Listener Rick Fuhry was researching his ancestry when he discovered a fascinating family connection to Milwaukee’s German history.
“I found an old article in the Milwaukee Journal about a bookstore in Milwaukee, which was established by my great-great-great-grandfather, called J.B. Hoeger and Sons,” says Fuhry.
John Hoeger founded the shop in 1847, soon after he moved here from Germany. The shop became the largest of its kind in the region, with the Milwaukee Sentinel describing Hoeger and Sons as “the premier German bookstore in America.” The building still stands on the 700 block of North Water Street, just two blocks away from WUWM's downtown office.
“I thought, ‘What motivated [German immigrants] to choose Milwaukee over other cities?’ And that's what I was hoping that Bubbler Talk could help answer for me,” Fuhry says.
To find out more, I spoke with UWM history professor Dr. Joseph Walzer. He says the story of German Milwaukee begins in the late 1830s, before Wisconsin was even a state. Germans found cheap farmland situated in the rolling hills of a familiar landscape.
“Southeast Wisconsin looks a lot like parts of Germany, geographically,” Walzer says. "And so, when these Germans were coming over, they knew exactly what to do with this land — how to survive, how to work the land.”
By 1846, the city of Milwaukee was founded. Lands once held in common by Potawatomi, Ottawa and Ojibwe tribes became a fur trading post. That trading post became a port city rivaling Chicago.
“The promise of Milwaukee was largely built originally on the shipping potential, with the harbor of Milwaukee being more viable than that of even Chicago in the 1840s and 1850 — when shipping was going to be the way of getting goods around,” Walzer says. “Well, the railroads ended up kind of unseating that.”
The 48ers
In 1848, Wisconsin became the 30th U.S. State. Meanwhile in Europe, revolution struck. Regimes had become increasingly repressive following the defeat of Napoleon. And in the fragmented German Confederation, high taxes, violent censorship and crop failure led to widespread discontent.
“Remember, in 1848 there wasn't a unified Germany,” says Walzer. “It was all a bunch of little independent autonomous kingdoms and principalities.”
Many middle-class Germans called for liberal reforms, while an emerging industrial working class called for socialism. But by early 1849, attempts to establish a united German Republic had failed.
“This growing frontier town offered new German migrants an opportunity to ... build from scratch the social structures and cultural institutions that they knew from back home — and build them in the way that they wanted them to look."Dr. Joseph Walzer, UWM history professor
“That is really where some of the first German migrants get pushed out, as this revolution and attempt to unite a democratic Germany ended up failing,” Walzer says. "These folks who had participated in that revolution found themselves either facing conscription or facing prison time or worse.”
Germans flocked to the U.S. in droves and settled in Milwaukee by the thousands, joining the growing German population there. A generation of left-wing Germans known as the 48ers brought new ideas, new institutions and new industrial skills to the city.
In 1850, more than 7,000 German-born immigrants lived in Milwaukee. By the turn of the century, that number reached nearly 70,000.
“This growing frontier town offered new German migrants an opportunity to buy land, establish farms, build businesses and build from scratch the social structures and cultural institutions that they knew from back home — and build them in the way that they wanted them to look,” says Walzer.
In 1853, exiled revolutionaries like Carl Schurz and August Willich helped found the Milwaukee Turners, hoping to promote progressive politics, physical fitness and public education. Schurz’ wife, Margarethe, would bring the German kindergarten to the U.S. in 1856, while the socialist Mathilde Anneke founded a German-language suffragette newspaper in 1852.
A 'German Athens'
Milwaukee became known as a “German Athens,” earning a reputation as an outpost for German culture — and a forum for high-minded ideals.
“It's this democratic cultural center where music and free thinking and philosophy and literature and politics and news all thrive,” Walzer says.
Germans built a strong print culture in Milwaukee, starting with Moritz Schoeffler’s liberal-leaning Wisconsin Banner in 1844. The more conservative Sentinel launched a rival German-language newspaper in 1847, and the two papers would merge by 1850.
But the biggest name in print was George Brumder's Germania Publishing Company, founded in 1873. By the turn of the century, the company had become a newspaper empire. And by 1906, Brumder owned every German-language newspaper in Milwaukee. Germania's impact extended "even beyond the city of Milwaukee, moving into other parts of the United States and even distributing over in Germany,” says Walzer.
Remember our Bubbler Talk question-askers' family connection to Hoeger and Sons? That becomes an important part of Milwaukee's German media ecosystem as well.
“J.B. Hager and Sons is part of this larger, growing industry of wholesale booksellers, publishers, and job printers — among them also the H. Niedecken Company, the Weston Company, and Lauenbach and Sons,” he says.
In addition to bookselling, Hoeger and Sons printed German translation curriculum and leather-bound composition notebooks for schools across the U.S. The shop also ran print jobs for local organizations and events, long before the advent of the copy machine. Across three floors and two traveling salesmen, the store and book bindery required a staff of 28, says Walzer.
“That's a pretty sizable operation," he says. "To think about, as a bookseller at that point in time — that's more than just going into a Boswell or something like that.”
Industrious Germans
Beyond the political idealism and high literary culture of the “German Athens,” Milwaukee’s proximity to critical waterways made it prime real estate for German industrialists, including brewers.
That includes the Krugs, who would sell their family brewery to Joseph Schlitz in 1850, and the Bests, who sold theirs to Frederick Pabst in 1866. Frederick Miller started his brewery in 1855, which stayed in the family for the next hundred years. Connected by the Erie Canal, the Great Lakes allowed easy transport, while local rivers played an important role in production.
“The river system produced the ice industry so that ice harvesting could happen," Walzer says. "That could promote the lagering of beer in the German style, and there were natural caves in the area that could also be lagering cellars."
The Pfister and Vogel families built tanneries, while Harschweiger and Falk established Milwaukee’s reputation as the “Machine Shop of the World.”
“Working conditions were not great. They were 12 to 14 hour days. In steel foundries, it was well over 100 degrees — same thing with brew houses and tanneries, working with heavy metals and toxic chemicals,” Walzer says.
In Milwaukee’s breweries, women and children worked in cold and wet bottle-washing rooms.
“Mother Jones ended up coming to the city in 1910, I believe, to talk to and help work to organize the women bottle washers because of, you know...this cold environment was really a health hazard for a lot of folks,” Walzer says.
Labor & leisure
But on Sundays, beer gardens were family-friendly spaces for relaxation after the long week. Before the advent of the Milwaukee Parks System, beer gardens hosted Labor Day picnics, Fourth of July celebrations, live music and even bowling.
“Schlitz and Pabst and Miller and Blatz ended up establishing beer gardens or affiliating with existing beer gardens to be able to sell their product and offer a leisure space that was also a destination for folks and visitors to the city,” Walzer says.
Folks could enjoy the company of friends and imbibe in the convivial atmosphere of Gemütlichkeit — a German word that roughly translates to “geniality.” But this German leisure ethic didn’t come for free.
“Working conditions were not great. They were 12 to 14 hour days. In steel foundries, it was well over 100 degrees – same thing with brew houses and tanneries, working with heavy metals and toxic chemicals."Dr. Joseph Walzer, UWM history professor
As workers struggled for an eight-hour day during the deadly strikes of May 1886, they “gathered at the Milwaukee Beer Garden down on State Street between 14th and 15th, and that became the headquarters for a large number of the striking workers," Walzer says.
While it's all too easy to get lost in romantic visions of the past, the history of German Milwaukee isn’t all gemütlichkeit. From anti-Polish discrimination to the German American Bund to anti-Black housing policies, segregation and more, German identity has at times been used as a cudgel to exclude non-German and non-white Milwaukeeans.
“Germans were really among the folks that were pushing up against inclusion in the labor movement. And business in a lot of unions was conducted in German, up to even the 1950s,” Walzer says.
At the same time, the contributions of German immigrants have shaped the Milwaukee we know and love today. When we recognize a familiar name on a street sign, an old building or a beer bottle, we see that German-American civic organizations, businesses and cultural legacies are still with us today.
As for or our question-asker Rick Fuhry — he says, “I’m proud to be of German heritage and living in Milwaukee.”
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