The East Village is now recognized for its nightlife, vintage clothing shops and the bustle of St. Mark’s Place – but there’s also a past time where German churches were the neighborhood stronghold.
Richard Haberstroh, a genealogist and native New Yorker with German roots, hosted an illustrative talk at the Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Parish giving the rundown on the East Village’s Kleindeutschland’s (Little Germany) religious history.
In 1808, New York Germans petitioned Bishop John Carroll in Baltimore for a German language church in New York, Haberstroh explained.
“They felt there was a tie between practicing your religion and the language in which you learn that religion,” said Haberstroh.
German-language parishes in the city took off with Father Johann Stephen Raffeiner, who founded the former St. Nicholas Church in 1833, which stood on East 2nd St. until its demolition in 1960.
Haberstroh said that infighting between priests and parishioners was frequent in those days of the Catholic Church. This spurred Father Raffeiner to head for Brooklyn and found another church.
Another unnamed priest was given “the unhappy job of being the pastor of St. Nicholas” according to Haberstroh, and eventually left to create the Most Holy Redeemer Roman Catholic Church on East 3rd St, built in 1851.
“They [churches] open up, they build a church and before you know it, the congregation outgrew the church,” said Haberstroh, noting the rapid expansion patterns of New York City churches in the 1800s.
As the German and church population rose simultaneously, many skilled German laborers were hired to construct the churches that shaped Kleindeutschland. There were German architects, cabinet makers, painters and locksmiths, according to Haberstroh.
“It appears that 68% of the fresco painters in New York City were German,” Habertstroh told the crowd at Trinity Lutheran, noting the figures from the 1870 census.
Literally bringing the conversation back into the building, Haberstroh touched on the history of the original 1860’s era Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Parish.
“I think of this as probably the first Lutheran church in Deutschland that was actually established by and for German immigrants,” said Haberstroh, explaining that most other German-language churches grew out of churches that were already established.
The church’s original location was located just outside of Kleindeustchland on Columbia Street, then moved to East 9th Street to a building constructed in the 1860s.
Haberstroh explained that before the construction of the East 9th Street church, many of the German churches existed on the fringes of Kleindeutschland, “but this establishment of Trinity here was very important,” said Haberstroh, noting the Trinity parish being in the heart of the neighborhood.
The history of German Lutherans in the East Village took a dark turn after the General Slocum boat disaster, in which over 1,000 passengers died when the boat caught fire and capsized in the East River. Many of them were Germans Lutherans living in Kleindeutschland.
The population of the German population in Kleindeutschland waned after the tragedy as many residents moved uptown to Yorkville, and so did the attendees of the church, which was demolished in 1975. It was eventually rebuilt to its current state in 1993.
“Other immigrant groups came into the Lower East Side, especially Italian and Eastern Europeans, so the neighborhood was now catering to the newer immigrants,” said Haberstroh, adding this context to the shift in Kleindeutschland’s population.
