How many germans are there in america

The greatest German influx occurred during the midth century due to high unemployment and unrest in Europe. The Irish potato famine brought around 4. Kennedy and Neil Armstrong. Mexican ancestry follows close behind at Check our upcoming releases.

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More Information. Skip to main content. Single Accounts Corporate Solutions Universities. Follow Statista. Description This chart shows the highest ancestral concentration in U. Download Chart. You will find more infographics at Statista. The opportunities seemed too good to be true: A peasant farmer who had to survive on half a hectare of land in Germany could acquire 64 hectares after just ten years in the United States.

A lack of political prospects was also a motivational factor behind emigration. Countless communities developed with schools, churches and clubs, in which the German language and culture was preserved and cultivated.

As advanced industrialisation took hold in the USA, German-Americans were among the most established groups of the population, both in farming and among the new blue-collar professions. Their early presence among the new industries also led to Germans becoming more mobile than virtually any other group. They were less tightly concentrated in individual regions than other immigrants and spread across the country working as foremen in railway construction, for example.

The image of those with German roots changed abruptly upon the outbreak of the First World War. All of a sudden, they came under pressure to cast off their ethnic identity. Full-blown anti-German hysteria meant that the German language and culture were ostracised. Thus, a process was set in motion which made German immigrants unique among all the major immigrant groups, and which was further fuelled by the Second World War — the almost complete erosion of their original identity. No other group lost its public visibility to quite the extent of the German-Americans during the course of the 20th century.

They still form the most important group of German immigrants in the USA today. In , around 12, Germans emigrated to America. How Germany ticks close. Best topics:. Germany and Europe.

Development and Dialogue. Peace and Security. Subscriber Account active since. Commemorating the founding of Germantown, Pa. As President Barack Obama proclaimed a few years ago on this occasion, " Our citizens of German descent excel in every discipline and open our minds to the expanses of human possibility.

When we drive across a suspension bridge, listen to music played on a Steinway piano, or send a child to kindergarten, their unique traditions and customs surround us. So why are there so many German-Americans in the United States anyway?

A slow but steady stream of Germans immigrated to the U. It all started with that fateful day in October:. On October 6, , thirteen Quaker families from Krefeld arrived in Philadelphia. From the outset, their settlement on the northern outskirts of Philadelphia was called Germantown.

From then on, the tolerant Quaker colony of Pennsylvania served as a beachhead for the immigration of pietistic and other Protestant minorities, notably dissidents of the Reformed and Lutheran persuasion.

When the first American census was taken in , Pennsylvania's German population was put at , which amounts to a third of the state's entire population. Immigration from Germany and other European states really picked up, however, in the early 19th century:. European mass immigration to the United States began in earnest only after the end of the Napoleonic wars in , at a time when unimpeded transatlantic commercial shipping resumed. Soon a first major wave of 20, emigrants from southwestern Germany took place, occasioned by major crop failures in the years The figures fell during the s, but increased significantly in the s.

Since , the areas of German emigrant origin shifted gradually to the West, later to the Northwest, and in the latter third of the century to the Northeast.