Little Germany: A History of Bradford’s Germans

Over the centuries, Germany and Great Britain have been close trading partners. When Bradford became renowned for its rapidly expanding textile trade, prosperous German wool merchants entered the country and many of them settled in Bradford. These men, comparatively few in number but with great determination, influenced Bradford’s markets with their knowledge of commerce and philanthropic culture. They were merchants who left their mark; men who built the palatial warehouses in Little Germany.

Susan Duxbury-Neumann, author of ‘Little Germany: A History of Bradford’s Germans’ was born in Baildon and all members of her family were connected in one way or another with Bradford’s wool-trade. In this talk she takes us back to the nineteenth century, when Bradford was the wool capital of the world, to offer a glimpse of a very different city and the lives of the people who came here from Germany to shape it.