Little Germany (New York City)
Klein Germany (English Little Germany , occasionally Dutchtown called) was a neighborhood in the Lower East Side in the district of Manhattan in New York City , where mostly German immigrants lived. Due to the death of many people important to the community in the " General Slocum " disaster in 1904, it disintegrated the following year.
origin
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a steady influx of immigrants who entered the USA via Ellis Island ensured a continuous increase in the population in small Germany. More than 50,000 Germans lived there as early as 1840. In the 1850s alone, around 800,000 Germans entered the USA via New York. The settlement fluctuated greatly because many families left the place in other directions. The main difference between German immigrants and immigrants from other countries was that they usually had a better education and were skilled in handicrafts.
More than half of the bakers and carpenters in New York were German or of German origin, and many Germans also worked in construction. Higher educated Germans were important contributors to the formation of trade unions and were often politically active; One of the reasons for this was a great wave of politically motivated people fleeing after the defeated revolution of 1848/49 . In 1840, 24,000 Germans lived in the district. In the 1870s the population grew to 170,000. At the beginning of the 20th century, Little Germany had a population of 50,000. The community was the cultural center of the activities of the German population of New York. The facilities included, for example, beer gardens, sports clubs, shooting clubs as well as German-speaking libraries, choirs, schools and churches.
The neighborhood was around Tompkins Square Park , which its residents called White Square , in what is now the East Village . The name of the quarter comes from the Irish population, the Germans themselves called their quarter Deutschländle in reference to the many residents of Swabian origin.
"General Slocum" disaster
The " General Slocum " disaster struck Small Germany on June 15, 1904. The Evangelical Lutheran Church held its 17th annual picnic to celebrate the end of the school year and chartered a paddle steamer, the "General Slocum", for a pleasure trip on the New York East River to Picnic Spot on Long Island . Over 1,300 passengers, most of them women and children, took part in the event. Shortly after casting off, a fire broke out in a storage room in the bow of the ship.
Although the ship was equipped with lifeboats and lifeboats, these were in poor condition. Some lifebuoys were even rotten and unable to float. The lack of adequate rescue equipment combined with Captain William van Schaick's poor leadership behavior resulted in an estimated 1,021 deaths. While about one percent of the population of Little Germany perished in the accident, these victims were members of the most established families, the social structure of the community; the rest of the newly immigrated population usually did not have the money to be able to afford such pleasure trips.
The end of small Germany
The "General Slocum" catastrophe is the main reason why New York City, home of the world-famous districts Chinatown and Little Italy , no longer has Little Germany .
Ultimately, the entire community of Little Germany could no longer exist because of the accident. Many businesses were no longer owned and some bereaved parents, spouses, children and friends took their own lives as a result. The desire to find someone to blame for the misfortune led to divided opinions among the public. Families fought over the distribution of the compensation funds to the survivors, which caused the community to fall apart. Many families separated and moved away, businesses were closed.
The social advancement at the beginning of the 20th century also led to a change of residential area. Many Germans later moved to Yorkville on the Upper East Side or to Brownsville , Brooklyn . 86th Street became the new main street, the German Broadway. At the census of 1910, 542,061 people lived in the district, by 1930 the population had fallen to 249,755.
With the entry of the Americans into the First World War in 1917, the high standing of the Germans disappeared. The third generation of immigrants felt they belonged more to the Americans than to the German war opponents. German terms such as sauerkraut , beer and German Gemütlichkeit disappeared from the everyday vocabulary of New Yorkers. In an effort to ban everything German from their own language and culture, sauerkraut became "Liberty Cabbage" and German Measles (German: Röteln) became "Liberty Measles". The term hot dog was now synonymous with all types of sausage and replaced Frankfurter and Wiener . People of German origin changed their names, German lessons disappeared from schools, and German bookshops and libraries also disappeared.
Today there is still a restaurant with a German name and German food in 1648 Second Ave and German sausage and meat products in a butcher's shop on 1654 Second Ave. A German-language service can be attended in the German Evangelical Lutheran Zion St. Mark's Church at 339 East 84th Street.
The Steuben Parade , named after Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben , which takes place every September , is a reminder of the German origins of many New Yorkers. In the 2000 census , 360,000 New Yorkers professed their German ancestry.
See also
- German American
- Germantown
- History of the Germans in the United States
- List of Manhattan neighborhoods
literature
- JJ: Little Germany . In: The Gazebo . Issue 48, 1874, pp. 781, 782 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
- Edward T. O'Donnell: The Outing. The end of Little Germany, New York . Marebuchverlag, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-936384-93-2 (as Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-17449-2 ).
- Alexander Emmerich: The History of the Germans in America. From 1680 to the present. Torch bearer, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-7716-4441-3 .
- Vincent E. Noel: The end of everything. Narrative. Stadtlichter Presse, Wenzendorf 2019, ISBN 978-3-947883-12-7 .
Web links
- The development of small Germany using the example of the German-American Shooting Society (PDF; 6.65 MB; English)
- Ship tragedy in New York - Little Germany's sinking . In: Der Spiegel
- Landmarks Preservation Commission on Little Germany. (PDF; English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Article on anti- German hatred from 1917 in the Library of Congress (English)
- ↑ Stadtlichter Presse: The End of Everything, Vincent E. Noel. Retrieved December 8, 2019 .