Recent German Heritage in Baltimore

Figure 1. Bottle from the Israel Greenberg Bottlers.

Back in January of this year, I wrote an essay about the first wave of German immigration into Maryland. This week, I am taking a look at the later influx of German immigrants.   I was led to this topic when I noticed that our Baltimore collections contained quite a number of beer bottles whose brewers had distinctly German names.

This early twentieth-century bottle (Figures 1 and 2), molded with the name of Baltimore bottler Israel Greenberg, was found in a privy associated with the family of German upholsterer Edward and Vera Hahn (18BC135). The row house formerly occupied by the Hahns had been demolished to make way for the new construction of Baltimore’s Juvenile Justice Center north of the harbor in the city’s Old Town (Williams et al. 2000:234). The same privy also contained bottles from the Gottlieb Bauernschmidt Strauss Brewing Company (Figure 3).

Germans in Maryland

Figure 1: This 25.5 x 23.5” plate from a five-plate stove is one of eight from the site that bear German or Pennsylvania Dutch motifs.

The Antietam Furnace (18WA288), more properly known as the Mt. Aetna Iron Furnace, operated between around 1761 and 1783 in what is now Washington County. Excavations conducted at the former site of the furnace revealed a number of industrial structures and evidence of the production of pig iron, hollow ware and stoves (Frye 1984).  Some of the most interesting artifacts from the site included stove plates containing inscriptions in German (Figure 1).

Although Antietam Furnace was not owned by individuals of German descent, proprietors Daniel and Sam Hughes apparently knew their local customer base well – of the eight complete or virtually complete stove plates that were recovered from the site, all were molded with German and Pennsylvania Dutch-style motifs in the forms of tulips, hearts, birds of paradise and blessings in German (Figure 2).  From its earliest beginnings, Maryland has been home to a large population of German immigrants and the Hughes brothers were banking on these stoves finding ready customers among them.