Why are German Americans so invisible?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why was Eisenhower's election not historic but JFK's was? Eisenhower was actually the first non-WASP president.

The Anglo Saxons and Germans have a long history of interbreeding. JFK was historic because he was a Catholic who presumably answered to the Pope first. Germans were and are widely protestant, so that doesn't raise as many eyebrows in a largely protestant country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is very amusing, when we dedicate a month every year to Oktoberfest events.

Agree! OP is some MAGA nut trying to be aggrieved over a non-fact.

Isn’t Trump German?

His mother was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why was Eisenhower's election not historic but JFK's was? Eisenhower was actually the first non-WASP president.

Because "WASP" refers to an elite, primarily east coast, establishment (hint, plenty of Appalachia hillbillies are technically WASPs). People didn't think in terms of WASPS versus everyone else. After all, Van Buren and the Roosevelts were of Dutch ancestry, not Anglo-Saxon. Abraham Lincoln grew up in a dirt poor rural family and in a log cabin, and a number of other presidents grew up in poorer rural conditions too and were self made. And the WASP establishment was never purebred or "pure blood" either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A few years ago my spouse and I were on vacation abroad and staying at a little bed and breakfast where a young German couple were also staying. Every time they saw us they laughed and pretending to be shooting guns. We took it in stride and played along but whispered to ourselves “talk about glass houses . . .”

You should have given them the Naxi salute while yelling Heil!

[Anonymous]

I'm sad I never got to Blob's Park before it closed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why was Eisenhower's election not historic but JFK's was? Eisenhower was actually the first non-WASP president.

Sorry to correct you, but Martin Van Buren, our eighth president, was of Dutch descent.

[Anonymous]

You must have never studied history OP. Do you know how many American soldiers died fighting the Nazis?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:German Americans are invisible? Aside from the fact that, as someone
stated , there's no such thing as Germany when most people who would generically fall under the German appellation immigrated to the U.S , it is only ignorant people who think these people are invisible. Unless you think visibility in the form of ..I don't know..festivals?

I mean, when in a store you see beers with names like Busch, Budweiser, Miller , does that feel like invisibility? When people shove hot dogs , pretzels and hamburgers in their mouths ,does it feel like German Americans are invisible ? Across this country , there are entire towns and cities with German names. Maryland I awash with such towns; Hanover, Hagerstown, Gaithersburg, and ..wait for it ...Germantown , just to name a few. I'm really confused by this thread.

Germans get 2 fests in America. Oktoberfest and then winter markets in some cities.

I think it's true that one of the issues facing Germans in America is that Germany was quite fragmented when immigration was happening, and remains fragmented today. I barely consider anything north of the Fulda gap to be real Germany because the culture, food, and dialect are markedly different in the north. When your frame of reference is Bavaria, Franconia, etc, the north is very foreign.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is very amusing, when we dedicate a month every year to Oktoberfest events.

Agree! OP is some MAGA nut trying to be aggrieved over a non-fact.

Isn’t Trump German?

His mother was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US.

Trump's family is from Rhineland-Pfalz in Germany. His great grandfather was exiled and moved to the US permanently. Trump paid to restore a church in the town his family was exiled from, interestingly. And perhaps more interesting is that this small village was also home to the Heinz family. It's a pretty posh village.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There isn't a Scottish lobby either, or a Puritan lobby, or an English lobby

Sounds like an untapped market.

[Anonymous]

Germans are one of the few ethnic groups that it is ok to openly mock and stereotype. Many of the comments in this thread would never be allowed about another ethnicity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There were different waves of German immigration to the United States. The first waves started in the late 17th century to Pennsylvania and formed what we now call the Pennsylvania Dutch, although most were actually just plain Lutheran and assimilated quickly enough. There are some letters exchanged among the Quakers and even Ben Franklin exhibiting concern that Pennsylvania was being overrun by Germans! My father's family of my surname came in the 1690s with other family branches in the subsequent decades through the 1750s. None were strictly Anabaptist and we fought in the Revolutionary War for the colonialists. You still see strong German cultural influence in central Pennsylvania from this immigration wave 300 years ago even though few new emigrants joined the Pennsylvania Germans after the Revolutionary War.

Then, in starting in the 1830s and particularly in the 1840s, a massive tide of German immigrants swept across America. Unlike the 18th century Germans, these were not Anabaptists or low church Lutherans but a mixture of Catholic and Protestants, and from various parts of Germany. This tide was partially fueled by the revolutions of the 1840s. They came to both cities and countryside and most headed for the "frontier" of the time, the middle west, although large and flourishing communities settled in Baltimore. These Germans were more recognizably "generically German" than the earlier Germans, whose identities had initially been rooted in faith. The Germans were the most successful of the immigrant groups and, unlike the Irish of the same time, were widely recognized as being law abiding, orderly, hardworking, making their assimilation much easier and as such they suffered fairly minimal anti-immigration pushback (although not entirely exempt, there were a few localized anti-German riots). It helped that most were Protestants.

The unification of Germany in the 1860s and the resulting economic growth of the new German state did slow down the tide of German emigration to America, but a strong German identity did continue, particularly among the 1840s immigration generation. Baltimore had German newspapers and German beer halls and German singing societies. But when WWI broke out, the German-speaking Americans knew where their loyalties lay and that was the psychological break with Germany and most of the German identities quickly faded away and newspapers and singing societies closed down. So successful was this retrenchment that by WWII, it never occurred to anyone to question the potential loyalty of someone like Eisenhower just because he had a German last name. An all-encompassing American identity had taken over and the middle 20th century saw a significant retrenchment from "ethnic" identities, which extended to other European immigration groups like the Italians and Polish.

If you want to ask why the German American concept is now so invisible, it's because it was no longer needed and people were now too far removed from a mother country that also no longer existed in a meaningful sense.

I think that there was a lot of fear that drove this, rather than just identities "fading away."

In addition, the Prohibition movement was openly anti-German and anti-Irish. Forcibly closing these culturally important saloons helped to weaken the ties. And just to add to your history lesson, German born males over the age of 14 were required to register as aliens during WWI and carry an ID card. The number was small, but about 2000 were interned in camps for that War. For WWII, A total of 11,507 people of German ancestry were interned during the war, comprising 36.1% of the total internments under the US Justice Department's Enemy Alien Control Program. A lot of German natives rushed to naturalize during these periods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting thread. I am second generation German American on my fathers side whose entire family was very German, his grandfathers were both brewmeisters who came to USA in the late 1800s and settled in NYC. Much of my family is still in New York Hudson Valley and one of my cousins is very active in a German dance and heritage group in Poughkeepsie called, of course, Germania. They have a club and an event grounds and are very active putting on an annual Oktoberfest etc.

Germans are the number one ethnic group in America, did you know that? In terms of numbers, they are. And yes they are in some ways more assimilated but that’s largely a result of being the dominant group. My father’s German American family, his parents Nazi sympathizers only first generation Americans felt themselves more American than their Italian and Jewish and other ethnic group neighbors in the south Bronx of the 1930s, 40s and beyond.

Now I’m going to state some facts and stir some anger, I’m sure. We Germans are a very racist people as a whole. Our presence as the dominant ethnic group in the USA is explanatory for the USA’s long reluctance to enter WWII and our refusal to help so many Jews who tried to emigrate to America in the 30s and early 40s. See Ken Burns’ most recent documentary if you are unfamiliar with this history. See also Rachel Maddow’s recent podcast Ultra for some more American history about Congressional collusion with the Nazis to influence American citizens in the 30s and 40s. See also recent rise of ultra far right nationalist domestic terrors groups and the backlash against rising diversity in America. America’s German roots are pivotal to her pains - and some of her successes, too.

I am proud to be German, but I am also very properly ashamed of much of my German heritage. A warring, authoritarian, fascistic culture that battles the urges ongoing. See current rise of far right nationalist extremism in . . . Germany.

You clearly know nothing about today's Germany since it is only your ancestry that is Geman.

Yes, they are incredibly passive now to government/EU intervention in their lives and pacifist. Interesting video about the Allies effort to deNazify Germany after WWII: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPZnym34KXM&t=2s
It's called "Erasing Hitler"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is very amusing, when we dedicate a month every year to Oktoberfest events.

Agree! OP is some MAGA nut trying to be aggrieved over a non-fact.

Isn’t Trump German?

His mother was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US.

Trump's father side was German and Nazi party people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There isn't a Scottish lobby either, or a Puritan lobby, or an English lobby

Sounds like an untapped market.

Puritans became WASPS.