Famous and Not-So-Famous Americans of German, Austrian, or German-Swiss Ancestry

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North Americans of German, Austrian, or German-Swiss heritage have made significant contributions to many fields of American culture, from the arts to science and engineering. Below is an alphabetical list of notable Americans and Canadians, both living and dead, who were born in German-speaking Europe or had Germanic ancestors. All persons listed have at least a summary. For some personalties you can click on a link to learn even more. This list also includes Austrian and Swiss-Americans.

Also see: German-American Day – October 6

Doris Day in a 1957 publicity photo. Her birth name was Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

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Damrosch, Walter Johannes (1862-1950) | Damrosch was a German-American conductor and composer born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland). He was the conductor of the NBC (National Broadcasting Co.) symphony orchestra from 1928 to 1942. His father Leopold and brother Frank were also prominent musicians.

Doris Day in a publicity shot from the 1960s.

Day, Doris (1922-2019) | Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff, later known as Doris Day, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 3, 1922. (Recent research revealed her previous birth year of 1924 was incorrect.) She was a German-American actress, singer, and animal welfare activist. Doris was the third child of William Kappelhoff (1892–1967) and Alma Sophia Welz (1895–1976), both of whom were also born in Cincinnati to German immigrants. Day’s paternal grandfather Franz Josef Wilhelm Kappelhoff (1843-1907) was born in Warendorf, a small town near Münster in Westphalia. Her paternal grandmother Juliana Agnes Kreimer (1853-1916) was born in Glandorf in what was then the Kingdom of Hanover. On her mother’s side, both her grandfather, Wilhelm Welz (1866-1907), and her grandmother, Anna Christina Mann (1863-1932), came from Baden in southern Germany. Franz Kappelhoff arrived in Cincinnati in 1875 with his wife Juliana, after coming into some money that allowed the couple to start a new life in America. That city was already very German at the time (some claimed it was “the most German city in the US”), so he quickly felt at home. Working as a bookkeeper, Franz became Frank Kappelhoff in his new home. He and Agnes Kreimer-Kappelhoff would have eight children, one of which was William Kappelhoff, Doris’s future father. Up until the First World War the American and German branches of the family stayed in postal contact, but after war broke out in 1914, there was no more contact. Doris Kappelhoff, born in 1922, knew virtually nothing about her German relatives. After a successful career as a big-band singer in the 1940s, Day’s acting career began with the film Romance on the High Seas (1948). She would go on to become one of the most popular Hollywood stars ever, appearing in various hit films with other stars of the day, including Jimmy Stewart, Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall, and Rod Taylor. Her last film was released in 1968, the same year her third husband Martin Melcher died – and she discovered that he and their lawyer had left her bankrupt. She was forced to turn to television, and “The Doris Day Show” ran from 1968 to 1973. After that she did a few more TV shows, but largely dropped out of public appearances by the end of the 1980s. In retirement she lived in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where she ran a pet-friendly B&B, and devoted herself to promoting animal welfare through what is now known as the Doris Day Animal Foundation (DDAF).
WEB: Weltstar mit westfälischen Wurzeln: Doris Day heißt eigentlich Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff – An article (in German) about Day’s Westphalian roots from the Westfälische Nachrichten, Münster

de Kalb / von Kalb / Kalb, Johann (1721-1780) | Born as Johann Kalb in Hüttendorf (now part of Erlangen) in what is today northern Bavaria, the man who was later known primarily as Baron de Kalb in the New World was not born into nobility, as the “von” or “de” before his surname would indicate. Johann Kalb was born into a Franconian merchant family. His father was Johann Leonhard Kalb, and his mother was Margarethe Seiz. The future American Revolutionary War hero added the “de” to his name while serving as a military officer for the French beginning in 1743. In 1764, he retired from the army and married Anna Elizabeth Emilie van Robais, an heiress to a fortune from cloth manufacturing. The marriage gave de Kalb a legitimate claim to nobility. He bought the Milon-la-Chapelle chateau in France and fathered three children with Anna. In 1768 de Kalb made his first trip to America on a covert mission to assess the level of discontent among the colonists there. He was impressed with their independent spirit. He returned to America in 1777, this time with the Marquis de Lafayette, and joined the Continental Army. He almost returned to France after learning he would not be granted the rank of major general, but Lafayette intervened on his behalf. De Kalb served at Valley Forge during the bitter 1777-1778 winter, commanding a division of American troops. Later he was sent south to the Carolinas, in command of reinforcements to help drive off the British. Through no fault of his own, the 1780 Battle of Camden (in South Carolina) turned into a disaster. De Kalb’s horse was shot from under him, causing him to tumble to the ground. Before he could get up, he was shot three times and bayonetted repeatedly by British soldiers. He died three days later and was buried in Camden. De Kalb was greatly revered by his contemporaries. Numerous towns, counties, and streets in the US are named after him, usually as DeKalb. In Erlangen, Germany the Johann-Kalb-Straße has honored his name since 1955.

Denver, John (1943-1997) | John Denver was the professional name of an American singer-songwriter, record producer, actor, activist, and humanitarian. Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. was born on December 31, 1943 in Roswell, New Mexico. His father, Henry John “Dutch” Deutschendorf Sr., was an Army Air Force pilot stationed in Roswell, and would later set flight speed records and earn a spot in the Air Force Hall of Fame. John Denver’s family tree goes back to Germans from Russia, with the surnames Koop and Deutschendorf. Descendants of German farmers, the two families settled in Washita County, Oklahoma in the early 1900s. Denver’s paternal grandfather, Johann Heinrich Deutschendorf (1895-1943) was born in Russia to German parents (Volga Germans) who had settled there at the invitation of German-born Catherine the Great. In 1917 he married a neighbor in Oklahoma, a Mennonite lady named Anna Elizabeth Koop (1901-1985). Her parents were also Germans who had come from Russia, sailing to the US from Bremerhaven, Germany in 1893. The Deutschendorf family endured the “dust bowl” years of the mid-1930s in Oklahoma. John Denver’s future father, Henry John, age 19, enlisted in the army in 1940, just as war threatened, going against his Mennonite background. He fell for a girl from Tulsa. Soon he and Erma Louise Swope were married. And that is how John Denver came to be born in Roswell, New Mexico. He would later become world-famous as a singer, actor, and peace activist.

Denver died in a plane crash in Monterey, California on October 12, 1997 while piloting an experimental Rutan Long-EZ aircraft. He was an experienced pilot, but at the time the FAA had banned him from flying because of prior drunk-driving convictions. But an NTSB investigation determined that alcohol was not a factor in the crash. A poorly designed fuel tank selector switch and Denver’s inadequate training for the Rutan airplane were listed as the main causes.
WEB: John Denver’s Genealogy Country Road Leads to Oklahoma, Not Colorado
WEB: Volga Germans – Wikipedia

DiCaprio, Leonardo (1974- ) | Leonardo DiCaprio is an American actor with a German mother (Helene von den Birken) and an Italian father. He first gained attention in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? and then went aboard the Titanic. More recently he portrayed Howard Hughes in The Aviator and the title role in The Great Gatsby. See our Leonardo DiCaprio bio for more.

Dietrich, Marlene (1901-1992) | Maria Magdalene “Marlene” Dietrich was a well-known German-American actress and singer born in Berlin (actually in Schöneberg before it became part of Berlin). See our Marlene Dietrich bio for more.

The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip as it appeared in 1922. PHOTO: King Features Syndicate

Dirks, Rudolph (1877-1968) | Rudolph Dirks was the creator of the beloved cartoon strip “The Katzenjammer Kids.” Dirks was born in Heide, Prussia (now in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein), but he moved to Chicago with his parents in 1884 when he was only seven. Rudolph and his brother Gus later moved to New York to work as cartoonists. Rudolph Dirks’ “Katzenjammer Kids” cartoon first appeared in The New York Journal on December 12, 1897. Dirks’ strip was modeled after Wilhelm Busch’s “Max und Moritz” stories, which also featured two mischievous boys.* “The Katzenjammer Kids” was one of the earliest newspaper comic strips. In fact, it was created in response to the first American comic strip ever, Richard Felton Outcault’s “The Yellow Kid,” which was published by the New York World. Dirks was the first cartoonist to standardize the use of speech balloons to express comic characters’ dialog. The Katzenjammer Kids published its last strip on January 1, 2006, but reprints are still distributed by King Features Syndicate, making it the oldest comic strip still in syndication, and the longest-running ever.
*Recent research by Alfredo Castelli has uncovered documents showing that the Hearst organization legitimately licensed Busch’s creation. In fact, it appeared under its original name in German-language editions of Hearst’s New York Journal.
WEB: The Katzenjammer Kids – Rudolph Dirks – A good (if dated) fan site by Jim Lowe

Dirksen, Everett M. (1896-1969) | Everett McKinley Dirksen was a prominent Republican Congressman (1933-1948) and Senator (1951-1969) from Minnesota. Dirksen was the minority leader of the Senate from 1959-1969. Born in Pekin, Illinois, a small town near Peoria, Dirksen was the son of German immigrants from East Frisia (Ostfriesland): Antje Conrady, born in Loquard, and Johann Friedrich Dirksen, born in Jennelt. The parents spoke a Low German dialect at home, and taught German to their children, but Johann was politically aware in his new country. Dirksen’s middle name came from president William McKinley, and his two brothers also had names from political figures. Everett was only nine when his father died from a stroke he had suffered four years earlier. Dirksen did well in school and went to study law at the University of Minnesota, working at various jobs to pay his way. After war broke out in Europe, it fell to Everett, now 21 years old, to prove his family’s patriotism by serving in the U.S. Army. (His mother had caused a fuss by refusing to take down a living room photo of Kaiser Wilhelm II.) Dirksen had to drop out of college to train and serve. After combat service in France as a second lieutenant, Dirksen performed post-war occupation duty in Germany until mid-1919. Offered the opportunity to remain with the Army of Occupation because of his fluency in German, Dirksen declined and returned home.

Donner Party (1846-1847) | The Donner Party (also Donner-Reed Party) was named for George Donner, a German emigrant who had first settled in North Carolina before moving west. In the fall of 1846 the 89 members of the Donner party (including James Reed, who was later banished, but survived) became trapped in deep snow in the Sierra Nevada range as they made their way to California. In order to survive the winter, several members of the group resorted to cannibalism. Johann Ludwig (Louis) Christian Keseberg, born in Berleberg, Westphalia in 1814, was one of the survivors tainted by the acts of cannibalism. Several other members of the ill-fated Donner party were Austrian or German. Of the 89 men, women and children who entered the Sierra Nevada near Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) in October 1846, only 49 survived. Of the total party, more than half were under 18 years of age, and six were infants.
WEB: Donner Party: List of Members – Who died, who survived (onlinenevada.org)
WEB: Donner Party Diary: Members – with biographical info, listed by family

Dreiser, Theodore (1871-1945) | Herman Theodore Dreiser was an American novelist, poet, and journalist. He began his writing career as a reporter for newspapers in Chicago, Pittsburg, and St. Louis. His best known novels are Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925), his first commercial success. Dreiser was born into a German-American family in Terre Haute, Indiana, on August 27, 1871. His parents were Sarah Schanab and Johann Dreiser. His father had emigrated from Mayen, Germany in 1844 and eventually landed in the American Midwest, where large numbers of fellow Germans were found.
WEB: Biography of Theodore Dreiser by Thomas P. Riggio

Duden, Gottfried (1789-1856) | Gottfried Duden (not to be confused with the philologist Konrad Duden) was a German emigration writer in the early 19th century. His book Bericht über eine Reise nach den westlichen Staaten Nordamerikas und einen mehrjährigen Aufenthalt am Missouri in den Jahren 1824 bis 1827 (“Report of a journey to the western states of North America and a multi-year sojourn in the years 1824 through 1827”) offered romantic, exaggerated descriptions of the Missouri River valley between St. Louis and Hermann, Missouri. Duden established a farm near what is now Dutzow, Missouri along the Missouri River near Washington, Missouri. His Bericht book compared the Missouri River to the Rhine in Germany, with overly positive remarks concerning the region (ignoring the harsh winter climate, for instance), encouraged a flood of German immigrants to the area beginning in the 1830s.

August and Fred Duesenberg in 1925. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

Duesenberg, August (Augie) (1879–1955) and Duesenberg, Fred (1876–1932) | August “Augie” and Fred Duesenberg were German-born brothers who founded an American automobile company that developed a popular luxury car. The brothers, Friedrich Simon Düsenberg and August Samuel Düsenberg, were born in Matorf-Kirchheide (now part of Lemgo), North Rhine-Westphalia. The farmhouse in which they were born was built in 1760 and is now a protected landmark that is still standing today. Their father, Karl Heinrich Ludwig, died in 1881. Four years later his widow, Konradine, moved to Iowa with her six children to join an older son, Henry, who had immigrated to America in 1884. In the US the family’s German surname exchanged the ü for ue to become Duesenberg, a name now associated with a classic American car brand. Starting out as bicycle makers and racers in Iowa, by 1913 the brothers had established the Duesenberg Motor Company in Saint Paul, Minnesota. After moving to Indiana, the firm was incorporated in 1920 as the Duesenberg Automobile and Motors Company in Indianapolis. The Duesenbergs developed top-notch gasoline-motor technology and a powerful eight-cylinder engine. They were also known for fine coach craftsmanship. The Model J, introduced at the New York Automobile Salon for the 1929 model year, was a remarkable vehicle for its time. It was bigger, faster, more powerful, and more expensive than any other American car. (See photo below.) The standard models had a sticker price of around $18,000. A later Model J, known as the Rollston SJ Arlington Torpedo Sedan (1933/1934), was nicknamed the “Twenty Grand” for its reported price. The Duesenberg company survived most of the Depres­sion, but died in the collapse of the Cord Corporation, which had rescued the company in 1926. The end came in 1937. Remarkably, over 75 percent of the original Model Js built are still roadworthy almost 90 years after their introduction. Today Duesenberg Motors Inc carries on the tradition with heritage recreations of the classic cars.

A 1931 Duesenberg Model J Derham Tourster on display at the 2015 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. This model had a 265-horsepower, 420-cubic-inch engine with 8 OHC. Only eight were ever produced by the Derham Body Company in Rosemont, Pennsylvania. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

Dunst, Kirsten (1982- ) is an American actress with a German father and a Swedish mother. She shot to fame in the Spider-Man movies. See Germans in Hollywood for more.

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Ebert, Roger (1942-2013) | Roger Joseph Ebert was born in Urbana, Illinois, the only child of Annabel (née Stumm), a bookkeeper, and Walter Harry Ebert, an electrician. He was raised Roman Catholic, attending St. Mary’s elementary school and serving as an altar boy in Urbana. His paternal grandparents were German immigrants, and his maternal ancestry was Irish and Dutch. Ebert became a noted film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and later appeared on television with Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel (“Siskel and Ebert”). Roger Ebert was the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Ederle, Gertrude (1905-2003) | Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to swim the English Channel. The German-American swimming champ was born on October 23, 1905 in New York City, one of six children. Her father was a butcher from Germany. When Gertrude was eight, while visiting her grandmother in Germany, she fell into a pond, a fateful experience that led her to learn to swim. At the Paris Olympics in 1924 she won gold in the 400-meter freestyle relay, and bronze in the 100 m and 400 m individual freestyle events. In her 1926 Channel swim she beat the men’s record by more than two hours. She held the women’s record until 1950, when Florence Chadwick crossed the Channel in 13 hours and 20 minutes.

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955) | Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Württemberg on March 14, 1879. He spent his early formative years in Munich. He and his family later lived in Italy and Switzerland. Einstein published his famous “Special Theory of Relativity” in 1905. The German-American scientist and Nobel Prize winner (1921) is best known for his science related to time and space. Long a stateless person, Einstein became a US citizen in 1940. – Also see the Albert Einstein entry on our “Notable Germans” page.

Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1890-1969) | Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower was one of only two American presidents of German extraction up to that time. (The other was Herbert Hoover.) After serving as Allied supreme commander in World War II, Eisenhower became the 34th president of the United States (1953-1961). On Oct. 14, 1890 in Denison, Texas, Dwight David Eisenhower was born into a German-American family that goes back to Johann Nicolaus Eisenhauer (ca. 1691 – ca. 1760) who came to America with his son Johann Peter in 1741 and settled in Pennsylvania.
WEB: Dwight D. Eisenhower Bio from the White House site

Emmerich, Roland (1955- ) | Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Roland Emmerich is the writer/director of popular Hollywood films that include: Stargate (1994), Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), The Patriot (2000), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), and Midway, starring Woody Harrelson as Admiral Chester Nimitz (release date: 8 November 2019). See Germans in Hollywood for more.

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Feininger, Andreas (1909-1999) was a German-American photographer and the son of Lyonel Feininger (below).

Lüneburg II (1933) by Lyonel Feininger, watercolor and ink on paper, Expressionism CREDIT: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City

Feininger, Lyonel (1871-1956) | Lyonel Feininger was born in New York City to artistic musical German-American parents. (His father Karl was a violinist, his mother a singer.) Unlike most German-Americans in this list, Léonell (his real name) Feininger went from the US to Germany and then back. In 1887 he went to Germany to study art in Hamburg and Berlin. In 1924 Feininger founded “The Blue Four” with fellow artists Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Alexei von Jawlensky. Feininger became associated with the Bauhaus in 1926. With the closing of the Bauhaus by the Nazis and the deteriorating political situation in Germany, Feininger returned to the US in 1937.
WEB: Lyonel Feiniger – Guggenheim – A bio with his artwork

Feltman, Charles (1841–1910) | Karl Feldmann (Charles Feltman in the US) was a German-American baker who invented the hot dog at Coney Island in 1869. Born on November 8, 1841 in Hannover, Germany, Feltman arrived in New York City in 1856 at the age of 15. A trained baker, by 1865 Feltman had opened a bakery in Brooklyn and was earning a good living delivering pies to Coney Island businesses from a push cart, while selling clams on the side. After customers told him they preferred hot food, Feltman had his cart converted into a charcoal grill for cooking sausages with a metal box to warm the buns. In 1869 Feltman introduced his unique Frankfurter, calling his creation the “Coney Island red hot.” He soon had a hit on his hands, selling almost 4,000 “red hots” in a long bun for a nickel each. The bun proved to be the magic touch, allowing beachgoers an easy way to eat on the go. In 1871 Feltman opened a restaurant operation, dubbed “the world’s largest” in the 1920s. One of his employees, the Polish Jewish Nathan Handwerker, founded Nathan’s to compete with Feltman in 1916. Later (no one is sure exactly how), Feltman’s “red hots” became known as hot dogs, the iconic all-American food invented by a German.
WEB: Charles Feltman’s grave in Brooklyn from Find A Grave

Broad Street lunch carts selling “hot frankfurters” in New York City around 1906. German immigrant Charles Feltman (see above) first sold his “red hots” in 1869. Later they were known simply as “hot dogs.” PHOTO: Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company

Firestone, Harvey S. (1868-1938) | Harvey Firestone founded the American firm known as the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in 1900, but Firestone has been owned by the Japanese Bridgestone Corporation since 1988. The Firestone family goes back to German immigrants named Feuerstein. Harvey Firestone’s great-great-great grandfather was Hans Nikolaus Feuerstein, born March 25, 1712 in Berg, Alsace, a German-speaking region now in France. Hans and his wife Catharina arrived in America in September 1753 and Hans is believed to have died in Pennsylvania in 1763.
WEB: Firestone History from firestonetire.com

Fruehauf, August Charles (1867-1930) | August “Gus” Fruehauf was a German-American blacksmith and carriage maker who invented the tractor trailer or semi-trailer (Sattelschlepper in German) in 1914. Four years later he founded the Fruehauf Trailer Corporation and soon revolutionized the trucking industry. August’s father, Charles Fruehauf (1824–1894), was born in Prussia. (The German surname Frühauf/Fruehauf means “early riser.”) Around 1855 he married Christina Sophia Hoffmeyer (1835–1919), who was known by her middle name, Sophia. Soon thereafter, the couple immigrated to the United States and settled in Macomb County, Michigan, 20 miles from Detroit, a city popular with German immigrants. Charles and Sophia Fruehauf had ten children in Michigan, the sixth being August Charles.
WEB: August Fruehauf – German-American Business Biographies (immigrantentrepreneurship.org)

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Related Pages
ON THIS SITE

• German-American Day – October 6 | About this special American holiday, its origins and historical background
• Notable Germans, Austrians, Swiss | Brief biographical sketches
• Featured Bios | Notable people with full biographies
• Germans in Hollywood | The three waves of Hollywood immigration
• Notable Women in Germany, Austria, Switzerland
• Notable Authors in Germany, Austria, Switzerland