I was reading a Louisa May Alcott book and couples were making arrangements to pair up for "The German" part of a ball with implications that it was a little more serious than the rest of the dances. Google just gives me a lot of German politics. Was it a particular dance or something else?
Yes, it was a family of dances.
This page at American Memory will give you a brief run-down on it. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dihtml/diessay6.html Also a video clip.
The funny thing is that the German, in its many forms, is barely a dance at all. I've described it as a parlour game to music, involving changing partners while passing around an object (called a favour), some silly stunts for the gentlemen, and in one variant, what we would call musical chairs.