Louisiana
In 1717 Jean-Etienne Purry’s attempts failed to persuade the Duke of Orleans to invite German and Swiss emigrants to Louisiana, because the Duke feared that the foreigners could undermine French authority.
The French government had always been reluctant to transport foreign nationals to their colonies despite the fact that the Swiss and Portuguese emigrants who arrived in Quebec in 1668 quickly assimilated. John Law, a Scottish emigrant to France and the founder of the Compagnie des Indoes (Company of the Indies), brought the first German settlers to Louisiana in 1720. Many Germans responded to Law’s propaganda booklets that circulated in the German states. They were promised a Garden of Eden, where crops could be harvested four times a year and gold and silver were abundant. However, only 330 of over 4,000 potential settlers survived the dangerous journeys of 1720 and 1721. Needless to say, the land that they found did not match the glorious description they anticipated. When Law’s monopoly position of overseeing the entire French overseas trade collapsed at the end of 1720, the Germans initially refused to stay in Louisiana, as they wanted to work only for John Law. Governor Jean Baptiste le Monye de Bienville persuaded them to reside in Louisiana by granting them concessions on a region 30 miles north of New Orleans. Under the leadership of the Swedish military officer Karl Friedrich von Arensburg (or D’Arensbourg) the thriving settlement became known as the Cote des Allemands, Les Allemands, or the German Coast, where the settlers founded the villages of Carlstein (or Charlesbourg, hence today’s name St. Charles Parish), Hoffen, Marienthal, and Augsburg. In 1722 the region was devastated by a hurricane that left 152 settlers dead; the 169 remaining Germans had to abandon Augsburg and Marienthal. However, the Cote des Allemands eventually flourished and was highly respected by the French. By 1766, when the Spanish took over Louisiana, the settlement was populated by 1,803 inhabitants (1,268 Germans and 535 slaves) and had 3,000 cows, 350 horses, and 540 pigs. The second and third generations abandoned their German heritage, customs, and language and completely assimilated. Many names had already been gallicized before the original settlers departed from French harbors, others took on French names when they entered French-Louisiana society. “Huber” became “Oubre” or “Hoover,” “Himmel” became “Ximel” and later “Hymel.” During the course of the nineteenth century, a number of these already changed names underwent another transformation, when they were anglicized.
Trade between Frenchmen and Indians at the mouth of the Mississippi River. This engraving was distributed by agents of John Law to promote investment in the Company of the West and emigration to the Louisiana Colony. (Historic New Orleans Collection, accession no. 1952.3)
Although the settlers faced considerable challenges during the early years of the Spanish occupancy, the colony continued to prosper and a number of plantations, including the Ormond, Destrehan, and Homeplace plantations, were built.
Due to political, economic, social, and religious reasons, thousands of Germans left their homeland for America during the nineteenth century. The first of the three immigration waves was caused by the European famine of 1817. More than 50,000 Germans arrived in New Orleans between 1820 and 1850, and many made their home there. The second wave that began in the 1840s was triggered by political factors. At its peak in 1860, 24,614 Germans lived in Louisiana (5 percent of the state’s population), most of them settled in New Orleans, then the wealthiest city in the nation. In 1864 Louisiana saw the third wave of German immigrants that lasted until 1895. Anti-Catholic laws and the wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870 forced thousands of Germans to leave their country.
During the course of the century, the German Society of New Orleans supported more than 250,000 German immigrants in various ways. Because Otto von Bismarck’s social and economic reforms of the 1880s were quite successful, fewer and fewer Germans saw the need to emigrate. As a result, Louisiana’s German population had significantly decreased by the turn of the twentieth century.During the nineteenth century, the cultural, social, and economic influence of the Germans in New Orleans was quite impressive. Germans founded bakeries and German newspapers such as the Staats-Zeitung (State Newspaper) and the even more significant Deutsche Zeitung (German Nesws- paper). Many worked as goldsmiths, watchmakers, carpenters, architects, and shoe manufacturers. In addition, the printing and beer industries were monopolized by Germans. The “German Coast” delivered vegetables, fruit, eggs, butter, and cheese to New Orleans. A number of German farmers and gardeners found their niche in growing flowers, as truck farming was dominated by other European immigrants.
Clearly, by midcentury German culture flourished in New Orleans. The German Theater on Magazine Street staged plays by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the original language. German singing clubs such as the New Orleans Liedertafel, the Turn-Verein Singing Society, the New Orleans Frohsinn, the New Orleans Liederkranz, and the Haragari Men’s Glee Club attracted large audiences. In 1890 Hanno Deiler, a musically gifted German professor at the University of Louisiana (today’s Tulane University), organized the Twenty-Sixth North American Sanger Bund Festival in New Orleans. These efforts notwithstanding, the German language gradually disappeared from New Orleans.
Even though the majority of German immigrants were either Catholics or Lutherans, several hundred German Jews came to Louisiana as well and built their own synagogues. Similarly, Catholics and Lutherans established their churches and schools, but their German identity hardly survived the beginning of the twentieth century.
The only remaining German presence in New Orleans in the early twenty- first century is the Deutsches Haus on South Galvez Street. The Deutsches Haus, which has its roots in the German Society of New Orleans, was founded in 1928.But not all German immigrants lived in and around New Orleans. In 1870 a handful of settlers from New Orleans founded a colony in modern-day Acadia Parish, west of Lafayette. Under the leadership of Zeno Huber and Joseph Fabacher, several families and recent immigrants established a settlement on the prairies of southwest Louisiana. When the Fabacher settlement flourished, Joseph Fabacher promoted the founding of a second German settlement nearby. By 1882 Fabacher had recruited about eighty immigrants, among them Nicholas Zaunbrecher, who was one of the most important inhabitants of the newly established Roberts Cove settlement. Zaunbrecher played a key role in improving the infrastructure of Roberts Cove and he created artificial lakes to ensure the success of his rice harvest. The community experienced its golden age between 1900 and 1917. However, in 1922 the church school was forced to close its doors, and in 1930 the diocese of Lafayette took control over the town’s church, abruptly ending the line of German-speaking priests. Gradually the inhabitants assimilated, but in the 1950s the members of the widespread Zaunbrecher family began to revive their German identity by initiating family reunions. As a result, a number of descendents of other German settlers had a renewed interest in their German heritage, and in 1995 the first Roberts Cove Germanfest was celebrated. Today the town is particularly known for its Ger- manfest on the first weekend of October and for upholding its German traditions during the Christmas season.
Gregor Thuswaldner
See also Beer; Duden, Gottfried; New Orleans; Newspaper Press, German Language in the United States
References and Further Reading
Blume, Helmut. The German Coast during the Colonial Era, 1722—1803. Destrehan, LA: The German-Acadian Coast Historical and Genealogical Society, 1990.
Kondert, Reinhart. From Geilenkirchen to
Acadia Parish: A History of the Germans of Roberts Cove, 1880—1987. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, 1988.
------. The Germans of Colonial Louisiana, 1720-1803. Stuttgart: Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1990.
Nau, John Frederick. The German People of New Orleans, 1850-1900. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1958.