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: US immigration: America’s German roots
German immigrants in the USA
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
dpa
There is virtually no other population group that has shaped the past of the USA quite as strongly as German emigrants, with almost seven million of them making their way to the New World over the course of four centuries. Currently 40 to 60 million Americans cite “German” as their primary origin and thus represent the largest immigrant group – even greater than those descended from Irish and Italians. German emigration to the USA began at the end of the 17th century when Germany was suffering from the after-effects of the bloody religious conflicts of the Thirty Years’ War, and Christian minorities were being persecuted. Many farmers lived in poverty, their very existence threatened by failed harvests and land shortages, so many decided to leave for a country that appeared to offer both freedom and prosperity. That country was America. In 1683 a group of 13 orthodox Quaker families from Krefeld left for New England, where they founded Germantown, the first closed German settlement, which is now a suburb of Philadelphia. They were followed in 1709 by 13,000 peasant farmers from the Palatinate, hence they were known as the Palatines.