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German-Americans - The silent minority
The Economist ^ | February 7, 2015

Posted on 10/06/2015 6:49:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

America’s largest ethnic group has assimilated so well that people barely notice it.

KOHLER, WISCONSIN - ON A snow-covered bluff overlooking the Sheboygan river stands the Waelderhaus, a faithful reproduction of an Austrian chalet. It was built by the Kohler family of Wisconsin in the 1920s as a tribute to the homeland of their father, John Michael Kohler, who had immigrated to America in 1854 at the age of ten.

John Michael moved to Sheboygan, married the daughter of another German immigrant, who owned the local foundry, and took over his father-in-law’s business. He transformed it from a maker of ploughshares into a plumbing business. Today Kohler is the biggest maker of loos and baths in America. Herbert Kohler, the boss (and grandson of the founder), has done so well selling tubs that he has been able to pursue his other passion—golf—on a grand scale. The Kohler Company owns Whistling Straits, the course that will host the Ryder Cup in 2020.

German-Americans are America’s largest single ethnic group (if you divide Hispanics into Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc). In 2013, according to the Census bureau, 46m Americans claimed German ancestry: more than the number who traced their roots to Ireland (33m) or England (25m). In whole swathes of the northern United States, German-Americans outnumber any other group (see map). Some 41% of the people in Wisconsin are of Teutonic stock....

(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Germany
KEYWORDS: ethnicity; germans; germany; immigration
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We are legion.
1 posted on 10/06/2015 6:49:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Yep, and I share the name. I’m even a plumber. LOL

We come from a long line of charcoal makers.


2 posted on 10/06/2015 6:52:33 PM PDT by headstamp 2
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

As a Sheboygan native, I enjoyed this.


3 posted on 10/06/2015 6:53:04 PM PDT by Luke21 (Go Ted go.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Bratwurst und Rotkohl soul food.


4 posted on 10/06/2015 6:55:55 PM PDT by BigEdLB (Congress will have blood on their hands if anything happens because of the Iran appeasement)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
OK FReepers, make a mental note - It's 1854. There are no roads, no bridges, and there sure as Hell weren't any planes, and surely Mr. Kohler had to either go across through treacherous land from when he got off the boat in NYC or navigated through the Great Lakes. And Sheboygan is in the mid-part of Eastern Wisconsin so he still had to go across more treacherous terrain, weather, and Indians.

Now how did he and other immigrants then survive and assimilated, but today's immigrants, with modern conveniences, travel, and gadgets up the wazoo, can't do the same?

5 posted on 10/06/2015 6:57:12 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist (I am going to get those guns out of peoples hands. - Hillary Clinton 10/05/2015)
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

They don’t want to.


6 posted on 10/06/2015 6:59:00 PM PDT by smokingfrog ( sleep with one eye open (<o> ---)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Waelderhaus - "a house in the woods" Construction 1929-1931 Architect: Kaspar Albrecht
7 posted on 10/06/2015 7:01:24 PM PDT by Robert DeLong (u)
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To: BigEdLB

Been doing Faceboot too long, I went looking for the “Like” button for your post!


8 posted on 10/06/2015 7:03:10 PM PDT by Mr. Dough (Who was the greater military man, General Tso or Col. Sanders?)
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

Different country.


9 posted on 10/06/2015 7:04:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (TED CRUZ. You can help: https://donate.tedcruz.org/c/FBTX0095/)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Helping a friend with some World War I records for his family near Sheboygan, we came across a newspaper article about Mr. Kohler who was the local chairman for war bonds. He announced a quota for all households in the area and he promised to publish a list of anyone who failed to participate. He later followed up with his promise and published all the names of those who did not subscribe to the war bond drive. I guess being Anti Kaiser was good business.


10 posted on 10/06/2015 7:07:22 PM PDT by centurion316
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

German/Irish heritage here ... but full-blooded American.

And on top of all that ... Texan!


11 posted on 10/06/2015 7:12:38 PM PDT by al_c (Obama's standing in the world has fallen so much that Kenya now claims he was born in America.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
The article omits a very important and very early German emigration which occurred about three quarters of a century before the Declaration of Independence. These Germans were mostly pilgrims in the sense that the Plymouth Rock Pilgrims of 1620 were religious refugees. About a century later, many Germans made the same trip, proceeding down the Rhine to Holland, wintering there and then proceeding on to America.

When they arrived they found that the English had taken most of the attractive and arable coastal lands so they moved inland. Many of them were Mennonites and Amish but most of them were yeomen farmers who pioneered homesteads and farmed typically without slaves. The German farmers were probably the most efficient and most successful farmers of that age. They maintained a bilingual culture in many places such as in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia which continued up until the first world war when the language as well as the German nation fell into disfavor. Of course the Amish still speak an interesting dialect of German to this day.

There is an interesting anecdote which appears in the Virginia Historical Society papers describing an incident in the Shenandoah Valley when a Confederate officer dispatched from Richmond stood on a wagon to harangue the crowd to secure volunteers for the Confederate Army. After he spoke a few words he was interrupted and told that he could speak English if he preferred.


12 posted on 10/06/2015 7:15:27 PM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

My Mom was German. My Dad’s family was here from almost the beginning, 1607 Jamestown Colony.


13 posted on 10/06/2015 7:21:45 PM PDT by BuffaloJack (Political Correctness is Suppression of Free Speech. Thank the Commies for Political Correctness.)
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To: nathanbedford

At Oktoberfest in Fort Wayne, IN, I saw renactors for the 32nd Indiana Volunteer Infantry. The 32nd used German as its command language. Fort Wayne has one of the 2 Lutheran High Schools in the entire state of Indiana.


14 posted on 10/06/2015 7:24:52 PM PDT by Lysandru
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To: BuffaloJack

The Samuel, September 18, 1682, John Adey, master, one of Penn’s fleet.


15 posted on 10/06/2015 7:26:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (TED CRUZ. You can help: https://donate.tedcruz.org/c/FBTX0095/)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Germanic stock here, too. At least as far back as we can go on that side of the family.

L


16 posted on 10/06/2015 7:27:17 PM PDT by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is it is the only answer.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
We are legion and we Vote!
17 posted on 10/06/2015 7:28:14 PM PDT by Art in Idaho (Conservatism is the only Hope for Western Civilization.)
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To: BuffaloJack

Exactly the same here. Dad is a Jamestown descendent and Mom is an ESL German.


18 posted on 10/06/2015 7:29:15 PM PDT by conservative cat
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To: Mr. Dough
Been doing Faceboot too long

That's "Das Faceboot."

19 posted on 10/06/2015 7:34:53 PM PDT by Disambiguator (Cis-American)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Ja wohl.


20 posted on 10/06/2015 7:35:12 PM PDT by IronJack
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