Johann Heinrich Zimmermann (1741-1805) was one of three German sailors aboard Captain James Cook’s ships HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery, when Cook made his discovery of Hawaii on Jan. 18, 1778, and was present aboard HMS Discovery when first contact with Hawaiians occurred off the coast of Kipu Kai, Kauai, on the 19th.
Another German, Georg Anton Schäffer (1779-1836), a representative of the Russian-American Company, arrived at Waimea, Kauai, in May 1816 to retrieve the cargo of the Russian ship Bering, which had been shipwrecked there in January 1815.
He remained in Hawaii, and in 1817, he drafted the design for a Russian fort at Waimea named Fort Elizabeth, which King Kaumualii constructed with Hawaiian laborers.
Schäffer also instigated and was ultimately foiled in a fantastic attempt to conquer the Hawaiian Islands on behalf of the Russian Empire and was subsequently banished from Hawaii at Waimea by Kaumualii in 1817.
Still another German who made his mark in Hawaii was businessman, judge and governmental minister Hermann A. Widemann (1822-99).
Widemann settled on Kauai in 1846 and found employment as a tutor, and later, as head overseer of Peirce Plantation.
In 1856, he purchased lands in Halehaka and Huleia valleys, planted sugarcane on his property and named it Grove Farm.
He succeeded Judge Jacob Hardy on the Kauai Circuit Bench in 1863 and served both King David Kalakaua and Queen Liliuokalani as ministers.
Paul Isenberg (1837-1903) was a German businessman who developed the sugarcane industry in Hawaii, particularly at Lihue Plantation, Kekaha Sugar Co. and with Hackfeld &Company.
Isenberg also interested a number of German families to immigrate to Kauai, and was instrumental in contracting laborers from Japan, Puerto Rico and Portugal to work at Lihue Plantation.
Among the descendants of those German immigrants bearing German surnames on Kauai are the Koertes, Brauns, Bandmanns, Lemkes, Schumachers, Kruses and Schimmelfennigs.
Intermarriage of these Germans with other ethnicities was commonplace.
Other prominent early German immigrants in Hawaii are physician William Hillebrand ( 1821-86), industrialist Claus Spreckles (1828-1908), businessman Heinrich Hackfeld (1815-87), merchant B. F. Ehlers (1852-98), and bandmaster Henri Berger (1844-1929).
