German Immigrants Research Articles

»Egal was er auch ist, Hauptsache einer von uns«

Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit den konflikthaften Begegnungen und Beziehungen zwischen Alevit_innen und Sunnit_innen, die wir als ein historisches kollektives Verletzungsverhältnis auffassen können. Dabei reichen die psychosozialen Spuren dieser Figuration bis in die Gegenwart der deutschen Einwanderungsgesellschaft und dokumentieren sich in den Identitätskonstruktionen junger alevitischer Frauen. Als Resultat der erlittenen und historisch tradierten Verletzungen durch die sunnitische Orthodoxie und aus Angst vor Anpassungszwang und Unterdrückung in einer imaginierten sunnitisch-alevitischen Intergruppenehe verschließen insbesondere alevitische Frauen bis heute über Endogamie ihre Gruppengrenze zu den als unmoralisch markierten Sunniten. Anhand einer Gruppendiskussion mit zwei jungen alevitischen Frauen, die mit der relationalen Hermeneutik ausgewertet wurde, wird diese bis in die Gegenwart anhaltende, historisch begründete Grenzziehung durch Zuschreibung mangelnder Moral gegenüber Sunnit_innen rekonstruiert. Der Beitrag bietet damit eine erweiterte, kulturpsychologische Perspektive auf die psychosoziale Funktion von Moral und moralischer Kommunikation in Intergruppenbeziehungen.

Partnership Living Arrangements of Immigrants and Natives in Germany.

This paper compares the partnership arrangements of Turkish and Ethnic German immigrants (i.e., return migrants from Ethnic German communities from predominantly Eastern European countries), the two largest migrant groups in Germany, and native Germans. Most existing analyses of migrants' partnerships focus on intermarriage, marriage formation, or union dissolution. We know only a little, however, about the prevalence of non-marital living arrangements. Given that single person households and cohabitation are widespread phenomena mainly in post-materialist societies, analyzing whether immigrants engage in these behaviors sheds light on potential adaptation processes. The analyses are based on the German Microcensus of the years 2009 and 2013, with a focus on adults in the 18–40 age group. First, we present descriptive findings on the prevalence of partnership arrangements of immigrants and native Germans. Second, we estimate cross-sectional regressions with the partnership arrangement as the outcome variable in order to control for compositional differences between immigrant groups with respect to education. Our results show that while the vast majority of first-generation immigrants are married, the share of married natives is considerably smaller. Living in an independent household without a partner and cohabitation are rare phenomena among immigrants. By contrast, about one in seven natives is cohabiting and more than one quarter is living in an independent household without a partner. The most prevalent partnership living arrangement of the Turkish second generation is living in the parental household without a partner. These results are robust after controlling for education, age, and year in the multiple regression analysis.

Agricultural Citizenship and the German Winemakers of Los Angeles County, 1853–1891

Newly arrived in 1850s California, a group of German immigrants adopted viticulture and founded Anaheim as a wine colony. Along with industry leaders and boosters, they helped expand the region’s commercial wine industry from its Spanish and Mexican roots, using viticulture as a vehicle of Americanization in California. Per the observations of wine industrialists, trade groups, and boosters, these German immigrants represented the American ideal of agricultural citizenship as a barometer of belonging in California. This notion was rooted in large-scale land ownership and relied on modern technology, shipping infrastructure, agricultural science, marketing, and wage workers. Significantly, Anaheim’s German wine growers also employed modern agribusiness techniques that laid the foundation for the citrus industry in the early twentieth century.

Memória, língua e tradução em cartas pessoais escritas por imigrantes alemães no século XIX

A correspondência pessoal simboliza um testemunho do olhar e da memória dos sujeitos sobre determinados acontecimentos de uma época e representa ainda uma fonte significativa para estudos históricos e linguísticos de épocas passadas. Assim, cartas de imigrantes e de seus descendentes são uma fonte valiosa para as pesquisas que envolvem os contatos linguísticos e as variações e mudanças linguísticas decorrentes deles, como aquelas que se dão através de fenômenos tradutórios resultantes do contato entre o alemão e o português falado no Brasil. Neste trabalho, através da análise de uma carta escrita em português por um descendente de imigrantes alemães e com base em pressupostos teóricos da sociolinguística e dos estudos da tradução, pretende-se ilustrar brevemente a trajetória histórica e linguística desses sujeitos, mostrando a influência que as línguas em contato têm umas sobre as outras e garantindo visibilidade ao plurilinguismo ‒ que, embora ainda largamente ignorado, é característica basilar do povo brasileiro.

Um capítulo da história da imigração reinventada através dos lugares de memória: o caso do Conflito Mucker

Discute-se o processo de produção de narrativas sobre o conflito Mucker, que ocorreu entre 1868 e 1874, no contexto do processo imigratório germânico no sul do Brasil e, de forma mais particular, na Colônia Alemã de Sāo Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul. O conflito, de caráter messiânico, teve o protagonismo de sua líder, Jacobina Mentz Maurer, sobre quem recaiu toda a culpa dos fatos e acontecimentos que constituíram o enredo dessa história. A imagem construída e difundida sobre a líder dos Mucker é interpretada, nesse estudo, a partir da identificação e análise dos lugares de memoria, produzidos sobre o episódio, que procuraram contar uma determinada versão dos fatos, a partir da criação e nomeação de monumentos, praças, instituições e logradouros públicos, que contribuíram para a condenação moral dos Mucker, ao mesmo tempo em que celebrava a heroicizaçāo daqueles que lutaram contra os Mucker.

Packaging Niagara:The Langenheim Brothers and the Transatlantic Circulation of Early Photography

A few years after opening their celebrated photography studio in their new home in Philadelphia, German immigrants William and Frederick Langenheim produced eight almost identical daguerreotype panoramas of Niagara Falls. Keeping one set for themselves, they sent the others to multiple heads of state. The brothers’ identities as American photographers and experiences as German immigrants, this article demonstrates, shaped their specific photographic vision of the impressive cataracts as well as its circulation abroad. By calling attention to the German dimensions of this project, this article underscores their panorama as an important articulation of German-American identity formation. The article thus highlights the intercultural nature of the Langenheim brothers’ photographic practice, and the fact that the medium itself was rooted in international networks and trade in the mid-nineteenth century. Through a close examination of their advertising campaigns, their relationship with optician Peter Wilhelm Friedrich von Voigtländer and their extraordinary 1845 panorama, this article allows us to better understand how ideas of culture were negotiated through the making and distribution of early photography.

The Language Situation in the Russian German Ethnic Community of Molchanovo District, Tomsk Region

This article presents the analysis of the language situation, done as part of sociolinguistic study among representatives of the German etnic minority in the Molchanovo district of Tomsk region which has been a place of concentrated residence of German immigrants since the second half of the 20th century. Using recorded monologic and dialogic speech as well as questionnaire data, the authors identify subject-specific areas that have communicative significance in the speech behavior of Russian Germans in the area. The purpose of this article is to examine the functioning of the German dialect in the speech of representatives of the German ethnic minority from the Molchanovo district of Tomsk region as an exogloss component of the language situation. The study uses data from a sociolinguistic analysis of the language situation conducted on the territory of the Molchanovo district of Tomsk region in 2017. The main research methods are observation, comparison and interpretation, oral interviews and questionnaires. The analysis of the language situation in the indicated region has revealed a significant dominance of the Russian language over German in all areas of everyday communication. Thus, 99% of the Russian German surveyed use the Russian language, which has become their native language (54%) and serves as the main means of communication among the informants. Since, due to its long-term residence in a Russian-speaking environment, the Molchanovo German ethnic minority has been isolated from the German-speaking parent community in Germany, this has brought about a widespread use of Russian in oral (72%) and written (63%) speech as well as communication in the workplace (72%). Of no small importance is the belief of these Russian Germans in the importance of the Russian language for the development of Tomsk region (63%) as well as the use of Russian in religious practice when reading texts and prayers (45%), caused by more than fifty years of living in the area dominated by a different religious tradition (Russian Orthodox). Thus the language situation among Russian Germans in the Molchanovo district of Tomsk region is characterized by a significant dominance of the Russian language as its endoglossic exponent.

Types of tasks in the didactization of materials to trace the German in the history of Kiev

The article is devoted to the problem of didactization of linguistic and historical materials about the activities of German immigrants in the territory of Kyiv. The main focus is on the choice and justification of the types of tasks for using these materials during German classes. It is determined that semi-open and open types of tasks are optimal in the process of didactization of these materials. A number of tasks have been developed on the basis of materials on the contribution of German architects to the design and construction of recognized architectural monuments of Kyiv. It has been found that the proposed assignments are appropriate to use for students at B1 + level in accordance with the Common European Guidelines for Language Education. The developed tasks are based on the following principles: communicative orientation, activity orientation, intercultural sensitization, and scaffolding.

Preparativos e festividades do casamento de descendentes de imigrantes alemães na metade do século XX, no Rio Grande do Sul

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar aspectos sobre os preparativos e as festividades de casamento de descendentes de imigrantes alemães na metade do século XX, no Rio Grande do Sul. Para tal, utilizam-se estudos sobre o ritual do casamento, uma entrevista realizada com o historiador Telmo Lauro Müller e a narrativa de três casais desse grupo étnico, por meio de etnografia, trazendo elementos para ponderações sobre memória, cultura e sociedade.

Pulling up the Drawbridge

The most recent scholarship on the Alternative for Germany (AfD) indicates that citizens primarily cast a vote for the party based on anti-immigrant or xenophobic attitudes. Nevertheless, prominent figures from the AfD suggest that many Germany citizens with immigrant backgrounds vote for it—an argument that has been picked up by the media. In this article, we investigate the most likely potential constituency of immigrants that might support the AfD: ethnic German migrants from the former Soviet Union, so-called Russian-Germans. Using the 2017 Immigrant German Election Study (imges), we find that these ethnic German migrants from the former Soviet Union indeed voted for the AfD in relatively large numbers when compared to the overall population. Furthermore, when predicting vote choice, we find that the main predictor of voting for the AfD among Russian-Germans is not political ideology but rather a simple hostility towards new refugees. Crucially, migrants with a Soviet background are more likely to vote for the AfD if they hold the position that there should be no economic or political refugees allowed into the country.

Migration across developed countries: German immigrants in Sweden and the US

AbstractThe present study evaluates the interplay between the effects of host countries' characteristics and self‐selection patterns of immigrants from a highly developed country on their economic assimilation in other developed countries. The focus is on immigrants originated from Germany during 1990–2000 who migrated to Sweden and the US. The results show that almost all German immigrants reached full earnings assimilation with natives of similar observed attributes, and that the assimilation of highly educated Germans was better than that of the less educated. It was also found that the skilled immigrants were compensated for their human capital acquired in Germany. Finally, the better assimilation of German immigrants, especially the highly educated, took place in the US. This finding was probably the result of an interaction between the Germans’ pattern of self‐selection and the US context of reception.

Why they fought: the initial motivations of German American soldiers who fought for the Union in the American Civil War

ABSTRACTGerman immigrants who came to the American North prior to 1861 volunteered en masse once the Civil War began, and they became the largest group of foreign fighters in the Union Army during the war. The initial motivations of German immigrant soldiers in the Union Army have been misunderstood by many historians who look at Germans as Hessian mercenaries in the Union ranks – who fought purely for money –and historians who focus too heavily on the failed 1848 German Revolution as the basis of German immigrant involvement in the war. Both answers are correct to some degree, but neither fully explains the initial motivations of 190,000 German immigrants and 56,000 German Americans who volunteered to fight for the Union. This paper asks the question: what were the initial motivations of German immigrants who fought for the Union? The answer is much more complex than any one historian has presented prior, and only by exploring the full range of their initial motivations can we understand their sustained motivations for remaining in the Union Army.To demonstrate its argument, the paper utilizes sources ranging from English- and translated German to English-language newspapers, personal letters, soldiers’ memoir s and manuscripts in American archives. The paper traces German soldiers in the army from 1861 through the entirety of the war, and it explores the significance of their reenlistment in 1864. It concludes that German immigrant soldiers’ commitment to the Union was rooted in numerous intertwined situations that existed in the years prior to and during the American Civil War, especially their desire for liberty and a new home.

The Historical Stages of the Resettlement of Germans in Ukraine

The article analyzes the three stages of the migration of the German ethnic group into the territory of modern Ukraine, different in nature, character and orientation, and their features are clarified. The author reveals the geography of the first migratory flows of the Goths in the second half of the II century, which went from the Wisla delta to Scythia, and were divided into the western (settled on the right bank of the Dnieper) and eastern. The latter, having settled down near the Sea of Azov, founded the state of Germanarich, and in the IV century, under the pressure of the Huns, the center of life of Goths moved to the Kerch Peninsula, the mountainous region of Crimea, where their state association Gothia existed until the XVIII century.
 It turns out that in the early Middle Ages there was a second wave of German settlements on modern Ukrainian lands from the West European direction. The expansion of the settlements of Germans and immigrants from other European countries on the lands of Kievan Rus was facilitated by political relations, which were also realized with the help of dynastic marriage unions. The princes of Kiev, pursuing a foreign policy worthy of a great power, have equal relations with the main European states of the medieval world - the Holy Roman Empire (Germany) and Byzantium, they invite priests, German craftsmen and merchants. Starting from the XI century, small German trade colonies appeared in Kiev, Vladimir-Volynsky, Lutsk and other cities. During the Lithuanian-Polish period, the influx of German settlers to Ukrainian lands is increasing. This was facilitated by various benefits and provision of points to the German immigrants by Lithuanian princes and Polish kings. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Magdeburg law was acquired by large trading cities.
 The third period, the most significant resettlement and colonization, that is, large-scale development of the South of Ukraine - the Sea of Azov, the Black Sea region and the lands of Crimea - begins in the second half - the end of the 18th century. The author emphasizes that this most powerful period and the great positive history of the development of our region is largely connected with immigrants of German origin (and representatives of other ethnic groups). This period becomes a powerful colonization and economic development of the entire South of Ukraine, the rich land of the Azov, Black Sea, Crimea. It is noted that then, on the initiative and real support of the government of tsarist Russia, the development of wide steppe spaces took place, which, together with Ukrainian lands, had recently been transferred to the Russian Empire. Since then, the history of immigrants has become part of the history of the Ukrainian people.
 The dynamics of the development of German colonies in different provinces of the South of Russia is analyzed separately, the social aspects of the life of settlements, the grave consequences for the colonists associated with the First World War, and revolutionary events in the Russian Empire are indicated. The gains and losses in the national development, in the arrangement, in the administrative division of the German and other settlers, which were the consequences of radical fluctuations in the national policy of the Soviet government in the pre-war period, are revealed.

How Migration Experience Affects the Acceptance and Active Support of Refugees? Philanthropy and Paid Work of Hungarian Migrants in the German Immigrant Service

The paper examines migration experience and migrant solidarity within a differential migration system. The paper unfolds how Hungarians living in Germany have become involved in refugee support (either in form of voluntary or paid work), and how their engagement relates to their own experience of migration. Concerning applied methods the paper is based on a quantitative online survey and qualitative interviews.

Los alemanes en el Caribe colombiano. Migración, sociabilidad y Nacionalsocialismo en Barranquilla, 1919-1945.

El presente artículo explora las dinámicas de migración y sociabilidad de los inmigrantes alemanes en la ciudad de Barranquilla, en el Caribe colombiano, durante un periodo que comprende la posguerra y la segunda guerra mundial. A través del análisis de distintas fuentes, como prensa, informes de inteligencia del gobierno colombiano y documentos generados por los mismos inmigrantes, entre ellos algunas publicaciones seriadas, se analiza la manera como estos extranjeros desplegaron toda una serie de dispositivos de sociabilidad que les permitieron una sólida conexión con la sociedad de acogida, y entre sí y su lugar de origen, elementos que estuvieron en la base del éxito de muchas de sus iniciativas empresariales y que los convirtieron en protagonistas de primer orden del desarrollo económico del puerto caribeño en la primera mitad del siglo XX. Se explora además el efecto de la llegada del Nacionalsocialismo a este grupo de inmigrantes, y la manera como los procesos políticos internacionales de finales de la década de los treinta y años posteriores, determinaron una profunda transformación en las condiciones de vida de estos extranjeros en el Caribe colombiano.

German Iowa and the Global Midwest

From statehood until the 1970 census, Germans constituted Iowa’s largest immigrant group, and the same was true throughout much of the Midwest. “German Iowa and the Global Midwest” explored the story of German immigration, German American communities, and anti-German xenophobia in Iowa and the Midwest. Originally conceived to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the United States’ entry to World War I and attendant actions against German Americans, the project was intended to spark discussion about immigration and anti-immigrant sentiment today. The xenophobia of the 2016 presidential campaign and the early stages of the Trump presidency made these discussions yet timelier—while also deepening the risks of a counter-narrative heroizing earlier generations of European immigrants as a foil to negative portrayals of more recent immigrants from other locations.

Os trabalhadores das fábricas de chocolates e caramelos em 3x4: história do trabalho e fotografia a partir da Delegacia Regional do Trabalho do Rio Grande do Sul, 1933-1943

The first Brazilian chocolate and caramel factory was established in Porto Alegre,in 1891, on the initiative of the German immigrants, and also brothers, Franz and MaxNeugebauer and also the German immigrant Fritz Gerhardt.This is how the history of thesweets made by the Neugebauer family began. Production-oriented activities have remained tothis day, although the factory it has changed owners since the 1980s.Besides the Neugebauerfamily factory, in Rio Grande do Sul other plantsmanufacturing the same product emerged,such as the Ernestides Lopes Caramel Factory. This article analyzes a group of workers whowere connected to the chocolate and caramelfactories in this state and requested a professionalcard from 1933 to 1943. It intends to investigate a set of data and the 3x4 photographs ofthese workers present in their professional qualification cards – a document that contained allnecessary information to request the professional card.The research,carried out in the collectionof the Regional Labor Department, safeguarded in the Center of Historical Documentationof the Federal University of Pelotas, included a significant number of workers in this type offactory. Among them were some specialized foreigners, women and young female workers.

Labour market dualism and immigration policy preferences

ABSTRACTWhat are the effects of labour market deregulation and increased immigration inflows on public attitudes towards immigration? Despite increased levels of dualism and free movement of labour in European countries over the last two decades, the effects of these policy developments are still unclear in the literature. This study argues that high concentrations of migrant workers in non-standard forms of employment decrease economic redistribution towards, and labour competition with, immigrants. Consequently, the politicisation of immigrant-native conflicts is paradoxically lower when immigration and labour market dualism cluster together at the occupational level. These claims are validated cross-nationally, and in a difference-in-differences setting analysing the impact of the 2005 German Immigration Act.

Different Arenas, Different Deliberative Quality? Using a Systemic Framework to Evaluate Online Deliberation on Immigration Policy in Germany

One major strand of contemporary research on political participation addresses online deliberation. Over time, online deliberation has become increasingly pluralistic. Our study applies a framework derived from systemic deliberative theory to evaluate different online deliberation processes on German immigration policy. A crucial premise of the systemic deliberative theory is that the quality of deliberation varies systematically between different arenas within a political system. We differentiate between highly formal, semi‐formal, and informal deliberative arenas (arenas 1–3) and develop seven theory‐driven hypotheses concerning the quality of deliberative procedures in arenas 1–3 that we test through quantitative content analysis. Our study confirms the overarching expectation: processes’ deliberative quality varies systematically between arenas. The highest level of (aggregated) deliberative quality is displayed in arena 1—deliberations, that is, on the government‐run consultation platform. The more fine‐grained analysis of different dimensions of deliberative quality reveals that the patterns observed with regards to certain dimensions of deliberative quality (e.g., constructiveness and reciprocity) do not conform with our theory‐driven hypotheses. We discuss the theoretical and empirical implications of these findings. Future collaborations of theoretical and empirical scholars of deliberative democracy must address the specifics of online communication and the function of emotional communication in different deliberative arenas.

Oб изучении диалектов крымских меннонитских поселений (по материалам архива В. М. Жирмунского)

Mennonite Germans were among the many ethnic groups that inhabited the Crimean peninsula since the end of the 18th century until the 1940s. A special way of life, faith and language significantly distinguished them from other German immigrants. The dialect spoken by the Mennonites and called Plautdietsch (Plotditch) is a type of Low German, close to Low Prussian. During this period, two dialects were formed, which are still preserved in Mennonites communities in Siberia, in the Altai region, etc. – the dialects of Khortitsa and of Molotchna. The dialect contamination took place in new, mixed settlements, in the so-called daughter colonies. The major contribution towards studying the folklore and the language of the German colonies of the Southern regions of the USSR was made in 1920s by V. M. Zhirmunsky, a major Russian scholar, philologist, Germanist, folklorist, along with his students and assistants. The collection of the material and its linguistic description were stopped in the 1930s due to repressions against Russian Germans, as well as the researchers of their culture. The collected data were preserved in Zhirmunsky’s archive in the Sciences Academy Archive in Saint-Petersburg. The linguistic processing of these data is today an important task of Germanistics. The aforementioned archive, which is of great academic value, offers rich data on dialectology, as well as language variation and change, and will allow scholars to understand synchronic and diachronic processes in the corresponding dialects. Of particular interest are the dialectological questionnaires in Zhirmunsky’s archive, some of which were completed in the Mennonite language (dialect) Plautdietsch. Our study deals with linguistic analysis of such questionnaires. Special attention is paid by us to several phonological phenomena in Plautdietsch: palatal consonants, palatalization of long /u:/, the development of /a/ in closed syllable. The processing of the questionnaire data provides a basis for their possible comparison with the current state of affairs in the modern language, primarily in the Siberian Plautdietsch.