History of the Germans in Baltimore

[4] In total, 23,889 people of German birth or descent lived in the city, comprising 17.1% of the foreign-stock white population.

[5] As of 2000, 18.7%, or 478,646, of the Baltimore metropolitan area's population were of German descent, making it the largest European ancestral group.

[8] German immigrants began to settle along the Chesapeake Bay by 1723, living in the area that became Baltimore when the city was established in 1729.

[12] This wave of immigrants created numerous German institutions, including banks, insurance companies, and newspapers.

By the time of the American Civil War, there were 32,613 German-born residents of Baltimore, not counting their American-born descendants of first generation along with the earlier wave of colonial and pre-revolutionary era settlers.

The population continued to surge after the Civil War, due in large part to the agreement signed on January 21, 1867 between the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Norddeutscher Lloyd, a German steamship line which brought tobacco along with further German immigrants to the port of Baltimore from Bremen, Germany.

[15] By 1868, one-fourth of Baltimore's 160,000 white inhabitants were German-born and half of the remainder were of full or partial German descent.

[19] Holy Cross Church on West Street off Light Street in old South Baltimore near Federal Hill was founded in 1860 to serve the growing numbers of Germans moving onto the peninsula south of "The Basin" of the Patapsco River's Northwest Branch and the Baltimore Harbor, which had been annexed into the city in 1816.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary Roman Catholic was later founded in 1895 in Highlandtown in east Baltimore to serve the German immigrant community in that part of the city.

By the 1920s, one third of Baltimore's public schools still offered German-language curricula and a quarter of Baltimoreans could still speak German fluently.

The church had historically played an important institutional role for South Baltimore's large German community.

Zion Lutheran Church in December 2009.
A January 15, 1869 advertisement in the Baltimore Sun : "No German need apply."
Eutaw Place Temple in December 2011.
The Raine Building, publishing location of Der Deutsche Correspondent , southwest corner of Baltimore Street and Post Office Avenue (now known as Customs House Avenue), Baltimore Maryland, circa 1869, prior to the great 1904 fire [ 11 ]
Berger Cookies .
Eichenkranz Restaurant, December 2014.
H. L. Mencken , an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century.
Babe Ruth , an American baseball player who spent 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed "The Bambino" and "The Sultan of Swat", he began his MLB career as a stellar left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, but achieved his greatest fame as a slugging outfielder for the New York Yankees.