The Germans: Arzberg's letters and the parish of St. Mary

1851 — present

The German community arrived by letter: between 1851 and 1854 some two hundred people — more than a tenth of the town — left Arzberg, in Bavaria, most of them for South Bend, drawn by the letters of those who had gone before; the historian Gabrielle Robinson of Indiana University South Bend, herself a descendant, recovered the chain from the Arzberg side, and the family names her research names — Elbel, Frederickson, Ginz, Hagen, Kamm, Knoblock, Koenig, Kuespert, Kuntzman, Lederer, Mainer, Muessel, Nickel, Rockstroh, Sachs, Weiss — read like a directory of the city's German century. The Studebakers were not of this migration; that family came to the bend by way of Ohio, a generation earlier. The Arzbergers and their countrymen worshipped first at Notre Dame, then at St. Joseph's, then at St. Patrick's, toward whose building the German families contributed; on 25 March 1879 they organized the St. John's Benevolent Society, and in September 1881 the German congregation was formed from St. Patrick's, with Father Paul Kolopp of Holy Cross given charge of the German Catholics.

Father Peter Johannes became the first regular pastor on 3 February 1882, with about fifty families; ground on South Lafayette Boulevard was bought that July for $2,100, and the cornerstone of St. Mary of the Assumption was laid on 22 August 1883. (The parish's records are headed "Founded: 1882" in one listing and 1883 in another; the two years are the congregation's organization and its church's cornerstone, and both are printed at their mechanism.) The Germans were among the city's largest peoples — German-born residents numbered 2,402 in the census of 1900, second only to the Polish-born, and German was the city's second language of print and pulpit for two generations. A German Evangelical Lutheran congregation built the church at 418 West Jefferson Boulevard that the Greeks would buy in 1926 — a succession the Greek entry below records. No German secular institution of the Turnverein or singing-society kind is verified for South Bend in the record reached; this community is documented chiefly through its parish, its benevolent society and the Arzberg correspondence, and it is printed at that documented size rather than dressed in the institutions of other Indiana cities.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune — "German Americans' Lost Heritage" (Gabrielle Robinson's Arzberg research), 23 September 2001
2. Blanchard, ed., History of the Catholic Church in Indiana (1898) — St. Mary of the Assumption, South Bend (congregation formed September 1881; grounds and cornerstone)
3. "Saint Mary of the Assumption Church and School," RootsWeb St. Joseph County parish records (pastor appointed 3 February 1882; ~50 families)
4. Population & Demographics, this history (1900 census country-of-birth counts) — banked fragment
5. Notre Dame, Building South Bend — St. Andrew Greek Orthodox Church (the Jefferson Boulevard building's German Lutheran origin)