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MEET GRETA HAUPTNER WHO LEFT GERMANY IN 1810. WHEN THEY CAME. First Wave, 1683: 13 German Quaker families arrive in Philadelphia By 1790, 30% of Pennsylvania’s population was of German descent. THEIR NUMBERS GROW. First peak, 1854: 220,000 Germans registered at American ports
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WHEN THEY CAME • First Wave, 1683: 13 German Quaker families arrive in Philadelphia • By 1790, 30% of Pennsylvania’s population was of German descent
THEIR NUMBERS GROW • First peak, 1854: 220,000 Germans registered at American ports • Second peak, 1882: 250,000 came. In the 1880s, more than a million departed • Third wave, 1950s and 60s: A “brain drain” is created by US’ generous exceptions to immigration quotas for “displaced persons” following WWII.
During the entire decade of the 1930s, only 119,107 immigrated from the German Reich. These were mostly intellectuals, actors, musicians, and artists, creating the first “brain drain” in Germany.
No one knows for sure how many returned to Germany, but what is certain is that during periods of “economic weakness,” many disillusioned did return.
INDENTURED SERVICE:HOW THEY GOT HERE • Frau Hauptner: “My family had no money, so my father arranged our fare with the captain. In return, my mother, brothers, and sisters worked for three years for a local farmer.”
Estimates suggest that half of all early German immigrants financed their passage in this manner.
Profiting from this arrangement were the employers who in 1800 paid “bail” amounts of $70 for a healthy adult in return for three years’ labor. Normally, the owner realized $500-900 profit. While the “serve” laborer worked for 6 cents a day, a “free” laborer earned about 50 cents a day.
*“Serves” almost always fell into the hands of unscrupulous employers.*Usually a farmer would buy a serve because he could not get any hired hands simply because he did not treat them right. *He exploited his “serve” miserably to earn back the passage costs in the shortest time possible.
Conditions could be harsh: If a child died before finishing its contract, the parents or siblings might be required to work the remaining years of the contract (which is why Germans in particular joined the anti-slavery movement).
"An Urgent Warning for Emigrating Young Women" Poster of the German National Committee for International Solidarity Against the White Slave Trade, ca. 1900.
PUSH FACTORS WHY THEY LEFT WHEN THEY LEFT
WHY THEY LEFT –RELIGIOUS REASONS • William Penn spread the word of a new kind of religious freedom • Oft-persecuted sects found a home: German Mennonites, Quakers and Amish
WHY THEY LEFT –RELIGIOUS REASONS • The number of Catholic emigrants, particularly priests and religious orders, increased dramatically following the power struggle between the Prussian State and the Catholic church (1871-1887).
WHY THEY LEFT –RELIGIOUS REASONS Here we see a dispatch hall for Jewish emigrants at the emigration facilities of the Hamburg-America Line in Hamburg-Veddel.
WHY THEY LEFT:POLITICAL MOTIVATION • Emigration began in earnest in 1830 when the government persecuted liberals and democrats. • Several thousand revolutionaries left after the failed German Revolution of 1848. Most of these considered themselves asylum seekers. (Hence, historically, Germans have been political activists in the US.)
WHY THEY LEFT:POLITICAL MOTIVATION • The National Socialist government, 1933-1945, pushed Social Democrats and opponents of the regime out, among them Jews and others threatened with extermination.
WHY THEY LEFT:ECONOMIC MOTIVATION • Wheat crop failures, poor wine harvests, and a potato blight made for more misery. • In the early phase of the industrial revolution, when home spinning wheels fell idle but before other industries had sprung up, there were too many workers for too little work.
FRAU HAUPTNER:“Times were so difficult. There was no work; people could not survive on so little food. We had to go or face starvation.”
PULL FACTORS WHY THEY RELOCATED WHERE THEY DID
*Like other immigrant groups, the Germans followed the natural instinct of forming neighborhoods with their countrymen where they felt at home far away from home. *They preferred to head for a region where they could still acquire reasonably priced farm land in areas where German-language churches and perhaps German schools already existed.
"German Immigrants on Their Way to New Braunfels, Texas" (ca.1850)
The States of the South held little attraction for German immigrants following the Civil War. They were unable to compete with the favorable conditionsfor western land acquisition provided by the Homestead Act of 1862, nor could the South compete with the wages paid in the textile and steel industries on the EastCoast.
The dream of most German immigrants in the 18th and 19th centuries was the debt-free ownership of a farm. Taking up city residence initially often was a strategy to build up savings of $50 to $150. Around 1850 in Missouri this sum was sufficient for a down payment on a farm of about 40 acres, the size needed to make a living. In addition, another $500 was needed for implements, livestock, and seed.
*Germans held an equally high profile as businessmen and shopkeepers, and, in the final third of the 1800s, also as skilled laborers. *Some fields of work were filled almost exclusively by Germans (for example, brewers, watchmakers, distillery workers and land surveyors).
GERMAN INDUSTRIALISTS • John Bausch and Henry Lomb: First optical company • Steinway, Knaub and Schnabel: Pianos • Rockefeller: Petroleum • Studebaker and Chrysler: Cars • Frederick Weyerhaeuser: Lumber
Contributions to US Culture • Education: Brought Kindergarten, vocational education, and physical education to America • Zeal for “weekend” life: Picnic grounds, bandstands, sports clubs, concert halls, and bowling alleys! • The Christmas tree, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny!
Especially in high demand in through all periods of immigration were domestic servants:Young women could earn more working in an English-speaking home than in a German-language household of their fellow countrymen.
Family orientation was a highly significant feature. • However, in comparison to other Anglos, the German father played a domineering role. Wife and children were clearly subservient.
Greta Hauptner:“What my father said, went. He had no problem using a switch or berating us endlessly. But he was no different from the other German fathers in our neighborhood. They were tough men.”
Wife beating was less tolerated in America. Carl Wihl “…beat up his wife for every little thing,” reported a neighbor, “and that’s not done here. Here, a wife must be treated like a wife and not like a scrub rag like I saw in Germany so often, that a man does what he wants with a wife. He who likes to beat his wife had better stay in Germany. It doesn’t work here, or soon he’ll not have a wife anymore.”
Living in close proximity meant continuing familiar lifestyles. Adjustment was much easier when one could shop at a German bakery or use a German bank.
Greta Hauptner: “Oh, we always spoke German in school. We took English lessons, but mostly we learned in German. Our Lutheran services were exclusively German. Yankees, of course, didn’t go to our church, so why should we speak English? My Uncle Willard ran the local store, frequented entirely by our German neighbors.”
ENJOYING A GERMAN BEER IN A BEER GARDEN OR TAVERN MADE THE MOVE TO AMERICA TOLERABLE!
Festivals afforded Germans the opportunity to indulge in old-time German style and thereby acknowledge the validity of their national traditions and “moral fiber.”
The leisure-time behavior of US’ largest immigrant population could hardly be kept secret. Sunday beer garden visits bumped straight into the Puritan standard for a day of rest!
Most of the cities and large towns supported at least one German newspaper, sometimes two. These became the “glue” that held German-Americans together up and down the eastern seaboard.
These are some of the German-language newspapers and English Journals on German-Americans still being published in the US. In 1970, 6 million Americans still claimed German as their first language.
Greta Hauptner’s Great Granddaughter:“The anti-Germany sentiment during WWI so shamed and dismayed my parents that they resolved to raise me without acquainting me with the language or the literature or the music or the oral family histories which my ancestors had loved. They volunteered to make me ignorant and rootless as proof of their patriotism.”
One official warned, “Every American must declare himself an American – or a traitor.”
The period for politically significant public displays of “German-ness” ended for good with WWI. There remains no trace of the politically charged “German Day” celebrated in many cities from 1883 to 1933.
Greta Hauptner’s Great, Great, Great, Great Grandson, 2001: “I don’t know. I think somebody in my family might have been German.”
