The Sovereign Citizen. Patrick Weil

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      A year and a half later, on December 23, 1919, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed the Wursterbarth doctrine. Herman Kramer, a German naturalized in 1912, was denounced by A. H. Rebentish, a Secret Service agent, for telling him that he would do all he could against the United States. A keeper of a saloon near an aviation field in San Antonio, he told Rebentish that any information he could get from soldiers at the aviation field, he would send to Germany. The court asserted that “American citizenship is a priceless possession, and one who seeks it by naturalization must do so in entire good faith, without any mental reservation whatever, and with the complete intention of yielding his absolute loyalty and allegiance to the country of his adoption. If he does not, he is guilty of fraud in obtaining his certificate of citizenship.”⁴⁰

      The Ninth Circuit Court, on May 3, 1920, refused the appeal from F. H. Schurmann to have his certificate of naturalization, which had been issued to him in Los Angeles on December 17, 1904, restored.⁴¹ Schurmann published a book in August 1916, The War as Seen in German Eyes, to convince Americans not to go to war against Germany, his country of origin. When the United States entered the war, Schurmann wanted to continue to sell his book but, cautiously, asked his U.S. attorney and the attorney general about its legality. He was denaturalized for having responded to an American who asked him whether it was possible that he would not defend the shores of the United States: “Well Allen I will tell you. I have sworn allegiance to your flag or country, but I am going to tell you this much: That I didn’t swear away my birthright. And this is the crisis where every German, whether he is a socialist or not, this is the time that it is up to him to defend the fatherland.”⁴²

      On April 2, 1921, a federal court in Washington State stripped Paul Herberger of his citizenship, which was acquired in 1912, on the grounds that he had not been loyal to his country.⁴³ He wrote numerous letters to his sister in Germany, excerpts of which served as evidence of “a legal fraud.” He wrote in one, for example, “I cannot write you anything of the war and the feeling here, because, if I did, the censor would keep the letter as a souvenir. This much I can tell you, that this famous liberty stuff here does not amount to much. Over there in Germany we had much more liberty than we have here; militarism is absolute trump here.”⁴⁴ In another letter, he wrote, “If you did not have to reckon with America’s friendship, the submarines would have long since brought England to her knees through hunger. It is hoped that someday Germany may repay America like with like.”⁴⁵ The court reasoned that “it is not necessary that a man be shown to be guilty of treason in order to conclude from his actions and speech that he is not loyal and has not been loyal.”⁴⁶ And the court concluded with a sort of sociological and psychological tone:

      Loyalty or allegiance, is necessarily, of slow growth; therefore somewhat involuntary, not fully subject to the will. Those who lightly, for temporary advantages, undertake to change their allegiance, are liable to overlook the deep seated nature of this feeling; but the fact that not until afterwards, in times of stress, is it made manifest that the desires, suffered to lie dormant, are stronger for their native than for their adopted country, although this fact may not be fully realized at the time of their realization, renders it none the less a legal fraud for the applicant to fail to disclose his true, although latent, feeling in such matter.⁴⁷