Order 1017647: political, social, religious and ethnic composition of german society from 1871-1924
tutorthammy
GermanImmigrants.pptGerman Emigration
The Dresden Daily 18.2.1906
Postcard
(c1900-1910)
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Annual overseas emigration 1871-1914 (1000s)
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1880-1893 Third and (in absolute numbers) largest wave
1881, 1882 Peak years: 4-5% of population leave
Vast majority to U.S. , some to Brazil, Canada, Argentina, Chile
1890 Germans 1/3rd foreign-born U.S. population
1893- Steep decline in overseas emigration
(Depression in U.S. ,boom in Germany )
Annual Overseas Emigration 1871-1914
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Origin and Causes
Ag. N-E provinces disproportionately affected
Land inheritance (eldest son), Emigration an option for the others
For rural wage labourers …
1870s- Ag. ec. crisis, & modernization. (seasonalization, mechanization)
Attraction of self-sufficiency in U.S.
Planned route: German agriculture. -> U.S urban work -> U.S. Farm
But increasingly German agriculture. -> U.S. urban life.
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Emigrationist Colonialism
Idea of the ‘unbounded German nation’ (Sauer, 2007).
Germans could be Germans away from new German nation state
The nation as ‘imagined community’ centred on culture
Breaking in and farming the soil of ‘new territory’ the core ‘national’ economic task
Colonialist also because displacement of indigenous peoples taken for granted, seen as a natural effect of necessary German expansion.
A refutation of state-based nationalism & core duty - military service
Bismarck (1884) ‘A German who jettisons his Fatherland like an old coat, to me is no longer a German’
Hamburg and Bremen – regulating departure
1867 Weekly Bremen- NY 1871 Norddeutscher Lloyd 20 steamers (NY, Baltimore, Galveston, New Orleans). 1881 9 day crossings.
1880-1893: 100,000 p.a. Hamburg and Bremen
1892 Hamburg Cholera, blamed on Russian migrants, temporary closure of border
1894 Companies & ticket agencies broker deal with Govt. Separate carriages and trains, separation at ports, medical checks at border, at Ruhleben & ports, 4% rejected at European checkpoints (1% NY)
1893- as German emigration peters out, large-scale East European emigration begins, Missler agencies across C. and E. Europe
Numbers fluctuate 1893-1914, but high after 1900 230,000+ through ports in 1907 and 1913
Quarantine Village on the Veddel
Mary Antin, traveling in 1894. From Hoerder, ‘Traffic’
On the following day, the 22nd [of August 1895] ..[t[owards half past twelve our steamer anchored in Queenstown harbour on the Irish coast to take on board new passengers. Long before we had reached the harbour however, several small boats approached our steamer propelled by powerful oar-strokes and in no time had fastened themselves to the ship’s sides. Nimble boys climbed on board and secured rope ladders, and in a matter of moments a dozen Irish pedlar-women (Händlerinnen) were on board hawking all manner of things to the passengers. You can bet that a lot of us – still so far from land – were fairly amazed to see these chattering (zungenfertig) women suddenly appear, though for all that also pleased, since after a twenty-four-hour journey many people had discovered that they well needed this or that after all. Because these pedlars knew the requirements of ocean going passengers, they had everything with them
The Journey
Heinrich Horstmann, Meine Radreise um die Erde (1895), 10-11.
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At three o clock the steamer turned around and headed for the open sea, but the pedlar women were still wandering around the deck. We had been about half an hour out of port when the captain finally gave the order for the women to leave the ship. The last-minute trading and haggling needed to be seen to be believed. It was like a waterfall, and, as if by prior agreement, suddenly every item became significantly cheaper. In the end the sailors hurried proceeding to an end and it did not take long before the women with their wares were off the deck. The sailors untied the ropes with which the small craft were tied to the ship, and , one by one, they sped back towards the already distant coast, which itself soon sank out of sight.
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Statistical atlas of the US, (1890, eleventh census) https://www.loc.gov/item/07019233/
Cincinnati
Pittsburg
Indianapolis
Destinations
Germans concentrated in N-E States & increasingly urban
1890s Milwaukee 2/5 population 1884 Chicago 6th largest German population
160,000 German born, 1/3rd of city population (1.1M) incl. second generation
4 German dailies inc Freie Presse, Illlinois Staatszeitung .
‘Germanness’ in common.. but heterogeneous background: pre-unification emigrants S-E, 1880s- N-E and agricultural & divided by class and occupation
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Generation and Immigration
Chicago’s ‘Germans’ in 1900:
1) Older generation livening in a German community with its own churches, associations, theatres, businesses & press but who are American-born children of mid-19C settlers.
2) 3rd wave (1880s) immigrants raised in Germany, who help reinvigorate community ties with German culture (The core of 1900 ethnic community).
3) Young adults born in Germany but who arrive with parents as children in the 1880s and remember little of Germany. Socialised in Chicago, usually skilled workers or small businessmen.
4) 1890s arrivals, least adapted to American culture. From a much more industrialized Germany and more likely to find work in unskilled trades.
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Carl Schurz to his wife, Margarethe (née Meyer) July 8, 1867, describing his visit to Augusta, Missouri
After the dinner, however, came the great event. Our arrival had become well known in the town; and the population of Augusta, old and young, male and female, gathered together in a small grove to welcome us. They brought along their band, which was made up wholly of amateur musicians, but not at all bad. There was plenty of Augusta wine. Quite naturally speeches had to be made. First I had to talk to the men, then to the women, then to both. Following this, Preetorius came on; then the old Münich until we all declared it was enough of a good thing. Of course all the speeches were in German, for in Augusta there are no Americans except the shoemaker's apprentice, who has recently arrived and who is learning German, and several negro families, among whom the children can already speak German. An evening meal at the home of a German doctor concluded the delightful affair. About eleven o'clock we went up and down the hills until we reached the home of the sixty-eight-year-old "young" Münich, that offered us a welcome bed.
Letters of Carl Schurz 1841-1869
Preserving German Identity and Assimilation
Continued…
The little German colony in Augusta certainly gives the impression of prosperity. The old people have preserved the tradition of the German spirit and German training, but they are unable to bequeath this tradition to their children. It is an observation which I have almost everywhere, that here in America, perhaps with the exception of individual cases in the great cities, the children of educated Germans contrast strikingly with their elders. The German spirit fades away. If the training remains wholly German and all contact with Americanism is avoided, a stupid Pennsylvania Germanism results. Where that is not the case, the waves of Americanism soon overwhelm the second and third generations. "The mission of Germanism" in America, about which some speak so loudly, can consist in nothing other than a modification of the American spirit, through the German, while the nationalities melt into one. In a few years the old patriarchs in pleasant little Augusta will be dead and their successors must be carried away by the universal movement.
Preserving or Creating German identity?
Cultural memory in the U.S.
Inventing traditions?
www.germanfest.com
US Germans in WW1
Hard hit by anti German movement after US entry (April 1917)
One case of lynching (Robert Prager)
St Louis.
German language disappears from schools & Lutheran church services
Books removed from City Library
Berlin Avenue become Pershing Avenue
Semi-official American Protective League investigate cases of espionage, pro-German propaganda, pacifism and radicalism, draft-dodging, disloyalty and enemy alien activity
1924 Immigration Act. 2% p.a. of 1890 Germans
Emigrant Letters
Kamphoefner (ed) News from the land of freedom. German immigrants write home
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Matthias Dorgarthen series
Arrives in NY April 24, 1881
Navare, May 7, 1881
Here you can go fishing and hunting as much as you like , we’ve already done some fishing since we are near a stream, it’s called Rebbe
Here you are free to do anything, you don’t have to register with the police when you move in or out , you also don’t have to pay any taxes. If you rent a house here , you can move out any day, you just go there and say, I’m moving out tomorrow, that’s all, but as long as I pay my rent I don’t have to move out , for that time the house is mine. It’s the same at work, when I have a place in the mine no foreman can boot me out unless I do something no good, for example stealing, that’s punished hard here, otherwise the job is mine, but I can leave whenever I want to , if I want to quit then I just pick up my tools, that’s all, and I can go wherever I want
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Massilon, May 26, 1881
Write and tell me if it is true that there’s a war in Germany, they talk about it a lot here, they’re always going on about it that France declared war on Germany , if need be then I’ll come back to Germany and help beat up the French, for we are still Germans here in America and German-minded, when we go to a saloon here in the evening and sing songs then we don’t have to pay for anything, they like to listen to German songs so much here , they can all understand German here, too [..] We are a group of 12 men here in Massilon, I knew them all from home, that is me and Keffen, Vos, Goldschmid, 2 Hinde, Bckel, Heisterkamp, Brus and Kiphen from Alstaden, Ers and Gißenand many more that have come [..] Give my best to all friends and relatives and all the neighbour girls and tell them they should just come on over to America
Massilon, November 7, 1881
..that business about sending the girls was just a joke, but give my best to all the girls that I know and tell them I’m coming back soon and want to bring one back to America with me.
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Massilonn, November 7, 1881
We also got very thin, as you can well imagine, from sweating so much and drinking so much water and not eating very much, you can’t get fat from that. Now it should be different, I think, if I am still healthy, that’s the main thing here in America, and I keep working then we should do all right, but otherwise the streets aren’t paved with gold here like people always write, more lies are written home than truth.
Massilonn, October 12, 1881
Dear parents and brothers and sisters, you write that agents are running around at home, trying to collect people to take them along to America, don’t anybody be fool enough to go with agents like that, because I believe it’s all a swindle. Here in Massilonn and Navarre we can’t even get on at the mines, the Schlössers, Damers and everyone are working on the new railroad, they couldn’t even get work at the mines
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Massillonn, November 20th
If I get the fever again and have enough money then I’m coming home. But I would still like to stay here, otherwise everyone will say he hardly left and now he’s back again.
Bakinghamm, 6th May 1882
I think that in two weeks I’ll be leaving here, first of all because I don’t like it here and secondly I want to know now if things are this bad all over America [..] I want to know this , if I come home again then they shouldn’t be able to say, he always stayed in one place.
Backinghamm October 1st 1882
If you would be so kind, please send me a translator, a book where English is translated into German , but something different from the other one, but not expensive
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Interview with the Brodbecks
(Federal Writers Project)
See also related Immigrant interviews from the
New Jersey Ethnic Survey 1939-1941
David Steven Cohen (ed.), America, the Dream of My Life (Rutgers UP, New Brunswick, NJ, 1990).
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