page_title: History of the Germans in Baltimore
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Germans in Baltimore / History / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Eutaw Place Temple, Baltimore, Maryland. originally Temple Oheb Shalom, built 1892, sold to the Prince Hall Masons in 1960. Français&#160;: Temple d'Eutaw Place, Baltimore, Maryland. à l'origine Temple Oheb Shalom, construit en 1892, vendu aux maçons de Prince Hall en 1960.
context_page_description: The history of the Germans in Baltimore began in the 17th century. During the 1800s, the Port of Baltimore was the second-leading port of entry for immigrants, after Ellis Island in New York City. Many Germans immigrated to Baltimore during this time.
context_section_description: Following the War of 1812 in North America, a wave of German immigrants came from the Palatinate, Hesse, Bavaria, and Bohemia. Many fled from Germany between 1812 and 1814, during the War of the Sixth Coalition, (1812-1814), the last of the series of French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, in order to avoid military conscription into the Royal Prussian Army. The port of Baltimore was developed as a gateway for immigrants during the 1820s, and soon became the second largest gateway to America after New York City, (and Ellis Island), especially at the terminals of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad on Locust Point, Baltimore, which had made an agreement with the Norddeutscher Lloyd (North German Lloyd Line). By 1850, 20,000 German-born people lived in the city. Between 1820 and 1860, Germans were the largest group of immigrants to Baltimore. This wave of immigrants created numerous German institutions, including banks, insurance companies, and newspapers. German immigrants also created a thriving German-language press, including publications such as the "Baltimore Wecker" ("Alarm").
  Immigration from Germany increased again after the various Revolutions of 1848 flaring up throughout Europe, bringing thousands of "Forty-Eighters" to Baltimore. 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. Many German immigrants were political and social liberals and freethinkers who would become politically active in opposing slavery, which at times attracted violent opposition from old nativists and Confederate sympathizers, rising eventually into the "Know Nothings" (American Party) which was unusually strong in the Old Line State in the 1850s. During the Baltimore riot of 1861, the office of the Baltimore Wecker was destroyed by mobs; the publisher, William Schnauffer, and the editor, Wilhelm Rapp, left the city due to the violence. 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. German immigrants disembarked from the steamships at B&O's pier, which was located in Locust Point. 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.
  Many of the German immigrants who arrived during the latter half of the 19th century were affluent German Jews who created a number of cultural institutions, including Yiddish theatres such as the Concordia Hall and the Convention Hall Theater. Beginning in the 1870s, many wealthy German Jews built lavish homes in the northwest area of the growing city along North Eutaw Street and Eutaw Place towards the new Druid Hill Park of 1860. They also built several synagogues, such as the Eutaw Place Temple. By 1880, there were around 10,000 German Jews living in Baltimore, most of whom were of Bavarian and Hessian descent.
  The German-born immigrant population in Baltimore peaked in 1890, when German-born Baltimoreans numbered 41,930 out of the total population of 365,863.
  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.
caption: Eutaw Place Temple in December 2011.
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