Willkommen home, Frau Merkel

By The Data Team

ON FEBRUARY 9th Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, will meet Barack Obama in the White House. They will discuss the war in Ukraine, transatlantic trade, the wobbling euro zone and the upcoming G7 summit in Bavaria. German-Americans will barely notice, few of them emphasise their links with the Fatherland. In the United States, German-Americans constitute the largest single ethnic group, yet despite 46m Americans claiming German ancestry, they are barely visible. Everyone knows that Michael Dukakis is Greek-American, the Kennedy clan hail from Ireland and Mario Cuomo was an Italian-American. Fewer notice that John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky with presidential ambitions, are of German origin. German immigrants have flavoured American culture like cinnamon in an Apfelkuchen. They imported Christmas trees and Easter bunnies and gave America a taste for pretzels, hot dogs, sauerkraut–and coffee. Today German-Americans are quietly successful. Their median household income, at $61,500, is 18% above the national norm. They are more likely to have college degrees than other Americans, and less likely to be unemployed.

Timeline picture credits: Alamy; Getty Images; Ronald Grant Archive

Read more on German Americans here.