Chicago

Important urban center of German migra­tion in the United States during the nine­teenth century.

Chicago’s history illustrates the full im­pact of the dramatic social, demographic, and economic changes American society and economy underwent in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Chicago’s rise depended on three con­nected factors: location, investment, and immigration. Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 with just 4,000 inhabitants. From the 1850s to the 1870s, Chicago emerged as a strategically located traffic hub, halfway between the seemingly un­limited raw materials and agricultural products of the West—in particular lum­ber, grain, and meat, which were processed in Chicago—and the markets on the East Coast and beyond. The Civil War proved a catalyst driving the rise of Chicago against its main rivals, the river cities Cincinnati and St.

Chicago’s largest immigrant group during the decisive second half of the nine­teenth century was Germans. However, today few traces recall the presence of tens of thousands of German-speaking immi­grants in Chicago. A prominent Goethe Monument on the northern edge of Lin­coln Park dedicated before World War I, a small Schiller statue, and streets named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller on the near North Side are the most visible traces, apart from Chicago’s cemeteries, where thousands of graves with German inscriptions can still be found. Further northwest, on Lincoln Square, a few remnants of post—World War II immigration remain: a popular German restaurant, a small souvenir shop, a deli­catessen, and nearby, a Konditorei (bakery). However, the area is not a German neigh­borhood; most of the immigrants who lived there during the 1950s and 1960s have moved to the suburbs. Although streets and buildings in Chicago recall the names of famous immigrants of other eth­nic backgrounds, once-famous German immigrants like the doctor and Forty- Eighter Ernst Schmidt, publisher and politician Anton Casper Hesing, newspa­per editor and politician Lorenz Brentano, Civil War general Edward Salomon, and many others are forgotten.

Around 1900, shortly after the decline of the strong German transatlantic migra­tion, the Germans and their still vibrant ethnic life were much more visible in Chicago.

The German presence in Chicago was never as dominant as in the three cities of the so-called German triangle surrounding Chicago (Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and St. Louis) or as in many of the smaller cities and towns throughout the Midwest. In Chicago, Germans certainly represented the largest immigrant group in numerical terms during the second half of the nine­teenth century: in 1850, they numbered about 1,000, or 17 percent of Chicago’s population; in 1870, about 52,000, or 17.5 percent; in 1900, about 170,000, or 10 percent. However, Chicago also at­tracted large numbers of Irish, English, Bohemian/Czech, and Scandinavian im­migrants, and, after 1880, eastern Euro­pean Jewish, Polish, Italian, and Greek im­migrants. By the turn of the century, the number of German immigrants was de­clining significantly. Moreover, as else­where in North America, German immi­grants were far from being a homogeneous group. They arrived throughout the nine­teenth century from different regions in Germany and came for different reasons. Regional and religious differences often went hand in hand. German speakers were Protestant, Catholic, and even Jewish. German immigrants influenced by social­ism, a strongly growing group in Chicago since the early 1870s, were openly atheist or agnostic; others were freethinkers.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that most attempts to lump together Germans and their numerous Vereine (associations), ranging from the Turners to many literary societies and religious congregations, were short lived. The so-called Beer Riot of 1855—a violent protest by German and Irish immigrants against a ban of the pub­lic sale and consumption of alcohol by the city—strengthened the cohesion of the German group. Conflicts over Prohibition laws were symbolic battlegrounds over the place of (German and Irish) immigrants in mid-nineteenth-century American society. In 1856, German immigrants led by Forty- Eighters organized a cultural center called the Deutsches Haus (German House), which served as a focal point for many of the German associations for several years before it lost its appeal. Many Germans in Chicago identified with the newly founded Republican Party. German opinion leaders in Chicago, especially the editors of the leading German daily, the Illinois Staatszeitung (Illinois State Newspaper), George Schneider, Eduard Schlaeger, and Lorenz Brentano (all Forty-Eighters) were prominent Republicans in Illinois.

During the Civil War, many German- born Chicagoans fought for a mostly Ger­man unit, the 82nd Illinois Volunteer In­fantry Regiment, which was led by the famous Forty-Eighter Friedrich Hecker and later by the German Jewish Chicagoan Edward Salomon.

German-speaking immigrants lived all over Chicago. During the 1850s and 1860s, the main German neighborhood was the Near North Side. Following the disastrous Chicago fire in 1871, many Ger­mans moved farther to the north; during the 1880s and 1890s, ethnic German neighborhoods could be found in particu­lar on the Northwest Side along Milwau­kee Avenue. At first glance, the Chicago fire represents the worst-case scenario of social disorder in the modern American city. Large parts of Chicago burned down within a few hours, and thousands of peo­ple of all social backgrounds lost their homes. Federal troops were dispatched to Chicago to safeguard law and order. Ger­man immigrants were particularly hard-hit, as the fire destroyed in particular the Ger­man North Side and thus weakened the co­hesion of the German immigrants in the city. The Chicago Relief and Aid Society discriminated against many immigrants, especially those who did not speak English. The philanthropic Deutsche Gesellschaft (German Society), in later years known as the German Aid Society, which had been established in 1854 to support immigrants from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, could only assist a few of the worst-off vic­tims of the fire.

Before the 1920s, most bakers, butch­ers, and brewery owners (and brewery workers) in Chicago were German immi­grants. Several Germans “made it,” becom­ing successful and wealthy businesspeople. Even before the turn of the century, grow­ing numbers of German immigrants rose into the middle class. But throughout the nineteenth century, most Germans were manual workers. Unlike other European immigrants in Chicago, a large proportion of the Germans arriving between the 1840s and 1870s were skilled in different fields, often having been trained as artisans. Ger­man women often worked as domestic ser­vants, usually starting at a young age. Ger­man men and women arriving after the Civil War found jobs as industrial workers. During the 1870s, Socialist German immi­grants led efforts to organize a radical workers’ movement in the city, which was influenced to some extent by anarchist ideas. Chicago was still recovering from the fire when two serious recessions hit the na­tion in 1873 and in 1877, displacing hun­dreds of immigrant workers from their jobs. The recession of 1877 led to strikes and serious violence in Chicago, and again federal troops were brought in to quell the disturbances. The 1877 strikes were the first in a series which culminated in the 1886 Haymarket riot and the 1893 Pull­man strike. In both instances Chicago saw the worst urban workers’ riots in the na­tion’s history.

Several cultural institutions in Chicago can be traced back to German founders, most famously the Chicago Symphony Or­chestra, which was founded by conductor Theodor Thomas in 1891. During the nineteenth century Chicago counted nu­merous well-attended German-language theaters and many small German music and literary societies. Several of the largest German American newspapers, such as the Illinois Staatszeitung or the Abendpost (Evening Post), which had readers throughout the Midwest and beyond, were published in Chicago. After the turn of the century, however, the vibrant German eth­nic life in Chicago gradually lost its mo­mentum, becoming less German. The slow erosion of the still large German American community network from within was caused by the decreasing immigration of German speakers, the loss of German as a spoken language among the second gener­ation, and declining membership in the Vereine.

In retrospect, the inherent structural weakness of the Chicago German commu­nity, which from the start had been more project than tangible reality, and the post- 1900 erosion of German ethnic life miti­gate the seemingly massive impact of the U.S. declaration of war against Germany in 1917. In Chicago, moreover, the anti­German campaign of 1917 must be seen within a specific interethnic political con­text. In 1914, leading Chicago Germans facing a growing disintegration of German ethnic life instrumentalized the war to rally Germans once again. They managed to bring thousands to the streets supporting the German cause. Throughout 1915, sev­eral large rallies were held in support of the German war effort. Although Jewish and Irish immigrants who opposed Russian and English oppression of their kin in Europe initially expressed sympathy, Polish and Czech immigrant leaders who were sup­porting efforts for national independence in Europe were deeply offended. A series of small, sometimes violent interethnic inci­dents paralleling to some extent the war in Europe ensued. In 1917, Poles and Czechs, now backed by official U.S. policy, took re­venge for the Teutonic arrogance.

After World War I, Chicago Germans played a rather subdued role. The German Vereinsleben (activities of associations) did not entirely disappear but was organized much more inconspicuously than before 1900. The German-language Abendpost, for instance, was published into the 1950s. During the 1930s, the pro-Nazi German American Bund was active in Chicago, one of its most important centers. However, the impact of the Bund was limited, and the organization lost its appeal even before U.S. entry into World War II. As a result of persecution by the Nazis, several famous German and German Jewish emigrants moved to Chicago during the 1930s. Among them was the Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology and emerged as a leading proponent of the in­fluential international style. Mies and his students played a major role in shaping the modern image of Chicago and, in fact, of most modern cities in the Western world with their office buildings. A number of in­fluential intellectual and academic exiles from Germany taught and studied at the University of Chicago; for example, the historian Hans Rothfels, the physicist and Nobel Prize laureate James Franck, and Stefan Heym, who took a masters degree in the German Department during the 1930s and became a leading German writer after the war. During the 1960s, famous exile scholars like the theologian Paul Tillich and the philosopher Hannah Arendt taught at the University of Chicago.

Tobias Brinkmann

See also Addams, (Laura) Jane; Altgeld, John Peter; Anarchists; Bauhaus; Cincinnati; 82nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment; Forty-Eighters; German American Bund; Haymarket; Hecker, Friedrich; Heym, Stefan; Illinois; Illinois Staatszeitung; Intellectual Exile; Judaism, Reform (North America); Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig; Salomon, Edward S.; Socialist Labor Party

References and Further Reading

Avrich, Paul. The Haymarket Tragedy.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Brinkmann, Tobias. “ Von der Gemeinde zur Community”: Judische Einwanderer in Chicago, 1840-1900. Osnabruck: Rasch, 2002.

Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W W Norton, 1991.

Holli, Melvin G. “German American Ethnic and Cultural Identity from 1890 Onward.” In Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait. Ed. Melvin G. Holli and Peter d’Alroy Jones. Grand Rapids: W B. Eerdmans, 1995, 93-109.

Philpott, Thomas L. The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and Middle­Class Reform, Chicago, 1880-1930. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Seeger, Eugen. Chicago: Die Geschichte einer Wunderstadt. Chicago: M. Sternand, 1892.

Seeger, Eugen, and Eduard Schlaeger. Chicago: Entwickelung, Zerstorung, und Wiederaufbau. Chicago: M. Stern, 1872.

Smith, Carl. Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb and the Model Town of Pullman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.