German American Totally Explained

Everything about German American totally explained

50,764,352
17.1% of the US population (2006)
| popplace = Throughout the United States, especially California, Pennsylvania, and the Midwest | langs = American English, German | rels = Christian (Protestant & Lutheran; Roman Catholic), Mennonite, Amish; Jewish and other minorities |related = Ethnic Germans (which includes Germans, Austrians and some Swiss), Austrian Americans, German Canadians, Scandinavian Americans, Dutch Americans, German diaspora}} German Americans (German Deutschamerikaner) are citizens of the United States of ethnic German ancestry and currently form the largest ancestry group in the United States, accounting for 17% of the U.S. population. The first significant numbers arrived in the 1680s in New York and Pennsylvania. Some eight million German immigrants entered the United States since then. Immigration continued in substantial numbers during the 19th century; the largest number of arrivals came 1840–1900. Germans form the largest group of immigrants coming to the U.S., outnumbering the Irish and English. Some arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Europe, and others simply for the chance to start fresh in the New World. California and Pennsylvania have the largest populations of German origin, with over six million German Americans residing in the two states alone. Over 50 million people in the United States identify German as their ancestry In Pennsylvania, English and German were co-official languages until around the time of World War I.
Americans of German descent live in nearly every American county. They have been in the US for 400 years, from the East Coast, where the first German settlers arrived in the 1600s, to the West Coast and in all the states in between. German Americans and those Germans who settled in the United States have been influential in most every field, from science, to architecture, to sports and entertainment to commercial industry. Some, like Brooklyn Bridge engineers John Augustus Roebling or architect Walter Gropius, left behind visible landmarks. Some people of German birth, like Albert Einstein, Maria Goeppert-Mayer and Wernher von Braun, set intellectual landmarks. In baseball, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Honus Wagner are widely regarded to be some of the greatest in history. Others have been prominent actors like Clark Gable, David Hasselhoff, Marlene Dietrich, Doris Day, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Willis, Sandra Bullock, Edward Arnold,Kirsten Dunst, and Eric Braeden.
Throughout the year, German Americans get together often for ethnic celebrations, the largest being the German-American Steuben Parade in New York City, which is held every third Saturday in September.

History

17th century

The first seeds of this country were planted at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in what is today the United States of America. The first English settlers arrived at Jamestown in 1607; the first German, in 1608. Germans were present in the American colonies from the very beginning of settlement. The Germans who came to Jamestown in 1608 and subsequently in 1620 were the forerunners of the largest nationality to immigrate to the United States since its founding in 1776.
   The first Germans to reach the Jamestown Settlement came aboard the English vessel Mary and Margaret, captained by Christopher Newport. They left England around July 1608 and arrived in Virginia around 1 October — 12 years before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. They consisted of up to five unnamed glassmakers and three carpenters or house builders — Adam, Franz and Samuel. They came in a group of about 70 new settlers, including several Polish makers of pitch and tar, soap ashes and potashes. Jamestown at that time consisted of nothing but a small wooden fort on a peninsula of the James River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay near modern Norfolk, Virginia.
   Among the settlers was a Swiss German mineral prospector called William Volday by the English; his original name was probably Wilhelm Waldi. He accompanied Captain Newport on a search for precious metals shortly after their arrival. This was done by order of the organizers of the Colony, the Virginia Company of London, a stock company. The colonists believed that they'd found a vein of silver beyond the falls of the James River, but they were forced to return when their supplies ran low.
   The Germans and the Poles faced precarious conditions at James Fort, which had been built on the north bank of the James River by June 1607. More than half of the original 105 settlers were already dead by the first autumn.
   The first German settlement was Germantown, Pennsylvania, founded near Philadelphia on October 6 1683.

18th century

Large numbers of Germans migrated from the 1680s to 1760s. They migrated to America for a variety of reasons. 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.
   Many Hessian POWs who had fought with the British in the American Revolutionary War settled in America. The Continental Congress lacked the money to send German prisoners back to Europe.
   Two waves of German colonists in 1714 and 1717 founded a large colony in Virginia called Germanna, located near Culpeper. Large German settlements were also formed in North Carolina, especially near 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."
   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.
   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
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 Germans were the largest group of immigrants. Following the revolutions in German states in 1848, 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.
   The cities of Chicago, Detroit, and New York were favored destinations. By 1900, the populations of the cities of Cleveland, Milwaukee, Hoboken and Cincinnati were all more than 40% German/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 German Catholic-American cultural centers.
   In the mid 1800s, German immigrants and German Americans increased rapidly in numbers in Milwaukee. 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. They established 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 cities, such as Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Richmond, Virginia, German Americans were at least 30% of the population.
   About half went to cities, the other half went to farms in the Midwest. By the mid-20th century German Americans were the predominant rural element in much of the Midwest, as they were more likely than others to remain on farms. 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. As in Milwaukee, Germans in Houston built the brewing industry. They also established a German cemetery. By the 1920s, the first generation of college-educated German Americans were moving into the chemical and oil industries. Immigrants included figures such as Paul Machemehl.
   Germans also settled in cities in border states, such as Baltimore, Louisville and St. Louis. Few Germans went to the Deep South, though German Americans moving from surrounding rural areas made up a noteworthy part of the population of New Orleans. German Americans were the largest group of immigrants during the 19th century, outnumbering both English and Irish immigrants, making German Americans the largest ethnic group in the United States today.
   The immigrants were as diverse as their countries of origin, except that very few aristocrats or upper middle class businessmen arrived. For example, consider Texas, with about 20,000 German Texans in the 1850s (from Handbook of Texas Online):

� 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, 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.

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'd to do to get rid of the Saint Louis Unionists was destroy the local breweries and seize all the beer: "… By this means the 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's known chiefly because of the famous outlaw Johnny Ringo's participation on the anti-German side.

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. Likewise Harvard psychology professor Hugo Münsterberg dropped his efforts to mediate between America and Germany and threw his efforts behind the German cause.
   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 appeared to be of German descent. The killers were found innocent 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 (for example Schmidt to Smith, Müller to Miller, Rickenbacher to Rickenbacker, Eisenhauer to Eisenhower) and limited their use of the German language in public places.
   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, a street named 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). By then the nativist mood had largely subsided.

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. German Americans who had been born overseas were the subject of some 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 U.S. 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 Americans between 1940 and 1948. Most were not yet 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.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't hesitate to name Americans of German ancestry to top war jobs, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and General Carl 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

In the aftermath of WWII, tens of thousands of ethnic Germans were expelled from nations in eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, Poland and Yugoslavia. Many resettled in East Germany, but others came as refugees to the United States in the late 1940s and established cultural centers in their new homes. Danouswabians, for instance, were ethnic Germans who had maintained language and customs after resettlement along the Danube in Hungary, later Yugoslavia (now Serbia). They were new immigrants to the US 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.
   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. Only 1.5 million Americans speak German.
   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

Immigrants from Germany in the early 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.
   Other German Protestants were descendants of the united "Evangelical Church" in Germany. They created the Reformed denomination (especially in New York and Pennsylvania), and the Evangelical denomination (strongest in the Midwest). They 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.
   Some 19th century immigrants, especially the "48ers", were secular, rejecting formal religion.
   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.
   The Hutterites are another example of a group of German Americans who continue a lifestyle similar to that of their ancestors. Hutterites, much like the Amish, fled persecution for their religious beliefs and came to the United States in 1870. Today Hutterites mostly reside in Montana, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, as well as in the western provinces of Canada. Hutterites continue to speak German. Most are able to speak Standard German in addition to their dialect.

German American influence

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 Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg 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 rocket base 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 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. Almost half of all current beer sales in the United States can be attributed to German immigrants Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch, who founded Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis in 1860; the company remains in the Busch family still today. The revival of microbreweries is partly due to instruction from German beer masters. One of the areas in which the influence of German cuisine is strongest is the small town Midwest. Among larger cities, Cincinnati is known for its German American annual festival Zinzinnati,, and Milwaukee is known for German Fest. The two are among the largest German American festivals in the country. Oktoberfest, German-American Day and Von Steuben Day celebrations are held regularly throughout the country.

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).

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 Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville; Richmond, Virginia; and Milwaukee.
The following list shows historically German neighborhoods or areas in major cities. Often the residents of German descent have been succeeded by those of other ethnic groups. The list concentrates on urban areas and doesn't include the rural areas extending from western New Jersey and Upstate New York to the Great Plains that were, or still are, heavily German.

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