Francis
Daniel Pastorius
was a lawyer in Krefeld but because of his religious beliefs was forced
to leave the country in 1683. Pastorius arranged for twelve other
Quaker families from Krefeld to sail to
America on a ship called the Concord.
Pastorius and his followers established Germantown, the first permanent
settlement of German immigrants in America. Pastorius became the town's
burgomaster and on 16th November, 1684, Germantown became the first
in Philadelphia to hold a fair.
Germantown concentrated on producing cloth and sold considerable quantities
to New York and Boston.
Francis Daniel Pastorius
was opposed to slavery and it was banned
in Germantown. He also campaigned against it in other German colonies
in America.
German emigration to America did not take place in any significant
numbers until the beginning of the 18th century. In 1708 the British
government began to encourage Protestants from Germany to settle in
America. Over the next few years about 13,500 Germans reached England.
Of these, 2,257 Roman Catholics were
turned back. It took nearly 6 months to transport these Germans to
America. Ships were overcrowded and typhus
fever became a major problem. Of the 2,814 who started from America
in 1710, 446 died on the way. One of those who arrived safely was
John Peter Zengler, who later became
the publisher of the journal, the New
York Weekly Journal.
By 1711 the British government had spent £100,000
transporting Germans to America. Later the Germans purchased land
along the left bank of the Mohawk in New
York and established villages such as Mannheim, Oppenheim and
Herkimer. In 1784 a Deutsche
Gesellschaft was organised to help German immigrants on their arrival
in America. One person helped by this organization was John
Jacob Astor, who went on to become a highly successful fur trader.
Some moved on from New York to Pennsylvania.
In 1766 a committee of the House of Commons
was told that about a third of Pennsylvania's population were German
immigrants. Roman Catholics from Germany
also began to settle in Maryland. Significant numbers of Germans also
went to Virginia and began smelting iron ore at Germanna, near Fredericksburg.
In 1829, Gottfried Duden, a German
visitor to America, published his book, Report
of a Journey to the Western States of North America.
The book providing a very attractive account of German immigrant life
in America. As well as describing spectacular harvests, Duden praised
the intellectual freedom enjoyed by people living in America. The
book sold in large numbers and persuaded thousands of Germans to emigrate.
The failed German revolution in 1848 also stimulated emigration. Over
the next ten years over a million people left Germany and settled
in the United States. Some were the intellectual leaders of this rebellion,
but most were impoverished Germans who had lost confidence in its
government's ability to solve the country's economic problems.
Others left because they feared constant political turmoil in Germany.
One prosperous innkeeper wrote after arriving in Wisconsin: "I
would prefer the civilized, cultured, Germany to America if it were
still in its former orderly condition, but as it has turned out recently,
and with the threatening prospect for the future of religion and politics,
I prefer America. Here I can live a more quiet, and undisturbed life."
New York City was popular with German
immigrants. By 1860 over 100,000 Germans lived in the city and owned
20 churches, 50 schools, 10 bookstores and two German language daily
newspapers. There was also an estimated 130,000 German-born immigrants
in Chicago. The city became a centre
of German culture with bands, orchestras and a theatre. Milwaukee,
known as the German Athens, and Cincinnati,
also had large numbers of Germans. One journalist wrote in the
Houston Post, commented that "Germany seems to
have lost all of her foreign possessions with the exception of Milwaukee,
St. Louis and Cincinnati."
Most arrivals in America came from rural areas in Germany. These were
often small farmers and farm labourers who had suffered from advances
in agricultural technology during the 19th century. Many of these
immigrants settled in Wisconsin, where the soil and climate was similar
to that in Germany. Of the 70,000 Germans who migrated to the Deep
South, about 15,000 lived in New Orleans.
Several of those who fled Germany in the 19th century because of their
political beliefs became successful in the United States. This included
August Follen (poet and politician), Carl
Schurz (journalist and politician), Franz
Sigel.(journalist and soldier), Peter
Osterhaus (soldier and politician), Friedrich
Heckler (soldier and politician) and Adalbert
Volck (artist). Others such as the German revolutionary leader,
Gottfried Kinkel, found it difficult to
settle in the United States and decided to seek political sanctuary
in England.
Anti-socialist laws passed in Germany also encouraged radicals to
emigrate to America. These men usually became active in politics after
arriving in the United States. In 1867, Germans in New York established
the first ever socialist party in the
United States. It is claimed in 1880 the majority of members of of
the Socialist Labor Party had been
born in Germany. In 1889 there were eight socialist daily newspapers
printed in German.
Some German immigrants were attracted to anarchism.
After being forced out of Germany and Britain, Johann
Most, arrived in 1882 and soon emerged as the leader of the movement
in the United States. In November 1887, eight German anarchists were
indicted for the Haymarket Bombing,
Later, four of these men, August Spies,
Adolph Fisher, Louis
Lingg and George Engel, were sentenced
to death for the crime. In 1893, the German born Governor of Illinois,
John Peter Altgeld, pardoned the men
still in prison.
Several German immigrants became successful businessmen. This included
Johann Suter (trading post), Oscar
Hammerstein (real estate), Joseph Seligman
(banking), Frederick Weyerhaeuser
(timber), Solomon Loeb
(banking), August Belmont (banking),
Paul Warburg (banking),
Jacob Schiff (banking), Otto Kahn (banking),
Adolphus Busch (brewing), Isidor
Straus (department stores), Henry Villard
(publishing), Henry Lomb (optical products)
and John Jacob Bausch (optical products).
Milwaukee, known as the German Athens, and Cincinnati, became the
main centres of German-American culture in the United States. In 1915
a journalist wrote in the Houston
Post that
"Germany seems to have lost all of her foreign possessions with
the exception of Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati."
In 1901 the National
German-American Alliance was formed in an effort to preserve the German
language and literature. It also became involved in the campaign against
prohibition. By 1914 the organization
claimed a membership of over two million.
On the outbreak of the First World War there
was a growth of German nationalism in America. However, when the United
States entered the conflict in 1917, the vast majority of German-Americans
played their full part in the war-effort. This did not stop a hostility
to anything German in the United States. Towns, streets and buildings
with German names were renamed. During this period a large number
of American-Germans changed their surnames in order to hide their
origins.
In 1917 the National German-American Alliance, an organization that
had campaigned against United States involvement in the war, had its
charter withdrawn. Some schools stopped teaching German as a foreign
language and radio stations were encouraged not to play the music
of German composers. A large number of German language newspapers,
starved of advertising, were also forced to close.
In 1890 there were large numbers of German born
immigrants in the states of New York
(499,000), Illinois
(338,000) and Minnesota
(117,000). There were also significant communities in New
York City (211,000), Chicago (161,000),
Milwaukee (55,000), Baltimore
(41,000) and Minneapolis (8,000).
There were fewer opportunities for skilled workers in the United States
in the early 20th century and emigration from Germany declined. Between
1820 and 1920 over 5,500,000 emigrated from Germany
to the United States. Germany therefore contributed more people than
any other country including Ireland
(4,400,000), Italy (4,190,000) and Austria-Hungary
(3,700,000).
Persecution of Jews by the Nazis in Germany in
the 1930s once again increased a desire to emigrate to the United
States. Arrivals included Albert Einstein,
Karen Horney, Erich
Fromm, Berthold Brecht,
Kurt Weill and Hans Eisler.
An investigation carried out
in 1978 revealled that since 1820 over 6,978,000 people emigrated
to the United States from Germany. This amounted to 14.3 per cent
of the total foreign immigration during this period.
German immigrants in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1897.
(1)
Gottfried Duden, Report of a Journey to the Western States of North
America (1829)
As
long as the settler does not have sufficient meat from domestic animals,
the hunting grounds keep in in provisions. There are so many deer,
stages, turkeys, chickens, pheasants, snipe and other game that a
good hunter without much exertion provides for the needs of a large
family. Throughout the entire United States, hunting and fishing are
completely free, and in the unenclosed spaces anyone can hunt how
and when he pleases.
(2)
John Kerler, letter written by a German immigrant after settling in
Wisconsin (1849)
I would prefer the civilized, cultured,
Germany to America if it were still in its former orderly condition,
but as it has turned out recently, and with the threatening prospect
for the future of religion and politics, I prefer America. Here I
can live a more quiet, and undisturbed life. One lives in such safety
here in the country that you seldom lock your door at night, leaving
cattle, waggons, plows, everything, out in the open without having
to fear thievery.
(3)
Gustav
Unonius ,
A Pioneer in Northwest America: 1841-1858, (1861)
Often we had found notices nailed to some tree close
to the public road announcing such meetings, and had had private invitations
to attend them, especially from zealous partisans of the Democratic
Party apparently eager to convert us to their political faith. Notwithstanding
these solicitations, we had not as yet even applied for United States
citizenship. This would not have prevented us, though, from taking
pan in various communal affairs and from voting in the local elections.
But we did not consider ourselves well-enough informed in these matters
to be willing to
take active part in them. Who were
to become justices of the peace, road inspectors,
constables, tax collectors, and so forth,
did not much concern us. We were protected
as to person and property and felt fully
satisfied with our government, or, rather,
we hardly noticed that we had any.
Foreigners are generally
inclined to engage
in political disputes long before they know
what things are all about, and the rashness
with which they make use of a citizenship
they have gained all too soon is without
question harmful to the country.
The American republic
will no doubt sooner or later find it necessary to change its naturalization
laws. The Germans and especially the Irish have hardly had time to
get a roof over their heads before they begin to busy themselves with
political affairs of all kinds, become eager partisans, get their
hands into everything, and cause no end of trouble and disorder -
all of which could be avoided if Americans were left to govern the
country alone.
Accustomed perhaps to
being of little or no importance before, in a more liberal social
order they feel all-important, and the spirit of opposition that led
them to political radicalism at home now induces them to oppose almost
everything proposed by sane and wise Americans for the good of the
country. Many a time I have heard Germans who hardly understood the
simplest English sentences say, "We are not going to let the
Americans rule over us." Their false conception of liberty and
citizenship and that of the Irish gave me an absolute distaste for
all politics, and neither then nor later did I meddle with it except
in questions where my duty bade me appear quietly and calmly at the
ballot box.
I love the democratic
social order where the majesty of the people really is a majesty before
which a man can stand with the same veneration, yes, with even more,
than before a royal throne; and I believe that the American people,
left to themselves, will one day reveal that majesty to the world.
(4)
Henry Villard wrote about arriving in
New York in 1853 in his Memoirs: Journalist
and Financier (1904)
My landing upon American soil took
place under anything but auspicious circumstances. I was utterly destitute
of money, had but a limited supply of wearing apparel, and that not
suited to the approaching cold season, and I literally did not know
a single person in New York or elsewhere in the Eastern States to
whom I could not apply for help and counsel. To crown all, I could
not speak a word of English.
A travelling companion who had tried to persuade me to accompany him
to California noticed my depression, and guessed its cause from what
he had drawn out of me on the voyage about my antecedents and plans.
He generously offered to lend me twenty dollars, which I accepted,
of course, with joy.
(5)
Carl Schurz, Autobiography of Carl
Schurz (1906)
Abraham Lincoln appointed General
Franz Sigel as the commander of the First Army Corps of the Army of
Virginia. The German-American troops welcomed Sigel with great enthusiasm,
which the rank and file of the native American regiments at least
seemed to share. He brought a splendid military reputation with him.
He had bravely fought for liberty in Germany, and conducted there
the last operations of the revolutionary army in 1849. He had been
one of the foremost to organize and lead that force of armed men,
mostly Germans, that seemed suddenly to spring out of the pavements
of St. Louis, and whose prompt action saved that city and the State
of Missouri to the Union. On various fields, especially at Pea Ridge,
he had distinguished himself by personal gallantry as well as by skillful
leadership.
(6)
Samuel
Gompers
began involved in the National Union of Cigarmakers soon after arriving
in the United States in 1863.
There
was a vast difference between those early unions, and the unions of
today. Then there was no law or order. a union was a more or less
definite group of people employed in the same trade who might help
each other out in special difficulties with the employer. There was
no sustained effort to secure fair wages through collective bargaining.
The employer fixed wages until he shoved them down to the point where
human endurance revolted. It was late in the fall of 1879 my attention
was called to a Cooper Union meeting at which two Englishmen, A.J.
Mundella and Thomas Hughes, M.P., were to speak on the scope and influence
of trade unions. Mundella was a manufacturer of Nottingham who established
the first voluntary board of conciliation and arbitration for the
hosiery and glove trades of that locality. My sense of injustice was
stirring and I began going to more labour meetings, seeking the way
out.
The cigarmakers employed in New York were practically all Germans
- men of keener mentality and wider thought than any I had met before.
They talked and read in German, but there was enough English spoken
to enable me to understand that the trade union movement meant to
those men something vastly bigger than anything I had ever conceived.
Many of them were men who had learned the labor movement in Europe
and who were refugees because they were active for the struggle for
political as well as economic freedom.
(7)
Louis Lingg,
Autobiography of
Louis Lingg (1887)
At thirteen I received my first impressions
of the prevailing unjust social institutions, i.e., the exploitation
of men by men. The main circumstances which caused this reflection
in my youthful mind were the experiences of my own family. It did
not escape my observation that the former employer of my father grew
continually richer, despite the extravagant life he and his family
were leading, whilst, on the other hand, my father, who had performed
his respective part in creating the wealth his employer possessed
and who had sacrificed his all, which was his health, in his effort
to serve his master, was cast aside like a worn-out tool which had
fulfilled its mission and could now be spared.
(8)
John Peter Altgeld, Forum Magazine
(February, 1890)
The
question whether immigration shall be encouraged or restricted, and
whether naturalization shall be made more difficult or not, must be
considered both from the political and from an industrial point of
view; and in each case it is necessary to glance back and see what
have been the character, the conduct, and the political leaning of
the immigrant, and what he has done to develop and enrich our country.
If we look at the political side first, and, as our space is limited,
we will go back to 1860, calling attention, however, to the fact that
up to that time, no matter from what cause, the immigration had been
almost entirely to the Northern and free States, and not to the slave
States. These, when carefully examined in connection with election
returns, will show that but for the assistance of the immigrant the
election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States would
have been an impossibility, and the nineteenth century would never
have seen the great free republic we see, and the shadow of millions
of slaves would today darken and curse the continent.
The Scandinavians have always, nearly to a man, voted the Republican
ticket. The Germans, likewise, were nearly always Republicans. In
fact, the States having either a large Scandinavian or a large German
population have been distinguished as the banner Republican States.
Notably is this true of Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan,
which has a large Scandinavian population; and of Illinois, Ohio and
Pennsylvania, which have a very large German population.
(9)
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House
(1910)
An evening similar in purpose to the one devoted to the Italians was
organized for the Germans, in our first year. Owing to the superior
education of our Teutonic guests and the clever leading of a cultivated
German woman, these evenings reflected something of that cozy social
intercourse which is found in its perfection in the fatherland. Our
guests sang a great deal in the tender minor of the German folksong
or in the rousing spirit of the Rhine, and they slowly but persistently
pursued a course in German history and literature, recovering something
of that poetry and romance which they had long since resigned with
other good things. We found strong family affection between them and
their English-speaking children, but their pleasures were not in common,
and they seldom went out together. Perhaps the greatest value of the
Settlement to them was in placing large and pleasant rooms with musical
facilities at their disposal, and in reviving their almost forgotten
enthusiams. I have seen sons and daughters stand in complete surprise
as their mother's knitting needles softly beat time to the song she
was singing, or her worn face turned rosy under the hand-clapping
as] she made an old-fashioned curtsy at the end of a German poem.
It was easy to fancy a growing touch of respect in her children's
manner to her, and a rising enthusiasm for German literature and reminiscence
on the part of all the family, an effort to bring together the old
life and the new, a respect for the older cultivation, and not quite
so much assurance that the new was the best.
(10)
John Dewey,
The School as Social Centre (1902)
It is said that one ward in the city of
Chicago has forty different languages represented in it. It is a well-known
fact that some of the largest Irish, German, and Bohemian cities in
the world are located in America, not in their own countries. The
power of the public schools to assimilate different races to our own
institutions, through the education given to the younger generation,
is doubtless one of the most remarkable exhibitions of vitality that
the world has ever seen.
But, after all, it leaves the older generation still untouched; and
the assimilation of the younger can hardly be complete or certain
as long as the homes of the parents remain comparatively unaffected.
Indeed, wise observers in both New York
and Chicago have recently sounded a note of alarm. They have called
attention to the fact that in some respects the children are too rapidly,
I will not say Americanized, but too rapidly de-nationalized. They
lose the positive and conservative value of their own native traditions,
their own native music, art, and literature. They do not get complete
initiation into the customs of their new country, and so are frequently
left floating and unstable between the two. They even learn to despise
the dress, bearing, habits, language, and beliefs of their parents
- many of which have more substance and worth than the superficial
putting-on of the newly adopted habits.
One of the chief motives in the development of the new labour museum
at Hull House has been to show the younger generation something of
the skill and art and historic meaning in the industrial habits of
the older generations - modes of spinning, weaving, metal working,
etc., discarded in this country because there was no place for them
in our industrial system. Many a child has awakened to an appreciation
of admirable qualities hitherto unknown in his father or mother for
whom he had begun to entertain a contempt. Many an association of
local history and past national glory has been awakened to quicken
and enrich the life of the family.
What we want is to see the school, every public school, doing something
of the same sort of work that is now done by Hull House Settlement.
It is a place where ideas and beliefs may be exchanged, not merely
in the arena of formal discussion - for argument alone breeds misunderstanding
and fixes prejudice - but in ways where ideas are incarnated in human
form and clothed with the winning grace of personal life. Classes
for study may be numerous, but all are regarded as modes of bringing
people together, of doing away with barriers of caste, or class, or
race, or type of experience that keep people from real communion with
each other.
(11)
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House
(1910)
In a recent investigation of two hundred working
girls it was found that only five per cent had the use of their own
money and that sixty-two per cent turned in all they earned, literally
every penny, to their mothers. It was through this little investigation
that we first knew Marcella, a pretty young German girl who helped
her widowed mother year after year to care for a large family of younger
children. She was content for the most part although her mother's
old-country notions of dress gave her but an infinitesimal amount
of her own wages to spend on her clothes, and she was quite sophisticated
as to proper dressing because she sold silk in a neighborhood department
store. Her mother approved of the young man who was showing her various
attentions and agreed that Marcella should accept his invitation to
a ball, but would allow her not a penny toward a new gown to replace
one impossibly plain and shabby. Marcella spent a sleepless night
and wept bitterly, although she well knew that the doctor's bill for
the children's scarlet fever was not yet paid. The next day as she
was cutting off three yards of shining pink silk, the thought came
to her that it would make her a fine new waist to wear to the ball.
She wistfully saw it wrapped in paper and carelessly stuffed into
the muff of the purchaser, when suddenly the parcel fell upon the
floor. No one was looking and quick as a flash the girl picked it
up and pushed it into her blouse. The theft was discovered by the
relentless department store detective who, for "the sake of example,"
insisted upon taking the case into court. The poor mother wept bitter
tears over this downfall of her "frommes Mädchen" and
no one had the heart to tell her of her own blindness.
(12)
Max Eastman, wrote about the persecution
of Germans during the First World War in his
book, Love and Revolution (1965)
It became a crime to advocate heavier taxation
instead of bond issues, to criticize the Allies, to say that a referendum
should have preceded the war, or hold that war was contrary to Christ's
teaching. German music was banned, German editors and orchestra leaders
were mobbed, German fried potatoes were swept from the table or renamed.
Robert Prager, accused of pro-Germanism, was lynched in Collinsville,
Illinois; the mob leaders were tried and acquitted. The Reverend Herbert
S. Bigelow, a noted liberal preacher of Toledo, who spoke for the
war but against hating the Germans, was kidnapped and horsewhipped
"in the name of the women and children of Belgium".
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