Germania’s Seed?
Edited, 4/11/15 3/17/14. See below!
Blogger “Agnostic” over at Dusk in Autumn has a post up about the regional variation in Germany (Oktoberfest, lederhosen, dirndls and Germany’s cultural fault-line). As I’ve noted in my posts on the American nations (most recently here, see the category here), Germany has been one of the most important countries for seeding the nations of North America, if not the most important, after Britain itself. (Indeed, “German” is the largest self-reported ancestry in America – and one of the largest in Canada; but, as Greg Cochran notes, this should be taken as more of a sign of the reach of German genes rather than the true distribution of German-Americans themselves.) As was the case for Britain – made clear in the books Albion’s Seed (“Albion” being the oldest known name for Britain) and American Nations – the regional origin of the German settlers should have great significance for the places they settled.
On that point:
This is a map of the common regional stereotypes in Germany (origin not clear – feel free to let me know if you know its source).
Germany is a country of contradictions. The country that:
- Rolls out the welcome mat for immigrants – such that 19% of its population is of foreign background, including from the developing world – particularly Turkey
- Is overly insistent on diversity – to the point that it bans a political ad featuring white chocolate because of the ad’s “subtle racism” (which isn’t totally off-base, by the way)
Is the same country that:
- Gave us the genocidal and ultra-nationalistic Nazis
- Has towns that are this day run by modern Nazis
What’s up with that?
Indeed, even in the United States, there is a distinct and seemingly orderly division between the areas that contain heavy amounts of German-American settlement:
The western sections of the Midlands – and Yankeedom for that matter – contain heavy German settlement. Why are the Germans of Nebraska so much more to the Right politically than the Germans in southern New Jersey/eastern Pennsylvania?
Part of the reason is of course due to intermixing with the other settlers in the various regions, particularly the Scotch-Irish in the west (see this comment of mine over at race/history/evolution notes: Ethnic origins of presidents of the University of California system for more on that).
The answer to all these may lie in the words of “Agnostic”:
Perhaps the most familiar example to us of Germans who know how to have a rollicking good time is Oktoberfest. That sure doesn’t sound like a ritual created by dour, nose-to-the-grindstone martinets. Incurious foreigners might try to spin some baroque explanation for this “counter-intuitive” fact. I don’t know why people have such a problem with common sense. Maybe it’s not so counter-intuitive, and you’re simply missing a big piece of the puzzle.
That’s what’s going on here — Oktoberfest comes from one half of Germany, while those other stereotypes come from the other, opposite half. No contradiction to resolve. It would be like a clueless outsider trying to explain how Los Angeles stereotypes ultimately and tortuously derive from American Puritanism — wrong part of the country.
(Well, I can explain how L.A. culture derives from American Puritans, but I digress.)
Germans in different parts of Germany are quite different from one another in many ways. Ergo, places that received German settlers may differ from one another depending on from where, exactly, these settlers originate – just as the case with Britain.
Germany was forged into a unified country fairly recently compared to the other old European powers, having been united into the German Empire in the 1870s. Before that it consisted of various de facto sovereign states at various stages of consolidation. Regional differences have remained evident.
Agnostic gives us a few examples. Google searches reveal cultural divides within Germany:
HBD Chick has also looked at this issue, noting a distinct East-West divide in the country terms of civicness:
As you would expect from its geographic location, Germany (and Poland) gradually transitions from outbred Western Europe to inbred Eastern Europe, just as one would expect as one approaches/crosses the Hajnal line (or about such).
Indeed, the aforementioned neo-Nazi town is, sure enough, in the East, in the area marked “Uncharted” on the map (not too far north from the section marked “Nazis”).
EDIT: 3/17/14: As further evidence for the existence of a East-West and a North-South divide in Germany, here (courtesy commenter Richard), a map of the results of German federal election, from March 1933 (from Wikipedia):
EDIT, 4/11/15: [Here are voting patterns in Germany for earlier years during the Weimar period (credit here):
We can see that while there is some variation, the strong regional differences remain evident during the entire period. ***End Edit***]
This gives us an indication that German emigrants might systematically vary depending on which section of the country they originate. There were several waves of German settlement to the U.S. The earliest waves, the Pietists that settled in William Penn’s Delaware colony. Many of the early colonists came from the Palatine region – the area marked “Cheerful” on the above map. Several of the subsequent waves originated in that area. However, the flow of migrants remained strong, and indeed, began to swell during the 19th century, when, all told, nearly 6 million Germans came to America (unfortunately, I don’t have regional breakdowns of these subsequent immigrants).
If there was a distinct regional skew in where these settlers to America originated, it might go a long way towards explaining a few things. If you have any information on this, please feel free to share it. 🙂
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That map of Germany is pretty funny, I wonder if you have any German natives who can confirm its accuracy. I descend from two different places in Germany, pretty much right on top of the “Serious” and “Cars” label.
JayMan, I am the commentor formerly known as “Coward”. I lied about my identity, I am actually a 13 year old almost pure White HBD’er. Here is my new blog ; shadydawgcoward.wordpress.com. You will have to excuse the immature and simplistic tone of the majority of my posts, I wrote it during severe bouts of OCD+ I am very young. However, I will be writing more complex and coherent posts from now on. Here is my magnum opus thus far;
It deals with epigenetics.
”Gave us the genocidal and ultra-nationalistic Nazis”
Like ”israelis”??
Tell me the differences between them??
Simple: The case with Germany is the truth while the case with Israel is a pack of lies repeated by Islamofascists and Eurofascists. Looking to rebuild the Ottoman Empire, are you?
Apart from the “dirt porn” and “ctatty” the stereotypes seem to be right to me (I am a German).
Bavarians are fun-loving beer-hounds, but they’re also the wealthiest Germans, and have lots of manufacturing. Prussians are also fun-loving, but their idea of fun is invading Poland.
My wife is from Iowa, and when she visited Germany, she said the countryside looked *a lot* like a more densely-populated Iowa. Iowa has lots of Germans, some Dutch (Nederlanders), some Danes, and very few Scandinavians. Probably just not cold enough for the Scandis. Every town has a Catholic church and a Lutheran Church. Most also have a Baptist/evangelical church.
Sounds like paradise!
Incidentally, there are German folk festivals in my area, and they’re very, um, efficient. Almost no handcrafts or import-sellers, or any of that. Just the essentials for having fun: beer, sausage, music, dance.
Interesting post, probably true stereotypes lol.
In addition to large-scale German migration to America, there was also considerable German migration to the UK lasting from 17th century to the early 20th century. It didn’t really have as much cultural impact here as it did in the US though.
“By the end of the seventeenth century, a significant German community had developed, consisting mostly of businessmen, mainly from Hamburg; sugar bakers and other economic migrants. In 1709-1710, thousands of Germans from the Electorate of the Palatinate, which had been invaded by French forces and suffered a severe winter, also migrated to England. Queen Anne’s government had invited them, with the plan to settle Germans in the North American colonies. Some stayed in the London area.”
“Throughout the 19th century a substantial population of German immigrants built up in Britain, numbering 28,644 in 1861. London held around half of this population, and other sizeable communities existed in Manchester, Bradford and elsewhere. The German immigrant community was the largest group until 1891, when it became second only to Russian Jews. There was a mixture of classes and religious groupings, and a flourishing culture built up, with the growth of middle and working class clubs. Waiters and clerks were two main occupations, and many who worked in these professions went on to become restaurant owners and businessmen, to a considerable extent.[14] This community maintained its size until the First World War, when public anti-German feeling became very prominent and the Government enacted a policy of forced internment and repatriation. The community in 1911 had reached 53,324, but fell to just over 20,000 after the war.[15]”
[Source: Wikipedia]
“Gave us the genocidal and ultra-nationalistic Nazis” – this statment demonstrstes a very pedestrian and inaccurate understanding of the National Socislists and therefore of history.
Meanwhile, you stop there and refuse to elaborate. That looks like an apologistic view of national socialsm, to be sure. The nationalism is in the Nazi Party’s name, and their genocidal behavior is a matter of record.
Well said!
I didn’t refuse to elaborate, I simply didn’t elaborate just as Jayman didn’t with the statement in question. What I did do was challenge JayMan to look deeper than what the winners of the war offer. He might start here: http://inconvenienthistory.com/index.php
As our knowledge of humanity grows by challenging the status quo so does our understanding of history.
different germans is different! yes! (^_^)
i have a hunch — and it’s just a hunch so far, i’ve got no data — that that the northern germans (on greying wanderer’s north european plain) are going to prove to be more outbred than germans further to the south as one approaches the alps. that’s my prediction (now i just have to find some data!).
germans very far to the north on the coast — the dithmarsians, for instance — they’re another story, of course — clannish and recent inbreeding, i do believe (again, i need data!).
Wait… 😉
Not all emigrants to the USA from Germany were of Germanic origin.
Jayman:
The issue of Germans is far more complicated than what you are looking at. First of all, Germans have long lived far beyond the borders of today’s Germany proper. Some ethnic/dialectical groups today who were German and were indistinguishable from other Germans in the middle ages pretend not to be today. Much of todays understanding of ethnic groups and nation states goes back only to the time of Napoleon, while Germany itself only became strictly defined in the time between Bismarck and Hitler.
When looking at who is German, or “Deutsch” when such people started coming to America in the 1600’s, this group would have included all of the Germanic people of Germany (including Silesia and Pommerania), Austria, Tyrol, Switzerland, Alsace, Lorraine, Luxembourg, Flanders, Holland, Prussia, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, and Transylvania.
In general, this larger group of Germans can be divided into a handful of large tribal groups dating back to before the time of Rome:
1) Franks (Germans living along the Rhine and Meuse Rivers – Holland, Flanders, Luxembourg, Rhineland, Franconia, Palatinate, Lorraine, and also eastward through Thurningia and Silesia and into Posen and Ukraine).
2) Allemanians (Germans living in Alsace, Baden, Switzerland, Vorarlberg)
3) Bavarians (Germans living in Bavaria, Bohemia, Tyrol, Moravia, Austria)
4) Swabians (Germans from Swabia [Wurrtemburg/Northern Bavaria], who also later settled the Danube Valley in Hungary and Serbia)
5) Frisians (Germans living on the North Sea Coast)
6) Saxons (Germans living behind the Franks along the Ems and Elbe River behind the North Sea and also in Holstein, Mecklenburg, and Pommerania and also down the Carpathians in Transylvania, who also later settled in Russia)
7) Prussians (Baltic Prussians mixed with Saxons and Germanized)
The densest part of Germany has always been the Rhine Valley and upper Danube Valley – i.e the Romanized parts of Germany from Holland and Flanders down through Swabia and into southern Bavaria. This part of Germany was continually producing a surplus of population compared to arable land who tended first to move east into the slavic countries of eastern Europe, and later after the discovery of America emigrated in very large numbers to the US, Canada, and Brazil. They were also the Germans who settled the lands in the lower Danube Valley, southern Ukraine, and Volga Russia Plain devasted by Turks and Tartar slave raiders.
The German pietists who emigrated from the Palatinate who settled in Pennsylvania were Allemanians from Switzerland and Alsace who had been driven from their homelands for their pacificsm and religious non-conformity and moved up the Rhine the in search of tolerance. This liberal group is the base German population of Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. To this group were added Lutheran dissidents driven out of Catholic Austria and Bavaria int he 1700’s.
Later German settlers tended to settle in climate/geographic belts reminiscent of their homelands. Middle and Southern Germans (Franks/Swabians/Bavarians) tended to settle the eastern midlands out to Iowa. Northern Germans (Saxons, northern Franks) tended to settle in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota along with their Scandanavian kissing kin. Eastern Germans, including large numbers of dissilusioned Russian German settlers from Russia and Ukraine settle on the great plains along with Poles and Czechs. You can in part tell the general origin of settlers by the names they gave to places they settled in America. A town named Bremen in Indiana (and a major city in northern Germany) is unlikely to have been settled by Bavarians. A neighborhood named “Over the Rhine” in Cincinatti is unlikely to have been settled by Saxons.
Germany in general is divided between a conservative and Catholic South and West and a liberal, individualistic, and Protestant North and interior. The different temperment of Germans from different regions along with the special temperments of small pioneer groups like the German Pietists or the Russian Germans account for quite a bit of the political variance in American German groups. It should not be surprising the the descendants of liberal dissident Germans in Pennsylvania vote more liberal, while conservative pioneers who had previously colonized Russia and later moved to South Dakota would remain conservative.
Actually, there are plenty of Fanks in northern Baden-Wurttemberg, and northwest Bavaria. The Electoral Palatinate had in fact been primarily in northern Baden, from which many Palatinate German immigrants to America and the Black Sea region of Russia had come from, before Napoleon dismembered that state, and gave it to it’s neighbors, such as Baden.
As a native born to wisconsin and also a resident of Pennsylvania, I believe most of the “dutchies” in PA are rural, provincial and conservative. The Germans who arrived in the later years and settled the midwest tend to be the more liberal of the 2 groups. I suspect many of these folk are the offspring of progressive germans who left when bismarck was unifying the empire. Just my take on it.
Hariken Porimaa,
I do not understand, you did now a satire is not?
I’ve read that Nazism was inspired by Zionism.
You just do not know what you’re talking about, lower your tone of voice and his pedantic arrogance. I do not know what happened in World War II and will be humble in making sure the historical facts only when in fact it is proven something.
What actually happens is that the protocols of Zion, fake or not, make sense as well, the warnings of Adolf Hitler on the Jews.
And yes, Israel is like Nazi Germany, with the difference that the latter, above any other factor, tried to shake the arms of the octopus.
A number of factors are strange happening. For example, the Jewish organizations refuse to accept that any genocide can be compared at the same time that the alleged Holocaust. This is crude, absurd and disgusting. Moreover, there are people who have written books denying the Holocaust and are trapped while others deny it happened eg holodomor and their perpetrators and remain free, light and loose. So to say that the holocaust (supposed) was caused in large letters by GERMAN NAZIS, is correct. But to say that it was caused by holodomor COMMUNIST JEWS, is wrong, anti semitic.
”And yes, Israel is like Nazi Germany, with the difference that the latter, above any other factor, tried to shake the arms of the octopus…”
… (the international jewry).
It seems clear to me that there are several Jewish communities scattered around the world, who help each other and develop the same suicidal policies in the host countries, the vast majority of most European nations.
Prove i’m lying…
(1) Don’t know where to find the precise breakdown either, but AFAIK most of the 19th century German emigrants were from the north of the country. (Where does the hamburger come from)))
One curious fact I was once looking at and trying to propose hypotheses for is why average American IQ’s are higher for descendents of Italians than for Germans – a puzzle first raised by Ron Unz.
One is the rural/urban distinction; more Italian-Americans live in cities, which appear to have an independent positive influence on IQ. Another explanation I suggested is that the bulk of German-Americans (especially those who emigrated more recently and are likelier to have retained their identies) are mostly from the north. We know from PISA that while the average IQ (as translated from PISA) in Germany is ~103, there are marked regional differences, with the north and east around ~100 and the south and Rhineland at ~100.
(2) About the Nazis – it’s worth pointing out that the movement evolved out of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeosie of the Rhineland and Bavaria, and not from the more proletarian north or the east with its landed Prussian aristocracy. Prussianism was actually one of the more hostile elements to Nazism and always coexisted uneasily with it. Just look at the ethnic origin of the leading Nazis and this becomes obvious – there were even more Austrians (Seyss-Inquart, not to mention Hitler himself) there than there were Eastern Germans (Alfred von Rosenberg, IIRC, was the only one of any prominence). So I’m not buying any connection with original Nazism and increasing rates of inbreeding as you go east.
Likewise for modern times, the explanation is sooner the post-Communist transition shock experienced by East Germany and the surfeit of males there (a lot of the young women have migrated west) than anything to do with HBD.
Not much of a puzzle. Stated ethnicity doesn’t mean much in America.
Yeah, as has been thoroughly discussed before, that’s all bullshit. Where cities do have higher IQs than rural areas, this is entirely because of selective migration; smarter people move to cities raising average IQ there.
I’ve been meaning to look that up. As I recall, don’t the PISA score rise as you go from north to south in Germany?
Maybe not so much east as south. I suspect the south of Germany (and, by extension, Austria) is more inbred than the northern part. This is where that DNA info would come in handy. 🙂
Explanation for what? 🙂
Just a thought Ak but could the tendency of German/Austrians toward National Socialism be because of their direct experience with the dysfunctional Austrio-Hungarian multicultural experiment and not with any inbreeding or other genetic factors? Simply, could environment have been the key?
>(2) About the Nazis – it’s worth pointing out that the movement evolved out of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeosie of the Rhineland and Bavaria, and not from the more proletarian north or the east with its landed Prussian aristocracy.
While that might be true regarding the elites, National Socialism didn’t resonate well with the Catholic peoples of Germany (Rhinelanders; Bavarians; the south in general). The NSDAP swept the northern, Protestant electorate, while it received significantly less (but still many) votes elsewhere. Perhaps because it was not so much reactionary rather than revolutionary as an ideology, and thus not warmly received by the more conservative folks?
I think it has more to do with the economic problems in East Germany, from what I’ve read. Also, as many people say, you can’t assume that a given part of a country will stay the same forever–the Southern US was less religious than the North in colonial times, for example. History is complicated and makes strange bedfellows.
@SFG:
Economic performance is more a symptom than a cause of anything. Why does the East German economy lag? As Staffan said, “we can’t adjust for their entire history.”
As to your other point, indeed, much of this is a snapshot in time. We don’t know how these things will continue to evolve. That said, David Hackett Fischer managed to trace British-American ways to regional differences across Britain. If it works there, then almost certainly the same should work for German-Americans.
The environment can turn certain genes in the population than before for reasons of cultural socialization were asleep. I think that Nazism arose as a response to a foreign threat. The wave of nationalism that swept Europe so far, are nothing more than your immune system responses to threats coming from outside. They are like white blood cells when they attack a virus or bacteria.
I believe that the environmental reasons are part of what I call internal variation to genetic predisposition. I mean, some people are closer to accept some kind of extreme behavior-collectivist, especially in response to the most hostile environment while others would show a bell curve behavioral unless directed to tribalism. While other people might have a large internal variation in personality, what I call a great adaptive capacity.
It may also be that in more collectivist societies, the idea of social hierarchy is more established and therefore, because the difference between the classes, ordinary people tend to accept the judge originated by control centers more easily.
I think that as a condition of human environmental adaptability, we present a variation inner personality that, like I said, some people are more prone to tribalism as a response to foreign threats, while others, perhaps for hormonal reasons, are less likely. Note that women and men are liberal and less likely to tribalism. The role of defense of human society, due especially to men, is a task almost entirely male.
This is so disconcerting for me to read on this blog that I admire so much. Granted, you’ve grown up in the same Anglosphere that I have, with all that that entails, but to reject as much as the dissonance that you have and do, and then to post this is, while perhaps not bizarre, certainly indicative of the power of 100+ years of anti-German agitprop from both self-identified Anglo-Saxons and Jews.
I am not German. I am not descended from Germans. But the contributions from that group of people – not just Germanics, but Germans – in every imaginable field is, when viewed objectively, mind boggling, and to see some insipid map like the one you reposted, here, of all places, is galling.
If you look hard enough, one can distinguish “regional” differences between all peoples who call themselves peoples. We still call English English, French French, Jews Jews, Chinese Chinese, and Germans Germans. As any two-bit sociology prof will tell you here in the eternal land of German hatred, hair color or perceived emotional traits are trumped by a unifying culture. Just because the lands that constituted Germany got together late doesn’t mean many of the people didn’t desire that, just as they desired further unification with Austria and other traditionally German lands in Europe. They saw commonality in worldview and life approach.
You write about countries as if they’re static, forever remaining the same no matter what happens to their population over time. Are you really scratching your head over the fact that a country that once had a nationalist government like China, India, or Israel and was defeated in a war like no other there’s ever been on the planet, suffering the corresponding demographic change first internally (i.e. nationalists replaced by internationalists) then externally (i.e. now replace the native people with outsiders) is a land of “contrasts”? If you lost your legs in a car crash and your relatives wonder why you go about in a wheelchair now instead of playing soccer like you used to, wouldn’t you find it bizarre that they don’t take the car crash into account?
Calm down buddy. When did I deny any of those things or have said anything disparaging about Germans? The map is NOT MINE, it’s a collection of stereotypes presumably held by Germans themselves.
No kidding. Have you not been following along on this blog? Investigating those differences is. The. Point.
No kidding, again. Just because there are differences doesn’t mean that there aren’t similarities, or a common national identity.
Despite what you say, you must be new here or don’t read what I’ve said very closely.
Look, I’m here looking for the reasons behind what we see. Merely pointing out that stuff happened is not end of the story, by a long shot.
Hello Jay,
I know that Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS for short!) has detailed information on where German-born immigrants came from, as well as where they live in the U.S. Amazingly, analysis can be conducted on 100% of all census returns (not a sample, but every actual return!) for the year 1880 (lots of for-born Germans still here at that time) under their North Atlantic Population Project: https://www.nappdata.org/napp/
@Pablo Jakobi:
Thanks for the tip! I’ll have to be sure to check it out.
Hey Jay,
I extracted the data for 1880 by a few selected states (with high German populations) and by about 2 dozen German regions (Baden, Bavaria, Wurttemburg, Hesse, Schleswig, etc). It’s a lot of info and I haven’t begun to make sense of it just yet. A lot of state-specific variation in different German groups settling in different states. Do you have an email contact? I’d love to share & see what you think!
The Nazis were popular in the North, because of the power of the Catholic Center party in Germany’s south. Germany had only three real political parties before the Weimer republic, the Social Democrats, Communists, and the Center Party. Most Northern Germans that were not leftists did not have any politics before the Nazis came along. Northern Germany was very aristocratic, and most Northern Germans supported the Junker class or were leftist. In the book, “They Thought They Were Free”, which is about why ordinary Germans voting and supporting Nazis. Most Germans that were Nazi supporters supported them because they were about the first political party that considered them to be human beings. The Nazis were a democratic yet elitist paradox of German politics. Hitler and many of the Nazis were Southern Germans who aspired to be part of the Junker class in the North. Hitler and many of his henchmen (yes, I am using that word) were more conservative than people realize. However, Hitler knew that in order to defeat the left and gain power in Germany, he had to play a populist line. Hitler’s rightwing or non-leftwing populism worked in Northern Germany, because Social Democrats, Communists, and the Junkers did not care about the majority of Germans that lived in the North. The Left in Germany was all about urban workers, and the Junkers were about themselves. Meanwhile, the Southern Germans had a real populist party that was not leftwing. This was the Center Party. And Nazis I might add were influenced by the Center Party. It has even been debated among some historians, that Nazis were racist & secular version of the Center Party.
How this factors into the Southern and Northern cultural divide in Germany is rather complicated. The Nazis were a bunch of Southern Germans who wanted to be Junkers, yet largely built their success off of a political model that existed in Southern Germany. Southern Germany even today is dominated by economic populist yet culturally conservative politics. The rest of Germany has far more class based parties like the rest of Europe. Merkel recent success with Christian Democrats was that she transformed the party into a pro-middle class & pro-business party. Christian Democrats beforehand were becoming a regional party due to its rightwing populism. The only reason why Christian Democrats were even a major party was due to the United States occupation of Germany and the Cold War. America wanted a non-leftwing party to control Germany, and Christian Democrats were the only real non-leftwing party after the war. Christian Democrats were the Center Party reborn. The Center Party disappeared because of Franz Van Papen of the Center Party making Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
Might add the modern successors of the Nazis, NPD or National Democratic Party has been far more successful in Northern Germany than Southern Germany. Also the party has disappeared from Bavaria when it became actual Nazi party in 1980s. Bavaria was the hotspot for the original party, yet when the party went super racist they went north. Beforehand, the old NPD was racially conservative, yet not crypto-Nazi. This is the paradox of German politics. Rightwing populism seems not to succeed in Northern Germany without being racist. While in Southern Germany, racist parties usually gain some ground at first before making it big in Northern Germany. This because rightwing populism is such a big part of Southern German culture. Meanwhile, it is alien to Northern Germany.
Might add a lot German Anabaptists who settled America were from the Southern Germany or Switzerland. For example the Amish were a breakaway group of Swiss German Mennonites. Most German Mennonites are from Bavaria. If you are looking for regional breakdown, look at what religious sect they were. If someone is of Mennonite and Amish ancestry, they are Southern German or Swiss German.
Um, folks, the assertion that the “Nazis got support in the North” is too broad to be correct.
Here’s a map of Nazi support in the last free election in 1933: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NSDAP_Wahl_1933.png
The Nazi’s got the least support in the (industrialized, dense, Protestant, liberal, northern) Rhineland and the most support out in the (Prussian, Protestant) east
My german ancestors were Prussians from modern north-central Poland. You’d think this would be common, as they had to have some wandering genes to decide to leave denser German areas to go live among slavs far away from home. I don’t see the “ke” name endings that most Prussians have very often though in the U.S.
Interesting read! So here is my take on Germans in America. You have the Pre Revolutionary War Germans (American Revolution not German) also known as the Pennsylvania Dutch/German who moved to the Midlands for religious freedom. Their descendents tend to be very conservative. Then you have the 49ers who moved to America after the 1848 German Revolution who tended to be more intellectually diverse than the previous German groups. Therefore as you move across the United States you have various degrees of Liberalism / Conservative Germans. My family in America comes from both of these two groups which makes for some interesting Christmas dinners!
Great map which shows Lutheran Churches in America. There were not alot of Scandinavians in the US at this time so these churches were almost all German. You can see how perfectly this fits into Colin Woodards Midlands map of the 11 Nations and the map above of German American settlements.
Update your prejudices! The country that contributed most to the ethnic makeup of the USA is none other than Spain. Southern Spain, to be precise.
A map that is talking about German culture rather than politics really should include Austria. It is only due to historical accidents that modern Austria is not part of the German state. If anything, Vienna should be the capital of Germany, not Berlin. A pre-1945 map should also include the German speaking areas of Bohemia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, most of whom emigrated to West Germany after 1945, adding another wrinkle to the East/West divide.
look into “Germans from Russia”
Interesting approach upon explaining the demographical and political situation regarding German immigrants in the US. Still a scientific approach would need to rely on much more data, including properly adressed sources.
One remark however: Being German I think it is wrong to explain current Nazi-tendencies in eastern Germany with the election outcome of the 1930s. A generally much more supported reasoning roots in the decades if communist reign, resulting in an economical deficiency as compared to west Germany. As the unemployment rate is much higher, emigration and a tendency to support more extreme political parties are the consequence.
@Joost:
A key point of this post is that communism isn’t so much a cause of present-day outcomes, but more a common symptom. Where did communism come from?
I think German’s diversity is based on
– Topography of their region
The north is flat, the middle hilly, the south more hilly with mountains. In the north people could and did mix well between villages. This did not happen so much in the south, hence the difference in tradition and foremost dialect.
– Dialect
Dialect in Germany is no social class indicator but very well accepted as a regional fingerprint. I believe that is one of the mayor differences to the Uk and France, but please correct me.
– Weather in their region
The north sees Atlantic rain, the south benefits from southern weather spilling over the alps or coming through the Rhone valley, The NW benefits from the Channel’s Gulf-stream and the East gets Russian cold but also stable continental summer-heights. The impact of that to society can not be underestimated and is fascinating.
– Religion
Some time after Luther, it was ruled that people had to take up the religion of their local Fürst or Graf. The impact of the above mentioned mechanisms plus some randomness gave northern Germany a dominant Protestant population and the south a dominant Catholic one. The different ways these religions shape perceptions is a huge factor in diversity.
The NSDAP voting maps shown are a mirror of this religion distribution: Protestants like to try out new things, Catholics stick with tradition. In case of the NSDAP, one can see how that (try new things) can go wrong even if intentions were good.
– Heritage regulation
And finally, there is a dividing line in Germany as to who inherits the farm: The eldest son gets all (roughly NE) or all land is divided amongst the sons (roughly SW). That also determines who left for America. I do not know too much about the origin or the reason of these two different systems but am sure they are routed in the above mentioned mechanisms.
Being a country in the middle of Europe, Germany’s diversity might not be caused by genetic diversity, but that would be a good research subject, sort of an Anti-Finnland case.
I guess the German map is quite OK.
Regional diversity generally reflects genetic diversity.
Thanks a lot for the info!
Just a contribution: my dad’s family came from the Volga region of Russia, where large numbers of Germans–Protestant and Catholic–built colonies at the invitation of Catherine the Great[who was a German]. The maintained their autonomy, language, and identity, but many were unwilling to serve under[later] the Czars, so they emigrated to North America. It made sense that these farmers settled in places like Kansas, Eastern Washington, and parts of Canada[some also settled in Mexico; I’ve met a few who spoke both German and Spanish]. I can trace our lineage back to Germany, but we identify more with the Volga area. By the time the Bolsheviks seized power, these farmers resisted collectivization and were either killed or sent to Siberia.