Nova Scotia

Germans established their long-standing presence in Nova Scotia in the mid-eigh­teenth century. Although the first group settlement, Waldoburg on Cape Breton Is­land, was abandoned after only three years, the town and county of Lunenburg devel­oped and maintained a strong German identity well into the nineteenth century.

Early Presence

Nova Scotia’s first German settlement was established in 1745 when British forces con­quered the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. Several Germans, who had previously lived in Maine, participated in the conquest and shortly after founded Waldoburg, in close proximity to Louis- bourg, as Canada’s first German settlement. After only three years, Waldoburg was drawn into the renewed colonial struggle between France and Great Britain. The community was finally evacuated in 1748, when the British government returned Louisbourg to France on the basis of the Treaty ofAachen. Several residents moved to Halifax and later participated in the found­ing of Lunenburg. Among them was Sebas­tian Zauberbuehler who took a leading role in the Lunenburg settlement and became a member of Nova Scotia’s first House of As­sembly. In 1758 several German soldiers participated in the final conquering of Louisbourg from the French as members of the Royal American Regiment. Many of them later settled in Halifax, where Ger­mans had been present since 1749.

Germans in Halifax and Arrival of the “Foreign Protestants”

In Halifax, which was founded in 1749 as a British fortress to counterbalance the French fortress in Louisbourg, German­speaking immigrants played an important role from the early days on. Several Swiss and Germans were among the settlement’s original population. Disappointed with the lack of discipline among Halifax’s first set­tlers, mostly released soldiers and impover­ished immigrants from London, Governor Edward Cornwallis requested the British government to recruit more German Protestants for the settlement of Nova Sco­tia. The governor’s demand for Protestant settlers reflected his political objective to outbalance the predominant Catholic, French-speaking Acadians, descendants of the early French settlers who had estab­lished settlements before Nova Scotia came under British rule by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Immigrants had to be non­British, as emigration of British people to the colonies was considered to be counter­productive to the mother country’s eco­nomic goals. Mercantilism, the predomi­nant economic theory at the time, pursued the goal of exploiting the colonies without investing financial or human capital into Great Britain’s overseas territories.

Immigration agents in Europe prom­ised potential emigrants from the German­speaking territories free land and exemp­tion from taxation for ten years, as well as free provisioning with tools, farming uten­sils, and arms in the British colony. Pam­phlets that were distributed described Nova Scotia in the brightest colors. Faced with anti-Protestant measures in their home­lands, the “Foreign Protestants” welcomed the British invitation to immigrate to North America. Next to increasing over­population and oppressive taxation, which affected Germany’s population at large, the situation for Protestants in Europe had be­come increasingly difficult due to religious persecution. The withdrawal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, mass emigration of Protestants from the Palatinate in 1709, and the expulsion of the Protestants of Salzburg in 1731 and 1732 resulted in a large pool of potential emigrants to North America.

As most settlers were unable to pay for their transatlantic passage, they signed con­tracts that committed them to work off the passage fare as indebted laborers in Halifax immediately after arrival. Between the summer of1750 and 1752, a total of 2,724 settlers arrived in Halifax in three large groups. They came from the German Palatinate, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and other German-speaking areas. At least 433 of the newcomers were French-speak­ing residents of Montbeliard, a small prin­cipality that at the time was part of Wurt­temberg. The British authorities’ intention was to establish a “Foreign Protestant” group settlement in Merligash Bay on Nova Scotia’s South Shore, but continuing hostilities with the Native Americans made the settlement impossible prior to 1753. Accordingly, all settlers had to be accom­modated in the small fortress of Halifax. Widespread discontent developed, as new­comers, instead of cultivating free land and building homes for their families, worked on the construction of fortifications and roads in Halifax.

The Lunenburg Settlement After the Natives ceased hostilities, British authorities put the Lunenburg settlement plan into effect, and on June 8, 1753, a total of 1,453 of the approximately 2,000 remaining German-speaking settlers in Halifax set sail for Merligash Bay. The set­tlement site was located some 50 miles southwest of Halifax and was chosen for its natural harbor and its isolation from the French Acadian settlements. The commu­nity’s name was chosen by Governor Pere­grine Thomas Hobson to honor the British king, George II, who was also duke of Braunschweig-Lueneburg. Despite the group’s regional diversity, their common religious faith and language, combined with the demands and challenges of a pio­neer society, proved sufficient for the for­mation of a common identity. Lunenbur- gers fortified their settlement against the French and the Natives, and within only a few years Lunenburg was developing into a thriving community.

The German presence in Nova Scotia was of particular significance to the British authorities during this early period. Ger­man immigrants arrived at a time when the race between France and Great Britain for predominance in North America was still undecided. During the early 1750s, Ger­man-speaking immigrants constituted the majority of Nova Scotia’s population. When the British authorities expelled Nova Scotia’s French population, the Acadians, in 1755, Lunenburg and Halifax remained the only European settlements in Nova Scotia. Only with the final fall of Quebec in 1759 and Montreal in 1760 was the British position fully established.

From the early nineteenth century on, almost the entire area of Lunenburg County—with communities such as New Dublin, Chester, Mahoone Bay, Bridgewater, New Germany, etc.—became settled by Canadians of German descent, whose parents had been among the Lunenburg pioneers. The town of Lunenburg, however, remained the economic, cultural, and denominational center for Lunenburg County’s various smaller German settlements.

Lunenburg is an outstanding example of immigrants’ successful adaptation to the economic needs of their new geographic environment. Most of the immigrants had been farmers in Germany, but faced with the challenges and opportunities related to Lunenburg’s geographic location on the Atlantic Ocean with a large natural harbor, most immigrants abandoned farming en­tirely and turned to shipbuilding and fish­ing. Various Lunenburg firms became ac­tive in the West Indies trade. They exported salted fish and imported rum, coffee, molasses, and tobacco, which they sold in Halifax, Quebec, and Newfound­land. By the 1830s Lunenburg had more than 20 stores in which British manufac­tures and goods from the West Indies were being sold. The shipping of lumber was also important to the local economy. Dur­ing the 1870s Lunenburgers introduced trawling with ground nets, which made fishing along the shore more efficient. By 1900 some 180 vessels, employing some 2,000 men from Lunenburg, fished off the banks between Nova Scotia and New­foundland and Labrador each year (Cuth­bertson 1996, 13).

Lunenburgers developed a strong com­munity spirit centered on their common Protestant faith. Shortly after the founding of the community, they established a Lutheran congregation, but did not have a church or a German pastor prior to the early 1770s. From 1760 on, a teacher from Germany taught children in a German-lan­guage school. Pressure from the Anglican Church for English-language education re­sulted in the closure of the school but did not interfere with German-language ser­vices. Zion’s Lutheran Church was com­pleted in 1772, and its first German pastor, Friedrich Schultz, assumed his duties the very same year. Although many members of the local elite converted to Anglicism and joined the local Anglican congrega­tion, Zion Church remained the most im­portant single factor for the partial mainte­nance of the German language, customs, and a common German identity among the pioneers and their descendants.

Following a general pattern, language maintenance declined gradually over the course of three generations. By the mid­nineteenth century, German was almost entirely replaced by English as the language of everyday and business life. There were two main reasons for this decline that were unique to Lunenburg. First, because of its isolated location, Lunenburg received very few new German-speaking settlers after the original settlement phase. While an esti­mated 1,000 Hessians and about 5,000 Loyalists, many of the latter of German origin as well, came to Nova Scotia after the American War of Independence (Bassler 1991, 128, 136) only a few were attracted by the existing settlements. They were provided with free land by the British authorities and most of them settled in the Annapolis Valley in inland Nova Scotia. Second, language loss corresponded with the pioneers’ transformation from farmers to fishermen, shipbuilders, and traders.

Germans in Halifax

Closely linked to the founding of Lunen­burg, the German ethnic neighborhood in Halifax constituted the second most impor­tant German settlement in Nova Scotia. A number of Germans stayed behind when their fellow immigrants left for Lunenburg in 1753. Halifax’s Germans settled in the city’s north end, which for many years was commonly referred to as “Dutch Town.” Shortly after their arrival, German immi­grants erected a schoolhouse at the corner of Gerrish and Brunswick streets, where they also held their first Lutheran services. The schoolhouse was later transformed into “the little Dutch church,” dedicated in 1761 as St. George’s Church, Canada’s first Lutheran church. Halifax’s German population fluctu­ated, with many leaving for Lunenburg County and other areas. A local census of 1766 lists only 264 remaining Germans in Halifax (Bassler 1991, 151). However, dur­ing the 1770s and 1780s, the German com­munity was revitalized with the arrival of Loyalists and former Hessian auxiliary troops, who had fought on the British side in

the American War of Independence, bring­ing the German group to more than 1,000 people. A new German school was opened, and ethnic denominational and cultural life flourished. Between 1788 and 1801, Ger­man immigrant Anton Heinrich, who had participated in the final conquering of Louis- bourg in 1758, published Canada’s first Ger­man newspaper, the Neu-Schottlaendischer Kalender (Nova-Scotian Calendar). In 1786 Canada’s first secular German organization, the Hochdeutsche Gesellschaft (High Ger­man Society), was established by a former of­ficer of the Hessian auxiliary troops. The or­ganization remained active until 1801. By the turn of the nineteenth century, however, Halifax’s German congregation succumbed to the town’s mostly anglophone character. Following numerous conversions to Angli­canism, Halifax’s small Lutheran congrega­tion officially became Anglican in 1799 and adopted the English language. Typically, the ethnic church was the last stronghold of lan­guage maintenance and the change of lan­guages so early on significantly sped up the process of assimilation of Halifax’s German population. Located in the center of British colonial administration of Nova Scotia, lack­ing new immigrants, and left without a Ger­man-language church, Halifax’s German community became fully anglicized and as­similated by the 1830s.

Ulrich Frisse

See also Hessians; Seume, Johann Gottfried

References and Further Reading

Bassler, Gerhard. The German Canadian

Mosaic Today and Yesterday. Ottawa: German-Canadian Congress, 1991. Bell, Winthrop P The “Foreign Protestants” and the Settlement of Nova Scotia. The History of a Piece of Arrested British Colonial Policy in the Eighteenth Century. Sackville, NB: Centre for Canadian Studies: Mount Allison University, 1990.

Cuthbertson, Brian. Lunenburg: An Illustrated History. Halifax: Formac, 1996.

DesBrisay, Mather Byles. History of the County of Lunenburg. Toronto: William Briggs, 1895.

Richter, L. “Germans in Nova Scotia.” XV Dalhousie Review (1935—1936): 425—434.

Statistics Canada, Census 2001, http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/ home/index.cfm (accessed May 15, 2005).