A very substantial portion of the German immigration to America occurred when there was no Germany. It was not until 1871 that Prussia, Bavaria, Baden, Mecklenburg, Hesse, and other Germanic states were united by Bismarck to form the nation of Germany. However, the German language is recorded as far back as 750 A.D. and Germanic peoples - who do not include the Huns - as far back as the first century B.C.
It can be noted that the Goths, a Germanic group, left extensive written documents as far back as the 380's A.D. (The Huns from Asia invaded Germanic regions.) Sowell's point, however, is that there is a rich and ancient linguistic and cultural heritage at work:
In the early days of the Roman Empire, the Germans were among the barbarian warriors on the northern frontier described by Julius Caesar. Over the centuries, through the shifting fortunes of war and politics, as well as migrations, some Germanic people acquired the civilization of the Romans, and ultimately influence in the Roman Empire. In the later empire, German soldiers replaced Romans in the Roman legions, which were not often commanded by German generals, who were sometimes de facto rulers behind figurehead Roman emperors. At the same time, other German peoples on the northern frontiers of the empire continued to be a major menace to its existence. Many of the great battles in the declining phase of the Roman Empire were battles of Germans against other Germans. Within the empire, Germans were never fully accepted or fully assimilated. Intermarriage between Romans and Germans was forbidden. The Roman aristocracy referred to Germans as "blond barbarians" and denounced them for "the nauseating stink of the bodies and clothing." To some extent, Germans themselves were apologetic about their racial origins. For example, a tombstone among the Germans buried in Gaul referred to their ancestry as "part of the stain that baptism has washed away." Other Germans simply returned the resentment and hatred that Romans felt toward them.
While Sowell's interpretation of the inscription can be disputed - it was more probably the common imperfections of human nature which were "washed away," not the peculiar ethnicity - his broader point is valid: the Germans made to feel inferior and ashamed. Roman arrogance left a collective emotional wound which would take centuries to heal, if indeed it ever did heal.
More than a thousand years of history - and the evolution of language, culture, and peoples - elapsed between these early Germans and the people who began immigrating to colonial America. Modern Germany - even before it became a nation - was in the forefront of Western civilization in science, the arts, music, literature, and philosophy. It was the home of Goethe, Beethoven, Kant, and Leibniz. Technology and craftsmanship were German hallmarks. Zeiss and Voigtlander were renowned names in optics long before they (and other German names) became famous in the later era of photography.
Was it the anguish of Roman racism and hatred which drove the Germans to excel? Did they bring that focused perseverance with them to America, and thereby create America's leading role in technological progress and scientific discovery?
Germans, once disdained as inferior barbarians by the Romans, now easily surpassed Italy, where "the glory that was Rome" had become only a memory and a bitter mockery of Italian weakness, disunity, and lagging technology and economy. In a still later era, the German ancestry that some had felt ashamed of in Roman times was to become an object of fanatical worship under Hitler and the Nazis.
The Roman geo-political dominance during the first century A.D. served only as a painful contrast during the Middle Ages, when Germany took the lead in technology and culture. One need only think of Gutenberg and his printing press, Kepler and his orbits, the Fugger family and their economic conquest of the Medici, Luther and his destruction of the Papal monopoly, and other such examples, to see how the early Roman hegemony gave way to Germanic inventiveness. It was this creativity which came to America:
Emigration from the German states (and later the German nation) ebbed and flowed with historic event.
The earliest documented German presence in North America is probably the families who came to New York around 1620. There were almost certainly earlier Germans here (probably sailors), but written evidence has been lost. A steady stream of Austrians and Swiss followed as well, but in every decade, the reasons changed.
The German states of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were separately ruled by petty princes and were in a state of turmoil. The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation had created religious refugees in both Catholic and Protestant German states, and the Thirty Years' War disrupted their economies, as well as reduced the total German population by about one-third. A sever winter in 1708-09 destroyed the German wine industry for years to come. In short, the domestic problems that often stimulate emigration were present in the German state. However, there were also restrictions and prohibitions on emigration, which led to much internal migration instead.
The three classic causes of emigration (politics, economics, and religion) led some of the most skilled and talented people to bring Germanic creativity and innovation to America.
