| This dissertation focuses on Christian and Jewish German immigrant women who left the rural regions and small towns of many nineteenth-century German states, immigrated to the U.S., and made Cincinnati their home. Situating this study in a trans-Atlantic context, German female immigrants are recognized as members of two "worlds." Examining regional, socio-economic, religious and cultural backgrounds this study reveals the tremendous structural transformation occurring in the German states. Many German women and men coming to Cincinnati could not hold onto the old structures of society, or were not able to profit from these massive changes. Cincinnati's accessibility, its economic opportunities, and its cohesive, German ethnic community enticed many German immigrant women and men to settle there.;In Cincinnati German immigrant women lived in complex environments of multiple "Gemeinschaften." Rather than "just" being daughters, wives, or mothers, German immigrant women were members of multiple spheres and communities. They were friends, neighbors, helpers, workers, associational members, congregation members, and Cincinnatians. Their daily lives were characterized by negotiating the various communities of which they were a part; their identities within different "Gemeinschaften" were not mutually exclusive but co-existed, further enhancing the constantly changing nature of the entire ethnic community. Closeness, common experiences, and shared interests in the immediate environment, brought German immigrant women together. Independence and interdependence shaped their lives.;Immigrant women brought distinctive female traditions, in addition to particular German ways and customs. By blending Old and New World experiences, German women created and sustained ethnic identities and became German Americans. German women in Cincinnati redefined the meaning of womanhood as the distinct image of the frugal, thrifty German woman prevailed in the ethnic neighborhood. Within the domestic sphere, German women through their cooking, the maintenance of Old World holidays and family festivities became markers of cultural persistence and transformation. Ethnic culture worked in complicated ways through family, kinship and communal networks, retaining women's gendered roles and ethnic identities and opening up new opportunities. Cincinnati's German immigrant women constructed and occupied ethnic social, cultural, and economic spaces that extended beyond the family. |
