German American Food: The Forty-Eighters and Other Early Immigrants

Great numbers of German Americans arrived in the United States during the 1840s and 1850s, with a peak in 1854. Those fleeing the failure of the 1848 uprisings were known as “forty-eighters.” This group, consisting mostly of speakers of High German, did not connect with the Pennsylvania Dutch farmers and more often settled in eastern and midwestern cities. A contingent of German Jews was included in this group, and they were joined by continuing waves of immigrants. Another peak occurred in the 1870s, motivated by Bismarck’s laws against socialists and Catholics. These “new immigrant” German Americans settled heavily in Mid-Atlantic and midwestern cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and above all, Chicago and Milwaukee. In these cities, German-speaking communities were so large that they retained a sense of regional foods from Bavaria, Prussia, and Bohemia.