Unlike the Irish, the Germans brought with them a strange language, and this proved a strong bond in that German solidarity which maintained itself in spite of the influence of their new environment.  In the glow of their first enthusiasm many of the intellectuals believed they could establish a German state in America.  “The foundations of a new and free Germany in the great North American Republic shall be laid by us,” wrote Follenius, the dreamer, who desired to land enough Germans in “one of the American territories to establish an essentially German state.”  In 1833 the Giessener Gesellschaft, a company organized in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, grew out of this suggestion and chose Arkansas as the site for its colony.  But unfavorable reports turned the immigrants to Missouri, where settlements were made.  These, however, never grew into a German state but merged quite contentedly into the prosperous American population.

A second attempt, also from Hesse, had a tragic denouement.  A number of German nobles formed a company called the Mainzer Adelsverein and in 1842 sent two of their colleagues to Texas to seek out a site.  The place chosen was ill-suited for a colony, however, and the whole enterprise from beginning to end was characterized by princely incompetence.  Thousands of immigrants, lured by the company’s liberal offers and glowing prospectus, soon found themselves in dire want; many perished of disease and hunger; and the company ended in ignominious disaster.  The surviving colonists in Texas, however, when they realized that they must depend upon their own efforts, succeeded in finding work and eventually in establishing several flourishing communities.

Finally, Wisconsin and Illinois were considered as possible sites for a Germany in America.  But this ambition never assumed a concrete form.  Everywhere the Americans, with their energy and organizing capacity, had preceded the incoming Germans and retained the political sovereignty of the American state.

But while they did not establish a German state, these immigrants did cling to their customs wherever they settled in considerable numbers.  Especially did they retain their original social life, their Turnvereine, their musical clubs, their sociable beer gardens, their picnics and excursions, their churches and parochial schools.  They still celebrated their Christmas and other church festivals with German cookery and Kuchen, and their weddings and christenings were enlivened but rarely debauched with generous libations of lager beer and wine.  In the Middle West were whole regions where German was the familiar language for two generations.