Sandra Bullock. Kevin Costner. Kirsten Dunst - Filmography by type David Letterman. Uma Thurman. Christopher Walken. Bruce Willis.

They all have two things in common: They are Americans. And they have German ancestors.

They are not alone. Each seventh American has at least some German roots: the US Census asked where her family came from, 14 percent of the US citizens are in first or second place in Germany.

In elections, this group already has its sheer size weight, potentially anyway. And in the forthcoming presidential election this weight could actually come to the fore: According to a survey, the German Americans are conspicuously strong Donald Trump. The half-favored the Republican candidates - and only one-third of them hold to their democratic counterpart Hillary Clinton.

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In addition, many German-Americans live in swing states, federal states, which could be the decisive factor in the presumed narrow election result.

46 million people of German descent are now living in the United States. There are even more German Americans than US citizens of English, Irish or Italian descent, there are even more German Americans than blacks (43 million) or Mexican Americans (36 million) in the USA.

The "german belt", the German belt, extends from Pennsylvania in the east of the USA to Oregon in the west. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the German immigrants settled mainly in Pennsylvania.

But the big wave came in the middle of the 19th century, now the political and economic refugees from Germany moved to the Midwest, cities such as Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis and the Great Plains still further west.

The largest concentration of German-Americans is still to be found today. In North and South Dakota, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Iowa, more than one-third of the population is German American.

Politically unobtrusive to abstinent

The German immigrants have left deep traces in American everyday life; They have exported the kindergarten across the Atlantic, the Bretzel, the Oktoberfest. Many well-known American companies were also founded by German-Americans, including Anheuser-Busch, Boeing, Bloomingdale, Chrysler, Heinz, Levi Strauss, Merck and Steinway.

Politically, on the other hand, most German-Americans remained inconspicuous to abstinent from the beginning. "The Italians stormed the town halls, the Germans the inns," wrote the British "Economist" last year about the immigrants from Europe.

Even a clear political profile can not necessarily be attributed to the German Americans. It is sometimes said that they supported Abraham Lincoln and his fight against slavery by a large majority in the mid-nineteenth century, but apparently no such convincing evidence exists.

On the other hand, the opposition of German-Americans against prohibition is secured. But it is not just the liberation of the Teutones, and their pronounced preference for alcohol consumption. The reason for this is probably the fact that America's beer industry has long been dominated by German entrepreneurs - Anheuser, Busch, Miller, Yuengling.

US presidents were mostly of British origin

It is also assured that not all immigrants from good ol 'Germany were conservative bones. In 1910, for the first time in the American history, a professing socialist was elected mayor. This was in Milwaukee, a very German city in Wisconsin. The mayor was Emil Seidel, an American whose family was from Pomerania.

Otherwise, American political figures with German roots remained a rare species. There is the former congressman John Boehner, the Radikalliberal Rand Paul - and now Donald Trump, whose grandfather once went from the Palatine Kallstadt to America. Almost all US presidents of the history were of British origin, the German-born Dwight Eisenhower is still a big exception to this day.