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Waves of German Immigrants Embrace America
German-American Day Since 1987, every U.S. president has proclaimed German-American Day on October 6 to recognize the substantial contributions that German immigrants have made to the United States. The day stands as both a celebration of German heritage and as a reminder of the pioneering people from Germany who sought a better life for themselves and their children in America, and in doing so, helped shape that life dramatically. U.S. President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the first German-American Day on October 6, 1983, to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the first group of German-speaking settlers who arrived in the American colonies from Krefeld, Germany. While individual Germans had been active in America’s nascent years, the first thirteen German families in America arrived from the Rhine valley in Philadelphia aboard the schooner Concord, considered the “Mayflower of German immigration.” They established a community on the city's northern outskirts, later known as Germantown. However, individual Germans had been in America since the start of European immigration. Germans were part of the Jamestown settlement in 1608. And Peter Minuit, a Rhinelander, was the famous director of the Dutch colony who bought Manhattan from Native Americans in 1626. German ancestry prevalent in the US
More Americans claim to have German heritage than any other national ancestry, according to the report for 2000 released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau. Nearly 43 million Americans — about 15% of respondents — listed German as their primary cultural heritage in 2000. The numbers highlight the strong sense of tradition among descendants of German immigrants who left their homeland to make a new life for their families in the United States. Why they left
By far the most Germans who immigrated to the United States left Germany in search of an improved standard of living. Religious freedom prompted many groups to immigrate, as did fear of compulsory service in the Prussian military. Today, it is impossible to quantify what motivated immigrants to set out for the new world, but it has been determined that knowledge about the American business cycles, wages, food prices, and standards of living were widely publicized in Germany beginning in the 18th century. Land and railroad companies as well, often overstated opportunities for settlers willing to try their hand in the colonies. Those who left in pursuit of their own land often did so to reject the rigidity of the German social structure in the authoritarian German states. Both pious sects and state-recognized churches helped immigrants to the colonies, mostly in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Lutherans immigrated to evade the forced unification of the Lutheran and Reformed churches in 1839, while Catholics, stepped out of the power struggle towards the end of the 19th century between the church and the Prussian State incited by Bismarck’s “Kulturkampf.” Jews as well, fled social discrimination at several points in German history. Political reasons were naturally tied to economic and reasons. The greatest wave of political asylum seekers left Germany in 1848 after the failed German Revolution. Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law (1878-90) also motivated many activists to continue their class struggle in American metropoles. The last largest group of political refugees was made up of people persecuted by the Nazi Regime, primarily German and European Jews, Social Democrats, dissidents, and homosexuals. But even more Germans left to pursue the “American Dream” of land ownership. Spurred on by an inheritance law which left many sons without income in southern Germany, many young Germans set out to the Midwest, where soil was fertile and space in abundance. By the end of the 19th century, most emigrants were unmarried industrial workers who came to the United States seeking seasonal work but never returned to Germany. Where they settled, what they did Germans, like other immigrant groups, settled with other speakers of their language from the area of their birth, where they felt at home away from home. They settled in areas where farm land was reasonably priced, and where churches and schools already existed. While there were attempts to form a new German state in the colonies, such as in Texas in the 1840s, none came into fruition. The majority of Germans in the 19th century settled in the states of Ohio Missouri, Michigan to North Dakota through Nebraska. Craftsmen went to the cities of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, St. Louis and Chicago, as well as the already well-established cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The southern states held no attraction for German immigrants following the Civil War, though several state governments had established agencies to attract immigrants. Skilled craftspeople formed the largest group of German immigrants in any given period. Germans became high profile businessmen and shopkeepers, skilled laborers in rural and urban settings. Fields such as breweries, watchmakers, distillers, and land surveyors were almost exclusively filled by Germans. They also became bakers and butchers, cabinet makers, shoe makers, tailors blacksmiths, typesetters, and printers. Young women from Germany often worked as domestic servants in English-speaking households, which also led to greater assimilation. The public display of “Germanness”
One of the reasons why Germans never formed a coherent ethnic bloc was that they were propelled to the colonies by greatly differing motivations. Before 1820, as many as half of all German immigrants were indentured servants, people who paid for their trip by indebting themselves to the ship owners before meeting family in America, and in many cases, paying their debt in full on arrival. There were, however, positive aspects of indentured servitude. Often separated from their family and other German-speakers, the “serves,” as they were called, assimilated much more quickly by learning English, receiving lessons in American farming methods, becoming craftsmen, and learning about commerce and law. While Germans worked with other ethnicities, they most often spent their leisure time with other Germans. Enterprising German-language organizations grew up around the country, from singing societies and athletic clubs to charitable groups. Already in 1857 there was anti-immigrant sentiment, and a growing feeling that not enough was being done to assimilate Germans into American society. Some of these groups helped to introduce Americans to German culture, such as the Turner Gymnastics Society of Milwaukee, which issued the following statement in 1886: “the case for our German culture will be better served if we attract Americans to our side. On the gymnastics field, we can acquaint them with our German customs and traditions and of course, also with our language more successfully than if we hold them at bay because of our nationalistic tendency to live in our own enclaves.” Der Vorbote, July 7, 1886. One of the largest groups to promote the German-American understanding during the years of immigration was the German-American National Alliance, founded in Philadelphia in 1900. Its task was “to arouse and promote feelings of unity within the people of German origin.” It became the official lobbying organization of its membership, which peaked at 3 million in 1916. However, Germany’s aggression in World War I stigmatized the group, which was blatantly pro-Kaiser, and the U.S. Congress disbanded it in 1919. Germanness in general fell quickly out of fashion. The Steuben Society of America took up the task of representing German-Americans, but did so using only English and by distancing itself from the former organization, seen as unpatriotic. Today, it stands as a cultural symbol of pride in German-American heritage. The tolerance movement created further rifts between Germans who chose to carry on their old traditions and other immigrant groups. Germans saw prohibition attempts as an attack on their freedom and as an encroachment on their traditional leisure activities: evenings in bars and Sundays in the beer garden. A nation of German English-speakers?
The myth that German almost became the official language of the United States persists even today. Although the notion was widely spread by German travel authors of the 1840s, the vote never came to the congressional floor. Colonial leaders had no tolerance for the German language. During the war of 1812, only 9% of the U.S. population was German. Officials ignored German-language farmers in Virginia who petitioned the House of Representatives in 1794 for a German translation of a law booklet. More often than not, the idea reigned that the “faster they became Americans, the better,” and that meant speaking English. Most Germans sought economic prosperity, which required the ability to communicate with other Americans. While bi-lingual schools existed through the early 20th century, the German language still was heard less and less. By World War I, many communities had banned the teaching of German. Today, nearly 1.4 million Americans speak German at home, according to a 2004 report by the Modern Language Association. German-American legacy Perhaps the most famous German-Americans were those who integrated fully into American public life, leaving their mark on business, culture, society, and politics as Americans, not Germans. German enclaves in large American cities all but vanished in the 1920s, German-speakers dropped out of the public realm as German schools closed. But American society of today is unlike that of the early 20th century in that cultural differences have become a source of pride. That pride in one’s heritage has encouraged thousands to delve into their families’ personal histories and to seek out links between themselves and the immigrants of their past. Links
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