Anonymous wrote: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 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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Clearly you have never been to Cincinnati, Ohio.

Huge German population and presence. It is Munich's "sister city."

Anonymous wrote:

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.

One word...SHAME

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My German grandparents were terrified to speak German or look German during the 40s. They refused to let my dad and his brothers speak German even at home. They were told they were American and not German and to never talk about Germany in public. I’m assuming that mentality has something to do with it.

Yes, this is what my father told me about his German-speaking immigrant parents (they were from a non-German minority that spoke German). My father's eldest brother (about 25 years older than my father) went to a German-speaking ES in Cleveland but was either taken out of it or it closed down due to anti-German sentiments in the wake of WWI. None of my father's other siblings or my father himself ever learned more than a handful of German words. He did not embrace his ethnic roots until he was well into his 70s.

Google almost any ethnic group in the US and you will find that they were targeted, persecuted, or hated at some point in US history

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My German grandparents were terrified to speak German or look German during the 40s. They refused to let my dad and his brothers speak German even at home. They were told they were American and not German and to never talk about Germany in public. I’m assuming that mentality has something to do with it.

Yes, this is what my father told me about his German-speaking immigrant parents (they were from a non-German minority that spoke German). My father's eldest brother (about 25 years older than my father) went to a German-speaking ES in Cleveland but was either taken out of it or it closed down due to anti-German sentiments in the wake of WWI. None of my father's other siblings or my father himself ever learned more than a handful of German words. He did not embrace his ethnic roots until he was well into his 70s.

Google almost any ethnic group in the US and you will find that they were targeted, persecuted, or hated at some point in US history

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

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.

Anonymous wrote:My German grandparents were terrified to speak German or look German during the 40s. They refused to let my dad and his brothers speak German even at home. They were told they were American and not German and to never talk about Germany in public. I’m assuming that mentality has something to do with it.