Germans in Minnesota

A concise history of Germans in Minnesota including immigration patterns, the Catholic and Lutheran churches, cultural organizations, businesses, and politics, especially in the World War I years.

Germans are the largest immigrant group in Minnesota history and perhaps its most invisible. Exploring this paradox, author Kathleen Neils Conzen tells the story of German Americans and their profound influence on Minnesota history and culture. Conzen recounts triumphs and struggles over the decades in a clear and concise narrative. Landing in poverty, Germans transformed acres of wilderness into productive farms and brought with them their love of art, music, and sociability. They came to America intent on creating, in the words of one immigrant agent, "an earthly paradise of this Minnesota," and "a new Germany" soon rose in Stearns County. Conzen not only explores the well-known enclaves in Brown and Stearns Counties but also looks at the smaller communities of Winona, on the Iron Range, and along the North Shore, as well as in the Twin Cities. In recent times, a renewed interest in German heritage can be seen in popular annual ethnic festivals and in towns like New Ulm, home to the thirty-two-foot statue of Hermann the German, hero of the wars against the ancient Roman legions.