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Following the end of the
Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) Germany experienced a relatively
stable period and its population expanded rapidly. The economy
did not expand at the same rate so many people experienced hard
times. Emigration in search of a better life started in the
1830s and expanded greatly in the mid and late 1800s.
Emigration to the U.S. prior to
the 1830s came almost exclusively from southwest Germany,
Wurtemberg, Baden, Bavaria and the Rhineland Palatinate. This
was a region of small farms and the inheritance laws of the time
required that the property be equally divided among the
surviving children. This resulted in loss of the farm to
everyone in the family if they could not afford to buy out the
other children. German industry had not expanded enough to take
in the surplus of the farm populations.
From the 1840s forward,
emigration spread to the northwest region of Germany. This was
an area of large landholdings held by a small number of elites.
In the 1850s, peasant emancipation movements in Schleswig
Holstein, Mecklenburg (home of the Heidens) and East Prussia led
to the dispossession of former serfs from the great estates.
This added greatly to the number of people emigrating primarily
to the U.S.
The population of the German
states doubled between 1840 and 1910 from 32 to 64 million.
However, emigration carried away almost a third of the increase
during those years. Between 1865 and 1895 peasants and
unemployed workers primarily from eastern Germany left the
country seeking employment or farm land in the U.S.
Breman and Hamburg were the
primary German ports of embarkation throughout the nineteenth
century. The most important port for arrival in the U.S. was New
York City. |
