Over 300 years ago, German immigrants crossed the Atlantic to reach, among other places, Pennsylvania. Their language and culture continues to influence their descendants, as DW correspondent Oliver Sallet discovered.
Image: DW/Oliver Sallet
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When Norman Sunday sits in front of his barn, he sometimes finds himself looking wistfully over his property. The 82-year-old farmer from the northeastern state of Pennsylvania knows that a decades-old family tradition is coming to an end. He once bred cattle here, but he's retired now and knows his children are unlikely to follow in his footsteps.
Like many in Berk County, Sunday is the descendant of German immigrants who came from the Palatinate region of southwest Germany in the 18th century to find a new home. They were farmers who worked hard, believed in God, and cultivated their German culture.
While the farmer himself has never been to Germany, his parents spoke Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch ("Pennsylvania Dutch"), a German dialect spoken by the rural population for 300 years that is still alive today. "Ich kann's ned gud schwätze, aber ich verstehe" ("I can't speak it well, but I can understand it"), said Sunday in the local dialect.
Bratwurst on sale at a yearly festival in the Pennsylvanian town of Kutztown that celebrates its strong German heritageImage: DW/Oliver Sallet
German dialect born in the USA
Patrick Donmoyer of the University of Pennsylvania wants to preserve this German heritage for future generations. At the German Cultural Heritage Center in Kutztown in Berks County, he teaches Pennsylvania Deitsch in a former German school from 1870 that is now a museum.
On an old school slate board in the cultural center, one can see "deitsche Sprichwadde" (German adages) written down such as "Schpaar die Geld" ("saving money"), and the unusual phrase "gut gwetzt ist halwer gmeht" ("well-sharpened is half mown"), which literally refers to the mowing of fields with a scyth.
The language is not at risk of extinction, says Donmoyer. Around 40,000 people speak the dialect in Pennsylvania alone, and around 400,000 across America. The number is rising since many Amish and Mennonites faith communities who speak Pennsylvania German as their mother tongue traditionally have large families.
Some 30% of Pennsylvanians have German ancestors, and many of the descendants still speak some form of German at home. Donmoyer says a Pennsylvanian German dialect has developed into its own language across 300 years.
From Wilhelm von Steuben to Diane Kruger: Germans who've influenced the US
Wilhelm von Steuben, Carl Laemmle, Marlene Dietrich and Levi Strauss: From the very beginning, German immigrants have influenced culture and life in the US. Often, however, their German roots aren't well known.
Image: Imago/Hollywood Photo Archive/C. Slater
A German Helen in Hollywood: Diane Kruger
Her real name is Diane Heidkrüger and she was born in Germany in 1976. The film "Troy" with Orlando Bloom made her famous in 2004. She became a US citizen in 2013. Other influential Germans in the US film industry today include "Troy" director Wolfgang Petersen, and Roland Emmerich, who shot "Independence Day," the ultimate in patriotic blockbusters.
Image: imago/United Archives
Organized the army in the Colonies: Prussian General von Steuben
It was also thanks to the former Prussian officer Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben that the militarily inexperienced Colonist army was able to defeat the world power Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. With discipline, drill and order he made a powerful troop out of the guerrillas. He described his training methods in a book which became a standard military work.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Painted the most famous picture in the US: Emanuel Leutze
The painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware" is located at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It depicts a decisive moment in the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), when the Colonists under General Washington, who had so far been unsuccessful, launched a counterattack on the British. It was painted by Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868), who emigrated to the US from Germany as a child.
Image: ullstein bild - histopics
A model for Scrooge McDuck: America's first millionaire, John Jacob Astor
His descendants founded the world-famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel, but this was still unfathomable to the butcher's son Johann Jakob Astor from Walldorf near Heidelberg when he moved to the US in 1784. He became America's first multimillionaire through fur trading and real estate sales — and was the inspiration for literary legends Ebenezer Scrooge and Scrooge McDuck.
Image: Imago/United Archives International
Advocate of women's rights: Mathilde Franziska Anneke
With her husband Fritz, Mathilde Franziska Anneke fled Westphalia to Milwaukee, Wisconsin after the democratic revolution in the German states failed in 1848. She worked as a journalist, published a women's magazine and fought for women's suffrage and equal educational opportunities — and thus became one of the leading US feminists.
Image: Gemeinfrei
Created the cult fashion item: Levi Strauss
Löb Strauss, a young Jew from Buttenheim near Bamberg, emigrated to the USA in 1847 at the age of 18 with his mother and sisters. The Gold Rush drew him west, where he wanted to sell tent tarpaulins to gold prospectors — and saw that they needed robust trousers. Thus were "jeans" born — making Levi Strauss, as he was then called, and his business partner, Jacob Davis, rich.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Hollywood pioneer from the start: Carl Laemmle
Born in 1867 as the son of a Jewish cattle dealer in Laupheim, Germany, Karl Lämmle emigrated to the US at the age of 17. For 20 years he survived by doing odd jobs. In 1906 he visited a small movie theater — and it sparked an idea. He opened his own cinema, started a successful film distribution company and founded Universal Studios in 1915 — one of Hollywood's first big dream factories.
Image: picture-alliance/Imagno
From Berlin to Hollywood: Marlene Dietrich protested the Nazis by singing
The 1930 movie "The Blue Angel" made Marlene Dietrich a world star, catapulting her to Hollywood with director Wilhelm von Sternburg, where she ended up staying. When the Nazis seized power in Germany in 1933, she supported Jews who had fled and other exiled Germans. She also sang "Lili Marleen" to cheer up US troops — probably the most famous song of the Second World War.
Image: Imago/Hollywood Photo Archive/C. Slater
Expelled by the Nazis: philosopher Hannah Arendt
Arrested and expatriated by the Nazis, Hannah Arendt fled to New York in 1941. The 35-year-old journalist and philosopher quickly learned English and became an American citizen in 1951. As a writer, she reported on the Eichmann trial and coined the much-discussed term "banality of evil." One of her goals in life was to explain how the Holocaust could occur.
Image: Leo Baeck Institute
First Nazi engineer, then space travel idol: Wernher von Braun
Engineer Wernher von Braun constructed the V-2 rocket, which was built by forced laborers for the Nazis. After World War II, Americans had him come to the US. He was among over 1,000 German scientists who were never held accountable for their work for the Nazi regime. As the father of rocket technology, Wernher von Braun became a space travel idol in the US when NASA astronauts landed on the moon.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Persecuted as a Jew in Germany: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
Born in Fürth, Franconia in 1923 as Heinz Alfred Kissinger, he emigrated to New York in 1938. During the Second World War he returned to Germany as a soldier — then as an American. After studying and teaching at Harvard, he advised politicians. The highlight of his career: Under President Nixon, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was US Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Charisius
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'Barn stars' from the old country
Another German cultural import that is still typical across Pennsylvania and beyond is the famous "barn star" or "hex sign" seen fixed to farmhouses and barns. Ranging from decorative five-pointed stars to colorfully painted twelve-point compasses, the signature emblems were brought across the Atlantic by the Palatinate immigrants and have developed into a distinct regional art form.
At the Kutztown Folk Festival, Donmoyer demonstrates how to paint the barn stars. Contrasting colors like yellow and black give the impression that the stars are turning, he says. The emblems should not be mixed up with pagan symbols, he adds, noting that the sun, moon and stars have always played an important role for people on the land. These Pennsylvania Germans simply continued to draw what was important to them.
Decorative "barn stars" in Pennsylvania have 300-year-old German origins Image: DW/Oliver Sallet
Old customs reborn
The popular Kutztown Folk Festival attracts 130,000 annual visitors who come to experience the lifestyles of German immigrants who have shaped Berks County to this day. In the Wursthaus, one can get their fill of German-style Pennsylvanian sausages with sauerkraut, while a brass band plays music that would not be out of place in the southern German state of Bavaria.
The band's trumpet player, Leon Moll, regularly spoke Pennsylvania Deitsch with his parents as a child. Since their death, however, he rarely speaks the language, while his children "tun es nid mehr schwätze" ("don't speak it anymore"), he explains. For many, it is only during the nine days of the annual festival that their old country customs come to life.
