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German American

History

17th century

The first English settlers arrived at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, and were accompanied by the first German American, Dr. Johannes Fleischer. He was followed in 1608 by five glassmakers and three carpenters or house builders.

The first permanent German settlement in what became the United States was Germantown, Pennsylvania, founded near Philadelphia on October 6, 1683.

18th century

John Jacob Astor, detail of an oil painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1794. He was the first of the Astor family dynasty and the first millionaire in the United States, making his fortune in the fur trade and New York City real estate.

Large numbers of Germans migrated from the 1680s to 1760s. They migrated to America for a variety of reasons. The two causes for the migration were push factors: worsening opportunities for farm ownership in central Europe, persecution of some religious groups, and military conscription; and pull factors: better economic conditions, especially the opportunity to own land. Typically, they paid for their passage by selling their labor for a period of years as indentured servants.

Large sections of Pennsylvania and upstate New York attracted Germans. Most were Lutheran or German Reformed; many belonged to small religious sects such as the Moravians and Mennonites. German Catholics did not arrive in number until after the war of 1812.

In 1709 Protestant Germans from the Pfalz or Palatine region of Germany built rafts and traveled down the Rhine to Rotterdam. They lived in shantytown shacks with reed roofs in winter. The Dutch took up a collection to help them subsist until they could travel by ship to London. In London the Palatine families lived in tent cities in parks until Protestant Queen Anne Stuart could help them get to her colonies in America. Four American Indian kings were visiting London at that time. The Mohawk king offered to share land in the Mohawk valley of New York. The trip was long and difficult to survive because of the poor quality of food and water aboard ships and the infectious disease typhus, or Palatine fever. Many immigrants, particularly children, died before reaching America in June 1710.

The Palatine immigration of about 2100 people who survived was the largest single immigration to America in the colonial period. Most were first settled along the Hudson River in work camps, to pay off their passage. By 1711, seven villages had been established in New York on the Robert Livingston manor. In 1723 the Germans became the first Europeans allowed to buy land in the Mohawk Valley west of Little Falls. One hundred homesteads were allocated in the Burnetsfield Patent. By 1750, the Germans occupied a strip some long along both sides of the Mohawk River. The soil was excellent; some 500 houses were 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 of the early German Palatine immigrants was editor John Peter Zenger, who in colonial New York City led the fight for freedom of the press in America. A later immigrant, John Jacob Astor, who came from Baden after the Revolutionary War, became the richest man in America from his fur trading and real estate investments in New York City.

Two waves of German colonists in 1714 and 1717 founded a large colony in Virginia called Germanna
, located near modern-day Culpeper, Virginia. Large German settlements were also formed in North Carolina, especially west of what is now Winston-Salem. There were also many German settlers around the Dutch (Deutsch) Fork area of South Carolina.

A thriving population of Germans lived upriver from New Orleans, Louisiana. They were attracted to the area through pamphlets such as J. Hanno Deiler's "Louisiana: A Home for German Settlers."
The Studebaker brothers, forefathers of the wagon and automobile makers, arrive in Pennsylvania in 1736 from the famous blade town of Solingen. Their blacksmith trade would be influential for their family through the years and eventually for America. Their wagons drove the frontiersmen westward, their cannons provided the Union Army with artillery strength in the American Civil War, and their automobile company became one of the largest in America, although never eclipsing the "Big Three", and was a factor in the war effort and in the industrial foundations of the Army.

Between 1742 and 1753, roughly 1,000 Germans settled in Broad Bay, Massachusetts (now Waldoboro, Maine). Many of the colonists fled to Boston, Nova Scotia, and North Carolina after their houses were burned and their neighbors killed or carried into captivity by Native Americans. The Germans who remained found it difficult to survive on farming and eventually turned to the shipping and fishing industries.

The tide of German immigration to Pennsylvania swelled between 1725 and 1775, with many immigrants arriving as redemptioners or indentured servants. By 1775, Germans constituted about one-third of the population of the state. German farmers were renowned for their highly productive animal husbandry and agricultural practices. Politically, they were generally inactive until 1740, when they joined a Quaker-led coalition that took control of the legislature, which later supported the American Revolution. Despite this, many of the German settlers were loyalists during the Revolution possibly because they feared that their royal land grants would be taken away by a new republican government, or because of loyalty to a British German monarchy who had provided the opportunity to live in a liberal society The Germans, comprising Lutherans, Reformed, Mennonites, Amish, and other sects, developed a rich religious life with a strong musical culture. These Germans came to be known as the Pennsylvania Dutch (from Deutsch). There were few German Catholics in Pennsylvania before the 1810s.

Thousands of German soldiers came to the United States to support King George III, Elector of Hanover and King of Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War. The largest group came from Hesse, and the soldiers are often referred to as Hessians. Many of the POWs who had fought as British auxiliaries settled in America because the Continental Congress lacked the money to send German prisoners back to Europe.

In the 1790 U.S. census, the first taken by the new country, Germans are estimated to have constituted nearly 9% of the white population in the United States.
19th century
German population density in the United States, 1872.
Heavy German immigration to the United States occurred between 1848 and World War I, during which time nearly six million Germans immigrated to the United States. From 1840 to 1880 they were the largest group of immigrants. Following the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, a wave of political refugees fled to America, and became known as Forty-Eighters. They included professionals, journalists, and politicians. Prominent names included Carl Schurz and Henry Villard.
Cities
The cities of Milwaukee, Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago, New York, and Baltimore were favored destinations. By 1900, the populations of the cities of Cleveland, Milwaukee, Hoboken, and Cincinnati were all more than 40% German American. Dubuque and Davenport, Iowa, had even larger proportions, as did Omaha, Nebraska, where the proportion of German Americans was 57% in 1910. The Over-the-Rhine neighborhood in Cincinnati was one of the largest centers.

In the mid 1800s, German immigrants and German Americans increased rapidly in numbers in Milwaukee, known as "the German Athens." When they entered city politics in great numbers, they became a vanguard among that city's Social Democratic Party (Socialists). They were heavily engaged in growing industries. Germans created the beer brewing industry under the Pabst, Schlitz, Miller, and Blatz family brands. German Americans in Milwaukee also brought their strong support of education, establishing schools and teacher training seminaries (Töchter-Institut) to prepare students and teachers in proper German language training. By the late 19th century, the Germania Publishing Company was established, a publisher of books, magazines, and newspapers in German. In many other Northern cities, such as Fort Wayne, Indiana, German Americans were at least 30% of the population.

By 1900, Columbus, Ohio was about half German American. Most established homes on the south side of Columbus, an area now known as the German Village District.

While half went to cities, the other half went to farms in the Midwest. From Ohio to the Plains States the census maps show a heavy presence in rural areas into the 21st century.

In the South, Texas attracted many Germans who entered through Galveston, both those who came to farm and later immigrants who more rapidly took industrial jobs in cities such as Houston and also in Louisville, Kentucky. As in Milwaukee, Germans in Houston built the brewing industry. By the 1920s, the first generation of college-educated German Americans were moving into the chemical and oil industries.

Few Germans went to the Deep South, apart from some in New Orleans.
Texas
The Germans did not form a uniform bloc--they were highly diverse and drew from all sectors of European society, except that very few aristocrats or upper middle class businessmen arrived. For example, consider Texas, with about 20,000 German Texans in the 1850s ():

The Germans who settled Texas were diverse in many ways. They included peasant farmers and intellectuals; Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and atheists; Prussians, Saxons, Hessians, and Alsatians; abolitionists and slaveholders; 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. Traditional Lutherans from Saxony and some Wends, went for religious freedom. The Saxons founded the Missouri Synod, which remains a leading German American denomination.

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.

Civil War

Hundreds of thousands of German Americans volunteered to fight for the Union in the American Civil War (1861-1865). Most had settled in northern states and no doubt adopted local attitudes. Having gone through their own revolution, many Germans had a strong revulsion against slavery. This was reflected in an incident on January 1, 1861, when the mostly German crowd made such a disturbance at a slave sale at the St. Louis courthouse that the sale price couldn't go above $8.00. The demonstration marked the last slave auction in St. Louis. Many Germans could see the parallel between slavery and serfdom in the old fatherland. The Germans were among the largest immigrant groups to participate in the Civil War: roughly 516,000 (23.4% of all Union soldiers) were German Americans, and about 216,000 were born in Germany. 36,000 of these native-born Germans enlisted from New York. Behind the Empire State came Missouri with 30,000 and Ohio with 20,000. A popular Union commander among Germans, Major General Franz Sigel was the highest-ranking German American officer in the Union Army, with many German immigrants claiming to enlist to "fight mit Sigel."

A Missouri man had once written the Confederate authorities that all they had to do to get rid of the Saint Louis Unionists was destroy the local breweries and seize all the beer: "… By this means the Dutch [Germans] will all die in a week and the Yankees will then run from this State."

::- M. Jeff Thompson of Missouri

The identification of Germans with the Unionist-Abolitionist persisted into the 1870s in the so-called "Mason County War" in Texas. "Germans" were identified as Unionists while "Americans" were predominantly pro-Confederate. The conflict claimed some dozen lives before petering out. Now it is known chiefly because of the famous outlaw Johnny Ringo's participation on the anti-German side.

Voting

thumb|200px|The German vote in 1900 was in doubt; they opposed the "repudiation" policy of Bryan (right poster) but also disliked the overseas "expansion" McKinley had delivered (left poster). Relatively few Germans held office, but the men voted once they became citizens. In general, the Protestants and Jews leaned toward the Republican party and the Catholics were strongly Democratic. If prohibition was on the ballot, the Germans voted solidly against it. They strongly distrusted moralistic crusaders, who they called "Puritans." This included the temperance reformers and many Populists. The German community strongly opposed inflation and Free Silver, and voted heavily against crusader William Jennings Bryan in 1896. In 1900, however, many German Democrats returned to their party and voted for Bryan, perhaps because of President William McKinley's foreign policy.

Assimilation and World War I anti-German sentiment

After two or three generations, German Americans adopted mainstream American customs—some of which they heavily influenced—and switched their language to English. As one scholar concludes, "The overwhelming evidence … indicates that the German-American school was a bilingual one much (perhaps a whole generation or more) earlier than 1917, and that the majority of the pupils may have been English-dominant bilinguals from the early 1880s on." By 1914 the older members were attending German-language church services while the younger members were attending English services (in Lutheran, Evangelical and Catholic churches). In German parochial schools, the children spoke English among themselves, though some of their classes were in German. In 1917–18, after the US entry into WWI on the side of the British, nearly all German language instruction ended, as did most German-language church services.

During World War I, German Americans, especially those born abroad, were sometimes accused of being too sympathetic to the German Empire. Teddy Roosevelt denounced "hyphenated Americanism" and insisted that dual loyalties were impossible in wartime. A small minority came out for Germany, including H. L. Mencken, who believed the German democratic system was superior to American democracy. Similarly, Harvard psychology professor Hugo Münsterberg dropped his efforts to mediate between America and Germany and threw his efforts behind the German cause.
thumb|200px|World War I war bond posters depicted Germans in ways similar to modern hate-group caricatures.
Several thousand vocal opponents of the war were imprisoned. Thousands were forced to buy war bonds to show their loyalty. The Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. One man was hanged in Illinois, apparently for no other reason than that he was of German descent. The killers were found not guilty of the crime and the hanging was called an act of patriotism by a jury. A Minnesota minister was tarred and feathered when he was overheard praying in German with a dying woman. Some Germans during this time "Americanized" their names (e.g. Schmidt to Smith, Müller to Miller) and limited their use of the German language in public places. Newspapers also printed blacklists of names of Germans, including their addresses, headlined as German Enemy Aliens.

In Chicago Frederick Stock temporarily stepped down as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra until he finalized his naturalization papers. Orchestras replaced music by Wagner with Berlioz on programs. In Cincinnati, reaction to anti-German sentiment during World War I caused the public library of Cincinnati to withdraw all German books from its shelves. German-named streets were renamed. For example, in Indianapolis, Germania Avenue was renamed Pershing Avenue — for a World War I general of German descent. In Iowa, the 1918 Babel Proclamation made speaking foreign languages in public illegal. Nebraska banned instruction in any language except English, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the ban illegal in 1923 (Meyer v. Nebraska).

World War II

Between 1931 and 1940, 114,000 Germans moved to the United States, many of whom—including Nobel prize winner Albert Einstein—were Jewish Germans or anti-Nazis fleeing government oppression. About 25,000 people became paying members of the pro-Nazi German American Bund during the years before the war. Germans aliens were the subject of suspicion and discrimination during the war, although prejudice and sheer numbers meant they suffered as a group generally less than Japanese Americans. The Alien Registration Act of 1940 required 300,000 German-born resident aliens to register with the Federal government and restricted their travel and property ownership rights. Under the still active Alien Enemy Act of 1798, the United States government interned nearly 11,000 German immigrants between 1940 and 1948. Most were not American citizens. Some of these were United States citizens; some were the parents of active military men. Civil rights violations occurred. Five hundred were arrested without warrant. Others were held without charge for months or interrogated without benefit of legal counsel. Convictions were not eligible for appeal. An unknown number of "voluntary internees" joined their spouses and parents in the camps and were not permitted to leave.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not hesitate to name Americans of German ancestry to top war jobs, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and General Carl Andrew Spaatz. He appointed Republican Wendell Willkie as a personal representative. German Americans who had fluent German language skills were an important asset to wartime intelligence, and they served as translators and as spies for the United States. The war evoked strong patriotic sentiments among German Americans, few of whom by then had contacts with distant relatives in the old country.

German Americans in post-war years

Parking meter checker stands by his police vehicle which is imprinted with the German word for police (Polizei). It is part of the town's highlighting its German ethnic origins. New Ulm, Minnesota, July 1974.

In the aftermath of World War II, millions of ethnic Germans were expelled from nations in eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia. Most resettled in Germany, but others came as refugees to the United States in the late 1940s and established cultural centers in their new homes. Some Danube Swabians, for instance, ethnic Germans who had maintained language and customs after settlement along the Danube in Hungary, later Yugoslavia (now Serbia), immigrated to the U.S. after the war.

From the 1970s on, time abated the anti-German sentiment aroused by World War II. Today, German Americans who immigrated after World War II share the same characteristics as any other Western European immigrant group in the U.S. They are mostly professionals and academics who have come for professional reasons. Germany has been a preferred destination for immigrants rather than a source of migrating peoples.

In the 1990 U.S. Census, 58 million Americans claimed to be solely or partially of German descent. According to the 2005 American Community Survey, 50 million Americans have German ancestry. German Americans represent 17% of the total U.S. population and 26% of the non-Hispanic white population.

About 1.5 million Americans speak German today. In 1860-1917 German was widely spoken in German neighborhoods; see German in the United States. There is a false myth, called the Muhlenberg legend, that German was almost the official language of the U.S. There was never any such proposal. The U.S. has no official language, but use of German was strongly discouraged during World War I and fell out of daily use in many places.

There are about 5 million German Americans in the Heritage Society Germans from Russia, who came from Russia, many via Canada, to the United States. Other nationality sources of German-Americans are Mexico; followed by Argentina, Brazil and Chile, South America known for notable German immigrant colonies and communities.

Of the four major U.S. regions, German was the most-reported ancestry in the Midwest, second in the West, and third in both the Northeast and the South. German was the top reported ancestry in 23 states, and it was one of the top five reported ancestries in every state except Maine and Rhode Island.

Religious affiliations

German immigrants who arrived before the nineteenth century tended to be members of the "Evangelical Church" in Germany. They created the Reformed denomination (especially in New York and Pennsylvania), and the Evangelical denomination (strongest in the Midwest), which are now part of the United Church of Christ. Many immigrants joined different churches from those that existed in Germany. Protestants often joined the Methodist church.

Before 1800, communities of Amish, Mennonites, Moravians and Hutterites had formed and are still in existence today. Some still speak dialects of German, including Pennsylvania German, informally known as Pennsylvania Dutch (from Deutsch). The Amish, who were originally from southern Germany and Switzerland, arrived in Pennsylvania during the early 18th century. Amish immigration to the United States reached its peak between the years 1727 and 1770. Religious freedom was perhaps the most pressing cause for Amish immigration to Pennsylvania, which became known as a haven for persecuted religious groups.

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

The Hutterites are another example of a group of German Americans who continue a lifestyle similar to that of their ancestors. Like the Amish, they fled persecution for their religious beliefs and came to the United States in 1870. Today Hutterites mostly reside in Montana, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, and the western provinces of Canada. Hutterites continue to speak German. Most are able to speak Standard German in addition to their dialect.
Immigrants from Germany in the mid- to late-1800s brought many different religions with them. The most numerous were Lutheran or Catholic, although the Lutherans were themselves split among different groups. The more conservative Lutherans comprised the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Other Lutherans formed a complex checkerboard of synods. In 1988 most of these merged, together with Scandinavian-based synods, into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Some 19th century immigrants, especially the "48ers", were secular, rejecting formal religion. About 250,000 German Jews had arrived by the 1870s, and they sponsored reform synagogues in many small cities across the country. About 2.0 million Eastern European Jews arrived from the 1880s to 1924, bringing more traditional religious practices.

German American influence

<a href="http://reference.findtarget.com/search/Maps of American ancestries/" class="wiki">Distribution</a> of German Americans according to the <a href="http://reference.findtarget.com/search/2000 United States Census/" class="wiki">2000 Census</a>

Distribution of German Americans according to the 2000 Census

Germans have contributed to a vast number of areas in American culture and technology. Baron von Steuben, a former Prussian officer, led the reorganization of the U.S. Army during the War for Independence and helped make the victory against British troops possible. The Steinway & Sons piano manufacturing firm was founded by immigrant Henry E. Steinway in 1853. German settlers brought the Christmas tree custom to the United States. The Studebakers built large numbers of wagons used during the Western migration; Studebaker, like the Duesenberg brothers, later became an important early automobile manufacturer. Carl Schurz, a refugee from the unsuccessful first German democratic revolution of 1848 (see also German Confederation), served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior.

After World War II, Wernher von Braun, and most of the leading engineers from the former German V-2 rocket base at Peenemünde, were brought to the U.S. They contributed decisively to the development of U.S. military rockets, as well as rockets for the NASA space program.

The influence of German cuisine is seen in the cuisine of the United States throughout the country, especially regarding pastries, meats and sausages, and above all, beer. Frankfurters (or "wieners", originating from Frankfurt am Main and Vienna, respectively), hamburgers, bratwurst, sauerkraut, and strudel are common dishes. German bakers introduced the pretzel. Germans have almost totally dominated the beer industry since 1850.
Milwaukee was once the home to four of the world's largest German breweries (Schlitz, Blatz, Pabst, and Miller), and was the number one beer producing city in the world for many years. The historic German Milwaukee Brewery, located in "Miller Valley" at 4000 West State Street, is the oldest still-functioning major brewery in the United States.

Almost half of all current beer sales in the United States can be attributed to German immigrants, Capt. A. Pabst, Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch, who founded Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis in 1860.

One of the areas in which the influence of German cuisine is strongest is the small town Midwest.

German-American celebrations, such as Oktoberfest, German-American Day and Von Steuben Day are held regularly throughout the country. One of the largest is the German-American Steuben Parade in New York City, held every third Saturday in September. There are also major annual events in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood, a traditional a center of the city's German population, in Cincinnati, where its annual Octoberfest Zinzinnati is the largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany and in Milwaukee, which celebrates its German heritage with an annual German Fest.
Skat, the most popular card game in Germany, is also played in areas of the United States with large German American populations, such as Wisconsin and Texas.

German American presidents

There have been two presidents whose fathers were of German descent: Dwight Eisenhower (original family name Eisenhauer and maternal side is also German/Swiss) and Herbert Hoover (original family name Huber). Presidents with maternal German ancestry include Richard Milhous Nixon (Nixon's maternal ancestors were Germans who anglicized Melhausen to Milhous). Other presidents with one or more German ancestors include John Tyler, Grover Cleveland, George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, and Theodore Roosevelt.

German-American communities

Today, most German Americans have assimilated to the point that they no longer have readily identifiable ethnic communities, though there are still many metropolitan areas where German is the most reported ethnicity, such as Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis – Saint Paul, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis.