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Germans, either by nationality or ethnicity, made their mark on the United States in the late Ninteenth and early Twentieth Centuries in the two decades leading up to World War I. Taking up mostly agricultural pursuits, some settled in Southwestern Michigan, and Berrien County in particular. Where did they come from? How did they get to Michigan? What difficulties did they face?
Emma Waldheimer and Freddie Fenstermacher were of the first generation born in the United States. They grew up in German farming families. A chance meeting at a fruit market near the beginning of the Great Depression was enough for the two of them to fall in love. Eloping on Emma’s eighteenth birthday, the young couple was quickly catapulted into adult life with all of its trials, tribulations, and conflicts.
The Germans tells the story of how two ethnic German families emigrated from Imperial Russia to Berrien County Michigan, were eventually joined by marriage, and assimilated into American life. Most realized early on that this assimilation and especially the mastery of English was the essence of survival and prosperity. The one area that retained its German flavor was worship. The German community, wherever they settled, established churches and generally conducted services auf Deutsch, making it their own language of faith, not unlike Latin was to Roman Catholics.
