List of German Americans

List Of German Americans

This is a list of notable German Americans.

German Americans (Deutschamerikaner) are citizens of the United States of German ancestry and form the largest ancestry group in the United States, accounting for 17% of US population. The first significant numbers arrived in the 1680s in New York and Pennsylvania. Some eight million German immigrants have entered the United States since that point. Immigration continued in substantial numbers during the 19th century; the largest number of arrivals came 1840–1900, when Germans formed the largest group of immigrants coming to the US, outnumbering even the Irish and English. Some arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Europe, and others simply for the chance to start afresh in the New World. California and Pennsylvania have the largest populations of German origin, with over six million German Americans residing in the two states alone. Over 50 million people in the United States identify German as their ancestry.

Americans of German descent live in nearly every American county, from the East Coast, where the first German settlers arrived in the 17th century, to the West Coast and in all the states in between. German Americans and those Germans who settled in the US have been influential in most every field, from science, to architecture, to entertainment to commercial industry.