2008 | UNITED STATES-GERMAN ECONOMIC YEARBOOK GERMANS IN AMERICA–INSIGHTS INTO A FRIENDSHIP Since 1608, eight million Germans have emigrated to what is now the US in search of freedom, work and better living conditions. Today they represent the largest ethnic group in the land of unlimited opportunities: every third American citizen has at least one German ancestor. The emigration process continues even now – yet the reasons for it in the age of globalization differ from those obtaining when migration began four hundred years ago. What is it like today from the standpoint of Germans who have emigrated to the US to live caught up in the tensions between the Old and the New World? Are they happy in the US and have they found a place in their adopted country? And how has 9/11 affected life in America, particularly for the Germans living there? Gunter Klötzer, a photographer who lives in Berlin, visited more than one hundred and twenty immigrants to the US who were born and raised in Germany. He took portraits of them and interviewed them about their reasons for leaving their home country. Hot off the presses at ARNOLDSCHE Art Publishers, Germans in America presents the results of tracking them down in the America of the Iraq War and the George W. Bush administration in sixty-three brilliant portrait photos and forty interviews. The subjects of the portraits range from old to young, rich to poor, hopeful to disillusioned, from Jewish immigrants on Long Island to graffi ti artists in the Bronx. And there are also some famous names among them, including the artist Josephine Meckseper, the journalist and author Alexander Osang and the actress Nina Franoszek. While the portrait photographs capture the German immigrants in their own personal American living environments, the interviews provide insights into the “new” lives they are leading. Descriptions often fl uctuate between rejection of and admiration for the new country but questions of identity and belongingness continually surface. At the same time, the interviews paint a picture of the Land of the Free caught up in the tensions arising from the American Dream confronted with 9/11, the Iraq War and an increasingly emancipated Old Europe.