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: 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. All of a sudden, they came under pressure to cast off their ethnic identity. Full-blown anti-German hysteria meant that the German language and culture were ostracised. Thus, a process was set in motion which made German immigrants unique among all the major immigrant groups, and which was further fuelled by the Second World War – the almost complete erosion of their original identity. No other group lost its public visibility to quite the extent of the German-Americans during the course of the 20th century. American soldiers dance with German women in a Frankfurt bar.