Historically, Chicago has had an ethnic German population. As of the

2000 U.S. Census The United States census of 2000, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2000, to be 281,421,906, an increase of 13.2 percent over the 248,709,873 people enumerated during the 1990 cen ...

, 15.8% of people in the

Chicago area The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km2), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago, its suburbs and hin ...

had German ancestry, and those of German ancestry were the largest ethnic group in 80% of Chicago's suburbs. As of the year 1930, those of German ancestry were the largest European ethnic group in Chicago. However, as of today that number has decreased to 6%.Irving, p
65

19th century

The first Germans arrived in Chicago in the 1830s. Germans arrived in the United States as Chicago began to develop in the mid-19th century.Harzig, Christiane.

. ''

Encyclopedia of Chicago ''The Encyclopedia of Chicago'' is a historical reference work covering Chicago and the entire Chicago metropolitan area published by the University of Chicago Press. Released in October 2004, the work is the result of a ten-year collaboration ...

''. Retrieved on May 4, 2014. 1,000 Germans were in Chicago in 1845. In 1848, the first large group of Germans immigrated due to failed revolts in German states. The Germans arriving on or soon after that year became known as the "

Forty-Eighters The Forty-Eighters were Europeans who participated in or supported the Revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe. In the German Confederation, the Forty-Eighters favoured unification of Germany, a more democratic government, and guarantees of human ...

". Irving Cutler, the author of ''Chicago'', wrote that their true underlying motive to come to the U.S. was economic even though they had to immediately leave Germany due to political issues. According to Cutler, these Germans did not place importance on religious reasons, and they "arrived much less destitute" compared to Irish immigrants. The German population increased to 5,073 in 1850, and that year Germans made up 1/6th of Chicago's population. In 1855,

Mayor of Chicago The mayor of Chicago is the chief executive of city government in Chicago, Illinois, the third-largest city in the United States. The mayor is responsible for the administration and management of various city departments, submits proposals and ...

Levi Boone declared that on Sundays all beer gardens and saloons will be closed, leading to the Lager Beer Riots. There were 22,230 ethnic Germans in Chicago, or 20% of the city's population, in 1860. One of the leading newspapers of the region in the late 19th century was the German language

Illinois Staats-Zeitung ''Illinois Staats-Zeitung'' (''Illinois State Newspaper'') was one of the most well-known German-language newspapers of the United States; it was published in Chicago from 1848 until 1922. Along with the '' Westliche Post'' and '' Anzeiger des We ...

, owned by former

Cook County Sheriff The Cook County Sheriff is the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, heading the Cook County Sheriff's Office. Office description Terms are currently four-years in length. Officeholders Recent election results , - , colspan=16 style="text-a ...

A.C. Hesing, who was also the first German-born elected official Rupert Ferguson Chicago. The paper's chief editors included U.S. Representative

Lorenzo Brentano Lorenzo Brentano (November 4, 1813 – September 18, 1891) was a German revolutionary and journalist who served as President of the Free State of Baden during the 1849 Baden Revolution. Following the failure of the revolutions, he and many ...

and Collector of Internal Revenue

Hermann Raster Hermann Raster (May 6, 1827 – July 24, 1891) was an American editor, abolitionist, writer, and anti-temperance political boss who served as chief editor and part-owner of the '' Illinois Staats-Zeitung'', a widely circulated newspaper in the ...

. The Staats-Zeitung was in publication until its support for Germany in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

and a subsequent scandal involving the

American Legion The American Legion, commonly known as the Legion, is a non-profit organization of U.S. war veterans headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is made up of state, U.S. territory, and overseas departments, and these are in turn made up of ...

caused its failure in 1921. The

Haymarket Riot The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in ...

occurred in 1886. The peak of German immigration was 1890.Heinen and Heinen, p
7
In 1900, there were 470,000 Chicago residents who had at least one parent born in Germany and/or who were born in Germany themselves. Those of German descent were the largest ethnic group of Chicago from 1850 until the turn of the century. German-born citizens occupied many of Chicago's highest political offices of the 19th century, including

County Clerk A clerk is a white-collar worker who conducts general office tasks, or a worker who performs similar sales-related tasks in a retail environment. The responsibilities of clerical workers commonly include record keeping, filing, staffing service ...

Sheriff A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland that is commonly transla ...

Coroner A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into the manner or cause of death, and to investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within the coroner's jur ...

City Clerk A clerk is a senior official of many municipal governments in the English-speaking world. In some communities, including most in the United States, the position is elected, but in many others, the clerk is appointed to their post. In the UK, a Tow ...

City Treasurer The municipal treasurer is a position of responsibility for a municipality according to the locally prevailing laws. The treasurer of a public agency is elected City Marshall and General Superintendent of Police, and

County Treasurer A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

20th century

Goethe Monument Chicago, by Hermann Hahn

German immigration decreased in the 20th century due to increases in the German economy and new restrictions on immigration. In 1914, there were 191,168 people born in Germany living in Chicago; this was the peak number of German-born people in Chicago. In 1920, 22% of Chicagoans self-reported as being of German ancestry. The lower numbers were because of a reluctance to report German ancestry due to

anti-German sentiment Anti-German sentiment (also known as Anti-Germanism, Germanophobia or Teutophobia) is opposition to or fear of Germany, its inhabitants, its culture, or its language. Its opposite is Germanophilia. Anti-German sentiment largely began wit ...

from

and because of reduced immigration from Germany. In the

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

era anti-Hitler dissidents and

German Jews The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

immigrated to Chicago. In the post-World War II era ethnic Germans expelled from

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...

, and

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label= Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavij ...

arrived in Chicago. In 1980, 6% of Chicago's population born outside of the United States was from Germany. After 1980, this percentage decreased.

Geography

Historically, the bulk of Chicago's Germans lived in the North Side with the center of the German population being Lakeview. In German the North Side was called the "Nord Seite". There were smaller numbers in the South Side that worked mainly in meatpacking. Joseph C. Heinen and Susan Barton Heinen, authors of ''Lost German Chicago'', stated that in the 1970s, some "vestiges" of the South Side German community remained but otherwise it had "quickly dispersed" in the 20th century.

Demographics

By the end of the 19th century, about 35% of the Germans originated from northeast Germany. In the 1880s and 1890s, most of Chicago's German immigration originated from the estates in rural northeast Germany in places such as

Mecklenburg Mecklenburg (; nds, label= Low German, Mękel(n)borg ) is a historical region in northern Germany comprising the western and larger part of the federal-state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The largest cities of the region are Rostock, Schweri ...

Pomerania Pomerania ( pl, Pomorze; german: Pommern; Kashubian: ''Pòmòrskô''; sv, Pommern) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The western part of Pomerania belongs to ...

, and

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an e ...

. By the end of the 19th century, 25% were from southwest Germany. 17% were from northwest Germany. 12% were from southeast; in the 1830s, most immigration came from southwestern Germany. By the end of the 19th century, 11% were from western Germany. Most German immigration in the 1850s and 1860s came from the middle part of the country. By the end of the 19th century, about 55% of Chicago's Germans were Roman Catholic. The Protestant population was smaller. According to Christiane Harzig of the ''

'', they "were more outspoken on political and community issues." There were about 20,000 German Jews in Chicago by 1900.

Institutions

The

DANK Haus German American Cultural Center DANK-Haus German American Cultural Center is a cultural organization located in the Lincoln Square, Chicago community area. Founded in Chicago in 1959, it seeks to preserve and promote German and German American culture. The center contains the D ...

is located in

Lincoln Square, Chicago Lincoln Square on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of the city's 77 community areas. It encompasses the smaller neighborhoods of Ravenswood, Ravenswood Gardens, Bowmanville, Budlong Woods as well as Lincoln Square itself. Profile ...

. The

Goethe-Institut The Goethe-Institut (, GI, en, Goethe Institute) is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange ...

Chicago is located in downtown Chicago and offers cultural programs, German language courses and exams.

Politics

In the 19th century, many Chicago Germans became involved in antislavery abolition movements. Notable German American abolitionists in Chicago included

Wilhelm Rapp Wilhelm Georg Rapp (1827–1907) was a Jewish German American journalist, abolitionist, and newspaper editor. He was born in Lindau, Bavaria, but grew up in Baden."Wilhelm Rapp (Husband of Mdme. Schumann Heink)." Abendpost, 1 Mar. 1907. As a studen ...

and

. In the late 19th century, many Germans in Chicago were involved in anarchist-radical politics. At that time German Americans were the primary leaders of the Socialist Labor Party and by 1890 it was essentially a German-speaking group. German was one of the organization's two official languages used in its meetings. German Americans disproportionately made up those who participated in the 1886

.Holli, p
97
Several factors caused German American involvement in radical politics to cease by the 20th century. In the 1880s and 1890s, the living standards of German Americans had improved, making them better than those in Germany. In addition, agitators and radical emigrant editors stopped coming to Chicago because Bismarck repealed Germany's anti-socialist laws.

References

* Heinen, Joseph C. and Susan Barton Heinen. ''Lost German Chicago'' (Images of America).

Arcadia Publishing Arcadia Publishing is an American publisher of neighborhood, local, and regional history of the United States in pictorial form.(analysis of the successful ''Images of America'' series). Arcadia Publishing also runs the History Press, which publ ...

, 2009. , 9780738577142. * Holli, Melvin G. "German American Ethnic and Cultural Identity from 1890 Onward" (Chapter 3). In: Holli, Melvin G. and Peter d'Alroy Jones (editors). ''Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait''. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995. Start p. 93. , 9780802870537. * Irving, Cutler. ''Chicago''.

Southern Illinois University Press Southern Illinois University Press or SIU Press, founded in 1956, is a university press located in Carbondale, Illinois, owned and operated by Southern Illinois University. The press publishes approximately 50 titles annually, among its more tha ...

, (no date). , 9780809387953.

Notes

External links

*
Historic Overview: Germans in Chicago

Goethe Institute The Goethe-Institut (, GI, en, Goethe Institute) is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and ...

.
German version
*

.
German version
{{German diaspora

Germans , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

German-American culture in Chicago German-American history