Germans in the United States

Historical Perspective

A. Country of Origin- The term “German” is used in an ethno-cultural sense to include immigrants who speak German as their primary language. Many came from such countries as Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Russia, France, Italy, Denmark, and Poland.  German-Americans make up the largest ethnic group in the United States.


B. Language(s) - German is the official language. However, the German taught in school and used in the media often differs from the German spoken daily. Dialects vary from area to area. In fact, a German from Bonn or Hannover may have trouble understanding a person from Munich (München), where Bavarian or Halle (Saxon) is spoken.


C. Religious Background - Germany is essentially a Christian, but secular, society. About 34 percent of the population belongs to the Roman Catholic Church; 38 percent is Protestant (mostly Lutheran); and two percent is Muslim. A number of other Christian denominations are active throughout the country.


D. Southern Baptist Work - Konrad A. Fleischmann, a German-born Baptist preacher, was considered the first missionary among the German-speaking population in the United States. In 1893, Marie Buhlmaier, at the urging of the First German Baptist Church, Baltimore, Maryland, Annie Armstrong, and the former  Home Mission Board (now the North American Mission Board), began a work among the German immigrants arriving in Baltimore.


E. Past Challenges - Germans tend to blend in with the society at large, becoming invisible ethnics, and hard to minister to.


G. Past Immigration Patterns - The first German settlers arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, in October 1608.  They became the first craftsmen to manufacture glass, soap, and other products in America.  On October 6, 1683, Franz Daniel Pastorius, considered the "Father of German Immigration," founded the first permanent all-German settlement in North America at Germantown, Pennsylvania.  The first large wave of German immigration resulted from the French invasion of southwest Germany during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), which left much of the region in ruins. 

By 1790, German-Americans made up one-tenth of the total U.S. population.  Five million German-speaking immigrants came to the United States between 1800 and 1900. German immigration increased substantially during the 1830s and 1840s, when Germany was rocked by revolutions aimed to unite the German states under a republican form of government like that of the United States. The failure of these revolutions caused thousands of Germans to immigrate to America.  Many of these immigrants moved to the western frontier in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys.  

After the Civil War, German-Americans helped build the rapidly industrializing nation, making important contributions in agriculture, business, and industry. Carl Schurz became the first German-born member of a presidential cabinet when Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him Secretary of the Interior in 1877. Other German-Americans won election to Congress and to state and local offices across the country. In the 1930s, the rise of National Socialism, or Nazism, in Germany drove more Germans to immigrate to the United States, including German Jews, intellectuals, and opponents of the Nazi regime. Another massive wave of immigration occurred after World War II ended in 1945. Most of these immigrants came from eastern and southeastern Europe, where millions of Germans had been expelled. Large numbers of Germans continued to immigrate to the United States throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The ethnic heritage revival of the 1970s in the United States fostered interest in cultural roots, family history, and ethnic origins, encouraging a renewal of pride in German heritage. 


II. Current/Future Challenges

A. Population - According to the 1990 U.S. census, almost 60 million Americans, or roughly one-fourth of the nation's total population, claim German ancestry. Today's German-Americans are descendants of the approximately 8 million German-speakers who immigrated to the United States, the majority of who arrived in the nineteenth century. Most German-Americans live in the "German Belt," the 21 states where they constitute more than one-fourth of the population. These states are Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.  


B. Present Immigration Patterns - Today, some German-Americans reside in rural areas working on the same land their families settled in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since the end of World War II, the majority of German-Americans who lived in urban areas moved from the inner cities to the suburbs. As a result, urban German communities no longer congregate in geographically defined neighborhoods as in the past, but center around community organizations and institutions.


A 1998 United States Bureau of the Census study showed that in 1990, there were 806,936 German foreign-born persons in the United States. A total of 93,772 persons entered the United Stats between 1980 and 1990. Among the employed persons 16 years of age and over -23,049,474 in total - 6.4 million were employed in managerial and professional fields.



C. Church Planting - Today, there are distinct German-speaking Baptist works in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Cary, North Carolina; and a German Bible class at First Baptist Church in Naples, Florida.  

E. Family Life

 
Education is a source of pride, especially in the areas of technology and craftsmanship. The states administer public education. Preschool begins around age four. Full-time schooling is mandatory between the ages of six and 15, and part- or full-time schooling continues on a chosen track until age 18. Students may enter a job-training program, train for specific professional careers, or study to enter a university.

III. Resources

• Non published-Individual research done by Mark Hobafcovich.
• “German Americans” by Mark Hobafcovich, Profiles of People Groups in North America.
• Culturegrams 2002: www.culturegrams.com