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Marvin Schwan was the founder of Schwan’s Sales Enterprises, Inc., one of the largest producers of frozen food in the world.

See Joseph Seligman

Joseph Seligman, along with his brothers, founded J. & W. Seligman & Co., which became the premier investment banking house raising money for the Union government, repaying the national debt necessitated by the war, and channeling European funds into the construction of American railroads and other industries.

The son of a German immigrant, Isaac Merritt Singer was the man behind one of the sewing machine patents that succeeded within an extremely competitive market in the mid-1850s. Since the eighteenth century, inventors had designed sewing machines to serve the needs of tailors and for various industrial purposes. However, inventors had struggled to develop a machine appropriate for domestic use. Singer contributed to the sewing machine trade with important technological advancements and also with the development of a marketing system capable of selling sewing machines around the world.

Between 1893 and 1932, John Philip Sousa was the most commercially successful bandleader in the United States and one of the best-known American entertainers worldwide. The son of Portuguese and Bavarian immigrants, from 1880 to 1892 Sousa served as leader of the United States Marine Band, “The President’s Own,” in Washington, D.C.

See Modie J. Spiegel

Modie Spiegel, along with his younger brothers Sidney and Arthur, expanded their father’s erstwhile Chicago furniture retail business into one of America’s leading mail order firms, the Spiegel Company.

Born in Lamstedt, Claus Spreckels settled in California and built a sugar empire that expanded into a multitude of sectors, including: transport, gas and electricity, real estate, newspapers, banks, and breweries.

Walter Spreckels emigrated to the United States to become a clerk in his cousin’s sugar factory in Yonkers, New York. He started a family and made a fine career as a sugar business executive. World War I interrupted this steady improvement when Spreckels was deemed an “alien enemy” and barred from his position. However, he eventually rose to become president of the Syrup Products Company, a subsidiary of his former employer, the Federal Sugar Refining Company. After being pushed out of the company as a result of running afoul of Prohibition enforcement, he went on to become a labor negotiator for the National Recovery Agency and eventually a private industrial relations consultant in California.

Walter Staib is an internationally renowned chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and hospitality consultant. A skilled self-promoter who is as comfortable in front of a television camera as in front of a stove, Staib is a regularly featured guest on local, national, and international television programs and specials.

At the time Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg and his family left the Duchy of Brunswick for the United States in 1850, he was an independent craftsman of modest means, similar in many ways to others leaving the German states during that era. Within less than twenty years, the woodworker-turned-piano maker from the Harz Mountains in northern Germany established the Steinway firm, together with his sons, as one of the leading piano brands in the world.

See Heinrich Engelhard Steinway

Leonard Stern took over the family business Hartz Mountain Pet Company from his father in 1959. By the early 1980s, he had expanded the company's focus beyond pet foods to make it America's leading pet supply manufacturer and name brand.

Second-generation German immigrant Gustav Stickley is remembered today as one of America’s leading furniture designers and arbiters of taste. A key figure in the Arts and Crafts movement, Stickley created an authentically American furniture designed to suit the needs of modern families. He also founded a groundbreaking magazine, <em>The Craftsman</em>, whereby he publicized his work and the philosophies that motivated it. Stickley’s furniture enjoyed widespread popularity among consumers. As importantly, however, his work influenced others in the craft and building professions, specially designers and architects who were receptive to Arts and Crafts ideals.

Henry William Stiegel was part of an early wave of German entrepreneurs who journeyed to British North America in the late seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. He established himself as both an ironmaster and a glassmaker.

Chris Strachwitz is a music producer and the founder of Arhoolie Records. Strachwitz and his family came to the United States in 1947, living first in Reno, Nevada, and later in California. After graduating, he became a high school teacher, but spent most of his time off searching out music in clubs. In 1962 he left teaching to concentrate on Arhoolie Records, which has become a Grammy-winning record label that specializes in roots music.

The son of a 48er immigrant from Germany, Edward Stratemeyer built a career as a writer and a publisher of juvenile literature. At the peak of his career, he presided over a publishing syndicate whose most successful book series, the Rover Boys and Tom Swift, sold millions of copies. Other series created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate – the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys – would make their mark on subsequent generations of readers (and writers).

Isidor Straus is best known as an owner and manager of the R.H. Macy department store in New York City. During his lifetime he was equally well known as an owner and manager of the Straus family’s large china and glassware importing business, L. Straus & Sons, also located in New York City.

See Isidor Straus

The name Levi Strauss is famous worldwide, and will be forever linked to the world’s first blue jeans, a product he helped to create. But Strauss was more than just the manifestation of his various denim products. He started his business when San Francisco was a raw, rowdy town and when he was only in his early twenties. The man and the city grew up together, as Strauss helped to make it the commercial capital of the West.