Why are German Americans so invisible?

[Anonymous]

I’m from Milwaukee and there was a huge German American presence and lots of German food and culture there!

[Anonymous]

Does it have something to do with German Americans are not likely to call attention to themselves and are somewhat introverted? My midwestern relatives are all like this

[Anonymous]

They intermarried with all the other ethnic groups and now are generic American mutts. At least in my family! We are german, italian, english, irish, who knows.

[Anonymous]

Almost all my half-German aunts and uncles married WASPs — Germany has a history of deep-seated Anglomania/Anglophilia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's actually no such thing as "German Americans," just as there's no such thing as "Italian Americans." During the time of greatest immigration from these areas of the world, the countries of Germany and Italy did not exist. People came from different provinces and Hanseatic leagues. Someone emigrating from Hamburg did not consider herself to be a countrywoman to someone from Prussia. Someone emigrating from Napoli did not consider himself to be coming from the same country as someone from Tuscana.

+1

On my ancestors’ documentation they shared their state/duchy of origin. Not “Germany”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m from Milwaukee and there was a huge German American presence and lots of German food and culture there!

This! My German-descent grandfather is from Milwaukee and had many other German Americans in his neighborhood. His family immigrated in the early 1800s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Almost all my half-German aunts and uncles married WASPs — Germany has a history of deep-seated Anglomania/Anglophilia.

I've observed way more anglophilia among Americans than among Germans. Germans tend to love Mallorca, but not so much the UK.

[Anonymous]

Yes! If this means more German restaurants in the DC area.

[Anonymous]

My great-grandfather stowed away on a boat in 1889 to avoid mandatory conscription in Germany. He and his friend (cousin?) were discovered and made to work aboard, then told that they would need to jump ship in NY Harbor in order to avoid US immigration. So he arrived here as a draft-dodging illegal immigrant stowaway. He made his way to the Lower East Side and found a German speaking policeman who helped him. Soon after he took a train to Nebraska with the promise of land to farm and he married there (another German immigrant who had come as a child) and they had 14 children, my grandfather was their eldest son.
I never knew my great-grandfather but my dad and grandfather had many stories about him. The family moved to SW Kansas to a community full of German families and settled there. Most people didn’t speak any English. When WW1 started everyone suddenly stopped speaking German and started learning English, mostly from their children who attended school. My dad was born in 1924 and lived through the Great Depression and the Dustbowl on a small Kansas farm. By the time he can remember his family only spoke English except for his grandparents who slipped back to their mother tongue as they aged.
The family had zero contact with their German relatives from about 1917 to 1984 when my dad took our family to the town he knew they had come from and we found them using church records. It was pretty amazing to see my dad meeting German cousins who looked so much like him. Apparently their grandfather, my dad’s grandfather’s brother, had to serve 2 extra years in the army because of his brother’s draft dodging.
Our Catholic German family actually aided a Jewish family during WW2 and none of the men were forced to serve in the army which makes our connection with them feel easier, especially for me as my husband is the son of a Holocaust survivor.

[Anonymous]

PP your family history is wild! It could be a HBO miniseries.

[Anonymous]

Because they’re part of the dominate population that doesn’t need a lobbyist. What individual needs set them apart from the dominate population?

Troll.

[Anonymous]

A lot of German immigrants changed their names or made extra efforts to assimilate during WW1 and WW2. Germans both then and now speak English widely and extremely well so assimilation was likely relatively easier for them.

[Anonymous]

There were a lot of German language newspapers in the 18th & 19th centuries. The populations became more diffuse with westward migration. Compulsory schooling made English the primary language. Then anti-German sentiment in the early 20th century continued the diffusion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Over 40 million Americans are of German ancestry. Yet there's no "German American" lobby, no "German American" vote, no German neighborhoods etc.

I'm from Chicago originally, and the Irish and Poles are much more visible than those of German ancestry.

Because all German cultural and language institutions came under attack during WWI and Prohibition. Books burned, etc. Given the two World Wars, there was a strong incentive to hide any notice of German heritage and now most of the 40 million German descendants barely know about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's actually no such thing as "German Americans," just as there's no such thing as "Italian Americans." During the time of greatest immigration from these areas of the world, the countries of Germany and Italy did not exist. People came from different provinces and Hanseatic leagues. Someone emigrating from Hamburg did not consider herself to be a countrywoman to someone from Prussia. Someone emigrating from Napoli did not consider himself to be coming from the same country as someone from Tuscana.

This is true, but a little pedantic. There was plenty of "German" culture in the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s.