DURING the reign of Charles II (1660-85) some thirteen German families arrived in Philadelphia. They were precursors of a substantial emigration from Germany to the United States. Indeed by the eve of the American Revolution there were over 100,000 German immigrants and their descendants living in the thirteen colonies. Thus the Germans were to constitute the first group that challenged the predominantly English nature of the American colonies. Subsequently, in the century and a half from 1820 to 1970, more than six million Germans found their way to America. What brought about this outpouring from the fatherland? What prompted so many Germans to come to the United States? Related to the English who speak a Germanic language and whose dynasty came from the German state of Hanover, how were the Germans received first in the colonies and later in the Republic? What contribution did they make and how did they fare in the two World Wars when Germany found herself on the opposite side of the United States? These are questions this essay will focus upon, commencing with the reasons for the massive migration.

    Germany as a state is a relatively recent creation. For the greater part of the modem period, the German-speaking people of Europe did not have one centralized government. When, in the sixteenth century, the Reformation destroyed the unity of Christendom, many of the ensuing religious wars were fought on German soil, by Germans against Germans. The issue was not confined to the German world, however, and thus Germany became the battleground of Danes, Frenchmen, Swedes, and Spaniards. The havoc wrought by the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) devastated Germany for many decades: commerce declined; industry was crippled; and intellectual life sustained a deep if not mortal blow. Politically, too, Germany seemed to stagnate. The Hapsburg attempt to unite Germany was frustrated, and the country remained divided for more than two centuries. Particularism, euphemistically termed the "German Liberties," triumphed completely as the small princes preserved their petty states at the expense of unification. Thus the territory between the Elbe and the Rhine, the North Sea and the Alps, led a sleepy existence under her parochial princes.

    Germany’s quiet was ended by the series of events that erupted in the latter half of the eighteenth century: the enlightenment, the development of absolutism in Austria and Prussia, and most important of all, the French Revolution. Nowhere, with the possible exception of Italy, was the impact of the French Revolution as great as it was in Germany. Under Napoleon the boundaries of the German states were redrawn so that in place of some three hundred separate states, less than fifty remained. German nationalism was aroused by the French invasion. It was particularly stimulated by the humiliating defeat of Prussia and the subsequent Prussian reform movement under the inspiration of Baron von Stein. This inspiration was purchased at the price of military defeat and the disruption of an already troubled economy.

    The states of Austria and Prussia had played a key role in the Quadruple Alliance that had forced Napoleon to surrender, encouraging some German nationalists to feel that the dream of unification could no longer be thwarted. After all France, their major enemy, had finally been defeated; the territorial changes of Napoleon, and particularly the elimination of many of the smaller states, had ushered in the process of unification; and, finally, middle-class businessmen had come to appreciate the benefits of a common market that unification would inevitably provide.

    These possible advantages were offset by a number of factors which continued to hinder consolidation. France, although defeated, was still a major power and had much to say about the reconstruction of the postwar period, and her opposition to German unification was well known. Furthermore, the Russians who emerged from the war a dominant force in European politics, were not anxious for such unity. Nor were the English, who sought a balance of power on the continent. Meanwhile the smaller German states were determined to maintain their existence. They remained in alliance with Austria, which, unable to unite Germany herself, therefore determined that it not be united against her. They presented a formidable barrier to the idea of unification.

    Consequently the old federal structure - the Bund - was reinstated under the leadership of the Austrian foreign minister, Count Metternich. Known as the "Coachman" of Europe, this astute Austrian Minister devised that the Bund, to serve his state’s interests, should have a maximum influence in Germany at the cost of a minimum effort. It completely failed to satisfy the demands of German nationalists. For one thing the organization had a Diet rather than a Parliament, and it represented states rather than people. Then, too, it provided no concrete provisions for the military defense of the fatherland. Even more discouraging, there was no mechanism for the modification of this structure, no provision whereby the confederation might become a federation and eventually a federal state. Perhaps most important of all was the failure of the Bund to create economic unity at a time when some coordination was necessary to confront the severe problems facing the people of Germany.

    Following the Congress of Vienna (1815), Germany, and indeed most of Central Europe, faced severe economic problems and lacked the leadership to provide solutions. The invasions and the demands of the war had left a legacy of heavy provincial and national debts, and throughout Germany the upper classes cringed at the thought of the taxes that would have to be imposed to salvage the budget. In part their hesitation stemmed from the fact that increased taxation would pinpoint the inequity of a social system in which feudalism survived and upper-class privileges continued. Despite the talk of reform the feudal nobility still remained the first order throughout most of Germany, furnishing not only the higher government officials and bureaucrats, and the most important figures in the Church, but most of the army officers as well.

    As a result of Germany’s economic retardation, its middle class remained small and weak. The trading and shop keeping classes, as well as the artisan class, found their position progressively undermined. These groups were prepared to take drastic steps, including emigration and revolution, to improve their status. Finally there were farmers who constituted the majority of the population in this still preindustrial society. In addition to the feudal landlords, who were to convert their estates to a capitalist economy during this period, there were wealthy nonfeudal farmers, small freeholders, feudal tenants, and finally the agricultural laborers, who were at the bottom of the economic ladder.

    This social stratification had long prevailed, but the revolutionary wars and the long period of almost continuous political reorganization had generated a sense of restlessness and had pinpointed the possibility of change throughout Germany. The economy of the countryside, the towns, and the cities was seriously compromised by the heavy concentration of the German population on a not very fertile soil. Furthermore the ending of the continental system and inadequate tariff protection could not stem the flood of cheap manufactured goods from abroad with which the artisan producers of Central Europe could not compete. In areas such as Baden, Wurttemberg and Rhineland Prussia, the dislocation was so serious that it proved impossible to reabsorb the soldiers who returned from the campaign against Napoleon. The governments of the various German states only belatedly recognized the danger and did not introduce any innovative or positive program to deal with it. The states did not seriously consider coordinating their efforts in dealing with the economic malaise, looking only as far as their own frontiers, and even within their own boundaries they preferred to overlook most difficulties. In Western Germany where some action was necessary, the solution favored by the various governments was to discourage marriage as well as to restrict the individual’s right to raise a family. The negative approach inspired little confidence on the part of the Western Germans who saw that they would have to find their own means of survival in the difficult postwar period.

    Compounding the problem in Southwest Germany was the custom of dividing the land among all the children in a family. This brought about a division of holdings into strips that were soon found to be inadequate for the families which farmed them. To cope with this land shortage some relied upon more intensive farming, others depended upon the supplementary income provided by a number of domestic industries, while still others turned to emigration as the sole means of salvation. Increasingly, artisans and farmers found that their labor could no longer provide for their needs. Emigration became a desperate necessity.

    Emigrating or wandering away from one’s home was not something new to the people of Southwestern Germany; some had wandered as far east as Russia or had found their way west to America by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The memory carried over into the nineteenth century, providing a safety valve should the economic situation deteriorate any further. Conditions in Central Europe were far from good in the early nineteenth century. Food prices in parts of Germany had doubled within five years, and the fear of famine continued to haunt large parts of the population. Still, all would have been well if in 1816 Germany had been blessed with a good harvest. Instead, a very warm spring, a cool and excessively wet summer, a series of floods, a plague of mice, and an early winter proved disastrous for the crops.

    The social consequences of the crop failure were calamitous; large parts of the countryside were rendered unsafe by hordes of thieves and beggars. The sentimental ties that held men to their villages and homes quickly snapped under the pressure of fear and hunger. Government, as before, showed itself ineffectual in confronting the disaster. Consequently Germans by the thousands spontaneously began to leave their homes, producing a great wave of emigration. Some 20,000 found their way to the United States, while almost as many went to the Hapsburg Empire and Tsarist Russia.

    This flight, ignored by a large part of the political class, was explained as the work of swindlers and fanatics by those who investigated the matter only superficially. Even the noted Friedrich List, commissioned to get to the root of the problem, failed to understand the urgency of the economic question. Heinrich von Gagem, on the other hand, quickly saw the economic problem, but proved unable to provide a solution, suggesting that the Bundestag take federal action. His call served to highlight the need for a national parliament and some sort of unification beyond the tenuous ties preserved among Germans by means of the confederation.

    Fortunately, the economic situation improved with the harvest of 1817, so that the natural conditions that had done so much to provoke the emigration, now served to curtail it. Because it was short in duration the outpouring of 1816—17 was overshadowed by the more massive outpourings which followed. Nonetheless, it was extremely important because for every German who left the Reich there were hundreds of others who were on the verge of taking the same step. Furthermore the impact of this emigration was to strengthen the ties between Germany and America and fix the New World in the minds of many as a possible haven should another series of troubles commence and life in Germany prove unbearable.

    For the moment emigration remained slight and was to remain so until the end of the 1820’s. Then in 1830 an increasing population, political instability, and revolutionary agitation, as well as a precipitous rise in the cost of living contributed to the mid-century transatlantic migration which did not abate until the mid-1850’s. As before, the emigration was most pronounced in the South and West of Germany and was largely composed of families of lower- and middle-class background. The outrageously high price of land in comparison to the income derived from it served as an incentive to sell and move elsewhere. The economic malaise of the small farmer worked to curtail his spending and therefore hit the artisan classes who relied upon his purchases. Weavers, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, tailors— all found their incomes dwindling and were therefore encouraged to emigrate. More and more Germans looked to America as the land where they could begin their lives anew.

    If the news from America was appealing and served as a positive pull factor, conditions in Germany worked to push an increasing number of her people out. Among the causes for disillusionment and dissatisfaction were the cholera epidemics, popular disturbances, anti-Semitic outbursts, rumors of war and revolution, heavy taxes, infringements upon personal rights, including conscription, restriction of the right to marry, and the persistence of the inequitable social system. For thousands of Germans the future appeared precarious and their economic prospects dismal; this lack of opportunity in the foreseeable future served to strengthen the resolve of many to leave the old country.

    In the nineteenth century large areas of Germany were as dependent as Ireland upon the potato crop to the extent that even a minimal crop failure would have grave consequences. Hence there was a widespread concern when the potato blight began to appear in different parts of Central Europe in the early 1840’s. This apprehension was justified, for in 1845 the blight destroyed the potato crop throughout northern Europe, playing havoc with the already precarious Germany economy. As in 1816, in 1846 salvation from catastrophe was sought in a good harvest, but, instead, Germans were to learn that their potato crop was rotting in the dry ground while the rye crop was damaged by an early frost. Even the most optimistic souls were forced to conclude that the food situation would inevitably get much worse before it improved and that starvation was inevitable in large parts of the fatherland.

    The ensuing famine could not be localized as no part of Germany proved immune to the shortage of food or the resulting astronomical prices. Peasants and farmers by the thousands fled from the countryside but found that the preindustrial cities of Germany did not have much to offer them in the way of employment. Under this situation many who had thought they would only have to venture to the nearest adjacent town found they would have to travel much further to find the security they craved. Given the widespread depression, emigration seemed the only solution for many. Whereas some 8,000 Germans entered the United States in the decade from 1820 to 1830, and some 152,000 in the following decade, over 430,000 entered from 1840 to 1850. In 1847 alone more than 100,000 found their way to the United States.

    Then in January, 1848, the people of Palermo rose in rebellion against Neapolitan rule, shattering the repression of the Age of Metternich, 1815—48. This was followed in February by a revolution in Paris which drove Louis Philippe out of his capital and led to the proclamation of the Second French Republic. In March, the people of Vienna broke the power of Prince Metternich, forcing him to flee and sparking a revolution in Berlin and a spirit of rebellion throughout Germany. This revolutionary turmoil persuaded some to pack and leave home, while the restoration of 1849 forced others to emigrate. However, it would be a mistake to hold the political revolutions or the ensuing repression entirely responsible for the mid-century emigration. Political refugees were the exception rather than the rule; they were émigrés rather than emigrants. Indeed during the years from 1848 to 1850, the number of German emigrants declined from their 1847 and pre-Revolutionary peak, indicating that economic rather than political factors were the key to the mid-century exodus.

    Likewise in the post revolutionary period, the economic situation continued to play a decisive role as the German population grew rapidly, outpacing the quickening industrial growth. The population increase combined with poor harvests from 1850 to 1853 to stimulate a new outpouring of Germans—over half a million left in these years—which reached a peak in 1854. The greater number came from southern and western areas, long centers of emigration, although by the mid 1850’s all of Germany was affected. Those who wished to stop the exodus stooped to telling exaggerated stories of American atrocities against its German-speaking minority, stressing the real prejudices of the Know-Nothings and other anti-immigrant groups and parties, and claimed that the American economy was subject to natural calamity and cyclical unemployment. Few listened to such stories, and Germans continued to cross the Atlantic in search of a better and more prosperous life. During the 18SO’s close to one million Germans left their native lands, and the bulk found their way to the United States. Eventually the tide of emigration ebbed as the German economy improved and the Civil War rendered life in America less attractive.

    In the 1860’s, the Prussian Chancellor Otto von’ Bismarck paved the way for the German Empire which was proclaimed in 1871. It was an answer to the prayers of German nationalists and liberals. However, not all Germans were satisfied or felt that their needs had been met, for some million and a half Germans emigrated overseas between the creation of the Empire and the mid 1880s. Of these, the vast majority once again found their way to the United States. There is still no consensus as to what caused this last outpouring. Some have stressed the dislocation of the German agrarian economy following the importation of grains from America and Russia. Others blame the building of railways which reached into Eastern Germany and facilitated the movement of masses of people from formerly remote regions. Still others point to the decline in the cost of crossing the Atlantic, while some maintain that the military conscription practiced by the new state was responsible for the flight of many of its subjects.

    Whatever the reason, large numbers of Germans continued to leave the homeland and did so until 1895 when the exodus from Germany slowed to a trickle. Indeed after this time there was a substantial flow of Germans back to the fatherland. Most observers believe that the great German prosperity of the prewar decade made emigration not only unattractive but unnecessary. However by this time millions of Germans were in the New World and were to play an important role in the United States where they represented the largest immigrant group next to the English.

    Most of these Germans had ventured to the United States in search of a better life, expecting that the New World would perforce have to be better than the old. Were their expectations fulfilled? Were they well received by their native American neighbors? Did they assimilate readily? It is to these matters that we now turn.

    As noted earlier, the first influx of German immigrants made their way to Pennsylvania. There, Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers and one of the most eminent Americans, rather than displaying a balanced attitude toward these newcomers from the German states reflected a narrow Anglo-American bias. He tended to overlook many of their positive attributes, harping upon their political immaturity, social incivility and the questionable business practices of a small minority.

    In 1750, Franklin wrote to one of his correspondents that "Because of the disagreeableness of the dissonant manners of the Germans their English speaking neighbors would have preferred to move away." Again in 1753, Franklin presented the American’s stereotype of Germans: "Those [Germans] who come hither are generally the most stupid of their own nation.. . not being used to liberty they know not how to make modest use of it. And as Holbein says of the Hottentots, they are not esteemed men until they have shown their manhood by beating their mothers, so these seem not to think themselves free, till they can feel their liberty in abusing and insulting their teachers."

    But, by far, Franklin’s most xenophobic and vitriolic outburst directed against the Germans can be found in his Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind (1751). There he asked, "Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements and, by herding together, establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them?"

    The Pennsylvania legislature reacted to this alarm. In 1729, it had passed a measure which placed a duty of five shillings on each foreigner coming into the colony. In 1755 it went further by passing a bill that would prevent ships from carrying Germans into the colony. The Governor refused to sign this legislation; instead, the heirs of William Penn encouraged German immigration. The Germans were sought because they were good craftsmen and farmers and they caused the proprietor little trouble.

    Others, however, viewed the Germans as a dangerous group because of their insistence on using their own language, their reliance upon German pastors, and their publication of German newspapers. Their hostility to the Germans was muted during the Revolutionary War. Then with the decline of immigration to America in the period of 1776 to 1820, the native-born Americans had the opportunity to impose upon the new nation a decidedly Anglo-American culture and tradition.

    The German immigrants who came in the nineteenth century had two choices. The majority view represented by Curl Schurz, an outstanding German-American of this period, insisted that the Germans must accommodate themselves to the American way of life. The minority view was represented by Gottfried Duden, whom we have already met as the author of a popular immigrant guide. He and several others wanted to set up a German nation within the United States. This idea had the support of the New York Germanic Society which tried in 1839 to set up such a colony. It failed because most Germans did not want to establish a new Germany in America. They congregated together in the New World for social rather than for political reasons.

    The native Americans developed an unfortunate stereotype of the Germans. It was based in part on their religious practices. Most Americans were not consistent churchgoers, but they nevertheless believed that the Sabbath was a day to be celebrated sedately. The Germans, especially the Lutherans, on the other hand, had their picnics and their beer gardens. They were considered by the nativists to be desecrating this holy day. Then, too, many of the Germans who came to America as a result of the potato blight, 1845—47, were predominantly Roman Catholic and were condemned as much for their Catholicism as for their Germanness. Some of these German immigrants, in demanding German-speaking clerics, antagonized both the Lutheran Synods and the Catholic hierarchy. Even their co-religionists often found this group of German immigrants quite difficult to handle.

    As well as being attacked for violations of the Sabbath and their Catholicism, Germans were also accused of being atheists. The pejorative attitude of the nativists rested on a small but articulate number of Germans who had fled to the United States after the failure of the revolution of 1848. Another stereotype presented the German as a stolid beer drinker, heavy of girth and dull of mind. They were condemned at once as Protestant violators of the Sabbath, as Catholics controlled by their priests, and as atheists. Such views of the German-American dominated nativist thinking in the nineteenth century.

    Hostility to the Germans became most obvious in the Louisville riot of 1855 led by the antiforeigner Know-Nothings. But other factors played a role. The German-American efforts to perpetuate the German language caused difficulties. And the German government’s foreign policies created suspicions of the German immigrants and their descendants.

    The German-Americans congregated mainly in the Mid West, especially in Wisconsin and Illinois. There, whether Lutherans or Catholics, they were able to set up both public and parochial schools which taught in the German language. This agitated many native Americans who believed that this kind of education retarded the Americanization of the Germans. In 1890, the Bennett law was passed in Wisconsin and the Edwards law in Illinois. Both called for compulsory attendance at schools where instruction was to be given in English.

    The German Lutherans were incensed at the English-language requirement. So, too, was the Catholic prelate of Milwaukee, the German-American Archbishop Francis X. Katzer, who insisted on the retention of the German language. When both laws were repealed, the American Protective Association saw these repeals as proof that a foreign Catholic conspiracy controlled these states.

    Following unification, the Reich’s foreign policy also caused German-Americans some difficulties. During America’s involvement in the Spanish-American War (1898), Admiral Dewey’s fleet was harassed by German vessels in Philippine waters. But the greatest outbreak of anti-German hostility manifested itself during the course of World War I. During this conflict, the loyalty of the German-Americans was seriously questioned. At times, the nativists’ fears reached ridiculous heights. German place names were changed or their pronunciation altered. Hamburgers became Salisbury steaks, frankfurters became hot dogs. There was even suspicion that German-Americans were putting ground glass in Red Cross bandages to thwart the war effort.

    German-Americans, however, were loyal. During the years-s of America’s neutrality, 1914—17, the German-American press tended to be sympathetic to the fatherland. Once America entered the conflict, the German-American press supported the American war effort.

    Nonetheless, the nativists’ attack on German-American culture continued. The German language was forbidden in many school systems. German-speaking families frequently dared not indulge in the practice. Most German-language newspapers began to publish in English. German-American societies often disbanded because mobs of one hundred percent Americans attacked their meetings. German opera was boycotted as well. It was a popular mood of indignation that transformed the old beer-drinking German into the vicious, barbaric Hun. Fortunately, with the end of the war, this hostility abated almost as quickly as it had begun.

    In World War II, this agitation did not arise, though some German-Americans were accused of being pro-Hitler and pro-Nazi. It is true that some 50,000 German-Americans were members of the German-American Bund, but the overwhelming number of German-Americans were loyal to their new country. In many ways, the German-American General Dwight D. Eisenhower best symbolized their attitude.

    The German-American experience was not always as dismal as during the dark days of the world wars. In the Midwest, where Germans rarely became public charges, they were by and large respected, and except for their temperance violations they were accepted as good citizens. The beer-drinking stereotype declined markedly after the Civil War. In its place, the German-Americans were pictured as hard-working, thrifty homeowners who usually made excellent neighbors, and good Americans.

    What is the process by which an immigrant group becomes Americanized? This issue has occupied a good many immigrant historians. Usually the native Americans try to push the immigrants into an Anglo-American mold: English-speaking, hardworking, law-abiding, and Protestant. Large numbers of Germans refused to follow this road completely, especially in their efforts to retain the German language. The harder Americans tried to coerce them to accept the use of English, the stiffer became the German opposition.

    Nonetheless, some German-Americans were speedily Americanized. One such person was John Anthony Quitman. He was born in Rhinebeck, New York. His father served the local German Lutheran Church as a minister for over a quarter of a century. Young Quitman was educated for the ministry but forsook that career and became a lawyer instead. He then moved to Ohio where he remained for a year. Then he settled in Mississippi where he married a local American girl, became a plantation owner, and never referred to his German background. He was elected to the Mississippi State Senate in 1835 and 1836 and went on to hold other public offices. In the Mexican War, he served with distinction as a Brigadier-General, then a Major-General. On the basis of his war record, he was twice elected Governor of Mississippi (1850—51). A German-American, Quitman nonetheless found it relatively easy to achieve acceptance in a completely non-German area.

    Other German-Americans, while unwilling to follow Governor Quitman’s pattern, were willing to accommodate themselves to the reality of life in America. They spoke English in business and a number of German-American churches even used the English language in their services. Some German immigrants who came to America after the Civil War were appalled at the changes they found in the German Lutheran and German Reform churches, where the services were held in English. But others found this pattern agreeable.

    German-born Gustav Koerner’s career in Illinois represents in many ways, the spirit of accommodation. Koerner studied law, passed the bar, and, for a time, became the law partner of the Irish-born politician, James Shields. Koemer himself became active in Illinois politics. But his power rested on his German-American constituency. His interest in the fatherland remained strong. In 1848, he tried to use his influence with his former law partner, now General Shields, to obtain a diplomatic appointment to Germany. Shields made a half-hearted effort, so that Koerner’s bid to return to Germany at the expense of the American government was thwarted. The interest, however, was there. Remaining in Illinois, Koerner was one of the organizers of the Republican party in Illinois and became the Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois in the post-Civil War period.

    By far the most prominent German-American in American political life was Carl Schurz. He had been forced to flee from Germany after the failure of the revolution of 1848. First he went to England where he spent three years. He and his bride then came to the United States. When Schurz reached America he believed that his German roots had been cut permanently.

    Schurz, like Koerner, opposed the efforts to establish a New Germany in America. He insisted that he had become an American and was no longer a German. In 1859, he’ delivered an address at Cooper Union in New York which he called "True Americanism." On that occasion, he outlined the policy of acculturation: one did not have to be anti-German to be a true American. Schurz subsequently became a lawyer in Wisconsin. He then moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he became editor of a German-American newspaper. Though the paper was published in German, Schurz opposed all efforts to set up segregated German communities.

    The whole thrust of Schurz’s career was to immerse himself in American life, especially in American politics. He was one of the most vocal supporters of Abraham Lincoln in the elections of 1860 and 1864. As a reward he was appointed Minister to Spain. But at the outbreak of hostilities in 1861 between the Union and the Confederacy, he elected to serve and was appointed a General in the Union army. After the war, he became a United States Senator from Missouri. In the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes (1877—81), he became Secretary of the Interior. The reason for his political rise was simple enough: he was able, and he was considered to be the Republican party’s German-American spokesman.

    The German-American community in the United States lost much of its parochialism as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, 1870—71, which finally resulted in German unification under Bismarck. The German press reflected pride and enthusiasm for the unification of the fatherland. Shortly thereafter, the German-American Alliance was organized. It became the largest ethnic organization in America. At the turn of the century, it had over one and a quarter million members.

    For the most part, the German-American community followed the path laid out by Koerner and Schurz. Some followed the example of Quitman, but, by and large, the Germans in America were unwilling to toss aside their German cultural heritage. Nor were they willing to ignore their American environment and its cultural demands. They tried to balance the two, and in the process became Americans.

    How successful have these German-Americans been? What are their achievements? Whether the German-American community, or any ethnic group for that matter, has been successful, depends on what one means by success, and achievement.

    Many immigration historians believe that the German immigrants have been, next to the English, the most easily assimilable and the most successful. Certainly if we measure the success of the Germans of the eighteenth century with those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by examining bank accounts, home ownership, factories, breweries, then the latter Germans may be considered more successful. But if viewed from the frame of reference of the Pietist sects of the eighteenth century— the Pennsylvania Amish are an example—then the question posed by the Gospel of St. Matthew, chapter 25: "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul," becomes relevant. Within this frame of reference, while America has given much, it has also taken a good deal.

    America’s impact on the Germans who ventured to the United States has produced mostly positive results as suggested above. What has been the German-American contribution to America? Certainly, the German immigrants have had a beneficial effect on education, America’s celebration of Christmas and Easter. and a tremendous amount of technological innovation in publishing, transportation, and music to emphasize three particular areas. They are only a part of the inventive genius of the Germans. Naturally enough, they also have their political figures.

    The Germans were among the first to set up a kindergarten in the United States. Two German groups claim credit for establishing the idea in America. One, Mrs. Carl Schurz (1855) in Missouri, the other the Poppenhusen Institute (1868) in New York. The latter group was established by a grant of $100,000 by the wealthy German industrialist, Conrad Poppenhusen. This idea became extremely popular in American education. But the German impact on American education was also felt in America’s secondary schools. The German immigrants brought with them the idea of fitness of the body as well as of the mind. On the college level the Germans also had an impact. Before the Civil War, American scholars went to the German universities and there came in contact with the graduate training offered by these institutions. But this factor was more the influence of Germany on American scholars than it was the result of German immigration.

    On the popular level, the German-Americans influenced the American celebration of Christmas and Easter. "Silent Night" is a German hymn. Santa Claus with his white beard and red and white suit is of German derivation. Then too, the Easter bunny and Easter eggs are of German origin. The German-American religious influence was not restricted to the celebration of Christmas and Easter. They had a profound impact on American Lutheranism and Judaism. The Lutherans in America are primarily Germans. The conservatism of German Lutheranism was transferred to the United States. The German-Jewish community brought Reform Judaism to America. Originating in Germany, it liberalized the tenets of Orthodox Judaism. It has had its greatest impact in America.

    One can list literally thousands of German-American inventors, including Dr. Werner von Braun, the physicist responsible for America’s space program. But who can think of American publishing without the work of the German-American inventor of the linotype machine, Otto Meyer Mergenthaler? Who can think of bridges and transportation without remembering the supreme achievement of John Augustus Roebling and the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge? And what would America be like without the great Steinway pianos, introduced by William Steinway and continued to this day by John Steinway. Steinway’s concern for his workers was well known. He was an advisor to President Grover Cleveland, and, at the end of the nineteenth century, was one of the major German-American industrialists and spokesmen for the German-American community.

    In politics, the German-Americans had many successes. Koerner and Schurz have already been mentioned. In 1892, Illinois elected the Democrat, John Peter Altgeld, a German-American, governor. Much earlier, William Havemeyer, organizer of the sugar refinery trust, was elected mayor of New York City. And, of course, the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President of the United States in 1952 has brought the German-American achievement to a culmination.

    The Germans who came to this country throughout its history have given much to the nation. They have been attacked, especially during the World War I years, but, more often than not, they have provided America with much talent and little trouble.

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARRY, COLEMAN. The Catholic Church and German-Americans. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1953.

DORPALEN, ANDREAS. "The German Element and the Issues of the Civil War," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXIX (1942), 55—76.

FAUST, ALBERT BERNHARDT. The German Element in the United States with Special Reference to Its Political, Moral, Social and Educational Influence. 2 vols. New York: Amo, 1989.

HANSEN, MARCUS. The Atlantic Migration, 1607—1860: A History of the Continuing Settlement of the United States. New York:  Torchbook, 1961, pp. 220—41.

HAWGOOD, JOHN A. The Tragedy of German America. New York: Putnam, 1940.

KEIM, JEANETTE, Forty Years of German-American Political Relations. Philadelphia: W. J. Dornan, 1919.

KOERNER, GUSTAV. Memoirs of Gustav Koerner, 1809—1896: Life Sketches Written at the Suggestion of His Children, ed. Thomas