Little Germany, Manhattan
Coordinates: 40°43′34″N 73°58′53″W / 40.72611°N 73.98139°W
Little Germany, known in German as Kleindeutschland and Deutschländle and called Dutchtown by contemporary non-Germans, was a German immigrant neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The neighborhood's ethnic cohesion began to decline in the late 19th century from the population dynamics of non-German immigrants settling in the area, and the loss of second-generation families to other German-American communities. The decline was exacerbated in 1904, when the General Slocum disaster wiped out the social core of the neighborhood.
Beginning in the 1840s, large numbers of German immigrants entering the United States provided a constant population influx for Little Germany. In the 1850s alone, 800,000 Germans passed through New York. By 1855 New York had the third largest German population of any city in the world, outranked only by Berlin and Vienna. The German immigrants differed from others in that they usually were educated and had marketable skills in crafts. More than half of the era's bakers and cabinet makers were Germans or of German origin, and many Germans also worked in the construction business. Educated Germans such as Joseph Wedemeyer, Oswald Ottendorfer and Friedrich Sorge were important players in the creation and growth of trade unions, and many Germans and their Vereine (German-American clubs) were also often politically active. Oswald Ottendorfer who was the owner-editor of the Staats-Zeitung, New York's largest German-language newspaper, was among the wealthiest and most socially prominent German-Americans in the city. He also became the undisputed leader of the newly important German Democracy, which would help Fernando Wood recapture the mayor's office in 1861 and elect Godfrey Gunther as mayor in 1863.
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