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German-American Landscapes

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Ethnic Landscapes of America

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Abstract

Germans are the most numerous European group to settle the United States, more numerous than the English or the French, yet they were a diverse group whose influence upon the cultural landscape varied from the 17th through the 20th Century. The earliest German immigrants evolved into the Pennsylvania Dutch, whose cultural landscape and history differed from the ethnic landscapes within communities established by Germans who immigrated between 1845 and 1880 into the American heartland. The chapter describes the numerous contributions of German ethnics in shaping the generic American landscape and notes the profound impact of the two World Wars in diminishing the cultural distinctiveness of German-American communities. This chapter focuses upon German settlements, ranging from rural farming villages to urban centers, in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, and Texas as examples. In addition, the far earlier settlement of Germans into Pennsylvania is described, as is the recent spread of the rapidly growing Amish, a splinter group of German-Swiss Anabaptists, from Pennsylvania into the Midwest. The Swiss ethnic landscape is also reviewed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI, USA

    John A. Cross

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Cross, J.A. (2017). German-American Landscapes. In: Ethnic Landscapes of America. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54009-2_11

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