The immigration of German Jews in America in the first half of the 19th century
Patricia Zimmermann
Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,25, University of Heidelberg (Anglistisches Seminar), course: Landeskundeseminar: Being Jewish in the USA, language: English, abstract: About three percent of the population in the United States of today are Jews.Their home is America and they fell and act as Americans. Most of them aredescendants of European emigrants who came to America in the mass migrationin the first half of the 19th century. Today, scarcely anybody thinks about thosedays and even worse, many people hardly know anything about it. Well, it wasnot a long period of time in which the mass migration took place. It only coversabout fifty years; yet, fifty important years. Those were the years, when thecornerstone of the Jewish history in America was laid. A history, different toJewish histories in other countries. In the United States of America, Jews havenever been discriminated nor persecuted. They had the same chances than everyGentile in America.This paper shows how the Jewish immigrants gained a foothold in Americabetween the early years of the 19th century and the beginning of the Civil War.Jewish immigrants arrived in America without any money in their pockets. Yet,they had the hope to find a better life in this ‘golden country’. In the following itwill be discussed how German Jews in America succeeded in business life andpolitics, and how they dealt with their religion in a country that did not put upany restrictions on them. This paper looks more on the general history. Althougha history is always the history of people, it was avoided to tell the history ofsingle persons because it would exceed the limit of this paper. Yet, sometimesthe life of some people are given as examples.
