Out-of-state visitors to San José and Santa Clara County are often amazed by the plethora of Spanish place names, and are also perplexed by their pronunciation. But they may be even more amazed to discover that many of our fair city’s earliest movers and shakers—architects, merchants, brewers and even volunteer firemen—were German. Local historian and Sourisseau Board member, April Hope Halberstadt, who carries the bona fide German surname and local German expertise through years of research, tells the story of this dynamic community that contributed so much to the commercial and architectural core of early San Jose. Read the story, and be amazed by that saga.

Fully informed about the Germans? Watch our September Sourisseau News video, sponsored by Linda Lee Lester, and follow Margo McBane and Suzanne Guerra’s story of San José’s Mexican-American community, which got here so early as to deprive the Germans from planting their own favorite names on the landscape.