Germans in the History of American Alaska - A Photo Essay

George Pilz (1845-1926) a German miner who immigrated to the United States would eventually find his way to Alaska and grubstaked Joe Harris and Joe Juneau resulting in what became the town of Juneau. Pilz was inducted in the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame Foundation for his mining contributions.

Joe Kendler, a German speaking Austrian who immigrated to Juneau later owned and operated Alaska Dairy with his wife Matilda who had immigrated from Germany. Kendler was prepared for dairy farming in the mountainous terrain of Juneau, due to his arduous upbringing dairy farming in the Alps of Austria.

Otto Geist, a German immigrant from Bavaria, became an important figure in the Alaskan scientific community. Geist discovered more Pleistocene fossils in Alaska than anyone else before or after him. See photo below of Geist holding one of his Mastodon tusks.

The German Cruiser Karlsruhe docked in Juneau’s harbor in 1932. The Karlsruhe’s Captain Erwin Wassner and fellow officers were invited by Alaska Governor George Parks to the Governor’s house for a dinner and dance.

Dinner and dance given by the governor in honor of the officers of the German Cruiser Karlsruhe.

Ernest Gruening was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt to serve as Alaska’s territorial governor. Gruening’s father Emil Gruening was a first generation American who had immigrated from Germany not long before Ernest was born. Ernest would grow up speaking German in his New York home with his earliest memory knocking on his parents door and shouting, “Ein Löwe steht vor deiner Tür!” (A lion stands before your door). Gruening served as Alaska’s territorial governor from 1939-1953 and then later served as an Alaskan senator from 1959-1969.

During World War Two German prisoners of war were sent to Alaska. These German POW’s were tasked with dismantling U.S. military bases that were built in Southeast Alaska. The extra Alaskan military bases in Southeast had become superfluous by August of 1943 as the Japanese military had been expelled from Alaska by then.

Yule Kilcher was a German speaking Swiss immigrant who served as a delegate on the Alaska Constitutional Convention. Kilcher vocalized opposition for the word “Borough” being used as a term for Alaskan governmental land designations.

Wally Hickel moved to Alaska and became a self-made millionaire. Hickel rose from humble German origins in Kansas. Hickel reflected, “My parents were both first-generation Americans. My mother’s parents, whose surname was Zecha, emigrated from southern Germany about 1890, and my mother was born in Odin, Kansas, in 1894. Nearly everyone in the area was of German ancestry, and until the middle 1930’s, the grade school in Odin conducted classes in German for half of each day…My grandparents never did learn to speak English, and my older sister, Gertrude was handicapped by the mix of German and English when she first went to school. Perhaps that is why my parents stopped speaking German in our home. I understood the language fairly well as a small boy…”. Hickel served two terms as Alaska’s governor first term 1966-1969 second term 1990-1994.