Title: US immigration: America’s German roots
Headings: History part 1: America’s German roots
History part 1: America’s German roots
Germans are the largest immigrant group in the USA – and yet are the least visible.
Klaus Lüber / 02.10.2018
A new life in “the land of the free”
Mobile and well-integrated

Content: A peasant farmer who had to survive on half a hectare of land in Germany could acquire 64 hectares after just ten years in the United States. A lack of political prospects was also a motivational factor behind emigration. For many people, the failure of the Revolution of 1848 represented proof that common people were unlikely to gain any rights to freedom in Germany anytime in the near future, and as a result, many members of the left-wing liberal middle classes and their supporters emigrated to the USA – the so-called “48ers”. German emigrants wait in Hamburg for their ship passage. Handout/Pressemitteilung/Getty Images
Mobile and well-integrated
Once in the USA, the Germans initially established themselves as a respected immigrant group, classic “hyphen-Americans” with dual identity. Countless communities developed with schools, churches and clubs, in which the German language and culture was preserved and cultivated. As advanced industrialisation took hold in the USA, German-Americans were among the most established groups of the population, both in farming and among the new blue-collar professions. Their early presence among the new industries also led to Germans becoming more mobile than virtually any other group. They were less tightly concentrated in individual regions than other immigrants and spread across the country working as foremen in railway construction, for example. The image of those with German roots changed abruptly upon the outbreak of the First World War.