I'm a Dutchman living in Germany, and in US media, I often see typical German names (especially the ones ending in -berg and -stein) used as stereotypical names for Jews, both in fiction and reality. Of course, in the Netherlands and Germany, that's not the case as they're all very German names. Is this an after-effect of WWII? And if not, how did this happen?
Thanks for your time!
First of all, I should note that I can only answer half this question. I can talk about why Jews in the US have the last names they do, but not about why Americans with German ancestry tend to not have names like -berg or -stein, or if they do why they don't have a large role in surname-perception in the US.
Anyway, Jews in the US very often have German or quasi-German last names. The reasons for this have to do with Jewish migration demographics and perception of languages. The vast majority of American Jews moved to the US from Eastern or Central Europe, especially between 1881 and 1920. They overwhelmingly spoke some variety of Yiddish.
Because Yiddish is closely related to High German, a lot of names would naturally be common between the languages. Besides that, a lot of Jews lived in areas where German was the official language (not just modern Germany, but East Prussia and Austria-Hungary), so picking a German name (or spelling the name as it would appear in German) made a lot of sense. For that reason -berg and -stein names are fairly common among Jews.
Are your sure you're not mistaking Jewish names for German names, just because they're composed from German words?