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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm sure someone here is more knowledgeable on this than me, but speaking anecdotally for my family of German descent, they were earlier immigrants (ie, pre Ellis Island) and not from a huge wave of immigration when anti-immigration sentiment ran high. They were also of a professional class that came with more money than later immigrants and didn't have to work menial jobs and live in nationality specific ghettoes, ie they assimilated quickly and never faced much discrimination. In turn, they never joined unions or networked together to form a "lobby" in the same way, they were more diffused with fewer common interests. I'm mostly familiar with the NYC area, but it doesn't seem like they went into the same professions as much as other ethnic groups either (again, correct me if I am wrong) like say the Irish going into metal working and the police that continued for generations. That's my impression anyway. [/quote]

My German family on both sides immigrated to New York at the turn of the 20th century and were not like yours -- they were quite poor, spoke no English, were not members of any professional class, and wound up in menial jobs (one great grandmother was a hotel maid, a great grandfather was a day laborer). My impression is that they struggled quite a bit in NYC and did not stay there long. I had one set of great grandparents who moved South and West, living in a series of very rural communities until settling in Texas. Another set moved upstate to the Albany area. One of my German great grandfathers wound up marrying into an Irish family and that part of my family is dominated by Irish heritage.

I do think WWII had an impact on German cultural identity -- my grandmother was discouraged from speaking German even though before the war it was spoken in their home, and they adopted a very anglicized pronunciation of their name (the degree to which this was a choice versus just how English-speakers in the US said it is not clear but my grandmother says her parents made a point of no longer using the German pronunciation in the 30s).

My impression is that my family's experience is not dissimilar from other immigrants who settled outside of major cities in the US. There was just less of a concentration of people from the same region who spoke the same language, so I think that led to faster assimilation, intermarriage, and dropping cultural touchstones. I know some immigrant communities formed more cohesive communities outside of major cities (and the German immigrants did as well, in the upper Midwest) but it seems to be less common. A small town can't support a "little Italy." You do find little German restaurants and bars sometimes, though.

I wonder if a lot of Germans were from rural areas (like my family) and less likely to stay in large cities like New York or Boston, which means they were less likely to form concentrated communities with other German immigrants.[/quote]

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