page_title: List of German Americans
section_title: Businesspeople and entrepreneurs
hierarchical_section_title: List of German Americans / Businesspeople and entrepreneurs
caption_attribution_description: English: John D. Rockefeller in 1885
context_page_description: German Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry; they form the largest ethnic ancestry group in the United States, accounting for 17% of U.S. 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 moved 1840–1900, when Germans formed the largest group of immigrants coming to the U.S., outnumbering the Irish and English. Some arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Europe, and others for the chance to start afresh in the New World. California and Pennsylvania have the largest populations of German origin, with more than six million German Americans residing in the two states alone. More than 50 million people in the United States identify German as their ancestry; it is often mixed with other Northern European ethnicities. This list also includes people of German Jewish descent.
context_section_description: John Jacob Astor – business magnate, merchant and investor and the first multi-millionaire in the United States
  John Jacob Astor IV – millionaire businessman, real estate developer, inventor, writer and a lieutenant colonel in the Spanish–American War
  William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor – financier and statesman
  George Frederick Baer – lawyer, Social Darwinist railroad baron (former President of the Reading Railroad)
  Ralph Baer – father of the home video game console, of German-Jewish descent
  John Jacob Bausch – optician who co-founded Bausch & Lomb
  Andy von Bechtolsheim – co-founder of Sun Microsystems and one of the first investors in Google
  Maximilian Berlitz – Berlitz Language School
  Isaac Wolfe Bernheim – businessman notable for starting the I. W. Harper brand of premium bourbon whiskey
  Bernard Baruch – financier, stock-market speculator, statesman, and political consultant
  William Edward Boeing – aviation pioneer who founded The Boeing Company
  Paul Bonwit – founder of Bonwit Teller department store in New York City
  George Brumder – newspaper publisher and businessman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
  Clyde Cessna – aircraft designer, aviator, and founder of the Cessna Aircraft Corporation
  Walter Chrysler – Chrysler automobile developer
  George A. Dickel – whiskey distributor; born in Grünberg, Hesse
  Chris Deering – businessman and marketer best known for his role as president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
  Noah Dietrich – CEO of the Howard Hughes empire
  William S. Dietrich II – industrialist who took over and expanded Dietrich Industries, a steel framing manufacturer which he eventually sold to Worthington Industries. Late in life, he made two of the largest charitable contributions in higher education history, to the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.
  Walt Disney – film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist
  John Doerr – venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
  Richard Driehaus – chairman of Driehaus Capital Management LLC
  August Duesenberg – automobile pioneer manufacturer
  Fred Duesenberg – automobile pioneer designer, manufacturer and sportsman
  Edward Filene – businessman, social entrepreneur and philanthropist
  Harvey Firestone – founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company
  Nicholas C. Forstmann – one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company, a private equity firm
  Theodore J. Forstmann – one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company, a private equity firm, and chairman and CEO of IMG, a leading global sports and media company
  Bill Gates – software magnate and investor, founder and former chairman of Microsoft
  Daniel Frank Gerber – manufacturer of baby food
  Frank Daniel Gerber – manufacturer of baby food
  Henry Giessenbier – banker and founder of the Young Men's Progressive Civic Association in 1915 and the United States Junior Chamber in 1920
  Theodor August Heintzman – piano manufacturer (Heintzman & Co.) and inventor
  Henry J. Heinz – H. J. Heinz Company ketchup founder
  H. J. Heinz II – best known as Jack Heinz, a business executive and CEO of the H. J. Heinz Company
  H. Robert Heller – President and CEO of VISA U.S.A. and Federal Reserve Board of Governors
  Richard Hellmann – company founder of Hellmanns
  Joseph A. Hemann – educator, newspaper publisher, and banker
  Milton S. Hershey – Hershey chocolate founder
  Barron Hilton – chairman of the Hilton Hotel chain and grandfather of Paris Hilton
  Conrad Hilton – founder of the Hilton Hotel chain and great grandfather of Paris Hilton and Nicky Hilton
  Richard Hilton – hotelier and real estate entrepreneur, father of Paris Hilton
  George A. Hormel – founder of Hormel Foods Corporation
  Steve Jobs – software tycoon, co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc.
  Max Kade – pharmaceutical tycoon, endowed the Max Kade Foundation
  Otto Hermann Kahn – investment banker
  Jawed Karim – co-founder of YouTube and designer of key parts of PayPal
  Edgar J. Kaufmann – department store entrepreneur
  William Myron Keck – oil entrepreneur and philanthropist who is now best known for giving
caption: John D. Rockefeller
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