German - American
I’m just about to go to the US Embassy in Dublin. It’s a grand affair and I’m looking forward to it. It’s about the continuing story of the Irish and America – more a love affair than story.
America, today’s America, was built on European immigration. Some of that immigration has been celebrated, nowhere more so than with the story of Irish emigration there. Today there are now nearly 35 million Americans who report having Irish heritage. That’s around seven times the population of Ireland today. Everyone has heard of Ireland’s contribution but did you know it is not the largest immigrant group in the Unites States.
Currently 40 to 60 million Americans cite “German” as their primary origin and that represents the largest immigrant group in the US. That group is even greater than those descended from Irish and Italian immigrants.
Historians reckon that about seven million Germans left Europe for the New World in the course of four centuries. German emigration to America began at the end of end of the 17th century. It was a time of upheaval and war throughout Europe. The 16th century Protestant Reformation had created a new Europe, one that was still being born one hundred years later often in war and persecution. Nowhere more so was this the case than in the various German-speaking parts of Europe. As yet there was no Germany, not as we would recognize it today, that wouldn’t happen until 1870.
In addition, many Germans lived in poverty, especially farmers, their very existence threatened by failed harvests and land shortages in what was still a system derived from Feudal times. So, perhaps inevitably, many farmers and others too decided to leave German for a new land that appeared to offer both freedom and the chance of a prosperous new life. That land was America.
In 1683 a group of 13 Quaker families left for New England from Krefeld. Once landed, they founded Germantown. This was to be the first German settlement. Today it is a suburb of Philadelphia. In 1709, from the Palatinate, 3,000 peasant farmers set out for the New World. They settled in what is now Albany, New York. In the mid-19th century, around three quarters of German farmers did not have enough land to make a living. So, from 1816 onwards, they began migrating in large numbers. This marks the start of German mass emigration to the USA. As the 19th century progressed, and with the start of industrialization, the living conditions in Germany worsened. The population grew dramatically as well allied with all the resultant problems of crowded cities and unhealthy lifestyles around factories and industrial centers. Many dreamed of a better life across the Atlantic.
As well Europe continued to revolt. 1848 and 1870 brought revolution and change to the continent, nowhere more so than in the German speaking central Europe. The failure of the Revolution of 1848 proved for many that true freedoms and the rights that accompany them were but a distant prospect in the Old World of hierarchy and ‘place’. This was in stark contrast to all that seemed possible in America. So many of Europe’s liberal middle classes began immigrating to America. These became known as the “48ers”.
Once arrived in the USA, Germans quickly established schools, churches and clubs, in which the German language and culture was preserved and cultivated.
In the workplace, Germans were equally represented in both agriculture and industry. But one characteristic of the new German immigrants was their mobility. They spread across the continent working in a variety of occupations. They became part of the great European adventure of discovering the possibilities that America afforded then, and still affords today.
The sad history of the 20th century changed how Germans were perceived in America. At the outbreak of the First World War, German-Americans came under pressure to hide their ethnic identity. The resultant anti-German hysteria caused by the war meant that the German language and culture were hidden from mainstream America. This situation was exacerbated by the events of the Second World War. It would be fair to say that no other ethnic group disappeared from mainstream America to quite the same extent as did the German-Americans during the course of the 20th century.
Post Second World War, the USA remained an important destination for German emigrants, however. Not least on account of the many fiancées and wives of American soldiers who had been stationed in Germany after the war. As well there was a regular flow of academics and highly qualified professionals from Germany across the Atlantic. In 2017, it is estimated that around 12,500 Germans immigrated to America.
Mount Bonnell works with many Germans and Austrians who are making the same journey their ancestors did. These men and women today come to a land that offers much to them by way of opportunity. Like those who came before they too are skilled and mobile and willing to integrate into the American political and economic systems. Like those who came before they want to make a contribution to their new country. They want to be good citizens of this still, by European standards, young country. They too have their American Dreams.
My story is part of that history. From Germany to Texas, from the European corporate world to running businesses in the US and living on a ranch – I can confirm that that movement of history, that movement of peoples from central Europe to the US continues today, and no doubt will continue for many years to come.
So I’m off to the US embassy here in Dublin – and more on that later – but for now I’m thinking of German-America, slowly reemerging into the light of the New World and taking its place once more in the family of ethnicities that is the United States of America.
