From 1840 to 1918, a year after the United States entered World War I, German theater flourished in New York City, in Manhattan. Amateur theatrical groups were continually active from 1840 onward, and at least one resident, professional German company offered regular performances at any one time between 1853 and 1918. Between 1879 and 1918, there were usually two and sometimes three commercial theaters (see appendix 8.1). After World War I, in the early 1920s, the German American stage resumed regular activity, although in a reduced state and in a peripatetic existence—moving between theaters and German social clubs in New York City and throughout its metropolitan area. Audiences in New York’s Kleindeutschland attended operas, operettas, musical comedies, plays with music, dramas, comedies, farces, variety acts, and tableaux vivants by foreign-born and local German American authors. However, the German theater was not the only “ethnic” (non-English-language) theater in New York City or the United States, although it was the most active one during the second half of the nineteenth century. For example, Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish, and other stages flourished at different times in the city and elsewhere in the country. Among these, the Yiddish theater experienced the most substantial activity in nineteenthcentury New York, after its German cousin. The relationship between the Kleindeutschland and Yiddish stages was both close and complicated. Some New York German Jewish actors spoke Yiddish and German and appeared in both German and Yiddish theaters. Both theaters also shared audiences to some extent.

In nineteenth-century America, wherever there were German speakers there were German amateur or professional theatrical companies, singing societies, orchestras, bands, and other musical ensembles. Germans celebrated an amazing variety of secular and religious occasions—theater, spectacles, living tableaux, balls, parades, and other ritual events—with music designed to reinforce German solidarity and pride. German American composers and authors wrote many works based on both German and American models. In fact, no other immigrant group created for itself a greater multiplicity of musical, social, or cultural organizations than did German Americans in nineteenth-century America. Moreover, no other ethnic group in the United States documented its own activities in greater detail.