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
 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.
Boarding a Ship for America
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 $500900 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 HamburgVeddel.
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 Germanlanguage 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 conditions
for 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 East
Coast.
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.
Threshing in N. Dakota
*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).
ANHUESER-BUSCH
IN ST. LOUIS, THE
WORLD’S
LARGEST
BREWERY
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.
CULTURAL
PATTERNS
 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 GermanAmericans 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.
ASSIMILATION
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.”
THE END