In the 19th century, New York was a growing city with great cultural and economic dynamism. As a result of immigration from Germany, the German districts of New York soon had a high population. Between 1855 and 1880 New York was the third largest German settlement in the world after Berlin and Vienna. Small Germany alone was about the same size as Buffalo or the cities of Milwaukee and Detroit combined in the 19th century. With in some cases over 200,000 German-Americans, only slightly fewer Germans than Irish lived in the city.
The one that was relatively out of place at the time Lower East Side developed into the center of German-American life. There were German street signs, restaurants, churches, daily newspapers, festivals and clubs. With the Germans and the Irish, Catholic immigrants came to New York for the first time, which was a thorn in the side of Protestant Americans. Supporters of the Pope and, of course, monarchists presented Old Europe to the Americans – and that’s where they should stay. The Americans feared that the Germans would water down their society because the majority of them did not bring any democratic traditions or political consciousness with them to the USA and were also loyal supporters of the Pope. America should be something new and not get closer to the society, structure and politics of the old world. In addition, the dissolute life and celebration of the Germans could not be combined with the Protestant way of life of the Americans. Sundays were a particular point of friction, when the Germans often sat down with the whole family in parks or beer gardens and drank beer, sang and celebrated in public. For the American temperamentalists, this behavior was godless and vulgar.
Small Germany – a bourgeois quarter
Although German streets clearly emerged at the beginning of the century, a “small Germany” could only emerge when workers and craftsmen from Germany came to the USA with the waves of immigration from the 1830s. From 1840 onwards, one Little Germany be spoken. The residential area comprised the 10th, 11th, 13th, and 17th Ward of the Lower East Side and was the cultural and economic center of the Germans in New York until the First World War. It differed from the American residential areas not only in terms of its appearance in German-language notices and German architecture. Culturally, too, things were different here. Countless beer gardens and pubs sprang up along the Bowery Lane and ensured a colorful life in public. Countless balls, singing and gymnastics festivals were celebrated by the Germans with parades on the streets.
Small Germany was a bourgeois quarter. The middle class lived here, most of which, remarkably, came from southern Germany. The majority of the population was between 20 and 40 years old, 30 percent even younger than ten years. That gave the quarter its own dynamic.
Gives Little Germany was the first ethnic neighborhood in New York, the subsequent immigrant neighborhoods “borrowed” ideas and structures from it. Because Little Germany was special in every way and differed significantly from the old Dutch and Anglo-Saxon residential areas. This peculiarity can also be seen with regard to the identity of the immigrant Germans. Depending on the situation, the German-Americans adopted a specific stance to differentiate themselves from other groups and described themselves as Germans or Americans, Bavarians or Mecklenburgers, Frankfurters or Berliners, New Yorkers, German-Americans or small Germans. These different identities not only reflect the political situation in the dismembered German states, they also illustrate the German-Americans’ uncertainty as to where they are now.
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The book “The History of the Germans in America – From 1680 to the Present” by Alexander Emmerich was published in 2013 by Fackelträger Verlag. Emmerich portrays interesting German-Americans and explains why some “typically American” things go back to the immigrant Germans.
Price: 14.95 euros
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