German Americans

German Americans are the largest ethnic group in the United States, with over 45 million people, comprising over a fourth of the white population. They are concentrated in the Midwest, and in eastern metropolitan areas. They comprise numerous different groups, all speaking German, and were largest language group to immigrate to the U.S. Some arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Germany, and others simply for the chance to start afresh in the New World. Today California and Pennsylvania have the largest populations of German descent, with over six million Germans residing in the two states alone. The Midwest has the largest proportion of German Americans, with the group dominant in many rural areas. It is one of the two or three largest groups in many major metropolitan areas, including New York, Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis.

Half the Germans became farmers, with centers of settlement in southeastern Pennsylvania (where they are called "Pennsylvania Dutch"), upstate New York central North Carolina and central Texas.

The other half went to cities, primarily ports cities on the ocean (Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, New York), on the Great Lakes (Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee), on the Ohio River (Pittsburgh, Cincinnati. Louisville), or the Mississippi (St. Louis and all cities north to St. Paul). There were a few inland cities that attracted Germans, notably Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis and Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Migration trends

During the 18^th and throughout most of the 19^th century Germans were usually the largest or second largest group of newcomers to the United States. Large numbers of German migrated from the 1680s to 1760s. Then came a pause, but from 1840 to 1890 large numbers came. The four primary causes for Germans seeking a new life in America include push factors: worsening opportunities for farm ownership in Germany, persecution of some religious groups, and military conscription; and pull factors, with religious freedom and better economic conditions in the U.S. especially the chance for farmers to own land.

The Germans who settled America were culturally and religiously diverse. The immigrants were as diverse as Germany itself, except that very few aristocrats or upper middle class businessmen arrived.

Colonial: Pennsylvania and New York

Large sections of southeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York attracted Germans.

The first German settlement in Pennsylvania was founded in 1683. The tide of German immigration to Pennsylvania swelled between 1725 and 1775, when they comprised a third of the population. The Pennsylvania Germans were called "Pennsylvania Dutch" by English speakers who mistranslated "Deutsch" ("German") as "Dutch". They comprising Lutherans, Reformed, Mennonites, Amish, and other sects, developed a rich religious life with a strong musical culture. There were few German Catholics or Jews in America before the 1830s. The German farmers were renowned for the highly productive animal husbandry and agricultural practices. Politically, there were inactive until 1740, when they joined a Quaker-led coalition that took control of the legislature, which generally supported the American Revolution. Fries's "Rebellion" was a rural protest movement among Pennsylvania Germans in 1799 against the direct federal tax on land and houses imposed by the Federalist Party in 1798 to pay for a threatened war against France. The resistance was in part a revolt of the Kirchenleute (Pennsylvania Germans of Lutheran and German Reformed background) against the Sektenleute (members of the pacifist Moravian and Quaker denominations, whom the Federalists favored with positions as assessors and collectors of the taxes). The leaders of the rebellion were restrained and kept the protest movement under control, even withdrawing the protesters before the movement got out of hand. Some were convicted but President John Adams gave them pardons.

Palatine migration to upstate New York was one of the largest single movements to colonial America. By 1711, for example, seven villages had been established in New York on the Robert Livingston manor. By 1750, the Germans occupied a strip some 12 miles long along the left bank of the Mohawk River. The soil was excellent; some 500 houses had been built, mostly of stone; and the region prospered in spite of Indian raids. Herkimer was the best-known of the German settlements in a region long known as the "German Flats." The most famous figure was editor John Peter Zenger, who led the fight for freedom of the press in America. Later John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant from Baden, became the richest man in America from fur trading and New York City real estate.

South, Texas

A large German colony in Virginia called Germanna was located near Culpeper; it was was founded by two waves of colonists in 1714 and 1717. Large settlements were formed in North Carolina, especially near Salem.

Texas had about 20,000 Germans in the 1850s:

They included peasant farmers and intellectuals; Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and atheists; Prussians, Saxons, Hessians, and Alsatians; abolitionists and slaveowners; farmers and townsfolk; frugal, honest folk and ax murderers. They differed in dialect, customs, and physical features. A majority had been farmers in Germany, and most arrived seeking economic opportunities. A few dissident intellectuals fleeing the 1848 revolutions sought political freedom, but few, save perhaps the Wends, went for religious freedom. The German settlements in Texas reflected their diversity. Even in the confined area of the Hill Country, each valley offered a different kind of German. The Llano valley had stern, teetotaling German Methodists, who renounced dancing and fraternal organizations; the Pedernales valley had fun-loving, hardworking Lutherans and Catholics who enjoyed drinking and dancing; and the Guadalupe valley had atheist Germans descended from intellectual political refugees. The scattered German ethnic islands were also diverse. These small enclaves included Lindsay in Cooke County, largely Westphalian Catholic; Waka in Ochiltree County, Midwestern Mennonite; Hurnville in Clay County, Russian German Baptist; and Lockett in Wilbarger County, Wendish Lutheran.

Wisconsin and Midwest

File:Milw1855.jpg

Milwaukee in 1854

In the 21st century half of Wisconsin's population claims some German heritage, as do large proportions in nearby areas of northern Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota, as well as the Dakotas. Historians stress the importance of of "pull" and "push" factors in explaining immigration. Wisconsin offered the promise of religious freedom, jobs, a climate and landscape that reminded many Germans of the forests at home, where forests played an core role in German collective identity, national memory, and socioeconomic stability. Even better the state offered cheap, good quality land on which they could grow familiar crops such as barley and wheat; it was especially well suited for dairy farming. farmers enjoyed new freedom in being able to make their own decisions about agricultural production as opposed to being regulated by communal authorities. Catholics and Lutherans came in about equal numbers; they settled near each other but did not interact soacially or intermarry. Migration was primarily by extended family units so the first arrivals wrote enthusiastic letters to family and kin about their new life, and others joined them in a process of chain migration. Most bought their land from Yankee landowners who had purchased title from the federal government. The farms in the Midwest were much larger than those in Germany, and required larger family sizes.

The state of Wisconsin systematically encouraged immigration by establishing an Office of the Commissioner of Emigration in 1852 and placing a commissioner in New York to greet them with promotional materials in English and German. Germans were allowed to vote before establishing U.S. citizenship. About half the immigrants settled in Milwaukee, Chicago, Davenport, Dubuque and many smaller cities, with the others heading for farms and small towns.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin the heavy German influx started in the late 1840s, changing a small Yankee settlement to a large predominantly German city. By the 1850s more than half of the city was part of "Germania". From the beginning, Germans concentrated on the west side, and by 1900 they dominated the entire northwest side; some also moved to the newly developed south side. The occupational patterns in Germania mirrored the social diversity of the group, which soon after its arrival became well-establsihed in city life. Religiously it was divided about equally into Protestants (mostly Old Lutherans of the Wisconsin Synod or Missouri Synod), Freethinkers (many of them refugees from the failed 1848 Revolution), and Catholics. Germans divided politically between the Democrats, and Republicans; after 1900 many joined the Socialist Party. Germans organized the labor movement in the city, with strength especially in brewing and cosntruction. Germania developed a wide range of ethnic organizations and institutions. There were German Catholic and Lutheran parishes and parochial schools, secret lodges, insurance and mutal-aid societies, labor unions, political and cultural clubs, theaters, bands, singing societies, fire brigades, and militia units. Germans also developed an ethnic press that represented different political orientations.

Religion

Germans brought many different religions with them. The largest numbers were Catholic or Lutheran, although the Lutherans were themselves split several ways. The more conservative groups comprised the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Other Lutherans formed a complex checkerboard of synods, most of which in 1988 merged, along with Scandinavian synods, into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Still other German Protestants were not Lutherans but were descendants of the united "Evangelical Church" in Germany. They created the Reformed denomination (especially strong in New York and Pennsyslvania), and the Evangelical denomination (strongest in the Midwest). The Evangelical and Reformed groups are now part of the United Church of Christ. Many immigrants joined quite different churches from those in Germany, especially the Methodist church.

1850 census map shows rural Lutheran population. Nearly all were German since few Scandinavians had arrived yet.

Before 1800, Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterite arrived in groups and formed closed communities in Pennsylvania; they are still in existence today and some still speak dialects of German. They set out branches into the Midwest. Dwight D. Eisenhower was born into a one such community in Abilene, Kansas.

Following the failed 1848 revolutions in German states, a wave of polical refugees fled to America. They were well educated and secular; their most prominent leader was Carl Schurz. Many German Jews arrived in the late 19th century, often setting up clothing stores in small cities across the country, such as the Goldwater Department Store in Phoenix, Arizona. (see Barry Goldwater).

Socialists who arrived after 1870 were generally hostile to religion.

Cultural role

Most Germans were farmers, workers, craftsmen or operated small businesses like local breweries. The influence of their cuisine is seen in sausages, meats, pastries and pretzels. Germans almost totally dominated the beer industry since 1850.

At a more advanced level Germans have contributed to a numerous areas in American culture and technology. Baron von Steuben, a former Prussian general staff captain, led the reorganization and training of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Carl Schurz helped found the Republican party, while most Germans voted Democratic.

After the Nazis came to power in 1933 thousands of scientists, artists, intellectuals and scholars fled to the U.S. The most famous was Albert Einstein. After World War II, Wernher von Braun, and most of the leading engineers from the former German V-2 rocket project were brought to the U.S. They took the lead in designing military rockets, as well as of rockets for the NASA space program. Two highly influential intellectuals were Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss; Strauss was the founder of the Neoconservative movement.

Assimilation

In 1910 German Americans lived in had created their own distinctive, vibrant, prosperous German-language communities, called "Germania". After 1917 the German language was seldom heard in public; by the 1940s Germania had largely vanished outside remote areas and the Germans were thoroughly assimilated. Historians have tried to explain what happened. Kazal (2004) looks at Germans in Philadelphia, focusing on four ethnic subcultures: middle-class Vereinsdeutsche, working-class socialists, Lutherans, and Catholics. Each group followed a somewhat distinctive path toward assimilation. Lutherans, and the better situated Vereinsdeutsche with whom they often overlapped, after World War I abandoned the last major German characteristics and redefined themselves as old stock or as "Nordic" Americans, stressing their colonial roots in Pennsylvania and distancing themselves from more recent immigrants. On the other hand, working-class and Catholic Germans, groups that heavily overlapped, lived and worked with Irish and other European ethnics; they also gave up German characteristics but came to identify themselves as white ethnics, distancing themselves above all from African American recent arrivals in nearby neighborhoods. Well before World War I, women in particular were becoming more and more involved in a mass consumer culture that lured them out of their German-language neighborhood shops and into English language downtown department stores. The 1920s and 1930s brought English language popular culture via movies and radio that drowned out the few surviving German language venues.

Bibliography

• Thernstrom, Stephan ed. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, (1980).
  • articles by Frederick C. Luebke, "Austrians," pp. 164-171; Kathleen Neils Conzen, "Germans," pp. 405-425; La Vern J. Rippley, "Germans from Russia," pp. 425-430; Arthur A. Goren, "Jews," pp. 571-598, esp. 576-579; Don Yoder, "Pennsylvania Germans," pp. 770-772; Leo Schelbert, "Swiss," pp. 981-987.
• Adams, Willi Paul. The German-Americans. An Ethnic Experience. American Edition by LaVern J. Rippley and Eberhard Reichmann. Indianapolis: Max Kade German-American Center, Indiana Univ.-Purdue Univ., 1993.
• Barclay, David E., and Elizabeth Glaser-Schmidt, eds. Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America Since 1776 (1997).
• Baxter, Angus. In Search of Your German Roots. The Complete Guide to Tracing Your Ancestors in the Germanic Areas of Europe. (4th ed. 2001)
• Bohlman, Philip V. and Holzapfel, Otto, eds. Land without Nightingales: Music in the Making of German-America. (2002). 301 pp.
• Dobbert, Guido A. "German-Americans between New and Old Fatherland, 1870–1914". American Quarterly 19 (1967): 663-80. in JSTOR
• Ellis, M. and P. Panayi. "German Minorities in World War I: A Comparative Study of Britain and the USA." Ethnic and Racial Studies 17 ( April 1994): 238-59.
• Faust, Albert Bernhardt. The German Element in the United States with Special Reference to Its Political, Moral, Social, and Educational Influence 2 vol (1909) online edition
• Gross, Ruth V., ed. Traveling Between Worlds: German-American Encounters (2006) excerpt and text search
• Helbich, Wolfgang, and Walter D. Kamphoefner, eds. German-American Immigration and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective. Madison: Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, 2004. 370 pp. ISBN 978-0-924119-18-7.
• Hegi, Ursula. Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America (1997).
• Hobbie, Margaret, ed. Museums, Sites, and Collections of Germanic Culture in North America (1980).
• Kazal, Russell A. "Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept." American Historical Review 100 (1995): 437-71. in JSTOR
• Luebke, Frederick C. Germans in the New World: Essays in the History of Immigration (1990).
• Luebke, Frederick C. Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans During World War I. (1974)
• O'Connor, Richard. German-Americans: an Informal History. (1968), popular
• Otterness, Philip. Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York. (2004). 227 pp.
• Pochmann, Henry A., and Arthur R. Schultz; German Culture in America, 1600–1900: Philosophical and Literary Influences (1957)
• Schelbert, Leo, and Urspeter Schelbert. "Portrait of an Immigrant Society: The North American Grütli-Bund, 1865-1915." Yearbook of German-American Studies. Vol. 18 (1983).
• Tatlock, Lynne and Matt Erlin, eds. German Culture in Nineteenth-Century America: Reception, Adaptation, Transformation (2005)
• Tolzmann, Don Heinrich. The German-American Experience (2000) excerpt and text search
• Trefousse, Hans L., ed. Germany and America: Essays on Problems of International Relations and Immigration (1980).
• Trommler, Frank, and Joseph McVeigh, eds. America and the Germans: An Assessment of a Three-Hundred-Year History. (2 vols. 1985).
• Wittke, Carl. The German-Language Press in America (1957)
• Wittke, Carl. Refugees of Revolution: The German Forty-Eighters in America (1952) online edition
• Wittke, Carl. We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant (1939), ch 6, 9 online edition

Colonial, earlky national, before 1820

• Fogleman, Aaron Spencer. Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 (1995).
• Newman, Paul Douglas. Fries's Rebellion: The Enduring Struggle for the American Revolution. (2004). 259 pp. re Pennsylvania in 1790s
• Roeber, A. G. "In German Ways? Problems and Potentials of Eighteenth-Century German Social and Emigration History." William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 44, no. 4 (1987).
• Roeber, A. G. " 'The Origin of Whatever Is Not English Among Us': The Dutch-speaking and the German-speaking Peoples of Colonial British America." In Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, edited by Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan (1991).
• Wokeck, Marianne S. "Harnessing the Lure of the 'Best Poor Man's Country': The Dynamics of German-speaking Immigration to British North America, 1683-1783." In To Make America: European Emigration in the Early Modern Period, edited by Ida Altman and James Horn (1991).
• Wood, Ralph, ed. The Pennsylvania Germans. (1942)

Regional studies

• Bungert, Heike; Kluge, Cora Lee; and Ostergren, Robert C., eds. Wisconsin German Land and Life. (2006). 260 pp. online review
• Cochran, Thomas. The Pabst Brewing Company: The History of an American Business (1948) online edition
• Conzen, Kathleen Neils. "Peasant Pioneers: Generational Succession Among German Farmers in Frontier Minnesota." In The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformations: Essays in the Social History of Rural America, (1985) edited by Steven Hahn and Jonathan Prude
• Conzen, Kathleen Neils. Germans in Minnesota (2003) 112pp
• Gjerde, Jon. The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830–1917 (1997) online edition
• Iverson, Noel. Germania, U.S.A.: Social Change in New Ulm, Minnesota. (1966), emphasizes Turners
• Jaehn, Tomas. Germans in the Southwest, 1850-1920. (2005). 242 pp.
• Jensen, Richard. The Winning of the Midwest, Social and Political Conflict 1888–1896" (1971), focus on voting behavior of Germans, prohibition issue, language issue and school issue
• Johnson, Hildegard B. "The Location of German Immigrants in the Middle West". Annals of the Association of American Geographers 41 (1951): 1–41. in JSTOR
• Jordon, Terry G. German Seed in Texas Soil: Immigrant Farmers in Nineteenth-century Texas. (1966)
• Jordon, Terry G. Germans," Handbook of Texas Online (2006)
• Kamphoefner, Walter. The Westfalians: From Germany to Missouri (1987).
• Kazal, Russell A. Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity (2004) ethnicity and assimilation in 20c Philadelphia excerpt and text search; online review
• Keil, Hartmuth, and John B. Jentz, eds. German Workers in Industrial Chicago, 1850-1910: A Comparative Perspective (1983).
• Luebke, Frederick. Immigrants and Politics: the Germans of Nebraska, 1880–1900. (1969)
• Merrill, Peter C. German-American Urban Culture: Writers and Theaters in Early Milwaukee. (2000). 128 pp. online review
• Stenzel, Bryce O. German immigration to the Minnesota river valley frontier, 1852- 1865: wir stammten aus Deutschland nach hausen Minnesota (2002), 119pp excerpt and text search
• Struve, Walter. Germans and Texas: Commerce, Migration, and Culture in the Days of the Lone Star Republic (1996).
• Tischauser, Leslie V. The Burden of Ethnicity The German Question in Chicago, 1914–1941 (1990).
• Wood, Ralph, ed. The Pennsylvania Germans. (1942)

Religious groups

• Barkai, Avraham. Branching Out: German-Jewish Immigration to the United States (1994).
• Barry, Colman J. The Catholic Church and German Americans. (1953)
• Coburn, Carol K. Life at Four Corners: Religion, Gender, and Education in a German-Lutheran Community, 1868–1945 (1992).
• Gleason, Philip. The Conservative Reformers: American Catholics and the Social Order. (1968)
• Grummer, James Edward. "The Parish Life of German-Speaking Roman Catholics in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1840-1920." PhD dissertation U. of Notre Dame 1989. 286 pp. DAI 1989 49(10): 3136-A. DA8901491 fulltext in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• McMaster, Richard K. Land, Piety, Peoplehood: The Establishment of Mennonite Communities in America, 1683-1790 (1985).
• Mauch, Christof and Salmons, Joseph, eds. German-Jewish Identities in America. (2003). 171 pp.
• Pahl, Jon. Hopes and Dreams of All: The International Walther League and Lutheran Youth in American Culture, 1893-1993 (1993),
• Roeber, A. G. Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British America (1998).
• Scholz, Robert F. Press Toward the Mark: History of the United Lutheran Synod of New York and New England, 1830-1930 (1995).

Primary Sources

• Kamphoefner, Walter D. and Helbich, Wolfgang, eds. Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home. (2006). 521 pp.

See also

• Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Online resources

• Catholic Encyclopedia article
• Reasons Germans Came to America
• “Deutsch-Athen Revisited: Writing the History of Germans in Milwaukee”, Dr. Anke Ortlepp, University of Cologne
• German Immigrant Culture in America" (1998) syllabus by Dr. Peter C. Merrill