My German Ancestors

Being German-American is a very personal thing. We want and we find external independence here, a free middle-class way of life, uninhibited progress in industrial development, in short, political freedom. To this extent we are completely American. We build our houses the way Americans do, but inside there is a German hearth that glows. We wear an American hat, but under its brim German eyes peer forth from a German face. We love our wives with German fidelity. . . We live according to what is customary in America, but we hold dear our German customs and traditions. We speak English, but we think and feel in German. Our reason speaks with the words of an Anglo-American, but our hearts understand only our mother tongue. While our eyes are fixed on an American horizon, in our souls the dear old German sky arches upward. Our entire emotional lives are, in a word, German, and anything that would satisfy our inner longing must appear in German attire [Cincinnati Volksfreund, Nov. 13, 1 848]. (Adams)

The conditions of which German immigrants faced were horrific and every person who has a trace of German ancestry, including myself, should be disgusted. German

immigration to the U.S. - was made difficult by the hardships they suffered in Germany and the persecution they experienced when they arrived in the U.S.

To begin with, hardships suffered in Germany made German immigrants? journey to the U.S. difficult. Throughout Germany, in the 1700?s, worsening conditions of farm ownership became a common push factor for German immigrants. The decline of land conditions made growing crops, of any type, nearly impossible and what little land there was to be had was already owned. (German American) Also, many immigrants fled to America because of the many revolutions in the 1860's and the poverty that almost always follows war. Following the revolutions in German states in 1848, a wave of political refugees fled to America, and became known as Forty-Eighters. In one twenty year span in the late 1800's, Germany went to war at least seven times taking on neighboring countries such as: Austria, France, Belgium and Russia. Much money was spent on the war effort in Germany. People were taxed heavily just to buy bullets for the army. (German Immigration) Following these costly wars came the onrush of millions of German immigrants, only to find that another war had been brewing in America.