Frederick Muhlenberg, first Speaker of the US House of Representatives, who did not cast a deciding vote in 1794, 1776, or any other year, to prevent German from becoming the official language of the United States
The United States, however, has no statutory official language; English has been used on a de facto basis because of its status as the country's predominant language. At times, various states have passed their own official language laws.[1]
History
Franz Löher, whose 1847 German book included an early version of the story
There are several versions of the story. One source of the legend may be a vote in the US House of Representatives in 1794 after a group of German immigrants had asked for the translation of some laws into German. The petition was debated by the House of Representatives but was not acted upon. A vote to adjourn and to reconsider it later was defeated 42 to 41.[1][2]Muhlenberg, who was of German descent himself and had not voted in the roll call, was later quoted as having said that "the faster the Germans become Americans, the better it will be."[2][3]
Other accounts credit Franz von Löher as the source of the legend. Löher was a German visitor to the United States who published the book Geschichte und Zustände der Deutschen in Amerika (History and Conditions of the Germans in America) in 1847.[4] Löher seemingly placed the crucial vote only in Pennsylvania to make German the official language of that state, not the United States as a whole. (Philadelphia was the city in which the US Congress then sat, but it was also the capital of Pennsylvania. To confuse matters further, Muhlenburg had served as Speaker of the Pennsylvania House before he served in that title in the US Congress.) According to Löher, the vote was a tie, which Muhlenberg broke for English.[5]
The legend has a long history and led to a number of analyses and articles published from the late 1920s to the early 1950s explaining that the story was false.[9][10][11][12] The story was dubbed the "Muhlenberg Legend" by the late 1940s.[13] Nevertheless, the legend persists.[14][15][16]
For example, in 1987, a letter from a former Missouri election official emphasized the importance of voting in an Ann Landers column. He included a list of events allegedly decided by one vote from his local election manual, one of which was a claim that "in 1776, one vote gave America the English language instead of German." (In fact, versions of the error-filled list long had predated the 1987 Ann Landers mention.)[17] That led to another round of news stories again pointing out that it was a myth.[18][19] Oblivious to corrections of that sort, Ann Landers ran the same list again in November 1996.[20] A chorus of dismayed responses caused Landers to clear up the matter in a subsequent column. [21]
^Arndt, Karl J. R. (Summer 1976). "German as the Official Language of the United States of America?". Monatshefte. 68 (2): 129–150. Arndt's article attempts to trace pre-Loher accounts, which may have helped foster the legend, including an 1813 article by Justus Christian Henry Helmuth; at n. 21, Arndt lists seven accounts published between 1927 and 1952 debunking the myth, starting with the second edition of Albert Bernhardt Faust's The German Element in the United States, at Vol. II, pp. 652–656 (1927).
^Lohr, Otto (1931). "Deutsch als 'Landessprache' der Vereinigten Staaten?" [German as the 'national language' of the United States?]. Mitteilungen der Akademie zur wissenschaftlichen Erforschung und zur Pflege des Deutschtums (in German). 4: 283–290.
^Wood, Ralph C. The Second Period of the German Society of Pennsylvania and the Muhlenberg Legend, publication?, cited in The German American Review, 1949
