman Catholic” was being used as a substitute for “Polish”, that journalists undertook every effort to avoid mentioning the ethnic designation. Reports on events from the southern – and predominantly Polish – area of Recklinghausen frequently made use of the word “Catholic”, without explicitly mentioning the Polish minority, so that readers could only infer the ethnic background of the people involved when, for example, a new children’s home was opened (Recklinghäuser Zeitung, vol. 82, 3rd April 1912, p. 2), or the training ground of a fire brigade was made accessible for sporting activities “on Sunday afternoons for the Catholic youths’ club” (Recklinghäuser Zeitung, vol. 82, 3rd April 1912, p. 2). For jour- nalists, direct mention of the ethnic background seems to have been taboo. The migrant group was only immediately recognizable if this was unavoidable, as, for example, in news from the civil registry office, or the semiofficial and voluminous coverage of the city council’s meetings, or of committee elections, in which Poles competed with their own candidates. The civil registry office in Southern Recklinghausen reports the following births on April 3rd, 1912: