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"The Americans are very inclined to put the Germans a little behind. They only keep the immigrants good for work and cheat them where they can" - these lines were written by a German immigrant, a law student without an exam from the Weser estuary, in 1863, returning home from the USA. Another let the relatives in Germany know:
"... the Americans have a great dislike for all Germans and set them back everywhere...".
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Around 52 million Europeans left the continent in the 19th century, a large proportion of them moving to the USA. Germans, in particular, migrated to the land of "unlimited opportunities". This is about a time when the Germans were the refugees - and they founded companies in their new homeland that are still famous today.
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Germans who left their homeland and disembarked in New York were not welcomed with open arms - probably also due to the large number. In the years from 1880 to 1885 alone, around 850,000 Germans are said to have left their homeland and made a pilgrimage overseas. It was a strenuous journey - and yet some six million! Germans set off on their journey between 1820 and 1930.
"Nowhere else does the legal, wise and active man live so well, so freely, so happily as in America, the poorest better than the one in Europe two steps higher," wrote H. W. E. Eggerling in "Short Description of the United States of North America" in 1832.
The USA became a place of longing. At the beginning of the 19th century, few Germans left their homeland. Religious reasons - once an important reason for flight - faded into the background. However, failed harvests and the resulting price explosion, famine and the arrogance of the craft guilds made emigration more attractive - despite the strains of the crossing.
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Hardly Controlled Migration
The migrants were on the move for up to six months: by ship and barges, horse-drawn carts and on foot. "The period between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the beginning of the First World War was a phase of unbound 'proletarian mass migration'," writes historian and migration researcher Jochen Oltmer.
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This phase was "characterized by 'free' cross-border migration, which was hardly hindered and only rarely controlled by the state or the administration. This phase, which spanned the entire so-called 'long' 19th century, led over 50 million Europeans overseas. Apart from various continental immigration and emigration movements, with around 40 million, mostly to the United States.
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Hamburg, Bremen, and Bremerhaven were developing into major emigrant ports. This poses logistical challenges for the cities because those willing to travel want to be accommodated until the ships leave. Emigrant houses were being built. And the US ports were also increasingly gearing up for the wave of migrants. Ellis Island, an island at the mouth of the Hudson River, had been developed into an immigration station.
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Ellis Island
"The decision to make Ellis Island an immigration collection point in New York was made by the US government. Since 1890, it has regulated nationwide immigration," Barry Moreno, explained a historian at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York. "The government wanted to enforce stricter rules to limit the number of immigrants. Since immigrants were blamed by the population for the rising crime rate, authorities preferred an isolated location."
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Germans and the Problem of Integration
About 40 percent of all Americans have ancestors who came into the country via Ellis Island. From 1892 on, inspectors controlled the immigrants: What is the profession of the newcomers? How much money do they have with them? Do they have diseases? And: Do they speak enough English?
The German immigrants were particularly lacking in language - this also contributed to their bad reputation. And it made their integration more difficult. However, they worked hard and were considered to be resourceful.
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Some Germans Refugees Became Successful Entrepreneurs:
At the end of the 19th century, German workers, especially from southern Germany, were recruited - among other things for the construction of the railway lines. Many Companies founded by these immigrants from Germany have survived to this day.
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One of them was
Marcus Goldman from Trappstadt in Lower Franconia, who left his homeland in 1848 and went to the USA. After the turmoil of the Civil War (1861 to 1865), he opened a one-room office in New York, where he bought promissory notes from tobacco and diamond dealers and sold the bills of exchange to bankers. In 1882, his son-in-law, Samuel Sachs, joined the company. Goldman's son Henry and Samuel Sachs are considered the founders of the world-famous bank Goldman Sachs. In 2017, the financial house generated approximately 916 million US dollars.
Karl Pfizer from Ludwigsburg also wanted to make his fortune in the USA. His emigration was not entirely voluntary: he is one of the "forty-eighters" who left Europe in the wake of the failed European Revolution of 1848/49. Pfizer, the fifth child of a master confectioner and himself a pharmacist's apprentice, joined forces with his cousin Charles after his arrival in New York. They borrowed 2500 dollars and opened a pharmaceutical shop in Brooklyn. There they sold Santonin, a chemical used to combat parasitic worms. These white crystals were to become the first commercial success of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
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Airplanes Instead of Lumber
Wilhelm Eduard Böing lost his father whom he admired very much, at the age of nine due to influenza. Wilhelm Böing Senior had migrated from Limburg/Sauerland in the USA in 1868 and had made a considerable fortune with a timber trade in Detroit. His mother sent him to a boarding school in Switzerland. When he returned to the USA, he changed his clearly German name to the more English variant
William Edward Boeing. Although he worked in his father's timber business, his love for airplanes made him one of the most important producers of airplanes.
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Friedrich Trump, the young man from Kallstadt, Rheinland Pfalz, had already completed a hairdresser's training and had migrated to the USA at the age of just 16. Trump was not satisfied. Now, in his early 20s, he wanted to become rich. He borrowed money to take over a small restaurant in a filthy Seattle district. Until then, he was living with his sister in New York. A very German life: He spoke German, dressed like he did at home, and ate German food. In Seattle this period was over, he became an American. But it wasn't until real estate deals in Queens that he became really rich. The empire was inherited by his son and then Donald Trump, his grandson.
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