German overseas migration

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As a German overseas migration is emigration of Germans referred to areas outside of the Eurasian continent.

German overseas migration until 1945

Situation in the German-speaking area

The early emigrations overseas took place in a transitional phase of European development, which lay between the collapse of the old agrarian society and the dawn of the modern industrial age. The European overseas migration of the 19th and early 20th centuries is therefore closely linked to the demographic transition.

The first named German emigrant was Franz Daniel Pastorius , who in negotiations with William Penn in 1683 obtained the immigration permit for a group of German settlers in Pennsylvania . Together with 13 Krefeld families who followed on a later ship , he founded and organized the Germantown settlement , now a suburb of Philadelphia .

Because of religious oppression and a great famine, more than 10,000 Palatinate people left their homeland in 1709 and started a new life in North America. Starting from the Palatinate, migratory movements spread to large parts of southwest Germany by the middle of the 18th century. One of the reasons for this was an overpopulation, which in other German countries did not occur until the beginning of the 19th century.

The main trigger for this enormous growth - which occurred all over Europe - was an increase in agricultural productivity and the advancement of industrialization . Sanitary and medical advances also contributed to a falling death rate . Across Europe , the high emigration rates correlate with the natural growth rates that were around 20 to 25 years earlier.

Associated with the growing population in the German states was the onset of pauperism (mass poverty) and unemployment . This created the structural requirements for emigration , and emigration to America had become a constant phenomenon in southwest Germany from the first half of the 18th century. In the 19th century, emigration spread from the southwest via the west to the north and northeast of Germany. The reason for this were the emigration bans that were relaxed or later lifted after the Congress of Vienna .

However, the emigration flow did not increase significantly until after 1820. This was not only due to the rapidly growing birth surpluses, but also to technological progress, which was evident, for example, in the development of steamships , and thus led to a faster and less dangerous Atlantic crossing. In addition, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, freedom of emigration was ensured, which allowed people to leave their country again. Advertising campaigns by landowners in the destination countries as well as by shipowners and captains who wanted to earn money on the crossing also contributed to increased mass emigration. Last but not least, the emigrants themselves were responsible for an increase in the number of migrants, as they tried to bring relatives and friends to the New World, which is referred to as chain migration. The attractions in the destination country offered the emigrants free land, free people, national security and economic independence combined with industrialization that had already taken place.

The emigration of the 19th and early 20th centuries took place in several phases that correspond almost exactly to long-term population waves, i.e. the alternation of strong and weak cohorts. In addition, the migration was controlled by economic and political crises. To name the poor harvests of the year 1846-47, which is about American Civil War between 1861 and 1865. The late nineteenth bloom led from 1872 temporarily to a drastic decline in emigration from the German Reich. Around 1900, the overseas migration from Germany finally decreased. This was due to the end of free land acquisition in the United States in addition to the rise of German industry since the 1870s.

Emigration from the German Empire
via Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp and (only statistically recorded from 1874) Stettin
1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879
75,912 125,650 103,638 45.112 30,773 28,368 21,964 24,217 33,327

However, the USA remained the main target of German emigrants throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the period from 1850 to 1890, the Germans even constituted the largest national immigrant group. Of the 5.9 million people who went overseas between 1820 and 1928, 5.3 million migrated; H. almost nine tenths to the USA, compared to only 200,000 to Brazil , 145,000 to Canada (from 1851) and 120,000 to Argentina (from 1861). The numbers are even lower for Australia and South Africa , each with fewer than 50,000 people; and until 1913 only around 24,000 people from the mother country came to the German colonies .

Around 1930 the freedom of individuals to migrate was restricted for the first time. Due to the global economic crisis, the most important immigration countries decided to tighten immigration controls. The US immigration laws of 1921 ( Emergency Quota Act ) and 1924 ( Immigration Act of 1924 ) had already initiated this development a few years earlier by trying to curb the increase in immigration with permissible immigration quotas according to nationality. This is evident from the fact that in 1927, for example, the number of European hikers to destinations in Europe exceeded that to transoceanic ones for the first time. The intra-European migrations of the 1920s and 1940s, however, were to a large extent connected with political changes or were a consequence of the two world wars .

Composition of the emigrants

The demographic and social composition of emigrants has changed conspicuously over time. There are three phases:

  1. The period up to around 1865 , in which the family emigration of self-employed smallholders and small-scale craftsmen first dominated from the southwest, but later also from other parts of Germany: even if many more men (approx. 60%) than women emigrated, this indicates the relatively high proportion of children under 10 years of age (approx. 20%) point out that only a small part of the overseas hikes were individual hikes and that mostly entire families left home.
  2. The period from 1865 to 1895, when sub-peasant and lower-middle-class classes began to emigrate from northern Germany and individual migration gradually increased: In contrast to the previous period, only a small proportion of the emigrants were self-employed and the proportion of children was high back. Since about 1890, individual emigration has made up the bulk of the migratory movement. It was no longer exclusively men, but increasingly women too.
  3. The period from 1895 to 1914, in which family emigration came to an end and settlement migration became a labor migration: The end of agricultural colonization in the United States led to the fact that the emigration, which was predominantly carried out as a family, with the aim of agricultural activity in the destination country, gradually faded away and was replaced by the emigration of industrial workers. In the post-war period, the proportion of individual migration even increased. Between 1921 and 1928 two thirds of the emigrants traveled as individuals, 38% of whom were women.

Push and pull factors

For the German overseas migration of the 19th and early 20th centuries, some push and pull factors can be found that are related to social and economic changes. In the real estate areas of the south-west of Germany, population growth and fragmentation of property continued from the 18th century. This type of inheritance was typical for southern Germany and means that the property of a family is divided into equal pieces among those entitled to inherit. This division takes place with each inheritance, so that the number of tiny parcels increases over time. In addition, connected with the dissolution of the manor at the beginning of the 19th century, there was a further deterioration in the economic situation and increasing indebtedness of the dwarf job owners. Especially after bad harvests, such as in the 1840s, the smallholders were mostly forced to sell their farms and relocate to the New World.

In areas with inheritance rights, i. H. In contrast to the real estate division, in which a single heir was inherited and the rest was settled, this practice led on the one hand to a strengthening of the peasantry. On the other hand, this brought for the sub-peasant strata, i. H. economic disadvantages for the heirs who have been compensated. While these people were able to keep themselves financially afloat with secondary activities such as linen weaving or Holland walking (a type of migrant worker), many were forced to emigrate after these sources of income ceased to exist.

In north-eastern Germany, the liberation of the peasants (during which the peasants' personal obligations to their landlords were gradually dissolved) and separation (land consolidation) initially led to land development and agricultural intensification, which initially made it possible to increase the number of families living on agriculture. The situation of overpopulation only occurred with a phase shift of around two decades in the 1860s and 1870s, after which north-east Germany (especially West Prussia , Pomerania and Posen ) became a center of emigration. Along with the phase shift in overpopulation, there was also a shift in the professional and social position of the emigrants. Most of these emigrants were still unmarried agricultural workers and no longer, as in the early phase of migration, small farmers and tradespeople with their families.

However, the emigration of people in the first half of the 19th century was not only caused by the agricultural problems, but was also intensified by the decline in the home trade and the overstaffing of the handicrafts as a result of the beginning industrialization . In the second half of the 19th century, the newly emerging industrial companies were able to absorb more and more the “surplus population” from other economic sectors and thus weaken the population's tendency to emigrate. The fact that Germany gradually developed into the largest industrial nation on the continent is due not least to the emigration of the decades before. As a result, the German economy was freed from the number of people it could not offer jobs.

Even in the time of economic and political upheavals and uncertainties, many Germans emigrated to America, which experienced a huge economic boom in those years, in the years of the global economic crisis after 1929 there was a renewed wave of emigration, especially from rural areas, but there it was Immigration to the US has already been limited due to high levels of unemployment and poverty in their own country.

After the NSDAP came to power in Germany in 1933, the persecution of the Jews and the complete suppression of all opposition began. People who recognized the danger early enough and had the necessary financial means left the country. They included democratically minded politicians, but also a large number of artists and scientists. Often there was an overlap between these emigrants and the Jewish emigrants, who with 500,000 people represented by far the largest group of emigrants in the Third Reich .

The film metropolis Hollywood profited immensely from the influx of creative personnel such as producers, directors and actors. The classic film Casablanca (1942), for example, was almost without exception cast with immigrant actors. Famous emigrants in the 20th century were, for example, the natural scientist Albert Einstein , the writers Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht , the actress Marlene Dietrich , the director Billy Wilder , who left Germany during the Third Reich because of National Socialism and emigrated to the USA. They all sought refuge in the USA from political persecution by the Nazis or, in the case of intellectuals, democratic structures and the opportunity to express themselves freely.

German overseas migration after 1945

Post-war situation

After the end of the Second World War a somewhat different problem arose for Germany. The political and economic structures had largely collapsed. Germany faced renewed overpopulation: many displaced persons, especially from the eastern areas who had become homeless as a result of the war, migrated to Germany and although the total number of inhabitants in the four zones of occupation corresponded to that of 1938 in the Reich, the German border area was now significantly smaller . The shortage of food, the elimination of large agricultural areas, scarce living space (around a quarter was destroyed by the war) and a lack of opportunities to earn a living both troubled people.

Immediately after the war, the occupying powers forbade any emigration to prevent war criminals and National Socialists from leaving Germany; in July 1950 this ban was lifted. In addition, they wanted to counteract a loss of workers who were urgently needed for reconstruction. In addition, most countries refused to accept Germans after the victory over the Third Reich.

Developments in Germany and in the US target area

See also: Immigration to the United States

For the first time since 1947, a change in attitudes abroad became noticeable, and the United States was the first country to allow German immigrants to enter again. It therefore attracted the interest of those willing to emigrate to a particular degree. This could also be related to the fact that many Germans came into contact with the English language and the Anglo-American way of life for the first time through the occupying powers. Reports from the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden make this clear: 503,096 people emigrated to the United States in the 1950s. The comparatively high number of people who emigrated to America in the 1950s is due to the fact that many East Germans fled to the USA. Their economic situation was worse than that of the rest of Germany's population and they benefited less from the economic upturn. In addition, many of these refugees came from occupations for which there was no longer any need in Germany, but which were in the United States. These were mainly industrial workers and craftsmen. The poor economic conditions in the East thus acted as a push factor for these people, the favorable employment prospects in America as a pull factor. This was also favored by the immigration policy of the USA: in this decade several laws were passed that allowed German displaced persons and refugees to immigrate. Of particular importance was a law of 1950 in which it was determined that the ethnic Germans, ie refugees displaced from their homes, were to be financed by the United States, which in many cases made emigration possible in the first place.

However, the number of emigrants decreased significantly in the 1960s to just 284,349. One of the reasons for this is that there was a first economic crisis after the economic upswing in the 1950s. At first glance, this may appear to be a push factor for one's own country, which should actually encourage migration. However, economic development in the USA ran parallel, which is why the pull factors of the target country do not apply here. Second, the United States government passed a new immigration law in 1965, which stipulated a quota of no more than 20,000 immigrants per country per year. While in 1969 there were still 9,289 emigrants from America, in 1975 the low point of the emigration movement was reached with 5,154 people. In the 1970s, an average of only around 6,700 Germans emigrated to the United States each year.

The most popular emigration countries of the 1950s after the United States, Canada and Australia, in which special immigration programs were carried out during this period, also recorded declining numbers of immigrants from Germany in the 1960s. While 208,300 Germans immigrated to Canada in the 1950s , there were only around 56,500 Germans in the following decade and around 20,100 Germans in the 1970s. The number of German immigrants to Australia did not fall quite as drastically : 64,000 Germans emigrated to Australia in the 1950s, this number fell to around 38,500 in the 1960s and fell again by half to around 18,200 in the 1970s.

Overall, the willingness of Germans to migrate decreased significantly in the 1970s, with an average of 54,400 emigrants. Fewer Germans emigrated to the United States during this period than in the years 1945 to 1949 with their considerable immigration restrictions.

This is likely to be due to the strong economic situation in the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, the Bretton Woods system , a system of fixed exchange rates that had set a relatively high dollar rate, collapsed in the early 1970s . The dollar had been overvalued since the end of the war; the Deutsche Mark and other European currencies are undervalued. Anyone who worked abroad for a while and saved a lot there could become wealthy relatively easily in this way. When the dollar rate was released in 1973, one got DM 3.67 for one dollar; Within a few years, the exchange rate fell to about 1: 2 (almost half).

In addition, there may have been a growing awareness among the population that the fate of countries today is so closely linked that emigration does not necessarily protect against the consequences of environmental disasters, armed conflicts or global economic recessions.

Push and pull factors

As already mentioned at the beginning, after the end of the Second World War, many Germans felt the desire to leave Germany, as many parts of it were destroyed after the war, the economy became ailing and there was a threat of overpopulation due to the influx of refugees from the east. Food shortages and the elimination of large agricultural areas also led to a push factor. In contrast, America stood as a land of undreamt-of possibilities and an opportunity for a new beginning. America suffered no destruction whatsoever during the war, large areas of land were available to the people and especially the need for skilled workers, especially in industry, caused many people to emigrate.

Proportion of the sexes

The proportion of female emigrants was always at least 60% to over 70%. By 1969 about a quarter of female immigrants were married to American citizens, which is why they are referred to as “immigrant wives”. In comparison, the number of immigrating German husbands of American women was never so high: up to 1959 it was only about 1.1% per year, in the 60s about 2.1% and in the 70s there was an increase approx. 15.9% per year.

The American Immigration Act of 1965 resulted in a sharp drop in the total number of immigrants and a sharp increase in the percentage of immigrant spouses. Indeed, one of the aims of this law was to promote reunification. To date, the immigrant spouses make up 50% of all German immigrants. The number of immigrant husbands also increased (both in percentage and in absolute terms).

Most immigrant women were between 20 and 29 years old. The next largest group was that of 10 to 19 year olds (15.8% on average). An average of 13.9% of women were 30 to 39 years old. Looking at the periods between 1954 and 1979, between 81.4 and 91.9% women were not older than 39 years. Of the immigrant men, between 80.5 and 91.8% were under 40 years of age. As a rule, younger generations emigrated. The lion's share here were the 20-39 year olds with an average of 27.1%. Then the 30–39 year olds with an average of 16.2% and the 10–19 year olds with 14%. The largest proportion of the total population had children up to the age of 9 with an average of 30.8%, for whom the parents naturally made the decision to emigrate.

Proportion of occupations

Analogous to the age structure and the high proportion of wives, something can still be observed: 61.9% of immigrants did not work. Most of the working immigrants were skilled workers and artisans. But an astonishingly high proportion (on average 9.1%) came from professions with a theological orientation. They could immigrate outside of the quota until 1965 and were given preferential treatment. Traditional American tolerance of faith may also have contributed to this group's decision-making. However, work in the household sector has steadily fallen, as for many there was something “servant-like” attached to this profession. In the first post-war years, however, this type of employment was popular with many women, because they had a perspective without the necessary professional qualifications in mind. With the Immigration Act of 1965, skilled workers and specialists were given preference and a growing group of managers, civil servants and the wealthy can also be recognized.

The extent to which American immigration legislation has promoted family reunification since 1965 is shown by the large increase in the number of unlimited immigration. Family members of American citizens fell into this category. It jumped from 1966 with 26.7% in the next year to 54.2% and in the next few years to well over 70%.

See also

literature

  • Klaus J. Bade: Germans Abroad - Strangers in Germany. Migration in the past and present. Munich: CH Beck 1993.
  • Jürgen Bähr: Population Geography. Berlin: De Gruyter 1992. ISBN 3-11-008862-2 .
  • Jürgen Bähr: International migrations in the past and present , in: Geographische Rundschau 47 (1995), 7–8. ISSN | 0016-7460.
  • Hildegard Bartels (Ed.): Population and Economy 1872–1972. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1972.
  • Matthias Blazek: Memoirs of Carl Wippo - life memories of Carl Wippo. Articles about the emigration to North America from the Kingdom of Hanover in the years 1846–1852. Stuttgart: Ibidem 2016, ISBN 978-3-8382-1027-8 .
  • Friedemann Fegert: You don’t like to imagine Eich as it is to ged in Amerigha. Emigration from the young clearing villages in Passau to North America since the middle of the 19th century. Karlsruhe 2001. ISBN 3-8311-0234-1 .
  • Peter Guttkuhn: 200 years of the USA: Lübeck in North America . In: Vaterstädtische Blätter, 27th year, Lübeck 1976.
  • Wolfgang J. Helbich: All people are the same there. German emigration to America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Düsseldorf 1988.
  • Wolfgang J. Helbich: Letters from America. German emigrants write from the New World, 1830–1930. Munich 1988.
  • Peter Marschalck: German overseas migration in the 19th century. Stuttgart: Klett 1973. ISBN 3-12-905480-4 .
  • Karin Nerger-Focke: The German emigration to America after 1945: General conditions and course forms . Stuttgart: Heinz 1995 a. Bonn 1998. ISBN 3-88099-636-9 .
  • Friedrich Seidel: The new immigration. History and problems of the overseas migration from Europe to the United States between 1880 and 1930. Diss. Cologne 1955.
  • Rainer Vollmar: Living in the wild. Settlement design and identity of German emigrants in the USA. Berlin 1995. ISBN 3-496-02554-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ General Handbook by Dr. Richard Andree, Velhagen & Klasing, Leipzig 1881, explanatory text p. 21/22.