walnut beams, vaulted ceilings, canopied pulpit, carved stone altar, and in-
tricate reredos were the highest forms of art that many of Zion's par-
ishioners ever would see. And here the immigrants could educate their chil-
dren, introducing them to the ways of the New World while transmitting
the culture of the Fatherland.

The parishioners of Zion established a parochial school almost imme-
diately after they formed their congregation in 1873. Within a dozen years,
they had hired a permanent, full-time teacher and had erected a separate
building for the school. Two years later they built a residence for the teacher,
a house as large and as solid as the parsonage. Instruction was conducted in
German during the first decades. But although German continued to be the
exclusive or principal language of many Zion communicants until well into
the twentieth century, and English was not the primary language in Zion's
church services until the middle 1940s, all subjects at the Zion school were
taught in English by the early twentieth century. ¹ After switching to En-
glish, however, the school began to teach the German language to students
who had not learned it at home, in order that the young people could main-
tain a link with the culture of their forebears, communicate with members of
the community who spoke only German, and participate in German-lan-
guage worship services.

During the early twentieth century, Zion was the nucleus of a vibrant and
prosperous German-American community. In 1915, attendance at Zion's
school had grown so large that the congregation erected a second school
building and hired a second teacher. ² Two years later, however, this commu-
nity, like German enclaves everywhere in the United States, received a shock
from which it never fully recovered. America's declaration of war against
Germany suddenly transformed Zion's parishioners from objects of respect
into targets of suspicion among their non-German neighbors. Public hostil-
ity toward German culture shook the hope of Zion's leaders that the com-
munity could remain authentically German even while it became fully
American, and the war hastened the process of assimilation. The size and
strength of Hampton's German community, however, made it more re-
sistant to change than weaker communities. When state officials urged
churches to conduct all services in English, Pastor C. F. Brommer tempo-
rarily held one service each Sunday in English but defiantly retained a Ger-
man service. ³ Under pressure from Nebraska authorities, Zion's schools
temporarily suspended instruction in German in January 1918. ⁴ When a Ne-
braska law enacted shortly after the war prohibited the teaching of foreign

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