Hard Working Germans in America

The crossing was often life-threatening

Before the 2500-person emigration center opened in Bremerhaven in 1850, those wishing to leave, are often accommodated in barns or attics (lofts?) when the ships are occupied or not ready for departure. "There is a pig economy here, of which no one has an idea!" , wrote an examination board in 1847. The rush was also high in the French and English ports. The trip to Le Havre has the advantage, that the port is closer to the Atlantic, so that the risk of getting stuck in the North Sea or the English Channel for days or weeks is lower even in bad weather. The English ports also remain very important. Some emigrants receive prepaid tickets from their relatives in America, which are then valid, for example, for the boat trip from Liverpool.

During the first half of the 19th century, the crossing to New York took an average of 45 days. A two-masted brig ( 2mastige Brig) or three-masted barque ( 3-mastige Bark) can carry up to 250 passengers, most of whom spend their time on the intermediate decks, where the intended sleeping space is narrow: Usually, four adult travelers are estimated to be no more than 1.80 by 1.80 meters . In 1847, the American Congress imposed a limit on the number of passengers on emigrant ships – this has the result that people, which wants to leave, were stuck in the European port cities. After 1850, sailing ships were gradually replaced by steamships: with the new ships, the journey time could be reduced up to eight days, it was less dependent on the weather, and the number of passengers could be increased to up to 800. The trip with the sailing ships remains attractive until the 1870s, because it only costs half.

The crossing is often life-threatening: during it´s third passage from Hamburg to New York in September 1858, the Hapag steam sailing ship “Austria” with 538 passengers on board caught fire from improperly handling tar while smoking the decks and sank in front of the Newfoundland Bank - only 89 people survived the catastrophe. The “Leibnitz” sailing ship, operated by the Hamburg shipping company Sloman, with around 550 travelers on board, reached it´s destination on January 21, 1868 after a 70-day journey, but had to complain about a hundred cholera victims. An additional deck had been installed under the intermediate deck to accommodate more passengers. Commissioner Friedrich Kapp, appointed by the New York Immigration Service, describes it as a "complete plague cave".

In New York, all arriving immigrants were smuggled through the landing depot in Castle Garden on the southern tip of Manhattan from 1855. From 1892 onwards, Ellis Island, located in the estuary of the Hudson River in front of Manhattan, became a central gathering point for immigrants: Ellis Island is not only larger than Castle Garden, but also better suited due to its island location.

The immigrants then move from New York further inland. While the typical settlement area of ​​German immigrants was concentrated in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York, around the middle of the century it shifted to the German Triangle, between Milwaukee (Wisconsin), St. Louis (Missouri) and Cincinnati (Ohio). German-style residential quarters develop there, with their own churches, associations, schools and theaters. The settlers can continue to expand to the west, because they push the Indians back and force them to cede large prairie areas. In the decades following the civil war, thousands of Germans were lured by state agencies, churches, railroad companies and business people, with the information to Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota and Oregon that they could buy cheaply undeveloped land there.

America differs from the familiar in many ways for the newcomers. In their letters to their relatives in their German homeland, they describe the climatic differences, the higher standard of living, they tell of exotic fruits and the high meat consumption.

Many have to deal with differences in mentality. Franz Löher complains in The German Emigrants of the Educated Estates in North America (1853) : "The hot business urge, the incessant bustle of the market becomes obnoxious, the naked, raw selfishness in politics, the grandiose hypocrisy in religious life emerges, one feels that Unpleasant and strictly uniform and one-sided of the American character, one notices the lack of deeper intellectual life, the rarity of true education in all external polishing. " Some feel exploited by the Americans. Still others complain of a lack of decency and a sense of justice: Some Germans are outraged that it is possible in America, for people arrested for criminal offenses, to be released on payment of a deposit.

The emigrants find themselves in an ethnically and linguistically unusual heterogeneous society. They are often frightened by the neglect of black people, that they see when they arrive in the American port cities. When emigrants describe their encounters with Indians, they reflect clichés and at the same time their efforts to understand and sympathize. Hermann B. Scharmann, who was hit by the gold rush in 1849 and traveled with his wife and children from New York to the west coast, met a large group of Sioux in Wyoming. "Her sight was grotesque, her appearance and her costume wonderful," he writes. He smokes with the chief, it is a peaceful encounter in which ( according to Scharmann) "the savages" in any case do not seem as bad to him "as many civilized people". But there is also a dark side: in the city of New Ulm, founded in 1854 in Minnesota by German settlers, a bloody massacre of Indians occurs after the initially peaceful coexistence, when the numerically superior Sioux try to conquer the city.