Few of the German states were seafaring powers, and as a result the
colonization of America was carried out by other nations. However, some Germans
played a role in it. There were, for instance, Germans among the English
colonists at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Prussian-born Peter Minuit {whose
name in German was Minnewit) became the first governor of the Dutch colony of
New Amsterdam in 1626. It was Minuit who purchased the island of Manhattan-
today perhaps the most valuable piece of real estate in the world- from local
Native Americans for trade goods that were worth about 60 Dutch guilders {the
equivalent of $24).
The first large group of German immigrants came from the Rhineland, the area
that had suffered most during the Thirty Years' War of 1618-48. On October 6,
1683, 13 families from the town of Krefeld arrived in Philadelphia on the ship
Concord. They had been invited by William Penn, an English member of the Society
of Friends, or Quakers, who had founded the colony of Pennsylvania a year
earlier. Wishing to populate this vast tract of land with European settlers,
Penn visited the German states to encourage emigration, offering religious
freedom and farmland.
Most of the passengers on the Concord were Mennonites, a Protestant sect whose
practices and beliefs were similar to the Quakers'. Having endured religious
warfare in Europe, the Mennonites were pacifists who opposed all forms of
violence. Their leader, Francis Daniel Pastorius, had arrived earlier, declaring
his intention "to lead a quiet, godly, and honest life in a howling
wilderness." These first German Americans established a community called
Gerrnantown, which still exists within the boundaries of Philadelphia.
Many more German peasants followed during the 18th century . Those who had no
money for their trans-Atlantic passage arrived in America as
"redemptioners," or indentured servants. They agreed to work for a
period of four to seven years to payoff the cost of their ship passage. American
colonial landowners came aboard the newly arrived ships to purchase
redemptioners in a system that was like temporary slavery. Indeed, colonial
newspapers were filled with advertisements offering rewards for redemptioners
who had run away from their masters.
The journey to America in colonial times was uncomfortable at best and deadly at
worst. One German who crossed the Atlantic in 1728 wrote in his diary that the
food on ship "consisted of horrible salted corned pork, peas, barley,
groats, and codfish. The drink was a stinking water, in which all food was
cooked. "
The time it took to cross the Atlantic varied greatly, depending on the time of
year and the weather. Gottlieb Mittelberger, who emigrated in 1750, wrote that
one ship took six months to cross the stormy ocean in winter. Of the 340 persons
who had sailed in it, only 21 survived the voyage. Mittelberger noted that many
ships sank in mid-ocean, a fact he claimed was concealed so that future
emigrants would not be discouraged.
The agents of shipping companies and recruiters for the American colonies made
extensive efforts to attract immigrants. They traveled through the Rhineland in
brightly colored wagons. Drawing a crowd with trumpets and drums, the recruiters
described in glowing terms the life that awaited in America.
In addition to the dream of free farmland, Germans came in search of religious
tolerance. Besides the Mennonites, many Lutherans and Reformed Church members
also arrived in colonial America, often coming from the German states Bavaria
and Wiirzburg, where Catholicism was predominant. Smaller numbers of German
Catholics also arrived, such as a group expelled in 1732 by the staunch
Protestant Count Leopold of Firmian.
Estimates of the total number of Germans who arrived in America in colonial
times range from 65,000 to 100,000. The final group were deserters from the Ger-
man forces who fought for the British in the Revolutionary War . Their story
illustrates just how miserable a life the German peasants of that time led. Most
of them had been forcibly pressed into service by the princes of the domains in
which they lived. The princes then sold their subjects' ser- vices to the
British for large cash payments. Because about half of these unwilling recruits
came from the state of Hesse-Kassel, all came to be referred to as Hessians.
During the Revolution, some of them deserted and joined Washington's army. At
least 5,000 more Hessians greeted the news of the American victory by deciding
to remain in the new country as citizens.
The pace of German immigration slowed from 1790 to 1815, in part because of the
Napoleonic Wars that then engulfed all of Europe. With Napoleon's defeat,
Germans in rural areas again began to seek relief from poverty , famine, and
over- population by emigrating.
Religious persecution once more played a role in the push to emigrate. From
about 1830 to the 1880s, anti-Semitic laws were passed in some German states.
During that time, many German Jews left to seek a better life in the United
States. Germans were the largest group in American immigrant history to include
sizable numbers of all three major Western religions: Catholicism,
Protestantism, and Judaism.
In the early 19th century , the majority of German emigrants were young,
unmarried males. Later in the century, entire families made the journey
together. A French writer in the 1840s de- scribed the "lamentable
sight" of Bavarian villagers traveling toward the French port of Le Havre:
"The long files of carts that you meet every mile, carrying the whole
property of the poor wretches, who are about to cross the Atlantic...piled with
the scanty boxes containing their few effects, and on the top of all, the women
and children, the sick and den, and all who are too exhausted with the journey
to walk."
Guidebooks for emigrants and letters from those who had gone before continued to
spread word of the vast fertile lands and free society that awaited them in
America. Family members who prospered in the United States sometimes sent home
the money to bring others across the ocean. By now there were numerous German
American communities where immigrants could find familiar customs and others who
spoke their language.
The second wave of German immigration peaked in the decade 1850-59, when nearly
a million Germans arrived in the United States. During each of the next two
decades, about 700,000 German immigrants landed. Then from 1880 to 1889 another
peak was reached when more than 1.4 million German speakers arrived. Sizable
numbers in this latter group were Catholics seeking refuge from Bismarck's
Kulturkampf described in Chapter 1; others were Germans from Russia who fled
that nation when its government adopted a repressive policy toward them.
Well-educated Germans, some of whom fled during various periods (1819, the
1830s, the late 1840s) when the German state governments sought to repress
liberal movements that attracted students, teachers, and intellectuals. The
" '48ers"-those who had taken part in the revolutions of 1848- made
notable contributions to their adopted country .
The process of emigration could be difficult. The German states required all
family members to obtain emigration visas. Emigrants had to provide such
documents as baptismal and marriage certificates from their local church,
evidence of having a trade or profession, and proof that adult males had
fulfilled their military service. Charitable organizations, in cooperation with
government agencies, sometimes supplied emigrants with a travel guide, a map of
the railroad lines in the United States, and a list of German settlements where
they would be welcomed.
Until about 1830, most emigrants sailed from the Dutch port of Rotterdam or the
French city of Le Havre. Afterward, German ports became the major departure
points. Steamships, and later railroads, carried people to the port of
Bremerhaven, in Bremen. Most of the emigrants from southern and western Germany
departed from here. Indeed, by the mid-19th century Bremen had become known as
Der Vorart New-Yorks, "the suburb of New York."
A few decades later, Hamburg, on the Baltic Sea, attracted emigrants from
eastern and southern Germany. During the 20th century , Hamburg became the chief
port of emigration as large passenger- carrying steamships established regular
routes across the Atlantic from there.
In every port from which sizable numbers of emigrants left, inexperienced
travelers faced swindlers who tried to strip them of their savings. In 1870 the
governor of Minnesota, which had a large German immigrant population, sent
Albert Wolff to investigate conditions in Bremerhaven. Wolff noted that there
were about 70 emigrant boarding houses in the area. But he said the emigrant was
"preyed upon by blacklegs and confidence men, here called Bauernfanger,
which means trappers of 'green horns,' from the moment he starts from his native
city or village. "
Officials were not immune to bribery. For example, when Ed- ward Stein left for
America in 1871, to avoid serving in the army of Prussia, he boarded a ship in
Hamburg without a passport, which he could not obtain without proving he had
served in the army. When a ship's officer asked for his papers, Stein handed him
a packet of 400 marks of German money that his father had given him. "I
find the papers of Mr. Stein to be quite correct," the officer declared.
(Later, Stein would become the first mayor of Pocatello, Idaho.)
A majority of emigrants traveled in the cheapest berths, the steerage. There,
poor ventilation, over crowding, unsanitary water, and a minimum of food
encouraged the spread of diseases such as cholera and scurvy. In 1853, a New
York newspaper called the immigrant vessels "plague ships and swimming
coffins." In an attempt to foster good health, German ship captains
required emigrants aboard to take exercise on deck.
As the age of steamships dawned, the time of a trans-Atlantic trip was cut from
six weeks to two or three weeks, but few emigrants could afford the more
expensive steamship passage until late in the 19th century. German immigration
continued to exceed 300,000 in every decade unti1 1930, except between 1910 and
1919, when World War I temporarily halted it. Even so, from 1923 to 1963 the
number of German arrivals on the shores of the United States still out- numbered
those from any other country . During the 1930s, many were Jews seeking refuge
from Hitler's anti-Semitic policies.
After 1945, another wave of German emigrants came flooding into the United
States to escape the devastation caused by World War ll. The postwar division of
Germany into East and West Germany brought about half a million additional
refugees, most fleeing Communist East Germany.
In the three centuries since the first German American settlement was founded,
about 7 million German-speaking emigrants have made their way to America. They
and their descendants form the largest single ethnic group in the U.S.
population today.
* These are excerpts from the book 'The German American Family Album' by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler