According tothe US Census Bureau, 63% of American citizens are from Europe.
And this, in general, is expected.
But what is unexpected: the dominant European ethnic group in America are the descendants of immigrants from Germany.
There are almost 50 million conditional Germans in the USA.
For comparison, the conditional British (English, Scots, Welsh, Irish) – only 36 million
Why and How did this happen ?
Let me tell you why there are so many Germans in the USA in Today’s article…
What American Regions are Called German?
There are so many people of German origin in the heartland of the United States that the states from Ohio to Missouri and from Michigan to Nebraska are sometimes called America’s “German belt”.
Inthe Shenandoah Valley, there are entire compact areas with a German-speaking population, which are called “Valley Germans.”
When you travel around the US, you are bound to come across countless German names:
Leesburgs, Friedrichsburgs, Wilmsburgs, Goethesburgs, Hanovers and countless other German towns will continuously flicker outside your car window…
The first German in the territory of the modern United States wasDr.
Johann Fleischer, who arrived in 1607 with a group of English settlers in the city of Jamestown in the British colony of Virginia.
In general, however, German immigration to the United States began in the 1680s, heading mainlyto New York and Pennsylvania.
The first Germanic enclave in America was the settlement of Germantown in Pennsylvania, founded in the neighborhood of Philadelphia on October 6, 1683.
Why Did So Many Germans Settle in Cincinnati?
So many Germans settle in Cincinnati because of constant waves of German emigration.
The main contingent of German emigrants were ruined peasants, artisans, and workers.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, agriculture in southwestern Germany, from where emigration to America had a two-century tradition, was struck by crop failures.
Crop failures were in Bavaria and Baden.
In Württemberg there was a bad harvest of grapes.
Potatoes didn’t come out.
All this aggravated to the extreme the need of the peasantry, already burdened with debts and unsustainable payments, worsened the position of urban artisans and workers.
German handicraft and manufactory were also crushed by the competition of English factory goods, especially textiles.
This deprived them of earnings and forced many German skilled workers and artisans to emigrate.
Indeed, in the early 1950s, the number of skilled workers who emigrated to America increased.
However, most of the emigrants were peasants.
In southern and western Germany, emigration assumed at times a massive character: entire villages were removed from their places.
Similar things happened in the north: peasants were evicted en masse from Mecklenburg in the 1950s.
The abolition of personal serfdom facilitated peasant emigration; the partial abolition of feudal duties, moreover, for a ransom, stimulated it, since the ransom payments and heavy debts ruined the peasants
Among the emigrants there were rich people who, for one reason or another, were captured by the “fashion” for emigration.
The proportion of the intelligentsia in the German emigration was great, relatively more than in the Irish.
Writers, journalists, lawyers, doctors, scientists who find no use for themselves, dissatisfied with the social situation, left their homeland and moved to America.
Are Cincinnati Roots German?
Yes.
Cincinnati Roots are German because Germans had settled in (Ohio, Pennsylvania) the United States in appreciable numbers since the 17th century, and by the time of the Civil War, a significant part of the descendants of the early German colonists had assimilated.
The middle of the XIX century gave an unprecedented increase in German immigration too.
Only for the decade 1851-1860.
951,667 immigrants from Germany moved into the United States, mostly in the first half of this decade.
The highest growth was achieved in 1854, when more than 200 thousand Germans arrived in the country.
Thus, the vast majority of the Germans living in the United States at the beginning of the Civil War arrived there in the previous 10-15 years.
When Did Germans Immigrate to Cincinnati?
Since the 18th-19th century, Germans immigrated to Cincinnati.
Numerous settlers from Germany appeared on the territory of the young United States at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries.
They were active, thinking, hardworking, diligent people.
It is not surprising that they began to actively develop new lands and no less actively try to promote their interests in the public environment.
What Percent of Cincinnati is German?
Now, the origin of ancestors of
Germans is % 18.2
English is % 4.9
Irish is % 9.5
Italians is % 3.4
How Was German Almost Replaced by English?
For two and a half centuries now, the story has been told in America, how one day the German language almost received the status of an official language on the territory of the country.
In January 1794, a group of German immigrants who settled in the state of Virginia filed a petition with the House of Representatives asking them to begin translating current laws into German, since not all settlers spoke English.
The motion was rejected by a margin of only one vote, 42 to 41.
It is noteworthy that according to some historical sources, the decisive vote in favor of a single English for all was provided by the Speaker of the House,Friedrich Muhlenberg, who was himself an ethnic German.
He is credited with the following phrase when making the decision: “The sooner the Germans become Americans, the better.”
Nevertheless, German in many regions of the United States remained the second most important language for a very long time.
And many Americans categorically did not like it.
The end of the linguistic confrontation came unexpectedly, but objectively.
The First World War began in which the United States opposed Germany.
The general upsurge in American patriotism greatly reduced the popularity of the German language among American Germans.
In America, people increasingly began to realize themselves as a single nation of Americans, taking the nationwide foundations as personal attitudes.
