Thehistory of the Germans in Baltimore began in the 17th century. During the 19th century, thePort of Baltimore was the second-leading port of entry for immigrants, afterCastle Garden inNew York City. Many Germans immigrated to Baltimore during this time.[1]
In 1880, Germans made up the majority of the foreign-born population of Baltimore at 58% of all foreign born residents. 16.9% (56,354) of Baltimore residents were foreign born, 32,685 of them Germans (includingPrussians,Swabians, andBavarians).[2]
In 1920, 19,813 foreign-born White people in Baltimore spoke theGerman language as their mother tongue.[3]
In 1940, 9,744 immigrants fromGermany lived in Baltimore. These immigrants comprised 16% of the city's foreign-born white population.[4] In total, 23,889 people of German birth or descent lived in the city, comprising 17.1% of the foreign-stock white population.[5]
As of 2000, 18.7%, or 478,646, of theBaltimore metropolitan area's population were of German descent, making it the largest European ancestral group.[6] In the same year Baltimore city's German population was 48,423, 7.4% of the city's population.[7]
As of 2011, immigrants fromGermany were the seventeenth largest foreign-born population in Baltimore and theGerman language was the sixteenth most common language of those who spoke English "less than very well".[8]
German immigrants began to settle along the Chesapeake Bay by 1723, living in the area that becameBaltimore when the city was established in 1729.[9] German Lutheran immigrants establishedZion Lutheran Church in 1755, which also attractedPennsylvania Dutch settlers to the region. Early German settlers also established the German Society of Maryland in 1783 in order to assist German immigrants.[10]
A January 15, 1869 advertisement in theBaltimore Sun: "No German need apply."Eutaw Place Temple in December 2011.The Raine Building, publishing location ofDer Deutsche Correspondent, southwest corner of Baltimore Street and Post Office Avenue (now known as Customs House Avenue), Baltimore Maryland, circa 1869, prior to thegreat 1904 fire[11]
Following theWar of 1812 inNorth America, a wave of German immigrants came from thePalatinate,Hesse,Bavaria, andBohemia. Many fled from Germany between 1812 and 1814, during theWar of the Sixth Coalition, (1812–1814), the last of the series ofFrench Revolutionary Wars and theNapoleonic Wars, in order to avoid military conscription into theRoyal Prussian Army. The port of Baltimore was developed as a gateway for immigrants during the 1820s, and soon became the second largest gateway to America afterNew York City, (andEllis Island), especially at the terminals of theBaltimore and Ohio Railroad onLocust Point, Baltimore, which had made an agreement with theNorddeutscher Lloyd (North German Lloyd Line). By 1850, 20,000 German-born people lived in the city. Between 1820 and 1860, Germans were the largest group of immigrants to Baltimore.[12] This wave of immigrants created numerous German institutions, including banks, insurance companies, and newspapers.[13] German immigrants also created a thriving German-language press, including publications such as theBaltimore Wecker (Baltimore Alarm).
During the 1700s and 1800s, many states in the United States allowednon-citizens to vote. Anti-German Catholic and anti-Irish Catholic sentiment following theWar of 1812 and intensifying again in the 1840s lead many states, particularly in the Northeast, to amend their constitutions to prohibit non-citizens from voting. Non-citizen voting was banned by theMaryland Constitution of 1851.[14]
Immigration from Germany increased again after the variousRevolutions of 1848 flaring up throughoutEurope, bringing thousands of "Forty-Eighters" to Baltimore. By the time of theAmerican Civil War, there were 32,613 German-born residents of Baltimore, not counting their American-born descendants of first generation along with the earlier wave of colonial and pre-revolutionary era settlers. Many German immigrants were politically active in opposingslavery, and German newspapers that editorialized against it were targets of attacks bynativists and Confederate sympathizers.[15] During theBaltimore riot of 1861, the office of theBaltimore Wecker was destroyed by mobs; the publisher, William Schnauffer, and the editor,Wilhelm Rapp, left the city due to the violence. The population continued to surge after theCivil War, due in large part to the agreement signed on January 21, 1867, between theBaltimore and Ohio Railroad and theNorddeutscher Lloyd, a German steamship line which brought tobacco along with further German immigrants to the port of Baltimore fromBremen,Germany. German immigrants disembarked from the steamships at B&O's pier, which was located in Locust Point.[16] By 1868, one-fourth of Baltimore's 160,000 white inhabitants were German-born and half of the remainder were of full or partial German descent.[17]
Many of the German immigrants who arrived during the latter half of the 19th century were affluentGerman Jews[18] who created a number of cultural institutions, includingYiddish theatres such as theConcordia Hall and theConvention Hall Theater. Beginning in the 1870s, many wealthy German Jews built lavish homes in the northwest area of the growing city alongNorth Eutaw Street and Eutaw Place towards the newDruid Hill Park of 1860. They also built several synagogues, such as theEutaw Place Temple. By 1880, there were around 10,000 German Jews living in Baltimore, most of whom were ofBavarian andHessian descent.[19]
The German-born immigrant population in Baltimore peaked in 1890, when German-born Baltimoreans numbered 41,930 out of the total population of 365,863.[20]
Holy Cross Church on West Street offLight Street in old South Baltimore nearFederal Hill was founded in 1860 to serve the growing numbers of Germans moving onto the peninsula south of "The Basin" of thePatapsco River's Northwest Branch and theBaltimore Harbor, which had been annexed into the city in 1816.St. Elizabeth of Hungary Roman Catholic was later founded in 1895 inHighlandtown in east Baltimore to serve the German immigrant community in that part of the city.[21]
In the year 1900, the city's German population was 34,000, according to theUnited States Census. Around 1900 there were over 30 congregations in Baltimore that were holding Sunday services in German.[22] By 1914, the number had risen to 94,000, 20% of city's population. During the 19th Century, many of the city's public schools were known as "German-English". By the 1920s, one third ofBaltimore's public schools still offered German-language curricula and a quarter of Baltimoreans could still speak German fluently.[9] Up untilWorld War I the notes from theBaltimore City Council were published in both German and English.
Before and duringWorld War II, manyJewish refugees fled from Germany to Baltimore. By the end of the War they numbered 3,000.[23]
Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church, in theFederal Hill neighborhood, was listed as a German parish until 1959. The church had historically played an important institutional role for South Baltimore's large German community.[24]
Aspects of Baltimore's German heritage remain, such as theZion Lutheran Church. The church has held services in both English and German for over 250 years. There is also an annual Maryland German Festival held in the Baltimore area, which is sponsored by the German-American Citizens Association of Maryland.
The German immigrants influenced the cuisine of Baltimore. German beer breweries numbered in the dozens prior to prohibition, they broughtlager beer to America which previously drank mostly ale; one of the largest lager breweries was theJ. F. Wiessner & Sons brewery. The two centers of brewing in Baltimore were "Brewers Row" along North Gay Street, and "Brewers Hill". TheSchmidt Baking Company was established by Elizabeth and Peter Schmidt, immigrants from Germany who used German recipes for their products.Berger Cookies were a German treat.
Baltimore used to have many German restaurants, though by 2014 Eichenkranz was the sole remaining restaurant that servedGerman cuisine.[26] That restaurant, in turn, closed down in 2015.[27]
H. L. Mencken, an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century.Babe Ruth, an American baseball player who spent 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed "The Bambino" and "The Sultan of Swat", he began his MLB career as a stellar left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, but achieved his greatest fame as a slugging outfielder for the New York Yankees.
Jacob I. Cohen Jr., a banker, railroad executive, and civic leader who helped win for Jews the right to hold public office in Maryland.
Moses H. Cone, a textile entrepreneur, conservationist, and philanthropist of the Gilded Age.
Cone sisters, wealthy socialites who gathered one of the finest collections of modern French art in the United States.
David Einhorn, a rabbi and leader of the Jewish reform movement in the United States who was chosen in 1855 as the first rabbi of the Har Sinai Congregation in Baltimore.
Walter M. Elsasser, a physicist considered a "father" of the presently accepted dynamo theory as an explanation of the Earth's magnetism.
Solomon Etting, a German-Jewish merchant and politician.
Joseph Fels, a soap manufacturer, millionaire, and philanthropist.
George A. Frederick, an architect whose most prominent commission was the Baltimore City Hall.
George Fruits, claimed to be the last known surviving soldier of the American Revolutionary War.
Louise Glaum, an actress known for her role as a femme fatale in silent era motion picture dramas.
Brian Gottfried, a retired tennis player from the United States who won 25 singles titles and 54 doubles titles during his professional career.
Charles Stieff, an industrialist and piano manufacturer.
Louis J. Weichmann, one of the chief witnesses for the prosecution in the trial of the alleged conspirators involved in the Abraham Lincoln assassination.
Edelweiss Club (Baltimore, Md.).Collection, 1974-.
Fecher, Vincent John.A study of the movement for German national parishes in Philadelphia and Baltimore, 1787-1802, Romae, Apud Aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1955.
German Beneficial Society of Homestead, Baltimore, Maryland.Constitution and by-laws of the German Beneficial Society of Homestead, Baltimore, MD, Baltimore, Md. : Wm. Sweiger, 1902.
Hennighausen, Louis Paul.Reminiscences of the political life of the German-Americans in Baltimore during the years 1850-1860, [S.l., Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland, 1898?]
Katsareas, Dimitri.The public and private English-German schools of Baltimore : 1836 to 1904, 1994.
Kassof, Anita; Decter, Avi Y; Weiner, Deborah R; Jewish Museum of Maryland.Lives lost, lives found : Baltimore's German Jewish Refugees, 1933-1945, Jewish Museum of Maryland, 2004.
Keidel, George C.The earliest German newspapers of Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Priv. Print., 1927.
Nordöstlichen Sängerbund; Saengerfest Association of Baltimore.The 30th national Saengerfest of the Nordoestlicher Saengerbund of America, Baltimore : The Association, 1938.
Prichett, Morgan H.German immigrants to Baltimore : the passenger list of 1854, Baltimore, Md. : Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland, 1982.
Vill, Martha J.Land tenure, property ownership and home mortgages in the late nineteenth century : a case study of Baltimore's Germans, 1976.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg)
