German American in the context of "Anaheim, California"

Illinois (/ˌɪlɪˈnɔɪ/ IL-ih-NOY) is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-most land area. Its capital city is Springfield in the center of the state, and the state's largest city is Chicago in the northeast.

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by Indigenous cultures for thousands of years. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois rivers in the 17th century Illinois Country, as part of their sprawling colony of New France. A century later, the revolutionary war Illinois campaign prefigured American involvement in the region. Following U.S. independence in 1783, which made the Mississippi River the national boundary, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River. Illinois was soon part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany, Sweden and elsewhere. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation, especially in the city of Chicago, which became the world's fastest growing city by the late 19th century. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large Black community, particularly in Chicago, which became a leading cultural, economic, and population center; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

Wisconsin is a state in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. With a population of about 6 million and an area of about 65,500 square miles, Wisconsin is the 20th-largest state by population and the 23rd-largest by area. It has 72 counties. The state's most populous city is Milwaukee. Its capital and second-most populous city is Madison; other urban areas include Green Bay and the Fox Cities.

Wisconsin's geography is diverse, with dense forests in the north (including Chequamegon–Nicolet National Forest), rugged unglaciated hills in the western Driftless Area, and wooded plains, lowlands, and farms stretching from the interior east to Lake Michigan. Wisconsin has the third-longest Great Lakes coastline, after Ontario and Michigan. At the time of European contact, the area was inhabited by Algonquian and Siouan nations, and today it is home to eleven federally recognized tribes. Originally part of the Northwest Territory, it was admitted as a state in 1848. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, many European settlers entered the state, mostly from Germany and Scandinavia. Wisconsin remains a center of German American and Scandinavian American culture, particularly in its cuisine, with foods such as bratwurst and kringle.

Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter names. It is bounded by Houston Street to the south and 14th Street to the north, and extends roughly from Avenue A to the East River. Some famous landmarks include Tompkins Square Park, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the Charlie Parker Residence.

The neighborhood has a long history, serving as a cultural center and ethnic enclave for Manhattan's German, Polish, Hispanic, and immigrants of Jewish descent. However, there is much dispute over the borders of the Lower East Side, Alphabet City, and East Village. Historically, Manhattan's Lower East Side was bounded by 14th Street at the northern end, on the east by the East River and on the west by First Avenue; today, that same area is sometimes referred to as Alphabet City, with Houston Street as the southern boundary. The area's German presence in the early 20th century, in decline, virtually ended after the General Slocum disaster in 1904.

Lewis Naphtali Dembitz (February 3, 1833 – March 11, 1907) was a German American legal scholar. He influenced his nephew Louis Brandeis, who admired him greatly, to choose law as a profession.

Born into a Jewish family in Zirke, in the Prussian province of Posen, he attended gymnasium in Frankfurt, Sagan, and Glogau. After one semester at the Charles University in Prague studying law, he emigrated to the United States in 1849. He continued to study American law in offices at Cincinnati, Ohio, and Madison, Indiana. After doing journalistic work for a time, he began in 1853 to practice law in Louisville, Kentucky, where he remained for the rest of his career.

The Missouri Rhineland (German: Missouri Rheinland) is a German American cultural region of Missouri that extends from west of St. Louis to slightly east of Jefferson City, located mostly in the Missouri River Valley on both sides of the river. The region overlaps with Little Dixie, a cultural region of central Missouri originally populated by “Old Stock” settlers from Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. Dutzow, the first permanent German settlement in Missouri, was founded in 1832 by an immigrant from Lübeck, the "Baron" Johann Wilhelm von Bock. The area was named by Rhinelanders who noticed its similarities in soil and topography to the Rhineland region of Europe, a wine-growing area around the Rhine river. Rhinelanders settled the region, along with other Germans; by 1860, nearly half of all settlers in Missouri Rhineland were from Koblenz, capital of the Rhine Province.

The Rhenish Germans resided in the Missouri Rhineland: St. Louis, Kansas City, and the towns Gasconade, Franklin, Lincoln, Montgomery, Osage, Cole, Moniteau, Morgan, Pettis, Benton, Westphalia, Deepwater, and Henry. The German settlers of Hermann, known as "Deutschheim", came from the Rhineland through Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Hermann Raster (May 6, 1827 – July 24, 1891) was an American editor, abolitionist, writer, and anti-temperance political boss who served as chief editor and part-owner of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, a widely circulated newspaper in the German language in the United States, between 1867 and 1891. Together with publisher A.C. Hesing, Raster exerted considerable control over the German vote in the Midwest and forced the Republican Party to formally adopt an anti-prohibition platform in 1872, known as the Raster Resolution. He was appointed as Collector of Internal Revenue for the First District of Illinois by President Ulysses S. Grant but resigned from this post shortly thereafter. Raster returned to Europe in 1890 when his health began to fail him and died filling a minor diplomatic role in Berlin. Today he is best remembered for his extensive correspondence with Western intellectual and political figures of the time, such as Joseph Pulitzer, Elihu Washburne, and Francis Wayland Parker, much of which is preserved at the Newberry Library in Chicago.