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Bernd Birnbaum, formerly of ZF Lemfoerder, hands out playing cards as he plays "Skatabend," a German game, during a weekly meet up with friends at Hans & Franz Biergarten on Tuesday, June 20, 2017.(Photo: JOSH MORGAN/Staff)Buy Photo

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“Warum lernst du deutsch?” German teacher Sabina Kruger asked her three adult students recently at Upstate International in Greenville. “Aus Spass?”

The three retired South Carolinians attending Kruger’s class answered almost as one to her question about why they were learning German — fun, an eagerness to learn more about the culture, maybe a chance to visit friends and use it. Debbie Walsh said she has a daughter working for VW in Germany. Lavinia Plumley said she kept running into fellow Latin teachers over the years who studied German and figured she ought to give it a try. Pat Patton has a German buddy and wants to travel to Germany someday.

The impact that BMW has had on the Upstate’s economy since breaking ground in Greer 25 years ago is unmistakable – a 2014 study by the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business estimated the automaker’s direct and indirect economic output at $16.6 billion in 2013 alone. This includes about 31,000 people employed by BMW or its suppliers.

The prosperity this has brought to the Upstate along with the presence of hundreds of German families since BMW broke ground in 1992, not to mention the European suppliers that have followed the automaker, has also had a profound effect, albeit not as easy to quantify, on the region’s culture.

No one mentioned BMW in Kruger’s class, for instance. But the German automaker is one of Upstate International’s many corporate sponsors, its American employees often take advantage of the club's German classes, and several spouses of BMW employees and suppliers such as ZF round out the ranks of the organization’s International Women’s Club, which throws the annually sold-out Glühwein Party at Christmas. Such support makes Upstate International — a social and educational gathering place for people of multiple nationalities — possible. The Glühwein Party also raises money for Safe Harbor.

More: From peaches and textiles to automobiles: The rebirth of the Upstate

BMW Manufacturing does not share information about its nearly 9,000 employees’ demographics, nor does it share the number of German employees and family members who reside in the Upstate.

Still, the numbers are large enough to support a number of businesses catering to German tastes, and the deutsche Sprache is definitely in the air. Meanwhile, anyone wanting to hear the latest German pop hits or catch a Bundesliga soccer game on TV can dine at Hans & Franz Biergarten on S.C. 14 near Michelin.

“We all have had the experience of taking a plane from Atlanta to GSP, and the language – definitely the second language if not the first – on the plane is German,” Greenville Mayor Knox White said.

A dedicated German-as-a-native-language program has thrived at Christ Church Episcopal School in the years since BMW’s arrival, and Hans Schmidt, a German-born American, said he gets about 100 kids a year enrolling in German-as-a-second-language classes at German School Upstate in Greenville and Spartanburg. The school, which like Upstate International started 20 years ago, receives direct support from the German government.

“A lot of our kids have one parent who is German,” said Schmidt, who is the school’s principal. “We focus totally on the child. We want to make speaking German cool, to make it OK. We have a warm atmosphere with long breaks. They need to want to come to school.”

Natalia Sokil, owner of five European Market shops around the Upstate, said Germans have been some of her most loyal customers.

“People from BMW are coming to the store all the time,” Sokil said. “Half our store is German products.”

The German population also supports local eateries such as Schwaben House on Laurens Road and Legrand French Bakery on Augusta Street. Listen closely to guests eating at restaurants in downtown Greer and Greenville – the mayors of those cities say they hear German every day.

“At lunchtime on Friday in Greer, you will see an awful lot of blue BMW shirts,” Greer Mayor Rick Danner said. “There are a lot of people eating and popping their heads into stores.”

“I was at a fine restaurant downtown yesterday,” White said, “and the table next to us was a group of Germans. It turns out they were from BMW.”

Sadly, Schmidt said, BMW’s German families do not, in general, integrate well with their American neighbors, primarily because their assignments in South Carolina rarely last more than three years. Schmidt came to America in 1990 as a scholarship athlete in javelin for the University of Georgia.

“My son’s friends were always going back,” he said.

Still, the Germans are an amiable bunch if you can find them.

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Christoph von Patow of BMW plays "Skatabend," a German card game, with friends during their weekly meet up at Hans & Franz Biergarten on Tuesday, June 20, 2017. (Photo: JOSH MORGAN/Staff)

On any given Tuesday night, about 10 businessmen gather at Hans & Franz for a "Skatabend" to play cards, drink some beer and generally give each other a hard time. Some, like Christoph von Patow, are from BMW, but the group also attracts (mostly) men from the ranks of BMW suppliers as well as a few German entrepreneurs who have settled in the area. All are welcome, and the language of play is German.

Bernd Birnbaum, a retired executive for ZF Lemforder, a division of ZF, was there on Tuesday. He recalled working at a Lemforder plant in Maine in the early 1990s when he brought a trade-magazine article about BMW to his plant manager. The plant manager took the article, an early preview of the automaker's interest in the Southeast.

"'Give me that, and get out of the room,'" Birmbaum recalls his boss saying. "He closed the door," he added, chuckling. ZF Lemforder would later supply BMW with all the axles it needed for the 3-series assembled at the time in the Greer plant, and Birnbaum moved to Greenville.

Although he appreciates the boost to his business that BMW employees bring, Hans & Franz owner Addy Sulley said he never wanted to tie his restaurant to the German automaker. Thing is, he said, the Upstate is full of companies from across Europe, and they all enjoy a good beer garden.

“Michelin is one of the biggest customers,” Sulley said. “Of course the BMW guys drink here all the time. They are so close by, and we have a small group that is always here because of the soccer games.”

The real impact of BMW, he said, has been more pan-European.

“Diversity is what makes Greenville so big,” Sulley said.

Danner echoed that sentiment.

“Their presence has encouraged other international companies to locate here,” Danner said of BMW. “So for a town of our size, we have incredible business diversity. Other European and Asian countries are well-represented here.”

BMW is also far from the first German company to locate in the Upstate.

German textile-machinery manufacturers have invested heavily in the region since Interstate 85 opened it up to commerce in the 1960s. (An oft-repeated nickname for the stretch of Interstate 85 through Spartanburg County is “The Autobahn”). One of the Skatabend players at Hans & Franz is Alois Krussig, who moved to Spartanburg in 1986 with his company Menzel, a textile machinery manufacturer.

When Michelin opened three plants in the Upstate, one each in Anderson, Greenville and Spartanburg counties, in the mid-1970s, the region started its slow transformation from a dying textiles cluster to a still ascendant automobile cluster. Michelin moved its North American headquarters from Nova Scotia to Greenville in 1988.

“It all started in Spartanburg in particular with the supplier network for the textile industry,” White said. “Really the legacy begins in Spartanburg, and then goes into Greenville with Michelin.”

Downtown Greenville, meanwhile, with its shaded outdoor cafés, flower planters and public green spaces, had already benefited from the leadership of forward-thinking public officials two decades before BMW showed up. Former mayor Max Heller, a native of Vienna, and Charleston native Bill Workman led downtown development from the 1970s through the 1990s. White, Greenville's current mayor, said the city appealed to BMW executives who wanted a location that made sense in terms of quality of life as well as the bottom dollar.

Related: Max Heller considered among fathers of today's downtown

“We built a walkable, people-focused downtown that has a European feel to it, and they enjoy it and embrace it,” White said. “They affirm it.”

Development throughout Greenville County has expanded right along with the growth of BMW and its supplier network. The BMW effect, Birnbaum said, is undeniable.

"Look at that whole area north of Greenville -- there was nothing there before BMW came in," he said, recalling further how downtown stopped at Main and Broad streets when he first started visiting in 1992. The Camperdown Bridge still covered Reedy Falls. "There was no connection between downtown and the West End."

More recently, Greenville’s older established neighborhoods near downtown, with their sidewalks, small yards, neighborhood schools and walking-distance shopping have become a magnet for ex-pat Europeans looking to invest in a place like home, said White, whose day job is in immigration law. These people, he said, are now buying and renovating historic homes.

“Ten years ago or more, it seemed like all my German clients lived close to the BMW plant,” White said. “Over the last couple of years, it’s been a definite gravitation toward downtown Greenville neighborhoods like the North Main area.

"The word is out.”

For his part, Amsterdam-born Sulley over at Hans & Franz – whose mother was Dutch and father was German – prefers to think of his business as Southern hospitality with a German flair. And he wants to keep it that way.

“That’s the reason I have all the palm trees – in honor of the Palmetto State,” Sulley said.

“I am more Southern than people think."

More: BMW: By the numbers

BMW Manufacturing in Spartanburg County produces its own bit of history by way of an internal newspaper.

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