Americans in Germany

Last updated
Americans in Germany
US American population relative to total US American population in Germany 2021.svg
Distribution of US American citizens in Germany (2021)
Total population
324,000 (with American ancestry) [1] 111,529 (American citizens) [2]
Regions with significant populations
Kaiserslautern, Berlin, Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Rosenheim
Languages
American English, German and Spanish
Religion
Christianity  · Irreligion

Americans in Germany or American Germans (German: Amerikanische Deutsche or Amerika-Deutsche [3] ) refers to the American population in Germany and their German-born descendants. According to Destatis, 300,000 - 400,000 Americans live in Germany. 200,000 of them in Rhineland-Palatinate. [4]

Contents

At the same time, more than 40,000 members of the US military and 15,000 civilian employees of American citizenship are permanently in Germany, with a strong presence in Kaiserslautern, which in the 1950s became the largest US military community outside of the United States. [5] In addition, there are significant numbers of American expatriates in Germany, especially professionals sent abroad by their companies and an increasing number of college students and graduates (also due to the affordable higher education system and the favorable quality of life). By December 2013, the largest American diasporas in Germany are Rhineland-Palatinate with over 50,000. Berlin with over 16,000 people, and the area around Darmstadt with about 13,000 people. [6]

Military backgrounds

American Zone in Germany after 8 June 1947. Mainly today's state areas of Bavaria, Baden-Wurttemberg, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate were affected, as well as city states Berlin (West Berlin) and Bremen. Deutschland Besatzungszonen 8 Jun 1947 - 22 Apr 1949 amerikanisch.svg
American Zone in Germany after 8 June 1947. Mainly today's state areas of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate were affected, as well as city states Berlin (West Berlin) and Bremen.

A large portion of the American-German population has a military background. Great numbers of American soldiers were stationed in Germany after World War II. The Occupation statute of 1949 set regulations for the post-war time within Allied-occupied Germany. Numerous American military installations were established during this time, and eventually hundreds were in place, mainly in Southern Germany. At the time of German Reunification in 1990, there were still about 200,000 US soldiers in Germany. By 2014, the number had been steadily reduced to 42,450 stationed in 38 facilities. [7]

During World War II General Dwight D. Eisenhower and the American War Department enforced a strict non-fraternization policy regarding contact between American military personnel and German citizens. After the war this prohibition was mitigated in several steps and finally abandoned in Austria and Germany in September 1945. [8] In the earliest stages of the Allied occupation US soldiers were not allowed to pay maintenance for a child they admitted having fathered, since to do so was considered as "aiding the enemy". Marriages between white American soldiers and German women were not permitted until December 1946. [9]


Demographics

Number of Americans in larger cities
#CityPeople
1. Berlin 22,694
2. Munich 6,705
3. Hamburg 3,880
4. Frankfurt 3,147
5. Bonn 1,823
6. Heidelberg 1,670
7. Wiesbaden 1,346
8. Nuremberg 1,327
9. Stuttgart 1,264
10. Kaiserslautern 1,187

Notable American-Germans

In sports

Organizations of Americans in Germany

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mainz</span> Capital of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Mainz is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 221,000 inhabitants, it is Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in the Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region—Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after Rhine-Ruhr—which also encompasses the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Offenbach am Main, and Hanau.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhineland-Palatinate</span> State in Germany

Rhineland-Palatinate is a western state of Germany. It covers 19,846 km2 (7,663 sq mi) and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Koblenz, Trier, Kaiserslautern, Worms and Neuwied. It is bordered by North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse and by France, Luxembourg and Belgium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhineland bastard</span> Slur for Afro-Germans in Nazi Germany

Rhineland Bastard was a derogatory term used in Nazi Germany to describe Afro-Germans, believed fathered by French Army personnel of African descent who were stationed in the Rhineland during its occupation by France after World War I. There is evidence that other Afro-Germans, born from unions between German men and African women in former German colonies in Africa, were also referred to as Rheinlandbastarde.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German revolutions of 1848–1849</span> German part of the Revolutions of 1848

The German revolutions of 1848–1849, the opening phase of which was also called the March Revolution, were initially part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many European countries. They were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire. The revolutions, which stressed pan-Germanism, demonstrated popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the thirty-nine independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German territory of the former Holy Roman Empire after its dismantlement as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. This process began in the mid-1840s.

War children are those born to a local parent and a parent belonging to a foreign military force. Having a child by a member of a belligerent force, throughout history and across cultures, is often considered a grave betrayal of social values. Commonly, the native parent is disowned by family, friends, and society at large. The term "war child" is most commonly used for children born during World War II and its aftermath, particularly in relation to children born to fathers in German occupying forces in northern Europe. In Norway, there were also Lebensborn children. The discrimination suffered by the local parent and child in the postwar period did not take into account widespread rapes by occupying forces, or the relationships women had to form in order to survive the war years.

Stein may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kaiserslautern</span> Town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Kaiserslautern is a town in southwest Germany, located in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate at the edge of the Palatinate Forest. The historic centre dates to the 9th century. It is 459 kilometres from Paris, 117 km from Frankfurt am Main, 666 kilometers from Berlin, and 159 km from Luxembourg.

Fraternization is the act of establishing intimate relations between people or groups. It is generally used to refer to establishing relations that are considered unethical, controversial, or problematic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhine Province</span> Former province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia

The Rhine Province, also known as Rhenish Prussia or synonymous with the Rhineland, was the westernmost province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia, within the German Reich, from 1822 to 1946. It was created from the provinces of the Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg. Its capital was Koblenz and in 1939 it had 8 million inhabitants. The Province of Hohenzollern was militarily associated with the Oberpräsident of the Rhine Province. Also, for a short period of time, the Province of Hohenzollern was indirectly and de-facto controlled by the Rhine Province.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roland Vogt</span> German politician (1941–2018)

Roland Vogt was a German politician. He was the first member of the German Green Party to be elected to the Bundestag from Rhineland-Palatinate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Germersheim</span> Town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Germersheim is a town in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, of around 20,000 inhabitants. It is also the seat of the Germersheim district. The neighboring towns and cities are Speyer, Landau, Philippsburg, Karlsruhe and Wörth.

Rossbach or Roßbach may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allied-occupied Germany</span> Post-World War II occupation of Germany

The entirety of Germany was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. Unlike occupied Japan, Germany was stripped of its sovereignty and former state: after Nazi Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, four countries representing the Allies asserted joint authority and sovereignty through the Allied Control Council (ACC). At first, Allied-occupied Germany was defined as all territories of Germany before the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria; the Potsdam Agreement on 2 August 1945 defined the new eastern German border by giving Poland and the Soviet Union all regions of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line and divided the remaining "Germany as a whole" into four occupation zones, each administered by one of the Allies.

Afro-Germans or Black Germans are Germans of Sub-Saharan African descent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">People's State of Hesse</span> State of Hesse (1918–1945)

The People's State of Hesse was one of the constituent states of Germany from 1918 to 1945, as the successor to the Grand Duchy of Hesse after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I, on the territory of the current German states of Hesse and the Rhineland-Palatinate. The State was established after Grand Duke Ernest Louis was deposed on 9 November 1918. The term "People's State" referred to the fact that the new state was a Republic and was used in the same manner as the term Free State, which was employed by most of the other German States in this period.

Hohn may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occupation of the Rhineland</span> 1918–1930 occupation by the WWI Allies

The Occupation of the Rhineland placed the region of Germany west of the Rhine river and four bridgeheads to its east under the control of the victorious Allies of World War I from 1 December 1918 until 30 June 1930. The occupation was imposed and regulated by articles in the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the Treaty of Versailles and the parallel agreement on the Rhineland occupation signed at the same time as the Versailles Treaty. The Rhineland was demilitarised, as was an area stretching fifty kilometres east of the Rhine, and put under the control of the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission, which was led by a French commissioner and had one member each from Belgium, Great Britain and the United States. The purpose of the occupation was to give France and Belgium security against any future German attack and serve as a guarantee for Germany's reparations obligations. After Germany fell behind on its payments in 1922, the occupation was expanded to include the industrial Ruhr valley from 1923 to 1925.

Brown Babies is a term used for children born to black soldiers and white women during and after the Second World War. Other names include "war babies" and "occupation babies." In Germany they were known as Mischlingskinder, a term first used under the Nazi regime for children of mixed Jewish-German parentage. As of 1955, African-American soldiers had fathered about 5,000 children in the American Zone of Occupied Germany. In Occupied Austria, estimates of children born to Austrian women and Allied soldiers ranged between 8,000 and 30,000, perhaps 500 of them biracial. In the United Kingdom, West Indian members of the British military, as well as African-American soldiers in the US Army, fathered 2,000 children during and after the war. A much smaller and unknown number, probably in the low hundreds, was born in the Netherlands, but the lives of some have been followed into their old age and it is possible to have a better understanding of the experience that would unfold for all of the Brown Babies of World War II Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lantz (surname)</span> Surname

Lantz is a surname of German and Swedish origin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French occupation zone in Germany</span> Zone of French occupation in postwar Germany

The French occupation zone in Germany was one of the Allied-occupied areas in Germany after World War II.

References

  1. "BiB - Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung - Pressemitteilungen - Zuwanderung aus außereuropäischen Ländern fast verdoppelt". Archived from the original on 2017-12-09. Retrieved 2017-03-08.
  2. publisher. "Pressemitteilungen - Ausländische Bevölkerung - Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis)". www.destatis.de.
  3. Barack Obama gilt als Favorit der Amerika-Deutschen, Westdeutsche Zeitung, 4 November 2012
  4. "158 700 US citizens vote for their President". Märkische Online Zeitung. 30 October 2012. Archived from the original on 5 July 2020. Retrieved 27 January 2015.
  5. Europe Online Magazine, 25 June 2014
  6. "Bundestag" (PDF).
  7. Varns, Nicola (December 2005). "It Started With a Kiss. Happy and tragic German-American love stories after World War II". The Atlantic Times. Archived from the original on 2014-12-25. Retrieved 2015-01-28.
  8. Biddiscombe, Perry (2001). "Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-Fraternization Movement in the U.S. Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria, 1945-1948". Journal of Social History . 34 (3): 611–647. doi:10.1353/jsh.2001.0002. JSTOR   3789820. S2CID   145470893.
  9. PenrodApril 01, Susan; Team, 2006 Global IT. "Welcome to Democrats Abroad Germany". Democrats Abroad. Retrieved 2024-01-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)