Citizens in a Strange Land: A Study of German-American Broadsides and Their Meaning for Germans in North America, 1730–1830 9780271061009

Citation preview

Citizens in a

Strange Land

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max kade german-american research institute series Edited by A. Gregg Roeber and Daniel Purdy

This series provides an outlet for books that reflect the mission of the Penn State Max Kade Institute: to integrate the history and culture of German speakers in the Americas with the major themes of early modern scholarship from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century.

The Max Kade German-American Research Institute, located on Penn State’s campus (http://www.maxkade.psu.edu/), was founded in 1993 thanks to a grant from the Max Kade Foundation, New York. The directors of the Penn State Max Kade German-American Research Institute are Daniel Purdy and A. Gregg Roeber.

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Citizens in a Strange Land A Study of German-American Broadsides and Their Meaning for Germans in North America, 1730–1830

Hermann Wellenreuther

THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS UNIVERSITY PARK , PENNSYLVANIA

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This book has been published through the support of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grants WE 586/10-1 and WE 586/17-1.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wellenreuther, Hermann. Citizens in a strange land : a study of German-American broadsides and their meaning for Germans in North America, 1730–1830 / Hermann Wellenreuther. p. cm.—(Max Kade German-American Research Institute series) Summary: ‘‘Examines German broadsides published in America from 1730 to 1830. Through them, explores aspects of the German-American world, including printing, religious practices, social life, politics, education, farming, economics, and medicine’’—Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-271-05937-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Germans—North America—Social life and customs—18th century—Sources. 2. Germans—North America—Social life and customs—19th century—Sources. 3. German Americans—Social life and customs—18th century—Sources. 4. German Americans—Social life and customs—19th century—Sources. 5. Broadsides—North America—History—18th century. 6. Broadsides—North America—History—19th century. 7. Printing—North America—History—18th century. 8. Printing—North America—History—19th century. I. Title. II. Series: Max Kade German-American Research Institute series. E49.2.G3W45 2013 973⬘.0431—dc23 2012051290 Copyright  2013 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48-1992.

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For Claudia

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations / ix Preface and Acknowledgments / xiii

Introduction / 1

One The German-American Printing World / 11

Two The German-American Secular World / 49

Three Praying and Reading: House Devotions of German Settlers / 140

Four Pennsylvania Politics and German Political Broadsides, 1730–1830 / 194 Conclusion / 248

Appendix A: Georg Hohmann’s Broadsides / 255 Appendix B: Statistical Tables / 259 Notes / 275 Bibliography / 320 Index / 341

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ILLUSTRATIONS

color plates

(plates appear after page 176) 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8 9 10 11

12 13

Lieben und geliebt zu werden Ist das gro¨ste Glu¨ck auf Erden Geistlicher Haus-Segen Christlicher Haus-Seegen, Nebst der Zwo¨lf Stunden Geda¨chtniß Himmels-Brief, welcher mit goldenen Buchstaben geschrieben Das Leben und Alter der Menschen. Die Stufenjahre des Menschlichen Lebens von der Wiege bis zum Grabe . . . alphabetischen Gedichte Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern, Worinn wir die wundervolle Leitung Gottes erblicken, in allen Leiden, Widerwa¨rtigkeiten, im Glu¨ck und Unglu¨ck, etc. Detail of Adam und Eva, im Paradies (C. A. Bruckman, [ca. 1815–23]) Detail of Adam und Eva im Paradies (H. W. Villee, [1825–32]) Detail of Adam und Eva im Paradies (Heinrich B. Sage, n.d.) Detail of Adam und Eva im Paradies (Meyers und Christian, [after 1829]) Detail of [Adam und Eva.] ALS GOTT die Welt erschaffen (Samuel Baumann, [1810–20]). Die Wege zum Ewigen Leben oder zum Ewigen Verderben Ein sehr geistreicher Spiegel, als worinnen das rechte Bild des einsamen Lebens erscheinet, und was eigentlich desselben

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14 15 16

Beschaffenheit seye, wann es seine rechtma¨ssige Sache darstellet und ans Licht gibt Der Him[m]el ist mein Stuhl und die Erde meiner Fu¨se Schemel Ich sahe ein Lamm stehen oben auf dem Berge Zion Das neue Jerusalem

figures 1 2

3

4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12

Liebes-Erkla¨rung / 62 Eine wahre Geschichte, oder eine probirte Kunst, in Feuers-Gefahr wie auch in Pestelenz Zeiten zu gebrauchen / 75 Tinctura Assafoeditae Composita. Zusammengesetzte Asandtinktur . . . Dr. Salomon Henkel / 80 Infant in the cradle. Detail of Das Leben und Alter der Menschen (plate 5) / 83 Young man. Detail of Das Leben und Alter der Menschen (plate 5) / 85 Betrachtung u¨ber das ABC / 87 Scho¨ne geistliche auserlesene und Sinnreiche Ra¨tzel-Stu¨cklein / 90 Anfangsgru¨nde der ganzen UniversalHistorie, von Anfang der Welt bis auf diese Zeit / 94 Gebet-Lied der Confirmanden / 100 Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern (plate 6) / 101 Das Leben und Alter der Menschen (plate 5) / 102 Ein neues Trauer-Lied, Enthaltend die Geschichte der Susanna Cox, die in

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ILLUSTRATIONS

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24

25

26

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28 29 30

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Reading wegen den Mord ihres Kindes hingerichtet wurde / 107 Der Bauren-Stand / 116 Das vortreffliche Schaff-Pferd Stumpstowner Bald / 119 Johannes Rose, Mineralisches PferdPulver / 121 Erkla¨rung dieser Tafel / 122 Jahrmarkt . . . Auf Befehl des Managers / 124 Tobias Hirte, Sclaven-Handel. Die Menschlichkeit beleidiget / 128 Das Todesurtheil von Elisabeth Moore und John Charles, und das Letzte Bekenntniß von Elisabeth Moore . . . 1809, zu York in Pennsylvanien, hingerichtet wurden . . . / 130 Eine wahre Geschichte / 137 Konfirmazionslied (‘‘Fu¨hl das heiligste Entzu¨cken’’) / 144 Trost Lied, fu¨r ein Nachfolger JESU / 145 Ein Scho¨n JEsus-Lied / 147 Die Richtschnur und Regel eines Streiters Jesu Christi, welcher in die ewige Scha¨tze der Weißheit verlibet ist / 160 1. Corinth. 1 v. 81 [sic]. Das Wort vom Creutz ist zwar eine Thorheit denen die verlohren werden / 164 Gedanken u¨ber den Zustand der Kirche, (sonderlich in Europa,) in der nahen Stunde der Versuchung, die u¨ber den ganzen Weltkreis kommen wird . . . Yalc. Avilas / 167 Seht doch am Creutzes-Holtz nur euren JESUM an, Er hat ja eure Schuld bezahlt und abgethan / 176 ‘‘Joseph’s Second Dream’’ / 181 Detail of Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern / 182 Detail of Der Him[m]el ist mein Stuhl (plate 14) / 184

32

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34

35 36 37

Eine Vorstellung von Begebenheiten, welche sich auf die Kirche GOttes und die Welt beziehet, durch emblematische Figuren . . . / 187 Auf Befehl von dem Ko¨nig der Ko¨nige . . . das Weltgericht oder der Ju¨ngste Tag / 190 Ein Wohl-gemeindter und Ernstlicher Rath an unsere Lands-Leute, die Teutschen / 202 [Christoph Saur I], Eine zu dieser Zeit ho¨chstno¨thige Warnung und Erinnerung an die freye Einwohner der Provintz Pensylvanien von Einem, dem die Wohlfahrt des Landes angelegen und darauf bedacht ist / 208 Eine lustige Aria, u¨ber die letztgeschehene Unruhen in Philadelphia / 212 Nun will ich Valediciren Nun So Will ich / 218 An die hochgeehrten Glieder der Assembly, des Pennsylvanischen Staats. Das Memorial verschiedener Einwohner der Graffschaft Lancaster giebt mit aller gebu¨hrenden Hochachtung zu erkennen / 235

tables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Changing book trading patterns / 12 German printing presses in North America, 1730–1830 / 15 German almanacs printed and distributed by Daniel Billmeyer / 18 Publications of Johannes Albrecht, 1788–1806 / 20 Publications of Christian Jacob Hu¨tter, 1800–1830 / 21 Hu¨tter’s economic activities in Lancaster, 1798–1804 / 26 Geographical distribution of customers / 26

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8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

B.1 B.2

B.3 B.4 B.5 B.6

B.7 B.8

Geographical range of orders / 26 Books Yost ordered from Hu¨tter / 27 Medical broadsides: Producers and location / 79 Places of publication of medical broadsides / 79 Broadsides by printers, physicians, and pharmacists according to illness / 81 German congregations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia in 1793 / 141 Hymnals printed in German in North America, 1730–1800 / 142 Main themes of hymns / 171 Five thematic groups / 175 Frequency of broadsides within the five periods / 199 Analysis of broadsides in the colonial period / 199 Distribution of broadsides during political crises / 200 Ticket changes according to the broadside Ho¨ret ihr deutsche Bu¨rger / 214 Categories of broadsides classified according to origin / 259 Towns with printers who produced German-American broadsides, 1728– 1830, sorted by state / 260 Clients of Michael Billmeyer: Pastors and printers / 261 Peddler’s licenses in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1732–1830 / 261 Peddler’s petitions in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1722–1830 / 263 Prices of single sheets, handbills, directions, and information charged by John Ritter & Comp., 1804–1814 / 265 Broadsides advertising real estate, 1760–1830 / 265 Death of owners as motive for sale / 266

B.9 Nature of propery advertised in broadsides / 266 B.10 Broadsides on courtship, love, disappointments, and parodies / 267 B.11 Haussegen broadsides, 1760–1830 / 267 B.12 Heavenly letters and other protection broadsides in figures / 268 B.13 Broadsides on wool-carding machines / 269 B.14 Hand carding and machine carding in selected counties in Pennsylvania and Virginia, 1810 / 270 B.15 Contours of the settlers’ private ‘‘religiosity’’ / 271 B.16 Broadsides on the story of Joseph in Egypt / 271 B.17 Acculturated political terminology, 1741–1764 / 272 B.18 German political broadsides / 272

graphs 1 2

3 4 5

Broadsides advertising real estate sales, 1760–1830 / 52 Broadsides advertising real estate sales, with place of publication and language, 1760–1830 / 52 Broadsides on real estate, with motives for selling and language, by decade / 53 Broadsides on movable properties, by decade / 53 Broadsides on immovable properties, by decade / 54

map 1

Map of Pennsylvania (1819) with locations of German-language printers / 16

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The history of Pennsylvania is usually written as that of its English-speaking inhabitants; other ethnic and linguistic groups, like Native Americans, Swedes, French Huguenots, Finns, and Germans, live their separate and somewhat isolated historiographical lives. This means that while they exist, as far as the cultural, political, economic, and religious development of Pennsylvania is concerned, they are perceived to be by and large irrelevant. In a sense this is natural: after all, English-speaking inhabitants formed and form the large majority of Pennsylvanians. This was not always so, however. Until 1700 European immigrants were still outnumbered by Native Americans; at the beginning of the French and Indian War German settlers probably constituted about 50 percent of the colony’s European population; and by the time of the Declaration of Independence they may still have represented about a third of Pennsylvania’s population.1 One reason for the emphasis on the English majority in Pennsylvania’s history has to do with language. Almost all governmental records of Pennsylvania are in English; except for Saur’s almanacs and his newspaper, there is no single group of sources in the German language, with the exception of the German-American broadsides analyzed in this study, which have been ably described by Corinne P. and Russell Earnest and by Don Yoder.2 Their work is described in detail in the introduction. This study has profited greatly from their achievements. How it opens up new research perspectives is discussed in the introduction. Materially, this study is based on the work of a research group the author chaired between 2000 and 2007 at the Georg-August University at Go¨ttingen, which systematically searched, sorted, and described the large number of German-American broadsides published between 1730 and 1830 that we had found in American repositories and in private collections. Parallel to this study, the Pennsylvania State University Press will publish a bibliography of German-American broadsides, and the university’s library will host an Internet database containing images of the broadsides. The bibliography and database will contain full bibliographic information on the broadsides discussed in this study, as well as on the remainder of those we found. No scholarly book can be written without the help of others, and this one is no exception. The classification system according to which the broadsides were arranged was largely developed by Dr. Carola Wessel, the first bibliographer of the Go¨ttingen research group; without her groundbreaking work this study could not have been written. When she passed away in early 2003 we thought that the project would have to be aborted, so heavy did we feel her loss to be. When I toured archives and libraries

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

in Pennsylvania I stumbled at almost every place over her tracks; archivists and librarians shared with me their memories of her. In late 2004 we found in Dr. Anne von Kamp another librarian and bibliographer who ably and energetically continued where Carola Wessel had left off. Reimer Eck, the second member of the research group and then head of the library’s North America department, and I resumed work, and by 2007 we had finished the project and submitted our final reports to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council), which had so generously funded the project (grant WE 586/10–1). The council likewise helped publish this study with another generous grant (grant WE 586/17–1); for both these grants the council deserves our gratitude. In the bibliography volume we list and thank all the institutions that have liberally shared with us their treasures. Here I can only repeat what we say there: that without their cooperation this project and thus this study would not have been begun, continued, and completed. For this study two librarians have been particularly helpful: James N. Greene of the Library Company, Philadelphia, who had always time for me and helped me to sort out difficult issues of the German publishing world in North America; and Sandra Stelts, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Paterno Library, Pennsylvania State University, whose generosity and kindness eased my worries when I got stuck with endless numbers of hymnals and other soul-saving publications. We are likewise deeply grateful to the staff of the Paterno Library, who under the energetic guidance of Mike Furlough, Assistant Dean for Scholarly Communications and CoDirector, Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing, have taken over the digital publication of our broadside bibliography and have procured permission to reproduce those broadsides whose images were not in our possession. In the many meetings and the two workshops in which we participated, we profited greatly from their technical expertise in modernizing databases and improving digital images. My friend A. Gregg Roeber kindly invited me to publish this study in the Max Kade German-American Research Institute Series. As always, his kindness extended to endless hours we spent together in arguing over interpretations of particularly challenging religious broadsides, and again I was the learner in these conversations. Thanks to his good offices the Max Kade Foundation has supported the project and provided funds for the workshops and other cost-intensive parts of the project; we are grateful to the Foundation. Finally, Penn State Press manuscript editor John P. Morris has not only saved me from many unhappy phrases and linguistic traps, but has proved that his mathematical abilities by far surpassed mine; in general, he has displayed uncalled-for patience with an author who not always was willing to see the light. Last but not least, the Go¨ttingen research group had a large share in the writing of the book. Both Reimer Eck and Dr. von Kamp were always willing to spend time with me in sorting out difficult bibliographical problems. Dr. Thomas Fischer of the Go¨ttingen University Library was likewise ever ready to sort out our problems with the Allegro database we used. Three close good friends have a large share in this study: Hartmut Lehmann, former Director of the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., and Director of the

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Max-Planck Institut fu¨r Geschichte in Go¨ttingen, my friend of forty years; Timothy H. Breen, whom I first met during my year as a fellow of the Commonwealth Fund of New York at Yale, and with whom I spent many hours during our joint times in Evanston and at the Huntington Library arguing about broadsides and the misery of the world; and finally, Mark Ha¨berlein, Chair of Early Modern History at the University of Bamberg, who has devoted much time to carefully weeding out errors and guiding me to the latest research in the field. I have lived with broadsides in general for over ten years; it took me four years to conceptualize and write this study. One person in particular has supported me, spent time with the project, read each chapter of the manuscript, fought with me over eternity envisioned in broadsides and printed images, listened for endless hours to my reading to her sections of the book—and after all she has suffered, she still wants to share the good and bad with me: my wife, Claudia Schnurmann. To her I dedicate this book. Hermann Wellenreuther Go¨ttingen, early December 2012

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The Setting In a broadside published in September 1741, Conrad Weiser reminded his fellow German settlers of what they had hoped to achieve in immigrating to Pennsylvania: ‘‘to attain peace and security, and to more easily secure our daily bread than in Germany. All of which we have abundantly achieved [in this country].’’1 In the midst of social, political, and military crises, thousands of middling and poor people in southern Germany had packed up and decided to leave. Most of them opted for eastern Europe, but by the time of the American Revolution some one hundred thousand men, women, and children from Baden and Wu¨rttemberg had emigrated to Pennsylvania, their ‘‘new Canaan.’’2 To Badenians and Swabians Pennsylvania was known as the land of unlimited freedom of conscience, the land of liberty, rights, and the possibility of acquiring property by sheer dedication, work, and discipline—virtues southern Germans seemed to possess in abundance. Faced with feudal dues and indebtedness, these Germans were tired of being discriminated against as the dregs of society, tired of war miseries, and tired of shabby treatment by their local landlords and squires. To them, Pennsylvania seemed the land of hope and glory, the perfect refuge where they would be able to achieve a peaceful life on earth and eternal bliss in heaven. With the beginning of the War of Austrian Succession in December 1740, the harmony that had reigned in Pennsylvania collapsed—not because Thomas Penn, eldest son of William Penn, had become the monster some of his political opponents thought, but simply because macro-political conditions in Europe and in the Atlantic world had changed.3 As shadows began to darken the bright new American world, Conrad Weiser’s broadsides appealed to the rapidly growing number of German immigrants to vote for candidates who, under the mounting danger of war, favored defensive measures. They mark the beginning of one of the most turbulent phases in the history of Pennsylvania.

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Germans had fled war and misery. Now, according to Weiser, war had again caught up with them. Yet that was not the only problem Germans faced. They could not understand Pennsylvania’s large English-speaking majority; they had to accept indentures for up to five years with a farmer, albeit often a German one; in the first two years increased mortality threatened their lives;4 and they had to cope generally with cultural, political, and social dislocation. These difficult experiences, together with their European memories, became deeply engrained in their minds. The English, Welsh, and Irish in Pennsylvania experienced this influx of foreigners differently. For them in 1739 Pennsylvania was still a peaceful haven, stable and quiet except for the little catastrophes here and there. Two years later that peace was gone. Political controversy reigned as the colony became politically deeply divided between the dominant Quaker Party and the small but influential Proprietary Party, which drew its strength from its closeness to the proprietors of the colony. In this context the German settlers voted the way most English settlers did: for the Quaker Party. As long as the number of naturalized German settlers was small, their vote was insignificant. The rapidly growing influx of Germans from the 1730s onwards, however, increasingly irritated the English, who perceived these newcomers as a danger to English culture and politics.5 The process for acquiring full citizen status and thus the right to vote was eased in 1741 by the arrival of the new general naturalization act of the British Parliament and in February 1743 by the passage of laws in Pennsylvania that allowed German Mennonites and other peace churches to substitute affirmations for the required oaths of allegiance.6 Along with the substantial immigration not only from Germany but from Scotland and Ireland, this meant that Pennsylvania was gradually becoming a multiethnic society. This picture was complicated even more by a continuous substantial immigration from Ireland and Scotland. As future developments would show, the English considered both a problem. As it turned out, Germans would come to adopt English prejudices toward the Irish. Another consequence was that pacifism, which had been seen as a distinctive mark of Quakerism, came to be associated with a number of German peace churches, including Moravians, Mennonites, and Dunkers.7 The consequences of this development would continue to surface in Pennsylvania politics until the early nineteenth century. Most German immigrants, like most of Pennsylvania’s population in general, became farmers. The greater part of them finally settled in the colony’s southeastern counties—Berks, Lancaster, and Northampton—which became German strongholds after the middle of the eighteenth century.8 This is the region with which this book is primarily concerned.

German-American Broadsides Conrad Weiser’s reminder of German immigrants’ initial hopes is contained in one of the first German-American broadsides;9 the first German sheet, entitled Notice calling

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for the payment of consideration money, dated November 1738, was printed by Benjamin Franklin. Its existence is known from Franklin’s account book.10 In the same year a second German printing appeared, the first for which information on date, place of publication, and printer has survived: Eine Ernstliche Ermahnung, An Junge und Alte. Its colophon states, ‘‘Germanton [sic] Gedruckt und zu finden bey Christoph Saur. 1738.’’11 Christoph Saur I (1693–1758) would dominate German print culture in the Middle Atlantic colonies. This first printing fits the definition of ‘‘broadside’’ we employ in this study as well as in the larger project on which it is based: a broadside is a sheet that is printed on a single sheet on either one or both sides irrespective of its contents. We exclude three categories from this definition: forms, formulas, and handwritten texts. Who are ‘‘we’’? The answer is simple: we are the members of a research team whose genesis reaches back to the 1980s, when Dr. Werner Tannhoff, a librarian, returned from a two-year research stay in the United States. Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Dr. Tannhoff had collected data on German-language publications published in North America between 1730 and 1830. The fruits of his labor were published in 1989 in a two-volume bibliography.12 In the course of his studies, Dr. Tannhoff had also collected bibliographical data on about five hundred broadsides whose existence had hitherto been unknown. Faced with this rich harvest, the editors of the bibliography decided that ‘‘the even scarcer broadsides had to be left out to be described in a later, supplementary volume.’’13 Some time later Reimer Eck, then chief librarian for the North American holdings in the Niedersa¨chsische Staats- und Universita¨tsbibliothek Go¨ttingen, asked me whether I would be willing to sponsor a new application to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for funds to continue work on these precious leftovers. I agreed in principle. By early 2000 the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft granted sufficient funds to continue and complete work on the German-American broadsides. The research team consisted then of Reimer Eck, Dr. Carola Wessel as research bibliographer, and myself as project director. At the outset we agreed, first, on the above-mentioned definition of ‘‘broadside’’; second, on developing a subject-focused project index; third, on listing all the bibliographical data in a database according to the project index; and fourth, on linking the data to their digitized images. Finally we decided that another search for German broadsides in American libraries, archives, and private collections was necessary. Based on a thorough analysis of the broadsides Dr. Tannhoff had catalogued, Dr. Wessel developed a project index that, with slight variations, still forms the backbone of our project. The index has been invaluable in ordering the over seventeen hundred broadsides. This simplified version of the project index provides a rough idea of the classification system of the index:14 1.1–1.6 2.1–2.8 3.1–3.2

Local controversies and politics Devotional poems and hymns Patent medicine

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4.1–4.7 5.1–5.8 6

Advertisements and economy Secular texts Various

Most broadsides were described by Dr. Wessel according to general bibliographic rules15 and to the categories of the project index. She filtered the data into the database. In late 2002 Dr. Wessel went to the United States to hunt for more broadsides. Sadly, after about six months of successful work she fell seriously ill and had to return to Germany. Her death on February 14, 2004, was a great personal loss to all who knew her and to the project. In 2005 Dr. Anne von Kamp, another fine historian and bibliographer, joined the team, and work resumed. The index suggests a panorama of subjects reflecting contemporary concerns and interests of printers and customers. These suggestions form the basis for this study. This is how we will proceed: first, broadsides of particular index positions will be placed in their historical context and, if possible, linked to the historical reality of the times. Second, the texts will be carefully interpreted as potential projections of contemporary visions, concerns, and perceptions. We will ask the following questions: To which visions and perceptions do they respond? What were the functions or purposes of the broadsides? Why were they produced and how did they reach their potential customers? Were they addressed to particular groups or persons? What kind of cultural images did they evoke? To which needs, if any, did they react? Answers to these questions, reported in chapters 2 to 4, are suggested by the links and relationships between broadsides, printers, and customers or users. Each broadside is the product of and reaction to a particular historical setting. The study will therefore be based on a careful reconstruction of the colony’s and state’s print culture (chapter 1), the material conditions of life, the problems German settlers faced, the demands their communities made on individual settlers, the complications to be overcome, and the needs to be satisfied (chapter 2). Since the project index showed large clusters of broadsides with religious subjects, special care will be taken to carefully delineate the religious world of German settlers (chapter 3). Other clusters, for example on local and state political affairs, discussed in chapter 4, seemed to arrange themselves by the problems and needs settlers encountered in the course of their lives. In a very real sense they provide advice, projections, and comment on phases of life from the cradle to the grave. Although the number of German printers proliferated in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there is ample evidence that aside from those printed in Philadelphia, most German broadsides were printed in Lancaster/Ephrata, Reading, York, and Lebanon. This regional concentration reflects the tendency of German settlers to settle in specific counties. The Reverend Johann Christoph Kunze, one of the leading Lutheran pastors and son-in-law of Heinrich Melchior Mu¨ hlenberg, discussed this process in focusing on the language problem:

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I consider it unlikely that the German language will ever die out in Pennsylvania. Yet the situation is different between the east coast and the inner parts of the state. In the latter parts children would find it difficult to wean themselves from the German language and be ashamed of using it. In some rural regions Germans live so closely together that one finds large villages where no English at all live and where no schools for English children exist. In these villages life is as genuinely German as in Swabia or in the Palatinate—and it will remain so for a long time to come. . . . The real German farmer prefers to live among other Germans and only rarely or never moves into a region where English farmers settle, whom they call ‘‘Eirisch.’’16 Kunze went on to point out that the controversies over the use of German or English in German Lutheran churches were unlikely to plague these rural regions. By implication he suggested, as it turned out correctly, that these language controversies were the product of linguistically mixed neighborhoods. Indeed, the fiercest battle over the use of German or English was fought out in the Lutheran congregation in Philadelphia, where between 1803 and 1825 the congregation was badly split between advocates and opponents of the use of English in Lutheran services. In the end the advocates of English split off and started their own congregation.17 Without explicit proofs, the analysis of the relationship between German settlers and the broadsides rests on the assumption that for the most part these broadsides were not only produced but read and consumed in the rural regions where most Pennsylvania Germans lived and where they had created their own cultural, religious, political, and linguistic communities.

Research on Broadsides and Definitions Broadsides are part of the communicative system of the Atlantic world, and our lack of knowledge about that system’s contours and contents is a direct result of the historiography of broadsides.18 For example, the subject entries for ‘‘Einblattdrucke’’ in the Herzog August Bibliothek at Wolfenbu¨ttel list sixty-nine titles, sixty-seven of which refer to broadsides issued in late medieval times and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.19 The list of the sixty-six titles on broadsides owned by the second contributing library to the Fachdatenbank Buchwissenschaft (Database for Library Science), the St. Gallen Klosterbibliothek in Switzerland, is similarly skewed,20 as is that of the Fachdatenbank Buchwissenschaft of the University Library Erlangen, which contains twenty-eight titles on broadsides printed prior to 1680.21 Aside from these libraries, probably the largest collection of broadsides is housed in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The library has made impressive efforts in making its holdings in modern scholarship on broadsides, single leaves, and broadsheets available. Most of them have been digitized. The bibliography Auswahlbibliographie zur Geschichte des Einblattdrucks in

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der fru¨hen Neuzeit, published in 2003 by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, offers the best survey of international scholarship on broadsides and is easily downloaded.22 It confirms the impression gained from the holdings of the other three libraries: scholarship on broadsides focuses heavily on broadsides prior to 1700. Because the distribution, function, and movement of broadsides within a European or an Atlantic context have thus far escaped the attention of scholarship, our Go¨ttingen project, of which this study is a part, has ventured into hitherto largely unplowed fields. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term ‘‘broadside’’ seems to have come into use in the second half of the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, however, the term was not widespread in England or in the Middle Atlantic British colonies. The printers in Pennsylvania seem to have preferred terms like ‘‘sheet’’ or ‘‘handbill.’’23 In Germany the Swabian poet Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1739– 1791) is credited with introducing the terms ‘‘Flugblatt’’ (flying leaf ) and ‘‘Flugschrift’’ into the history of the printed word. Neither Johann Heinrich Zedler (1706–1751), whose encyclopedia was published between 1731 and 1754, nor Johann Christoph Adelung, whose Grammatisch-Kritisches Wo¨rterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart appeared in five volumes between 1774 and 1786, included the terms.24 Schubart coined ‘‘Flugblatt’’ in 1786/87 as a creative translation of the French term ‘‘feuille volante’’ to replace the older generic terms ‘‘Libell,’’ ‘‘Tractat,’’ and ‘‘Pasquill.’’25 German scholarship is agreed that a ‘‘Flugblatt’’ consists of one sheet printed on one or both sides that addresses newsworthy and controversial subjects of a particular time.26 There are disagreements about the exact differences between ‘‘Flugschrift’’ and ‘‘Flugblatt,’’ but they do not concern us here. Until the last two decades most German scholars viewed these flying leaves as curiosities of interest only to the folklorist. Specialists on the Protestant Reformation period and on early print culture did realize early on their exceptional value in the swift dissemination of new religious insights; scholars also noted the important role they played during the Thirty Years’ War and in the fierce public debates in Germany between 1847 and 1849.27 But outside these critical periods broadsides remained an ignored species. Probably the most important reason for this crisis-centered attention to broadsides has to do with the German definition of a broadside: its function and definition are dependent on ‘‘sensations, catastrophes, crises, and wars.’’28 This rather limited perception is squarely contradicted by a large number of broadsides discussed in this study. American historiography on broadsides does not differ significantly from its German counterpart. The index to Lawrence C. Wroth’s magisterial The Colonial Printer does not mention the term; Michael Warner in The Letters of the Republic includes ‘‘broadside ballads’’ in his description of ‘‘counterpublic literature’’ and credits them with a role in the public debate on politics,29 but that exhausts his treatment. David P. Shields describes the New England broadsides—mostly elegies on the famous dead, usually composed by Harvard men—as part of ‘‘the parochialism of the collegiate cult of memory’’; they were often ‘‘collected and displayed in [rural] households.’’30 To our

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knowledge only one monographic study examines the role and contribution of broadsides to the public debate during the American Revolution.31 The impressive exception to this meager harvest is the scholarship on German broadsides as part of Pennsylvania Dutch culture. For a long time scholarly discussion of these broadsides was confined to little articles in journals or magazines like Der Reggeboge that specialized in the Pennsylvania Dutch.32 But within a few months in 2005 the first two comprehensive studies were published: Corinne and Russell Earnest’s Flying Leaves and One-Sheets: Pennsylvania German Broadsides, Fraktur, and Their Printers and Don Yoder’s The Pennsylvania German Broadside.33 Both studies were based on the authors’ own large collections of German-American broadsides. The Earnests’ collection is housed at the Schoeneck Library in East Berlin, Pennsylvania; Yoder’s Roughwood Collection is now deposited at the Library Company at Philadelphia. In the preface to Flying Leaves and One-Sheets, Edward L. Rosenberry rightly describes the Earnests’ work as a ‘‘landscape view of a largely unexplored region among American broadsides’’ and characterizes it overly modestly as an ‘‘introductory’’ and more correctly as a ‘‘pioneering work.’’34 The study is divided into six chapters: the first five chapters sketch the nature of broadsides, their production, shape, paper, coloring and illustrations, texts, and producers. The sixth chapter, the largest, describes in thematic order the whole range of German-American broadsides. Each broadside is accompanied by excellent reproductions that rival in quality Klaus Stopp’s reproductions of birth and baptismal certificates,35 by bibliographical data, and by a brief description of its context and contents. The Earnests include in their definition ‘‘freehand copies of printed examples’’36 and forms like birth certificates and certificates of marriage, but exclude broadsides with official, administrative, or military content. Don Yoder, professor emeritus of folklife studies and American civilization at the University of Pennsylvania, calls his somewhat different, yet equally impressive work ‘‘a history and guide.’’ Yoder’s purpose is to ‘‘illustrate how broadsides, including prints, can be used to illuminate the culture of the Pennsylvania Germans.’’ For him broadsides provide ‘‘a cultural index’’ as a basis for ‘‘a cultural description of the everyday world of the Pennsylvania Germans. They are indeed,’’ says Yoder, ‘‘a ‘window’ into the culture.’’ ‘‘Culture’’ is here meant in a comprehensive sense, for broadsides, Yoder notes, ‘‘illustrate rites of passage, customs of the year, the engagement of the people with religion, politics, and war, and their enjoyment of humor, poetry, and song.’’37 As a true scholar, Yoder begins with an overview of the broadside in Old Europe, Great Britain, and America before he zeroes in on Pennsylvania German culture. In ten chapters he analyzes in detail ten thematic groups of broadsides, ranging from songs and ballads, military, political, and medical broadsides to those that advertise goods, offer religious nourishment, and depict the linguistic and imagined world of the Pennsylvania Dutch. In each chapter the individual broadsides are embedded in rich context and well-researched data both on the genesis of the texts and on the printers who produced them. This contextualization supplements the Earnests’ work; both books

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indeed provide scholars with a rock-solid basis on which they can stand and from whose substance they can and must profit. Yoder’s twenty-page bibliographical essay attests to his erudition. We, the Go¨ttingen team, are not the only ones who have immensely profited from these two books. Indeed, we are most grateful to Yoder and the Earnests for sharing their knowledge with us and allowing us unlimited access to their treasures. Yet this does not mean that our study will repeat what these two have so superbly done. Indeed, it differs in scope, methodology, emphasis, and range of sources from both. Scope: As mentioned above, we have excluded from our definition of broadside all ‘‘forms,’’ or broadsides that have a set form character. Our decision is based on the principle that forms or broadsides of a schedule character are by nature endless. The blanks for birth and death certificates are always valid—one just had to fill in the name of the person and the person’s date of birth or death.38 The same is true for administrative forms like blanks for bonds—they could be used as long as the law did not change.39 We accept criticism of our decision and indeed agree that Fraktur certificates deserve serious scholarly attention—which they have received in Klaus Stopp’s splendid volumes and the Earnests’ and Don Yoder’s exemplary discussions. Finally, we exclude from consideration manuscripts, English broadsides, and other printed sources like treatises and pamphlets. If this had been intended as a comprehensive history of Middle Atlantic print culture, they would of course form one of the bases of this study. But such an enlarged scope would have not only precluded the careful textual analysis of the Pennsylvania German broadsides, but also exceeded the abilities of this author. Methodology: Fundamental to the approach of this study is the assumption that Pennsylvania German broadsides are embedded in a special relationship between the producer and the consumer, in most cases the printer and the customer. In this context these broadsides are the result of specific needs—of local politicians to publicize their perceptions, of pharmacists and doctors to propagate their products, of ill people, of heirs to sell the estates of their loved ones, of the religiously driven to share their insights with the rest of the world. Alternatively, broadsides respond to specific religious concerns of German settlers and provide help to the lover who wants to please his beloved. Methodologically, the concrete and often very detailed analysis of the texts, decorations, and images as an integral whole provides the clues to the nature of these ‘‘needs,’’ which are at the core of the special and dynamic relationship between the producer and the consumer. Our methodological approach thus does not assume a one-to-one relationship between Pennsylvania German broadsides and social life in the Middle Atlantic region. Rather, it assumes a one-to-one relationship between the perceptions and imaginations of both the producer/printer and the consumer/purchaser of Pennsylvania German broadsides. Included in the term ‘‘producer/printer’’ are those who ordered a printer to print a broadside and paid the printer for his services. Put differently, this is not intended to be a history of print culture or of Pennsylvania social life. It is a study of the imaginations, perceptions, and visions of Pennsylvania Germans embodied in German-language broadsides.

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In general we assume that German settlers’ cultural perceptions were formed by their own experiences back in Germany or within their communities in the Middle Atlantic region. This implies that in interpreting broadsides we will ignore possible contemporary English perceptions of similar problems because we cannot assume that these perceptions were known to German settlers. This assumption raises a larger problem. In a broad sense it is evident that cultural perceptions are not nationally confined. Europeans shared perceptions, for example, about the mystical nature of earth, and scholars have described these perceptions in some detail.40 Drawing on these European concepts would imply, however, that German settlers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were aware of them as ‘‘European perceptions’’ or that, more generally, they knew what today’s scholars know. There is no evidence that would support such an assumption. We will therefore not evoke European perceptions of ideas, concepts, and notions in interpreting German settlers’ visions as expressed in German broadsides. Similarly, we do not intend to compare findings about the distribution of print media or the business practices of German printers in North America with findings about English printers. German printers most often learned their jobs in Germany or were, as in the case of Christoph Saur I, self-taught; they worked in a German business environment and streamlined their business practices to the needs of their German customers. There are of course exceptions like Christian Jacob Hu¨tter, and these will be discussed. Similarly, German printers who owned bookshops offered not only German but also English books and therefore served English as well as German customers, as will be shown in the analysis of the business ledger of one German printer, Christian Jacob Hu¨tter. Emphasis and structure: At the center of this study are the printers as the producers of broadsides and the people who acquired, bought, or received them. The broadsides represent links between the two; their messages tell us of the motives for their production and their acquisition. This, and only this, is the reason why the interpretation of their texts is of vital importance. Methodology and emphasis determine the structure of the book. The first chapter is devoted to German printers and how they brought their products to their customers. We have intentionally limited ourselves to them and excluded any discussion of English printers, who made no contribution to Pennsylvania German broadsides and who have already received lavish scholarly attention.41 Chapters 2, 3, and 4 describe and analyze how, with their broadsides, printers or authors expressed or served their and their customers’ needs. The focus on customers’ needs results in emphases that distinctly differ from those of the Earnests and of Yoder. Almost half of all broadsides convey religious messages that speak to the interests and concerns of German settlers. Three in particular will be discussed in the second and third chapters: the need for protection through house blessings and heavenly letters, the need for solace and comfort, and, most importantly, the quest for the attainment of eternal happiness. The analysis of these texts forms the

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core of our hypothesis that Pennsylvania German society was not only intensely religious but, as part of an Atlantic Christian community, Pietistic and driven by the hope of the coming of Christ. A final aspect has to be mentioned: broadsides are not only literary artifacts but sheets in which texts, illustrations, decorations, and artistic embellishments merge and thus produce messages that transcend purely textual meanings. Unraveling the meanings of these broadsides often required detailed inquiries, which in some cases led us into fairly specific biblical discussions and often forced us to draw on the insights of art historians. Fortunately, scholarship has identified the meanings of symbols popular within the Ephrata circle.42 In many other cases our interpretations probably do not do justice to the complexity of the messages conveyed in the broadsides. If in the end the idea of a lively German community in Pennsylvania with its own religious, social, material, and political concerns, hopes, and visions emerges, then this is most of all due to the messages and comments the broadsides carried. The reader of these lines will occasionally miss modern scholarly discussions of the subjects examined in this book. The author shares this feeling. It is unfortunate that many important aspects of the life of German settlers in the Middle Atlantic region have thus far received very little scholarly attention. While we know, for example, much about the art of medicine within the American majority society, and about emotions, love, and death, no work exists on these subjects regarding German settlers in the Middle Atlantic region. It would of course not be appropriate to transpose scholarly findings based on sources produced by English colonists onto German settlers—one of the important findings of this study, after all, is that precious few connections existed between the majority of Germans and their surrounding American neighbors. At least as far as their cultural and religious interests were concerned, the two societies lived side by side, but without significant contact.

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One THE GERMAN-AMERICAN PRINTING WORLD

Heady words and phrases like ‘‘print culture’’ and ‘‘public sphere’’ shape our thoughts about books.1 Authors worry whether a print culture and a public sphere existed at all in the colonial, Revolutionary, or early national period—and occasionally become depressed by indications that the Revolution may have happened without the existence of a ‘‘national print culture.’’2 These thoughts, however, are exclusively focused on English-language books, publishing, and culture. Given the dominating influence of English printing in shaping American thinking in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this is natural. Non-English books of any kind do not play a role in this debate: scholars conceive the emergence of the American nation as an English-language event. That raises the question of the role of non-English minorities like the German settlers within the larger cultural and political setting of North America. Did the German inhabitants who represented about one-third of the American population read only English books, if at all? Of course not. According to Arndt and Eck, between 1728 and 1830 some 3,151 German books, treatises, magazines, almanacs, and pamphlets were printed in North America.3 To these one must now add the 1,682 German-language broadsides published in the same period that are the subject of this study. At least for the Middle Atlantic region, these production figures are far from negligible.4 But these German publications have thus far received little scholarly attention.5 We know little about who produced them, who bought them, what made them so attractive that German settlers were willing to spend money on them, and finally, what their role and meaning were in the life and culture of German settlers. We hope to answer some of these questions in the following pages. How did these German publications reach customers in early America? Where could a hypothetical German farming couple buy broadsides, hymnals, or Bibles? Today we assume that the bookstore is still the most important distribution center for books, newspapers, and other printed items, probably because visiting a bookstore means more than just buying something: it means walking leisurely between the shelves, sipping a coffee while leafing through a book that has caught our eye. At the same time we know

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that this is only part of the story, for today Internet stores like Amazon represent a sharply rising part of book sales, at least in the Western world. The figures on the sales of the biggest American players for 2008 suggest changes in book trading patterns (see table 1).6 Data for Germany indicate that the large majority of books in Germany are still sold through bookstores. According to a report in Das Bo¨rsenblatt, only 8–9 percent of all sales were negotiated via the Internet.7 Discussing the importance of Internet business is not the purpose of this first chapter. It is rather designed to introduce the reader to German print culture and its economic underpinnings in North America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. We will set out with a short discussion of where the printers acquired the texts for the broadsides they produced. In the next section we will offer a description of the numbers and locations of German printers and the links between them. We will argue that apprentices as well as membership in the same church linked German printers until the early nineteenth century, when they slowly joined the mainstream of American print culture. The next section will seek answers to the simple question of how customers acquired print products. The analysis discounts the importance of peddlers and to a lesser extent of markets and fairs. Instead, the evidence from merchant accounts in the following section, ‘‘Price of Printing and the Distribution of Books,’’ suggests a complex network that linked merchants in the rural economy on the one hand to the metropolis and on the other to potential customers. In the penultimate section of the chapter, ‘‘German Settlers, Printers, and Broadsides,’’ we focus on the question of what determined the survival rate of broadsides. In the concluding section we sketch the complex relationships between printers, customers, and motives for production and acquisition of broadsides that form the basis for the analyses in the following chapters.

Who Authored the Texts? Where did printers get the texts for the 1,682 broadsides? The composition of the text as well as the costs were the responsibility of those who wanted them to appear in Table 1 Changing book trading patterns North American sales (books, media plus coffee, etc.)

Company Barnes and Noble / B. Dalton Borders / Waldenbooks Amazon media (excludes electronics, services—books, includes books, music, DVDs) BN.com Total

$4.68 billion $3.41 billion (excludes international) $4.63 billion (2006 was the first year Amazon outsold Borders in North America) $477 million (also used to promote stores) $13.20 billion

Source: Morris Rosenthal, North American Book Market, 2008, http://www.fonerbooks.com/booksale.htm (accessed July 2, 2008).

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broadside form, namely the sellers of medicine, those advertising the sale of an estate, books, or other goods, those promoting an election campaign, as well as those putting forth an official public announcement. Some claimed that they had authored the texts: Johann Georg Hohmann alleged that he had written some of the songs he printed, or at least improved them.8 Others, such as Hohmann again, Christian Bru¨stle, Martin Gaby, and the Reverend Friedrich Geissenhainer, just added their names to the broadside so that future owners would know who had initiated the text.9 Possibly many more unknown pastors authored hymns and had them printed at their own expense. The authors of some of the ballads that describe the miserable fate of murderers are known: Johannes Koppelberger10 claimed to have written the ballad Ein Lied, von der Mordgeschichte des Joseph Miller, which went through sixteen editions.11 Johann Valentin Schuller (1759–1833)12 signed his name as author of the ballad Lied von einem Mo¨rder, Namens Johannes Schild . . . der seinen Vater und Mutter mit einer Axt auf das grausamste hingerichtet hat, which never saw a second edition.13 And a large number of the authors of political broadsides, including Christoph Saur I and II, Conrad Weiser, Andreas Emmerich, and the editors of newspapers in Reading, York, Lancaster, and Lebanon, can be named.14 But these publications amount to probably less than a third of all German-American broadsides (see table B.1). For another group of broadsides it is less clear who the authors were: no one claimed authorship of the many secular poems or love poems, or the ballads about outrageous incidents or heinous crimes. We can only suspect that at least a respectable number of these were written by the printers themselves; certainly Peter Montelius wrote some of the broadsides he produced on education and for schools.15 The origin of the largest number of religious broadsides, however, is unknown. For a very few hymns, such as ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen,’’ we have found the European roots. The same is true for heavenly letters (Himmelsbriefe), and probably for some of the many house blessings (Haussegen). Yet despite thorough searches, very few European predecessors of the rest of these broadsides have been located.16 Occasionally a broadside offers excerpts from the writings of a popular religious poet like Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769) or Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen (1670–1739)17—but again, very few broadsides fit this category. In the absence of further research, we assume that most of the hymns published in broadsides were composed in North America; certainly some brothers and sisters at Ephrata copied the example of Conrad Beissel, who wrote literally hundreds of hymns.18 They may have brought their offerings to the monastery’s printshop, had them printed, and then decorated them. In other cases a hymn was probably printed at the suggestion of a pastor. But in the absence of hard evidence, the most likely guess is that for most religious broadsides the printers themselves either wrote the text or got it from a book that was printed either locally—Tersteegen’s books come to mind19 —or elsewhere in the Atlantic world. If our speculations come near the truth, then they would explain why so many of the German printers in North America played such prominent roles in particular denominations: that is certainly true for Christoph Saur I and II, Henrich Miller, Peter

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Leibert, Michael Billmeyer, the members of the Baumann family, and Conrad Zentler.20 Belonging to a particular denomination was one of the most important ways to characterize a Pennsylvania German printer before 1830. The close links between the nature of the broadsides, the themes that shape their broadside productions, and the particular ability of the printers to react to the expectations and needs of their customers would support our main thesis about the symbiotic relationship between customers and printers in early modern North American German print culture.

German Printers in North America In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries purchasing a book was not easy. German settlers who wanted to acquire a book were probably forced to visit a bookshop. If we assume that all printers of German-American texts retailed some of their products through their own bookshops,21 then we get a fair impression of the regional distribution of bookshops that carried at least some German books and broadsides (see tables 2 and B.2). The data offer few surprises. Pennsylvania, the seat of the largest number of German settlers, boasted the most printers and bookshops. After Philadelphia, the printing center par excellence, the centers of book printing and trade were Lancaster, at that time the region with probably the greatest concentration of German settlers, followed by Harrisburg in Dauphin County, the state capital since 1812, Reading, Pittsburgh, and finally Ephrata, which from the early 1730s was the seat of Ephrata Cloister. At least from the perspective of the German-American broadsides, Ephrata in the eighteenth century was the liveliest place for religious printing. All in all, between 1728 and 1830 215 German printers were active in Pennsylvania—though not of course all at the same time. By and large, the number of printers reflects the proportion of German settlers in the colonies and states. Yet there are some surprises: while New Jersey certainly claimed a larger proportion of Germans in its population than Vermont, each state boasted only one German printer; and while in the early nineteenth century Germans in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia most likely outnumbered those in New York and probably in Ohio, there were eleven printers active in New York, twelve in Ohio, but only seven in Virginia.22 This can possibly be explained by the commanding position of the Henkel family, who dominated the book market and printing world in the Shenandoah Valley, largely due to their exceptional number of sons. One notable member of the family was Paul Henkel, who introduced his sons into German Shenandoah parishes as pastors.23 The five printers in New Market between 1809 and 1829 were all sons of this fertile Lutheran pastor (table B.2 counts partnerships as well as publishers and printers separately, making the total number of companies six).24 Before the Revolution most printers of German texts lived within Pennsylvania; outside the state only printers in New York City and Baltimore produced and offered

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Table 2 German printing presses in North America, 1730–1830 States

Number of towns

Number of printers

1 1 1 2 4 3 4 3 31

1 1 1 7 11 11 12 29 215

Massachusetts New Jersey Vermont Virginia North Carolina New York Ohio Maryland Pennsylvania

German texts. After the Revolution printers opened shops in Frederick, Hagerstown, and Baltimore in Maryland and Albany in New York. But the real proliferation of printers again took place in Pennsylvania, where the number of towns with printers jumped from six before the Revolution to fifteen by 1809, as well as North Carolina, where between 1797 and 1827 printers opened shops in Salisbury, Lincolnton, Raleigh (established as state capital in 1792), and Salem. Slightly later the printing business reached Ohio, where Lancaster, Canton, Osnaburg, and Cincinnati became residences of printers. Thus the expansion of the German printing business somewhat reflects the general trends of territorial expansion in the first decades of the early republic. Map 1 illustrates a much more fundamental problem: the distances between the towns demonstrate not only the infrastructural problems contemporary settlers had to overcome in order to bring their products to their customers, but also the difficulty of distributing and acquiring printed matter. Except for the Philadelphia area, printers generally lived in towns usually more than ten miles apart. Certain regions, like the central, the northwest, and the central-north regions of Pennsylvania, boasted no German printers at all, although at least the central region, around what is today State College, attracted considerable numbers of German settlers by the 1810s. The evidence of this map thus raises the simple question of how printers and settlers managed to get together, the one to sell and the other to purchase the printed matter. German-American printers were not only widely dispersed but linked among themselves in a variety of ways beyond the simple fact that the printers of one town or city would know each other, even if they were in opposing camps. Most of the important German-American printers were concentrated in five places: 1. In Philadelphia/Germantown the most important were Christoph Saur I (1693–1758) and Christoph Saur II (1721–1784), Peter Leibert (1727–1812), Michael Billmeyer (1752–1837) (all Germantown), Henrich Miller (1702–1782), Charles Cist (1738?– 1805), Melchior Steiner (1757?–1807), Zachariah Poulson (1737–1804), and Conrad Zentler (1771?–1848) (all Philadelphia).

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Map 1 Map of Pennsylvania with locations of German-language printers and years of initial printing activity. Adapted from ‘‘A Map of Pennsylvania from the best Authorities,’’ by Jedidiah Morse, 1794. Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg. Note: Some sites not on the original Morse map—Chestnut Hill, Schellsburg, Orwigsburg, Selinsgrove, and others—have been added from more recent maps. Printers in Doylestown and Upper Mahanoy Township are not included here, because the years in which the printers settled in those areas could not be determined.

2. In Ephrata Johann Peter Miller (1709–1796) began the printing business and the Baumann family carried on until the early decades of the nineteenth century. 3. In nearby Lancaster the outstanding printers were Francis Bailey (1735–1815), Johann Albrecht (John Albright) (1745–1806), Joseph Ehrenfried (1783–1862), William Hamilton (1771?–1820), and Hermann W. Ville´e (1789–1842). The Grimlers and Christian Jacob Hu¨tter were significant publishers of newspapers and political opponents of William Hamilton but printed only a few broadsides. Albrecht probably dominated the printing scene in this significant inland town. 4. Farther west by the late eighteenth century, Reading developed into probably the busiest center of German printing. Gottlob Jungmann (1757?–1833), Johann Ritter (1779–1851), Carl August Bruckmann (1791?–1828), Jacob Schneider, and, in the early

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nineteenth century, Johann Ba¨r (1795–1858) were the most active printers in this county town. The impact of printers in Allentown, Easton—Christian Jacob Hu¨tter (1771–1849), after being a bookseller and small-time printer in Lancaster from 1798 to 1805, dominated printing in Easton after moving there in 1806, while his son, Carl Ludwig Hu¨tter, did the same in Allentown—York, and Lebanon was comparatively much smaller, although the broadsides produced in Lebanon by the radical and utopian Protestant pastor Jacob Schnee (1784–1838) are particularly appealing. In general there is no reason to suspect that the printers in these towns interacted with each other more than other craftsmen did. The account books of Billmeyer in Germantown, of Christian Jacob Hu¨tter in Lancaster and Easton, of Johann Ritter in Reading, and of Francis Bailey in Philadelphia and Lancaster do not suggest a closer interaction with the other printers in those cities. Probably of larger importance for the development of the German-American printers was the relationship between master printers and their apprentices. Charting these linear relationships highlights the role of the elder Christoph Saur. In teaching the art of printing to Johann Peter Miller, later Brother Jabez at Ephrata Cloister, he provided the brethren of that cloister with probably their most important tool to shape the religious scene of the eighteenth-century Middle Atlantic region.25 This lineage was extended through Benjamin Baumann (1732–1809), a brother in the Ephrata printshop who most likely learned his trade from Brother Jabez, to Johann Baumann (1765–1809), who was taught printing by his father and who in 1799 transferred the printing equipment from the cloister to his own private house in Ephrata. Johann’s son Samuel Baumann (1788–1820) continued the Ephrata and family tradition from 1810 until 1816, when Joseph Bauman (1789–1862), son of Christian Bauman,26 took over the printing business. From his press issued some of the most important and controversial as well as radical religious texts.27 The century-long printing tradition at Ephrata ended in 1830 when Joseph Bauman moved to Cumberland County, where he continued as a printer.28 The remarkable element in this lineage is that all its members concentrated their printing activities on religious texts. While they did print texts dealing with moral or medical issues, secular literary texts were not within the compass of these printers.29 There was one important genre printed by Christoph Saur I, however, that these printers did not continue: newspapers and almanacs. These were important concerns of the second lineage started by Christoph Saur I through his apprentice Peter Leibert. Leibert belonged to the circle of influential families of the Brethren congregation in Germantown, as shown, for example, by his 1749 marriage to the sister of Alexander Mack Jr.’s (1712–1803) wife, Maria.30 Leibert was a close associate and friend of Christoph Saur II; when the younger Saur’s printing equipment and property were confiscated by the Americans in 1778, it was Leibert who bought most of his friend’s equipment. The continuity in printing extended to the parallel religious activities of Saur II and Leibert. In 1737 Christoph Saur II joined the

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Germantown Brethren congregation, which his father had refused to do, and became one of the ministers in 1753; around the same time Leibert, too, was ordained as a minister of the congregation.31 While both continued to play important roles within the Germantown congregation, in their printing business they pursued a slightly more secular course; both continued the elder Saur’s tradition of printing texts that did not necessarily reflect the religious views of the Brethren. In 1764 the congregation threatened, without success, disciplinary proceedings against Christoph Saur for printing a Reformed catechism;32 most importantly, Saur continued his father’s newspaper under the title Germantowner Zeitung, oder, Sammlung wahrscheinlicher Nachrichten aus dem Natur- und Kirchen-reich. The end of this lineage is marked by Michael Billmeyer. He was most likely the brother of Andrew Billmeyer, who together with Christian Schlichting published the newspaper Der Wahre Republikaner in York from 1805 to 1828.33 Two years after the Peace of Paris, Billmeyer came to Germantown, where he formed a partnership with Peter Leibert, whose daughter Mary he married. The partnership ended in 1788, but the marriage and the friendly relations between the two families persisted. Billmeyer continued to print an almanac in the tradition of the elder Christoph Saur34 and was one of the most important printers of German Lutheran and Reformed hymnals and catechisms. He distributed these works together with his German almanacs throughout the Middle Atlantic region. His account book for 1797–1801 includes a surprisingly large number of Protestant pastors and printers among his clients (table B.3),35 testifying to the appeal his print products enjoyed among them. In addition to the printers listed in the account book, Michael’s brother Daniel Billmeyer’s wholesale ledger reveals that he was yearly sending approximately twelve thousand almanacs printed by his brother to almost every bookdealer and stationer of the Middle Atlantic region. In the ledger he separately lists those for Reading, York, Lebanon, and Wormeldorf as well as Lancaster (see table 3). In short, Michael Billmeyer and his brothers Daniel and

Table 3 German almanacs printed and distributed by Daniel Billmeyer Almanacs wanted for Reading (1823) D. & G. B. Keim G. K. Boyer Benneville Keim

2 gross ( 2 x 12 x 12  288) 1 gross 1 gross

John Schwaiz George Sely Mr. Bell & Son George Getz Fitchhorne & Boyer

1 gross 1 gross 1 gross 1 gross 1 gross

Almanacs wanted for Lancaster John Lander

1 gross

E. Billmeyer in York E. Billmeyer in York

6 dozen 8 gross (8 x 144  1152) 1 gross 1 gross 1/2 gross 1/2 gross

John Willson Jacob Raich in Lebanon Frederick Schulz in Wormeldorf Henry Kush in Wormeldorf

Source: Daniel L. Billmeyer, Wholesale Book Dealer’s Account Book, 1819–1822, BM B-131, Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown, Pa.

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George, who both operated from Philadelphia, not only continued the almanac tradition of the Saurs, but extended it through their elaborate distribution network. A third lineage within the world of German-American printers is associated with the name of Henrich Miller.36 Miller learned his trade together with the second Moravian printer, Johann Brandmu¨ ller (1704–1777), at the printing firm of Johann Ludwig Brandmu¨ller in Basel, Switzerland.37 But while Brandmu¨ller devoted most of his time and energy to religious services and pursued the printing business only for a few years in Friedensthal near Bethlehem, Miller, after a short interlude in Lancaster in the early 1760s, opened shop in Philadelphia, where he continued printing until the British occupied the city. In a broadside Miller published after the British had vacated Philadelphia, he accused the Loyalist Christoph Saur II of having pilfered his printing shop.38 Miller started printing again, but soon retired to Bethlehem, where he died on March 3, 1782. Miller’s tradition was continued by his apprentice Melchior Steiner, to whom, in 1781, he either sold or bequeathed his printing equipment and shop in Philadelphia. Steiner, too, hailed from Switzerland, but belonged to the German Reformed congregation in Philadelphia, of which his father, the Reverend Conrad Steiner, was pastor. The father’s friendship with Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg secured the son the printing business of the United Lutheran Ministry.39 After Steiner finished his apprenticeship he formed a partnership in December 1775 with Charles Cist, whom he had known as an apprentice in Miller’s shop. Cist, born Charles Jacob Sigismund Thiel, had emigrated from Russia to Philadelphia in 1770, where he began to edit, correct, and translate material for Henrich Miller until he entered the partnership with Steiner.40 That partnership was dissolved in summer or autumn 1781, around the same time that Cist married in Philadelphia the Moravian Mary Weiss, daughter of Jacob and Rebecca Weiss of Philadelphia. From there the story gets a bit blurred. It is certain that Charles Cist died December 2, 1805, and that his widow, Mary, continued his printing business for about two years. It is, however, unclear whether Cist accepted a position from the federal government; it is certain that he continued to print books in Philadelphia until 1798 and that around 1800 he moved, probably for less than one year, to Washington, D.C., where in 1800 he published The Post-Office law: with instructions, forms and tables of distances, published for the regulation of the post-offices, and the following year Richard Parkinson’s Of turnip & pea fallows, with a design of a rotation of crops, recommended to the farmers and planters of the United States of America. He then seems to have returned to his printing shop in Philadelphia. From ‘‘Num. 104 in der Nord Zweyten-Strasse’’ in Philadelphia he continued to issue a steady stream of publications until 1805.41 The story of Melchior Steiner is equally unclear, but his publishing activity indicates that he probably stayed in Philadelphia and continued as a printer at least until 1798.42 He certainly formed a number of partnerships with the elder and younger Ka¨mmerers. One continuity that linked the 1760s with the early 1800s was the fact that Henrich Miller had printed both the Moravian Losungen as well as the daily texts; Steiner and Cist continued that tradition until 1780. Between 1781 and 1783 Steiner alone published the Losungen. The print job was then transferred until 1805 to the Lancaster printer

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Johann Albrecht, another member of the Moravian Church and apprentice of Christoph Saur II. Before Albrecht moved to Lancaster in 1788 he had worked in Philadelphia, probably as a journeyman in the office of Francis Bailey.43 The Losungen of the following year were produced by Charles Cist’s widow, Mary, in Philadelphia. From late 1807 onwards Conrad Zentler was awarded all the printing contracts of the Bethlehem Moravians. Zentler had connected himself to the Moravian printing tradition by purchasing the printing shop of Charles Cist from Mary Cist in 1807. While Zentler became the printer of the Moravians, at the same time he enjoyed excellent relations with the Lutheran establishment in Philadelphia, especially with Justus Heinrich Christian Helmuth (1745–1825), the leading pastor of the Lutheran congregation, for whom he printed a number of broadsides as well as religious tracts. Zentler also played a prominent role in the German Society of Pennsylvania.44 At the same time, the titles of Zentler’s publications make it clear that he continued the tradition of Henrich Miller in staying clear of too close an alliance with any particular religious group. Like Steiner and Cist, Zentler lacked the religious fervor of Miller.45 The development of the German printing business in Lancaster and Easton in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries could be taken as a kind of emancipation from dependence on Philadelphia. Johannes Albrecht, no doubt the most important printer in Lancaster between 1789 and 1806, started his career in the 1760s as an apprentice of Christoph Saur II in Germantown.46 In the late 1770s he probably worked in the printing office of Francis Bailey in Philadelphia, and left the city in 1787. During his time as Lancaster’s busiest printer, Albrecht continued the traditions established by Saur and Miller. Most of his publications were religious, with a sprinkling of secular texts (see table 4). The printing program of Christian Jacob Hu¨tter (1771–1849), the second printer with a Moravian background in Lancaster, was more secularly oriented. It is unclear whether this difference can be explained by the fact that Albrecht remained an active member of the Moravian Church, while Hu¨tter left the Moravians in 1791. Born to Moravian parents in Neu Dietendorf, Germany, Hu¨tter was sent by the Moravian congregation at Zeist, Netherlands, to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1789. After two years he left the congregation, married Maria Magdalena Huber, also a former member of the Moravian Church, and settled as a dry goods and book merchant in Philadelphia.

Table 4 Publications of Johannes Albrecht, 1788–1806 Genre

1787–1799

1800–1806

Total

42 7 13 1 3

26 6 7 5 1

68 13 20 6 4

Institutional religious publications Religious tracts and treatises Calendars and almanacs Institutional political publications Secular publications

Source: Based on the data in Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing.

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In late 1798 he moved his family to Lancaster, where he quickly established himself as the leading bookseller and, surprisingly, as a printer. Ill-conceived speculation in alcohol in 1803 resulted in his bankruptcy in late 1804 or 1805. Hu¨tter moved to Easton, restarted his printing business and bookstore, opened an apothecary’s shop, and soon published an English as well as a German newspaper. He was considered one of the most influential local politicians. His son Carl Ludwig Hu¨tter repeated his father’s career in nearby Allentown.47 Hu¨tter’s printing program differs from that of Albrecht (tables 4 and 5 demonstrate the differences). Three differences in particular stand out. First, Albrecht’s printing program is heavily biased in favor of institutional religious and devotional publications, while Hu¨tter’s products are highly diversified, with almanacs, educational, and secular publications being of equal importance to his religious publications. Second, in contrast to printers like Albrecht, Hu¨tter considered printing a subservient effort designed to further his overall ambition to acquire, increase, and maintain influence in the communities of his choice, Lancaster and Easton. And finally, diversification lessened his economic dependence on one particular economic activity and gave him more freedom to pursue his political ambitions. That his business practices helped him consolidate and strengthen his status in Lancaster and Easton will be shown below.48 More importantly, the analysis of his business activities in Lancaster will offer important insights into the distributive system of print media in the Middle Atlantic region. His bankruptcy in Lancaster was not due to his general business strategy but to his folly in speculating with alcohol. When he started anew in Easton, his diversification and energy secured him success and influence. Fittingly, Christian Jacob Hu¨tter, the former Moravian and now lukewarm Lutheran, became the first Worshipful Master of the Easton Lodge of Masons. Easton’s German community from 1810 until Hu¨tter’s death on January 10, 1849, was dominated by this active and agile printer, apothecary, businessman, and politician.49

Table 5 Publications of Christian Jacob Hu¨tter, 1800–1830 Genre Religious literature Politics Almanacs Novels Songs Teaching Medicine Handbooks Catalogues

1800–1805

1806–1815

1816–1830

2 3 3 1 1 0 0 0 0

1 2 0 2 1 8 2 2 0

10 0 10 0 0 1 0 2 1

Source: Based on the data in Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing. Note: Broadsides are not included.

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With Zentler, Billmeyer, and Albrecht the lineages of Saur as well as Henrich Miller reached a point where German-American printing activity merged with mainstream printing. The religious fervor of the Saurs and of Leibert on the one hand and of Miller and the Baumanns at Ephrata on the other had lost its exclusive focus; while Billmeyer, Cist, Steiner, and Zentler continued to print mainly religious texts, they now addressed the religious sentiment of the large German Protestant churches more than the smaller and more radical religious groups like the Brethren, the Baptists, and the Moravians. The printed works of John Ritter50 at Reading and to a lesser extent those of Johann Albrecht51 in Lancaster and Christian Jacob Hu¨tter52 reflected the same developments.

Peddlers and the Selling of Broadsides Precious little is known about how these printers and bookdealers sold their printed materials or how potential customers acquired broadsides or books. Scholars usually focus on the ‘‘book trade,’’ by which they mean the exchange of books between printers, the importation of books from Europe, or the production of books in North America—subjects more attractive than the description and analysis of how books reached their customers. Some scholars have suggested that peddlers carried chapbooks, cheap prints, and broadsides into the countryside, while the large majority of scholars apparently assume that magic brought the books to the potential customer.53 Peddlers, hucksters, or chapmen (all three names were current in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) were an elusive yet, it seems, highly regulated breed within the American colonial and state economies. In Pennsylvania the first law that regulated their activities and required peddlers to take out licenses before they went into the countryside was probably enacted in 1730. It empowered justices of the peace to grant licenses upon application, without, however, restricting the peddlers’ activities in any way.54 This largesse does not seem to have prevented the justices in Quarter Session Courts from adding conditions that restricted the peddlers’ trade if they felt it necessary. Thus, the York County General Quarter Sessions granted a license to one peddler on the condition that ‘‘the above Benjamin Swoope shall not at any time during the Continuance of this present Lycence suffer any drunkenness unlawful Gaming or sell any Liquour to the Indians to debauch or hurt them, but in all things shall well and truly observe and practise all Laws & Ordinances of this Province.’’ Should he fail to fulfill this obligation, Swoope would forfeit his bond of £100.55 Colonial laws for regulating peddlers were continued into the Revolutionary period. The law passed on February 1779 expired in 1783 with the conclusion of the peace with England. Its successor, An Act for Regulating of Hawkers and Peddlers, was passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature on March 30, 1784. It stipulated that the peddler was to post a bond of £100 for good behavior and pay a fee of £5 for the license, which was valid for one year and then had to be renewed—for £5, of course.56 The last law regulating peddlers within the period in question was passed on April 2, 1830. Its most

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important new feature was that it introduced a new table of fees for licenses: peddlers who went on foot alone into the countryside, like James Libby from Perry County, were charged $8 or £1.68 for the license. If they traveled with a one-horse wagon, however, the license would cost them $16 (£3.36); and if, as David N. Camp from Reading proposed, they intended to travel with a wagon and two horses, then the judges demanded $25 (£5.25) for the license. If the peddler chose to trade in clocks, then the fee for the license was $30 (£6.30), which is what Benedict Albert of Harrisburg, Abraham Willcox, and John Keefley were charged.57 Not much is known about those who applied for peddler’s licenses. Some peddlers, like David N. Camp of Reading and James M. Mach of Harrisburg, had enough means to travel the countryside with a wagon and two horses.58 Others, like James Libby from Perry County, were less well off; they traveled the country with their backpacks on foot.59 Some petitions yield additional information: ‘‘Andrew Bowse of Manheim Township in the County of York, a Citizen of the United States,’’ informed the York Quarter Sessions that he ‘‘learned the trade of a Hatter, that from the weak state of his health, he is unable to carry on said trade, thereby to gain a livelihood, That he is desirous of travelling to the Western, or back Country, in order if possible to restore his health, and in order to bear the expenses of his Journey, would wish to carry with him, a few Articles of Store goods on Horse back.’’ After he had produced letters from two physicians that ‘‘certified his bodily infirmity,’’ his prayer was granted by the court. ‘‘Philip Freeman of Hanover Town in the County of York’’ told the same court that he ‘‘hath been sickly for a considerable Time past, and that he has an Inclination of Pedling through this Common Wealth with such Wares and Goods as may be lawful,’’ for which purpose he petitioned successfully for a license. Finally, ‘‘George Robb of Hopewell Township’’ justified his petition by his being ‘‘of low Circumstances, and is unable by Reason of Age to make a Livelihood by Working,’’ and therefore prayed for a license ‘‘to travel with goods as a Pedlar on Foot.’’60 One petitioner admitted to his ‘‘weak state of health,’’ another described his ‘‘sickly’’ state of health, and a third was too old and poor to earn his livelihood by activities other than peddling. Does this suggest that peddlers belonged to the lowest strata of society? Probably not. The question, rather, is why these three gave reasons for their desire to receive a license and the others received their licenses without stating their reasons. The most likely answer is that it was unusual for old and sickly persons to apply for a license as a peddler—a job, after all, that involved walking a lot, carrying a heavy rucksack, and thus required a robust body, endurance, and physical strength. Most likely the typical peddler was a healthy and young or middle-aged man—no petitions by women for licenses exist—who conveyed the impression to the court that he was physically well equipped for the job.61 If peddlers represented the link between producers of goods, such as the printers of broadsides and books, and customers, it should be possible to identify them, especially since they had to petition the local courts, pay a fee, and finally get the license from the governor—all activities that supposedly produced records. The strange fact, however, is

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that peddlers have left few traces in archives. For the period through 1830 the dockets of Dauphin County list only twelve licenses, and these only from 1830.62 A search of the County Court Dockets for York County for the period from 1751 to 1830 yielded only licenses for Philip Freeman, Alexander W. Donald, Martin Uhlem, Felix Gallagher, Andrew Bowse, and George Robb.63 A search in the records for Lancaster County was more successful, as table B.4 testifies. Yet again, the list there includes only a portion of the peddlers’ licenses—there are conspicuous gaps between 1740 and 1757, between 1758 and 1771, during the Revolutionary period, and after 1785. The largest number of licenses for peddlers, one hundred, has survived for Chester County. These are listed in table B.5. This comparable wealth of information contrasts with the dearth of licenses known for Berks County, where we have thus far identified only one person as a peddler. On April 11, 1821, printer John Ritter sold printed matter to ‘‘G. J. Wagner, Pedler’’ for $3.09.64 There is also agreement that Johann Georg Hohmann (1781–ca. 1846), having arrived in Philadelphia on October 12, 1802, and served his indenture time of three and a half years in at least the first ten years of his life in Pennsylvania, followed the same trade, peddling.65 In short, evidence on peddlers is confusing. If we assume that the number of peddler’s licenses issued by the Chester County courts represents a reasonable county average for Pennsylvania, then we must conclude that on the county level only one peddler roamed the countryside per year. A look at the table for Berks and Lancaster peddlers, unfortunately, suggests that this is an oversimplified assumption: peddler’s licenses obviously were in high demand at one time and seem to have been unattractive at other times. Thus, Chester County judges granted two or more licenses per year in the 1730s and 1740s, slightly more in the early 1750s, many fewer in the years after 1763, and probably none between the Revolution and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Except for the four licenses in 1830, licenses were not much sought after in the first three decades of the nineteenth century. This distributive pattern is not dissimilar to that of Lancaster County and suggests that over time the distributive system for goods, including printed matter, was fragile at best. The number of peddler’s licenses granted was insufficient to serve the needs of a growing population. Printers and producers of dry goods on the one hand and farmers as customers on the other could not manage for such long periods of time without buying and selling these goods. Merchants must therefore have employed additional means to reach their customers. Merchants’ and printers’ records suggest a number of alternatives to peddlers. The first was personal visits to the printer’s shop. Most country farmers, however, were probably unable to do this on a regular basis. Another alternative was yearly, quarterly, or weekly fairs, which presented occasions to combine the sale of one’s own produce with the purchase of broadsides, books, or other goods.66 Some printers on these occasions may have put up stands in the market area—a possibility suggested by Jacob Baab in a letter to his former master, John Ritter. From Harrisburg, where he was busy opening a printing shop, he reported to Ritter on February 28, 1828, his success in renting a shop in a very favorable location ‘‘which would make a fine Lottery office

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and stationary [sic]. We are pretty sure that more than the rent may be cleared by that means. There is no such concern in that street.’’ After discussing some printing ventures, he prefaced his determination to make his business in Harrisburg ‘‘a success’’ with the remark ‘‘I am aware that I can at the stand in front street sell many a trifle at a small profit.’’67 Among the ‘‘trifles’’ Baab offered were most likely his broadside Lieder; the sheet reprinted the texts of the three songs ‘‘Arm und klein ist meine Hu¨tte,’’ ‘‘Der Vogelfa¨nger bin ich ja’’ from Mozart’s Magic Flute, and ‘‘Freut Euch des Lebens.’’68

Price of Printing and the Distribution of Books A second and probably more lucrative mode for the distribution of broadsides and other publications was what we would call the mail-order business method. This method could only function through a fairly complex system of connections between booksellers and merchants. An intriguing example for an analysis of this distributive system is provided by the ledger of Christian Jacob Hu¨tter.69 The ledger covers three distinctly different periods: Hu¨tter’s initial period as a wholesale, dry goods, and book merchant in Philadelphia from 1792 until 1796; then his time in Lancaster from 1798 until 1804, where he traded mainly in books; and finally his activities in Easton from 1806 until 1817, a period in which the ledger shows him as a printer, apothecary, and bookseller. Until now it has only been possible to state that books from Germany were consumed by German settlers in North America; who procured them and how they reached the settlers and at what price were mysteries. With Hu¨tter’s ledger it is now possible to begin to answer some of these questions.70 Our findings will establish an important context and framework for the analysis of German broadsides in America. Our analysis will focus on Hu¨tter’s Lancaster activities. The first part concentrates on sales, the second and briefer one on services Hu¨tter offered his customers. Table 6 summarizes Hu¨tter’s economic activities during his time in Lancaster. The table conveys the impression that Hu¨tter conformed to the normal image of a bookseller who offered stationery and pharmaceutical products as a sideline. Only the musical instruments and the sheets and books of music do not fit this pattern. These may easily be accounted for by Hu¨tter’s Moravian background; indeed, most of his customers for instruments and sheets were members of the Moravian Church, the most important exception being Georg Willig (1764–1851).71 This summary of proceeds clearly demonstrates a change of focus: in Philadelphia Hu¨tter had divided his economic activities between dry goods, imported German books, musical instruments, and music sheets, but in Lancaster he concentrated almost exclusively on books, with stationery, printing jobs, and the sale of instruments and music sheets as supplementary activities. The summary conceals that Hu¨tter edited a newspaper, the Lancaster Correspondent, which does not seem to have made a large contribution to his income, however.

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Table 6 Hu¨tter’s economic activities in Lancaster, 1798–1804 Category

Total proceeds in £

% of total

Prints Printing copperplates Medicine and pharmaceutical products Musical instruments Printing labels and pamphlets Stationery Sheets and books of music Books Total

7.05.00 13.14.00 17.19.04 19.13.06 47.16.05 128.14.07 200.00.09 1228.02.04 1663.05.00

0.4% 0.8% 1.1% 1.2% 2.9% 7.7% 12.0% 73.8% 100.0%

Hu¨tter’s customers were widely dispersed geographically (see table 7). The data from the ledger suggest features of the distributive system for printed matter. Obviously a large number of Hu¨tter’s customers lived in Lancaster or the nearby villages (see table 8). These account for fifty-one transactions (15.3 percent). A similar number of orders went to Bethlehem, Nazareth, Lititz, and Salem, North Carolina, the principal Moravian settlements in North America. Unsurprisingly, the many contacts Hu¨tter had formed during his Philadelphia years account for the significant number of orders (12.9

Table 7 Geographical distribution of customers Customers whose residences are known Customers whose residences are unknown Total Customers with known Pennsylvania residences Customers with known Maryland residences Customers with known North Carolina residences Customers with known Virginia residences

252 81 333 223 24 3 2

88.11% 11.89% 100.00% 88.49% 9.52% 1.19% 0.79%

Table 8 Geographical range of orders Lancaster Moravian settlements Bethlehem Lititz Nazareth Salem, N.C. Philadelphia Larger inland towns Harrisburg Reading York Lebanon Orders from Pennsylvania settlements with less than four orders Orders from unknown settlements Total Pennsylvania and North Carolina geographic locations

51 51 27 16 5 3 43 34 17 7 6 4 51 79 309

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percent, table 8) he received from people in the City of Brotherly Love. This, however, needs qualification, since a fair number of orders from Philadelphia came from two government officials who had not moved to Harrisburg, Frederick August Muhlenberg and Tench Coxe.72 These orders, as well as those from other branches of the Pennsylvania state government, like the Secretary of State’s or the Receiver or General Surveyor’s offices, were the consequence of Hu¨ tter’s appointment as printer for the Pennsylvania Legislature.73 Probably the strongest clues to the distributive system for printed materials are suggested by the wide geographic distribution of most of Hu¨ tter’s customers. Hu¨ tter received 130 orders (table 8) from merchant-farmers in thirty Pennsylvania settlements, mostly small villages. These orders reveal a surprising range of needs and interests in the local rural and small-town population of Pennsylvania.74 For example, on July 8, 1799, Daniel Yost of Marlborough Township in Montgomery County ordered books worth £8.15.061/2—a fairly large order (see table 9).75 Marlborough Township was a small settlement: it boasted four taverns, 180 heads of cattle, about 180 horses, three grist mills, and two sawmills. In 1825 some 197 people in the township had to pay taxes.76 Yost lived in this community and probably hoped to sell the books he had ordered from Hu¨tter. The range of themes of these books is astounding. It ranges from scholarly works to travel literature, biographies of great men, historical books, novels, and moral treatises.

Table 9 Books Yost ordered from Hu¨tter Book titles

£

1 Ansons Reise um die Welt 1 Dusch, Moralische Briefe, 2 Theile 1 Herbst Betrachtung 1 Iselin, Tra¨ume eines Menschenfreundes 1 Leben Cooks 1 Reise durch Deutschland, Ungarn etc. 1 Sartorius Bauernkrieg 1 Scho¨pf, Mineralogische Kenntniß 1 Sprengel, Geschichte der Maratten 1 Sprengel, Geschichte der Revolution in Nord Amerika 1 Tu¨des 39ja¨hrige Gefangenschaft 1 Wieland, Cronik von Totojaba 1 Langstedts Grundriß ¨ konomische Hefte, 2 Theile 1O 1 Repositorium fu¨r die neueste Geschichte 3 Th. 1 Leben Hyder Allys, 2 Th. 1 Franklins Leben 15 6 1.02 ¨ bel, 3 Th. 1 Villaume, Vom U 1 Schmerlers Moral fu¨r Ju¨nglinge 1 Unterhaltende Beschreibung der Sklavenku¨ste 1 Brissons Schiffbruch 23 stitched a` 6d

0.03.09 0.06.06 0.02.06 0.05.00 0.04.00 0.03.00 0.04.09 0.05.00 0.03.00 0.02.06 0.02.06 0.03.00 0.10.00 1.06.03 1.17.06 0.11.03 0.04.00 0.11.03 0.01.05 0.13.011/2 0.03.09 0.11.06

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The ledger offers other surprises: under January 1801 Hu¨tter notes the order of ‘‘Hamsher’’ from Fort Pitt. In all likelihood this refers to John Hamsher, a coppersmith in Pittsburgh who around 1800 ran a small retail shop on Market Street.77 He ordered four works from Hu¨tter: 1 Carl von Burgheim, 4 Theile 1 Fernando und Wilhelmine 3 Theile 1 Nandchen 1 Erholungsstunden in Ostindien

£1.10.00 £1.05.00 £0.05.071/2 £0.08.06

These titles reflect particular literary tastes. Fernando und Wilhelmine is a novel in three parts that is justly forgotten today but was popular enough to receive a review in the Journal des Luxus und der Moden.78 Carl Gottlieb Cramer’s Das blonde Nandchen: Ein Spiegel fu¨r Viele, another popular read of the time, is a sentimental story about a young girl infatuated with a king who dies in the end. Hu¨tter no doubt correctly interpreted ‘‘Carl von Burgheim’’ to refer to the popular novel Geschichte Karls von Burgheim und Emiliens von Rosenau, the first volume of which had been published in Frankfurt and Leipzig in 1778. In his lengthy introduction the anonymous author defends novels as useful and describes this one as an evocation of all the worthy values associated with virtuous love and blissful marriage. Stegmann’s Erholungs Stunden in Ostindien belongs to the genre of picturesque travel literature, which also figured in Yost’s order. These two examples reflect a large segment of the orders customers sent to Hu¨tter in those years. The titles serve as a healthy and important corrective to the analysis below of the book titles printers offered in broadsides.79 They illustrate at the same time another important facet of the late eighteenth-century book world: novels, travel accounts, and what in general is called belles lettres were not available only in the larger towns. Owners of small retail shops or even farmers like Samuel Weiser80 and David Yost were obviously willing to procure German books for their customers and neighbors in villages or small towns like Marlborough Township or Pittsburgh. In more general terms, local farmers and small merchants collected orders or on their own initiative ordered German books they had heard about or that had been suggested to them, and retailed them once the parcel or box from Hu¨tter’s store in Lancaster had arrived. Since Hu¨tter seems to have been the only bookseller in Pennsylvania who kept a large supply of German books (Ludwig Laumann, the German bookseller in Lancaster, had died in 1797), he was the natural addressee for all merchants and German settlers who desired to keep in touch with the German literary world. There is one further aspect of Hu¨tter’s commercial activities that deserves mention: like the Billmeyers,81 Hu¨tter served as an important distribution center for German almanacs. In November 1802 he sent out large shipments of almanacs to Ladek Cramer in Pittsburgh, to David Newman in Hannover, to Jacob D. Breyfogel in Sunbury, to Franz Banzhaff in Emitsburg, Maryland, to John Fry in Manor, to Michael Diefederfer

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in Baltimore, to Owen Rice, Georg Huber, and Abraham Levering, all in Bethlehem, to Joseph Schweishaupt in Nazareth, to John Reitzel in Reamstown, to Archibald Loudoun in Carlisle, to Georg Ehrenfeld in Wommelsdorf, to the firm Weigandt and Son in Easton, to James Wilson, Esq., in Allentown, to Nathaniel Mickler, Esq., in Plainfield, and to Snowden and M’Corkle in Greensburg. In addition, Charles Heinitsch and Michael Grundacker in Lancaster received shipments of almanacs. Hu¨tter had entered this trade the year before and probably would have continued had he not gotten into financial problems. Clearly it constituted an important organizational backdrop to the larger bookselling and stationery business, and it certainly helped make his services popular to those who may not have been keen book buyers. Most of this business was done on commission—the recipients of the almanacs sold them in Hu¨tter’s name and were allowed to return all almanacs that remained unsold. In a relationship that tied both closer together than the mere filling of a book order, their economic success constituted Hu¨tter’s profits and their inability to sell constituted Hu¨tter’s loss. Probably only Billmeyer, the wholesale bookseller in Germantown, enjoyed stable long-term relations similar to what Hu¨tter envisaged. This ledger suggests a number of other connections. First, Hu¨tter received orders from a large part of the state for goods that he could not possibly have kept in storage. Second, upon receipt of the order the merchant started to assemble the goods ordered by contacting other merchants or original producers to supply him with the goods needed for his own client.82 Usually the ledger does not state the time the order was received. But there is one exception: the Reverend Johann Georg Butler’s order, states the ledger, arrived on July 6, 1801, and the books were shipped to him in Botetourt County, Virginia, on October 18, 1801, just over three months later. Considering the size of the order—the bill amounted to £71.18.00—and the fact that Butler ordered a fair number of German religious tracts and Halle Bibles, this is a surprisingly short period.83 Thus, it does not come as a surprise that on another occasion he asked John Ritter to supply him with some of the books Ritter had produced. In short, Hu¨tter performed functions for his clients that saved them much time and energy. Hu¨tter and no doubt other book merchants acted as important links between printers and customers, spanning the geographic distances between the two. Hu¨tter’s ledger shows that he accepted orders not only for finished products but for services as well. Consider the following entries in the ledger for the latter part of 1799. 1799 Oct. 25, J. L. Becker, Manheim To printing 200 Addresses and 2 doz. Handbills 1799, Sept. 23 Rev. W. Geissenheiner 2 Hallische Griechische Grammatiken [and some twenty other scholarly books for £7 in all] 1799 Nov. 16, John Rose To printing 1000 Goldtinctur bills To printing 1000 Luckersflaumersbill together

£1.6.3

£15.00.00

£3.00.00

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1800 January 12 John Rose To printing 1000 German Haarlembil (?)

£2.05.00

This sequence of orders demonstrates an important aspect of Hu¨tter’s business. He provided all his customers needed: books, stationery, and labels for bottles of pills and other medicines. There was no need to purchase books, printing services, or stationery from other Lancaster printers like Johann Albrecht unless the customer decided otherwise. Thus, on September 23 the Lutheran pastor William Geissenhainer employed the printing services of John Ritter in Reading,84 but ordered ‘‘2 Hallische Griechische Grammatiken’’85 and twenty other books from Hu¨tter, although, as pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Upper Saucon Township, and living in New Hanover, Montgomery County, he had a choice between a number of bookshops considerably closer than Hu¨tter in Lancaster.86 Finally, John Rose ordered a fair number of bills for his pharmaceutical products from Hu¨tter. Albrecht would probably have supplied him with this service faster, but it was more convenient for Rose to deal with one merchant instead of a merchant and a printer. Rose is most likely identical with ‘‘Dr. Johannes Rose in Lancaster,’’ who advertised his ‘‘mineral horse powder’’ and ‘‘sassafras oil’’ in three broadsides.87 These data suggest that the distribution of printed matter as well as goods outside larger inland towns was regulated by a set of complex networks and relationships. Customer behavior was obviously governed not only by factors like the nearness of shop or printing establishment but by other considerations, too. First, country people would buy certain goods from peddlers whose offerings were restricted to cheap prints, pamphlets, and broadsides.88 There are indications that a few peddlers listened to suggestions of customers or tried to improve their sales by initiating the production of broadsides they felt would find a ready market.89 These peddlers assumed the function of cultural brokers. Second, printed products were acquired during fairs or open markets. Third, local merchants procured goods either in advance or at the behest of a particular customer. This, too, was the function of Hu¨tter at Lancaster. Fourth and finally, there were specialized craftsmen like John Ritter, the printer in Reading, whose main business was printing broadsides, bills, handbills, books, and pamphlets, which he sold in his shop or through the mail; at the same time he retailed stationery (paper and ink) as well as pharmaceutical products.90 Johann Ritter was born in Exeter, Pennsylvania, on February 6, 1779, attended the school run by the Lutheran Church, and was apprenticed in 1797 to his uncle Jacob Schneider in Reading. In the same year Schneider started the Anti-federalist, later the Democratic newspaper Der Adler, which in 1801 was renamed Der Readinger Adler. On January 29, 1798, Schneider accepted his former apprentice as partner, and only two years later the company that produced the paper changed its name to John Ritter & Comp. The paper’s editors were now Schneider, his old partner Carl A. Kessler, and Ritter. Ritter’s printing business steadily expanded, and Der Readinger Adler continued to improve his social and political standing in the borough. In 1836 he was elected a

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member of the Pennsylvania State Constitutional Convention, and from 1843 to 1847 he served as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He died on November 24, 1851.91 Fortunately, a significant number of ledgers and cash books of John Ritter & Comp. have survived. They enable us to describe in some detail Ritter’s activities, pricing, and customers between 1804 and 1830. We will first discuss his daily printing of ‘‘odd jobs’’—handbills, little pieces, broadsides, what he calls ‘‘doctor bills,’’ ‘‘directions’’ for medicine, and so on. We will then focus on the relationship between broadsides and advertisements in newspapers. Finally, we will analyze the cost of printing and the relationship between purchase and price before we return to the larger question of the distribution system of broadsides and other publications. The cash book of John Ritter contains the following entries for odd jobs for the year 1804:92 March 23: Daniel Greene, printing 600 copies of Information on the Cowpock at 2 dollars per hundred $12.00 March 27: Conrad Fleger, To publishing an Advertisement in Der Adler $2.00 March 27: Doctors Oelig & Ziegler To printing 100 Doctor Bills (Brust Drops) $1.50 Ditto 200 Mutter Drops $2.50 Ditto 300 for Gold-Tinktur $3.50 March 29: Thomas Hiester. To printing 200 Handbills $1.50 April 7: Doctors Oelig & Ziegler To printing 200 Directions for Harlem Gel $4.00 April 17: Nathan Lee, or Ben Davis To publishing sale of Land for Lee $1.00 April 20: Doc. John Rose: To Printing 1000 Directions for Batemans Drops $15.00 April 24: John Christ, Esq. To an Advertisement in Paper in both Languages $1.00 June 29: Frederick Krebs, To printing 700 Taufscheine $3.71 August 7: Daniel Schenfelder To Publishing an Advertisement in Paper 6 times $2.00 September 4: William Wildermuth, Bern, to advertising a Plantation 3 times $1.25 September 21: Frederick Smith Esq., To printing 300 electioneering handbills $4.00 September 25: Frederick Smith Esq. or Pet Fraily To printing the Deputy Meeting in 450 Handbills $4.00 October 5: John Spyker Esq. To printing 60 handbills half sheets $4.50 October 6: Daniel Rose Esq., to printing 5000 election tickets $10.00 Although determining how much money John Ritter & Comp. made during the year would require a systematic analysis of the proceeds from Der Adler, from printing jobs, and from sales in the bookshop, the proceeds from odd jobs must have represented

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a respectable part of the total income. From printing handbills, tickets, and sheets alone the company made $68.46. The prices in the cash book allow us to calculate the price per printed sheet.93 For the ‘‘Information on the Cowpock’’ Ritter calculated a price per sheet of 2 cents; for the single ‘‘Doctor Bill’’ he charged 1.5 cents, for ‘‘Mutter Drops’’ bills he asked for 1.25 cents per sheet, and for the ‘‘Gold Tinktur’’ he asked 1.17 cents. The price Hiester was charged for his 200 handbills was 0.75 cents per sheet. On the other hand, Oelig and Ziegler, the doctors and pharmacists, had to accept a price per ‘‘Direction’’ for Harlem Gel of 2 cents, while Dr. John Rose from Lancaster was charged a price of only 1.5 cents. For the 700 ‘‘Taufscheine’’ Ritter asked half a cent per sheet, while he charged Frederick Smith a hefty 1.33 cents per handbill for his first order of 300 handbills and 0.88 cents for a second order of 450. John Spyker had to hand over 7.5 cents per handbill, but this time they were two pages and not just one. Daniel Rose, Esq., finally came away with his 5,000 election tickets for 0.2 cents a piece.94 The range of prices for single sheets, from 0.2 cents to 7.5 cents, is quite impressive (table B.6). There is, at the same time, a very clear correlation between the print run and the price. Although we have not seen the ‘‘Directions for Bateman’s Drops,’’ it is likely that the high price per sheet can be explained by the size of the text. That certainly is the case for the hefty 7.5 cents per sheet for the handbill ordered by John Spyker, Esq. The data for 1804 allow some speculations on the relationship between advertisements, broadsides, and handbills. Ritter charged from one to two dollars for an advertisement in Der Adler, depending on how long the advertisement was and how often it was repeated. From 1804 to at least 1814 the yearly subscription charge remained at one dollar. Indeed, in searching the ledgers and cash accounts one gets the impression that Ritter was generous with customers who were late in paying for Der Adler.95 The reason is obvious: the paper earned its profits not from the subscription rates but from the advertisements. With a price tag of one dollar per advertisement, each issue of the paper generated, since it contained about forty advertisements of various lengths, at least forty dollars in advertising revenue.96 From the customer’s perspective it was worth his while to compare the cost of an advertisement with that of printing a handbill that advertised the sale of produce, farm, or cattle. Ritter charged $1.50 for 200 handbills in 1804; this was indeed a competitive price. Advertising in Der Adler meant that the message reached the subscribers of the newspaper. Printing the handbill implied that the author could personally get the message to those he considered most interested or fix it in public places where it could be seen by passersby. The advertisement was spread throughout the county and state— that was its advantage. The handbill could be posted where the author felt it would produce the most effect. This possibility accounts for the importance of handbills in politics. Particularly during the last weeks of an election campaign, handbills were printed in large numbers because doing so allowed politicians and political parties to react to last-minute developments.97 If they had to rely on the newspaper alone, they

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depended on the cycle of its publication—in the case of Der Adler, once a week. In short, until 1830 and likely beyond, printing handbills, sale bills, and other single sheets was an effective and cost-conscious strategy in the political and economic worlds. How do these findings correspond with printing, its costs, and the print run of broadsides? John Ritter was one of the busiest printers in Reading and attracted customers even from Lancaster. His ledgers and cash books do not usually state the title of the broadside or give information that allows us to identify particular broadsides. But there are exceptions: 1805 May 24 George Homan [Hohmann] to printing 800 sheets of songs 1806 Jan 21 Martin Gaby Sr. To printing 400 songs 1807 March 16 Rev. Fr. Geissenhainer to printing 500 songs 1809 June 12 John Rose To 25 songs of Susanne Cox 1809 June 10, William Stahle To 5 doz. ditto songs a` 50 cents 1809 June 10, Jacob K. Boyer To 2 doz. Ditto songs

$9.75 $2.00 $4.50 $0.75 $2.50 $1.0098

These entries provide some important new information. They link a customer of the printer to a particular broadside: Martin Gaby, the Reverend Friedrich Geissenhainer, and Johann Georg Homan. They also show three persons buying a broadside about an issue of local and regional importance. Before we turn to Martin Gaby and the Reverend Geissenhainer, let us discuss another aspect of the price. For the customer it was an important consideration that for certain types of handbills or broadsides he did not have to pay a cent. This holds true for handbills printed at the expense of a politician like James Sitgreaves or the Reading Democratic Society during election campaigns, and for handbills that informed members of a militia unit of the time they would be mustering in a particular town.99 Neither did the customer have to pay money for the many handbills that advertised the services of, for example, carding machines, studs, the sale of farms or parcels of land, or the wonderful qualities of a particular medicine.100 All these handbills were paid for by the advertisers. The broadsides, on the other hand, that a printer or a private person like Johann Georg Hohmann had printed on his own initiative and that he hoped to sell and make a profit from conveyed a message customers hoped would be useful, important, and necessary to acquire: these were the broadsides with religious content, like the many hymns, prayers, and biblical stories, or those with songs about gruesome murders, pitiful events, the hanging of Susanna Cox and its sorry circumstances, or advice on how to write a love letter. These broadsides were not intended to sell a service or a particular good; they provided enjoyment and promised eternal happiness or simply pleasant contentedness—and for these satisfactory effects the customer was expected to pay. Gaby’s and Geissenhainer’s broadsides belong to neither category, for both paid for them and then presented them to individuals, probably in their congregations. Martin Gaby Sr. (1742–1812) was born in Germany, most likely to parents who were Dunkers.

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It is unknown when he came to Pennsylvania. He settled in Pricetown, a village close to Reading, and married Susanna, the oldest daughter of the leading local farmer and Dunker Conrad Price. Gaby’s father-in-law owned the land on which the Dunker meetinghouse of the Maiden Creek congregation in Pricetown stood. In 1766 Gaby settled right next to the meetinghouse and became, like most other rural Dunkers, a farmer. In 1770 he was ordained a minister and some years later an elder of the Maiden Creek congregation.101 The title of the song Ritter printed for Gaby is not known but could be one of the versions of ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ that was printed by Ritter during those years. An additional reason for assigning the entry in the ledger to this song is the unusual notice in the colophon: ‘‘Reading, Gedruckt bei Johann Ritter and Comp. fu¨r den Verka¨ufer’’ (Reading, printed by Johann Ritter for the seller).102 That this hymn enjoyed some popularity among Brethren, Dunkers, and similar religious groups is attested by the fact that it was printed in the Mennonite hymnal’s second edition of 1808 and in none of the other Protestant hymnals.103 Whichever song it was, Gaby ordered four hundred copies printed—one of the few precise notations of the print run of a particular title. In the case of the song the Reverend Geissenhainer had printed by John Ritter, we know a bit more. Friedrich Wilhelm Geissenhainer I was born on June 26, 1771, in Mu¨hlheim an der Ruhr, read theology in Giessen and Go¨ttingen, and then decided during the French Revolution to immigrate to the United States. He married Anna Maria Reiter, sister of the wife of the Lutheran minister Conrad Roeller, and the couple had six children. The elder Geissenhainer served Lutheran congregations in New Goshenhoppen, New Hanover, Schuetz’s congregation in Milford Township, and finally in New York City, where he was succeeded as pastor by one of his sons, Frederick W. Geissenhainer II (1797–1879).104 Ritter most likely printed for Geissenhainer the song ‘‘Fu¨hl das heiligste Entzu¨cken,’’ under the title Confirmations-Lied von dem Ehrw. Doct. F. W. Geissenhainer.105 The worthy reverend accomplished a number of goals with this broadside. First, it served rather nicely as a propaganda piece for the pastor; that may also account for the fact that it did not have a colophon. Second, due to the large print run of the hymn, he was able to favorably impress his pupils in his three congregations for a number of years. Third, since the broadside was recyclable without a colophon outside the state, he could still use it in New York, where he served the Lutheran congregation from 1808 until 1814, the year he returned to Pennsylvania. Geissenhainer had a second broadside printed in 1821, in which he reprinted the first song, which he claimed to have composed himself, together with a text in which he dedicated this old song to his current confirmands.106 The print runs for both Gaby’s and Geissenhainer’s songs are remarkably large for a hymn—four hundred and five hundred copies, respectively. These print runs were topped by Johann Georg Hohmann, who came from Germany in 1802.107 Hohmann became a customer of John Ritter in 1805 and continued as a client until 1823. We find the following entries in Ritter’s ledgers and cash books:

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1805 May 24 George Homan [Hohmann] to printing 800 sheets of songs 1820 Aug. 1 Johann Georg Hohman credit by cash paid per John Steiner For an Ev. Nicodemi [Evangelium Nicodemi: oder: historischer Bericht von dem Leben Jesu Christi], 1820 August 19 John Addams Esq. by fees to receive Judgment against Johann G. Hohman Joh. G. Hohman Debtor to fees paid J. Addams for receiving Judgment 1820 Aug. 30 Johann Geo. Hohman Debtor to two doz. of Almanacs 1820 Dec. 1 Joh. George Hohman paid by Pet Shlepman for an Evang. Nicodemi 1821 March 13, Joh. George Hohman by cash received 1822 Sept. 7 Johann Georg Hohman to one Lechlers Trial 1822 Sept. 26 Joh Georg Hohman to printing 50 handbills 1823 April 22 Johann Georg Hohmann By 100 Rails for Ritter John Ritter Debtor to 100 rails received from J. G. Hohmann 1823 June 4, J. G. Hohman debtor 6 sheets paper

$9.75

$1.00 $1.00 $1.00 $1.60 $1.00 $1.00 $0.25 $2.00

$0.60

The printing of the following broadsides was initiated by Johann Georg Hohmann in the same time period. We have listed them in appendix B in some detail because Hohmann’s products have evoked some controversy. These eight broadsides associated with Hohmann certainly suggest that this recent German immigrant was most likely more than just a peddler. In one broadside he describes himself with a touch of understatement as a ‘‘ungelehrte Herumtra¨ger,’’ an ‘‘illiterate’’ or ‘‘unlearned peddler’’ who was surprisingly so concerned about the morals of his compatriots that he composed and published a song about a gruesome murder in order to demonstrate to his readers the folly of murdering people.108 In a number of other broadsides he repeatedly offers his services as a scrivener, a ‘‘composer of proverbs, prayers, and songs.’’ Others suggest that he must have been a pious man—with a nice sense for the small profit. He published ‘‘lovely, new, and pious hymns,’’ songs of mourning, and heavenly letters. For our purpose it is quite irrelevant whether Hohmann really published the first heavenly letter in North America.109 It is more important that he claimed he had done so; he claimed, too, that he had composed hymns or at least revised them and added new verses to them—although in most cases this may not have been true. Ordering eight hundred copies of a broadside took courage when Geissenhainer and Gaby were satisfied with four hundred and five hundred. In 1805 Hohmann was probably a man of modest means, but he tirelessly and successfully began to accumulate riches, first with broadsides and probably walking the country as a peddler, then as a publisher of some rather successful books that made it unnecessary for him to be satisfied with the pennies to be gained from selling broadsides. In 1819 C. A. Bruckman in Reading printed Das Evangelium Nicodemus: oder: Gewisser bericht von dem leben, leiden und sterben, unsers heilands Jesu Christi for him. According to John Ritter’s ledger, Hohmann received one dollar for one copy sold by Ritter to John Steiner on August 1,

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1820. One can assume that that title alone netted Hohmann a nice profit. The same can be said for his little book Der Freund in der Noth, which he had printed around 1813, this time by John Ritter.110 But beginning some time after 1813 all his publications were printed by Bruckmann, who among other things specialized in printing numerous broadsides of Adam und Eva. In 1818 Hohmann edited Die Land- und Haus-Apotheke, something of a companion volume to his Freund in der Noth—healing by magic and healing by medicine! In the following year he finally produced Der kleine Catholische Catechismus.111 Contemporaries may not have been all that surprised that he would print a Catholic catechism. After all, he had published at least two heavenly letters and a book on healing by magic, both of which were of a nondenominational nature. But publishing such a work in a state that was known for its fervent and radical Protestantism probably required some courage.

German Settlers, Printers, and Broadsides What implications do the examples of Geissenhainer, Gaby, and Hohmann have for our understanding of the relationship between German settlers, printers, and their products? As is so often the case, they demonstrate that the world of the German settler was not one neatly packaged into separate cases, boxes, worlds, and expectations. They tell us instead that the printing world, the buying behavior, and the infrastructure of the rural economy overlapped rather untidily. In all three cases an individual person went to a printer in Reading with a particular text and ordered several hundred copies to be printed—four hundred, five hundred, eight hundred. Religious broadsides thus probably had considerably larger print runs than we had assumed. The evidence also tells us that probably more of the religious hymns that crowd our database were printed at the behest of preachers or pastors than we had expected. If so, then their influence on house devotions was probably larger than we had thought. We may never know, however, because for the large majority of broadsides there is no way to determine who initiated the printing—a pastor, a busy scrivener like Hohmann, or the printer himself. Another implication of these three little case studies relates to the infrastructure of the rural economy. Let us summarize what we know: customers probably acquired broadsides and other publications mostly from peddlers who showed up occasionally. This may have prompted more people like Christian Bru¨stle and Johann Georg Hohmann to initiate the production of broadsides. But the number of peddlers who roamed the countryside was certainly not enough to satisfy the expectations of potential customers. Our extensive archival search in Bucks, Berks, Chester, Lancaster, York, Lebanon, and Dauphin Counties forced us to conclude that on the average less than one peddler regularly roamed the countryside in any given year. German farmers must have had other means to acquire broadsides and books. One possibility for them was contacting the small local merchant or the printers’ stands in the weekly, monthly, or yearly markets and fairs. The farmers would visit those markets because they wanted to

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sell their produce, but there is no reason why they should not at the same time have toured the market, inspected the stands, and purchased the piece of linen, the hardware, or the dry goods they lacked, or the broadsides, the New Testaments, the new edition of Arndt’s Wahres Christentum that they wanted and that are listed in so many inventories of German settlers in Bucks County.112 We suspect that these markets and fairs were more important outlets for books, broadsides, and little treatises than has hitherto been assumed. That raises the question, however, of how such publications reached the small merchants and potential customers in villages and small towns that did not have a printer and bookseller like Baab in Harrisburg. The ledger of Christian Jacob Hu¨tter suggests one possibility, while the activities of pastor Geissenhainer and preacher Gaby and the accounts of Billmeyer and John Ritter suggest others. From the point of view of the customer, these accounts and ledgers describe a triple-layered infrastructural system in which a number of persons interacted: customers, pastors, and printers. Clergymen would place bulk orders or have hymns printed; for example, in the second half of 1781 alone, the Lutheran pastor Johann Ernst ordered from Melchior Steiner at least two dozen Lutheran ABC books, dozens of Lutheran catechisms, and probably an equal number of Lutheran hymnals.113 The clergymen would either sell these hymnals or, in the case of broadsides, more likely distribute them to their confirmands and other members of their parishes. Wholesale printer account books like that of George D. Billmeyer for 1814–19 suggest that they were filling orders, such as, for example, for ‘‘Mr. Montelius,’’ the printer and teacher in Reamstown, on June 20, 1816, for 3 doz. ABC Books 9 doz. German Testaments 3 Lutheran H. Bks Classes

$3.00 $7.20 $3.39

which Montelius then retailed in his small village.114 Samuel Weiser, a farmer and local merchant, did the same with his half dozen ‘‘Arndt’s Wahrem Christentum,’’ which he received on May 1, 1815, from Billmeyer together with a bill for over $10.50.115 The account books of Michael Billmeyer for 1797–1804 list the names of over 130 clients who received shipments.116 They included small printers; owners of bookshops like Eichhorn & Repplier in Reading; other Billmeyers, like Elizabeth Billmeyer in York; John V. Thomas, a stationer in Alexandria, Virginia; Christian Jakob Hu¨tter, described by Billmeyer as ‘‘Printer & Bookseller, Lancaster’’; and fourteen clergymen, like Christian Emmanuel Schultz in Tulpehocken, the son-in-law of the late Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg.117 Billmeyer’s clients and customers were spread over a surprisingly large area. Some lived as far away as Virginia,118 Maryland,119 New Jersey,120 and New York,121 while his clients in Pennsylvania covered the expanse of the state from Philadelphia to Shaferstown in Dauphin County and beyond.122 In short, like Christian Jacob

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Hu¨tter, Billmeyer, the printer and wholesale merchant, served as a very significant distribution agent for the whole Middle Atlantic region. Between the large wholesale printers and merchants and the German farmers were the smaller merchants and printers like the son of the former Pennsylvania Indian agent Conrad Weiser, Samuel Weiser, whose main occupation was farming, and David Yost, John Hamsher, and the printer John Ritter in Reading. They performed different functions: while Ritter specialized in books, broadsides, and stationery and in addition dabbled in medicine and pharmaceuticals, which he usually seems to have gotten from Dr. Rose in Lancaster, Billmeyer dealt in books and Hu¨tter in books, music, dry goods, and stationery. A farmer simply had to write a letter ordering dry goods, books from Germany, England, or Pennsylvania, ribbons, stationery, or the printing of some handbills, and the merchants would oblige.123 In short, by the late eighteenth century—and probably much earlier124 —Pennsylvania rural economic life was embedded in an infrastructure that encompassed the towns as well as the villages of Pennsylvania and the neighboring states. Some of it was centered in Philadelphia—Billmeyer and Benjamin Warner, another of the large printers and wholesale merchants in Philadelphia,125 are good examples—but there were regional merchants who differed in their function from wholesale specialized merchants like Billmeyer. Hu¨tter offered everything—not that he had it in store, but he knew where to get the products his client wanted. He must have known where to get the ‘‘2 Hallische Griechische Grammatiken’’ the Reverend Geissenhainer ordered, which he received on September 23, 1799, together with a bill for £15.126 Nor was Hu¨tter the only merchant who functioned as a mail order house. What distinguished him and Billmeyer from merchants like Michael Hart in Easton was that the latter’s clients lived in the countryside around Easton,127 while Hu¨tter and Billmeyer drew customers from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. What they fulfilled for clients statewide, Hart did regionally. Evidently he had no difficulty at all in filling the following order: 1793 Dec. 2, Jakob Meixell Almanach 1793 Sept. 9, Samuel Sitgreaves, Esq. 1 Novel Charlotte Tryal Margerot Almanac Cookery French Revolution

£0.00.08 £0.05.071/2 £0.03.09 £0.00.09 £0.00.09 £0.15.00128

Ordering from the local store saved the lawyer Sitgreaves a trip to Philadelphia and a visit to one of the large bookstores that stocked the novel Charlotte.129 And the same savings were of course possible for German farmers or their wives who had particular cravings. They could all fulfill their wishes without using the services of a peddler. A clearer understanding of the rural distribution system of broadsides and other publications leads to two larger questions. Since there is no direct evidence that would inform us why a German farmer’s wife would buy a broadside with a religious song, or

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why a farmer would acquire a broadside that advertised the sale of an estate, other ways have to be found to discuss motives and reasons for the acquisition of broadsides. That problem again is related to the question of how representative the broadsides are that we have found in American libraries, collections, and archives. Does the large representation of religious broadsides really indicate a strong religious bent in the German population in the Middle Atlantic region, or is it the result of other factors? Does the survival rate of broadsides as well as the composition of the broadsides we found result purely from chance or from the different functions of broadsides for the people who produced and acquired them? We will focus first on the latter question before we turn to the difference between broadsides that were distributed freely and those that were sold in the marketplace. This discussion will lead us to an examination of the broadsides themselves. We will conclude this chapter with a discussion of the broadsides as mirrors of German settlers’ aspirations, hopes, and yearnings. Let us start with the relationship between odd jobs for the printer, the function of broadsides, and the survival rate: the business papers of printers of handbills and broadsides illustrate the contexts for the survival rates and functions of these sheets. Francis Bailey’s Day Book and Ledger, 1794–1829,130 lists the following print jobs for 1794: 1794 1794 1794 1794 1794 1794 1794

July 10, Joseph Scott to printing 500 proposals half sheet Nov. 6, Eckstein & Sohn, to printing 500 copies of their Catalogue of Paintings Oct 1 John Arbegeist to printing 50 handbills Oct 1 John Patton to Printing 100 handbills Dec 5, D. W. Ball To Printing 105 Circular Letters Paper for ditto Dec. 5, Rebecca Griscom to Printing 200 Addresses To Paper for ditto in all Dec. 8 Joseph Scott To Printing the Gazetteer of the United States containing 17 sheets a £ 15

£3.15.00 £3.07.00 £0.11.03 £0.11.03 £0.15.00 £0.07.06 £2.05.00 £2.00.00 £255.00.00

Joseph Scott, the first customer, was a well-known geographer and author of the United States Gazetteer, for which he sought subscribers with his five hundred proposals ‘‘half sheet.’’ None of these proposals have survived. Their purpose was to solicit potential buyers for the gazetteer. Once enough had signed up and it had been published, there was no reason to retain copies of the proposals. Half a year later, the Baileys printed, as the last entry shows, The United States gazetteer: containing an authentic description of the several states: their situation, extent, boundaries, soil, produce, climate, population, trade, and manufactures. The entry for December 8, 1794, explains why Scott sought subscribers, for he had the Gazetteer printed at his own expense and risk. Obviously the venture was eminently successful, for four years later Bailey printed a second and much enlarged edition in four volumes.131

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The case is somewhat different with the ‘‘catalogue of paintings’’ ordered by Johann Eckstein (1736–1817) and his son Ferdinand.132 Again, to the best of our knowledge, no copy has survived, and thus we do not know whether it was indeed a broadside or whether the catalogue contained more than two pages; since the Ecksteins arrived from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern only weeks before their visit to the printers’ office in Philadelphia, a multipage publication is rather unlikely. The high price as well as the fairly large press run of five hundred copies indicates, rather, that the ‘‘catalogue’’ was printed on parchment and may have contained a specimen of their painting—all of which would explain the price of £3.07.00, about 11/2 pence per sheet. Again, we were unable to locate a copy of this or similar broadside catalogues of paintings—although catalogues of books as advertisements of booksellers exist.133 The case of John Patton’s order for ‘‘100 handbills’’ is different. Colonel John Patton was a prominent citizen in Philadelphia, as reflected by his admission to the Freemason Lodge on September 9, 1793.134 What Patton most likely wanted to advertise was not his new status, but a public auction in Philadelphia, for Patton was the official auctioneer of the city.135 Obviously he thought one hundred handbills enough to spread the good news, particularly because distributing them was costing him money too. The merchant, printer, and book trader William Young, for example, was charged ‘‘Two Dollars for putting up three hundred Lottery Schemes through Philadelphia’’ by Robert Heron on May 23, 1795, a bill that Young endorsed with the remark ‘‘Pasteing up Lottery Schemes.’’136 Once someone had read and digested the fact that he or she could strike a bargain at that auction, the handbill was discarded, perhaps after being used as paper for notes. John Patton’s official position suggests a purpose for which, as auctioneer, he had his handbills printed. Concerning Rebecca Griscom, we know only that she was a miniature or mantua maker and sister of Betsy Ross and that she was later active in the Quaker crusade against slavery. We do not know for what purposes she intended her ‘‘200 Addresses,’’ for which she was charged £2.00.00. This amounted to almost 21/2 pence per sheet, which was higher than what the Baileys charged for the Ecksteins’ ‘‘Catalogue of Paintings.’’137 Again no copy of the advertisement has survived, and again we assume that Rebecca Griscom’s message in her address focused on a particular event and that once it had occurred there was no reason to retain the address. These examples illustrate our hypothesis that the survival rate of advertisements that were focused on particular events was minimal. Yet this is not the only kind of broadside that had little chance to be preserved for mankind. We do not know of any copy of the two hundred ‘‘funeral notices [for] Mrs. Eckfeldt’’ that her husband Jacob Eckfeldt ordered printed from the Baileys on December 5, 1817, for the respectable price of four dollars.138 Its text was probably similar to the funeral card found in Cleveland, Ohio, which reads, ‘‘FUNERAL NOTICE: the funeral services of the late ALEX EARLY who died Friday february 22, 1907 at 8:45 PM, will be held at the M.E. Church on Monday February 25. 1907, at 2:30 PM. Interment in Barry Cemetery. Friends are invited to attend.’’ It measures 4.5 x 3.5 inches and was enclosed in a paper sleeve.139 A few broadsides akin to funeral

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notes have survived from the early period. Yet they not only state the date and place of the funeral but, as in the case of the funeral notice for Barbara Fretz or Christian Weber,140 also offer a brief biography of the deceased. Such biographical information, coupled with a short remark about the attendance at the funeral (‘‘many attended the funeral’’ [for Barbara Fretz]) and the sermon (‘‘a sermon was held on a text from the Revelation of John’’ [for Christian Weber]),141 made these notices memorabilia that descendants cherished and preserved. Based on this evidence, we assume that the funeral notices printed for Eckfeldt did not contain a biography of his wife but rather were something like invitations to attend the funeral and comfort the grieving and bereaved relatives. Whether these notices were glued to house walls and affixed to trees, as is still the custom in Iberian countries, we do not know. Probably Eckfeldt had the handbills delivered by boys to the houses of those he felt should know about his sad loss. The ledger of John Ritter of Reading suggests another large area where broadsides were printed but simply have not survived. This is illustrated by the account between John Ritter and Captain Jacob Phener:142 1812 July 9 to printing 30 engl. & germ. Handbills, respecting a deserter 1812 Aug. 25 ditto to ditto 1812 Sept. 27 ditto 30 blanks weekly returns Oct. 24 ditto handbills respecting a deserter Oct. 28 ditto 50 blank Enlistments Nov. 5, 50 handbills respecting a deserter 1813 January 5, an advertisement in the paper respecting recruiting February 4, printing 50 weekly returns July 9, printing 30 english & german Handbills respecting a deserter

$1.50 $1.50 $2.00 $1.25 $1.50 $1.50 $1.50 $6.00 $1.50

All in all, within a comparatively short period of time the captain had some two hundred handbills printed, most of them in German and English, in his quest to find deserters from his regiment within both the English and German communities in Berks County. These were no doubt not only widely dispersed but spread especially in those villages and small towns where the parents of the deserters lived and where they would find places to hide but at the same time were known to the local people. Again, once the deserter either voluntarily returned to his regiment or was brought back as a prisoner, the handbill had served its purpose and would either be discarded or more likely used for other purposes—after all, paper was more valuable in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than today. The military needed handbills for many occasions, as the entry makes clear: the call to arms in 1813 was still a serious concern, for the British-American War had not yet been concluded. And weekly returns on the strength of the regiment belonged to the regular if boring routines battalion commanders insisted upon. They all served a very particular purpose; the returns were maintained as evidence that the disbursements for

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salaries, food, clothing, and so on matched the numbers given in the weekly returns. They were formulas that crowd military archives but not our files of broadsides. In short, the rules for survival and longevity of broadsides established for the handbills as advertisements also apply to the military world. Also having a short lifespan were administrative notices or broadsides that were designed to simplify communications within a larger but well-defined circle of persons. Thus, the following broadside—if we may call it such—survived only in one copy in the business papers of one of the shareholders, William Young: Notice. Is hereby given to the Stockholders of the Brandywine Chalybeate Spring Company; that the Books will be opened at the house of General J. Wolf, on the 29th Inst. at 10 o’clock, and continue open until 3 o’clock each day: for the purpose of obtaining the sum of Ten thousand Dollars, by subscription for new Stock, that shall bear an interest of 6 per cent payable annually. By order of the Board of Managers, Bell Webb, Sec’y, Wilmington 3rd mo. 24th 182[7].143 It could, of course, be argued that these were but notices for a particular purpose and lacked the quality of a broadside. We do not, however, see a basic difference between this notice and the advertisement of a lottery scheme or of a sale or auction. These all had one thing in common, which was to announce a particular event to an interested public. That event gave the broadside its significance and meaning—and once the time announced had arrived, the notice became meaningless. At best it became an item in a business collection or an archive to prove that a certain procedure had been followed. Finally there is the huge pharmaceutical field, with its descriptions, sheets with information, bills, handbills, tickets, and labels. On the one hand, a significant number of broadsides have survived that advertise as well as describe medications. On the other hand, the extant account books, for example of John Ritter, list large amounts of ‘‘bills’’ that have perished. The odd jobs John Ritter lists in his cash book for March and April 1804 might serve as good examples: March 23: Daniel Greene, printing 600 copies of Information on the Cowpock at 2 dollars per hundred $12.00 March 27: Conrad Fleger, To publishing an Advertisement in Der Adler $2.00 March 27: Doctors Oelig & Ziegler To printing 100 Doctor Bills (Brust Drops) $1.50 Ditto 200 Mutter Drops $2.50 Ditto 300 for Gold-Tinktur $3.50 March 29: Thomas Hiester. To printing 200 Handbills $1.50 April 7: Doctors Oelig & Ziegler To printing 200 Directions for Harlem Gel $4.00

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April 17: Nathan Lee, or Ben Davis To publishing sale of Land for Lee April 20: Doc. John Rose: To Printing 1000 Directions for Batemans Drops

$1.00 $15.00

The entries reflect at least four different kinds of handbills, with different functions and survival characteristics. The ‘‘bills’’ for ‘‘Brust Drops,’’ ‘‘Mutter Drops,’’ and ‘‘Gold Tinktur’’ most likely refer to labels to be put on the containers of the medication. They were probably thrown away with the containers. On the other hand, what Ritter calls ‘‘directions’’ seems to have had a good chance to be kept. They usually were descriptions of medications and/or directions on how they were to be used or supplied. Thus, the Harlemer Oel. Medicamentum Gratia Probatum describes how the medicine helped cure stomach problems, stones, and ulcers. These directions occasionally included testimonies from grateful patients who had experienced the benevolent and healing effects of the ‘‘Harlemer Oel.’’144 Yet the fact that not one handbill of the ‘‘1000 Directions for Batemans Drops’’ has survived clearly demonstrates the limits of how deeply medication engraved itself into the memory of German settlers.145 Nor does Dr. Greene seem to have made a lasting impression on the German settlers’ minds with his ‘‘Information on the Cowpock,’’ despite the six hundred sheets he had printed at the surprising cost of twelve dollars.

Interest and the Market for Broadsides A number of contexts seem to have influenced the longevity of broadsides: the specific purpose of the broadside, such as the search for a deserter, the muster of the militia, or the signing of shares; the designation of a particular time frame, such as (on labels and bills) when medication should be used, or the date of a funeral; or the announcement of a particular event, such as a lottery, an auction, or a book subscription. Once the purpose had been achieved, the date had passed, or the event had occurred, the broadside lost its meaning and became wastepaper. That in itself does of course not mean that the broadside’s fate was sealed. It might end up in an archive, in the files of a large company, or, in the case of an invitation to sign new shares, in the archived papers of a shareholder. Alternatively, it might become part of a pile of paper that survived the time. But by nature finiteness characterizes these broadsides. The chance that such broadsides survive is definitely smaller than for other broadsides that were produced. It is no coincidence that we have found only a few, and that in some categories (administration, military) we have found none at all. These broadsides share one common characteristic: usually their cost of printing was paid by a particular person and not by those to whom they were addressed. The shareholding company paid for the ‘‘notice,’’ the pharmacists were charged for their bills, labels, and information, Jacob Eckfeldt paid cash for the funeral announcements—they all used the broadsides they had paid for to disseminate information that was important

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to them and that they wanted to share with others or interest them in. Since the originator of the broadside was the one who stood to profit from it, he bore the expense for the production of the communication. If there was anyone interested in retaining a copy of the broadside, it would have to be him as the originator and not the recipient of the broadside. In short, payment for the production of the broadside is an important indicator of who might be likely to preserve it. Within the general concept of public communication and public sphere this particular factor suggests the nature of the communication created by broadsides: it emanates from a particular person, who is usually known—the auctioneer, the author of a book, the pharmacist, the medical doctor, the shareholding company—and addressed to an identifiable circle of people, such as the friends and neighbors of Mrs. Eckfeldt, those who knew the whereabouts of a deserter, the members of a militia company, the shareholders, those interested in a particular medicine. They are all linked by actual or potential personal ties and relationships. Thus, these broadsides suggest the directions in which the producers steered the communications, hoping to produce the intended results—attract people to the funeral or to the auction, subscribe to a book, and so on. The social circles touched by these communications were not the community at large, but smaller groups that can be described. Finiteness of purpose and the specificity of groups as recipients define the outer limits of the communication processes of which these types of broadsides are the carriers. Nevertheless, because of the indeterminate nature of the direction of these broadsides as communications, they belong clearly to neither the public nor the private sphere. The invitation to attend the funeral of Mrs. Eckfeldt was directed to her personal friends and acquaintances but not limited to them; the public ‘‘notice’’ was directed to the shareholders of a company but allowed others to sign additional shares; the specific medicine was aimed at those with a particular illness or at those who feared they would suffer from it or knew someone who did suffer from it. And the invitation to subscribe to the publication of a gazetteer addressed those interested in acquiring a gazetteer—not the shoemaker, seamstress, or cook but the merchant, politician, financier, or scholar; but again, a shoemaker was not precluded from signing up. There is yet another way to describe these broadsides: by their time frame and event character. They speak to specific social or material features—funeral; auction; deserter; muster; book subscription; goods like books, medication, cattle, or estates. Indeed, today their value does lie in these descriptions. And the broadsides of these types that have survived, about 29 percent of all that we have found, offer us glimpses into the economic, medical, and political worlds for which the artifacts described stand.146 What these 500 broadsides tell us about daily life of German settlers will be narrated in the second and the fourth chapters of this study. Do the 185 broadsides that voice political concerns really belong to the category of broadsides that speak to specific social or material features? Most of these broadsides discuss electoral matters: they represent German-American views on political issues

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related to colonial politics, revolutionary events, or events that shaped the early American republic. Most texts are focused on the political views of a specific politician or a political party, like the Quaker Party during colonial times, Tories or Whigs during the Revolution, and Federalists, Anti-Federalists, and Republicans in the following decades. They all share one feature: the broadsides are time-honored projections of particular persons or groups who publish their views in order to induce as many of their countrymen as possible to vote for their views and the ticket they stand for. They originate the broadside, they order it printed, the printers charge them, and they pay for them. In the ledger and cash books of John Ritter we find the following entries: 1804 September 21 Frederick Smith Esq., To printing 300 electioneering handbills 1804 September 25 Frederick Smith Esq. or Pet Fraily To printing the Deputy Meeting in 450 Handbills 1804 October 6 John Spyker Esq. To printing 60 handbills half sheets 1804 October 5 Daniel Rose Esq., to printing 5000 election tickets 1808 Oct. 7 Wilhelm Stahle, Reading, to ditto 2000 election handbills 1809 Juli 18 Hiester & Shayd to printing 200 english and 200 germ. Handbills 1809 July 25 Frederick Smith Esq., to printing 1000 German Letters 1809 August 15 Society Democratic to him 200 German advertisements for Township Meeting 1809 Sept. 27 Society Democratic to printing 6000 Election Tickets 1809 Oct. 5 Society Democratic to printing 2000 tickets and 1000 ditto 1820 Oct 5 Fred. Smith Esq. to printing 800 election handbills 1820 Oct 6 Gen. J. Addams & N. Hobert to printing 1000 handbills

$4.00147 $4.00 $4.50 $10.00 $15.00148 $6.00149 $6.00 $2.00 $9.00 $5.00 $1.50 $10.00150 $15.00

Scanning Ritter’s ledger and cash books for a few years shows that in 1804, 1807, 1809, and 1820 this printer, as just one of the four larger printers in Reading, printed well over twenty thousand letters, handbills, and tickets dealing with election matters.151 All of these would now, had they survived, be classified as broadsides. In terms of numbers the eighty-seven broadsides preserved in the database that deal with election matters are a tiny fraction of the mass produced by Ritter, and it could well be asked

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whether, given the ratio of 87:20,000, it is worth the historian’s interest to base an analysis of Pennsylvania German-American politics on such a tiny sample. The answer is simple: for the historian it is not the number of sheets printed that is decisive but the number of people who ordered printers to print broadsides; not the print run but the individual text that was multiplied by print. That changes the ratio from 87:20,000 to 87:13 for Reading alone. According to the Ritter ledgers, nine local politicians had their views and programs printed in eighty-seven texts and distributed among the electorate. That certainly does not represent the total of all election broadsides printed in Reading, but it certainly stands for a respectable number of them. As far as numbers are important, a similar argument can be made for all the 500 broadsides that were paid for by particular persons. If we turn to the 1,025 broadsides for which customers presumably had to pay,152 the argument is somewhat different. For these broadsides share one characteristic that the smaller group lacks: the 500 broadsides discussed above deal with finite, concrete, and mostly material matters, while the other 1,295 sheets deal mostly with infinite, immaterial, abstract matters—piety, religion, eternal life, salvation, love, secular literary topics, education, knowledge, and so on. They address thinking, emotional experience, perception, worldview, joy, and rational as well as irrational fields within human knowledge. Reading these broadsides evokes joy or depression, pleasure or frustration, thoughts about life or death, sensations relating to crime, and satisfaction about punishment. The texts of these broadsides do not ask the reader to attend a funeral, purchase a share, or buy medication, but to be concerned about eternal life, pray for forgiveness and salvation, meditate in daily devotion, follow rules of decency and morality, be concerned for children, decry and shun sins, and marvel at the degeneracy of mankind in general and ghastly murders in particular. In short, these broadsides speak to the worldview, experiences, visions, and perceptions of readers in the broadest conceivable terms. This worldview of the largest single group of the broadsides (analyzed in chapters 2 and 3) is decidedly Christian, more precisely Protestant, and often deeply soaked in Pietism. Almost all the texts of these broadsides can be characterized this way. Emotions in the texts are linked to this general frame; hopes and anxieties are focused on the final goal of Christianity, the attainment of eternal life. Other groups deal with more secular emotions: love and marriage, murder and horror, sorrow and despair, the supernatural and the natural, nature and daily joy. Yet it is worth repeating that even these texts are mostly embedded in religious textures. With the exception of those that pastors distributed, usually at the end of the confirmation classes, these broadsides had to be bought. The few above who we know ordered the printing of broadsides of this nature are those who were named: the pastor Geissenhainer, the preacher Gaby, and the scrivener Johann Georg Hohmann. The first two most likely did not sell their sheets, while the last certainly did. The overwhelming majority, indeed, of the 1,295 broadsides in this category had a price tag. How large it was, we do not know—the range is probably, depending on the amount of illustrations, from six pence and five cents up to a couple of shillings and a dollar.153

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Above we discussed at some length the question of where a German settler could purchase broadsides and other printed goods. We described in detail the distributive system for print goods; analyzed the nature of those broadsides that addressed specific events or material concerns; and concluded by arguing that these broadsides carried expectations and interests from the producer or initiator to the addressee, the person who was handed the sheet or found it on his doorstep. These broadsides were located in what encompassed the public as well as the private sphere within the indeterminate gray zone—their precise location depended on the nature of the interest of the originator of the text. For the other 1,295 broadsides the reverse was true. They were part of a capitalist economy. The printer produced them with the expectation of selling them for a stated price that covered his production costs and secured him a profit. The customer at the other end of the line was willing to purchase the product in hope that it would, to phrase it in the broadest possible terms, meet and satisfy his expectations. The whole transaction linked producer and customer in a relationship whose nature was economically unproblematic, but whose philosophical implications and meanings were, at least for the potential customer, unclear. Why did a German settler, man or woman, buy a heavenly letter, a house blessing, a hymn, a prayer for redemption, the text of a love letter, or a song about the horrid deeds of Susanna Cox? We will discuss the specific reasons in chapters 2 and 3, but the examples share common motives: the immaterial longing for protection and sensation, the yearning for security and for assurance. The purchase of the broadside is meant to provide protection and security (heavenly letter, house blessing), comfort and assurance (prayer, love letter, stories about murder). It is probably least obvious how the fairly numerous stories about murder fit this picture, for there are no broadsides about thievery, child molestation, sexual deviation, or assault and battery. Without delving too deeply into the psychology of potential eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German customers, we would suggest that these stories attracted their attention because they described the underside of their own lives and experiences. The core contents of these ballads, by showing the horrible results of deviating from the readers’ conceptions of virtue, reaffirmed the readers in the justness and morality of their own lives. At the end of the ballad the moral is often spelled out in clear terms. While for the smaller group of broadsides interest and motive rest with the producer, for the larger group of broadsides interest and motive rest with the customer. Because the customer is interested in a particular broadside, he or she is willing to acquire it at the price the producer, in this case usually the printer, asks for it. Thus, in the ideal world of broadside economics the producer anticipates the expectations of the potential customer; the customer in return acquires the product that responds to his or her expectations and needs—the hymn for house devotions, the prayer to uplift his soul, the devotional text that reassures him of his eternal life, the poem about love that lifts him out of a depression. Once this symbiotic relationship broke down, the printer, at least in theory, would go bankrupt. That of course almost never happened. But the number of editions of individual broadsides—the forty-eight different editions of the

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dirge about Susanna Cox, for example—clearly testifies to the importance of the printer’s correct anticipation of the customers’ wishes and expectations. From a larger cultural and theoretical perspective, these broadsides that printers produced at their own risk spoke mostly to the intensely private concerns of the customer—his cultural enjoyments, religious concerns, and moral views, to name the most important ones. The customer would equate his hopes, his yearnings, his expectations, his visions, and his perception of his own self within the larger society with the text he had bought. Only his family and probably his close friends could be partners in this process. They too would profit from the protection provided by the heavenly letter, the house blessing, the daily or weekly devotional exercises, the common prayers, or the joys experienced in reading or even singing a song acquired in print. Broadsides thus would mostly function within the private sphere of the German family living in the Middle Atlantic region. It is this symbiotic relationship that provides the methodological and theoretical underpinning for our analysis of the broadsides. The smaller group that were printed at the behest of individuals we take as expressions of then-current German-American political views, controversies, and concepts, which were probably reinforced by victories at the polls for those who had the election broadsides produced. These 1,295 broadsides reflected the cultural, religious, and moral concerns of the German-American settlers. They fill in the moral and religious framework of daily life with the details, anxieties, hopes, and joys of the women, men, and children who lived between 1730 and 1830. To that daily life we now turn.

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We have identified printers, characterized broadsides, and defined methodological issues. What remains is the simple task of bringing together printers, broadsides, and those who craved, desired, wanted, and used broadsides. In the following chapters we will describe these interactions and analyze the motives of German settlers in acquiring broadsides or in ordering them to be printed. Our doing so raises a general question: do broadsides reflect concrete historical situations that structured the lives of the German settlers in the Middle Atlantic region? Any general answer to this question must depend on the message, function, and nature of the documents. In our discussion of the longevity of broadsides in the first chapter, we concluded that they generally fall into two different groups. There is the smaller group, about a third of the total, whose importance is clearly terminated by a date, an event, or a message. When the deserter is caught, the estate is sold, or the medication is used up, the related broadside loses its meaning and becomes wastepaper. This group will make up the documentary evidence for our analysis in chapter 2. The second and larger group of broadsides retains its relevance forever because it focuses on the life beyond, visions of eternity, and paths to the New Jerusalem. We will analyze this group in chapter 3. Is it possible to describe the German-American secular world on the basis of such broadsides? Does such an intention not assign too much weight to these single sheets? Or, to put it differently, is it possible to write a kind of social history of Pennsylvania Germans on the basis of broadsides? The answer, of course, is no. What, then, is the intention of this chapter? Let us begin with a closer look at the broadsides with a terminal date. About a third of the broadsides fall into this category. These sheets focus on medical problems, advertise goods and services, and relate to production methods. In other words, they reflect concrete and individual sections of a rather complex reality. In that respect they differ little from other kinds of documents, like large treatises, pamphlets, or learned books, that focus on sections of social or cultural life. Yet there is one fundamental difference between such treatises and broadsides: the average German settler could not afford to buy these larger treatises, but they could afford the

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cheap broadsides. In other words, while the reality reflected and discussed in larger treatises may have been more comprehensive and contained fuller discussions of relevant social problems, they were simply outside of the German settlers’ financial abilities. Indeed, they are not listed in the inventories of German farmers. What, then, does an analysis of the broadsides contribute to our knowledge? Are we engaging in a kind of puzzle where we hope that adding tiny pieces to tiny pieces will finally provide us with the total picture of how Germans lived between 1730 and 1830? That certainly is not our aim. Let us recall the function of these broadsides. They were produced by people who wanted to accomplish something. The texts they produced reflected that intention. The reader was informed that a particular piece of land was for sale, that a product could be more efficiently processed or a particular ailment cured. These sheets confronted the potential user with solutions to problems the producer had defined as such and for which he offered his particular solutions. For the purpose of this study we therefore take these broadsides as perceptions of the producers and customers of problems current in Pennsylvania. We do not interpret them as concrete evidence that these problems existed as such, but only as evidence that these problems were identified by a particular producer and adopted by a customer. Or to put it differently, we differentiate between concrete reality and the perception of concrete reality. Through the careful analysis of the texts of these broadsides we chart the perceptions and not the actual contours of reality of the Middle Atlantic region. Only in the first section of this chapter, where we examine broadsides advertising the sale of estates, do we look beyond these limits; in those cases we interpret the messages and information of the broadsides as concrete evidence of the structure and sizes of farms and of landed property that appealed to the potential German buyers. To accomplish this goal, we have adopted a double strategy. In this chapter we will discuss how broadsides perceived and reflected stages and problems in the life of the German settlers. The following chapters will concentrate on particular themes in broadsides. Close textual analysis will hopefully yield information on why settlers purchased the broadsides or why, at their own expense, they asked printers to produce them. As an auctorial act of creation we have dreamt up a fictitious couple of German settlers, Peter Beimert, second son of old farmer Robert Beimert of Mannheim, Lancaster County, and Elisabeth, amiable daughter of a farmer in a neighboring village. In our imagination they lived in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They shared the concerns, problems, and memories of their German-American contemporaries from their childhoods until their deaths. At least in this study, our German couple will live beyond this chapter, for we will describe and scrutinize their religious world, especially their house devotions. The fourth chapter shifts the focus from house and religion to politics and political values, concerns, and perceptions of German settlers as they are reflected in the political broadsides.

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Beginning: The Market for Land, Houses, and Farm Implements Broadsides had different uses: they announced to the interested the sale of products and property and in doing so offered descriptions of houses and their interiors, of the location of farmhouses in relation to rivers and towns, and of the lands the farmer worked. We learn from these advertisements something about the implements used in various occupations and what kind of help existed to make life more than permanent drudgery. Writing to attract buyers, the authors of these broadsides walked a tightrope between praising their products and avoiding the charge that they embellished where truth was called for. Of course, many more advertisements were published in newspapers. But, as has been shown, advertising sales with broadsides often allowed a more pointed and focused advertisement campaign because a broadside permitted its author to display it in public places where it would attract the attention of those most likely to be interested in purchasing the product advertised.1 Between 1761 and 1830 some fifty broadsides advertised the sale of real estate, either by vendue, or auction, or through the sheriff. They were published either in German alone or in English and German. Most of them were printed in Philadelphia, Lancaster, Lebanon, or York. Almost all of them advertised sales of real estate only in Pennsylvania; only rarely were lands in other states advertised, and only in one case land beyond the Alleghenies. Table B.7 gives a summary of the data. The distribution of the broadsides over time is uneven. Most were published between 1786 and 1805 or 1821 and 1830. In both periods there were no wars; at least in the first years after the Revolution, however, serious adjustment problems affected the real estate market. These difficulties are illustrated by the fact that between 1786 and 1805 six out of seven sales were ordered by a court.2 Equally apparent is that real estate sales advertised through broadsides were rising sharply over the period (graph 1). Nevertheless, the broadsides reveal more changes over time. One important change is related to the place of publication of the broadsides. Initially most of them were published in Philadelphia; at the end of the period, however, almost all broadsides were published in counties away from the East Coast. This trend correlates rather nicely with the languages of the broadsides, as graph 2 indicates. Broadsides published in Philadelphia were typically printed in German and English, while those that appeared in Lancaster, Lebanon, or York most often were published in German only. At least for those real estate sales that were advertised through broadsides, a shift over time took place away from Philadelphia into those counties where a significant part of the population was German. Printing the broadside only in German meant that the offer was addressed exclusively to the German settlers in the region. This could probably be interpreted as meaning that the real estate market as reflected by these broadsides changed from one focused on the bilingual capital to one focused on the German-speaking counties of the state.

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8

Number of broadsides

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1760–69

1770–79

House

1780–89

Barns, stables

1790–99

1800–1809

Cultivated land

1810–19

Uncultivated land

1820–30 City lots

Graph 1 Broadsides advertising real estate sales, 1760–1830

Number of broadsides

In such a regionally structured market the motives for selling and purchasing were much more important simply because people tended to know each other better. As graph 3 shows, there were four reasons for selling real estate: death of an owner, bankruptcies, sale for profit, or sale ordered by an orphanage court—reasons that reflected fundamental life crises of the settlers. One has to keep in mind that these findings are based on broadsides; their publication does not reflect the development of the actual land market, nor does it suggest hard economic trends. What it does suggest is why people wanted to sell and how they went about informing the public about their intentions. This reminder raises the question of whether real estate sales of owners who had just died were preferentially advertised in broadsides, rather than in newspapers.3 Was there a difference between the sale of an estate of a person who had just died and the sale of a house or land of persons still living who negotiated the sale as owners? If there was, the most obvious reason

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Philadelphia

Lancaster

Lebanon

York

German broadside

English/German broadside

Graph 2 Broadsides advertising real estate sales, with place of publication and language, 1760–1830

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Number of broadsides

12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1760–69 Owner died

Graph 3

1770–79 Owner bankrupt

1780–89 German owner

1790–99 English owner

1800–1809

1810–19

German broadside

1820–30

English/German broadside

Broadsides on real estate, with motives for selling and language, by decade

would have been that the sale of the estate of a person who had just died certainly may have been under time pressure, particularly if it was a farm: farm lands needed to be worked, cattle fed, fields looked after, and crops harvested. If the farm was to be sold at harvesttime or seedtime, the potential seller—usually the administrator of the estate or the executor of the will—had to attract as large a group of seriously interested buyers as quickly as possible and sell the property fast, preferably on the day appointed. Advertising the sale in broadsides and in advertisements in newspapers may have achieved that goal better than relying only on a newspaper advertisement. If this analysis is correct, then the properties offered in broadsides should reflect it. Graph 4 indicates that the results are somewhat inconclusive. The really important indicator for time concerns is shown in the ‘‘Cattle and fruit’’ column, which indicates that the seller advertised the sale of cattle and of fruits on trees and in the fields. In the decades prior to 1800, cattle and fruit did not play any significant role in the goods advertised, but they became of growing importance in the real estate advertised thereafter. This should be viewed in combination with the immovable property offered in broadsides. The trends are obvious: the most important parts of the property advertised were cultivated lands, followed by houses and other buildings associated with a complete

Number of broadsides

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1760–69

1770–79

1780–89

Household implements

Graph 4

1790–99

1800–1809

Farm implements

1810–19

1820–30

Cattle and fruit

Broadsides on movable properties, by decade

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8

Number of broadsides

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1760–69 House

1770–79

1780–89

Barns, stables

1790–99 Cultivated land

1800–1809

1810–19

Uncultivated land

1820–30 City lots

Graph 5 Broadsides on immovable properties, by decade

farm—barns, stables, and other outbuildings (graph 5). Clearly, the people the advertisements were aimed at, including our fictitious couple, the Beimerts, were not interested in acquiring or clearing uncultivated land. Most advertisements also mentioned springs, often with pumps and orchards as additional features. The trend clearly was to advertise working farms that needed care and attention and could not be left idle and uncared for. Cows had to be milked, pigs sold or slaughtered, apples and other fruits harvested, and corn and wheat brought in. In including fruits and implements, the administrators made sure that the farm as a whole remained functioning. Someone was needed who possessed the means as well as the farming skills to continue where the previous owner had left the farm at the time of his demise. The German broadsides describe a world in which property was increasingly advertised only within the German farming community in the region. This clearly increased the number of farms from which the Beimerts could choose their dream farm. It was an important way of keeping the small towns with predominantly German inhabitants closed to other language groups. German and English broadsides both describe the location of lands with great care, indicating that they shared the same concern with maintaining closely knit communities. A good example emerges in Johann Steinmetz’s description of the location of the ‘‘delightful’’ land he advertised in Northampton County: ‘‘situated in Mannheim and Germany townships, adjoining Lands of John Long, Mark Furney, Peter Syler, Nicholas Miller, Daniel Utz, and others, and about one mile from the said town of Hanover. The little Conawago runs through this tract upwards of a mile, on which there are several valuable mill Seats, and a large Quantity of Meadow may be made.’’4 Around the same time, R. H. Hammond advertised the sale of the late Thomas Clark’s land in the public house of Peter Lineweaver (as the name appears in the English part of the broadside), alias Leineweber (in the German part), in Lebanon Township. The piece of woodland belonging to the estate is described

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as ‘‘containing about twelve acres, situate in Bethel township, near the road leading from Lebanon to Jonestown, adjoining now or late John Shally, Michael Steckbeck, A. Hershberger and others.’’5 The striking feature of these descriptions is that the location of lands is given not only in relation to natural features like rivers, creeks, and distance to towns and villages, but also by naming the owners of the adjoining lots. The latter serves two purposes: the locally interested buyer would immediately be able to identify the piece of land and ask the adjoining owners about the quality of the soil, and he could verify the solidity of the legal title to the land. On a communitarian level these names embedded the piece of land into a web of communal property relationships that facilitated the cooperative working habits so common in North America. These details provided valuable clues to the interested. In addition, in a land where titles were all too often disputed, it provided certainty that the property possessed a legally secure title. Indeed, almost no piece of advertised real estate failed to contain explicit assurances that good title to the property would be offered on the day the sale would be finalized. With very few exceptions, these broadsides offered only lands within the Middle Atlantic colonies and states that were settled and properly registered. The exceptions, such as offers of land in recently acquired formerly Native American territory, tried particularly hard to assure the potential purchaser that he was not being taken for a ride. The best-thought-out advertisement is for land in the northern corner of Northampton County, published in early January 1788 by the respected merchant company of Tench Coxe (1755–1824) and his partner, Nalbro Frazier (1759–1811).6 At that time this region was barely settled and little known, as reflected in the description, which states that the land was situated in ‘‘Northampton County, Pennsylvania, five or six miles from the New York line, beginning on the head waters of the Shohocking Creek, about four miles from the River Delaware, and extending southwesterly about three miles, when the course of the lands turns from the South, and runs nearly due West. The northernmost waters of the Equinunk touch two of the southernmost Lots.’’7 In simple terms: go up the Delaware River until you come to where the Equinunk enters the Delaware, and you will be at the southern edge of the lots. The potential buyer had indeed very few other means to find out more about the location in the border region to New York State. Knowing this, Coxe and Frazier supplied some further information: ‘‘The distance from Easton is about eighty miles, from Jersey [it] does not exceed sixty miles, and from Poughkeepsie on the North River is the same.’’ All three settlement names were well-known at the time, so the readers would have had at least a rough idea about the location. The next important problem the broadside addressed was the question of the region’s accessibility, infrastructure, and link to potential markets. Here the broadside assured the potential buyer that the products from his new farm ‘‘will in a short time be got to Market on easy Terms, from the Improvement of the Navigation of the Delaware, and of the Susquehanna, a Stream which rises in the western Parts of the

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Tracts, and runs northerly into that River at the Great Bend.’’8 Of course, the readers knew that the improvements of both the Delaware and the Susquehanna had not yet reached that high up. But even so, flatboats could surely bring agricultural products down both rivers to Philadelphia or the Chesapeake Bay. But these were not the only potential markets, the broadside assured the interested reader: ‘‘the unimproved Lands now being offered for Sale or Lease . . . [are] very near to thick settlements, that lie Eastward and Southward of them.’’9 Moreover, these settlements as well as those ‘‘on the Susquehanna in New York, and in Pennsylvania, with the river itself ’’ served, the broadside bravely stated, as a defense ‘‘from the Indians, if any Disturbances should take place.’’10 Although this latter assurance must have sounded to some contemporaries like wishful thinking, it was common knowledge that during the French and Indian and the Revolutionary Wars the Indian tribes had been pushed farther west. By 1788 almost none were living east of the Alleghenies. Finally, every potential purchaser would want to know something about the quality of the land. To answer such curiosity, the sellers, unable to give any references such as the names of neighbors to the property, had to rely on imagination coupled with practical knowledge about what a potential purchaser would find attractive: ‘‘There is an ample quantity of Grass and Meadow-Ground to each Tract, and they are well timbered with Beach, Maple, Birch, Ash etc. The Quality of these Lands is in many Instances very fine, and they all will make very good Farms,’’11 they bravely asserted. Finally, the broadside named two additional merchants, George Palmer of Moore Township, Northampton County, and Captain William Craig of Easton, who both were familiar with the lots and had precise plans for the area where they were located. For all its vague pronouncements, this broadside probably satisfied the curiosity of potential buyers like the Beimerts who were willing to venture so far out to find good but cheap land. Compared with much land available in the future state of Ohio, which after the proclamation of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 had just been formally opened for settlement,12 the lots offered by Coxe and Frazier had distinct advantages because the Delaware and the Susquehanna Rivers provided easy and fairly fast access to those markets on which the farmers depended for the sale of their products. Looking at other broadsides that offered uncultivated lands shows that next to price and quality, accessibility to markets and infrastructure were the two most important concerns of potential buyers. In 1819, in a broadside that was published only in German, Daniel de Benneville of Philadelphia offered ‘‘a large piece of land in the state of Ohio of the finest quality.’’13 The lands were located in Clermont County, Ohio, just east of Cincinnati. Little is known about de Benneville. He was apprenticed to Joseph Pfeifer, a surgeon in Philadelphia, around 1770, and sometime after 1776 enlisted in the Virginia Continental Line as a surgeon. For his services in the Revolutionary War, on January 21, 1795, the federal government granted him four hundred acres of bounty lands.14 Like other officers he most likely bought up bounty claims from other soldiers, since in the broadside

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he offers much more land than he had received from the federal government. At the time of publication of the broadside de Benneville gave his permanent whereabouts as ‘‘six miles from Philadelphia on the turnpike that leads to Willowgate.’’15 Obviously after the war he had moved from Virginia to Pennsylvania, probably finding his services more in demand in the City of Brotherly Love. According to the broadside, he would be traveling to Ohio and could be reached either in Cincinnati at the house of General William Lyttle or in Williamsburg, a small town to the east of Cincinnati, where ‘‘the lands are situated.’’ In giving the address of a general and adding that the lands were located in a well-established township, de Benneville established reputation and credibility among potential purchasers.16 De Benneville offers the following geographical description of the lands: ‘‘This land is situated on the Little Miami near the town of Williamsburg, in Clermont County. . . . The region where these lands are located is fairly well settled. . . . The great western postal route passes through the same as well as the country roads that go into different directions.’’ And he adds for good measure: ‘‘There is a post office in Williamsburg. To the west the mail leaves twice a week from Chillicothe [then the capital of Ohio] to Cincinnati; it passes en route through the town [Williamsburg] and the lands. Two printers work in the town, each of whom prints a newspaper.’’ This was, as far as location, infrastructure, and links to potential markets for agricultural products were concerned, a solid and precise description. Next he turns to describing the quality of his land, offering a medley of fiction and reality: ‘‘On this land one finds lime, building blocks, and numerous forests’’—all three useful for building and maintaining farms and fences. He then gives a list of trees found in the region, ranging from walnut and maple trees to ‘‘coffee trees etc. as well as underbrush of pawpaw and spicewood.’’17 The author, clearly not a farmer, offers fairly little on the quality of the soil, but does stress the eminently useful fact that many springs and creeks watered the lands. De Benneville goes to considerable lengths in his broadside to establish confidence in himself as a person and in his offer. His geographical description is straightforward and addresses most of the issues a potential buyer would have had in mind. The only weakness of his offer relates to the fairly nondescript qualities of the land itself. He does not use key words like ‘‘fertile’’; neither does he refer the reader to farmers in the region who might attest to the fertility of the lands. Nor does he mention anything about potential fruits like apples, so much in favor with German farmers in Pennsylvania. Finally, the broadside lacks references to meadows and pastures for those who were interested in cattle raising—although all these possibilities existed in the area. De Benneville does state fairly the rich possibilities for marketing the produce of the farms, but makes no mention of the possibilities suggested by the Ohio River, which marked the southern border of the county and linked the region to other important centers and markets to both the north and south. The last example represents a strange contrast to both Coxe and Frazier’s and de Benneville’s broadsides. The broadside Zu Verkaufen Eine Anzahl kostbarer Landesstriche

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in den Grafschaften Frederick und Shanandoe, im Staat Virginien says all the right things: the lands were well situated in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, were fertile, and neighboring farmers attested to the claims made. Proximity to Winchester and other settlements guaranteed markets for the produce; the title to the lands, finally, sounded solid and was to be conveyed after payment of a third of the price. The text mentions the fact that most of the land was excellent wheat land and well-watered pasture, which increased its attractiveness. The only odd feature of the broadside is that it makes simply no effort to establish the reputation and credibility of the seller. The interested purchaser is simply directed to apply to ‘‘Nr. 213 in der Market Straße’’ of Philadelphia—an address of stupefying simplicity singular among the German broadsides. Local people knew, of course, that Market Street was the finest address in Philadelphia and was where merchants tended to have their establishments. Yet someone could well ask why the advertiser withheld his name from the broadside and whether he had something to hide in doing so.18 Whether these considerations had any effect on the reception of the offers for lands in the border regions between Pennsylvania and New York, in Ohio, or in the Shenandoah Valley is unknown, as is the result of the other offers. But that does not mean that the broadsides represent a fictitious world with no beginning or concrete end. Detailed local research would provide answers on the fate of these offers. But for our purpose another aspect of these broadsides is much more important: the broadsides project the picture of a real estate market as part of a larger world in which Germans in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries lived and participated. Not only offers of farms, lands, and cattle, they give us images of what farms were like and of the desires and perceptions of originators and addressees of broadsides, such as our young German couple. Because there are few broadsides that contain sufficient data on the size of farms and the interior furnishings, we will summarize what the broadsides offer. The houses of German farmers advertised in these broadsides are on the whole smaller than their English counterparts. They have but one story, or to be more precise, just a ground floor most likely partitioned into a kitchen and two rooms, the ‘‘Stub’’ and the ‘‘Kammer,’’ a division common right through the eighteenth century even in small German craftsmen’s small houses in town.19 The most significant difference between English and German farms advertised in broadsides is the number of outbuildings, of which English farms had far more. In most other aspects English and German farms boasted essentially the same features. Both the kitchen equipment and the house furniture suggest that German farmers—at least those whose belongings were offered for sale in these broadsides—were not affluent but comfortable. The two clocks—one in the house of a widow, the other in the house of the late Peter Gingerich, probably a middling farmer—support this interpretation. While in Europe only well-to-do farmers owned bedding and bedsteads, these seem to have been the rule in Pennsylvania and the Middle Atlantic region. The same was probably true for tables and chairs.20

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The data on which the summary is based do not reflect the actual contours of the real estate market. But they do provide an impression of how the lives of the German settlers could be imagined in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; for contemporaries the broadsides were a visible element of what constituted rural life. True, the evidence this impression rests on is not systematically assembled, but it is evidence nevertheless, created by the frailty of nature and the chances of survival over time: that is what accounts for the fifty German broadsides that advocated sales of estates between 1760 and the election of President Andrew Jackson. Let us draw together the elements of this imagined world in which our fictitious young German couple, Peter and Elisabeth Beimert, chose to live. In the mideighteenth century the real estate market was an affair of both English and German buyers and purchasers, as attested by the number of bilingual broadsides. That was to change over the next eighty years. By the 1820s practically no bilingual broadside advocating real estate sales came out of Philadelphia. Most broadsides were published in the centers of German settlements in Lancaster, York, and Lebanon, where most sales were transacted as well. These transactions were to an ever-increasing extent not prompted by someone who had excess property to sell but by the death of farmers. And this meant too that in this rural world the transfer of property from father to son seems to have happened rather late. A significant number of broadsides mention that fruit had to be harvested and animals cared for, signs that the owner had worked his farm until he died. If one believes the broadsides, then for the old farmer the right time for the transfer of his property was his death.21 By that time, however, a third of the sons seem to have acquired property of their own, as the sons in the Clemens family had done.22 The accounts of this family show that the patriarch too retained his farm until his death. But during his lifetime he bought land and houses not only for his sons, but for his daughters as well, carefully entering the purchases in the account book with the intention to deduct them from the portions of his children in his last will.23 The household and farming utensils sold with the farms suggest that these farmers were neither rich nor lived in abject poverty.24 The number and variety of furniture, beds and bedsteads, and drawers and kitchen utensils suggest a modest but generally comfortable lifestyle of their owners. Heirs and administrators did not itemize all the possessions in the broadsides. Instead, a good part of the possessions left behind was covered by phrases like ‘‘many different kinds of house and kitchen implements too cumbersome to enumerate here,’’ as Heinrich Heilmann and Heinrich Merk from ‘‘Ost Hanover Taunship,’’ Lebanon County, informed their potential buyers in July 1830.25 These broadsides list important and spectacular items like the two grandfather clocks, the large furniture pieces, the desk one would not expect, the pewter, and the multiple pipe stoves—valuable items the heirs obviously owned already and were therefore willing to sell. But ordinary items, which of course were even more necessary for daily life, are often not listed. A significant number of possessions are not even mentioned in the broadsides. For example, no clothes are enumerated. We learn only that a widow

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left various linen at her death.26 And finally, no broadside says anything about books that the owner may have possessed.27 But as will become evident in the course of this discussion, texts, hymns, books, religious and worldly poetry, and other cultural artifacts were part of the life of the Germans who lived in these houses.

Getting Started: Love and Marriage Peter Beimert, the fictitious second son of the equally fictitious old farmer Robert Beimert of Mannheim, Lancaster County, had fallen in love with Elisabeth, the amiable daughter of a farmer in the neighboring village. We can imagine these young people sitting on a bench and talking about their joint future. Both wanted to continue their parents’ life as farmers; both knew that getting started would require some means. Elisabeth was confident that her parents would help her out, and Peter claimed that his father too had promised some assistance. Both had gone to some auctions of farms, and both had of course carefully read the advertisements in the local papers and broadsides that advocated sales of farms. Nothing was yet formalized; Peter had not even formally asked his beloved’s parents for permission to propose. In short, they lived in that romantic and exciting moment where life is all emotions, dreams, longing for each other, and imagining the future to come. They heard birds even when they slept. Birds and flowers were symbols of love and affection, as depicted on the colorful broadsides that Peter had picked up at the last market in Lancaster. Courtship was a time of sheer excitement; printers agreed, though for different reasons. They considered lovers reliable customers for their publications. These texts offered suggestions on how to start a relationship and maintain it, and with what kind of ardor to nurture it and make it permanent. Table B.10 offers a summary of the printers’ output on love. The summary suggests a few rough generalizations: between 1730 and 1830 more broadsides sing about the sufferings, joys, and idiosyncrasies of male than of female lovers. Songs or texts addressed to a woman are couched in the same terminology as those written for male lovers. Put differently, in courtship the woman is mostly the object who is addressed, causes suffering, and finally responds or succumbs. In marriage the woman is the loving partner—although the most spectacular broadside, richly embroidered with texts sentimentally squeezed into the form of hearts, contains both the letter of a bachelor or husband to his girlfriend or wife and the girl’s or wife’s response.28 Yet bliss and eternal happiness are not all there is to life, as a number of broadsides make clear: success and failure existed in the life imagined by broadsides as in the real thing. The lover bewails his fate when his beloved leaves him and marries someone else; full of spite, he might even suggest that his former love is a slut. In one poem the young women distance themselves from the bragging male youngsters by poking fun at them as suitors who enumerate all their wonderful possessions, which turn out to be

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rubbish and debts. And finally there is the poem that prints the promises of a lover in the left column and their antithesis in the right column. The poem captures the ambiguity of love that characterizes the ensemble of the broadsides, but not their thematic emphasis. Table B.10 shows that the broadsides can be arranged so that the narrative of courtship fits into a time sequence. The beginning of a love relationship could be a young bachelor going to the admired young lady’s house on New Year’s morning and reading her a poem in which he poured out his love for her and admired her charm and beauty, before shooting in the New Year for her.29 (The custom of shooting in the New Year was brought over from southern Germany and was popular enough in Pennsylvania for the printer to reprint this text at least, and for young men or women to purchase it.) In his bold poetic statement the lover neither minces words nor wastes time. He tells her, ‘‘You are to love me but shun others’’; asks, ‘‘Let me be your most beloved’’; and promises in return, ‘‘My heart will always be yours.’’30 He then wishes that she be spared grief, enjoy a long life, and be accompanied by love and friendship, and that roses will bloom only for her. In return he promises to love her eternally, do everything for her, and encircle her with a chain of roses. He confesses that he came to her house like a timid mouse to shoot the New Year in for her if she approved. Her disapproval would make him look like a fool to others. As he hopes for her goodwill, his shot will sound louder than the noisiest kiss.31 If the young man is fortunate enough to be greeted by his adored girl with approval, love, and affection, he will be overjoyed. He will sing about his noble love, which will be paradise for him.32 Heady effusions like these probably prompted printers to print and girls to buy the parodic portrait of a young courting coxcomb. The poem interjected irony into gender relations, which women obviously appreciated, as it was reprinted four times. Yet love, courtship, and romance were stronger market forces: the collection of three poems entitled Drei Liebes-Erkla¨rungen or just Liebes Erkla¨rungen! (fig. 1) was published twelve times.33 In addition, the first poem was reprinted singly five times and the last two poems twice.34 Two of the poems bewail the lot of the lover who longs for a sign of his girlfriend. In the opening of the first poem the young man beseeches his object of love to take seriously the pain caused by her coldness. He admits that his social standing is inadequate but assures her that he will raise himself. He suffers from not being permitted to see her and asks whether she truly loves him or is playing a false game with him. He would rather take poison or commit suicide than be shunned by her. Should he ever not be truthful to her, he continues, the sun will cease to shine on him and heaven will revenge her. He will love her until vines grow on millstones and fire ceases to burn. Should he die, his request is that she write on his gravestone that her lover lies here. The second poem, of equal length, repeats the pain the lover suffers and gives the same reasons, though in somewhat different terms, images, and metaphors. Even marble crumbles when pieces are chipped away; should her heart therefore not give in? If she does not listen to his pleas, pain will finally kill him, yet even while he is slowly rotting in the grave, she will remain his most beloved treasure. The two effusions

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Figure 1 Liebes-Erkla¨ rung (Reading, Pa.: C. A. Bruckman, [1817]). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

demonstrate a male tendency toward hyperbole and dramatic rhetoric; interestingly enough, there is no poem in which a woman spills such luxuriant emotions. Women are assigned passive and men active roles; men are characterized as the aggressive lovers who besiege women. Like fortresses the ladies resist male impetuousness—up to a point, of course.

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The third poem is different. It begins innocently enough with the man hoping that his ‘‘most beautiful treasure’’ will remember him—but if someone accused her (of what is not spelled out), it would hurt his heart. Yet she knows that people love to talk, and if his heart longs for her it will annoy them. The poem then develops a rational argument for why the people’s minds do not matter: if love were unjust, it would not have been created, and if love were a great sin, clergy would not succumb to it. God in heaven, who rules all, will effect and order their union, and then the little golden ring will have his name inscribed on it. He will present her with a little flower as a sign, and if they want to love each other, they must be quiet about it.35 This poem addresses two issues. First is society’s claim that courtship is inherently dangerous and therefore shrouded in negative images. Such views were buttressed by Christian teachings that stressed the sinfulness of the flesh, yet the poem advances arguments to prove such concepts wrong. Secondly, the poem reaffirms the necessity for lovers to seek secrecy to avoid social opprobrium. If this reading is correct, then this third poem stands in stark contrast to the first two. While they speak of the pain of unanswered love and nevertheless assure the beloved that the author’s love will never cease, this third poem develops an argument why the two who love each other will finally be joined in love by God as the ruler of everything in this world. While the other poems try to convince by citing the speaker’s suffering and longing, this author falls back on the justness of love as something created by God and not declared a sin by the clergy—two of the highest authorities in the land. While the first two poems couch love in terms of pure sentimentality almost oblivious to the social contexts, the third combines social context and religious dicta while evoking God and the clergy to assure the speaker’s beloved that their love and affection is the will of God—not sin but a reenactment of God’s will. This argument could apply, of course, to licit as well as illicit love relationships, which suggests an alternative reading of this third poem: the ‘‘little golden ring’’ at least indicates that this poem may describe a strategy for exchanging intimacies in strictest privacy. Such a reading denotes this package of three poems as something like a directory for beginners: together they tell of the initial difficulties in getting together, the willingness to overcome social obstacles, the high drama in the slowly evolving relationship between the two, which envisions fulfillment and failure to the last consequences, and finally the man’s expansive plan, submitted to his lover, for how they can privately intensify and deepen their newfound yet still fragile happiness. Two other groups of broadsides supplement this package: the one titled ‘‘LiebensLied’’ [sic] was printed six times. In the song the author recalls the wonderful time he had with his ‘‘dearest sweetheart’’ (‘‘liebstes Scha¨tzchen’’); he would love to spend more time with her, he is dreaming of her sweet kisses at night, and he thinks of her wherever he goes. In short, the author recalls the implementation of the strategic plan in the former poem. But now, he concludes, he has to leave her, he has spent enough time with her, and he must walk down his road. Yet he hopes that she will not forget him

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and will ever remain his most beloved.36 The poem combines two fairly familiar situations in North America: love and friendship with departure and migration. It does so in a remarkably cool fashion: love is real and deep as long as it lasts, but when the time has come the lover must leave his ‘‘sweetheart’’ (‘‘Scha¨tzchen’’). Courtship and love relationships are parts of the changeability of life; only when sealed by marriage are they eternal. The vows contained in the other poems are promises of faithfulness after marriage. It is not certain that this poem was written in America, for similar scenarios were familiar to all journeymen in Europe who spent time in particular towns to improve their skills and then continued their journey.37 But for our argument it does not really matter where it was written: the broadside addressed an issue important for both the American and European customer. The counterpart is marked by a letter full of ‘‘Herz’’ from a lover to his beloved female friend. He assures her that he unceasingly loves her and longs for her positive response. Despite the flat conventionality of its language and metaphors, it was obviously popular; it was printed a total of five times, both as a poem and as a letter.38 Two of the broadsides were obviously sent to the women who signed their names to them: Betsy Wolf39 and Sarah Wubley.40 The third group is an exchange of epistles between lovers (plate 1). These broadsides were printed five times.41 One of them is remarkable for its exquisite ornaments and colors. The letter of the young man is full of longing, assurances of eternal love, sadness that she is not with him, and hope that the letter upon his return will bring joyous news. The answer, in at least two broadsides printed on the same page, assures the beloved of eternal love and begs him not to forget her in life and death; only his love could heal her wounded heart and give her joy. The letter concludes with recalling the ‘‘theure Bund’’ (precious covenant) they had concluded. Being separate is again the motive for this exchange and the occasion for pouring out feelings of eternal love and joy. One striking element unites both letters: there is no female or male rhetoric. They are emotionally and linguistically on the same level, using essentially the same words and images. All these texts are full of sentiments repetitious in their nature and, if written in rhyme, of remarkably poor quality. But that of course is not really important. What is important is that most of these texts embed courtship in traditional forms of sentiment and emotionality spiced with the sense that love is not always eternal and not always as serious as most of the texts pretend. The fun side of the broadside is heavily weighted against men, who are parodied as suitors and coxcombs. Finally, courtship is full of little secrets and has its painful side when separation is inevitable. Love is time-bound for those who enjoy an intimate friendship for some time and then depart for other shores. That is the role of men. Women in these broadsides do not depart but turn to another man, whom they marry. In both cases the person left indulges in grief and selfpity. The dark side of courtship (seduction, abandonment, and bloody murder) is also prominently documented in broadsides.42 As in European broadsides, the young

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woman commits suicide, dies in childbirth, or kills her newborn, after which she is caught and condemned to death—she is not as fortunate as Gretchen in Goethe’s Dr. Faustus, who is saved at the last moment. In one American broadside (most likely a reprint of the European original) the count, after seducing the young woman, offers her one of his servants as a husband. She proudly refuses, returns to Augsburg to her mother, and dies in childbirth on the same night that the count, with awful prescient feelings, races to Augsburg, where he meets her funeral procession at the town gates. He then commits suicide.43 In a second broadside a girl loses her mind over the death of her lover, defames God, and as punishment suffers a horrible death.44 In a third version the Gretchen scenario is, as we discuss elsewhere, re-enacted in the drama of Susanna Cox.45 And in a fourth a lover, at the perfidious instigation of his mother, bloodily kills his beloved and is later caught and put to death. The moral is evident: do not listen to the insinuations of wicked mothers.46 Love is associated with pain, longing, and envisioned happiness in marriage; it is a mode of imagining the future, as well as amusement for a while only. Love is imagined and experienced as high drama that can end in murder, death, and damnation. The shades and meanings of love and courtship are part of a rich cultural and emotional texture that leave much unsaid. The most surprising silence is that the Christian meaning of love or the dangers of lust for a true Christian are totally ignored in these broadsides. Christianity and God are reduced to a rational argument in a strategy to fool society about the secret intentions of the lovers. A second silence is buried in high rhetoric: the sexual and carnal aspects of love are carefully avoided. Love in the eighteenth century is at best strategically imagined through planning the possibilities—that is the closest the broadsides get to what we today so freely describe as sexual practices. Love, in other words, is true to the fashion of the times: a sentimental experience, not a sexual one. Murder and bloodshed aside, in the peaceful Middle Atlantic world, at the end of their courtship, our fictitious Peter and Elisabeth agree to enter into, as one broadside phrases it, a ‘‘precious covenant’’47 to live ever after in joy and bliss.48 Heavenly angels gracefully smile, and tears of joy flush away former sorrows. Surprisingly enough, however, we have found practically no broadside that celebrates, comments, or discusses the joys of marriage—a remarkable comment on the problems Pietists in eighteenthcentury North America had with marriage.49 The exceptions are two poems printed on the occasion of ‘‘der ehelichen Verbindung des Herrn William Steinmetz mit der liebenswu¨rdigen und tugendbegabten Jungfrau Maria Billmeyer den 21. Februar 1807’’ (the wedding day of William Steinmetz and Maria Billmeyer, February 21, 1807), printed for the occasion by the father of the bride, the Germantown printer Michael Billmeyer. The second poem, published three months later, is entitled Dem Herrn Joseph Ehrenfried am Verbindungstage mit Madame Anna Smith den 6ten May 1807.50 The poems declare the marriage a day of joy and express hope that with God’s help the couple will remain happy and continue to think alike. The parents as well as the gentleman of the second poem will look forward to new offspring, and then finally

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both parents and grandparents will experience real pleasure. These are rather conventional texts that avoid any admonishment about the duties of wife and husband; the hope of both authors that the married couples may continue to be happy and think alike suggests an imagined equal partnership in matrimony.51 Obviously both broadsides were produced not for the market but for special family affairs. Thus the authors did not have to remember the expectations and perceptions of a potential buyer. They were free to express their thoughts as father of the bride, a consideration that lends credibility to the poem.

Daily Life in the German House Under God’s Protection With marriage came independence from parental control, establishing a household, pregnancies, and the chores and problems of daily life. Most German settlers were farmers, and our fictitious newlyweds, Peter and Elisabeth, were no exception. That simple fact may account for the sixteen printings of a broadside extolling the virtues of the ‘‘Bauernstand.’’52 Most likely based on broadsides produced in Germany, the poem is totally unaffected by American rhetoric about Jeffersonian yeomen and republican farmers.53 Instead it begins by asserting that Adam was the first farmer, together with his wife Eve, and then extols the work of both in raising cattle, planting fruit, and providing nourishment and food for the world at large. When war and devastation keep the farmer from doing what he can do best, men, women, and children die from hunger. Therefore, the poem concludes with a prayer for peace and the demand that each and everyone regard and view farmers with the highest imaginable respect. Like farmers in Germany, the German settlers in the New World saw farming as the estate that bore the duty of providing the world with food. As will be shown in chapter 4, this definition extended into the political world. For the German settler only a farmer was properly qualified to represent him in parliamentary institutions.54 Judging from the number of broadsides that focus on prayer, blessing, and piety within the household, life on Peter and Elisabeth’s farm was firmly embedded in a Christian context. Table B.11 provides a summary of the broadsides featuring Haussegen (house blessings). These broadsides are remarkable for their elaborate designs—even today they tend to fetch higher prices than many other German broadsides.55 There are good reasons for this, the most important being that most German houses at that time owned a Haussegen, which was kept in the house for generations. There is one remarkable document showing the longevity of these texts: on May 28, 1811, under the printed text the owner of this broadside wrote the following note: ‘‘My children, this is what I write down, that you do not sin, and if someone sins, we have our intercessor with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is just, and the same is the atonement for our sins’’ (plate 2).56 This admonition was clearly addressed to the next generation. House blessings were important parts of a Christian household, and that explains why most of them were more than plain printed texts. They were often little pieces of

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art decorated with birds and flowers. At least in the early broadsides, doves were symbols for the Holy Spirit, who had entered the house, while lilies and roses were symbols of Christ.57 These elaborate decorations also implied, of course, that producing them required more work. Since demand was high, they very likely fetched a considerably higher price than ordinary broadsides.58 The effort that went into production probably accounts, too, for the fact that a larger than average number of these broadsides carry information on printers and dates. On over half of the house blessings the printers stated their name, where they were located, and the year of production. 5 1 3 3 5 1 2 1 1 1 1 1

Johann Baumann, Ephrata Johann Baumann, Ephrata Samuel Baumann, Ephrata Ephrata Community Johann Ritter & Comp, Reading Carl Andreas Bruckmann, Reading Gra¨ter u. Blumer, Allentown H. W. Ville, Lancaster F. W. Scho¨pflin, Chambersburg Johann P. Wiestling, Harrisburg Heinrich B. Sage, Reading Benjamin Meyer, Lancaster

This list demonstrates the overall importance of Ephrata and the Baumann family as printers of house blessings; almost half of the twenty-five house blessings were printed in Ephrata, and over a third by the Baumanns; the second most important printer was the firm of Johann Ritter and Company in Reading. Both the Ephrata printers and Ritter’s company competed for customers with their elaborate designs and coloring. No price is known for such an elaborate house blessing, but if the average broadside was probably sold for four to six pence, a house blessing may have brought up to eighteen pence or more. If one assumes that the print runs of these house blessings were larger than for other broadsides, then it becomes understandable why printers like Ritter in Reading and the Baumanns in Ephrata competed for the market. From the customer’s point of view this competition probably did not affect the price; he seems to have accepted that more elaborate, colorful designs were pricier. But there are clear signs that the blessings became more elaborate and colorful. Purists who shunned the expense or the spectacular print, however, could always get the same one uncolored. The house blessing was a prominently displayed statement that informed the visitor that he was entering a house where piety and a Christian lifestyle were practiced—or at least that was the intention. The different characters of these blessings certainly offered the purchaser a choice that reflected his basic idea about what piety and the Christian walk of life meant to him. We will demonstrate the implications by taking a

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closer look at the three house blessings most often printed: Geistlicher Haus Seegen: In Gottes Nahmen geh ich aus, printed fourteen times; Haus Segen: In den drey allerho¨chsten Nahmen, printed eleven times; and Christlicher Haus-Seegen: Nebst der Zwo¨lf Stunden Geda¨chtnuß, printed seven times.59 Geistlicher Haus Seegen starts with a bland statement of rules in the house. The owner’s first prayer is that while he is out, God will rule ‘‘the whole house’’ and watch over ‘‘my housewife and children.’’ Second, he begs God to protect him from vice and from disgracing himself, and to help him to accomplish his goal and return cheerfully home. Third, he asks all in the house not to swear or else forthwith leave the house. Otherwise God will punish both the sinner and the owner of the house. The blessing has essentially three aspects: First, it establishes the owner’s responsibility for the whole house. Second, the owner asks God for protection and help outside the house. Third, the owner establishes but one specific commandment. A close reading makes it clear that the blessings of this text are specifically asked only for the master of the house; his wife and children are only recommended to God’s care while he is out on an errand that the text asks God to help him achieve. Among the many Christian commands that could have been elevated to a rule of behavior in the house, only swearing is singled out. Within the collection this broadside was the most popular. Although the text was the same in all fourteen printings, six were plain, with only border ornaments, while the other eight, all of them products of the Baumann printers, improved their Christian meanings with doves, peacocks, lilies, and other flowers as symbols for Christ and the Holy Spirit. All of these prints were most likely offered for sale either colored or plain. In Haus Segen, the text in the center is also surrounded by colorful birds, boys, and flowers. The title invokes God the Father, his Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are praised by angels, to give health, quietude, and blessings. The message is encapsulated in four verses. The first asks for blessings on the house, the land, the farming, the cattle, and the harvest as well as for protection against fire and misfortune. The second prays for the preservation of health, for strength to work, and protection against hail, storm, and late frosts. The third asks God’s help so that all can live in virtue, harmony, and grace and keep vice and disgrace from the house. The last verse is a prayer that the Holy Spirit will reside in the house and sanctify its inhabitants’ lives, doings, and deaths to make them inheritors in heaven. The text is thus neatly divided into four sections: the first focuses on the farm, the second on the people who live and work there, the third on morality, and the fourth on eternity. It says nothing about who rules the house, does not claim blessings for particular persons, and establishes no specific rule except to pray that the Holy Spirit reside in the house and sanctify family and servants. It is a text that could have been, and in some houses probably was, used as a morning or evening prayer. In decorations these broadsides differ. All but two of them display angels, though of two different types. Some have putti who hold either a flower or a branch, while two show respectable ladies dressed as angels with wings who hold branches, birds, or books

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in their hands. All of them display birds—mostly songbirds but sometimes also fantasy birds. Stylistically they represent a break with the older tradition, for while the older decorations with doves, peacocks, lilies, and roses link the print to the symbolic world of radical Pietism and biblical symbols, the grave ladies as angels and the putti lack specific Protestant emblematic features. Christlicher Haus-Seegen (plate 3) is by far the most elaborate and complex of the three texts. The text and the arrangement of its parts probably go back to Augsburg, Germany; some copies state under the title, ‘‘to be found in Augsburg.’’60 Compared to the other two, this one overwhelms both with its colors and with the wealth of texts. While the others could be digested in a minute, this one would require ten times that. The central text entrusts family and all possessions in the house to God’s protection, thanks God for the creation of the world, and prays for protection against lightning and for the preservation of the owner and his servants (‘‘Gesind’’), that they may live as Christians, avoid vice and disgrace, be protected by God’s angels, and live free from worry. God is asked to bless the owner and ‘‘die seinen,’’ meaning the family and servants, and finally and wordily concludes with the promise to do everything in the name of Jesus. The centerpiece is surrounded by twelve hearts with twelve texts. It is not quite clear what the ‘‘zwo¨lf Stunden Geda¨chtniß’’ (twelve-hour remembrance) signifies, but three meanings come to mind. One could refer to the twelve apostles, although in the text under the eleventh heart it is stated that only eleven disciples stayed with Christ after Judas had left him for money. The second could refer to the twelve tribes of Israel in the Old Testament. The third meaning, which is probably the one intended, could refer to the biblical definition of the day as consisting of twelve hours (John 11:9): in each of the twelve hearts that represent the twelve hours of the day the people in the house should ponder the message contained in the heart of that hour. These messages first state a religious or biblical truth and in the second part its application for the particular time of day. A random example is the verse for the second hour, which states that the Bible consists of two parts and that the New Testament renews us as an example of God’s grace. Another example is the verse for the ninth hour, which reads that nine of the ten healed by Jesus were ungrateful and prays that God grant that the reader remain grateful so that he will finally be saved.61 Finally, in the left and right corners at the bottom of the broadside is a text entitled ‘‘Herzens Glo¨cklein’’ (Little bell of the heart); it is a prayer to Jesus to awake the reader from his slumber and save him from his sins and shame, for the reader to accept him in grace and let virtue be his principle in life, and that Jesus’s blood ‘‘be my life drink’’ until the reader ends his life in a blessed death. This house blessing’s seven printings is a large number considering its elaborate and highly Pietistic nature. It is probably not surprising that the first house blessing discussed above was printed by Ritter in Reading and Gra¨ter and Blumer in Allentown, while the two highly religious ones were the work of Ephrata printers. The differences between the three are remarkable. The Ritter broadside is a mildly Christian production with strong secular overtones, the Gra¨ter and Blumer broadside could have been used as a morning or

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evening prayer, while the Baumann broadside defines the whole day as a Christian exercise, with the twelve insets functioning as texts for hourly meditations and the two main texts as morning and evening prayers. While the Gra¨ter and Blumer text would have been suitable for ‘‘church people,’’ the Baumann text spoke to Pietist minds among the German settlers in Pennsylvania and was most likely bought by them. We know next to nothing about the individual buyers, with one exception: the owner of the much shorter Geistlicher Haus Seegen, whose text reflects a somewhat milder Pietism than the Christlicher Haus-Seegen, penned a Pietistic memento to his children on the house blessing.62 The popularity of these house blessings offers insights into the religious attitudes of German settlers in Pennsylvania and the adjoining states. In its ideal state the family of the house would lead a life shaped by meditation and prayer, demonstrating a deep concern for eternal life guided by the desire to belong to the saved in society and not the sinners. The trio of Jesus, Jesus’s wounds, and Jesus’s blood were household words and Christian symbols. The visitor who entered this house would probably have been confronted at the entrance with this text, though before 1830 most German farmers’ houses probably did not have an entrance hall. The house blessing provided information about the attitudes and lifestyles of the house’s owners and thus helped the visitor to behave according to the message it conveyed. For the original owners house blessings were not just delightful decorative pieces to grace a wall in order to impress visitors with their artistic sense. The doves, other birds, and flowers provided additional religious meaning. Yet the elaborate decorative nature of these prints suggests that their beauty played an important role in the decision to purchase the more expensive ones and not the less spectacular ones that contained the same texts. In general, differences in prices as well as in Christian messages ensured that the purchase was based on a conscious decision by the buyer. Yet clearly the number of purchasers was limited. The simple but still quite appealing Haus Segen was reprinted four times more than the very elaborate Christlicher HausSeegen. The fact that the non-Pietistic text of Geistlicher Haus Seegen went through fourteen printings supports this interpretation. The trend from the less religious to the Pietistic also agrees with our impression that a significantly higher percentage of Germans belonged to the Lutheran and Reformed Churches than to the more Pietistic creeds of the Moravian, Mennonite, and Brethren congregations. Peter and Elisabeth, our fictitious farmer family, would certainly have bought one of these house blessings or been presented with one by their parents. But that would probably not have answered their desire to secure protection for their house, belongings, and expected children. Life was full of dangers: violent storms, fire, accidents, murder and thievery, illness and epidemics. Even if one led a carefully ordered, virtuous, and Christian life, one would need all the protection one could get. Peter and Elisabeth were aware of that, and surely were aware of the most widespread protective devices that linked Protestantism to medieval Catholicism as well as magic beliefs:

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Himmelsbriefe (heavenly letters). The mere fact that the database contains more than 120 different heavenly letters attests to their importance. Himmelsbriefe are often considered strange relics of a past world filled with magic, sorcery, and naı¨vete´, but this is probably a slightly simplified view. Heavenly letters went back a long way, and there are good reasons for their longevity.63 First of all, they responded to the various, often deadly, dangers of the times. In a mental world defined by intense spirituality and religiosity, they provided an antidote to the vagaries and dangers of life for German settlers. But most importantly of all, Himmelsbriefe were part of a life lived in accordance with the Bible, or what contemporaries in general and the clergy in particular believed the Bible demanded of the individual believer. The general idea of the Himmelsbriefe is related to the wider and highly controversial issue of how God made his will known to humankind. In the early modern period there were at least four sharply distinct answers. The first is the answer of the Protestant Augsburg confession, that God revealed his will in the Old and New Testaments, and that was final. (This is a generalization of a much more complex process that centers on the terms ‘‘dictation’’ [John Calvin] and ‘‘inspiration’’ [Martin Luther)]. Second is the belief held by the Catholic Church since early medieval times, that dicta pronounced by councils of bishops or later by the popes have the quality of divine pronouncements—a concept that in the nineteenth century was cast in stone by the concept of papal infallibility. New religious insights were thus formulated and became part of the canon of Catholic Christian teachings. A third approach was linked to the concern to find out the will of God on particular contemporary issues. The answer of many in the early modern world was that God’s will was revealed either in his Heilsgeschichte or in studying nature as his most complex creation next to humankind. This would lead towards a better understanding of God’s will. A fourth approach derived from some theologians’ refusal to accept the idea that with the completion of the Bible God had ceased to make his will known in a direct way. Followers of this approach included George Fox and the Society of Friends as well as the numerous believers called ‘‘inspired’’ or ‘‘spiritualists,’’ who believed in the continuing revelation of God’s will through all the means available to him—directly inspiring particular persons, sending of letters, or, for the Latter-Day Saints, supplementing the Bible with the Book of Mormon. The Moravians had developed an ingenious method of finding out God’s will: they put particular questions together with possible answers in the form of lots into a box. The lot drawn represented God’s decision on the issue at hand.64 Theologically, the Himmelsbriefe are part of this tradition. They reflect the belief that it was God, working through the direct inspiration of particular persons who acted as his scriveners, who imbued these revelations with the power that was attached to them. Thus, one Himmelsbrief claimed in the title that it had ‘‘been written by God himself . . . in golden letters . . . and sent down by an angel.’’65 And in the text the reader was told once more that ‘‘I JESUS have written this myself with my own hand, he who contradicts this and thus blasphemes me should expect no help from me.’’66

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A bewildering variety of dangers, and more importantly, many Christian rules, summarized in table B.12, awaited Peter and Elisabeth. Himmelsbriefe would offer protection or serve as reminders. The largest number of Himmelsbriefe belonged to the socalled Magdeburg Briefe; most frequently their title was Ein Brief So von Gott selbst geschrieben und zu Magdeburg niedergelassen wurde (A letter written by God himself and sent to earth at Magdeburg). The second most important Himmelsbrief had the title Eine Wahre Geschichte, oder Eine probirte [probate] Kunst, wie in Feuers-Gefahr oder auch in Pestilenz Zeiten zu gebrauchen (A true story or a method in times of fire or pestilence). Table B.12 shows how much these two heavenly letters dominated the early modern literary ‘‘protection racket.’’ The Himmelsbrief God sent down at Magdeburg, Germany, was dated 1783. For our discussion we have chosen among the approximately seventy broadsides a version that not only contains the classical text of the Magdeburg version but has additional texts and information: the ‘‘St. Michael’s Church’’ version (plate 4) contains the following editorial note at the bottom. The heavenly letter from Magdeburg is a reprint of this one and it was not sent to Magdeburg but to Gregoria, which Georg Hohmann witnesses. It is caused to be printed by Georg Hohmann of Hellersta¨dtel in Northampton County. Yet no one can prove that this heavenly letter is false and concocted by human beings. For on the last Judgment Day many signs and miracles will happen, by which we will note that the time is very close and many miracles have already happened. Georg Hohmann brought this letter in the year 1802 from Germany to America, where it had until then been unknown; but a German brought a handwritten one forty-five years before from Germany to America.67 This is a rather curious note. We can confirm nothing in it beyond Georg Hohmann’s arrival in Philadelphia on October 12, 1802. Everything else is shrouded in uncertainty. It is possible that Hohmann, whose other activities have already been mentioned,68 brought a copy of a Himmelsbrief to America; and it is possible, too, that decades earlier another had been brought from Europe. At least judging from the very few copies of the Magdeburg Himmelsbrief that have survived in Germany, it seems clear that at least in Germany it was not very widespread.69 What is certain is that Hohmann had the St. Michael’s Church version of the heavenly letter printed in Reading together with other texts.70 We read this bottom note, together with the title of the Himmelsbrief and the assertion of Jesus’s authorship in the text, as cumulative efforts to establish credibility and authority for the letter as God’s word and thus reassure potential customers. Probably such a note would not have been necessary in earlier and less skeptical times. But now Hohmann and his printer obviously felt that the assertion in the text was not enough. Contemporaries, moreover, knew Georg Hohmann as one of the busy peddlers and as an author with a reputation as a publisher of broadsides, songs, books of verses, and sayings helpful against a multitude of diseases.71

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Another version of the Himmelsbrief has a little endnote informing the reader that the letter was ‘‘edited by Ezechiel Herrman and is printed for the second time in America.’’72 It contains the classical text of the other Magdeburg letters, but the claim that it was edited by Herrman[n] was made in only four editions.73 Who Ezechiel Herrman[n] was is unknown, unless he was the controversial Protestant pastor of the early seventeenth century.74 The likelihood that both versions were brought from Europe is great, but who brought them remains a mystery. The endnotes, although they probably were credited by contemporaries and are taken at face value by modern historians, look to our eyes like efforts by printers to establish credibility for a product that was attractive to German settlers and thus an item that promised solace, protection, and profit. We know very little about which printers, other than Hohmann, were involved in the production and distribution of these Himmelsbriefe.75 It is certain that Hohmann traveled the German regions of the Middle Atlantic states in the years after his arrival and certainly was instrumental in their dissemination. Given the popularity of the Himmelsbriefe, it is likely that all the major printers, including the Baumanns, Ritter, Zentler, and Bruckmann, were involved in their production.76 Most were straightforward texts with only border ornaments; very few had additional ornaments like the one reproduced above. The most spectacular contained an angel, surrounded by devotional poetry, as a centerpiece in the upper section. The text of the heavenly letter was printed below the decorative angel.77 How competitive the market for these Himmelsbriefe was is difficult to judge. The fact that up to 1830 approximately 120 editions were produced suggests that demand was high.78 It is likely that most German families, including our young couple, Peter and Elisabeth, owned one. The letter produced by God in heaven and handed down in Magdeburg, or somewhere else, had a particular purpose. A closer look at the text suggests that much more than the observance of Sundays was at stake. The letter demands not only that Sundays be kept holy, but also that all of the Ten Commandments be observed. In addition, it stresses all the values that work for social peace and harmony: ‘‘Do not delight in your neighbor’s poverty but commiserate with him, and then things will go well with you. You children, honor your father and mother and then things will be well with you.’’79 At the same time, it threatened those who doubted that God or Jesus had written this text with his own hands with roasting in hell. A person who found the text was commanded to share it and its message with his neighbor and others who wanted to know about it. Modern researchers believe that this qualifies the Himmelsbrief as the first chain letter. The likely reason for this command was that the first Himmelsbriefe were circulated before the age of printing, when their multiplication and dissemination depended on the letter being copied by hand. All who did so and kept the letter in their houses were promised protection from thunder, storms, fire, and flood, and, if they observed all its commands, eternal life. The text is signed, ‘‘I, true God from heaven’s throne, and the son of God and of Mary. Amen. This happened at Magdeburg in the year 1783.’’80

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The heavenly letter reproduced in plate 4 contains, in addition to the classical Magdeburg text in the lower part, ‘‘a delightful Christian prayer to be spoken every hour.’’ The prayer is in essence a medley of well-known and popular Christian sayings and proverbs. The first part focuses on God: ‘‘The greater the need, the closer is God,’’ runs one sentence. The second part concentrates on sayings about Jesus Christ, such as ‘‘Lord Jesus Christ, my comfort and joy, in you I trust at all times.’’81 Again, the emphasis of the prayer is on harmonious social relations and total dedication to a Christian life. Printers and purchasers obviously valued social peace in the house highly. Below that prayer is a long poem filled with practical hints and advice as to how to lead a truly Christian life: ‘‘Therefore trust the Lord and remember that each hour could be your last’’ is a typical phrase.82 The broadside is much more than a heavenly letter; it is essentially a guide to Christian piety. Most German settlers would have already known its pithy Christian sayings by heart, and they would accompany the person during the day, while sections could be used in daily prayer or devotions. The tenor—either with or without the additional prayer and poem—agrees with the house blessings and complements them. Both speak to the same purpose: to remind the German inhabitant that saving grace, protection, and happiness depend on the daily intensity of one’s Christian beliefs and practices. The Magdeburg letter promises and provides the believer an almost all-purpose protection against every conceivable danger as well as an encompassing admonition to all in the house to live in all aspects a holy and pious life. That might well explain its appeal to the Germans, while its promise of profit made it attractive to the printers. Peter Montelius, for one, likely issued his Himmelsbrief in 1821 additionally in an effort to promote piety and virtue.83 To a certain extent this Magdeburger Himmelsbrief was supplemented by the second most widely printed and circulated broadside that promised protection, Eine wahre Geschichte, oder eine probirte [probate] Kunst, in Feuers-Gefahr wie auch in Pestelenz Zeiten zu gebrauchen (fig. 2), listed in table B.12 as ‘‘King of Egypt.’’84 The broadside has two parts: the first tells the story, which was ‘‘invented’’—the German term is erfunden (found)—by a Christian singing master from Egypt. It tells of seven gypsies or heathens who were condemned to death in Prussia. Six of them were executed, and the seventh, an eighty-year-old man, was to be executed some days later. At the moment of execution a fire broke out, and the old man was rushed to the fire and was able to quench it quickly. This feat earned him his freedom. The second part of the broadside—the implication is that it represents what the old man said in quenching the fire—is a text that a person had to repeat while circling a fire, conjuring it, in the name of God, to cease spreading and burning. One line is ‘‘I command you, fire, to place your embers next to Jesus Christ, precious blood he has shed for us for our sins and misdeeds.’’85 The last section of the text informs the reader that whoever has this broadside in his house will be protected against fire, and that a pregnant person who owns this broadside will be shielded against sorcery, evil, and illness. Additionally, everyone in the house is promised protection from the black death.

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Figure 2 Eine wahre Geschichte, oder eine probirte Kunst, in Feuers-Gefahr wie auch in Pestelenz Zeiten zu gebrauchen (n.p., [1815]). Photo: author.

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The house blessings as well as the protection texts respond to a desire for protection that seems, in this form, to be peculiar to the Germans in America. Only a few English house blessings exist, and heavenly letters were not a widespread medium, if the database American Broadsides and Ephemera provides any solid indication. The database lists only one broadside under ‘‘Household Blessings,’’ and that is an advertisement for a washing machine published in 1863!86 One can only speculate on the reasons why Germans sought to secure protection against the vagaries of life. One reason, clearly, is that they must have felt a widespread and deep-seated sense of insecurity, surrounded as they were by forces beyond their control, whether the Indians in times of war, the English, whose words were incomprehensible to them,87 the animals unknown in Europe, the storms that were fiercer than those back home, or the diseases unheard of in the Old World. German settlers turned, as they had done in Germany, to what promised protection, their Christian beliefs. The texts of these broadsides at least suggest that the German inhabitants rediscovered that they were dependent on an allpowerful God who alone could protect them from the dangers and mishaps that surrounded them in this strange new world called America. Such an explanation would suggest a different kind of religiosity than was typical for English inhabitants.88 Yet this did not mean that Germans left everything to God. The broadsides suggest that while Germans were willing to buy sheets that promised, for example, a cure for skin disease, they were practical-minded enough also to buy sheets that suggested medications. Germans believed in God but did not leave everything to him. How would Peter and Elisabeth have tried to live a life according to the commandments of the house blessings and the protection texts? First and foremost, the newlyweds would have had to rely on their own devices, retain their health, and then produce and raise a family, which implied, of course, that they would have to think about medicine, education, and schooling.

Daily Life in the German House: Preserving Health Broadsides were not intended to provide a companion through life for German settlers; rather, they responded to the demand of German settlers for particular information. That demand was at least partially the result of problems with which German settlers had to cope. Peter and Elisabeth might have been convinced that they would never be ill. But even so, they knew, or at least Elisabeth did, that even if pregnancy was normal and desired, it could nevertheless cause medical problems. German women came to North America with notions about women’s and their husbands’ role during pregnancy and childbirth. Those notions had shaped the position of women in southern German society and had secured them the protection of family, friends, and neighbors and, if those failed, of the city authorities. These concepts ensured that a woman experienced special protection, care, support, and consideration. Exposing a pregnant woman, of

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any social class, to sudden shocks, undue excitement, overly intense physical labor, rough treatment, and shocking sights that would endanger the unborn child’s life was subject to public punishment. The woman’s special status extended to the lying-in period, when she could take advantage of additional special care, nourishment, and protection.89 Among the many German broadsides devoted to medical problems before 1800, only a handful address health problems related to pregnancy and birth. The small number probably suggests that most problems associated with pregnancy were solved by handing down information from mother to daughter or by consulting neighbors, family members, elderly neighbors, or midwives like ‘‘Mother Thomas, who was an old and experienced midwife in Lancaster,’’ according to a broadside advertising the medicine Essentia Hysterica.90 Medical manuals and broadsides were a last resort.91 The small number may also indicate that, as in southern Germany in the eighteenth century, pregnancies may not have been a major cause of health problems. While within the English population childbirth was one of the most important causes of early deaths of women, in southern Germany, according to one study of the demographic structure of villages between 1690 and 1724, ‘‘an average of four women in a thousand died within forty-one days of giving birth.’’92 Essentia Hysterica or Essentia Dulcis, a medicine most likely imported from Halle that was distributed through Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg’s son Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Mu¨hlenberg in Lancaster,93 was described as a specific protection against sudden shocks, irregularities in the nervous systems, digestive problems, and attacks of nausea. It would, the broadside claimed, prevent or cure ‘‘restlessness of the mother, frenzy, dizziness, headache’’ and irregularities in the menstrual cycle,94 was generally helpful against hysterical nervousness and hypersensitivity,95 and was useful in controlling pains during childbirth. After childbirth, the broadside promised, the medicine assisted in the recovery of the exhausted mother. The broadside advertising a ‘‘Mutter-Balsam-Elixir’’ to be bought from ‘‘Doktor’’ Georg Lineweaver (interestingly, the broadside gives the English version of his German name, Leineweber) in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, made similar claims.96 But it also claimed that the medicine was good for men who suffered from ‘‘Kolik und Leibesschmerzen’’ (digestive problems), as well as for children with digestive irregularities of all kinds. Even babies just nine to thirteen days old, the text claimed, could be given two to three drops a day. While in North America by the latter part of the eighteenth century childbirth was a dreaded event for many English women,97 before 1790 there were no German broadsides devoted to it.98 Nor did it figure much in eighteenth-century German books on medicine published in North America. Except for John Tennent’s Every Man His Own Doctor, which Benjamin Franklin published in German in 1769 under the title Ein jeder Sein eigner Doctor, oder Des armen Land-Manns Artzt,99 no medical handbooks in German were printed in North America before the 1790s. Germans were evidently more concerned about the health and well-being of their horses and cattle than of

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themselves. Thus, in 1771 Henrich Miller published his Wohl-eingerichtetes Vieh-ArzneyBuch, which in over 180 pages listed all known remedies for animal diseases.100 The first booklet in German that dealt with diseases of animals and human beings was published in 1790. The Kurtzgefaßtes Arzney-Bu¨chlein fu¨r Menschen und Vieh, darinnen CXXX auserlesene Recepten encompassed a modest twenty-four pages and was obviously what Germans wanted and bought, given that it was published in ten editions, the last in 1812.101 The first general medical treatise in German was published by Samuel Saur in 1792, Tobias Hirte’s modest Ein Neues, auserlesenes, gemeinnu¨tziges Hand-Bu¨chlein.102 It was another six years before the first medical treatise on childbirth appeared, printed at Ephrata. Its title, Kurzgefaßtes Weiber-Bu¨chlein: Entha¨lt Aristotels und Alberti Magni Hebammen-Kunst, mit den darzu geho¨rigen Recepten, suggests that it probably was not quite up to the standards of English handbooks for midwives.103 But in the same year the printer Samuel Endredy Stettinius brought out a medical treatise by Eliam Baynon, Der Barmherzige Samariter, Oder Freund und Bru¨ derlicher Rath, which described ‘‘sundry illnesses and infirmities of the human body’’ and prescribed the medications useful for each of them.104 It also included an appendix, ‘‘Fu¨r die Hebammen’’ (for midwives). With the publication of two more treatises that dealt with women and childbirth, the ban was broken—sort of. The German printer Johann Gruber reprinted lectures delivered in the Churpfa¨lzischen Ammenschule in Mannheim ‘‘for the use and instruction of German-American midwives,’’105 while the Harrisburg printer Benjamin Mayer reissued the Kurzgefaßte Weiber-Bu¨chlein with its pre´cis of what the PseudoAristotle and Albertus Magnus had to say on childbirth.106 The scarcity of Germanlanguage publications on medicine, along with the discovery of only two Germanlanguage broadsides dealing with pregnancy and giving birth, confirms that neither was a primary concern for German women, families, and printers in the eighteenth century. Medical broadsides are more difficult to evaluate and assess than most other categories of broadsides,107 for the simple reason that these broadsides were produced at the initiative of two different groups with two different interests in mind: medical doctors and pharmacists on the one side and printers on the other. The doctors’ and pharmacists’ primary concern was to improve the sale of their medications by the publication and advertisements of their pills, balsams, drops, tinctures, powders, oils, and elixirs. The printers or the peddlers who ordered the broadsides, on the other hand, were primarily concerned with the sale of the broadside itself. While the one group hoped to meet the needs and interests of the market with the advertisements of their products and thus induce farmers to buy their medicine, the other group hoped to respond with their recipes and descriptions of particular remedies and illnesses to the needs of the German settlers and thus prompt them to buy the broadside. Another difference becomes obvious when one looks at the broadsides themselves. For a physician or pharmacist it was vitally important to get the potential customer into his pharmacy—which of course meant that he had to state on the broadside where his shop was located and what the name of the product was, and finally give his own name. For printers such information was less important, as table 10 demonstrates. From

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Table 10 Medical broadsides: Producers and location Producers of broadsides

Broadside states location

Broadside does not state location

77 7

35 13

Pharmacists and physicians Printers

the customers’ point of view that little difference may have been significant. Customers were more likely to buy medicines if they lived close to the pharmacy or physician’s office where the medicines were available. A German farmer was unlikely to travel twenty miles to Lancaster, Philadelphia, or Reading or to New Market, Virginia, to purchase medication if he could do with other remedies, whether from recipes handed down from parents or neighbors or found on a broadside bought from a peddler.108 Geographically the locations of the pharmacists and physicians are no surprise, as table 11 demonstrates. Philadelphia and Lancaster are two prominent places where German physicians and pharmacists competed for customers. New Market represents a different story. Founded in the second half of the eighteenth century, the settlement fairly quickly became the center of a large German population in the Shenandoah Valley. The Reverend Paul Henkel, together with his many sons, controlled public life in the area: one son ran the printing shop in the town; another son, Dr. Salomon Henkel, was the physician for New Market and the region; and a third son served as pastor of a nearby Lutheran congregation. Dr. Salomon Henkel was the author of all nineteen broadsides that were issued in New Market. They ranged widely over the field of pharmaceutical products; most of them were distinguished from similar broadsides by the imposing Latin names of his medications.109 In reading these broadsides, such as Dr. Salomon Henkel’s advertisements for Pilulae Colocynthidis Compounds,110 Tinctura Absinthii Compounds,111 or Tinctura Assafoetidae Compounds (fig. 3),112 one gets the distinct impression that their language as well as layout was directed to the local townspeople rather than to the rural population of

Table 11 Places of publication of medical broadsides Pennsylvania Philadelphia Lancaster Ephrata Allentown Bethlehem Easton Chambersburg Hanover New Berlin Reading Total

Maryland 16 10 4 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 39

Virginia

Hagerstown Frederick Town Baltimore

3 2 1

New Market

19

Total

6

Total

19

Note: Only those broadsides are listed that give the place where they were printed.

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Figure 3 Tinctura Assafoeditae Composita. Zusammengesetzte Asandtinktur . . . Dr. Salomon Henkel ([New Market, Va.: Salomon Henkel], n.d.). Henkel Collection, Menno Simons Historical Library, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

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the region. It is difficult to picture a peddler offering such a broadside—although it was free of charge—to a farmer in a small village, and the farmer being willing to purchase the tincture for what at the time was the respectable price of one thaler. Summarizing the illnesses and diseases as subjects of the broadsides reveals significant differences between the broadsides marketed by the printers and those advertising products of physicians and pharmacists (table 12). Printers believed that their customers were mostly interested in broadsides that provided recipes for treating kidney stones and gallstones, for problems during pregnancy, and for gout and breathing difficulties. Physicians and pharmacists agreed that, except for breathing difficulties, these represented serious health concerns, and also ranked digestive problems, possibly causing bouts of colic, rather high. Printers, on the other hand, did not offer recipes for colic, and only one broadside suggested help for digestive problems. Rabies, the major concern of Dr. William Stoy (1728–1801),113 for whom thirty-six broadsides were produced, received almost no attention from the printers. If we look at the areas where the broadsides produced by printers and those produced by physicians and pharmacists agree, a German society in the Middle Atlantic States emerges that was most concerned with three health concerns: kidney stones and gallstones and possibly related illnesses, pregnancy problems—with a plethora of related illnesses like giddiness (one broadside), recovery after delivery (one), and vomiting (three), for which pharmacists and physicians offered some remedies—and gout. Gout was widespread in the eighteenth century among the English nobility,114 caused by their beloved red wine, claret, and among ordinary people in England and the colonies who consumed too much purine-rich food: some seafood, but more importantly liver, brains, and kidneys. These last three in particular were part of the regular diet of Pennsylvania German farmers. Gout and stones in kidneys and gallbladders were and still are bedfellows. If you have the one, you are likely to get the other. This knowledge is reflected in the broadsides issued by printers and by physicians and pharmacists. The case of rabies is different. It seems to be well established that rabies was not reported in the British colonies in North America before the early eighteenth century. Table 12 Broadsides by printers, physicians, and pharmacists according to illness

Medication against Rabies Kidney stones/gallstones Pregnancy problems Gout Colic Digestive problems Breathing difficulties

Issued by printers

Rank of printer broadsides

Issued by physicians and pharmacists

Rank of physician and pharmacist broadsides

2 5 4 4 0 1 4

— I II II — — II

36 18 17 15 15 15 8

I II III IV IV IV —

Note: Often the print lists more than one illness; in that case these are listed separately.

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Only after 1750 did it become a danger that entered public consciousness.115 By the 1790s rabies had become a serious concern, as reflected in the decision of the American Congress to award Dr. William Stoy a patent for his invention of a cure. Whether the cure was really Dr. Stoy’s invention is difficult to determine; in 1809 Dr. William Kettering, supported by the botanist and Lutheran pastor of Lancaster, Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Mu¨hlenberg, claimed that Dr. Stoy’s cure had been well-known in southern Germany for a long time.116 At any rate, the public concern and the grant of a patent both account for the high number of broadsides advocating Dr. Stoy’s achievement. Printers who tried to advertise medication against rabies after the grant of the patent would have been liable to prosecution, which explains why they left that market uncontested to the Stoy family and pharmacists. Broadsides do not comment on, supplement, or support every aspect of life; our discussion of broadsides with medical content demonstrates that very clearly. But they do seem to reflect the perceptions of printers and health worries of their customers—at least that is one of the major results of the evidence that survives. These perceptions probably come fairly close to describing the most important medical problems of the times. Since we have very little evidence about the state of health of people, particularly in the rural areas, due to an almost complete lack of physicians and the sorry state of medical science in general, the evidence squeezed from broadsides may be more valuable than in times of systematic medical recordkeeping. From a larger perspective, it is worth keeping in mind that in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries birth, both in a religious and medical sense, was shrouded in mystery. The medical broadsides treat problems of pregnancy and in some few cases offer suggestions for helping a woman to recover from lying in. But religious broadsides on these issues are missing. There are no broadsides to accompany the pains of a woman lying in with a prayer, and none linking the experience of delivery to one of the most important Christian events, the birth of Christ—although Moravians assigned that event prime importance.117 This is even more surprising if one considers the many broadsides that describe life from beginning to end as a struggle between temptation and redemption. The five different editions of Das Leben und Alter der Menschen. Die Stufenjahre des Menschlichen Lebens von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (see plate 5),118 published between 1826 and 1830 by the printers Moser and Peters and later by Peters alone, state that they begin with the cradle (‘‘Wiege’’). But a close look at the picture shows a slightly obese little girl packed into the cradle with a brief text added that simply glides over the problem: ‘‘before the child reaches five years it resembles the innocence of the lamb’’ (fig. 4).119 The verse does not declare that the baby until age five is actually in a state of innocence, associated with the lamb; that would have meant it was born without original sin. Rather, the baby was born with the heritage of Adam and Eve. But until the age of five its life was like that of those who would have been born of Adam and Eve before they were driven from paradise. All of this indicates that neither printers, pastors, nor potential customers, including our fictitious Peter and Elisabeth, were really concerned about the religious contexts of

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Figure 4 Infant in the cradle. Detail of Das Leben und Alter der Menschen (plate 5).

birth and baptism.120 Children entered the world of the printer and became the subject of texts published in broadsides after their fifth year, when they entered the age where life changes from doing nothing to responding to parents’ and teachers’ suggestions and teachings. Learning, school, and acquiring skills on the farm and knowledge about the world of a German farm filled the lives of the young for the next ten or more years. For these years printers offered parents and children a respectable number of broadsides.

Daily Life in the German House: Learning to Be a Christian In the broadside Das Leben und Alter der Menschen one pithy but substantial verse covers education, illustrating the young man who represents youth in the scale of stages

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that mark the life of man. (Women are not on the scale except as figures to illustrate virtue and sin.) The line reads, ‘‘Even when young, think of your final last day, accept the wisdom of what you are being taught, bind yourselves to the pure wisdom, and look for it as a youngster as well as a man’’ (fig. 5).121 Wisdom and pure truth, which means, of course, the right kind of Christian teachings, are defined as the goals of a young person’s educational experience.122 These pillars not only well describe the texts of the broadsides on education, but name the subjects discussed. The young person’s day would start and end with a prayer. Hymnals and prayer books all contained such prayers, but they were also offered as broadsides. Obviously printers considered this an important item. At least three sheets with prayers for children exist. Peter Montelius published one with morning and evening prayers under the slogan ‘‘Pray and live piously.’’ The prayers reminded the children of the omnipotence of God and asked for his protection; in the evening the child thanked God for help and guidance and prayed for admittance to paradise in case of sudden death.123 Another text for children, and forcefully annotated with biblical references, reminded them that they owed obedience and love to their parents.124 Conversely, in another broadside Peter Montelius reminded parents of their Christian duty to send their children to school and educate them according to Christian principles.125 In 1781 the broadside Herzliche Bitte an die Kinder von einem Kinder-Freund explained in a rather didactic text, to be sung to the tune of ‘‘Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her,’’ that only in Christ would the child find eternal rest and happiness.126 Montelius produced another text with colorful decorations that argued that children were obliged to consider teachers, next to parents, their principal benefactors for providing them with ‘‘useful knowledge, teach[ing] him the will of God and the religion of Jesus Christ, the path to virtue, piety, and eternal life, and prepar[ing] him for the business and duties of life.’’127 According to Montelius, who was a teacher himself, the duty of a teacher was to teach useful knowledge, the will of God, the path to virtue, piety, and eternal life, and prepare the student for the practical problems of life. Along those lines Montelius published the Nicene Creed with the pointed admonition that it ought to be taught to children.128 At five the child truly entered a new phase in life in which only Christianity, piety, and useful knowledge counted. Thus fortified with prayers, he (and very rarely, she) would go to school. For the children of Peter and Elisabeth school would begin, as it did in many countries until the twentieth century, with a prayer. Peter Montelius supplied another broadside with a prayer to be spoken at the beginning and end of school.129 For education at school the most important instruments were the spelling books. These were printed in large numbers: after a slow beginning in 1738 with Christoph Saur’s publication of a nondenominational ABC Buch bey allen Religionen ohne billigen Anstoß zu gebrauchen, the market after the Seven Years’ War became glutted. Twenty-seven editions were published without any denominational affiliation; additionally, between 1764 and 1829, the German Reformed Church authorized forty-seven editions of German primers for its schools, and the German Lutheran Church had another seventy-five editions of separate German primers published for its schools.130 One

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Figure 5 Young man. Detail of Das Leben und Alter der Menschen (plate 5).

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would think that printers, faced with such an oversaturated market, would see no profit in publishing alphabet rhymes on broadsides. But that is precisely what they did. The database counts six such works (fig. 6).131 Some of them differ in one important aspect from the vast number of ABC booklets: like the first of them, they are nondenominational. A good example is a broadside that we believe to be the product of Peter Montelius. It begins with a career vision: if you want to become a doctor (presumably either

Figure 6 Betrachtung u¨ber das ABC (n.p., n.d.). Used by permission of the Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia.

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of theology or medicine), you will have to learn the alphabet well. It then mixes general Christian maxims like ‘‘Accept the cross with pleasure’’ with general virtues like ‘‘teach others virtue’’ with advice on how to behave within society.132 The verse ‘‘U soll Untertha¨nig ho¨ren’’ (U stands for obeying obediently) at the same time probably betrays the origin of this particular ABC in Germany, for ‘‘Untertha¨nigkeit’’ (obedience to higher authority) was not a popular value in a republican society in the 1820s. Peter Montelius (1791–1859) was born of German Lutheran parents who lived in Reamstown, Lancaster County. He was confirmed, however, in the Philadelphia Lutheran Zion Church on April 14, 1805, and seems to have lived and received his education in Philadelphia, where his grandparents resided. On January 12, 1812, he married Margaret Stitzer, and in the same year he returned to Reamstown and began to work as a printer and as a teacher in a school jointly run by the Reformed and the Lutheran congregations. He earned money on the side as a surveyor and did civic duty as a justice of the peace. He was thus well connected within his local community, knew his neighbors’ ills and customs, and certainly did not produce broadsides with the expectation of going bankrupt.133 His experience as a teacher in a ‘‘condominium’’ parish school may have prompted him to print a little ABC broadside that was nondenominational but decidedly Christian. The broadside’s summary makes that clear enough: ‘‘The letters taken together spell: Love none but God,’’ reads the last verse,134 and indeed that was the intention of the broadside. Peter Montelius’s market corner was nondenominational ABC and school texts. Ein Neues A. B. C. Lied, printed by Salomon Henkel in New Market, Virginia, was also nondenominational and carefully avoided any allusions to confessional theological statements. Typical were verses like ‘‘A ist ein Amtmann / versta¨ndig und klug, / B ist ein Bauer / und liebet den Pflug’’ (A stands for Amtmann [officeholder], judicious and prudent, B stands for Bauer [farmer], who loves his plow). Yet like Montelius’s work it was not without hints of Christianity: ‘‘P war ein Priester / von Gott sehr beglu¨ckt’’ (P stands for priest, blessed by God) is an example. Contemporary Protestants would have been a bit puzzled by the word ‘‘Priester,’’ which then as now was reserved for the clergy of the Catholic Church.135 That would have been a bad slip had the ABC not ended on a decidedly unambiguous note. The last verse reads, ‘‘Schließet den Heiland / sehr tief in Euer Herz / Dann seid ihr glu¨cklich / und flieht euer Schmerz’’ (Accept Christ firmly in your heart, then you will be happy and escape all pain).136 While Montelius in Reamstown and Henkel in New Market may have felt that nondenominational ABC books were more proper for teaching children, others obviously thought that the confessionally bound ABC books were not clear enough in their Christian orientation. For example, an undated broadside, the Christliches Alphabet, is a poem and an ABC text. The verses begin with the letters in their proper order with A and end with U: ‘‘Um meine Seele Herr Jesu Christ . . .’’ (About my soul, Lord Jesus Christ . . .). The twenty verses were clearly written by someone with strong Pietistic notions—possibly a Lutheran, although the Christ-centered nature points to a Moravian author.137 The unknown printer of the Goldnes ABC may have had similar

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thoughts, but the result was markedly different. Clearly not the work of a Moravian or a Reformed Pietist, it reads like a straightforward Lutheran text; the author looks to the afterlife with that sense of certainty that a good Reformed could entertain only if he was a deeply dyed Pietist.138 Another ABC broadside was published in 1772 by Johann Baumann and in 1820 by Joseph Bauman, both in Ephrata,139 and between 1816 and 1820 by C. A. Bruckman in Reading.140 This version was longer, more elaborate, and so complex in its structure as well as in its design that it clearly was not aimed at children but at adults. The Baumann broadsides suggested the following to the reader and customer in small letters, and Bruckman’s the same in large, bold letters: ‘‘In this German alphabet many good things to learn are written, it has been composed diligently in short and lovely rhymes. Therefore everybody should read it and learn what is written.’’141 Although the texts of the ABCs are identical, they differ in the verses that surround the centerpiece. The verses on the top are identical, taken from the most popular house blessing broadside, which asked the people in the house as well as visitors not to swear inside the house.142 Both printers had an adult readership in mind that was eager to acquire reading skills that would enable them to read Christian literature in general and the Bible in particular. The last type of ABC text—that is not what it calls itself, but it clearly falls into that category—is Von einem tugendsamen Leben, wird diese Vorschrift Nachricht geben (Guidance on how to lead a virtuous life).143 The text was published by Daniel Wilhelm Lepper and Samuel Endrey Stettinius around 1800 and reprinted by Friedrich Wilhelm Scho¨pflin around 1815. The simple frame-like decorations of the Lepper/Stettinius print contrast with the two statues of Greek goddesses in the Scho¨pflin print. These decorations conform to the secular contents, focus on rules for daily life and behavior, and represent a contrast to the Christian ending that reminds the reader that he should on this earth never forget his goal to become a citizen of heaven. The ABC broadsides published roughly between the end of the Seven Years’ War and 1830 complement the ABC books in surprising ways. The printers skillfully reacted to the domination of the market by publications issued by the two big German Protestant churches. The somewhat larger group of broadsides, however, represents an extension of the learning experience from school into adulthood and thus exploits another aspect of German life in North America: illiteracy and the urge of pious Christians to be able to read the writings of Johann Arndt and Gerhard Tersteegen, to name but two, as well as the Bible and the printers’ products. Once again the broadsides encompass all aspects and stages of life—probably less because printers were philosophically so inclined than because they correctly identified the needs of their customers. As to the contents of the ABC broadsides, there is no clearly marked difference between those directed to children and those printed for adult readers. In both groups there are examples of pious texts with a strong educational bent as well as more secularly oriented sheets. This variety suggests that the image created by the analysis of the house blessings and the protection broadsides needs qualification. As far as the printers were concerned, there were enough German families in the Middle Atlantic region who favored secular

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texts over the deeply pious ones to make serving this segment of the population worthwhile. Those children who lived close enough to be able to attend a school usually learned more than just how to spell, read, and write; at least Peter Montelius had been quite explicit that education required more.144 Again, the broadsides suggest some of the subjects that were taught. As with the ABC texts, however, one should keep in mind that broadsides did not represent all the material on which teaching in the classroom was based. At a time when textbooks had not yet been invented, teaching was largely structured by what a teacher had learned. Self-education probably counted for more than thoughts, concepts, and facts learned in a college. For Germans, Franklin and Marshall College, established in Lancaster in 1787, was, next to institutions of higher learning in Philadelphia, the only college where teaching was largely done in German.145 Teachers probably got the material for their teaching from books in the few libraries in Philadelphia and some inland towns. This rather undefined situation offered opportunities for the inventive mind to write shorter or longer texts for schools as well as for the inquiring adult customer. Some of these broadsides were clearly designed for parish schools: this is true for Scho¨ne geistliche auserlesene und Sinnreiche Ra¨tzel-Stu¨cklein (fig. 7), a remarkable compilation of puzzles that today sharpens our awareness of how much we do not know now that was common knowledge in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Because of its extraordinary nature, the text went through two different editions,146 and we readily admit that if these questions had been given as a test we would have gloriously failed. After careful thought we would probably have come up with an answer to the first question, ‘‘Welche sind gestorben und niemal geboren’’ (Who died but were never born?),147 but we would not have known where precisely in the Old Testament ‘‘gods’’ were called ‘‘rulers’’ (‘‘Obrigkeit’’);148 neither would we have known which animal spoke in the Bible.149 The questions suggest that knowledge of the Old Testament by heart was necessary in order to come up with the right answers. The last questions in this broadside take up secular issues. Again these are full of surprises. Take the question ‘‘Wo begra¨bt der Todte den Lebendigen?’’ (Where do the dead bury the living?). For us today ‘‘der Todte’’ and the ‘‘Lebendige’’ would seem to refer to human beings. But in the early modern period materia was considered as material and immaterial, as living and dead matter. Fire, for example, was thought of as living matter; thus the answer ‘‘Wenn die Asche das Feuer verdecket’’ (When the ashes cover the fire). As this discussion suggests, the premises of our thinking and of people two hundred years ago are different. And that will be true for most people when they turn to the last question: ‘‘Welches sind die vier schwersten Arbeiten auf Erden?’’ (What are the four most difficult labors?). Today we would probably think of mineworkers, of people who work in steaming hot iron foundries or sweat under the glowing sun in fields. For the reader of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the answer was much more down to earth and reflected a different appreciation of the fundamentals of civic society: ‘‘Regieren, Lehren, Beten und Geba¨hren’’ (To govern, to teach, to

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Figure 7 Scho¨ne geistliche auserlesene und Sinnreiche Ra¨tzel-Stu¨cklein ([Hanover, Pa.: J. P. Starck and Daniel Philipp Lange, 1815?]). Franklin & Marshall College. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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pray, and to give birth). As teachers at a German university, we find a deep depression befalling us when we ponder the stark changes over the last two hundred years, for ‘‘Lehren’’ (teaching) has no reputation today; politicians must have a similar reaction when they think of the similarly low reputation they enjoy. ‘‘Beten’’ (praying) would meet the rousing applause of all believing Christians, and ‘‘Geba¨hren’’ (giving birth) would surely be applauded by all women who feel that their contribution to the increase of mankind is starkly underestimated by their male partners. This broadside holds another surprise: farming is nowhere mentioned, although in the prominent and widely distributed Haussegen it is reckoned among the most important professions in society. The omission certainly does not make sense from the point of view of the potential customer, who was most likely a farmer. But it can be explained in context: the broadside was concerned with testing children’s familiarity with the Old Testament, in which, except for the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, agriculture is sparsely mentioned. The fundamental question could have been asked of where farming began, but the answer would have had to refer to Adam and Eve’s banishment from paradise and God’s curse in Genesis 3:17–19.150 And that would have linked farming, the basis on which American society in general and German farming community especially rested, with original sin. It was sound strategy to just ignore farmers and agriculture. From a larger perspective the broadside underscores the importance of knowing one’s Bible for almost all aspects of life. Answering the questions required a thorough intimacy with the Bible, for this was the essence of the moral side of education. It was not the individual pieces of knowledge that were being tested but whether the student knew his Bible by heart. In this period this was part of the preparation for life. Even the last questions in the broadside, which focused on aspects of early modern life, make us aware of the changes from then to now: our appreciation of the basic features of civic society has shifted ground to a larger degree than we might be aware. Establishing Bible knowledge as the foundation for all knowledge was the function of the German parish schools in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Within the Old Testament one story lent itself particularly well to being taught in the classroom: the story of Joseph and his brothers (see plate 6).151 The broadsides offer two variations of the story. Joseph und seine Bru¨der is a poem of eight verses that narrates how Joseph meets his brothers, who are ashamed of having sold him into slavery. He graciously forgives them in the same way that Jesus forgave the sinner in Matthew 9, and in return—and here Jesus speaks in the poem—asked only, ‘‘Repay me with love and hide deeply in my wounds.’’152 The two lines demonstrate the clumsiness of the verses and the Pietistic language. The language underscores the importance of the message: ‘‘Crucified as a public spectacle, my hands and feet pierced, the blood runs out of my wounds, the beneficial balm now flows for a wounded world.’’153 The story of Joseph in this poem serves as a parable for the world, which needs to be saved by Jesus. Despite the fact that Joseph had been sold by his brothers as a seventeen-year-old boy into slavery, then saved after he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams and was made his leading minister (these parts of the biblical story the reader had to know or the teacher had to

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narrate), he forgave his famished brothers and ‘‘since they were ashamed, he showed himself kind and gracious.’’154 Joseph does as Jesus did; Joseph saved his brothers, but Jesus saved mankind, for which the author uses much more colorful images and language. The soft and low-key verses on Joseph heighten the contrast with the verses that relate Jesus’s reaction and narrative, highlighting the didactic nature of the poem. The second version of Joseph’s story has a different structure and focus. First of all, it is a picture story, relating Joseph’s fall and rise in fifteen little pictures that are each interpreted by a little rhymed text. Second, it narrates the whole story of Joseph.155 Two different kinds of morals are spelled out in this narrative. The first is in the secondto-last verse: love your parents as Joseph loved his father. The second comes in the concluding verse: ‘‘He was just in life, virtuous in his dying, oh let us imitate his piety.’’156 A teacher could do much more with a story like this one. It falls into three parts. The first part ends with the attempted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife, illustrated by the daring image of a half-naked woman, which in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries seems to have represented the extreme of lewdness.157 The second part (and second line of verses and pictures) is devoted to Joseph the man: he is thrown into prison, rescued after interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams, made Pharaoh’s administrator of the land, meets his brothers again, and forgives them. The last part narrates his father’s arrival, the settlement of the brothers, the blessings and death of Jacob, and the hope that the reader will learn the moral of this story. Pictures and text serve as a parable of the dangers that await a young man and the rewards for fidelity, chastity, intelligence, and virtue. It tells the little scholars that they should treat their brothers (and sisters?) well and not sell them into slavery, and that, maybe, it is wise not to brag too much about dreamed-of successes, which only irritate the rest of the family. Thus the story teaches the values of harmony and decent behavior. Another lesson the teacher could tease out of the story is that even in the worst hour (like Joseph in prison) one should not give up hope, for God is always around the corner ready to save you. In doing so he makes use of the most unlikely persons—in this case the pharaoh of Egypt, but it could as well be the governor of the state or a justice of the peace, or, as in the Revolutionary War, King Louis XVI of France. There are indications in the text that the verses were written in North America, not brought over from Europe. The most significant proof is in the first and second lines of the ninth verse, ‘‘Bald war die Nahrung aufgezehrt, und keine Zeit zu spenden’’ (Soon the food had been consumed, and no time left to spend). ‘‘Spenden’’ is clearly a Germanized version of the English verb ‘‘to spend’’; no one in Germany would be familiar enough with English to use such a word, and no potential customer in Germany would understand it either. But every German in North America was familiar with such loanwords.158 Who produced and authored this particular broadside? The most likely composer of the text is Gustav Sigmund Peters (1796–1847), who hailed from Langebru¨ck, a village not far from Dresden, obviously enjoyed a good education, learned printing in the metropolis of book publishing, Leipzig, participated in the Napoleonic Wars to the

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bitter end, and five years later, in 1820, left for America. He worked as an independent printer in Baltimore, then in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, before he settled in Harrisburg in 1826, where he died. In America Peters very quickly became known for his wellproduced broadsides and children’s books, and as early as 1829 he used the new technique of color printing. Little else is known about Peters. We do not know whether he had an affiliation with any school, as some printers did, or any other connection to children. We have to assume that he was a shrewd businessman as well as an excellent printer, and, as this broadside proves, made the most of his almost complete monopoly in color printing.159 What audience did he target with this broadside? The text itself offers one clear hint that the broadside was not aimed at the adult market. The first moral, ‘‘Love your parents,’’ makes no sense unless the text is addressed to children. That raises the question of how such a broadside could be used, to which the title suggests a simple answer: ‘‘wherein we recognize the wonderful directing hand of God in all the suffering, contrarities, in happiness and misfortune.’’160 Of course, it is possible that parents bought it—although it must have cost quite a penny—and presented it to their children. Yet the text required not only explanations but, in order to exhaust its potential, guidance and interpretation. That was, we assume, the function and role of either the parents or the teacher. The broadside could easily be integrated into lessons on biblical history and ancient history and combined with the ethical, religious, and moral education expected from a teacher. In such a context the broadside Anfangsgru¨nde der ganzen Universal-Historie, von Anfang der Welt bis auf diese Zeit (fig. 8) offered splendid possibilities to the curious mind as well as the teacher.161 The broadside was intended to promote the sale of Der Neue Nord-Americanische Stadt und Land Calender auf das Jahr 1807, which Jacob D. Dietrich (1778–1839) had composed and probably Johann Gruber had printed.162 In a headnote Dietrich expresses his hope that his efforts would prove useful for youth. He planned four broadsides that would summarize ‘‘the whole history of the world.’’ With these broadsides ‘‘parents can instruct their children, young people each other, and teachers their students.’’163 Dietrich’s ‘‘world’’ was of course what we today would call the Western Atlantic world; neither India, China, Japan, nor Oceania is mentioned. But he was certainly aware that there was more than Europe and America. Indeed, he had to face this problem in discussing the beginning of all history. He goes further, for in the beginning he clarifies his terms and categories. The matter properly belonging to history, he declares in his opening statement, is fourfold: that pertaining to civil society, to the church, to the advancement of knowledge, and to the development of art. While this was a fairly conventional division, it was unusual for the author of a chronology to be so specific in divulging his criteria and terms. Next he defines the scope of his historical chronology, dividing it into general history, special history, and individual history. Finally he reveals his time frame, which falls into two parts: ‘‘The history of the Old Testament from year 1 to 4000 and the history of the New Testament from the year Christ 1 to 1807.’’164

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Figure 8 Anfangsgru¨nde der ganzen Universal-Historie, von Anfang der Welt bis auf diese Zeit (Hagerstown, Md.: Jacob D. Dietrich, 1806). Franklin & Marshall College. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

In the first column Dietrich begins with a short discussion of the rise of the first empires, which he dates to about a hundred years after the ‘‘Sintflut’’ (Flood). After first briefly delineating the decline of the three classical ancient empires (the Median, the Babylonian, and the Assyrian), the Persian Empire, and the Greek city-states, he zeroes in on the Roman Empire. He notes that the empire at its greatest extent encompassed almost half of the then known world, yet quickly developed signs of weakness.

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He links its decline to its division into western and eastern parts and its ‘‘marvelous invasion’’ by foreign people. Dietrich concludes this section with brief sketches of the development of Germany and of population movements in Europe. The second column recounts the birth of the prophet Muhammad and the emergence of Islam around the year 600 CE and the spread of the Saracens in the following century, and from there on recounts the chronology of western Europe, privileging German and English history. With the beginning of the year 1500 (the sheet erroneously has ‘‘1000’’), Dietrich boldly declares, ‘‘With this saeculo begins a new history. The Reformation in Germany begins in 1517. . . . Henry VIII, defensor fidei, governs and reforms from 1509 to 1547.’’165 But that is all he says about the Reformation. From there he returns to what he calls at the end of the chronology of the ancient empires ‘‘Staatshistorie’’ (the history of states). Dietrich devotes relatively little space to history from 1600 to 1807, but does concentrate a bit more on the colonial powers. He cites Spain, but only in connection with the War of Spanish Succession, while the Electorate of Hanover receives honorable mention in connection with the beginning of the personal union between Hanover and England. The story then quickly moves to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748, races to the ‘‘Declaration of Independence of 1776,’’ which receives ‘‘international recognition in 1783,’’ bemoans the ‘‘most terrible of all revolutions in France in 1789,’’ in which ‘‘Napoleon builds his empire, which due to its mighty rise shattered the equilibrium of all European monarchies and came to dominate even Holland, Switzerland, Geneva, and Italy’’—and thus breathlessly the author arrives in 1807 and at the end of his chronology.166 Although reducing history teaching to the ‘‘Staatshistorie’’ of Dietrich was very much the norm in German schools at least until the 1960s, the broadside displays what we today would consider the model of poor history teaching. But from the perspective of the early modern customer the chronology followed very much the conventional line. Students were taught a history with characteristic emphases (states and dates) as well as omissions. History did not happen in processes but in precisely marked moments in time. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries few went beyond this conventional view and remarked, as Benjamin Rush had done, on the process-related nature of the American Revolution.167 Societies in such a history did not exist. All was constricted to the names of nations or rulers, and that of course implied that common people, children, and servants were absent. It consisted of a wide range of dates loosely connected in national contexts, yet this knowledge gives little sense of people, societies, smells, and sufferings. Other omissions were in areas that Dietrich planned to cover in the other three chronologies, which he never published: the chronology of the churches, of knowledge, and of the arts. That explains why the Catholic Church received no mention and why the Reformation was just hinted at but not explained and developed. For the same reason the chronology was silent about important inventions that marked the progress of knowledge.

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Given the surprising comprehensiveness, the intelligent design, and the precision of this chronology, it is a pity that Dietrich did not publish the other three parts. The four together would have provided the German youth of Pennsylvania with a surprisingly complex concept and knowledge of history. Since this was in the form of a broadside and was the only chronology available for students in German, its influence on historical thought and knowledge of German youth must have been profound. At the same time, the lack of other broadsides indicates that the student’s knowledge of the ancient world largely depended on his close reading and knowledge of the Old Testament. Links did exist between Dietrich’s broadside and those on biblical subjects, such as that between the story of Joseph and his brothers and Dietrich’s reference to the ancient Egyptian Empire. Even so, without further information about the student’s knowledge of ‘‘Heilsgeschichte,’’ there was a remarkable gap between the birth of Christ and the ‘‘neue Historie’’ inaugurated by the Reformation in Germany. If a student drew his historical knowledge only from this broadside, then for him Catholicism did not exist and Protestant churches began in 1517 with the Reformation. Finally, this concept of history knew of no floods or catastrophes except the ‘‘Sintflut’’—Carthage just disappears without reason—and what is more important, suggests no causes for why this or that happened or failed to emerge. This does not mean that the author’s opinion is absent. He speaks of the ‘‘marvelous invasion’’ of the Roman Empire by barbarians, and ignores the whole of eastern Europe as well as Italy, except in mentioning the occupation of Genoa by Napoleon in 1805. If a well-informed teacher wanted to enlarge on the basis of this broadside—and he did not have much else—then the sheet offered him plenty of possibilities.168 Although the author himself suggests that this chronology be used in schools, thus far no direct proof exists that it was, or that the other broadsides discussed here were either. There is, however, one broadside for which the context is clearly a school. Its title, Fu¨r Unterrichts-Kinder, and the dialogue itself place it into either a regular school or a Sunday school setting. The structure of the text is remarkable. It consists of a discussion between the teacher and his pupils, starting with the teacher’s question ‘‘What will happen on the last Judgment Day?’’ The children reply first that everyone will weep at the place of Christ’s execution, then that children, parents, sisters, neighbors, friends, teachers, and listeners will separate and weep, and finally ‘‘The devil and the sinners congregate at the place of execution and oh, everyone will howl.’’ This is juxtaposed with the sentence ‘‘The pious and the angels assemble themselves. Oh, they will rejoice.’’ The teacher then asks his second question: ‘‘What does Jesus require from us so that we can joyously appear at the last court?’’ The children answer for Jesus: ‘‘Children, if you love me in the lower world I will love you in the upper world [and seat you] to my right.’’ Therefore, the children chant, ‘‘Love him in the lower world and he will bless . . . us from eternity to eternity.’’169 In the last question the teacher asks his students whether they will now part. The students sing that they will now depart from the lecture and promise to keep fast to the teachings of the hour.

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This text is more remarkable than its simple lines suggest. First, it is not a straight dialogue between teacher and pupils but a construct that underlines the intensity and importance of certain sections. The children repeat individual lines once, for example the one where parents, friends, and others part from each other. But when at the end of the first question they come to the line ‘‘The devil and the sinners congregate at the place of execution,’’ the children repeat the line three times, as they do the next line, when the pious and angels assemble. In the following questions all sayings of Jesus are chanted three times, and in the last section, where teacher and children part, the intentions and promises to recall the teachings are repeated four times. Through repetition, the children memorize text and meaning while as actors they are involved in the drama of Christ’s execution and the Last Judgment. With emotive terms like ‘‘separate,’’ ‘‘weep,’’ ‘‘howl,’’ ‘‘rejoice,’’ ‘‘love,’’ ‘‘part,’’ and ‘‘remember,’’ the little staged dialogue is loaded with emotional qualities that heighten the children’s receptivity and ability to memorize and internalize the message. This piece of schoolroom pedagogy indicates that teaching in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century schools was not just a confrontation between students and an all-knowing teacher, but a mutual engagement in a subject considered of the greatest significance. We do not know who wrote and printed this text, but it certainly must have been someone who was familiar with the reality in the classroom, such as Peter Montelius.170 Teaching could be fun for teachers and for the pupils. But the reverse was true, too. Sometime between 1830 and 1848 Joseph Jung of Skippackville and later Doylestown, Pennsylvania, published a poem lamenting the hard fate of a teacher.171 The refrain is the teacher’s plea that his students get their ABC’s right, or he will have to beat them with his cane. But if he beat them, the parents would threaten to complain about him to the pastor of the congregation and call him names like ‘‘grober Flegel, Kinderschinder’’ (rude boor, child flayer). So boring is his job, with its preparing ink and cutting feathers to write with, that he would rather be a ‘‘Seuhirt’’ (swineherd) than continue such a life. But another broadside conveys a much more positive image: a school song published in memory of Henry Young, most likely Heinrich Jung, a teacher. It was evidently produced by the same printer who published the teacher’s lamentation, given the identical elaborate border ornament on both broadsides. The printer’s name, Joseph Jung, even suggests that Henry/Heinrich may have been his brother. The little poem encourages pupils to listen to the teacher, who has their wellbeing at heart, since reading, writing, and reckoning will secure them prosperity and happiness. In their answer the children promise to be attentive.172 Broadsides offer a surprisingly complex and rich picture of life in the schools and of what might have been taught there in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One reason may have been that printers like Peter Montelius earned some of their money as teachers and thus were familiar with the joys and problems of that profession. But at the same time, schools and education offered potentially good markets for certain types of broadsides. A systematic survey of these, as far as they have been preserved, allows glimpses into what subjects were taught in school or considered worthy by

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parents to acquaint their young ones with. Next to the ABC’s, chronologies, puzzles as tests, and little dialogues, together with the inevitable prayers, were the main offerings of printers to schools, teachers, parents, and students. If useful things about agriculture, trade, and manufacture were taught in the schools, the printers obviously did not consider these topics worth printing.173 What would the children of Peter and Elisabeth have learned? First, it is likely that they went only to Sunday school, because schools in villages were very rare indeed. If they were lucky, their parents could read and write; in that case they had probably acquired an ABC broadside or a little booklet from which they taught their children the basics.174 Sunday school, reading in the Bible, and broadsides like those on Joseph and his brothers would have made them familiar with important stories from the Old Testament and key tenets of Christianity. Prayers they would learn from their parents and again in school—plenty of broadsides were available as a help to children and parents. The broadsides indeed convey the impression that children of German parents were solidly surrounded by Christian teachings that colored every aspect of their young lives. The sections in the Neu Eingerichtetes Schul-Bu¨chlein (discussed in note 174) reinforce this impression. If they were lucky, the broadside with the chronology of the world had found its way into their home, from which they would grasp some fundamentals about the course of history—in addition to what their grandparents and parents told them in the long evenings about their own histories. In the absence of any history books or treatises, history was but experienced personal history. On a more practical level, and without the help of broadsides or other publications, they would have been expected to help on the farm, learning how to tend to simple farm duties and thus preparing for the next stage in their lives: adolescence.

Confirmation, Adolescence, and the Dangers and Joys of Becoming an Adult Not yet learned, but hopefully at least versant in reading, writing, and reckoning and armed with the Bible and the teachings of his or her church, the young boy or girl of Peter and Elisabeth was slowly approaching the time to leave school or be declared an accomplished scholar by their parents because he or she knew as much as they did. We are aware that the broadsides through which we tried to look at education and school offer a very deficient sketch of what life between 1730 and 1830 must have offered children in a small Pennsylvania village. Working in the fields, tending animals, talking to parents, and playing with siblings and friends are never mentioned in these broadsides—or in schoolbooks. Nor are the educational side effects of home devotions with the family. Yet these interactions were part of life—with the usual consequences. From their friends the children of Peter and Elisabeth heard of sins and lusts and caught the whooping cough, for which they were probably treated with ‘‘Doktor Ballhausen’s Bittere Gallen- u. Magen-Tropfen,’’ which the Philadelphia pharmacist C. G. Ra¨tzer advertised in a broadside in 1820.175 Like all children they developed the occasional

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cold, but if they were lucky their parents had read the broadside advertising ‘‘HonigBrust-Balsam’’;176 or equally likely, the children prayed their parents would spare them the horribly bitter drops. Two events marked the entrance into adulthood: baptism, for Mennonites or Baptists,177 and confirmation, for Lutherans and Reformed. In both cases admittance required attending catechism classes, where the thorough preparation often seems to have fostered a deep bond between the teacher or catechist and the students. The valediction hymn ‘‘Nun ihr meine lieben Kinder,’’ probably authored by a Johannes Ellendien, about whom nothing else is known, describes the pain of separation in a dialogue between teacher and students that ends in the promise to hold fast to the covenant with God. The song saw at least fourteen different printings, which speaks to its popularity as well as to the profitability of printing it. All of the texts were encircled by rather elaborate ornaments, but only one, probably printed by John Baumann, also featured two doves.178 All in all, the database contains well over fifty broadsides of confirmation songs. Basically these fall into two categories. The first is songs most likely printed at the behest of the pastor of the congregation and given to the confirmand at the end of the church service as a reminder that he or she had entered a covenant with God and with the congregation (see fig. 9).179 Often these broadsides state the date and give the name of the church. The second category is songs that were generally sung in confirmation church services or designated as parting songs between the teacher or pastor who had catechized the students and the students themselves.180 Since most of these songs were not tied to a singular date or a particular church, we assume that they were published at the printers’ risk; the fact that they were often reprinted speaks to the good business sense of the printers. Within the 422 hymns in the database those celebrating confirmation are the largest group that can be linked to a particular event of the church, demonstrating the centrality of this event in the life of the young in Pennsylvania German society and providing proof that within both the Lutheran and the Reformed Church confirmation was considered an important event. This is so even though most confirmation songs were not printed in Lutheran, Reformed, or other hymnals. In many ways these hymns celebrated and summarized the four events that came together in a confirmation church service: the end of childhood and entrance into adolescence, the reaffirmation and reforging of the covenant with God, admittance to the Lord’s Supper, and admittance to full membership in the congregation—elements that reflect the Pietist understanding of confirmation.181 Even in twentieth-century German rural society, confirmation marked the most important event in the life of a young person. More than any other Christian event, confirmation was the occasion for uncles and aunts to come and join the celebration. But at the same time this event marked the beginning of dangerous times, as is reflected in the confirmation songs; the third verse in the ‘‘ConfirmationsLied’’ below addresses these dangers rather explicitly.182

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Figure 9 Gebet-Lied der Confirmanden ([Lebanon, Pa.: Joseph Hartman, 1827]). The Library Company of Philadelphia.

In the hymn the Lord is asked to arm the poor youngsters against the sordid world and its lustful temptations, prepare them for the fight, and help them conquer their forbidden instincts; they should not be ashamed to live a Christian life but should emulate Jesus, who was likewise ridiculed for his lifestyle. While songs addressed to younger children speak of sins, these verses display a greater frankness. One wonders what contemporaries had in mind when the confirmands were singing, ‘‘The corrupted world lures us to the lusts of youth.’’183 Three broadsides in particular picture what contemporaries probably considered the embodiments of these dangerous lusts and how they could be overcome. One is taken from the picture story of Joseph and his brothers in Egypt.184 The other is a pictorial narrative of the course of life from the cradle to the grave.185 Putting the two side by side reveals almost identical perceptions of sinful lust in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (see figs. 10 and 11).

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Figure 10 Detail of Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern (plate 6).

Sin for the young confirmand meant that he was succumbing to the temptations women represented. In figure 10 Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce young Joseph, who manages to escape but has to leave his cloak behind. The symbol of temptation is, the reader will guess, the bare bosom of Potiphar’s wife, which obviously contemporaries, too, understood; the bed signifies the place for sexual intercourse, licit or illicit. The story in figure 11 is a bit more complex. The center of the picture depicts the sinful world, where the devil invites the virtuous couple on his left to the temptations on the table. The couple is dressed in simple cloth; the woman has her hair not curled but straight and uncut, as the apostle Paul had decreed for the women of the Christian congregation at Corinth.186 Curled hair was a sign of lewdness, as wigs had been for radical Puritans before 1670. The temptations on the right side are alcohol and luscious food. A man sits at the table, dressed like a monk (everyone knew that only Catholics were monks!), holding a bottle and a glass in his hands. A glutton and a drunkard

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Figure 11 Detail of Das Leben und Alter der Menschen (plate 5).

indeed! Behind him in the corner a woman crouches on the floor. She is naked above the waist and, like the monk, holds a bottle and a glass filled, no doubt, with forbidden alcohol. The lower parts of both women are covered by what appears to be a bedspread. It is a sorry sight, and an exposed bosom would have betokened lewdness just as it would in America today. But the message is clear enough: in the one case Joseph runs away from temptation and seduction, for which he will be thrown into prison and only later saved by God, and in the other it is shown that drinking, gluttony, fornication, and other horrible vices like dancing and frolicking lead to doom and hell. With the covenant renewed and affirmed before the congregation, coupled with promises to avoid sin and live a holy life, the first participation in the Lord’s Supper began, signifying solemn acceptance into the Christian community and highlighting confirmation as an event that divided the lives of the congregants into childhood and adulthood. The rituals, the liturgy in the church, the solemnity of the occasion, and the joyous, festive celebrations all were designed to underline the importance of confirmation not only for the young people, but also for the congregation and the denomination it belonged to. At that time the Reformed and the Lutheran churches in particular were still in statu nascendi, in the process of confessionalization. It was in their interests, too, to bind and integrate the young pious people firmly into their congregational communities. Acceptance into the congregation and release into the world—joining the holy community of believers or possibly violating the covenant by leading a sinful life—were two sides of the same coin. Should any young people miss this message, the printers were all too happy to oblige with descriptions in gory detail. Take the poem Das Su¨nden Sterbebette, which went through six editions.187 Probably based on an English poem, it is the story of a young girl who loved to ‘‘Frolick’’ (a term that allows many interpretations), dance, and play around and refused to be concerned for her eternal happiness. On a Friday the girl fell

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ill and quickly realized that her last hour had come. The fear of death grasped her, and ‘‘her eyes, filled with terror, moved about in her face wild and uncontrolled.’’188 In long, windy verses she laments to her parents her failure not to have prepared herself for death. Both father and mother bewail her cruel fate, yet death knows no mercy: ‘‘death destroyed the splendor of her beauty, fear of hell contorted the tender youth’s adornment.’’ And just to be sure that the reader understood what had happened, the next verse reiterates: ‘‘Her soul now fled to hell, her body turned black and already began to rot.’’189 For the most dull-witted of readers who had not understood the crude message of the poem, the author spells it out as bluntly as possible: ‘‘You young people take note: If you sin, God’s revenge will catch up with you soon enough, and under God’s curse you will perish.’’190 The moral is clear: lead a virtuous life, shun vice, women, drink, gambling, and dance—in short, shun all things that are fun—and dedicate your life to the moral pursuit of happiness. Peter and Elisabeth’s son may have been puzzled by this message: he had entered the covenant, was a faithful member of the congregation, admonished his friends and himself to stay on the path to virtue, and prayed in the morning and in the evening. Why had God created these temptations, especially in the form of nicely shaped young women? And possibly he began to wonder about the origins of this paradox in Christian morality. This question leads directly to the more fundamental one about the creation of mankind and the mess Adam and Eve made of it. Bible illustrators and painters had endlessly depicted Adam and Eve before the apple tree with the snake offering Eve the forbidden fruit.191 The picture invited thoughts about the fall of man, about his ability to distinguish between ‘‘good and evil,’’ about God’s curse to Adam that ‘‘in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,’’ and finally about the meaning of Genesis 3:7: ‘‘and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.’’192 Next to the hymn Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen, broadsides with the pictorial story of Adam and Eve are the most popular German broadsides between 1730 and 1830.193 Between twelve thousand and forty-five thousand German broadsides featuring the almost naked Adam, Eve, snake, and apple tree were produced and sold between 1760 and 1830 in the Middle Atlantic region.194 The broadsides together went through over fifty editions. Looking over one of these broadsides, an adolescent boy’s eyes would have wandered from the text to Adam and possibly to Eve as well (plates 7–11). What he saw certainly did not help him learn the lesson of the text, for he was now subject to regular hormone attacks, with disturbing effects on his perception of the other sex. The five different renderings of Adam and Eve, with drastic differences in the state of nakedness of the figures, make it clear that this is something people at the time were aware of, not something we are reading into it now.195 All the pictures were handcolored, and thus the rendering of the figures was the act of conscious, if sometimes a bit careless, coloring.

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The figures of Adam and Eve conform to three different models, all standing erect and modeled after ancient Greek or Roman statues. In the Bruckman broadside, while Adam looks at Eve, Eve gazes elsewhere. In the much cruder Villee broadside Adam looks at Eve and Eve gazes just past him, while in the Sage broadside Adam somewhat lustily eyes her while she virtuously casts her eyes down. Their positions in the fourth broadside are identical to the Bruckman figures. In the Baumann broadside of 1810 the positions of Adam and Eve are reversed, but Adam still looks at Eve while Eve gazes elsewhere. The positioning of the figures and their viewing directions suggest that we are looking not at an intimate couple but at two human beings who just happen to be standing where they were. The contour of the figure of Eve in the Villee broadside has obviously been changed, her slender hips filled out. But certain other features aside, the real differences are in the way Adam’s and Eve’s bodies are painted. Bruckman and Baumann leave them naked and in full bloom, Villee blurs the bodies with hachures, while Meyers and Christian cover the bodies with sloppily applied dark red color. Most of these prints were offered with the bodies either fully covered with paint, sparingly colored, or uncolored. The broadsides have either a very short text that begins with the line ‘‘Over there is a tree with lovely fruits’’196 or a poem of up to sixty-four lines that recounts the story of Adam and Eve. In the short version the culprit is clear: the apples on the tree are so seductive that Eve cannot resist; she eats one and instantly dies. Original sin is Eve’s doing, and as a punishment the women of the world are therefore rightfully cursed and subjected to the domination of men. In the long version the story is different and much more complex. For our purposes the poem contains three remarkable manipulations of the biblical text. First, after Eve accepts the apple from the snake, hands it to Adam, and Adam and Eve have both eaten from it, they realize their nakedness: ‘‘They realized soon that they were naked; both were very ashamed.’’197 They immediately hide in the Garden; thus, hiding their nakedness is their first action after the Fall. According to these broadsides, the perception of nakedness is the sole consequence of breaching God’s command. This is the first deviation from the biblical text. For the reader might have noted that we did not say anything about the ability to discern right from wrong and good from evil as the fundamental ability conveyed by eating an apple from this particular tree. For this key feature of the biblical story of Adam’s and Eve’s expulsion from the paradise is omitted in the poem. The perception of nakedness is the sole effect of eating from the apple. God addresses not both, but only Adam, saying, ‘‘Adam, you are fallen, you and your whole generation in sorrow must now live and remain a vassal of sin.’’198 God then asks him who suggested that he eat of the forbidden fruit; Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the snake. Yet God is not impressed. In the poem he curses Adam, and this is the second deviation from the biblical text, only with the following words: ‘‘Antagonism will I establish between you and the woman, your head shall be bruised by a son from her womb.’’199 In this long version of the poem, the curse is not laid on Eve alone nor on Adam and Eve together but only on Adam.200 This reading of the verse and its

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interpretation is strengthened by the omission of God’s curse directed to Eve that henceforth ‘‘in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’’201 This deviation from the Bible is astounding because without the formula ‘‘[Adam] shall rule over thee’’ a greater degree of equality between woman and man is implied. At the same time this omission agrees with earlier statements by Christoph Saur in the 1750s assigning German women a much stronger role in the house than English wives enjoyed.202 A close reading of this text reveals significant variations and omissions from the biblical original; but what is important here is that this version of Adam’s fall was widespread among the German community in Pennsylvania. These broadsides were accessible to everyone, including women and the adolescents of both sexes. At the same time, they were probably the only easily accessible broadsides that depicted nudity, aside from the bare bosom of the seductive wife of Potiphar and the lewd woman in the print of Joseph and his brethren. In these broadsides women were objects of sexual perception by young and old Pennsylvania Germans at the same time that the text exonerated them from being the sole cause for the expulsion from paradise and imposing on men the burden of original sin. Certainly, these broadsides were unknown in English devotional literature;203 in The hieroglyhick [i.e., hieroglyphic] Bible; or Select passages in the Old and New Testament, the English publication that comes closest in intention to the German Adam and Eve broadsides, the figures of Adam and Eve are much smaller and one-dimensional, which allows them to retain their nonerotic and solemn character.204 While the Adam and Eve broadsides may have helped confuse young Pennsylvania German adolescents of both sexes by emphasizing nakedness as something attractive and evil at the same time, they also helped them to shape ideas about the bodily features of the opposite sex and thus prepared them for the next big step in their life: friendship with the opposite sex and courtship. As we have shown in the section on courtship, the broadsides suggest that there was ample space for expressing emotions, affection, and love in verses and prepared letters, which would no doubt be sent to the beloved other, either modified or unmodified. These expressions were chaste and virtuous and often ended, as they should, in marriage and the foundation of a family. And thus the cycle would begin again.

Culture and Leisure of Adults: Reading and Other Pastimes Children and adolescents not only learned more about the Bible and about the dangers of sin and the horrors of hell. They also began to explore the world, participate in family life, help on the farm, and learn about coping with the adversities that life has in store for parents and children alike. These were vital parts of their experience. Ordinary life had many facets, many of which are reflected in the broadsides. Politics

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reached the house during elections or in wartime.205 Death broke into the house occasionally, as when a child died, bemoaned by parents and siblings. Ein scho¨n geistlich Lied, a song that was printed three times, is a dialogue between the dead and the living that describes the sorrow of the parents and the dead child’s reassurances to them that it has ‘‘now received a life of joy.’’ She reminds her parents that only trust in God and the belief in redemption by Jesus will eventually reunite them on the last Judgment Day, when Christ will reappear.206 As the demographics of America’s population in this period show, death was never far away. This may help account for the abundance among the broadsides of stories about death, murder, and deadly atrocities. And sensationalism is another factor that likely propelled sales. But as the analysis of these stories will show, a complex web of motives linked the contents of these songs and narratives to the life histories of the purchasers. That is particularly true for the most prominent of these street ballads, Ein neues Trauer-Lied, Enthaltend die Geschichte der Susanna Cox (fig. 12).207 The ballad is based on the execution of a maid named Susanna Cox in Reading in 1809. It is not clear who its author was, but the facts as given in the song are essentially correct.208 What concerns us here, however, is the function of the ballad in the life of Pennsylvania Germans at that time. Over thirty editions were published, indicating that more than curiosity and interest must have driven sales and induced printers to turn out new ones until the late 1820s. The text contains four elements: first, the information that Cox was uneducated and unfamiliar with the law of God and men; second, the equation of Susanna’s seduction by a man called Mertz with Eve’s seduction by the snake; third, the conclusion that Susanna’s fatal error was that she was unable to distinguish between right and wrong; fourth, the statement of the inevitability of the law that had to be followed, though with sadness and regret. The reader is asked to take Cox’s prayers at the place of execution seriously and turn to God. The story in its basic features thus conforms to hundreds of other street ballads. A number of reasons account for why this particular ballad was so popular. The first was its emphasis on learning the laws of God and of men being vital to coping with the problems of the world. The second was that Susanna Cox as an ordinary woman was subject to those laws and therefore had to be punished for the murder of her child. The third was that although Susanna had been ravished by an unscrupulous, and married, man named Mertz,209 Mertz, despite God’s law, had remained unpunished and left the region. The ballad does not suggest that this could have happened to any young woman in the country, but it does forcefully underline the importance of being educated as a pious and knowledgeable person. At the same time the ballad indirectly criticizes the courts for letting Mertz go free. It underscores the values of learning and of living a pious life, while it condemns seduction as the result of ‘‘Fleisches-Lust’’ (carnal lust). Thus, the ballad speaks to and reinforces key values of Pennsylvania German society in general and their attitude toward youth and education in particular.210

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Figure 12 Ein neues Trauer-Lied, Enthaltend die Geschichte der Susanna Cox, die in Reading wegen den Mord ihres Kindes hingerichtet wurde (n.p., n.d.). Photo: author.

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There were other popular ballads, but none was as often reprinted as that about Susanna Cox. One, Ein neues Lied Von der Mord-Geschichte des Joseph Miller,211 circulated widely around 1825. The story is again short and moving: Joseph Mu¨ller, tutor of the children of a count in East Prussia, eloped with one of the count’s daughters to North America, where he started a school. His wife, with her constant complaining about her new life, drove her husband to despair. His response was drastic: he killed her and the two children and hanged himself. Why did this story fascinate Pennsylvania Germans? Again, we believe it was more than the fascination with murder and crime or sensationalism, although the gory details do appeal to that instinct. The story, first of all, evoked Pennsylvania Germans’ memories of their own emigration experiences and their difficulties in adjusting to the New World. Many of them had to sign indenture or redemption contracts because they were not able to pay for the journey across the ocean.212 Mu¨ller spent all he had on the crossing and arrived with his family penniless in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. While he seemed to be able to make do with what he had, his wife, as the daughter of a count, could not adjust to running a household and a family without the help of servants. The ballad in the end does not commiserate so much with the man as with the woman. The readers would have seen in her troubles their own difficulties in coping with a new and strange environment. While they had succeeded, reading the ballad made them aware of how fortunate they were. A third murder story that made the rounds and enriched the world of broadsides was the Trauergeschichte u¨ber eine Mordthat, the sad narrative of the murder of a woman by her bridegroom at the behest of his mother. The popularity of this broadside reflects not only that such murderous tales sold well, speaking directly as they did to the emotions of Germans in the Middle Atlantic states, but also that broadsides brought over from Europe were in high demand. The Trauergeschichte u¨ber eine Mordthat relates the story of a servant who promises marriage to a poor young woman; his mother strongly disapproves of the match and suggests that her son murder the maid in a neighboring forest. After he does so, the son marries a richer young woman and starts a happy life. Yet soon the local nobleman discovers the grave in the forest. The devil himself gives the young murderer a rough time until he surrenders to the authorities, is sentenced to death, accuses his mother on the execution block, and then dies. The familiar moral in three verses ends the tale.213 The ballad is conventional fare in fortytwo occasionally clumsy verses. Johann Georg Hohmann, in the version he published in 1811, states that he had improved some lines and added three new verses, which seems to have earned his version—only very lightly changed from the standard version—a second printing.214 But by and large the broadside had nothing but its gory story to recommend itself to the public, which probably explains why less than half as many editions were printed than of the broadside about Susanna Cox. Except for the Trauergeschichte, the sad murder stories have one thing in common: they all give a fairly precise date and place and describe in some detail the circumstances of the depressing events they relate. In 1785 Philip Bebel killed his wife and his four

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children in Frederickstown, Maryland;215 in 1788 a bridegroom, at his mother’s suggestion, murdered his bride in a forest near Eberstein in Germany;216 on August 12, 1812, Johannes Schild, as Johann Valentin Schuller relates the story, butchered his parents with an ax in Alsace Township, six miles from Reading.217 Then there is the sad confession of James London, who on March 1, 1818, shot dead his consort Jenny Austin in Harrisburg.218 And in 1822 John Lechler murdered his wife, Mary, and the wife of his neighbor, Bernhard Haag, in Lancaster.219 In all these stories women and children are the victims. In the case of the murder of Mary Lechler, whose neck was broken by her husband, the neighbor’s wife was doubly victimized: first her husband had committed adultery with Mary Lechler, and then John Lechler, while attempting to shoot the neighbor who had cuckolded him, accidentally shot the wife. The motives for these killings varied. For Bebel, as for Joseph Mu¨ller, the motive was desperation; killing was the only way they saw out of misery. For the bridegroom who stabbed his bride to death because he wanted to marry a richer woman and to please his mother, the motive was greed. Johannes Schild seems to have lost his senses and gone on a rampage: after murdering his parents, he tried to kill his wife, his two children, and finally his brother, who all fortunately escaped. James London killed Jenny Austin, with whom he was living, unmarried, in Harrisburg, after he had drunk too much and quarreled with her. These stories tell of violence in the home and of dire need, desperation, and greed. Surprisingly, however, only one murderer, James London, admitted to having been cruel to his victim. All these broadsides were published with the hope and intention that the gory details of the killings would fire the imagination of potential customers and induce them to purchase the broadsides, improve the sales of the printer, and generate some revenue either for a noble cause or for the bereaved. Interestingly enough, that was not the reaction they received. Schild’s bloodthirsty rampage and James London’s long, detailed, moralizing confession of his sinful life simply failed to inspire interest in potential customers. Neither story was reprinted. The poverty and distress of Bebel and of Mu¨ller, on the other hand, raised sympathy; Bebel’s story was printed seven times and Mu¨ ller’s story sixteen times. Yet what really attracted the German customers was the story of the bridegroom who killed his poor betrothed to marry a richer woman, which spread across the state in eighteen reprints. It is worth noting that the story of the other young woman who was involved in a murder, Susanna Cox, topped even these sales with thirty-two printings. Compassion, coupled with the experience of poverty, which many purchasers could identify with, and stories of greed were things that pushed sales; at the same time these probably reflected important values in Germans’ daily life. Many of them had gone through the experience of packing up in Germany, of starting a new life from scratch in North America, of struggling with a foreign language, and of poverty and distress until they finally reached the modest or comfortable estate that many of them enjoyed in the early nineteenth century. These experiences shaped neighborhoods and helped people share what they had, while letting them stress modesty and frugality and detest unwonted greed. Public

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merriment was a rare experience to be enjoyed only in a public place like the Jahrmarkt (yearly fair) at York. In purchasing the broadsides on the fate of Susanna Cox, Joseph Mu¨ller, and Philip Bebel, the customers again indulged publicly in sharing and showing sympathy for the unfortunate. These stories were projections of what happened if one deviated from the right path. Purchasers were taught the moral of the deeds: know right and wrong, live a godly life, stay on the virtuous path, and do not drink, and all will end well. There were other broadsides with similar qualities and similar appeals. Eleonore, oder die erschreckliche Begebenheit eines Ma¨dchens, most likely another import from Europe, went through only one edition,220 while a song about a Hungarian nobleman’s daughter who visited heaven was so popular that it was printed twenty times.221 Its success can be explained by its being a pious narrative with a miraculous ending. Like the heavenly letters, it linked heaven and earth. Also fairly popular was the gruesome story of a Bohemian farmer who in his unrelenting greed worked on Sundays and was justly punished by God by being stuck to the stump of a tree that he had just felled. Again the relation between this story and the heavenly letters is obvious. The villagers were unable to lift him off the stump, and when they tried to saw through it, blood ran from the wood. Printers responded to the demand with seven editions.222 Did aspects of gender influence, or even shape, the broadsides or motivate the behavior of potential customers? Taken together, the ballads, the Adam and Eve broadsides, and the sheets that focused on courtship, love, and mutual infatuation suggest, surprisingly, a fairly balanced relationship between women and men. There is one case of a woman who is beaten; but there are the two cases, too, where the men are driven to desperate deeds because they cannot stand the poverty and deprivation their wives suffer. Finally, there are two broadsides that focus on the separation of a man and his wife. In one case the husband renounces his wife, who has left him, and announces to the world that he will pay no debts incurred by her, and in the other a man whose wife has left him petitions the public for money to pay his passage back to Germany.223 These broadsides do not speak of domination but of equality in the relationship between women and men. The ballads aside, the broadsides as a whole offered little for secular reading or entertainment of the curious mind. In 1795 A New Entertainment by Mssrs. Egalite´ was announced in three languages, English, French, and German. In this ‘‘entertainment’’ two ‘‘artificial’’ men sat opposite each other on a stage, the one impersonating a ‘‘Citoyen,’’ the other ‘‘a Mr. L’Aristocrate.’’ ‘‘These curious automatons or artificial men show many great feats of activity, like lofty tumbling over an iron bar fixed horizontally, finish their labors in leaping a somersault backward and forward and saluting the company,’’ who, as the author of this extraordinary piece flatters himself, ‘‘cannot but be pleased at the whole of that performance.’’224 Evidently the title of this show was an attempt to cash in on the egalitarianism of the French Revolution, which would, the producers probably thought, evoke kindred feelings in American Republicans and attract them to the theater. On the whole these broadsides do not suggest literary,

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cultural, or other tastes much different from those of most English speakers in America or most Europeans on the other side of the water. Theater was only for those who lived in respectable county towns like Lancaster, Reading, or in Philadelphia, where Mssrs. Egalite´ offered their amusements. Yet it would be erroneous to believe that these literary broadsides were the only kind of entertainments offered. At least the broadsides in which booksellers and printers praised their goods suggest that the curious and culturally inclined had the possibility to acquire or borrow books to fill their idle hours. Seven booksellers praised their books in broadsides. Five of them had their shops in Philadelphia: Francis Hasenclever, Andreas Geyer, Georg Christoph Reinhold, Henrich Miller, and Christoph Lochner. The database has two broadsides by Reinhold and one by each of the others.225 Jacob Lahn ran a bookstore in Lancaster, and Ambrosius Henkel, the brother of Dr. Salomon Henkel, ran one in New Market, Virginia.226 These booksellers, with the exception of Lahn and Hasenclever, generally offered books only on moral, religious, and scientific subjects. Reinhold’s sole exception in his large offering of over 140 books is Samuel Richardson’s Pamela oder die belohnte Tugend, newly translated from the fifth English edition, to be had in two volumes for £1.17.00.227 Between the 1760s and the early nineteenth century Reinhold ordered regular shipments of books from the bookshop of the Francke’sche Waisenhaus in Halle, Germany.228 Andreas Geyer’s list included a number of historical and political titles and two plays known for their moral messages, Molie`re’s Der Gleissner, oder scheinheilige Betru¨ger (Tartuffe) and Johann Jakob Dusch’s bourgeois drama Der Bankerot.229 Lochner’s list contained a series of songbooks as well as, most unusually, a German translation of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.230 His other books were all either devotional, medical, or theological works. Henrich Miller’s list contained, besides religious works, an unusual number of scholarly and Latin texts; he is likewise the only bookseller who offered a good number of English titles. All of these bookstores carried a number of books for schools, including ABC’s, primers, and dictionaries (mostly English-German). If these broadsides adequately reflect the booksellers’ stock, then one cannot but be impressed by the close concordance between the general moral and religious attitude of Germans in the Middle Atlantic region and the fare they were offered by their booksellers. There was almost nothing to threaten the virtue and Christian morality of the potential German customer. The books offered were solid material: religious, devotional, instructive in medicine, learned, useful, and helpful in the joint effort to prepare the youth for the difficult life ahead and keep adults on the straight and narrow path to heaven. The result reaffirms our analysis of the German texts printed in the British colonies prior to 1776: 75 percent of the 302 books published in German were of either a religious or devotional nature; of the remaining texts only 10 fell into what we might call today belles lettres.231 The Lancaster bookseller Jacob Lahn, who had his shop on Queen Street close to the courthouse (today still a prime location), as well as the Philadelphia bookseller Francis Hasenclever, whose shop on Second Street between Arch and Reese likewise

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was in a prime location, do not fit this pattern. Both offered a significant number of titles that in a very broad sense would qualify as literature, including collections of poems by authors such as Friedrich Wilhelm Zacharia¨, Johann Friedrich von Cronegk, James Thomson, Johann Christian Gu¨ nther, Karl Wilhelm Ramler, Johann Jakob Bodmer, Johann Christian Blum, Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Ho¨lty, and Traugott Benjamin Berger, as well as plays by authors such as Carl Goldoni and Germain Franc¸ois Poullain de Saintfoix. All these titles stayed well within the moral compound marked by lists of other booksellers. If they contained something witty or even bordering on the frivolous, one really had to search for it. The major exceptions to the rule were the few novels offered by these two booksellers: Johann Gottwerth Mu¨ller’s Siegfried von Lindenberg was a very popular novel in which a poor nobleman imitates the life and manners of a duke.232 Morality as well as mild criticism of the nobility’s lifestyle also characterized the novel Lienhard und Gertrud by the educator and social reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Although of higher literary quality, Johann Karl August Musa¨us’s Das Ga¨rtner-Ma¨dchen, ‘‘ein komische Oper,’’ set to music by Franz Andreas Holly as well as by Ernst Wilhelm Wolf, as well as Miguel de Cervantes’s famous novel Don Quixote de la Mancha, complete the meager offerings of German booksellers for curious German settlers in North America. This is the crop, and again it is heavy on morality, heavy on serious critique; it is severe with anything that smacks of enthusiasm. Only two pieces suggest that critique and dream world could go together: Cervantes’s Don Quixote, which was offered in a new translation by Jacob Lahn in Lancaster, and the comedy Herzog Michel by Johann Christian Kru¨ger, which Hasenclever had on his list. Herzog Michel is the story of a servant in a small village who dreams for one day that he is a duke; in the role he is of course neither respected nor very successful. The play is a mild critique of baroque rule as well as the literary genre that uses dream worlds for real worlds. With few exceptions, the literature that the booksellers offered shunned the frivolous, the world of dreamers, the witty, and the even slightly immoral. There are bucolic elements, but what was most conspicuously missing is what we would today call ‘‘light reading’’: the many novellas, the novels in which the duke or nobleman inevitably wins the heart of the simple girl or, worse, breaks her heart, seduces her, and then dumps her on his servant—the story of one of the broadsides. The cultural world of the Germans between 1730 and 1830 was a serious one. It knew no idleness, no past time spent in light reading or even something faintly immoral. The wonderful naked Adams and Eves may have been the only thing that crossed the borderline of the permitted. Readers, however, had always the option of ordering books they craved through a merchant or a bookseller like Christian Jacob Hu¨tter in Lancaster, who was happy to get them from Germany, provided customers were willing to pay the costs.233 There was one genre that enjoyed popularity on both sides of the Atlantic: travel diaries or accounts. Hasenclever offered a number of them, including J. de Blainville’s Reise eines Engla¨nders durch Frankreich, Italien, die griechischen Inseln und Deutschland 234 and Jonas Hanway’s nationalistic account of his travels to Russia, Persia, Germany, and

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the Netherlands, part of a series of travel narratives in which Hanway contributed to the ongoing British search for new markets.235 The most fantastic travel account was Niels Klims unterirdische Reise mit einer ganz neuen Erdbeschreibung und einem ausfu¨hrlichen Bericht u¨ber die bisher ganz und gar unbekannte Fu¨nfte Monarchie by Ludwig Holberg, or more precisely Ludvig, Baron Holberg (1684–1754), an influential DanishNorwegian poet with a European reputation. Lahn’s offerings were more mixed: they included Johann Friedel’s suggestive Galanterien Wien; the anonymous Einer ju¨ngern Sophie Reise aber nicht von Memel nach Sachsen, a title that parodied Sophiens Reise von Memel nach Sachsen by Johann Timotheus Hermes, the second edition of which had appeared in six parts between 1774 and 1776; Sergeij Pleschtscheew’s Tagebuch einer Reise; and Johann Jakob Volkmann’s Neueste Reisen durch England. These were lengthy pieces compiled from other travel accounts, a practice quite common at the time.236 They reminded German readers in North America of the Old World while at the same time providing them with the excitement of the exotic other that was characteristic of such works. There was one genre that one might not expect to be of interest to these sober, serious-minded Germans—or perhaps they especially needed the ‘‘how to’’ books of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Whatever the explanation, Jacob Lahn offered the interested German customer in Lancaster Gottlieb Jakob Planck’s Tagebuch eines neuen Ehemanns and Nicolas Venette’s Die Geheimnisse keuscher Liebes-Wercke.237 The tract, if that is what it was, entitled Vom Zweck der Ehe is so rare that no German library lists it; yet Lahn offered it for six pence to his customers at Lancaster.238 Some ¨ ber die customers seem to have been interested in Johann Heinrich Vincent No¨lting’s U Vorbereitung zu einer glu¨cklichen Ehe, to be had for nine pence—which remarkably was published in a second edition.239 We could find only one copy, in a Swiss library, of the valuable guide for young ladies Sicheres Remedium fu¨r Ma¨dchen [um] sich zu wu¨rdigen Frauen zu bilden, which Lahn had in stock for £1.03.00, a price that suggests it was a bulky treatise. Similar in purpose was a tract advertised by Henrich Miller, Handleitung zu wohlansta¨ndigen Sitten, wie sich Kinder zuhause und in der Schule, ja u¨berall auffu¨hren sollen.240 It is tempting to suggest that these books responded to a certain insecurity among young and old Germans. They certainly document the existence of social aspirations in the small but lively German elites in towns like Lancaster or Reading. Another reason for offering these books to customers was the desire to provide childless couples with gynecological advice and the daughters of the small but rising bourgeois citizenry in Lancaster and similar towns with suggestions on how to improve appearances and manners. That the Germans in this region preferred German to English advice speaks to their lively perception of themselves as Germans as well as to the simple fact that some of them were probably unable to read English tracts. These guides, tracts, and treatises were part of the effort of German settlers, particularly in urban settings, to model their society according to the social values of Germany. But this does not mean that they conceived themselves as ‘‘strangers in their own land’’; rather, they envisioned themselves as building a society that blended the possibilities of

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the New World with the social values and mores of the Old and thus creating something that was their own. From today’s perspective the cultural activities of most German settlers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are not especially impressive. Most of the settlers were farmers whose days were occupied with working their lands and marketing their produce. Everyone who has lived on a farm knows how early the farmer and his wife have to rise in the morning, how physically demanding their daily chores are, and how exhausted they are at the end of the day. Peter and Elisabeth would have simply had no time to fire their imaginations with novels and poetry. For them, leisure and fun had to be connected to their life as farmers. Printers and book traders knew this, of course. They tailored their products and the books they held in stock to the needs of the small German urban population and of the German farmers, their largest clientele. They were aware that the farmers’ dramas happened in the stables, barns, and fields. Higher cultural needs were satisfied by ballads about the fate of Susanna Cox and other unfortunate souls.

Germans at Work and Having Fun This chapter began with a description of farms and farm implements—the framework and context of German settlers’ lives as farmers. This section will supplement that discussion with an analysis of the self-perception of German farming couples and of those features of farm life that were exceptional enough to become the subjects of broadsides—medicine for animals, care for horses, marketing products, the joys of the yearly fair at York, and finally the home manufacture of wool and the use of new machinery, particularly in the Shenandoah Valley, to improve quality and increase manufacturing capability. The section will end with a discussion of runaway servants and slaves, leading to the larger issue of slavery, ethnicity, and gender and their meaning in a religious society that forced slaves and indentured women to imagine their own paradise and eternal life despite the horrors experienced on earth. Again, the structure of this section is dictated more by the subjects of broadsides than by the concrete features of German farm life in the Middle Atlantic region. Key features of this life are missing: there are no broadsides on cereals and grain crops nor on cattle and hogs, arguably the most important farm products in this region.241 These represented the accustomed parts of a farm and were mentioned only when a farm was to be sold.242 Another important feature of life on the farm will be relegated to the next chapter: religion. Researchers who describe and analyze German farms and farm life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are usually much concerned with ethnicity and especially the problem of how much of the Pennsylvania German farm is Dutch or German.243 While much of this work is fascinating, it is beyond the scope of this study. We are not interested in which elements of German settlers can be described as typically German;

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rather, we are interested in how German settlers, men and women, built, perceived, and shaped their own lives in the Middle Atlantic region. Stressing ethnicity only makes sense from the perspective of the English majority society. We have found almost no evidence that before 1830 German settlers were concerned with this English perception, aside from the fierce discussion about the language and German culture issue in Pennsylvania politics from the early 1740s onwards, which will be discussed at length in chapter 4. In 1760, toward the end of the second column in an advertisement for his books, Christoph Lochner offered a book with the mysterious title Natu¨rlicher Geheimnisse entdeckte Gruft, by Christoph Lorenz Bilderbeck. Lochner obviously assumed that his customers knew what these ‘‘natural secrets’’ were that had been ‘‘discovered in a crypt or tomb’’; if so, they knew more than modern readers do. The subtitle explains that this is a treatise on how to administer and improve farms and larger estates.244 Those who were interested in books like this one were familiar with the work of Bilderbeck (1682–1749) of the Lu¨neburg’sche region in the electorate of Hanover, a land syndic, courtier, and prolific author of a number of treatises that dealt with estate law, administration, and agriculture of the predominantly rural electorate. German farmers in Pennsylvania spread the word about Bilderbeck’s treatises, and the bookdealer was encouraged to import the latest edition. Purchasing such a book was one way to keep in touch with and profit from agricultural practices, progress, and thinking in Germany. ‘‘Germans at work’’ must really read ‘‘German farmers at work,’’ for indeed most German settlers in the Middle Atlantic region and Shenandoah Valley were farmers. The few craftsmen, physicians, lawyers, and pastors of the Lutheran and Reformed congregations were a small band indeed. There are no broadsides that praise them or their services. But there is plenty of evidence that Bauern (farmers) celebrated themselves. In house blessings they counted themselves among the most important segments of society,245 and in politics being a farmer was probably the most important quality a potential candidate for office had to possess.246 But even beyond this, the farmers celebrated themselves and their estate with a poem that was published in twenty-one separate editions (fig. 13).247 The poem starts by lamenting that people do not have enough respect for farmers. It reminds these people that Adam and Eve were the first farmers—thus turning the curse of God into something positive.248 And thus, the poem modestly claims, all people originate from farmers. The poem then describes the farmers’ daily work in glowing terms, and adds that they can provide food for the rest of mankind only if they are not hindered by war or other catastrophes. The poem ends with the wish that God preserve the farmers at all times so that no one may go hungry. The message is clear and unabashedly presumptuous: there is simply no reason not to consider the Bauernstand the highest and most important estate in the country. The poem’s list of farm products, particularly the mention of wine, betrays it as originating in Europe. Indeed, the catalogues of both the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the Library of the Preussischer Kulturbesitz list copies of the poem in broadsides (the broadsides themselves were destroyed during World War II).249 Since the German

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Figure 13 Der Bauren-Stand ([Ephrata, Pa.: Johann Baumann, 1800–1809]). Used by permission of the Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia.

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Union Catalogue for the seventeenth century does not list it, we assume that the Munich and Berlin copies were printed between the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) and the great hunger crisis in Germany in 1771/72.250 That would explain why the poem stresses the destructive effects of war on the farmers and the necessity of peace for the production of sufficient food for the population. The claim for farmers of the first place in society fits reality more in America in 1830 than in Europe. The large number of American editions signals that the poem echoed the self-perception of the farmers who no doubt were the principal buyers of the broadside. Only a very few other broadsides dealt with farmers in general. One, probably published by a printer as part of the advertisement campaign for his almanac, discusses why farmers’ expectations in their prayers to God were problematic. Instead of believing that it was God’s job alone to produce good harvests, the author asserts, farmers should understand that their success depended on the right balance between recognizing God’s omnipotence and his curse on Adam, ‘‘In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.’’ The farmer should pray for success and then work hard to make it possible: ‘‘Pray and work, which means put all your trust into the Lord, pray to him for his blessing, but at the same time try as hard as you can to tend to your affairs properly and decently.’’251 What prompted the printer to issue this broadside? Clearly the text appealed to the pious and successful farmer, reaffirming that he was on the narrow path to happiness as well as success—although for contemporaries this was a contradiction in terms because descriptions of the narrow path to heaven always stressed that worldly success characterized those who chose the broad path to hell (see below). Another explanation could be that the text suggested to farmers in the Reformed Church that praying and working hard would lead God to grant them success and, they hoped, extend their road of success to the afterlife. The text could thus be taken as a reaffirmation that a farmer’s success was not evidence of a sinful life but God’s blessing for his hard work and prayer. If asked, most German farmers in the Middle Atlantic states would presumably have reckoned themselves among those who did precisely that: pray and work. The broadsides do not indicate precisely what German farmers in America were doing and producing. But since most Germans were farmers, there was no need to say anything about their major products like wheat, cattle, hogs, and sheep. Rather, the broadsides were confined to suggesting new and better products and production methods and advertising special services. The urge for improvement, we would argue, fueled farmers’ demand for broadsides that informed them about new trends. Broadsides specifically discuss three agriculture-related issues: the culture of orchards and care of the harvested fruits, the coloring and production of wool and linen, and horse breeding.252 Regarding orchards, the culture of new kinds of trees and importation of new seeds and tree samples from Europe were associated with the Moravian tree nursery at Bethlehem, one of the very few of its kind in the Middle Atlantic states at that time. In a broadside published in 1811, Timothy Horsfield claimed that in one year alone he had, through grafting, refined and improved eighteen thousand young

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apple, peach, pear, and plum trees, which he hoped the public would like and of course buy.253 A broadside probably by the printer for the Harmonists, followers of the Pietist Johann Georg Rapp (1757–1847), contains concise advice from the English gardener Cornelius Hegerty on how to cultivate and improve apple and other orchard trees.254 It is not clear whether this broadside offered something new, but that is what the author of another broadside claimed. In September of 1829 Amos Hart of Wharton Township in Fayette County announced that he had invented a new method to store ‘‘apples, red beet, sweet potatoes, and other roots by covering them in pulverized charcoal’’ and placing them in closed wooden barrels, for which he had received a government patent on August 10, 1829. Anyone who has tried to store apples in a cellar knows how difficult this is to do for any length of time without the apples shrinking and rotting. Given the importance of apple production, this invention promised considerable advantages to farmers and possibly to the inventor.255 However, it suffered from two serious drawbacks: the cost of the charcoal was a factor not to be overlooked, and on German farms a large part of the apple crop was turned into cider during autumn, making Hart’s costly way of preservation and storage unnecessary. Nevertheless, these broadsides indicate that orchards in general and fruit farming in particular were important parts of German farming in the Middle Atlantic colonies. Much of a farmer and his wife’s time was taken up with raising and caring for cattle and horses. Horses, which became a familiar sight on the farm after the French and Indian War, were probably the single most valuable things on a farm beside the buildings, and farmers took pride in breeding horses by using the best stallions in the region. Owners of stallions were well aware of this desire and advertised their services in German broadsides. In January 1774 a broadside announced that in March the stallion Young Juniper would be in Fort Augusta (today’s Sunbury), Pennsylvania, ready to service mares. The fee was ‘‘thirty shillings the season or twenty shillings the leap,’’ to be paid either during the leap or while the mare was still in the lot. The price was hefty but obviously realistic, as the owner added that Young Juniper was ‘‘got by Mr. Jakob Hiltzheimer’s famous Old Juniper, which was the highest bred horse ever imported into America.’’256 Jakob Hiltzheimer (1729–1798), a German merchant from Mannheim, was a very well-known cattle and horse dealer of Philadelphia who had made a name for himself in the 1760s by organizing the first horse race in the Middle Atlantic region.257 Thus, Young Juniper could claim the highest credentials, which likely satisfied German farmers and induced them to pay the fee demanded for the stallion’s services. Half a century later Johannes Groff (1753–1819) advertised the services of his stallion, the Stumpstowner Bald (fig. 14), on his farm in Bethel Township, Dauphin County, for the ‘‘moderate’’ price of ‘‘ein Thaler und 25 cent den einzelnen Sprung,’’ or two thalers and fifty cents, plus a bushel of oats for the season. But if the farmer wanted the guarantee that his mare would breed a foal, the fee was a hefty five thalers. The Stumpstowner Bald could not claim the impressive heritage of Young Juniper. It was not a racehorse of high breed but a workhorse (Schaff-Pferd) of sturdy stature. Its owner

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Figure 14 author.

Das vortreffliche Schaff-Pferd Stumpstowner Bald (Lebanon, Pa.: Heinrich Sage, 1810). Photo:

thus described him as a strong and beautiful black stallion, an excellent worker and a fine Fu¨llenzeuger (foal producer). The horse’s picture hopefully convinced potential customers of the truth of the claim and the justness of the fee.258 The high value of horses meant that their health was of major concern, as reflected in the number of broadsides that offered medication or advice, such as Recepte fu¨r

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Pferde and Unfehlbare Mittel fu¨r die Heilung der Krankheiten Der Pferde.259 Surprisingly, no German printer before 1802 published a treatise on the diseases of horses, although quite a few were available in English.260 Thus, it is not surprising that at least some broadsides tried to provide the information German farmers otherwise could not get. Recepte fu¨r Pferde, mentioned above, was published possibly around 1790,261 and Christian Ritters Europa¨isches Pferde-Pulver, which promoted minerals as an important supplement for horse fodder, was published in 1805.262 Indeed, minerals became the big new subject, and printers responded to the challenge with two broadsides, Daniel Meintzer’s list of minerals for horses and a concise description of the so-called yellow water and how it was to be healed.263 Johannes Rose, another seller of medicine for horses, was a pharmacist in Lancaster. In 1792 he had published a broadside with testimonies to the curative qualities of the sassafras oil that he sold. Thus his broadside on horse minerals (fig. 15) commanded respect.264 Rose vouched that the powder cured horses of most illnesses by cleansing their liquids and water. Depending on the seriousness and length of the illness, the farmer was to administer the medicine either in liquid form mixed with honey or molasses and a bit of water or as a powder under the fodder, either daily or at longer intervals. The medication was supposed to improve the skin and, most importantly, heal stomach disorders and yellow water, which according to the veterinarians of the day was the result of a serious liver disorder, described in graphic detail in the broadside. Rose warned everyone to keep the powder permanently in his house in case his or horses caught the Lungefa¨ule and died. Horses were vital not only for working the fields but also for transporting goods. During the French and Indian War and the War of Independence German farmers’ horses had been in high demand. German farmers had been loath to transport provisions and warlike material for General Edward Braddock’s army in 1755, and it took all Benjamin Franklin’s skills and a number of German broadsides, coupled with good payment, to convince them to help out in the crisis.265 Horses would become part of the ostentatious display of the few rich Germans, but more importantly, they were part of the infrastructure system of Pennsylvania. Without a horse, an inhabitant was nailed to the ground. Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg claimed that as a pastor of two, and sometimes three, Lutheran congregations in Pennsylvania he had spent the better part of his life on horseback.266 Infrastructure and accessibility to markets surface as topics in the broadsides.267 Another issue, currency exchange, was a critical component in the education of the German settlers. The broadside Erkla¨rung dieser Tafel (fig. 16) bluntly stated, ‘‘Because many people do not reckon very well, particularly when they purchase butter, meat, bacon, etc.’’268 The problem was a bit more complex than German farmers simply lacking skill in arithmetic; they seem to have had difficulty with the English currency system of pennies, shillings, and pounds, which was based on the number twelve as opposed to the German decimal system—which explains why they were still stating prices in thalers, as the owners of the stallions did, and not in pounds. There was a

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Figure 15 Johannes Rose, Mineralisches Pferd-Pulver [Lancaster, Pa.], n.d. Photo: author.

clear need to provide the German farmers with some help in converting currency, and the broadside Erkla¨rung dieser Tafel and similar tables in German almanacs did just that. The author suggested that the farmer or his wife fold the sheet and carry it to the market; or, if they were selling their produce to customers from their farm, they could nail it to a wall. Such a table was particularly handy when a farmer and his wife went to the big yearly markets like the one in York in 1825. The broadside Jahrmarkt . . . auf Befehl des Managers (fig. 17), which announced and invited people to the market, made it clear that much more was involved than just selling farm produce of all kinds. First, the farmer and his family had to get to York. The broadside mentioned especially the ‘‘Damen im Land,’’ who were welcomed together with ‘‘Fidlers’’ and ‘‘Hucksters.’’ For

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Figure 16 Erkla¨rung dieser Tafel (n.p., [1800–1804]). Roy Kulp Collection, Menno Simons Historical Library, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

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Figure 17 Jahrmarkt . . . Auf Befehl des Managers. April 19, 1825 [York, Pa., 1825]. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

the farmer, getting his livestock and produce to the market was of equal importance. With his sons and his servants he had to drive his horses and cattle up to York if he intended to sell them, and drive back young cattle that he might have bought for fattening. All the plantation, hay, and broad-wheeled wagons on the farm were probably needed for this excursion.269 Once in York, the men and boys would organize the sale of cattle, horses, and other bulky items, while the women would probably sell

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vegetables,270 eggs,271 dairy products,272 the plum puddings they had cooked over the last few days, and the ‘‘allerhand Leckereyen und Naschwerke’’ (various kinds of treats and sweets) that the broadside specially mentions would be sold at the market, which even today can be bought at farmers’ markets in the Pennsylvania Dutch region.273 Once all was sold, enough time remained to inspect the stalls of others and purchase cloth, delicacies, and utensils needed for the farm as well as the ‘‘Bretterwerk’’ and other ‘‘harte Waaren’’ (hardware) necessary for repairs on the farm. In short, this was the occasion for the farmers of the region to stock up on what they would need the next year. The broadside makes it clear, too, that this was much more than just a place to trade goods. The Jahrmarkt at York was a social event and pure entertainment, too. Farmers from the whole region would clog the streets of York, telling each other the news, exchanging views, and organizing political, social, cultural, economic, and family affairs, while the women would sort out the problems their husbands were unable to cope with. They would talk about prospective young men for their young daughters to marry and vice versa, and of course they would exchange all the gossip that had made the rounds in the villages in the last twelve months. And finally, this was the occasion for high entertainment: All would flock to the central square of York, take refreshments like ‘‘Thee und mu¨rbe Kuchen’’ (tea and shortcake) as the broadside suggested, and then watch with excited amazement as Professor Dumbach disappeared in a balloon from the ‘‘Hochstraß-Bru¨cke’’ into the skies. The name ‘‘Dumbach’’ was most likely a German slang name meaning ‘‘stupid.’’ Fiddlers would add their tunes and later invite everyone to a country dance. There would be fireworks, and Professor Ninkumpup would demonstrate his abilities ‘‘on the steel rope tightened between the tower of the courthouse and the pole of the Wild Goose Inn.’’274 Professor Ninkumpup was evidently a well-known tightrope walker. Variously spelled Ninkumpup or Nincompoop, the name was the popular contracted version of ‘‘non compos mentis’’ and meant ‘‘fool,’’ ‘‘a henpecked husband,’’ or a ‘‘Jerry Sneak.’’275 Even ‘‘Ga¨mblers’’ were permitted, although they were warned to keep an eye ‘‘auf den Deuter’’; otherwise the managers of the market threatened to have the ‘‘Philister’’ take care of them. The York Jahrmarkt was intended to be a time of business, fun, and frolic.276 It was held on a Thursday, which was a day farmers did not have to go to church. The end of May was a time between busy seasons: all the fields had been prepared, and hay harvest had not yet begun. Thus, farmers and their families could spend a long day enjoying the market. It was probably one of the few days in the year that spelled both hard work and pure fun for the country folks and brought them much-needed relief from the stern life on the farms in the small villages surrounding York. Sensational stories and frolicking were usually not part of their daily life. Going to market was the exception in the daily life of German settlers, whether they lived in Pennsylvania or in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Looking after the chickens and tending to the numerous house chores defined the normal routine. One

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of the more laborious chores was turning raw wool into finished products. Broadsides discuss only a few highly specific aspects of this part of the farming routine. They do not speak of the raising of sheep or of shearing, and, with one exception only, they focus on the mechanical aspect of wool production, mechanical wool carding. The distribution of broadsides on wool-carding machines in time as well as geographically is of some interest (table B.13). According to the twelve bilingual broadsides, the machines were heavily concentrated in the Shenandoah Valley: six were located in Rockingham County and five in Shenandoah County. Of the twelve locations, at least four were in the immediate vicinity of New Market, where all the broadsides describing these machines were printed—of course at Ambrosius Henkel’s press. Six of the twelve wool-carding machines offered their services in the same year, 1813, and other machines began working around that time, three in 1809/10 and two in 1814/15. Only one woolcarding machine was advertised in a Pennsylvania location: Samuel Lobach and Son announced in 1811 that they had set up a new machine for wool carding in Rockland Township close to Reading (see table B.13). The distribution of the wool-carding machines suggests that there was a considerably larger demand for these machines in the Shenandoah Valley than in Berks or Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. This could indicate a larger number of sheep in the Shenandoah Valley than in the German counties of Pennsylvania. A closer look at home industries, sheep-raising, and wool production in those counties and the Shenandoah Valley suggests a different picture. The basis for descriptions is the copious data collected in the 1810 census, the results of which were published in the American State Paper Series in the early 1830s. The data suggest lively activities on the individual farms throughout Pennsylvania and Virginia (table B.14). The statistical compilation explains why only one broadside for carding machines offered its services in Pennsylvania but twelve did in Virginia. In the three Pennsylvania counties there were enough carding machines by 1810, while in the Shenandoah Valley, due to increasing sheep flocks, a real demand for these machines had emerged. How large that demand was, at least potentially, is suggested by the estimate of the value of woolen goods produced by families in the Virginia counties, which was three times as large as for the Pennsylvania counties. This comparison also suggests that the difference between the regions lay not in the intensity of home manufacture of wool and cloth but in the degree of mechanization. The distribution of German broadsides supports that conclusion.277 Broadsides were published to advertise the new and extraordinary, and if what was being advertised was not new, one at least had to create the impression that it was. Samuel Lobach informed his potential customers that he had a ‘‘new machine for carding wool,’’ although there were already many wool-carding machines in the same county.278 The same principle explains the only other broadside related to home industries: the claim of Philip Steffy to have invented new recipes for dyeing wool, cotton, and linen in blue, red, green, violet-red, and scarlet.279 His major ingredients, Krapp (madder) and indigo, were of course well-known dye plants. In claiming that his recipes

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were new, Steffy was simply playing according to the rules. Since he did not earn money with the broadside—otherwise he would have had his address printed on the sheet—it did not really matter whether what he said on the broadside was true or not. There is another aspect to this argument: the statistics on hand carding and machine carding strongly suggest that on most German farms wool and linen production was a significant part of home production. Most of the cloth produced was probably used for home consumption, as it had been back in southern Germany by the settlers’ forefathers.280 As a part of normal life, it was not a profitable subject for printers to produce broadsides about. Living on a farm, one knew how to card wool, work a spindle, and operate a loom. The numbers suggest that these activities filled evenings and weekends in many a German farmhouse. And the time thus spent may, and here we enter again the world of broadsides, have been the occasion when many of the hymns and secular songs were sung and the horrid tales savored that circulated on broadsides in the Middle Atlantic states.281 Coping with the many tasks on a farm—plowing, harvesting, tending to the chickens and sheep, storing and then marketing the produce—required all the members of a family to help out. Indeed, even the family’s many hands were not enough to cope with all the chores. By the early nineteenth century hired farmhands were common on German farms. According to Sally McMurry and J. Ritchie Garrison, by 1838 ‘‘Berks County farmers kept over 6,000 farmhands (or more than three for each farm) steadily employed at $9 per month.’’282 As a normal feature on the farm, farmhands would not be the subject of broadsides unless, as in the case of horse breeding, they were coupled somehow with the extraordinary. Servants and slaves on German farms became subjects of broadsides only if they were involved in events such as maids getting involved in murder stories (see below) or indentured servants or slaves running away. Johannes Weidmann had a broadside printed in 1793 that offered a reward of forty dollars for the capture of Jacob Haug, a runaway indentured servant. Haug is described as from Switzerland and speaking ‘‘the Swiss dialect so as to be scarcely understood. He is a stout and well set fellow, five feet 10 inches high, about twenty-five years of age, smooth faced, sandy hair and fair complexion.’’ He was obviously quite a fellow. He had been captured, again escaped, possibly lived with a relative in Fredericktown, Maryland, for a while, and was now on the run again. Weidman confessed candidly that he did not know what kind of dress his fugitive servant was wearing but was sure that his description would be precise enough to identify him. A close look at the description makes it clear how important language was: many young men probably were stout, well set, close to six feet high and in their twenties—but few spoke a near-incomprehensible Swiss dialect. The broadside also makes it clear how risky buying an indentured servant was. Once they were on the loose, it was very difficult to pick them out from among the German settlers.283 And Haug’s Swiss dialect was, of course, something that only a German could identify, although the broadside was published in English and German.284

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Four broadsides focus on slavery, and all four describe extraordinary occasions, not the normal life of a slave.285 The first is an emphatic condemnation of slavery (fig. 18) composed by Tobias Hirte, pharmacist and the author of medical treatises, and printed by Samuel Saur in 1794.286 The text narrates in great detail the various methods used in the English West Indies to torture and punish slaves and keep them in irons to prevent them from rebelling or running away. The text is underscored by pictorial representations of the instruments used to keep the slaves in bondage.287 Hirte was the son of a couple who belonged to the Moravian Church and had settled in Bethlehem.288

Figure 18 Tobias Hirte, Sclaven-Handel. Die Menschlichkeit beleidiget (Philadelphia: Samuel Saur, 1794). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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It seems that for a while he was an Indian trader; by at least the 1790s he owned a pharmacy in Philadelphia. He advertised Seneca oil and authored one of the first German medical handbooks.289 His broadside against slavery was part of the Atlantic evangelical crusade against slavery and the slave trade, for which Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic had recruited eloquent supporters among other religious groups. The German publication indicates that antislavery feeling was shared at least by some former Moravians and certainly by Mennonites;290 the aggressive tone of the broadside probably indicates Hirte’s irritation with his former coreligionists and his and Samuel Saur’s firm conviction that Germans in general ought to support the crusade against slavery more energetically. That antislavery feeling was indeed not very strong among Lutherans and Reformed can be concluded from the next two broadsides that dealt with slavery. In the first, after a series of unexplained fires, on March 21, 1803, the burgesses and justices of the peace of the Borough of York told the inhabitants and the people in the surrounding villages that slave owners had to keep their ‘‘negroes or people of color . . . at home under strict discipline and watch. So as they may be under your eye at all times.’’ Their slaves were not allowed to enter York without a written pass, were not to speak to any person in the street, and had to depart the borough one hour before sunset at the latest ‘‘on pain of being imprisoned or at the risk of their lives.’’ ‘‘Free negroes or people of color’’ had to get a pass from the justices of the peace ‘‘in order that they may not be restrained from their daily labor.’’291 Three of the four who signed the proclamation on the broadside were Germans. In this case the broadside served as an effective medium for instructing a fairly widely dispersed community to tighten their watch over their slaves—certainly not evidence of stern disapproval of slavery. Nor is it possible to interpret the other broadside, which advertised the public auction of a ‘‘gesunder Neger’’ (healthy Negro) in Lancaster three years later, as evidence of antislavery sentiment. The advertisement was printed only in German and not, like the York proclamation, in both English and German. James Armstrong, the executor of the late James M’Etheny, evidently believed that his best customers would be German and not English farmers of the Lancaster region.292 In Pequea, a small village near Lancaster, only one farmer owned a Negro slave: the wealthy German farmer Michael Haberstich.293 Put differently: most German farmers preferred indentured servants to Negro slaves. The fourth and most disturbing broadside prints the confession of a Negro woman, Elizabeth Moore (fig. 19), who in 1808 was imprisoned in York for the murder of her son Isaac.294 The circumstances illuminate the conditions in which blacks lived in York around that time. Elizabeth Moore had been a slave in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Her owner was Solomon Brown. In her eighth year she was sold to William Gibson of the same place for a term of ten years, after which she was to attain her freedom. Her owner married when she was sixteen, and his new wife made life difficult for Elizabeth, who ran away. In York, Pennsylvania, she was picked up as a ‘‘Wegla¨uferin’’ (runaway slave), and after some time in jail she was indentured by the court on a monthly basis

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Figure 19 Das Todesurtheil von Elisabeth Moore und John Charles, und das Letzte Bekenntniß von Elisabeth Moore . . . 1809, zu York in Pennsylvanien, hingerichtet wurden . . . n.p., [1809]. Photo: author.

to York inhabitants. Within a short time Moore became pregnant by a white man whose name she does not reveal in her confession. Since she later calls her son Isaac Ba¨tman, the man’s name was probably Ba¨tman as well, or a variant such as Betmann, Bettmann, or Bateman. After the birth of her child the court bound her to Georg Test for a period of two years. During that time she became pregnant again, this time by ‘‘ein Neger namens Gibbon’’ who had promised to marry her. It turned out that

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Gibbon ‘‘hatte eine andere Weibsperson’’ (had another woman), and he therefore suggested to her that she abort her unborn child. He even brought her herbs for that purpose, which did not succeed. Shortly before her lying-in time had arrived, her firstborn son, Isaac, who was then eighteen months old and whom she loved dearly, was taken from her and left in the ‘‘Armenhaus’’ (poorhouse). Moore’s repeated pregnancies illustrate the precarious position of a young black woman in a male-dominated neighborhood that considered her easy prey for their sexual needs and suitable only for service, work, and drudgery. From the moment her son Isaac is taken from her, Moore’s confession becomes a mixture of visionary perceptions and reality: within three days after her second child is born, she writes that a little devil within her suggested that she kill the baby. All her behavior on this and the following days and weeks indicates that she was now suffering from severe postpartum psychosis. A medical authority explains what this means: Postnatal psychosis is a severe psychiatric disturbance where a mother becomes ‘‘out of touch’’ with reality after the birth of a baby. Some women may also have thoughts of harming themselves or their baby. They may not be aware that they are behaving abnormally and will have little control over their behaviour. . . . The causes of postnatal psychosis are not fully understood, but hormonal and biological imbalances are contributing factors. . . . [Common symptoms include] • over-active and over-enthusiastic behaviour • elevated or irritable moods • delusions . . . • hallucinations • obsessive religious beliefs.295 Elizabeth Moore took the girl into her arms and smothered her. Days or weeks later, having joined the Methodist congregation of York, she experienced a conversion and heard voices that commanded her to pray. She had two dreams. The first represented the story of the narrow and the broad path; she picked the narrow one, drank from a spring which she believed was the ‘‘Wasser des Lebens’’ (water of life), a term from Revelation,296 climbed a steep hill, and envisioned herself entering a huge building she identified as heaven, where she was welcomed first by angels and then by the Virgin Mary herself. Groups of angels praised the Lord, and after they were finished God himself ordered an angel to show Moore what would happen to those condemned to eternal torture. ‘‘Belzebub’’ was identified as an old man who, the angel assured her, was not allowed to touch her. The angel led her gently away, and then she was suddenly awake and alone. In her second dream she saw the world coming to an end: stars were melting like tin, clouds were in flames, and the earth was tottering. She saw a mighty river to which people were hurrying, and she heard them say, ‘‘We are saved.’’ Again she met an old man, who was very afraid and whom she told to pray, to which he

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replied that it was too late for him. She then awoke again and was sure that she had lost her senses and was condemned eternally to hell. In her agony she focused on her beloved son, Isaac; since she was irretrievably lost, she decided to save him at least. She feared that if he grew to adulthood ‘‘he would probably begin drinking and indulge in other vices and thus would find a bad end.’’ To spare him this fate, she decided to poison him, believing that ‘‘if he dies young he without doubt will enter heaven.’’297 With some difficulty she found a pharmacist who on Saturday, April 23, 1808, sold her the poison for the three cents she had. After attending the Methodist service the next day, a Sunday, she refused to go to the family to which she was indentured and instead hurried to the poorhouse, where she took her little baby son, Isaac, and brought him to a ‘‘heimliche Gemach’’ (secret chamber). After a prayer she gave him the poison; according to her confession she then turned and said, ‘‘poor little creature. Now you are still here, but your soul will soon enter heaven.’’298 In a little more than two hours the baby was dead. She was immediately arrested for the crime; in late April the following year she was condemned to death, and according to the German paper Der Wahre Amerikaner the date for her execution was set for May 29, 1809—some months before the execution of Susanna Cox.299 Elizabeth Moore obviously did not write her confession herself; unable to write, she signed it with a cross. Most likely she spoke only English, the language in which it was taken down. It was published in English and in German.300 The German text was written by someone with a reasonably good education, and that raises a second question: how much of the text is the English note taker’s or the German translator’s interpretation or addition, and how much represents what Elizabeth Moore said? The story certainly contains elements that indicate a link between them. Her first vision resembles key features of the broadside Die Wege zum Ewigen Leben oder zum Ewigen Verderben (see plate 12).301 Her second vision draws on the description of the river of life in Revelation 22:1–2. This is not to insinuate that Moore did not have visions. Likely they involved her idea of a better life and the promise of salvation in the afterlife; visions of this sort were experienced by slaves in the eighteenth century302 and in the ecstatic Methodist community at York. Her crude descriptions of them may have been translated into biblical language by the English note taker or the German translator. Some Catholic elements crept into her narrative; if she herself mentioned the Virgin Mary, she may have known about the Virgin from her time in Maryland if one of her masters was Catholic. The larger question is why Elizabeth’s confession was published. For one thing, it was spiced with a number of scandalous elements. First, at least indirectly, she mentions the name of the man who was Isaac’s father, and it is likely that Mr. Ba¨tman, Bettmann, or Bateman was an inhabitant of York. Secondly, Elizabeth gives the name of the pharmacist who had sold her the poison, a Mr. Mundorf—possibly a George Mundorf who lived in York around that time303 —which certainly must have raised some eyebrows in the borough. Thirdly, the confession that she almost poisoned the two children of her master, Georg Test, probably shocked not only Test and his wife

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but others too because it demonstrated how easily it could have been accomplished. Finally, Moore concludes her confession with what could be read as a veiled threat: she, or more likely the editor or translator of the text, hoped that her horrible fate would be a warning to all masters and mistresses of ‘‘negroes’’ to exercise care and ‘‘instruct them in time in the teachings of Christianity, which is their duty.’’ This message is reinforced by the concluding statement: ‘‘I do hope that God has forgiven me, because I have done my evil deeds in ignorance.’’304 If the scandals contained in the confession of Elizabeth Moore made it an ideal text for a best-selling broadside, the defiant concluding statement must have shocked not only the Methodists who had worked hard to save her soul, but other readers as well. The broadside states specifically that she made the confession in the presence of the sheriff and other gentlemen related to the execution. These gentlemen vouched for the correctness of the written text. She claimed to be a pious and troubled Christian who killed her son because she wanted to ensure that he would attain eternal happiness and escape the sins and lusts of this life, and because she did not know better. She laid the blame for her lack of knowledge squarely at the door of her white masters, first in Maryland and then in York. But this reproach must have been pure wickedness in the ears of all good Lutherans, Reformed, Methodists, and other Christians. And yet Moore’s confession acted out a strangely twisted ecstatic Christian logic. Like Susanna Cox, she grew up without ‘‘einige Erziehung,’’ as she states in her opening sentences and repeats at the end. She experienced conversion, and in a vision she saw that for those who chose the narrow path, as she saw herself as doing, God’s glory and eternal happiness were the just rewards. She constructed her own version of salvation and eternal happiness, and while she then destroyed it for herself by killing her secondborn, she transferred her self-acquired knowledge to her firstborn son because she knew no better. What had she done wrong? She had made sure that her firstborn was spared the sins and lusts of this world and instead would enjoy the bliss reserved for God’s children. Isaac was God’s child because he was too young to have committed a sin. In a sense she had secured God one human being who otherwise most likely would have ended up in hell. God must and would see her rightful intentions, take them as atonement for the deed, and forgive her. The broadside did not become the commercial success the printer must have hoped it would be.305 This was not due to its sensationalism. Its failure may have been caused by its repeated reproaches that white masters, by neglecting to educate their charges, had to accept the responsibility for their wrongdoing. This charge reflected not only the personal experience of Elizabeth Moore but most likely Methodists’ sincere dedication to educate the poor and laboring people.306 In addition, the theology of the piece must have horrified potential readers. Such warped logic was best kept out of the house and out of the hands of those not yet secure in their beliefs. The issue of education obviously loomed large in the minds of the people in York. Only a few weeks later, this time in Reading, Susanna Cox would also claim that she had committed her crime for lack of education,307 which left her unable to distinguish between right and wrong.

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That vital yardstick for moral behavior had been filtered out from the most popular broadsides published in German between 1730 and 1830, the Adam and Eve broadsides. These stressed Adam and Eve’s recognition, after eating of the forbidden fruit, that they were naked, but omitted what played such a large role in the Bible, that they also realized the distinction between right and wrong. These are disturbing signs that education had become one of the major problems for German inhabitants of the Middle Atlantic region. Yet it would be another two decades before they were willing to accept a general educational system that was not parish based but instead managed by the state.308 Daily life was both fun and hard work for German farmers. It consisted of elements indigenous to the Middle Atlantic region and of cultural concepts brought over from Europe yet modified by experiences in the New World. This memory shaped, so we have argued, German readers’ attitudes toward the broadsides that narrated the murders committed by Susanna Cox and Joseph Mu¨ller; it exposed them to the visions and horrors of the black woman Elizabeth Moore, which were unknown in Europe—and yet German farmers were not opposed to slavery. Their reaction to Moore’s counterworld is unknown, but they certainly did not rush to purchase her confession; neither was Tobias Hirte’s diatribe against the slave trade popular with them. The broadsides reveal yet another important facet of German farming life: the concern for horses as the most valuable animals on the farm, the interest in technical innovation represented by the wool-carding machines, and, most importantly of all, the self-perception of German farmers as the center of society. Most of the broadsides discussed in this section were printed at the behest of the authors—the owners of the carding machines, the owners of the studs, the sellers of horse medicine. They hoped that their investments would be repaid by the interest of their customers; and the number of reprints are a strong indicator of that interest. This is even truer for the ballads and confessions concerning murder, which appealed to the readers’ curiosity and sympathy. The ability to identify with the fates and experiences related in these broadsides largely determined, so we postulated, the number of reprints. And a lack of reprints, as for Elizabeth Moore’s confession or Hirte’s anti–slave trade tract, indicated a lack of interest as well as, in Moore’s case, an inability to relate to her visions—probably because they were perceived as perversions of readers’ own visions of eternal bliss and happiness. The yearning for eternal happiness loomed ever larger in our German farming couple’s minds as they grew older. The cycle of life was one image that was ever present, both in Europe and in North America.

Toward the Twilight of Life The broadsides suggest a cyclical concept of life. It was the subject of numerous pictorial and metaphorical representations, such as the poem Das Leben und Alter der Menschen (see plate 5), which expresses it better than we could:

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Once forty worries become your companion For the zenith of our life on earth has been reached From our fiftieth year on we will always go downhill He is happy who reaches his sixtieth year full of cheer In his seventies he often complains about cold weather And in his eighties he always needs a cane to walk Because we then are weak and feeble and need that help And at ninety years we creep along on crutches Should we reach our hundredth year We are weak and feeble and ready for the grave.309 In the print the different stages of life are associated with animals: the fox, with his wit, stands for the man in his fifties; the wolf who cannot part with his riches represents the man in his sixties; in his seventies man still seeks new things but like a dog now stays close to his house; in his eighties he and his cat stay indoors; and like the donkey, the man in his nineties is not to be envied. Once they reach a hundred, men and women walk bent over yet are afraid to sink into the grave. These little remarks accompany figures of men that visibly alter while adamantly hanging onto life. The broadside sketches the brutal consequences of the long journey from cradle to grave. Some of the text betrays the European origins of the print, such as that next to the thirty-year-old man: ‘‘Once thirty he marches into war, sturdy as an ox he gains victory.’’310 The print once more reiterates the dangers of lust and gluttony, which we have described above.311 In the long poem at the bottom, the reader, in verses ordered alphabetically, is reminded, ‘‘Remember the teachings, oh pious Christian, which are repeated in this picture, learn to venerate God and religion, then you can die whenever you want.’’312 German farmers found it difficult to part with their possessions and retire to the ‘‘Altenteil,’’ the place on a farm reserved for aging parents. This was probably one of the major differences from English farms. As documented by the many broadsides advertising the sale of estates and farms, farmers tended to live and work the farm until they died, and it was exceptional to hand the farm over earlier to the son.313 This explains why a printer felt it necessary and profitable to name what Johannes Henner, the son of Georg and Mary Henner, owed his parents as their ‘‘Leibgeding’’ (life annuity). The clause in the contract that stipulated the transfer of the farm from father to son spelled out in great detail how much land, cattle, fruit, and room the son had to leave to his parents and maintain at his expense if they were unable to do so due to old age or illness.314 The stipulations included regulations for the remaining part of the family after one of his parents had died. Apart from the fact that this document affords a rare glimpse of living and eating habits—it confirms, among other things, the high percentage of pork in the diet of this farming family, for Johannes had to give his father yearly one hundred and fifty pounds of pork and the salt necessary to salt the meat for preservation—the specificity of the regulations suggests how unusual this form of property transfer before the death of the parents was.

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Death and preparing for the end of life were major themes of German broadsides. The first verse of the song Der letze Wille des hochfu¨rstlichen Printzen Diederichs von Anhalt Dessau stated bluntly, ‘‘When I die I will not have made a last will or testament nor named an inheritor, but will happily leave my possessions to my next of kin and my friends.’’315 Clearly of European vintage, the song, in which the Duke of Dessau asks for a simple funeral with no fuss and no long mourning period, was popular in the Middle Atlantic region; it was printed under various titles at least five times.316 That life could be pleasant and that aging could have a bright side are seldom reflected in broadsides. One that prints a song about drinking is so out of the ordinary that while it qualifies as a broadside, what it says contradicts all the values of its potential German buyers. The first verse states categorically, ‘‘Everything I leave to my inheritors but my wine.’’ The last verse makes its objectionable contents clear: Therefore I want, be it yes or no! To die in front of the tap After the last rites Should yeast color me Angels’ choirs sanctify me As the heir of nectar. ‘‘Lord, do not let This drinker perish!’’317 The song could have redeemed itself if at the end the jolly drinker turned to God or the author pointed out in clear terms what happens to such immoral sinners. It was never reprinted, but perhaps with such an ending it could have been. If that argument is true, it would imply that songs about human vices that did carry a strong moral message had a good chance to become popular and reward the printer. The ballad Etwas wider die Geldliebe, oder die verderblichen Folgen der Habsucht fits the bill.318 Reprinted from a European ballad, it is the sorry tale of a poor farmer’s boy who falls in love with the daughter of a rich butcher, who violently objects to the marriage. The young people promise each other eternal love; he then joins the emperor’s army, gains rich booty, and returns to find his love waiting for him. The impressive dowry he brings changes the butcher’s mind, but the butcher’s thoughts turn to how he can get the rest of the young man’s money. He murders the young man and is quickly caught. The young bride dies within three days of grief, the butcher hangs himself, and the poem concludes with an admonition on what greed does to people who prefer hell to eternal bliss. This moral tale cum narrative was reprinted twice. Printers obviously sensed this particular message within the bundle of motives that fueled their customers’ interest in broadsides. Eine wahre Geschichte, the sad tale of a woman whose three boys died within a month of delivery, was a blatant attempt to cash in on compassion as a potential motive for purchase (fig. 20).319 The picture underlines and dramatizes the story: it shows a grief-stricken mother standing behind

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Figure 20 Eine wahre Geschichte (n.p., [1820]). Photo: author.

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a chair, from which a bird stares down on the three babies in a coffin, the symbol and receptacle of death. Whether the bird symbolizes the souls of the three babies is unclear, but the window is closed, preventing the bird from flying away.320 The text relates the birth of triplets, a sensational event at any time, the good health of the mother after the delivery, then after four weeks the children’s deaths. After the narration four lines are interjected with a religious interpretation of this event, and then the names and ages of the children, all boys, are given. The names reveal something about traditions of name-giving as a way of joining public and private memory. The oldest is Jacob Bahn Herbach, obviously a tribute to the patriarchs of the family. The second is Franklin Laucks Herbach, Franklin no doubt honoring Benjamin Franklin and Laucks the name of the mother’s family. The third is Washington Jost Herbach, a name that again mixes American national heritage with private German familial memory.321 The song under the names is a hymn sung in Reformed churches at baptism. Theologically its most important message is that baptism is the conclusion of a covenant between the baptized and God, meaning, in this case, that the babies were called home by God after the covenant had been sealed by baptism. From a secular perspective the broadside suggests an acceptance of the political and constitutional arrangement of the United States. Everything seems to have been done right, commercially speaking: the picture was an aggressive teaser, while the text appealed to the customer and wrapped the event in the appropriate religious garments. But somehow it did not impress the customers; the broadside was only reprinted once. The broadsides reflect death as part of daily experience in German life. But tragic death and other sensational events were not in themselves sufficient to impel Germans to purchase a broadside. To appeal to Germans such as our fictional farming couple, broadsides had to have stories or pictures to which they could relate in some way, such as the experiences of Susanna Cox, the fate of Joseph Mu¨ller, or the violation of important religious and moral tenets such as the Sabbath. Broadsides on subjects like these were usually reprinted more than once. In this chapter we have discussed broadsides that give us glimpses into the life and thought of German settlers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. German farmers considered themselves the backbone of society, loved horses, and enjoyed reading moral tales spiced with murder that reinforced their own sense of morality and good and proper behavior. At the same time, even the stirring tale of Elizabeth Moore, the black slave, did not move them, nor did they rush to buy Tobias Hirte’s diatribe against the slave trade. For them, slavery was not a problem. And that suggests a major omission in the broadsides: they never mention contacts or linkages with the larger English population, for whom slavery was a crucial issue. Nor do they hint at any kind of exchange with the English. The only issue the broadsides dealt with that was definitely related to the larger English society was slavery, and the unenthusiastic reception of the only two broadsides on that subject, Moore’s and Hirte’s, is a stern comment on the German attitude: this is your problem, not ours. As in the case of education, the German settlers were fooling themselves. German farmers did own slaves and robbed

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them of what they considered a most important part of their own rights, freedom. While much of what we have described as German work and pleasure rests on solid ground and projects a world that moved within itself, there were few links to the English majority culture, which the Germans silently absorbed but whose implications they shut their eyes to.

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Three PRAYING AND READING

House Devotions of German Settlers

Elizabeth Moore’s religious visions were not simply the aberration of a black woman in extreme distress. Aside from the particular reasons, they were part of a religious culture that was shaped by the Second Great Awakening, by the religious fervor of the Methodists, and by the eschatological beliefs among radical German Pietists, whose broadsides will be discussed in this chapter. The first part of this chapter will focus on the religious world in general and the role hymns played as links between the Old and the New World. The second part will concentrate on the large group of religious broadsides of a less radical nature—edifying devotional texts that for the most part responded to imagined individual needs. Yet some broadsides produced in Ephrata advocated radical and hermetic theological insights, and as such they link the mid-eighteenth century with the Second Great Awakening.1 A significant number of the broadsides published after 1790 combine images and texts in intriguing ways: textual meanings and figurative structures are interrelated, supplement each other, and form the contours of a remarkable eschatological worldview that will be discussed in the last part of this chapter.

Religious Denomination and the Transdenominational Atlantic Religious World Today, Christians living in Europe or the Americas may take churches for granted, but this was not so in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America. The small band of settlers in West Penn, Pennsylvania, lived without a church for more than half a century, and they were not alone. How did these people cope? Without going into detail, the distribution of the thematic features of the broadsides is suggestive (table B.15). The table shows that almost two-thirds of the religious broadsides (62.25 percent) were not directly related to denominations but rather to individual needs and interests

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in religion and Christian belief. Only about 17 percent of all religious broadsides reflected directly or indirectly on denominational life, about the same number as those broadsides that, broadly defined, fall into the group of ‘‘folk’’ spirituality. This raises three larger issues: what role did denominational Christianity play in the life of German settlers, what shaped the religious life of those who were not members of a congregation, and what was the relation between unofficial and official Christian religious beliefs? First, it helps to understand the dimensions of the problem around the turn of the eighteenth century: in the census of 1790 over 270,000 inhabitants (13.36 percent) of the Middle and South Atlantic states classified themselves as of German descent.2 Table 13 shows the number of Lutheran and Reformed congregations from New Jersey to Virginia. According to the table, these 485 congregations were served in 1793 by 143 pastors. Of the 249 Lutheran congregations, only 84 had a regular pastor (34 percent), and of the 236 Reformed congregations, only 84 were served by a pastor (36 percent). While many pastors served more than one congregation, a significant number of congregations had to do without weekly or monthly church services. For members of these congregations religious devotions within the family would have been more important than for those who were able to listen once a week to a pastor’s sermon.3 If less than half of German Lutherans and Reformed belonged to a congregation, then it is not really surprising that of all religious broadsides only a little over 13 percent are related to denominational church life proper. Among these the largest portion, 44 percent (see table B.15), are related to confirmation, that event in the life of young Lutheran and Reformed people which in the early modern period, as discussed in the previous chapter,4 signified entrance into adulthood. Broadsides related to confirmation responded to three different social situations: the church service; the danger that the confirmands would not live up to Christian teachings; and the nature of the covenant as an eternal obligation between the confirmand, God, and the congregation. Thus these broadsides were related to more than just denominational church events. It could be argued that that applies to other religious texts too. Yet there are differences: the songs and texts composed by or published on behalf of Sunday school teachers or pastors were designed to be companions to the young confirmands’ lives. Songs related to Christmas, the Passion, Easter, and the Pentecost were firmly situated, by their nature, in the church service celebrating a particular Christian event.5 The

Table 13 German congregations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia in 1793 Church

Pennsylvania

New Jersey

Maryland

Virginia

Total

Lutheran Reformed Total

181 175 356

10 10 20

23 23 46

35 28 63

249 236 485

Source: Glatfelter, Pastors and People, 2:428–29, 431. Note: Similar data for the Carolinas are not available.

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small number of these songs (twenty-one for Christmas, twenty-three for the Passion, seven for Easter, and ten for the Pentecost) very likely reflected the fact that most people owned a hymnbook, which would contain hymns already dedicated to these services. Indeed, in the Middle Atlantic states a good number of German hymnbooks were published (see table 14). From the printers’ perspective, it did not make much sense to print a hymn as a broadside if it was available in the hymnbook. In the absence of specific titles in inventories of German settlers, it is difficult to say whether ownership of hymnbooks was related to the membership in a congregation. The few broadsides suggest that printers in general seem to have been reluctant to print at their own risk sheets with hymns related to particular church festivities.

Hymns in America Moving from the small sample of church-service related hymns to the largest sample, the 422 ‘‘devotional poems and hymns’’ (table B.15), suggests a number of different issues. Probably the most complex one is how these broadsides reflected the worldview and self-perception of the German settlers. If our basic assumption is correct that religious broadsides should be viewed as products made for profit and purchased out of religious concerns, then one could argue that broadsides that were frequently reprinted reflect more accurately the buyers’ religious inclinations and motives than those that were reprinted only once or twice. This assumption guides the following discussion, which focuses on three of the five texts that were most often reprinted as broadsides: ‘‘Fu¨hl das heiligste Entzu¨cken’’ ‘‘Trauer Lied, wie man vernommen von einem Mensch, der nach Tod ist wieder komm’’ ‘‘Sey getreu bis in den Tod’’ ‘‘Adam und Eva’’ (we have only counted the images since the texts vary) ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’

12 12 13 56 62

Table 14 Hymnals printed in German in North America, 1730–1800 11 11 8 7 4 1

Ephrata Cloister German Reformed Church German Lutheran Church Church of the Brethren Mennonites Schwenckfelder Source: Early American Imprints, 1730–1800.

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The first hymn, ‘‘Fu¨hl das heiligste Entzu¨cken’’ (fig. 21),6 clearly was to be sung by confirmands. Since most of the broadsides with this hymn cannot be dated—one is dated 1815 and another was printed in Allentown7—it is difficult to say anything about their contexts. One additional piece of information is that on one broadside the owner, Harry Karcher, signed his name.8 The message of the five verses is simple and straightforward. The first verse expresses delight that Jesus accepts the confirmands, and calls for others to come to Jesus. In the second verse the singers proclaim the covenant holy and swear never to break it. The third verse extends the promise over the whole life, and as proof they kneel down and dedicate their lives to Jesus; in the fourth verse they proclaim, ‘‘Hail to us! We now are Christians’’ who have forgone all ‘‘worldly carnal lusts.’’ In the last verse they reiterate that nothing, not even suffering and death, can separate them from Jesus. The message is clear: confirmation is a covenant for life within a Christian and denominational community that now accepts the confirmands as members. Worldliness, carnal sins, and vanity have been exchanged for the prospect of bliss, happiness, and eternal joy. This hymn was sung in church confirmation services. It projects the image of a covenanted community of Christians that is and was constituted by the confirmation. Not intentionally but by implication, the hymn divides society into two groups, covenanted and noncovenanted: those who attain eternal happiness and those who are denied that assurance. Given the large number of nondenominational settlers, it is surprising that confirmation played such a large role in the life of both the Lutheran and Reformed churches, particularly because confirmation as a renewal of the covenant and as acceptance and integration of the young into the congregations was unusual at that time in Lutheran and Reformed congregations in Germany. Until the middle of the eighteenth century confirmation did not even exist in many congregations within the Protestant German states. As reintroduced by leading Pietists like Philipp Jacob Spener, it downplayed the factor of acceptance and integration into the congregation and shifted the focus to the individual relationship of the confirmand to God and Jesus. This new understanding of confirmation was brought to the New World. Yet while confirmation retained its Pietistic meaning in North America, in Middle Atlantic denominations it was now both an act in which the congregation reinvented and reaffirmed itself by accepting and confirming the new member and a covenant of the confirmand with God. From a wider perspective this type of confirmation can only be understood as part of the confessionalization process of both the Lutheran and Reformed churches, which gained momentum with the foundation of the United Ministerium (Lutheran Church) and the Reformed Coetus in the late 1740s.9 This context explains the large number of hymns related to confirmation. While the hymns for confirmation by and large project the same religious values and concepts, the other songs suggest different worldviews. The hymn ‘‘Sey getreu bis in den Tod’’ was printed at least thirteen times. Six editions have the title ‘‘Trost Lied’’ (fig. 22),10 but most are simply titled ‘‘Lied.’’ While occasionally associated with confirmation, in reality it was a hymn that responded to the yearning for security

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Figure 21 Konfirmazionslied (‘‘Fu¨hl das heiligste Entzu¨cken’’) (n.p., n.d.). Used by permission of the Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia.

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Figure 22 Trost Lied, fu¨r ein Nachfolger JESU (n.p., n.d.). Used by permission of the Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia.

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beyond life. Intensity, terminology, and language clearly separate this hymn from ‘‘Fu¨hl das heiligste Entzu¨cken.’’ ‘‘Sey getreu bis in den Tod’’ is characterized, first, by a starkly negative world vision filled with elitist mockery by the saved person, who is content with his ash-covered bread in a world filled with vanity, worldly lust, and excrement. The place for the next life is variously described as ‘‘a golden city,’’ the heavenly Jerusalem, where the saved will be crowned and guided to the saving lamb. Second, the hymn is constructed as a series of appeals to the singer to stay true to his conversion until death. Each appeal is coupled with a specific reward in the afterlife. The song’s structure has a mercenary element: there is a clear quid pro quo between the believer and his God. In this binary vision those who remain true to their covenant will attain eternal happiness and all others will be doomed. The hymn uses key terms of Pietistic theology: ‘‘blood,’’ ‘‘lamb,’’ ‘‘cross,’’ ‘‘wounds,’’ and ‘‘blood of Jesus,’’ as well as the image of the ‘‘golden city’’ as the paradise for those who have suffered on earth. This text is designed for the downcast, the low-spirited, the depressed in mind, and those struggling against the odds and the difficulties of the world. The comforting message is that you will be saved if you remain true to Christ; final victory and happiness will be yours. This song of stark contrasts is a comment on the living conditions and the degeneracy of the times. It is probably no coincidence that most broadsides were produced in Ephrata and that at least one was the work of Christoph Saur II. Hymns like these, and there are many of them, have an elitist touch and imply desperation in those who needed, cherished, and sang them. They create a chasm between those who know they will gain eternal happiness in the world beyond and others who lack that spiritual certainty. Elizabeth Moore had her vision of the New Jerusalem at a time when she was sure to lose her life. Her rather extreme vision gave her the strength to save her son, Isaac, for God by killing him. But ‘‘Sey getreu bis in den Tod’’ and the many hymns like it had another wide-reaching implication. Their nondenominational nature broke through the barriers set up by the confessionalization process within the Lutheran and Reformed denominations. Cutting away theological niceties, they reduced the wide range of demands of Lutheran and Reformed theologians to the simple statement ‘‘If you stay true to Christ until death, you will be saved and live eternally.’’ How important this nondenominational message was is demonstrated by the most widely reprinted hymn of the time.

America and ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ ‘‘Sey getreu bis in den Tod’’ was printed an impressive thirteen times. But the hymn ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ (fig. 23) was printed at least sixty-two times.11 It is the tale of a person who, after an atonement struggle (‘‘Bußkampf ’’), finds Jesus and eternal life. The hymn is neatly constructed: the first verse queries the whereabouts of Jesus, the second bemoans the unrest of the seeker’s heart and states his determination to seek

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Figure 23 Ein Scho¨n JEsus-Lied ([Ephrata, Pa.: Johann Baumann], n.d.). Used by permission of the Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia.

Christ, the third verse outlines all that Jesus does for the sinner, and the fourth verse pleads with Jesus to let himself be found. That is the catharsis; the five verses that follow describe the happiness, peace, and contentedness of the saved sinner. The hymn concludes with the person’s wish to leave his mortality (‘‘Sterblichkeit’’) behind and rest eternally in Jesus and paradise.

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This summary suggests that the hymn is a truly Pietistic Lutheran one, which would, given the number of Lutherans in North America, be an excellent explanation for its widespread distribution. Yet there are troubling issues that disturb this interpretation. It is quite explicit about the atonement struggle: out of pain and anguish and in the restlessness of his heart, the person searches for Christ. But is this really the fierce atonement struggle Luther and the Halle Pietists demanded? Where is the feeling of total doom, of being overburdened by one’s sins, of the abysmal despair that is part of the Pietistic Lutheran Bußkampf ? Indeed, whenever one expects the author to describe this desperate struggle, he instead turns to the wonderful things Jesus will do for those who seek him. The hymn lacks the frantic tone that is part of a Bußkampf; in the cathartic fourth verse, the desperate line ‘‘Meine Seele schreyt in mir’’ (My soul cries within me) is followed by the slightly comic line ‘‘Thu ihr [seiner Seele] mit den Augen winken’’ (Please wink at me with your eyes) so that he can hurry to Jesus. The most important difference between this hymn and ‘‘Sey getreu bis in den Tod’’ is that in ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ the world is barely visible, but when it enters the picture it does so with strong and poetic words: ‘‘Daß ich kann zu jeder Frist / fliegen u¨ber Berg und Hu¨gel’’ (He wants to fly over mountains and hills) in search of Jesus; he sallies forth to look for Christ ‘‘auf den Feldern, auf den Straßen’’ (in streets and fields); and after he is saved he is determined to avoid all ‘‘Weltlust’’ (worldly lust) and flee worldly ‘‘Eitelkeit’’ (vanity)—those are the only two negative remarks about the world. Only in the eighth verse does he use the term ‘‘Bußthra¨nen’’: ‘‘Bußthra¨nen ich geschwitzt’’ (I have sweated out tears of atonement). The last verse is the most colorful: he calls himself an ‘‘Erdenkloß’’ (lump of earth) that will become ‘‘Wu¨rmerspeise’’ (food for worms) while his soul separates itself ‘‘Von dem Leib der Sterblichkeit’’ (from the mortality of his body) and enters heaven. His characterization of the world as vanity and worldly lust is a far cry from the energetic yet stark description in ‘‘Sey getreu bis in den Tod.’’ If one wants to call this a binary vision, then it is marked by a remarkable imbalance: there is much of heaven and of individual pain and happiness but very little of the world or criticism thereof. It is the almost total absence of the world and of any criticism of its degeneracy and corruption that made the song acceptable to Christians of all ways of life. What initially looked like a straightforward hymn suggests upon closer examination a much more complex texture and argument. It is atypical of classic orthodox Lutheran thought, and difficult, in fact, to assign it to any of the religious groups of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What, then, made this hymn so popular that it was reprinted over sixty times between 1760 and 1830? We believe that two elements account for this fact. First, the strict focus on one person’s search and discovery of Jesus as his eternal source of happiness—a message of hope—appealed to people of all ways of life. Second, its nondenominational character meant it had a message for all Christians in the Middle Atlantic colonies and states. If that is true, however, it should show in reprints within different denominational contexts.

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The hymn’s nondenominational appeal is confirmed by the fact that it was included in a nineteenth-century Mennonite hymnal and the German Lutheran Hymnal of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Wisconsin.12 Neither in the nineteenth nor the twentieth century would Mennonites and Lutherans in any synod maintain that their key tenets were interchangeable.

A Hymn in the Atlantic World If one looks to the Old World the story becomes even more intriguing: the oldest trace of this hymn surfaces in an anonymous list of hymns in a widely used songbook for missionaries, the Missionsharfe.13 The meager information the text yields is that the melody for ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ was written by an anonymous Silesian composer.14 This hint suggested a search in Austrian libraries. The result was remarkable. The catalogue of the Library of the City of Vienna holds an undated broadside produced by M. Engel, Sieben auserlesene neue Arien: Zum Vergnu¨gen, which includes as its fourth hymn ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen.’’15 The Landesbibliothek of Vienna, a regional library, owns a copy of Vier scho¨ne Geistliche Lieder, also undated, in which ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ is the last hymn.16 Even better, the short-title catalogue of German-language publications of the seventeenth century (VD 17) lists a little collection of songs entitled Fu¨nf scho¨ne neue Geistliche Lieder, published around 1700, in which the fifth song is ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’; in this case the collection is digitized, making it possible to compare the American broadside with the German publication. The texts are identical down to the ‘‘Erdenkloß.’’ The catalogue entry carries some interesting information: the original, now housed in the Library of the Preußische Kulturbesitz in Berlin, was originally part of the personal library of the Pietistic counts of Wernigerode, which suggests a Pietistic context for this broadside.17 The Staatsbibliothek Berlin owns two more publications that contain ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen.’’ The first is an undated collection of four hymns entitled Vier neue scho¨ne geistliche Lieder, in which ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ is the second hymn.18 The second is a broadside dating from the last decades of the eighteenth century with the promising title Vier geistliche Lieder. Das erste: Von einer Commandanten Tochter zu Groß Wardein in Ungarn, welcher Jesus unser Heiland im Garten erschien, bey dem sie hundert und zwanzig Jahre lang gewesen, da es ihr doch nur wie Stunden geda¨ucht. Ihr lieben Christen steht still. Das Zweite: Christus der Herr im Garten ging. Das Dritte: Qua¨let mich nicht ihr Gedanken. Das Vierte: Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen.19 The title clearly suggests that it originated in a Catholic context. Furthermore, an article published in 1938 on songs, hymns, and broadsides in Lower Austria lists four publications that contain the hymn ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen,’’ the last dated 1848.20 Thus, the hymn that would be printed as a broadside in North America over sixty times was part of a European transdenominational religious song culture from the late seventeenth century until at least the late nineteenth century. It even became a part of

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Catholic Europe’s holy week ritual: in the Steiermark, the first verse of the hymn is sung by boys as they walk through the village between Maundy Thursday and Easter midnight to alert the villagers to go to church.21

The first verse of ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ in a twentieth-century version from the Steiermark

The first verse of ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ in an American broadside

Wo ist Jesus, mein Verlangen, mein Geliebter und mein Freund? Ach, wo ist er hingegangen? Nirgends seine Spur erscheint. Meine Seele ist betru¨bet ¨ bermacht. von der Su¨nde U Wo ist Jesus, den wir lieben? Wir begehr’n ihn Tag und Nacht.22

Wo ist Jesu mein Verlangen? Mein geliebter Herr und Freund! Wo ist er denn hingegangen? Wo mag er zu finden seyn? Meine Seel ist sehr betru¨bet, Mit viel Su¨nden abgematt, Wo ist Jesu den sie liebet, Den begehrt sie Tag und Nacht.

In the Catholic version one interesting difference stands out: the first six lines are in the first person singular, as in the Protestant American version, but in the next two lines the author switches to the first-person plural, which embraces all believers, while the Protestant version remains in the singular, giving the perspective of the individual. The Catholic version calls all believers to find Jesus in the church, while the Protestant version guides the believer as an individual to Jesus. The analysis of the hymn ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ and its survival in different publications in America and in Europe suggests some hypotheses. First, as suggested above, there seems to be a clear correlation between the nondenominational character of the hymn and its wide distribution in America. This character may also account for the fact that it was not widely included in American-German hymnals of the time, for these were usually fairly strictly controlled, whether by the Lutheran or Reformed synods or other bodies. Such a hymn would not have escaped Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg’s scrutiny when he corrected the final proofs of the first official North American Lutheran Hymnal in 1785.23 The hymn was part of a Protestant Christian song culture outside the strict denominational boundaries of the churched world, and as such it could only exist in North America. Its existence and the remarkable number of further editions underline the importance of Christian religion outside formally organized churches—a phenomenon largely unknown in early modern or nineteenth-century Europe. That is the reason why German-Americans who lived in relatively unchurched and underpastored America bought it. How, then, does this result square with the hymn’s history in Europe? Clearly, the existence of the hymn in Wernigerode, Berlin, Vienna, and the Steiermark in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the printing presses in Protestant and

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Catholic countries were subjected to strict controls, is astounding. There is only one possible explanation: the hymn’s silence about a corrupt and degenerate world and its nondenominational character allowed it to be tolerated by both Protestant and Catholic authorities. This surprising result suggests that in Europe, besides the sharp division between Protestant and Catholic countries, there may have existed a third world that linked both. We imagine it as a culture that focused strictly on otherworldly Christian fundamental truths which within the Protestant Pietistic denominations were only propagated by the Unitas Fratrum (Moravian Brethren). In America the existence of nondenominational hymns continued and reinforced the changes wrought on European concepts of denomination. There a Protestant denomination consisted of congregations noted for their lively and strong internal structure within an organizationally weak denominational fabric. In addition, a large number of German settlers were unchurched but perceived themselves as denominationally inclined believers. It is remarkable that this hymn and most other hymns printed on broadsides survived the energetic efforts of the Protestant clergy after 1750 to strengthen their confessional identity by, for example, promoting confirmation in order to reintegrate the unchurched into the life of their congregations. Success would have also adopted an increasing number of hymns that were not contained in the hymnals. Yet we have found that between 1750 and 1830 less than 5 percent of the hymns on broadsides were printed in the denominational hymnals. This suggests that there existed a large and significant hymn culture in North America outside the officially endorsed hymns, attesting to the importance of worship in family and household. This discussion finally indicates why printers in both Europe and America liked to print and reprint hymns such as ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’: its potential purchasers were not restricted to Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed, Mennonites, or members of other denominations but came from all. This was a product that promised a continuous sale over a long period of time—if not the money machine the printer would have liked, it would bring in a steady dribble of cents adding up to dollars and contribute to the well-being of the printing shop. The radical focus on the individual of ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ transcended the limitations of ‘‘Sey getreu bis in den Tod,’’ which would have appealed mostly to persons deeply troubled about life beyond life, and thus, from the printer’s perspective, was the economically more interesting proposition. This analysis of religious broadsides suggests that German settlers in the Middle Atlantic region constructed a religious culture whose roots most likely go back to Philip Jacob Spener’s Pietistic conventicula and that also reflected and reinforced the needs of worship in the house and within the family to a much larger extent than what was usual and possible in Europe. On the one hand, the emergence of this religious culture was the result of a dramatic lack of pastors to serve the flock. But there was more to it than that. The fact that certain songs were privileged over others indicates that many settlers lived in a religious world that preferred a religiosity focused on Christian

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fundamentals beyond denominational boundaries. Surprisingly enough, there are indications that such a transdenominational culture may have existed in Europe as well. The religious culture of the Middle Atlantic region was shaped both by rising denominationalism and strong and enduring resistance against denominational processes, which at least within the Lutheran Church were looked upon as a return to old European coercive restrictions on religious freedom.24 There are many indications that a lively relationship between this religious culture and the output of religious broadsides existed, manifested in three particularly important groups: devotional texts, texts as images, and eschatological broadsides.25 The most important reason for printers to publish religious texts was to produce edifying texts, or at least to issue texts whose noncommittal and nondenominational character would appeal to a large and vibrant market.

The Edifying Nature of Devotional Broadsides A friend who visited our imagined German farmer Peter Beimert and his family would be greeted near the entrance by a house blessing. It would inform him that he was entering a Christian house where prayer was normal and God’s blessing was craved every day. Depending on the particular text of the blessing, he would likewise learn that swearing or other ungodly behavior was not tolerated within the house.26 Most likely the visitor was not only familiar with the dictates of a godly life but had adopted them for himself and his family. He would read prayers in the morning, at lunch, and at dinner, and probably collect his family and servants once or twice a week or every evening for joint prayers and singing.27 If the nearest church was far away or if the congregation did not have a regular pastor, then the whole house would meet on Sunday for worship and devotion. For devotional texts, the German farmer could draw on two sources: the books offered by booksellers in Philadelphia and the smaller inland towns like Lancaster,28 and broadsides that he bought from peddlers who regularly came to the villages or during his visits to the nearest town.29 Judging from the broadsides in which the booksellers advertised their books, the interested customer could choose from a fair variety of collections of sermons, hymnals, and devotional texts. Francis Hasenclever’s bookshop in Philadelphia, for example, offered collections of sermons by Johann Lorenz Mosheim, Johann Andreas Cramer, Johann Gustav Reinbeck, and Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem,30 the prayer books of Benjamin Schmolke, Johannes Zollikoffer, Christoph Starke, Christian Scriver, Adam Struensee, Johann Lassenius, and Michael Cubach,31 the Marburger Hymnal, Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen’s hymnal,32 and Johann Arndt’s Wahres Christentum.33 For the children he had Johann Hu¨ bner’s Biblische Historien and a Bilderbibel in stock.34 The other booksellers offered similar titles. Yet these books were costly: Jacob Lahn in Lancaster offered Sanders Erbauungsbuch zur Befo¨rderung wahrer Gottseligkeit for 3 shillings and Gesammelte Lieder zum

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Gebrauch beim o¨ffentlichen Gottesdienst sowohl als bei der Privat Erbauung for three shillings and nine pence.35 These prices made the purchase of a broadside for between three to six pence quite attractive. If printers were aware that participants in house devotions were their potential customers, then one can assume that this would be reflected in the broadsides that have survived. Aside from prayers, songs, and poems for various occasions36 and the large number of hymns, broadsides possibly useful in house devotions can be grouped into six different categories: 1. Devotional texts37 and poems38 that invite the reader to meditate on the Christian message; 2. Songs with biblical texts suitable for house devotional services;39 3. Prayers and songs that would accompany and help people reflect on activities of the day as well as on questions of death and eternity;40 4. Picture stories that illustrated the dangers threatening a Christian’s life41 or a particular biblical scene;42 5. Graphic word plays (graphic designs in which words form particular figures or are arranged so that they make an Irrgarten or maze) that symbolized the joys and dangers of a Christian life;43 and 6. Didactic picture stories illustrating biblical messages.44 Whether texts that formulated concise rules for leading a Christian life were used in house devotions is possible but not probable.45 Ascribing functions to particular texts without evidence from those who were supposed to purchase and use them is of course a rather problematic procedure. Yet there is no doubt that a large number of the texts in broadsides—prose, songs, prayers, and picture stories—were not printed for specific purposes dictated by the church calendar, by special events in particular congregations, or by special occasions like funerals, births, or confirmations. Within the social context of German life in the Middle Atlantic region, two particular reasons come to mind that would prompt someone to purchase such a broadside: concerns of an individual nature or, more generally, a particular broadside’s function within the way a family conducted its private devotions at home. The titles of the broadsides containing devotional and religious texts suggest that printers were aware of the distinction between broadsides responding to particular concerns, such as the appearance of a comet46 or the occasion of a fast day,47 and those that, they hoped, would have a larger appeal. But this is not true for the greater number of hymns and devotional texts, though even here one has to differentiate. Titles like ‘‘Von der Kreuzigung Jesu Christi’’ (Of Christ’s Crucifixion),48 ‘‘Von den Leiden Christi’’ (On Christ’s suffering),49 ‘‘Joseph und seine Bru¨ der’’ (Joseph and his brethren), ‘‘Joseph’s Lied’’ (Joseph’s song), and ‘‘Das Joseph Lied’’ (The song of Joseph)50 speak to specific biblical stories or are related to important events in the church calendar. A significant number of broadsides fall into this category. A larger

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number are associated with three key terms: ‘‘Trost’’ (comfort), ‘‘Sehnsucht’’ (yearning), and ‘‘Verlangen’’ (craving). The database contains over twenty titles with the word ‘‘Verlangen,’’ more than ten with ‘‘Trost,’’ and six with ‘‘Sehnsucht.’’ A similarly large group of broadsides begin with ‘‘scho¨n geistlich’’ (lovely spiritual; seventeen titles) or ‘‘scho¨n Jesus’’ (lovely Jesus; sixteen titles). These titles are too vague to be associated with a particular Christian event or a particular religious state of mind, such as desperation or a longing for happiness. In short, the printers, trying to enlarge the market for their products, seem to have developed a strategy designed to signal to potential customers that the contents of a particular broadside addressed not a narrow Christian concern but broad questions that would fit large Christian topics; the broadside would thus be suitable to be used in house or private devotions.51 If one examines the vocabulary of the titles, first lines of texts, and descriptions, the argument becomes more complex. The database gives us the frequency of the following German words with religious content: ‘‘Gott’’ and derivatives and compounds ‘‘erbaulich’’ (uplifting) and derivatives and compounds ‘‘Jesus/Christus’’ ‘‘Su¨nde’’ (sin), ‘‘Su¨ndenfall’’ (Fall of man), and derivatives and compounds ‘‘Segen’’ (blessing) and derivatives and compounds ‘‘Sehnsucht’’ (yearning) and derivatives and compounds ‘‘Paradies’’ (paradise) ‘‘Verlangen’’ (craving) ‘‘heilig’’ (holy) and derivatives and compounds ‘‘Tod’’ (death) ‘‘sterben’’ (to die) and derivatives and compounds ‘‘ewig,’’ ‘‘Ewigkeit’’ (eternal, eternity) ‘‘Weihnachten’’ (Christmas) and derivates and compounds ‘‘Ho¨lle’’ (hell) ‘‘Ostern’’ (Easter) and derivatives and compounds

433 414 305 135 89 87 71 64 64 60 33 32 27 22 18

The results offer some surprises. First, they confirm the finding of the index classification that churchly and confessional perspectives play a subordinate role (see table B.1 and discussion in chapter 1). The terms ‘‘Weihnachten’’ and ‘‘Ostern’’ rank at the bottom. Second, key terms of Christian theology like ‘‘erretten’’ (save, rescue), ‘‘bekehren’’ (convert), and ‘‘erlo¨sen’’ (to redeem) that denote the act of saving a repentant sinner seldom or never show up in titles or first lines. If one looks at some of the most frequent terms—‘‘Paradies,’’ ‘‘Segen,’’ ‘‘Su¨nde,’’ ‘‘Sehnsucht,’’ and ‘‘Verlangen’’—a certain picture emerges. These terms suggest that, at least from the perspective of the printer, broadsides were designed to reinforce Christian faith as a longing for acceptance by Christ and assurance of eternal life—although it should be noted that the

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terms ‘‘ewig’’ and ‘‘Ewigkeit’’ are not particularly prominent. The three most often used words are ‘‘Gott,’’ ‘‘erbaulich,’’ and ‘‘Jesus/Christus,’’ which suggests three conclusions: first, the Christ-focused theology of the Moravians did not dominate the world of broadsides; second, the term ‘‘uplifting’’ offers an important clue to what the printers thought was the most important function of their broadsides, to edify the customer; and third, confessional boundaries did not play a particular role. The titles and first lines and the terms used in them suggest that the broadsides are rather transdenominational in nature; they are focused on piety and strengthening Christian beliefs and convictions not within confessional boundaries but rather within a Christianity that emphasizes the fundamentals of Christian belief—a truly Pietistic concern. And from the printers’ perspective the transdenominational nature promised the widest possible market. ‘‘Erbauung’’ (edification) is a term used by the apostle Paul in his letters to the Corinthians and to the Roman congregation. Its root means ‘‘to build up,’’ ‘‘to strengthen,’’ and that meaning is still contained in the term today. The frequent use of ‘‘Erbauung’’ and ‘‘erbaulich’’ in the broadsides suggests that printers, and most likely customers too, considered broadsides to be part of devotional exercises in the house that built up, maintained, and strengthened the Pennsylvania Germans in their religious beliefs. This conclusion would also explain why certain other Christian key terms are little used or not used at all, such as ‘‘Buße’’ (penance) and ‘‘Bußkampf ’’ (atonement struggle); ‘‘Buße’’ and its derivatives are used only fifteen times in titles and first lines. That is not to say that they are not important terms in the texts themselves— quite to the contrary, they are, along with ‘‘Su¨nde,’’ key terms that are almost constantly invoked. But in what we could call the ‘‘public image’’ of the broadsides, they play an insignificant role. The printers may have felt that using them in the titles and first lines would have suggested that broadsides were part of a struggle instead of being a helper and edifier for those who had survived the struggle and considered themselves saved. While these texts formed part of household devotional exercises, this generalization needs to be examined more carefully. Three different possible uses existed for devotional texts. First, they could indeed be used as part of ‘‘Hausandacht’’ or ‘‘Erbauungsstunde’’ (devotion). Second, texts could be read by an individual in response to or in the context of a particular situation—the death of a family member or a friend, times of great spiritual need or material deprivation, personal illness and suffering. Third, they could be used as part of family conversation either in general terms or in what today we would call the education of children in Christian teachings. A fair number of broadsides were clearly designed to be the subject of conversation—they were colorful, they posed riddles, and they needed explanation. In short, in a German household piety not only shaped individuals’ behavior but also made up part of the interaction with family members and friends.

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Ephrata’s Voice, 1740–1830 Between 1738 and 1830 twenty broadsides were published with texts that could be broadly characterized as Christian reflections. The largest number of these broadsides, sixteen, were printed at Ephrata,52 which is not surprising given their often radical Pietistic content. With two exceptions, all of these broadsides clearly belong to the Pietistic or even radical Pietistic tradition. One exception is a broadside authored by Benjamina Padley (see below), an early English representative of the Quaker Awakening movement.53 The other is the Catholic prayer Ein sehr kraeftiges Heiliges Gebeth, welches zu Co¨lln am Rhein mit goldenen Buchstaben geschrieben und aufgehalten wird, which reprints a broadside first published in Cologne around 1750.54 The first of these broadsides was published by Christoph Saur. This first German broadside with a devotional text published in Pennsylvania must have posed something of a mystery to contemporary readers. In 1738, Christoph Saur published what was probably the second work from his press, Eine Ernstliche Ermahnung.55 The broadside is dated May 1738 and bears the name of Benjamin Padlin. The author’s name was in fact Benjamina Padley, and the work is a translation of an English broadside she published in London in the same year under the title A Warning to the People Called Quakers.56 Evidently Saur felt that a text that pronounced doom for all ‘‘who in bodily and spiritual things feel secure’’ and eternal happiness for those who ‘‘are based on Christ the rock’’ could only have been written by a man or, alternatively, that it would not sell well if it became known that the author was a woman.57 The message of the text was clear: only those who not only confessed but also lived according to the dictates of the ‘‘Heilige Wahrheit’’ (holy truth) were to be saved in the final reckoning. Padlin, alias Padley, admonished his or her readers to continue to practice and live according to the commandments of the Bible. Reading this short text would reassure true Christians that they walked on the narrow path and prompt those who had deviated to return to it. At the same time, Saur, who had close ties to the Ephrata cloister as well as to the Schwarzenau Spiritualists, was echoing the antidenominationalism of those who, like Benjamin Lay (1682–1759)58 and, somewhat later, John Woolman (1720– 1772),59 were beginning to criticize the increasingly worldly habits and behavior of Quakers.60 Rendering this text into German gave it additional meaning for German readers. Since the text stated that it was originally addressed to Quakers in England and Pennsylvania, German readers in Pennsylvania now had ocular proof that Quakers were exposed to the danger of basing their religion on false grounds and indulging in an increasingly worldly lifestyle, and thus endangering the attainment of eternal happiness. For readers who had left Germany and come to North America poor and who in the 1730s and 1740s were by necessity still observing what the pious would define as an ascetic lifestyle, this message reassured them that they were the ones living the Christian life demanded by God and that their richer neighbors, the Quakers, were representatives of the degenerate species described in the broadside.

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A similar message with a clear focus on attaining Christ’s salvation is conveyed by Johann Adam Gruber of Germantown, one of the most influential members of the Inspired (Inspirierten).61 In 1741 Christoph Saur printed Gruber’s Einfa¨ltige Warnungsund Wa¨chter-Stimme An die gerufene Seelen dieser Zeit,62 which has been characterized as an anti-Moravian tract.63 This broadside was printed at a time filled with polemics and agitation, particularly among the Pennsylvania Germans. Nikolaus Count Zinzendorf, the head of the Moravians, had arrived in Pennsylvania and quickly joined the ecumenical efforts started by Johann Adam Gruber some years earlier. Prodded by George Whitefield, German radical Pietists like Henry Antes (1701–1755), who lived near Germantown, issued a call for a general synod of all German Protestants in late 1741. In early 1742 Gruber published an eight-page pamphlet, Ein Zeugnis eines Betru¨ bten.64 Given this context, it is clear that Gruber’s Einfa¨ ltige Warnungs und Wa¨chter-Stimme is not a clarion call against Moravians. Instead, the poem warns against the many temptations of this world and praises efforts to join Christ and to proceed to his very being, for ‘‘he will embrace us in our dark hour, and strengthen our faith to stick to the covenant.’’65 Christ will help us when we are in need, but does not want us to follow false brethren—a possible reference to Moravians or George Whitefield—or deny, like Saint Peter, that we belong to Christ’s flock. The poem concludes with an exhortation to true believers to stay with Christ as the one ‘‘who can flow through your inner self ’’ so that they will not ‘‘miss the true pleasure,’’66 that is, eternal happiness. Contemporaries probably read passages in this broadside as reflecting critically on the Moravians as well as on the many other false prophets readers saw as visiting the region—this was, after all, the first wave of the Great Awakening that was sweeping the land. But the text is clearly not directed particularly at the Moravians themselves, as Gruber’s slightly later Zeugnis eines Betru¨bten was. Rather, Einfa¨ltige Warnungs- und Wa¨cher Stimme was meant as an encouragement for those who had become insecure in their belief, who felt surrounded by gainsayers and tempters determined to lure the believer into sin and damnation. While the early 1740s were a time of high polemics and religious controversies, those years also saw the first serious efforts to organize German settlers into clearly defined denominations. Both the Reformed and the Lutherans adopted firmer organizational structures in the 1740s,67 as did the adherents of the Sabbatarian community led by Conrad Beissel, who settled in a cloister in Ephrata, close to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.68 These efforts were all marked by internal frictions. The next two broadsides published in the 1740s continued the religious tradition of the Saur broadside of 1738 while being firmly rooted in the controversial religious culture of those years.69 Both are attributed by Julius Sachse to Israel Eckerlin (1711– 1758), who at the time was Prior Onesimus of the Ephrata Cloister. In 1725 Eckerlin, his widowed mother, and his two brothers had emigrated to Pennsylvania. In 1728 Christoph Saur introduced him to Conrad Beissel, who baptized Eckerlin on June 9, 1728.70 In 1741 Beissel appointed him prior and second-in-command. In his new position Eckerlin instituted a program of aggressive and successful economic expansion: the

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printing business flourished, mills were built, and Ephrata became an important center for the farmers of Lancaster County. At the same time Eckerlin became an outspoken opponent of the Moravians. Whether that contributed to the friction that gradually evolved after 1743 between Beissel and Eckerlin is unclear, but by the time Eckerlin published the two broadsides in 1745, the two were involved in a power struggle. According to Julius Sachse, Beissel, irritated by Eckerlin’s economic expansion program and by what the Chronicon Ephratense called his efforts ‘‘to transform the estate of the hermits accompanied with many tribulations into a monastic lifestyle,’’71 managed, in an all-night conference on August 4, 1745, to secure the agreement of the brothers of the Ephrata Community to oust Eckerlin from his office as prior and appoint his brother Gabriel, Brother Jotham, as the new prior. The two broadsides thus were composed in an atmosphere filled with tension and rivalries within the Ephrata community, though these were most likely largely unknown to the outside world.72 The most convincing evidence of the broadsides’ authorship is the Chronicon Ephratense: ‘‘The sisters burned all hymns and writings, among which there were especially two in his hand [i.e., Israel Eckerlin], the one had the title: The conduct of a hermit, but the other: The guideline and rule of a warrior for Jesus Christ, at the same time the brethren gathered everything that had belonged to him and handed it to a brother to have it burned.’’73 Both broadsides raise a number of questions. First, they are similar in that they both discuss how to conduct a Christian life, both advocate a retreat from the world, and both promise solace and happiness to the reader who adopts the recommended way of life. But here the similarities end. The most important difference between them is in the means for attaining spiritual happiness. Ein sehr geistreicher Spiegel advocates a spiritual union with the virgin Sophia, while Die Richtschnur und Regel eines Streiters Jesu Christi advocates a complete retreat from the world and everything worldly, including a total break with family and friends, as a precondition for a life totally devoted to Christ—not to the virgin Sophia. Ein sehr geistreicher Spiegel (plate 13) demands from the truly dedicated Christian a total departure from this world. The Christian must leave everything behind, cut off all social ties, expunge every worldly thought from his or her mind, and give up all lust and yearning for comfort as well as ‘‘alle geistliche Hochmut’’ (all spiritual pride). The author calls for ‘‘complete separation between the spirit of the mind and all the senses, including hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and feeling.’’74 All thoughts and activities must be focused on the one goal: spiritual union with the Virgin, by which the author means Sophia, the female principle of God before Lucifer’s fall.75 Toward the end of the text he states the goal succinctly: ‘‘Once God has reclaimed man, he has reclaimed his lost Virgin in man and man has recovered his Virgin in God. Thus eternal truth has been reestablished as our sister and our bride and the son of God is our firstborn brother. We are again children of God, and what Adam lost when he defected from the Virgin to the wife is reclaimed.’’76 Reunion with Sophia the Virgin means a return to the prelapsarian paradisiacal conditions of perfection.

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Surprisingly, what the analysis of this broadside shows is that at the time when Israel Eckerlin was supposedly engaged in a fierce fight with Conrad Beissel over leadership at Ephrata, he published a broadside that summarized and popularized Beissel’s views as a rationale for a truly ascetic and Christian life to be pursued in Ephrata or in similar institutions. While Beissel reputedly charged Eckerlin with abandoning poverty and an ascetic lifestyle in favor of the sinful riches of this world, a charge that Conrad Weiser had already publicly voiced in 1743,77 this is not supported by the broadside. Within the Ephrata Community the broadside was probably read as Eckerlin’s affirmation that his religious views did not differ from Beissel’s. If that was the case, then surely the fight between Beissel and Eckerlin must have had other causes than disagreement over the right path to heaven. This conclusion is supported by the remark in the Chronicon Ephratense that although Eckerlin had been ‘‘fervently courting the Virgin [Sophia] . . . yet his efforts were focused only on subjecting her to his manly power.’’78 The Chronicon added, however, a second reason that figures less prominently in the modern accounts: ‘‘because of his trusty relation with Beissel the prior ruled over the brethren so strictly that whenever someone tried to raise his hand against him, it was clear to everyone that he was assaulting God himself and risked his eternal happiness.’’79 According to the Chronicon, the third objection against Eckerlin was the installation of a ‘‘worldly economy for securing sustenance for material needs’’ in which ‘‘the brethren and the sisters were degraded to menial servants.’’80 These remarks suggest that Eckerlin’s expulsion from Ephrata may have been less the doing of Beissel and more the result of Eckerlin’s conflict with the Ephrata Community at large. The Chronicon does not mention religious differences between Beissel and Eckerlin. If Eckerlin’s text was only a statement within the internal power struggle at Ephrata, it certainly would not have been reprinted. The broadside had a wider appeal—the only question is, to whom? There are at least two possible audiences. One was the small but significant number of radical Pietists who were anxiously following the events at Ephrata. Some, like Christoph Saur, had come to North America driven by their eschatological expectations, while others, like Conrad Weiser, had joined radical Pietistic groups after coming to the New World. The other possible audience was people who were still seeking for themselves the right way to eternal happiness and were tired of the endless religious bickering. For those who loved harmony and quietness, Eckerlin offered a possible solution—retreat. This appeal would likewise explain why the broadsides available at Ephrata were burnt after Eckerlin had been ousted. The second broadside, Die Richtschnur und Regel eines Streiters Jesu Christi (fig. 24), adds a confusing element to the story. The text opens with the bland statement that Jesus has to be everybody’s guide and rule. The author then relates what Christ has done for mankind. The author says he had followed Christ’s command and left the world to take refuge in ‘‘spiritual poverty/nakedness/loneliness and separation from all created things’’ on his way toward his ‘‘seat of grace,’’ a description of Ephrata.81 Clearly addressing those who were seeking reassurance and comfort, he then enumerates all the blessings that Christ has given him. The author’s concern, however, is focused not only

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Figure 24 Die Richtschnur und Regel eines Streiters Jesu Christi, welcher in die ewige Scha¨tze der Weißheit verlibet ist (Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1745). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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on the present but on the future, ‘‘so that all may conduce to the eternal salvation and well-being thanks to his grace.’’ He prays for forgiveness of his sins ‘‘solely thanks to God’s merit and mediation.’’ This and this alone is his ‘‘most blessed path to peace and well-being.’’82 This is the only true course of life. This goal, the text reaffirms in the conclusion, is the author’s reason for taking Jesus as his ‘‘Richtschnur’’ (guidance). The broadside ends with six verses of the hymn ‘‘Dies ist die rechte Lebens-Bahn.’’ This second broadside reflects a different theology than Ein sehr geistreicher Spiegel. While the Geistreicher Spiegel preaches the spiritual union with Sophia as the female principle of God, the Richtschnur advocates a rather conventional Pietistic theology that demands the emulation and following of Christ as the only path to happiness and eternal life. While the Geistreicher Spiegel was apparently directed toward the respectable circle of sympathizers with Ephrata and the theology of Conrad Beissel, who understood the vision of a union with the Virgin, the Richtschnur aimed at the general Pietistic German reader who was seeking spiritual guidance, certainty, consolation, and edification—all of which the Richtschnur, a rather long text of eighty-two lines, provided. While the Geistreicher Spiegel was a wonderful piece for Ephrata sympathizers to read during the long evenings and as counsel and encouragement in house devotions, the Richtschnur provided help and guidance to Pietists and helped them chart their way in the difficult times ahead. It is not clear how such broadsides produced in Ephrata were distributed and found their way to interested German farmers. Farmers who brought wheat and other products to the mills at Ephrata were probably offered the broadsides for a pittance or without charge. The Ephrata press was at least at that time not considered a big moneymaking endeavor but rather the means to communicate spiritual insights through the many songs, essays, and texts of Beissel to the pious German settlers, most of whom in those early days would not have been able to pay real money for a broadside.83 That, too, might explain why these two broadsides by Eckerlin are almost the only ones that have survived the times. Ephrata’s crop in the 1740s was small indeed. Overall, surprisingly few broadsides with pious texts suitable to be read in house devotions were published before 1780.84 If our estimate is correct that most German households in the Middle Atlantic region held some kind of religious devotions at least weekly, if not daily, then this paucity of devotional texts requires some explanation. Four explanations seem the most likely. First, many households probably owned a book like Sanders Erbauungsbuch zur Befo¨ rderung wahrer Gottseligkeit, which a Lancaster bookshop had in stock in the 1780s. Second, in many households devotions were probably solely based on texts from the Bible, which most German settlers owned. Third, devotions used hymns and rhymed texts focused on particular purposes, which we will discuss below. Finally, it is possible that these devotional texts were not used in the context of house devotions at all but were read by individual members of the house as a source of spiritual refreshment, consolation, strength, and reassurance. Certainly the wife of a German Protestant pastor, Beate Hahn Paulus, who kept a diary in a Swabian village in the early nineteenth century, often read her father’s collection of sermons or

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sections from the Bible for these purposes.85 This interpretation would fit well with the particular focus and contents of the twenty Ephrata broadsides. No devotional texts were published from 1745 to 1760. The five addressed to Protestants86 published between 1760 and 1772 were all written in the intellectual and religious surroundings of the Ephrata Cloister, which in itself is a telling comment on the strength of radical religiosity in Pennsylvania at that time. Three of them came from the Ephrata press, while the fourth, Eberhard Ludwig Gruber’s So Bleibt Ein Redlich Herz, printed around 1760, also belongs by its contents to the radical Pietist context. Gruber, father of Johann Adam Gruber, was born in 1665 in Stuttgart. He joined the Inspired after 1706, the year he had lost his position within the Lutheran Church and separated from that body. Gruber quickly became one of the most outspoken leaders of the Inspired in Germany, for whom he wrote over five hundred hymns and many tracts. He died in the congregation of the Inspired in Schwarzenau in 1728. The broadside is an excerpt from one of the tracts. It claims that just as a pure and honest heart will stay true to its love, the author will stay true to Jesus as his one and only, whose course of sufferings he will follow.87 This message is of course not dissimilar to the one his son propagated in his 1741 broadside. Around the same time two broadsides were issued from the Ephrata press that reflected to some extent the pessimism prevalent in Pennsylvania in the late 1750s and early 1760s, the time of the French and Indian War, when many incursions of Native Americans into the freshly settled regions of western Pennsylvania occurred. ES ist noch nicht am End, der Jammer bleibt noch stehen could be read as a jeremiad by someone who had experienced the sufferings of war, while JEtzt ist mein vieler schmertz, den ich so lang getragen sounds like the last song of someone weary of life and longing for paradise. ES ist noch nicht am End tells the story of a person who had turned to God, opted for the narrow path of virtue and Christian life in early youth, and thought as he became older that he had struggled and suffered enough and was entitled to peace and eternal bliss; yet suffering continued, as people passing ‘‘gaben mir bittre Gall, darzu viel harte Schla¨g’’ (handed me bitter bile and many hard blows). Full of complaints, he turns to God, for whom since early youth he had dared his all, only to find now that a judge was blocking the entrance to heaven. He will perish, he laments bitterly, if his God judges him and does not forgive him his failings. Yet he is confident that Jesus, who himself had sweated blood, will heal his wounds and save those who remained his disciples. JEtzt ist mein vieler schmertz continues the story: the speaker had suffered much, had walked in misery, and had almost given up when his beseeching prayers left God no choice but to save and accept him as his own. Now he walks in his life full of faith and with love and lives in Christ, who grants him grace and benignity. Yet he continues in his hourly prayers so that he may be allowed to enter heaven. The message of both texts is that even in the most sorely felt, unending suffering, God will finally relent and accept the suffering sinner. The second text, a true Reformed arm-twister, adds that insistent and fervent prayers may turn even God’s mind and induce him to listen to the prayers of the sinner. Both broadsides assure the reader who

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is in distress that God will not forsake those who endure suffering and do not succumb to the world’s many temptations but remain God’s children. They suggest the existence of communities of afflicted who wanted to share their afflictions and solace with each other. One has to read these texts in the context of the French and Indian War to understand the relationship between actual suffering and yearning for solace: settlers’ houses were burnt down, cattle stolen or killed, children and husbands lost or dead— ample cause for desperation, anxiety, and the feeling of being forsaken. Reading these texts helped in regaining confidence, strength, and courage: even in the worst affliction the devout German would not be left alone but would finally live in the camp of the saved. The next two broadsides were published during the Revolutionary period. The first, 1. Corinth. 1 v. 81 [sic]. Das Wort vom Creutz ist zwar eine Thorheit (fig. 25), is a celebration of the Cross. The first poem in it, printed in the form of a cross, affirms that the Cross does not hurt the bearer, does not burden him who carries it, but rather protects him against the temptations of the flesh. This message is reinforced in the next poem, printed in the form of a triangle, in which the text at the top culminates in the word ‘‘Geist’’ (spirit, i.e., Holy Spirit). The triangle is a dialogue between Geist and ‘‘Fleisch’’ (flesh). Although the text is meant to be read from top to bottom, the flow of its meaning moves from bottom to top and ends with the celebration of the Cross. The third text in the broadside, printed in the form of an ascending narrow staircase, lists the virtues of living with the Cross and challenges the reader to answer whether his life measures up to these virtues. As a counterpoint, to the right of the staircase text one of the key verses of Pietist theology is printed: ‘‘strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’’ On the other side of the staircase text the broadside cites another key verse of Pietist theology: ‘‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’’88 This broadside, which, as the colophon states, was printed with the permission of the Brotherhood of Ephrata, is probably the first that attempts to combine textual meaning and graphic design in a way that reinforces the message of the broadside.89 The message is clear: the readers’ eyes climb up the small stairs to the triangle, in which the flesh is conquered by the Geist (Holy Spirit). Above the word ‘‘Geist’’ the textcross commands the whole graphic arrangement as the centerpiece of the broadside. At the bottom of the cross the eyes are greeted by the affirmative conclusion of the description: ‘‘Das ist das Creutz’’ (This is the Cross). The description begins at the top with the query ‘‘Was ist das Creutz’’ (What is the Cross), which is answered by the text itself. Whichever way the reader’s eyes scan the text, he or she is led to the center, the Cross as ‘‘Des ho¨chsten Ko¨nigs Ordens-Zeichen’’ (the highest king’s decoration [i.e., medal]). There are many different ways to read this broadside. A devout Christian could read it as an affirmation of his Christian belief and as a confirmation that staying on the right path would be rewarded with the blessings of the Cross. Others could read it as Ephrata’s comment on political turmoil: retire from the world, concentrate on what is really important, and accept the commandments of the Cross.

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Figure 25 1 Corinth. 1 v. 81 [sic]. Das Wort vom Creutz ist zwar eine Thorheit denen die verlohren werden (Ephrata, Pa.: Jacob Matzenbacher, 1772). Franklin & Marshall College. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

The Ephrata Brethren and those at Snow Hill,90 the branch of Ephrata founded after the French and Indian War, continued in their publications to draw away from the increasingly turbulent world. The songs of Barbara Schneeberger (d. 1810) and her husband Andreas Schneeberger (1742–1825), published in 1776, were so ambiguous and couched in such mystic terms that even those attuned to Ephrata’s symbolic language

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might have had difficulty in deciphering their meaning.91 These songs would have provided religious nourishment only for insiders. With the death of Conrad Beissel in 1768, the focus of religious fervor shifted to Snow Hill; Ephrata’s print productions for a while began to reflect less the religious flavor of the separatist Sabbatarians and more a somewhat watered-down religious culture represented by the printed products of the Baumann family.92 For a while Ephrata receded into silence, at least as far as devotional texts were concerned. The next broadside with a radical religious text to come from the Ephrata press was issued in 1805. Within the next twenty-five years another six devotional texts followed.93 A close examination of these texts suggests the boundaries as well as the diversity of devotional texts. On the one end is the hermetic exploration of the question of whether all men will attain blessedness;94 the other is marked by the publication of excerpts from the writings of the German Pietist poet Gerhard Tersteegen on the loving presence of God, which no doubt appealed to a large German audience in North America.95 In COPIE Eines Briefs oder eine Antwort auf die Frage, Jacob Martin’s answer to the question of how men can attain blessedness is that they must recapture their inward life.96 His text is couched in hermetic terminology comprehensible today only by the specialist, and in the eighteenth century only by readers familiar with the writings of Jacob Bo¨hme and other mystics who expounded the principles of hermetic thought and theology: Mankind originally was created or concentrated out of God’s creation, . . . i.e., from the five essences [Quinta Essentia, i.e., greed, the emotions, anxiety, genius, love, hollow words, and sound understanding] of all temporal and eternal creations. . . . [Man’s origins were] linked to the three first and main principles . . . the principle of fire, of angelic light, and third by the principle of the elemental and astral world. . . . The soul is free within her imagination to function in whichever principle she chooses. . . . Whenever the soul is transplanted into the inner life, she becomes active within the inner heaven, in God’s light, and plays with the Virgin Sophia in her innermost being. . . . Therefore the abovementioned inner life is a result of the inner life within the new creation where God lives in his eternal love . . . and if anyone is transposed to the least degree of beatitude, the above-mentioned light is developed to such a degree within him and therefore profits accordingly from the inner life.97 The fact that this broadside went through an astounding four editions suggests that the number in the early nineteenth century interested in and familiar with such writings was larger than historians have assumed, and probably larger than contemporaries realized. The contrast between Martin’s broadside and Joseph Bauman’s, with its excerpts from the writings of Gerhard Tersteegen, could not have been larger. The message

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Bauman, who no doubt selected the writings himself, wanted to convey was simple and clear: we, the pious, have to live in the constant presence of God, and to do so we have to ‘‘pray to, glorify, love, and totally give ourselves up to him.’’ If you do so, he tells his readers, if you ask God’s forgiveness for every lapse in your duty, then God will be your ‘‘support and comfort . . . in the hour of death, when all friends have forsaken you.’’98 At the bottom of the broadside the printer added a hymn that repeated in measured, strictly ordered rhymes the message of the main text. For good measure, the customer who bought the broadside was finally invited to meditate on Jeremiah 23:23–24, which provided biblical proof of the necessity of staying close to God. This broadside fulfilled all the requirements of a devotional text: it was uplifting, consoling, and focused on eternal life and God’s help and consolation.99 Between these two extremes, Samuel Baumann’s Wann wird doch einst die Finsternis vergehen holds a precarious middle ground. The little poem uses hermetic concepts and terms: the first verse asks when the reader will visualize within himself ‘‘die Licht Welt’’ (the world of light); the second verse asks when his ‘‘Geist wird versezt ins Neue Leben’’ (spirit will be transposed into the new life). These queries are then combined with the traditional question of when God will hear his ‘‘Weinen und Flehen’’ (crying and supplicating). The fourth verse states that the author is strongly attracted to God, that he has nothing else to seek in this world but to be united with his God. The final verse again reverts to hermetic thoughts: in uniting with God, he is involved in a quarrel within himself. The spiritual upper part of him yearns for the light, while the spiritual lower part causes much pain. In this reversion, the broadside strangely seems to lose its comforting, encouraging quality. Instead it prolongs the battle between the two principles inherent in hermetic philosophy. These broadsides indicate a renewed interest in radical Pietism, hermetic thought as propagated in Ephrata and Snow Hill, and eschatology.100 With these broadsides, printers may have been reacting to the new religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, which swept the country in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Like the First Great Awakening, this second religious movement was not confined to North America but spilled over to England and the European continent. The evangelical crusade against slavery and the slave trade was one important result; the renewed interest in Christianizing the so-called heathens in Asia and Africa through the foundation of mission societies in England, the European continent, and North America was another.101 Both strengthened the consciousness of North American evangelicals and the awakened of being part of a rapidly growing worldwide Christian community that was awaiting the imminent coming of Christ. Gedanken u¨ ber den Zustand der Kirche (fig. 26), most likely printed at Ephrata between 1826 and 1830, clearly belongs to this context.102 The first and major part of the two-page broadside is taken up by a hymn that recounts the narrative in Revelation of the last battle and final coming of Christ. Each of the eighteen verses is copiously annotated with the relevant Bible references, turning the broadside into a crash course in eschatological thought. The last verse is a song of celebration of those who have

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Figure 26 Gedanken u¨ber den Zustand der Kirche, (sonderlich in Europa,) in der nahen Stunde der Versuchung, die u¨ber den ganzen Weltkreis kommen wird . . . Yalc. Avilas n.p., [1826–30]). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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arrived at the ‘‘Gottes Stadt’’ (God’s city). A second hymn, ‘‘Freut Euch des Lebens. Bald kommt die bessre, golden Zeit,’’ authored by Avilas,103 reinforces the eschatological visions and expectations of the broadside. Sandwiched between the two hymns is the author’s (or printer’s) account of five leading writers on eschatological thought: Thomas Newton (1704–1782), bishop of Bristol;104 Johann H. J. Stilling (1740–1817), German pastor and poet;105 Johann Georg Schmucker (1771–1854);106 and Johann Michael Hahn (1758–1819),107 one of the leading Wu¨rttemberg radical Pietists of the time.108 A somewhat casual comment gives broadside and argument a curious new twist: the reader of the writings of these authors on the last days ‘‘will consider these lights, Daniel 12:4 and Amos 3, as morning and evening stars on the horizon of this important time of emigration worthy of consideration, soon to be followed by a time of awakening until the daughter of Zion is liberated from the dust of false teachings and the bands around her neck.’’109 This text links hope for the return of Christ to emigration from corrupt Europe to pristine North America and Russia, and thus evokes a concept that had been around since the early seventeenth century. Among German radical Pietists in Frankfurt, for example, the idea of emigration had been expressed in eschatological terms in the 1680s.110 Francis Daniel Pastorius was one member of that group,111 as was John Kelpius (1673–1708),112 and later members would form the nucleus of the Ephrata Cloister. Eschatological hopes persisted within the group, as the broadsides demonstrate, into the beginning of the nineteenth century. That as such is not surprising. What is surprising is that some of the most radical broadsides produced by the group, such as Jacob Martin’s hermetic text, saw more than one edition. This indicates that eschatological expectations must have been shared by many more people than the few dozen associated with Ephrata and Snow Hill. They all were anxious to see the ‘‘Licht-Welt’’ that colored Samuel Baumann’s Wann wird doch einst die Finsternis vergehen. In 1813, close to the same time, Baumann’s parents, Ruth and Jacob Baumann, issued the broadside Des Heutigen Signals Charmen: Ein dreyfaches Echo . . . im 1813ten Jahr, in which three voices, termed ‘‘echoes,’’ speak in three columns. In the first column, the first voice expresses the need to turn to and stay close to God and Christ. In the second column a more worldly minded soul tries to put off his involvement with God. In the third column the procrastinator turns to God and praises his happiness: ‘‘That is where one turns softly and quietly and childlike to Christ’s womb.’’ Again hermetic thought shapes some of the verses: ‘‘Thus wondrous things are seen that reveal themselves in the innermost matter.’’113 At the same time, the text criticizes outward forms of piety—reminiscent of Spener—in general, and baptism as a substitute for true penance, conversion, and experiencing holiness in particular. While the initiated would recognize the fine theological and religious points, the broadside’s language reflects the concern to attract as wide a group of purchasers as possible. A lengthy prose text at the end, which repeats remarks from the beginning, strengthens the appeal to all those who felt touched by the awakening that was sweeping the newly settled regions of North America.

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These Ephrata broadsides amount to something like a concerted effort to be heard in the many-voiced, excited religious world of the early nineteenth century. At the same time, they do not project a unified new religious view. The strict hermetic text is tempered by the Tersteegen extracts and the dreyfache Echo, as well as a broadside taken from a long text by Johannes Engel and published by Joseph Bauman in 1826 under the title Diese Regel soll nur eine Anweisung an das Testament seyn.114 The latter is a fairly conventional description of how a person decides to choose the narrow path, repents his sins, finds acceptance in Christ, experiences rebirth, and then lives a life for Christ, not in an institutionalized church but in a loosely structured community of the pious governed by the rule of Matthew 18:15. The following year the same printer issued another broadside that enlarged on the legalistic side of communitarian togetherness: Eine wahre Geschichte von einem alten Bruder und einem ju¨ngeren Bruder. A discussion of how conflicts between brethren were to be solved according to the dicta of the Old and New Testament, the text reads like a handbook for those who were not affiliated with any denomination but were looking for rules and guidelines that would allow them to associate with like-minded pious people. Thus, the text does not speak about the final days and eternal happiness to follow, but concludes with the statement that ‘‘we accept the separation from irritating members.’’ The general structural design of the community is to consist of public meetings ‘‘where the word is preached to summon all to do penance’’ and private meetings where the pious ‘‘open themselves to each other in a childlike way.’’115 The broadsides discussed in this section differ from most others in one important aspect: they are not the commercial venture of a secular printer but missives issued by radical Pietists of different persuasions who wanted not only to communicate and distribute their views but to actively attract others to their small folds. As the print runs indicate, they were modestly successful in their efforts. These missives were supplemented to some extent by a small number of poems and hymns, but these differ from the prose texts in a number of ways. First of all, they are less sharply structured theologically than the devotional prose.116 Second, they are much scarcer: only one out of nine broadsides originated in Ephrata, broadsides which reminded the reader that all men would turn to ashes in their graves, and therefore it was necessary to die an early spiritual death in order to regain eternity as a new Adam.117 Third, the poems and hymns are much more focused thematically. A number of them describe the process of and rewards for conversion;118 two hymns praise trust in God and his protection and ask all to be prepared for the ‘‘great Sabbath Day.’’119 One poem describes the need to prepare early for Judgment Day.120 Another stresses that to be saved by God, one has to completely shed all ties to this world and single-mindedly follow Christ and his example.121 And another describes the Crucifixion.122 Most of these songs were fervent prayers or visions of the New Jerusalem, which may have reflected the longing for eternal happiness at a time filled with eschatological expectations. Printers must have felt that broadsides with poems and hymns that invited the reader to meditate on the Christian message, though they mirrored the devotional prose texts,

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did not have the same market appeal. If customers turned to broadsides for solace, help, and spiritual encouragement, they probably preferred reading sermons, sections from the Bible, or general devotional texts, as analyzed above. The few hymns and poems that describe the process of conversion and the path to eternity, praise God, and ask the pious to prepare for Judgment Day all concentrate on specific, albeit key parts of the Christian message. But prose texts of various kinds dealt with these same themes in more detail, and from the perspective of the customer were probably more attractive.123 These texts were close neighbors to the songs with biblical texts suitable for house devotional services. Yet in analyzing this third group the main difference between the two types of songs should be kept in mind: these songs were not intended to be read by individuals who privately sought solace, comfort, and spiritual strength, but were to be sung by groups joined together in devotions of the house community. That they were used this way is not recorded in writing, with the exception of Betstund Lied fu¨r die Christen, but reflects our own impression. The nine poems in the collection that explicitly elaborate a passage from the Bible or discuss a key biblical event and apply it to the present fall into three categories: they focus on God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his youngest son, Isaac,124 on the strained relationship between Saul and David,125 or on Joseph’s gracious act of forgiving his brothers.126 These biblical figures play prominent roles in other broadsides too: the database includes five broadsides that deal with God’s demand to sacrifice Isaac, four about David’s achievements, and an astounding seventeen that deal with Joseph’s narrative and his generosity to his brothers, who had treated him cruelly.127 Another group of texts have what could be called a deliberately fuzzy profile: while they offer texts on specific biblical passages, the printers added hymns or poems that had only a loose relationship to those passages.128 Nevertheless, the fact that one broadside is specifically called Betstund Lied fu¨r die Christen (Home devotion hymn for Christians) not only supports our thesis that hymns and texts like these were intended by printers for use in home devotions, but suggests that these mixed bags of biblical texts and accompanying hymns were brought onto the market with an extended clientele in mind. Customers, however, refused to be tied down to titles that told them where to use the texts. At any rate, this is the only one in the whole database that uses the word ‘‘Betstund.’’ Finally, two songs stand for themselves: one is a fairly close adaptation of the 42nd Psalm,129 while the other offers guidelines for the devoted reader to know whether he is prepared to partake of the Lord’s Supper.130 These hymns—many of which were clearly meant to be sung, since the melodies are included—are more clearly focused on very specific issues than the devotional prose. Their messages address specific religious concerns in short yet strongly worded rhymes that were ideally suited to provide solace and relief either to the individual or to the family in times of need, joy, or distress. However, the fact that none of them were reprinted many times suggests that their appeal to customers was limited. That appeal depended on the nature of the different religious broadsides offered as well as the layout

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and design of competing broadsides. Those discussed in this section are simple and straightforward in design and layout. Most of them are simply text with very few ornaments. It is possible that the more elaborate ornamental and graphic designs of the two groups of broadsides discussed in the next two sections indicate a shift from the second half of the eighteenth to the first half of the nineteenth century. That would be a further argument for an interrelationship between market forces and customer behavior.

Death and Hope for Eternal Life Why do devotional texts, poems, and hymns more likely answer the needs of the individual believer than those of the family gathered for a ‘‘Betstunde’’? Two reasons account for this: they are less uplifting because by and large they are written as complex think pieces or, as in the case of biblical hymns and songs, as the basis for a religious conversation in schools or families. By their very nature they needed to be explored by pondering their contents and meanings. By contrast, house devotions did not favor theological exploration and reasoning but provided solace, comfort, and edification in a group experience. The religious foci of the next group reflect activities of the day as well as questions of death and eternity. A word of caution: the broadside collection contains many texts (hymns and poems) that fit this description in large part. But the sample discussed here excludes hymns like ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ that were discussed in an earlier section and concentrates in a rather narrow sense on ‘‘activities of the day’’ and ‘‘questions of death and eternity.’’ The broadsides we will focus on suggest trends that throw further light on the religious attitudes of German settlers in general and the religious world in which they lived. The ranking of the twenty-eight broadsides in this group suggests some surprises, as table 15 demonstrates. Almost a third of the texts describe either how Jesus has saved a sinner or how happy those are who were saved by Christ and are therefore sure to belong to the blessed, who have gained eternal life. In general these are Pietistic texts like Offt hast du mir zugeruffen, published by Christoph Saur in 1738, in which the singer admires God’s graciousness and the many intercessions that rescued him from his sins. Another is Nur alleine Table 15 Main themes of hymns Main theme of hymns Saved by Jesus Christian virtues and way of life Omnipresence of death and the need for speedy conversion Eschatology Escape from the sinful world Total

Number

Percentage

9 7 6 5 1 28

32.14 25.00 21.43 17.86 3.57 100.00

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Jesus. In the first of the two hymns it includes, the author affirms that nothing but living in Jesus will guide his life, and in the second the author rests in Jesus’s wounds. In the final reckoning, the author suggests, Jesus’s wounds themselves will speak for him. The other texts contain essentially the same message.131 Most of them integrate the pious into the community of believers who through conversion have achieved assurance of eternal life and are fervently convinced that they will live in Zion or the New Jerusalem as the palladium of eternal life.132 Despite that certainty, these texts avoid the direct evocation of eschatological hopes; they say nothing about the imminent coming of Christ. A number of the songs are constructed around the dichotomy of evil world versus blissful Zion/Jerusalem, which links them to the hymns in the category ‘‘Omnipresence of death and the need for speedy conversion.’’ This is especially true of the hymn Gedanken eines sterbenden Gla¨ubigen, in which a fatally ill man takes his leave from the temptations of ruling, of his friends and other social groups, and finally of his wife. He is now, he assures her, married to Jesus, is tired of ‘‘Sodam’’ (i.e., Sodom), and longs for manna and for life in Zion.133 This dichotomy structures the five hymns in the category ‘‘Eschatology,’’ in which authors as well as readers expect the imminent arrival of Christ and the final destruction of the evil world in the Battle of Armageddon. The author of the hymn Erbauliches Lied refers to the battle according to Revelation and describes the joy when the ‘‘bessre und goldene Zeit’’ (better and golden times) begin. In Ein Geistlich Lied Johannes Landes (d. 1801), who belonged to the Ephrata Cloister,134 points to the immediate coming of Christ to proclaim that all have to abjure the world and return to the covenant with their God.135 In Lied vom Gerichtstag, the author sharply focuses on the final Judgment, which he believes to be imminent; he, too, evokes the images and events in Revelation. Only the worthy will be admitted to the wedding in Zion. Interestingly, the hymn remains silent about the fate of those who will be excluded. The same eschatological beliefs color the songs Das obere Jerusalem and Sehnsucht nach Oben. Both express the desire to leave this corrupt and insecure world for the New Jerusalem; only in that heavenly city can Jesus be seen and met. The second song assumes that the singer has arrived in the New Jerusalem, situated on the ‘‘bank of the River of Light’’—an image invoked by the black slave Elizabeth Moore in her last confession136 —where others have assembled in their ‘‘white vestments’’ to meet Jesus. The hymn ends triumphantly with the hope that ‘‘soon I will be in my home.’’ While all the other hymns were printed only once, this last description of the New Jerusalem was reprinted three times—another remarkable indication of the interest in and strength of eschatological beliefs. These hymns are noteworthy in another sense too: in them the evil world is gradually pushed to the background, while the yearning for the New Jerusalem and its description according to Revelation take up more and more space. In other songs perdition is described in vivid detail, but here only Zion is painted, in glowing colors.

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The six hymns on the ‘‘Omnipresence of death and the need for speedy conversion’’ tell of the dire fate that awaits those who miss the last chance to walk the narrow path, repent their sins, and join the dwellers in New Jerusalem. The hymns’ rhetorical model is simple: worldly thoughts and concerns are pitted against the joys of conversion, even if it happens only at the last minute. As the hymn Die Ewigkeit says, ‘‘short is the time, but death is swift,’’ meaning that little time is left to turn to God before death forecloses any further effort to convert. Two other songs, Ein scho¨n neu geistlich Lied Von dem Nichtsseyn des menschlichen Lebens and Vom ju¨ ngsten Gericht und der Verdammniß, convey the same message. The former adds a fine description of the frailty and perishability of the human body: no achievement on earth can change the simple fact that finally the body will be nothing but ‘‘Todtenbein’’ (dead bone)—unless the sinner turns to God in time and is saved. Three texts elaborate different aspects of the pressures that beset human life. Ein scho¨nes Lied. Gespra¨ch zwischen dem Tod und dem Menschen relates a discussion between a nobleman and Death. The nobleman pleads for more time to feast his guests, to govern a bit more, and to increase and use his wealth. The next day, he says, he might have time for penance. Death brushes every argument aside and takes the nobleman with him to hell. The last three verses make the message explicit: everyone must be prepared for death at all times and anticipate it by turning in time to Christ. These arguments are repeated in Gespra¨ch zwischen Todt, Doctor und der Edeldam, in which the lady, in addition to using all the arguments the nobleman had attempted, adds that she will need more time to bring up and marry off her daughter. Besides, she points out, there are plenty of old people Death could pick from. Again Death is unmoved, and the dialogue ends with the same moral as before.137 Although we have not yet found any evidence, we assume that both texts originated in Europe and were reprinted in North America. The last dialogue in this group was printed under the somewhat misleading title Ein scho¨n geistlich Lied.138 It is a dialogue of a father and mother with their young child in heaven. The parents bemoan their loved one’s early death; the mother in particular regrets that she has been robbed of support in her old age. But the child consoles the parents with a description of heaven and suggests that their sorrow is a veiled form of egotism and conceit. To the question of why the child had to die so young, the child answers that God’s ways are wonderful and inscrutable. The parents should, the child suggests, turn to Christ, who alone can save them from eternal damnation. If they stay true to their covenant, they will meet their child in heaven and all three will remain together forever. Remarkably, this text was reprinted three times. The texts on the omnipresence of death contain a number of interesting messages. First, in contrast to those in the other categories, they refrain from condemning worldly and human activities, as long as these are not an excuse for failing to walk the narrow path to heaven. A pious life is compatible with worldly activities as long as people do not lose sight of the fact that everything can be managed except the arrival of death. Second, these songs display an urgency and concern about the worldliness of the times.

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While most of them are undated, there is every indication that most or all were printed in the early nineteenth century, at a time of new religious stirrings and urgent calls for repentance and conversion. Third, it seems significant that only the dialogue between the little dead child in heaven and its mourning parents on earth was reprinted. It is the only text that comes close to the experience most German settlers suffered as parents in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its remarkable three reprintings support the thesis of this study that there is a direct relationship between the accuracy of printers’ perception of the social reality in which their customers lived and the willingness of the customers to purchase the printers’ products. Conversely, the dialogues between Death and a nobleman and noblewoman reflected a social image far removed from the German settlers’ way of life in North America. The last group of broadsides describes Christian virtues as part of an ideal pious, Christian lifestyle. Some of these concentrate on but one virtue, such as agape, meekness and humility, poverty, patience, or modesty.139 These virtues are contrasted with worldly vices, such as wealth,140 ‘‘Standesbewußtsein’’ (status consciousness),141 worldly wisdom,142 beauty,143 youthfulness,144 or lust.145 This catalogue of virtues and vices holds few surprises for those familiar with the many guides on how to live a Christian life that were printed in both Europe and America.146 Yet its particular composition links these values to the life experience of the German settlers. The positive values echo those of the house blessings,147 the social reality of the settlers, and views of radical Pietism, while the vices suggest an economic status held by only a fraction of German settlers but by many of the richer members of the Society of Friends and of other English churches. Including such texts in the family’s daily devotions meant that everyone was reminded of his Christian duty within the circle of the pious as well as within the larger worldly society. At the same time, those who adopted these virtues separated themselves from the multitude that had chosen the broad path to hell and associated themselves with those who climbed the narrow path to Zion. Such a process tended to reaffirm the sense of separateness between English and German settlers.

Textual Images and Images as Text: Inspiration as Revelation A number of broadsides use images to describe these choices and their social consequences in graphic detail. They belong to a set that combines illustrations and text. By linking design and figurative messages with texts, these broadsides represent a new dimension in religious intensity. At the same time, they transcend the ordinary house devotion: not only do they illustrate particular religious messages—the Cross, the narrow and broad paths to eternity, the imminent coming of Christ—but they invite the owner of the broadside to study its various features intensely. Some of these broadsides are so complex, in fact, that they probably required considerable time and the

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joint efforts of the whole family to decipher images and texts and interpret their meanings. Table 16 shows five thematic groups. The first group contains broadsides published over the whole time period discussed in this book. The first two, Der Sieg ist hoch vom Himmel her (1765) and Seht doch am Creutzes-Holtz (1747),148 proclaim God’s descent from heaven to destroy the ‘‘bo¨sen Rott’’ (evil horde) as evidence of ‘‘die letzte Stunde’’ (the last hour), the coming of Christ’s kingdom. The second also describes in awful detail Jesus’s sufferings on the Cross as a vivid illustration of how he paid for the sins of mankind. Der Sieg ist hoch vom Himmel her, printed at Ephrata, is shaped like a simple Greek column. The first three lines, which form the capital, announce that victory will come from on high when God will fight our wars. The text in the shaft describes the awful events that will end in the destruction of ‘‘Lucifer with his whole sinful army’’ in the last three lines of the column that form the base.149 The plinths on which the base rests consist of two blocks of citations from Revelation 2:18–19, in which John describes the signs by which the time of Christ’s coming will be evident. Graphic design and message correspond with each other: at the top the text reads, ‘‘Victory comes from high heaven’’ and at the bottom, ‘‘Lucifer with his whole army of sins’’ is destroyed and old Adam’s building collapsed.150 The whole construction rests squarely on citations from Revelation that proclaim the last hour, the coming of Christ, as the end of all times. Seht doch am Creutzes-Holtz (fig. 27) is graphically more sophisticated.151 The basic shape is simple: a Cross rests on a base much larger than that in the earlier broadside. The main text, printed on the crossbeams, asks the reader to view the crucified Christ, who by his sufferings paid for the viewer’s sins and will absolve him from them after he has justly acknowledged them in ‘‘wahrer Buß’’ (true penance). Along the outer lines of the upper part of the Cross, the text tells the reader to view the seven phrases Jesus uttered during his sufferings. These phrases are printed in rays that radiate down from the crossbeam. Within the lower shaft are printed the first words of one of the oldest Protestant hymns, ‘‘O Lamm Gottes unschuldig am Stamm des Creutzes geschlachtet.’’152 On the bottom of the Cross and on top of the base the phrase ‘‘Dein Creutz laß seyn mein Wanderstab’’ (Let your Cross be my walking stick) marks the transition from the suffering Christ on the Cross to Jesus as the personal Savior of the true believer; this is the theme that holds the texts on the base of the Cross together. Table 16 Five thematic groups Thematic groups

Thematic broadsides

Editions

6 2 3 3 4 18

20 5 7 6 6 44

Textual images Pictorial stories of the lives of Joseph and Jesus Broad and narrow paths and stages of life Christ’s kingdom and Judgment Day Jesus’s baptism, joyeuse entre´e into Jerusalem, and crucifixion Total

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Figure 27 Seht doch am Creutzes-Holtz nur euren JESUM an, Er hat ja eure Schuld bezahlt und abgethan (n.p., 1747). Photo: author.

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Typographically, the Cross is carried by the sentence, printed in large letters, ‘‘Believers should call Jesus their own Redeemer.’’153 Circling a crown of thistles at the center of the base are three texts that repeat with increasing intensity the message that Jesus died for us and our sins, as the quotation from Isaiah 53:4–5 asserts. The last texts within the pedestal, set in very small type, speak of the nothingness of the sinner who will tumble at Jesus’s feet and melt like wax in his glowing love.154 Cross and base are linked by the text that asks the reader to view the suffering Jesus on the Cross, who has paid for the viewers’ sins if they are confessed in true penance, after which (and this, the key phrase, appears in large print) he should call Jesus his own Savior. The two parts of the image are intimately linked: the text in the Cross narrates the suffering of Christ and its meaning for mankind, while the lower part applies the message of the Cross to the individual reader’s life and salvation. It culminates in the reader’s collapse at the feet of Jesus, where he utters the desire to become one with him. The two parts are attached to each other by the text that headlines the base and by the message in large letters directly below the base that Jesus should be called ‘‘euren Heiland’’ (your Redeemer). Thus, the image’s dynamics filter from top to bottom, from the Crucifixion to the salvation of the sinner and his desired merger with Jesus. Both broadsides skillfully blend graphic design and text, both require careful study, and both invite the reader to ponder the messages and how they relate to her or him personally. They invite communal discussion and joint exploration in the house devotions or religious bonding (‘‘Erbauungsstunden’’) that were common practice in radical Pietist circles. This interpretation would fit the origins of the broadsides: Ephrata was the only monastic community in the American colonies, and Christoph Saur was not only a printer but a member of the ‘‘Inspirierten Gemeinde,’’ a religious community out of which the Church of the Brethren eventually emerged. The third broadside, Geistlicher Irrgarten mit Vier Gnadenbrunnen,155 first issued by Henrich Miller in Philadelphia in 1762 ‘‘in the year after the redemption from the maze and the opening of the heavenly gate,’’156 was the most popular broadside to combine devotional text with graphic design; it was reprinted thirteen times through 1830. The main body of the broadside recounts the history of mankind from the creation and the fall of Adam to man’s salvation through Christ’s suffering and death on the Cross. This text is divided into four squares or ‘‘Gnadenbrunnen.’’ At the center of these the author has set the places of the biblical references, each marked individually by letters that link them to the sentence in which the biblical passages are recalled. In reading the text, one has to continuously turn the broadside around the squares. However, the texts change directions at each end of the line. In order to retrace the difficulties of the maze, the reader must continuously search for the continuation of the text. The complex religious design of the text was, it seems, not copied from Europe but probably developed in North America, as we were unable to find any European broadsides or publications that resemble it. European publications use the term ‘‘Irrgarten’’ in a sense that recalls the social function of baroque parks designed as mazes, in which a gentleman lover and his lady could get lost and find themselves in cheerful lust.157

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Miller, on the other hand, associates the term with the troubles of the world, in this case the troubles associated with the French and Indian War, which had just been concluded in North America with the conquest of Montreal and French Canada. His design is meant, as he points out in his introductory text, to resemble the four Gnadenbrunnen (springs of grace). First are the four rivers of paradise and the happiness of mankind before the Fall; second, the reversed readings indicate the worries and hardships of our lives; third, in the same sense in which water originates from the ocean and returns to it again, humankind is born of clay and returns to clay again. The Christian, however, should sacrifice his soul in daily penance until it returns to its creator and merges again with God. The fourth Gnadenbrunnen shows how mankind is seduced by Satan, who so corrupted human nature that men and women wander like stray sheep until God through his laws and his Holy Spirit helps them to find the way to Christ as their salvation. In reading the broadside, the reader has to unravel the text as a continuous narrative, experiencing the vagaries, irritations, and sense of loss that life brings, until he finally arrives at the end of his journey. End and beginning, Miller states, are the same if the sinner accepts God’s guidance through the maze of life. The complex structure of the argument and the textual arrangements suggest that this broadside was meant for meditation and contemplation by the whole family. It breaches the borderline between playing together—unraveling the mysteries of the text, finding the corresponding and continuing lines, and so on—and devotion and invites the participants to share with each other their religious discoveries within the maze. The second group, ‘‘Pictorial stories of the lives of Joseph and Jesus,’’ is represented by two broadsides, Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨ dern (plate 6) and Der Him[m]el ist mein Stuhl und die Erde meiner Fu¨se Schemel.158 The first is part of a larger body of broadsides that focus on or use the story of Joseph, his being sold into slavery in Egypt, and his gracious behavior toward his evil brothers. We have repeatedly referred to the importance of the Joseph theme in the broadsides, and this is the place to discuss it in greater detail. In nineteenth-century Germany few literary texts treated the theme of Joseph and his brethren, and it was not much more popular in the twentieth century, with the notable exception of Thomas Mann’s massive novel Joseph und seine Bru¨der, first published between 1933 and 1943.159 The situation was similar in the English-speaking world.160 Nor was the subject very popular with music composers: George Frideric Handel touched upon it in his oratorio Israel in Egypt, but few followed his example.161 Thus, the five German broadsides listed in table B.16, which together went through sixteen editions, most in the nineteenth century, seem to reflect a particular interest of German settlers in this theme. The broadsides fall into three categories (table B.16). The largest of these is the text entitled Joseph und seine Bru¨der, which was also printed, nine times in all, under the title Joseph’s Lied as well as in Ein Joseph Lied and Das Joseph Lied. The song, which was closely modeled on an English poem, On Joseph’s making himself known to his

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Brethren, has eight verses. The first three relate the vile actions of Joseph’s brothers, Joseph’s rapid ascent in Egypt, his invitation of his brothers to his house, and their worry that Joseph remembered what they had done and was seeking revenge. The next four verses equate the concerns, anxieties, and troubled consciences of the brothers with those of all sinners and suggest that sinners turn to Jesus. The brothers confess their sins and troubles to him, but he refuses to accept their confessions. Instead he asks them to turn to Jesus, who was vilified, lampooned, ridiculed, and finally crucified. Blood ran from his wounds to provide healing balm for the hurt in the world. Those who approach Jesus should remember that he suffered for their sake and that in return he expected nothing but their love for him. If they acknowledge him, the seventh verse concludes, he will absolve them from their sins. The eighth and final verse links both Joseph’s feeding of his famished brothers in Egypt and salvation through Jesus. It states that those saved should go out and proclaim that there was still bread in the land of blessed silence and the shining city of Jerusalem, where everything has been prepared by Jesus: crown, honor, and eternal bliss. The comparison of Joseph und seine Bru¨der with another broadside, Joseph in A¨gypten, reveals the reason why the former was so often reprinted and the latter printed only once. Joseph in A¨gypten relates in eight verses the story of how Joseph was captured by his brothers; sold to slave traders who took him to Egypt, where he interpreted the king’s nightmares; and was taken into the king’s household and finally elevated to the position of viceroy, touring the country in a wagon on golden wheels. The last verse relates that famine raged in Sichem (Shechem), where Joseph’s father, Jacob, lived. Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to escape starvation and finally came to Egypt too, where he found ‘‘Joseph his son.’’ There the poem ends. It is a straightforward story written in fairly elegant verses. One difference between it and Joseph und seine Bru¨der is that it lacks a moral. Another difference is more important: in Joseph und seine Bru¨der, Joseph’s story becomes a parable in which the brothers of Joseph are equated with the sinners of this world, who should turn to Jesus as their Savior in the same way in which the brothers turned to Joseph, who saved them from starvation. Implicit in this moral is that both Joseph and Jesus do not seek revenge for past misdeeds but require only that their goodness and love be acknowledged and accepted. The German settlers were not interested in the fate of Joseph as such, but bought Joseph und seine Bru¨der because it provided spiritual nourishment and encouraged sinners to emulate Joseph’s brothers and turn to Jesus. The broadside promised forgiveness and saving grace, while Joseph in A¨gypten left the reader alone with his spiritual worries. The broadside Der barmherzige Heiland im Vorbilde Josephs (The merciful Jesus as in the archetypical Joseph) reinforces this conclusion. Its text is word-for-word identical with that of Joseph und seine Bru¨der. It was probably first printed around 1830, and the second edition some years later. The meaning of the parable is incorporated into the title of the broadside, suggesting that the printer had arrived at the same conclusion we have: that customers preferred a broadside with a clear and explicit moral in accord

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with their highly Pietistic and Christian expectations. The printer obliged by improving the packaging of his product to match his customers’ expectations. As other broadsides show, this finding does indicate that the potential purchasers were able to appreciate a good story when they got one. The broadside Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern is a good example for two reasons: it is a straightforward narrative, but it went through four editions. The reason seems to be that it copied the tradition of the European picture Bibles, or biblia pauperum, which illustrated the text with pictures a person could easily understand, enabling them to grasp the meaning of an important biblical story. The broadside tells the story of Joseph’s misery, recovery, and rise to power and glory in fifteen verses, each verse accompanied by what we believe to be a woodcut that interprets and illustrates it. Since there seem to be no broadsides of this kind from any German-speaking country in Europe, the printer Gustav S. Peters in Harrisburg was most likely inspired by English examples. The most likely candidate is the anonymously published History of Joseph and his Brethren, first published in London between 1735 and 1756 and reprinted a number of times. The last reprint listed in the English Short Title Catalogue was issued in Newcastle around 1780. There are no records of an American printing that Peters could have used. Of the four editions, three are printed in black-and-white162 and one is handcolored.163 Whether they were part of Peters’s experiment with color printing is unclear. The most likely English publication Peters used as a model contains two woodcuts that at least partially resemble some key features of the Peters broadside. Figures 28 and 29 demonstrate that the two groups of sun, stars, and moon contain remarkable similarities. The comparison makes another feature clear: Peters clearly did not use the blocks from the English broadside, and his images are more elegant and of a much higher quality. Indeed, Peters himself issued an English edition, which suggests that the design and layout of this broadside were his own creation. That may have been true for the text as well. The word ‘‘prison’’ in the sixth verse of the German version certainly suggests that the text was either translated from an English publication or written in North America. Of the four editions the colored one is clearly the most attractive (see plate 6). It uses four colors, of which red is the most prominent. Surprisingly, this color is not reserved for the central figures in the images: in the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth image the figure of Joseph is painted red, while in the other pictures the color is either used arbitrarily (images no. 9, 10, 13) or highlights the figure of Joseph’s father, Jacob (images no. 11, 12, 14, 15). The liveliness of the pictures is partly due to the fact that in most of them people gesture or move about. They are shown in two different sorts of settings: in open country that resembles features of Pennsylvania, and in palaces in which Pharaoh, and later Joseph, lived. The palaces contain thrones and arched columns vaguely reminiscent of Greek architecture, while the landscapes always have trees and meadows. In the first image Joseph sits next to a wheat shock, which reflects the main content of his dream. Of particular significance is the illustration of

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Figure 28 ‘‘Joseph’s Second Dream.’’ From The History of Joseph and His Brethren: With Jacob’s journey into Egypt. And his death and funeral. Illustrated with twelve pictures, describing the whole history (London: Sold in Bow-Church-Yard, ca. 1735–56), 5.

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Figure 29 Detail of Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, 1830). Used by permission of the Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia.

the attempted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife: Joseph flees from the lusty woman, who vainly holds onto his cloak. Her evil, lecherous intentions are indicated by her sitting bare-bosomed in a bed. In the hand-colored version the drama is highlighted by Joseph being colored red while the woman’s naked upper body is painted flesh color. As noted above, Potiphar’s wife is one of the very few bare-bosomed women in German-American broadsides in the period before 1830, the others being the Eves in the Adam and Eve broadsides and the lecherous woman in the broadside Das Leben und Alter der Menschen.164 All this explains the attractiveness of the broadside. But does it explain the number of editions? Some features are puzzling. First of all, the story it tells is surprisingly inconclusive. Its title suggests that it narrates the life and wonders of Joseph, the son of Jacob, later one of the most powerful men in Egypt. This promise is fulfilled in the

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first ten verses. Yet then suddenly Joseph recedes into the background and Jacob moves center stage.165 He arrives in Egypt at the invitation of his son, is visited later by Joseph, then blesses his many sons, who had been reconciled to Joseph. The second-to-last verse describes Joseph’s affection for his father, and the last verse recounts Jacob’s death and laments the demise of a virtuous man who, the last line states, could well serve as an example to the reader. In a setting in which devotional broadsides with highly charged Pietistic contents usually fared much better than dry renderings of stories, such as Joseph in A¨gypten, the success of Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern requires a further explanation. Clearly the broadside would not satisfy those who were looking for spiritual consolation and uplifting, edifying experiences. Die Historie’s attractions lay elsewhere: its images and easily digestible rhymed verses would make it interesting and entertaining reading and were ideally suited to teach key lessons of the Bible to young people. The broadside was thus likely addressed, as we have pointed out already,166 to parents who may have used it in their discussions with their children about the Bible and its messages of forgiveness, generosity, love of parents, and forgiveness instead of revenge. While we have no proof of such discussions within a family context in German families in North America, the wife of a Swabian clergyman at that time, Beate Hahn Paulus, repeatedly mentions such discussions with her children.167 The second broadside in this group is represented by Der Him[m]el ist mein Stuhl und die Erde meiner Fu¨se Schemel (plate 14), which was published by the Ephrata Community in 1786. The title is a quotation from Isaiah 66:1 or Acts 7:49. The broadside tells the story of Jesus’s life. The contrast between this colored print and Joseph und seine Bru¨der could not be starker. While the latter is polished and elegant, with sharply drawn illustrations and neatly printed verses that lack a strong Pietistic moral, in this the text is somewhat arbitrarily dispersed over the whole sheet, with illustrations that display the naı¨ve simplicity of children’s drawings. Joseph und seine Bru¨der conveys the impression of order, Der Him[m]el ist mein Stuhl not of chaos but of arranged disorder. The broadside tells the story of Jesus, his birth in Bethlehem, the visit of the three kings, and his circumcision in the temple of Jerusalem, then moves swiftly to the events of Holy Week with Christ’s crucifixion, his resurrection and ascension to heaven, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, and finally the feast of the Holy Trinity. The key biographical stations are all embellished with illustrations and explanatory texts. The only exception is the illustration at the upper right side, which shows an angel holding a sword upright who guards the entrance to what we take to be the New Jerusalem since the image lacks explanatory remarks. Nearby a separate text explains that those who conquer their sins will sit eternally next to Christ on the throne. The lower part of the broadside describes the relationship between the believer and Jesus, what Jesus did in order to save mankind, and how he finally ascended to heaven, to be followed by all who have dedicated their lives to him. Throughout the broadside appropriate quotations from the Bible reinforce the story. On the bottom line, in large letters, is a

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quotation from Revelation 20:6: ‘‘Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death hath no power.’’168 The images in this broadside, although they suggest great naı¨vete´ , purposefully reduce the message to the bare essentials and key biblical assertions. The birth of Jesus is signified by a stylized puppet in a rectangle, a crudely drawn cradle, to which an ox is tied. The circumcision is shown by a humble Joseph and a towering priest with the child on his lap. Both there as well as in the cradle the child is wrapped in linen, which contemporaries probably linked to the linen in which Jesus was wrapped after he was taken down from the Cross.169 The most stylized image is reserved for the Crucifixion: three crosses with texts that identify Christ (see fig. 30). To the left is a couple, possibly Mary and Joseph, and to the right are two men with what looks like crosiers and wearing the same hats as the three kings. The broadside has to be read on two levels. The biography of Christ in the upper part moves left to right from the baby and the ox to the angel with a sword; the poem in the lower part also reads from left to the right as a kind of re´sume´ of the story. It begins with Holy Thursday and ends with the assurance that the righteous will sit at Christ’s throne. Why would the Ephrata Community, in which the cloister, after Beissel’s death, had become a monastic community, produce such a naı¨ve and simple broadside? The community was obviously unaware of the elaborate medieval iconography associated with these biblical quotations.170 To whom would it appeal, and what use would the customer make of it? Would it not have been simpler to print a straightforward, highly Pietistic text with one central illustration—Christ on the Cross comes to mind—which would have been easier and probably less costly to produce? It could be that the broadside was directed at parents, who were expected to use it to teach the central Christian message to their children. The naı¨ve images would allow the children to identify with the text and the central points in the life of Jesus as well as to associate the images with figures they could draw for themselves. The meandering texts, which sometimes require

Figure 30 Detail of Der Him[m]el ist mein Stuhl (plate 14).

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the broadside to be turned upside down or sideways, would have added a playful element to the didactic religious exercises. At the same time, the texts in the lower part would provide the parents with the proper interpretation to help them educate their children in the spirit of their Pietistic faith. In short, we consider this a family-focused production that rather intelligently extended house devotions into the educational sphere. Whatever the market expectations of the Ephrata Community were (if it is appropriate to use such a term in connection with the Brethren), they were disappointed. While the Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern went through four editions, Der Him[m]el ist mein Stuhl was never reprinted. Evidently the assumptions we ascribed to the producers of the broadside were not shared by its potential buyers. The four broadsides with large illustrations should also be classified as didactic texts, with one possible exception. They all illustrate key scenes from the Bible. Christi Taufe im Jordan, Lu[cas]. 3, 21 refers to Jesus, who ‘‘loves us as children.’’ The poem relates the baptism of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and ends with the admonition to trust Jesus, who died on the Cross and thus earned eternal happiness for the reader. Die Kreuzigung Christi and Jesus Christus stirbt fu¨r unsere Su¨nden are made up of illustrations with a few appropriate biblical quotations. The exception is Christi Einzug in Jerusalem, which lacks any text and can be seen as a purely decorative piece rather than a didactic one. Didactic purposes, on the other hand, dominate Jesus Christus stirbt fu¨r unsere Su¨nden. It depicts the three crosses on which Jesus and the two thieves were crucified; the persons mentioned in the Bible stand under Jesus’s cross, with Mary Magdalene kneeling, while the soldier pierces his side. The individual figures are labeled, which facilitates understanding the picture; of the four broadsides this is the only one with such labels. It also contains a number of elements, such as the cock, the city of Jerusalem, and a person labeled ‘‘Erzfeinde Christi’’ (archenemy of Christ), that could be used for opening discussions about key features of Christianity. Above the cross with the ‘‘gute Mo¨rderer’’ (good murderer) a sun smiles, while above the ‘‘bo¨se Mo¨rder’’ (evil murderer) the sun is darkened and grim. The little descriptive text under the picture repeats the educational message: Jesus was crucified with two murderers and had his side opened by a soldier ‘‘zur Busse und zur Tilgung unserer Su¨nden’’ (in order to do penance for us and redeem our sins). The reader may wonder whether the term ‘‘house devotion’’ can really include didactic conversations between parents and children. In chapter 2 we touched on the role of Christian teachings in the education of children;171 would it be more appropriate to discuss these didactic conversations there? In that chapter as well as in this one it becomes clear that contemporaries did not consider it possible to define the contours of house devotion clearly. Theological discussions of house devotions in Germany, as well as the tenor of the texts of house blessings, for instance, make it evident that meditation and any kind of talk about religious matters between friends or members of the same household were aspects of house devotion. August Hermann Niemeyer pointed out in his treatise Timotheus, ‘‘In the midst of our daily activities we can focus for a couple of minutes completely on our God . . . and then we are truly devout

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without anyone else noticing. . . . Where true devotion is, the soul is quiet. The furor of emotions makes no allowance for the quietness to seek the Lord or to lift any emotion to that height that has no particular material value and does not leave any recognizable trace.’’172 Indeed, most contemporary authors agreed with Cotton Mather and German Pietists that one of the important tasks of parents was to engage their children in conversations about key tenets of Christianity.173 Most of the broadsides discussed here stressed this message as well. In Das fromme Ma¨gdlein the mother is described as having taught her daughter ‘‘what is well done and what is just by which mankind is prepared for eternal life.’’174 The printer Peter Montelius was more explicit. In his broadside Jesus segnet Kleine, Kinder he directly admonishes the parents, ‘‘You parents! Bring your children early to Jesus and do not just be satisfied with them being baptized. Pray with them daily. Talk with them as soon as they are understanding about Jesus who loves mankind and is friendly, educate them in the fear of the Lord . . . make sure that they will receive his blessings.’’175 In another broadside Montelius expresses his astonishment that Christian parents sometimes forgot to teach their children the Ten Commandments and the Pater Noster by heart.176 And in a heavenly letter most likely printed around 1815 in Hanover, Pennsylvania, the father of the family is exhorted to educate his children and to be an example to them in the way he lives.177 Conversations between parents and children about the key tenets of Christianity were part of the canon of parental duties. Using broadsides in this effort was natural. Other broadsides with the same message were specifically produced for use in the schools.178 The fourth thematic group, ‘‘Christ’s kingdom and Judgment Day,’’179 contains three remarkable broadsides that combine texts on the coming of Christ with illustrations that emphasize the message of the text. Their existence testifies to the printers’ as well as the customers’ millenarian expectations. We will discuss these broadsides in the order they were published in North America: Eine Vorstellung von Begebenheiten (fig. 31) was published in two editions in 1794, Ich sahe ein Lamm stehen oben auf dem Berge Zion was published in two editions between 1800/1809 and 1820, and Auf Befehl von dem Ko¨nig der Ko¨nige was published in two editions in 1829/30.180 Most German settlers in the Middle Atlantic region would immediately have recognized the message of the broadside Eine Vorstellung von Begebenheiten. In the words of signs carried in recent decades through London’s streets, the broadside announced that ‘‘the end of the world is at hand’’—or almost at hand. The broadside has two related graphic sections. The first represents a biblical chronology in line with the writings of Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752) and Johann Michael Hahn. The second illustrates John’s vision in Revelation: ‘‘and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

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Figure 31 Eine Vorstellung von Begebenheiten, welche sich auf die Kirche GOttes und die Welt beziehet, durch emblematische Figuren . . . ([Philadelphia: Samuel Saur, 1794?]). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

And upon her forehead was a name written, mystery, babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.’’181 Captions explain each picture. The chronology is divided into four distinct ‘‘Begebenheiten’’ (events). The first occurs in 2347 b.c., when God concluded his covenant with Noah; second is the conclusion of God’s covenant with Abraham in 1921 b.c.; the third occurs in 1491 b.c., when God handed down his laws and ‘‘Israel zu einem priesterlichen Ko¨nigreich bestimmt wurden’’ (Israel was destined to become a kingdom of priests); the fourth is the crucifixion of Christ in 33 a.d.182 Neither the text nor the chronology dates events five and six precisely. The fifth event is placed in the fifteenth century, which would signify the Reformation, and the sixth is placed in the twentieth century. Rather cryptically, the explanation of the chronology ends, ‘‘This is followed by the breaking of the seals and the sounding of the trumpets, which are here represented in their mathematical proportions. How far these mathematical proportions resemble the events which they represent is left to the judgment of every honest and rational man who examines this matter unbiasedly.’’183 The lower image shows a seven-headed dragon with a rather featureless woman sitting on it. She holds a cup in her right hand—no doubt the ‘‘golden cup’’ John mentions. After the dragon there is another, much smaller monster, representing ‘‘the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition’’ (Revelation 17:11). The most remarkable features of this broadside are not the pictorial representations of the chronology of sacred history, nor the translation into an image of John’s vision

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of the Whore of Babylon, but the impersonal, detached, and rational rhetoric of the texts. This broadside recounts for the pious reader and potential owner one of the most crucial events of Christianity in language that allows only one query: what is the date of the last battle and the final reckoning on Judgment Day? It does not include urgent demands that the reader do penance and turn to Christ, and thus make sure that he will be counted among those who will live eternally in the new Zion. Neither does it include a moving description of the pains and temptations suffered by Christ, nor of the joys of eternal life near God and Jesus of those who take the narrow path, nor of the horrors and tortures which the unfortunate unregenerate sinners eternally suffer in hell. Instead, the broadside simply states that there is a beginning and an end for every life and that these are marked by a clearly definable beginning and the certainty of an end that will come probably sooner than later—the rational and understanding purchaser can decide the accuracy of its ‘‘mathematical proportions.’’ In other words, it is the product of a world in which history is the rational history of Christian salvation, which is without any doubt a natural part of the worldview of those whom the printers considered their potential customers. Those who harbored doubts about their belief and craved solace in times of temptation clearly would not be attracted to such a broadside. Neither in North America nor in Europe have we found any earlier broadsides that describe John’s vision in Revelation 17 in similar terms and images. It is thus at least possible that the printer, in partnership with a graphic artist, produced this image purely for the German market in North America. Printer and engraver were certainly aware of various competing chronological systems to determine the date of the final coming of Christ, but, not wanting to lose any customers, the printer opted for a solution that was acceptable to all potential purchasers. Those who subscribed to Bengel’s envisioned date of 1836 for the end of the world would have felt as comfortable with the broadside as those who subscribed to Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling’s (1740– 1817) date of 1816.184 Nevertheless, the broadside was but a mild market success, being reprinted only once. This most likely indicates not that only a few German settlers were convinced of the imminent coming of Christ, but the simple fact that they were able to choose in their lifetimes between three large broadsides whose messages were at least very similar. The second of these, Ich sahe ein Lamm stehen oben auf dem Berge Zion (plate 15), clearly conveys the same message as Eine Vorstellung von Begebenheiten. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek owns a broadside that is identical with this one except that the size and the border ornaments differ. The close resemblance suggests that there may have been more exchange of broadsides between Germany and the United States than we have thought.185 Yet from the perspective of the German settler it was of little relevance whether the broadside came from Germany or North America, as long as the price was the same and the message appealed to his concerns. The broadside is addressed only to the converted who are walking the steep and narrow path to the New Jerusalem, as the explanation makes clear. Under the main text, two blocks of texts inform the reader/purchaser that none will be allowed to climb

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that path but those who have done penance and thus are ‘‘gerecht in des theuren Lammes Blute’’ (justified in the dear Lamb’s blood). The design is simple: Christ stands above two hills with emblems on either side of him. The two verses within the hills are essentially encouragements to believers not to slow down, relent, or hesitate but to continue in their efforts to reach the top of the hill and view ‘‘den hellen Thron’’ (the shining throne) of Christ. Visually this message is contained in the verses, which have to be read from the bottom up to the top of the hill. The hills are covered with plants, grass, and bushes. Where they meet, two trees grow out of the cleft. Where the trees join, they form a single trunk, which is cut off into a stump, probably an indication of the tree of life,186 on which rests a bowl on which Christ stands. From his hands and feet as well as his side ‘‘quillt das Lebenswasser’’ (gushes the water of life). For those who knew their Bible, the text refers to Revelation 7:17 and 14:1 and Hebrews 12:22, each one a significant pointer to the arrival of the saved in the New Jerusalem. They are with Jesus, who stands ‘‘on the mount Sion and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads.’’ The remarkable properties of this broadside become clearer in comparison with Eine Vorstellung von Begebenheiten. While the latter is written in almost neutral and detached language and precludes any doubts and uncertainties by resting on the unquestioned assurance that the final judgment will come, this one speaks directly and emotionally to the religious concerns of the pious. It retraces the worries and agonies of the few who after penance have decided to climb the narrow, steep, and stony path to eternal life—a symbol for the tempestuous irritations of life—and need continuous encouragement and edification. Thus, at the center of Ich sahe ein Lamm is the spring that nourishes the thirsty, while the emblems to the left and right pronounce that the ‘‘Lamb is arrived’’ and simply ‘‘Victory’’; on the left and right edges at the top of the hill, quotations from 1 Corinthians 2:9 and Psalm 121:1–2 direct the readers to lift their eyes upwards to the mountains, from which help will arrive in time from God, who created heaven and earth. Potential customers who were troubled about whether they had chosen the right path or who had suffered from the temptations and hardships of an arduous life were thus assured that their efforts had not been in vain. They would be rewarded with the highest prize one who was redeemed could think of: to live in the presence of Christ for eternity. The third broadside, Auf Befehl von dem Ko¨nig der Ko¨nige (fig. 32),187 adds another important facet to the pictorial and textual representation of the creation of the kingdom of God. The broadside’s structure is fairly simple: under the title is a large picture. On the left side the few redeemed climb up the steep path to ‘‘Das Neue Jerusalem’’ (the New Jerusalem). Precisely in the middle, close to the top, sits Jesus enthroned in light and circled by rays. Directly under him hover three angels. Two of them play four trumpets, while the third holds a sword and is descending to earth. In the lower part of the picture is a cemetery with open graves, out of which two different kinds of people climb. The one kind is helped by angels; these are the redeemed. Devils are busily dragging the large majority, the condemned, to the lower right corner, where

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Figure 32 Auf Befehl von dem Ko¨nig der Ko¨nige . . . das Weltgericht oder der Ju¨ngste Tag (Harrisburg, Pa.: Gustav S. Peters, n.d.). Courtesy of the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center, Pennsburg, Pennsylvania.

they wait in packed formation to be pushed into hellfire. In the midst of the cemetery, another angel holds a book, which probably lists the condemned and the redeemed. The graphic details of hell, with its huge flames and devils pushing the condemned over the threshold, are matched by the simple and plain depiction of the redeemed as they climb the narrow path. At the gate an angel holds a halo over the head of the first who is about to enter the New Jerusalem. This heavenly city is designed in the form of a large and spacious court with houses to the left and right, overshadowed by a tree with apples, symbolizing the tree of life. While the picture does not seem to have any predecessors,188 the title and the text in the lower part of the broadside are translated from an English original by Rowland Hill (1744–1833), an Anglican preacher with strong Methodist leanings.189 According to a handwritten note on the English broadside, it was to be ‘‘posted by the side of the Richmond-Play bills on Saturday June 4, 1774.’’ The text indeed imitates a playbill. It announces the performance ‘‘at the Theatre of the Universe, on the Eve of Time,’’ where ‘‘will be performed, The Great Assize, or Day of Judgment.’’ The broadside seems to have been reprinted in London twice in the same year and then again in 1777 and 1790. From London it migrated to North America, where Alden Spooner (1757– 1827) of Windsor, Vermont, reprinted it in 1789, and Thomas Kirk (1772–1851?) of New

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York published it around 1798 and sold it for six pence.190 All these versions lacked the illustration; the German broadside, on the other hand, is for the most part an accurate translation of the English original and combines text and illustration. Thus, our original guess that the illustration is peculiar to the German broadside seems to be confirmed. The text is one of the most sophisticated descriptions of Judgment Day. Written as a theater program, it begins by noting that the structural design of the theater ‘‘consist[s] of Pit and Gallery only; and contrary to all others, the Gallery is fitted up for the Reception of the People of high (or heavenly) Birth, and the Pit for those of low (or earthly) Rank.’’ Entrance to both is sternly controlled, with the door to the Gallery ‘‘being very narrow and the Steps up to . . . somewhat difficult,’’ while of course the doors to the Pit are wide and commodious. In short, the setting replicates the imagery of the narrow and wide paths to the New Jerusalem and to hell; at the same time, the scenery plays on the ‘‘upstairs–below stairs’’ theme, but turns it upside down: the rich and the sinners have their quarters below stairs, while the poor and pious few are quartered upstairs. This pattern holds true for the play itself. First this ‘‘Grand and Solemn Piece will be opened by an Arch-Angel, with the Trump of God.’’ The second act will consist of a ‘‘Procession of Saints in white, with Golden Harps,’’ while in the third act the ‘‘Unregenerate’’ will be assembled. The accompanying ‘‘Music will consist chiefly of Cries, accompanied by Weeping, Wailing, Mourning, Lamentation, and Woe.’’ The play will ‘‘conclude with an Oration by the son of God.’’191 Each phrase or sentence in this bill is annotated with the proper biblical quotation, which to potential purchasers would have lent it authenticity and legitimacy. At the same time, the broadside represents a veritable guide to the biblical sayings on and descriptions of the Day of Judgment. The fiction of the Day of Judgment as a play is maintained even in the description of the ticket sales: ‘‘Tickets for the Pit, at the easy Purchase of following the vain Pomps and Vanities of the fashionable World, and the Desires and Amusements of the Flesh: To be had at every flesh-pleasing Assembly. If ye live after the Flesh ye shall die, Rom. Viii, 13.’’ Tickets for the gallery, accordingly, will be sold ‘‘at no less Rate than being converted, Forsaking all, Denying Self, taking up the Cross, and following Christ in the Regeneration: To be had no where but in the Word of God, and where the Word appoints.’’ Again this is buttressed by a number of biblical references. The final note completes the imitation: ‘‘N.B. No Money will be taken at the Door, nor will any Tickets give Admittance into the Gallery, but those sealed by the Holy Ghost, with Immanuel’s Signet,’’ and once again biblical quotations fortify this concluding sentence. The most important deviation from the English version is in the attribution of authorship. As the editions printed in England state, the author was the clergyman Rowland Hill, who in his time was considered one of the most powerful preachers in England. The German text, however, states at the head, ‘‘The following was composed by the Honorable John Wesley from London in the year 1774 and was sent to the King of England at the time the Final Judgment Day was to be performed in the theatre. Since then this play has not been performed.’’192 We suspect the printer’s motive for

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this change of authorship was a desire to improve the credibility and legitimacy of the broadside. Hill simply was not known in America; the American editions of the English text do not mention any author. John Wesley (1703–1791), on the other hand, had been to North America and was known as the founding father of Methodism, one of the fastest expanding denominations in North America. Assigning the text to him meant courting the patronage of the increasing number of pious German Methodists. The printer, Gustav S. Peters of Harrisburg, was modestly successful with that strategy; the broadside was reprinted once.

Radical Broadsides and Print Culture The market mechanisms described in the previous sections do not quite fit the ones on which the analysis of the religious broadsides in this chapter is based. These mechanisms, except regarding the few broadsides related to the educational process, applied to broadsides of a secular nature. But while the secular broadsides were focused on specific worldly matters, the religious ones were all concerned with matters beyond this world. Thus, the goals of the secular broadsides are definite, concerned with material and factual matters, while those of the religious broadsides, such as Das neue Jerusalem (The New Jerusalem, plate 16), are indefinite, concerned with immaterial and transfactual matters.193 Secular broadsides focus on this life, while the religious broadsides are concerned with the afterlife and the final attainment of eternal happiness or final damnation. Secular broadsides imply choices that are not life-threatening, while religious broadsides’ only purpose is to define the way to and nature of life after life; for contemporaries the consequences were drastic and irrevocable. In a sense, the religious broadsides are based on the radical Pietists’ concept of the tripartite nature of Christian society, by which most people walk leisurely along the splendid highways of this world, which lead them to hell; a smaller group of people use a narrower road that first leads them gradually upwards until it gently turns and takes them too to hell. Finally, a small segment of society chooses the steep and narrow path that takes them to the New Jerusalem. The broadsides make it perfectly clear which of the three groups will attain eternal happiness: the small band of virtuous, ascetically inclined people who have accepted, so contemporaries would stress, the commands of Christ. To put it differently, the producers of these broadsides accepted the fact that the market for them was very small. The interests of the printers and the customers were identical. Choice was nonexistent; the message is what counted. These implications of the religious broadsides explain the different market mechanisms that form the underpinning of the analysis of this chapter. One qualification is necessary: these restrictions did not apply as stringently for the devotional broadsides discussed in the first two sections of this chapter, for which the market was much larger. As our analysis made clear, these broadsides, while religious in nature, lack the fervent eschatological element; the texts of, for example, Tersteegen

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addressed the concerns of pious church people as much as did the radical Pietists. But the customers for these broadsides, too, based the decision to acquire or read them on their emotional needs and not on cold logic and material factors. The house devotions of German settlers provided a market in broadsides for (1) texts suitable for general devotions in the house, (2) hymns and poems suitable for special occasions, (3) poems and songs dealing with life and death, (4) broadsides that focused on particular biblical verses or events, and (5) illustrated broadsides that translated key Christian tenets—redemption, the Last Judgment, the Christian way of life—into illustrations or depicted key biblical scenes like the Crucifixion or Christ entering Jerusalem. This assertion depends, however, on the assumption that printers and customers shared a common understanding of Christianity and communicated their needs either directly or through intermediaries,194 as well as on the assumption that it is possible to learn about this common understanding through a close analysis of the broadsides themselves. Implicitly, this method rejects the notion that printers published broadsides with no particular idea or expectation of profit in mind and that purchasers bought them just for fun. The analysis of the broadsides has suggested that radical Pietism flourished side by side with the First Great Awakening and remained vital during the Second Great Awakening. More importantly, the number of broadsides with eschatological messages indicates that eschatological expectations were shared by a surprisingly large number of German settlers. Eschatology spanned the Atlantic. More generally, the broadsides indicate that a respectable number of Germans were interested in texts that brought them edification, solace, and hope in difficult times. Surprisingly, the broadsides do not suggest any significant ties to English religious culture. Very few broadsides were copied from English broadsides, and even fewer contained any reference to English-speaking denominations. This of course does not mean that piety was not omnipresent in English households. Rather, our conclusion is based on the simple fact that there are very few English broadsides with religious contents; this could be explained by the fact that English settlers, at least the Anglicans, may have used the Book of Common Prayer and the numerous collections of sermons for their home devotions. Up to now our analysis has indicated that the German and English religious cultures lived side by side without any visible links. Whether this means that German members of the Methodist and other new English churches were incorporated into their new religious cultures is unclear. There are at least no clearly identifiable Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian German broadsides that would suggest a different conclusion. Describing the German religious culture as distinct would, on the other hand, agree well with the results of our analysis of political and economic broadsides.

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Approaches to German-American Politics The discussion about Germans in the Middle Atlantic colonies and states has been largely shaped by the scholarship on acculturation of the German settlers to the dominant English political culture. The narrative is simple: after Germans began to arrive in the 1730s in ever larger numbers, English observers viewed the process with increasing concern. This concern triggered a debate in the late 1740s and early 1750s about the Germans’ allegiance and their inability to participate satisfactorily in the political decision-making process, and the danger that both their problematic allegiance and their lack of familiarity with English political and cultural values would put the colonies at risk. When America was embroiled in an imperial struggle with Catholic France, colonial politicians like Benjamin Franklin were worried about Germans. Schemes were formulated in both England and Pennsylvania to found charity schools that would in the end turn Pennsylvania into a bilingual society or, if that goal was unattainable, restore the monolingual English cultural and political paradise the English colonies had been before the arrival of the Germans.1 The events of the French and Indian War would change the argument. In the frontier regions, German, Irish, and Scottish settlers bore the brunt of the Indian attacks; the captivity tale of Marie Le Roy and Barbara Leininger made it clear that German settlers made up a large part of those who were taken prisoners or slaughtered in Indian raids.2 The unfailing allegiance of the German settlers and the blood toll they paid between 1755 and 1760 and once more during Pontiac’s Uprising between 1763 and 1766 quieted English xenophobic anxieties. When William Penn’s colony experienced the next and before 1775 the most serious political crisis, the position of Germans in Pennsylvania politics had changed.3 Germans were no longer seen as a potential danger to the colony or a disturbing factor within English political culture. Instead, German

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ethnic peculiarities were now accepted and the German settlers were courted as an important segment of Pennsylvania society.4 Historians have described the German settlers as a linguistic and cultural minority in search of themselves. Hanging on to the essential features of their ethnicity—language, lifestyle, religion—well into the nineteenth century they remained ‘‘foreigners in their own land,’’ to quote the title of Steven M. Nolt’s important study.5 Much can be said for this hypothesis, for there is indeed no doubt that after the American Revolution the Germans continued to cluster in villages, intermarry, communicate in German, tend their fields the German way, and talk about their concerns just as they had done back in southern Germany, where most of them had emigrated from. The findings of this study reinforce this perception.6 Their English-speaking neighbors experienced them as foreigners: because they could not understand them, because they planted their crops differently, because they raised their cattle in different ways, produced different cheeses, dressed differently, went to different churches, and, most importantly, spoke a different language. The hypothesis of today’s scholarship reflects, it seems to us, the perception of the English-speaking majority in America of their own past.7 The analysis offered here of German political culture in the Middle Atlantic colonies between 1730 and 1830 is based on a different perspective and a different set of sources, the German-language broadsides published in that period. These broadsides not only suggest a new perception and different concerns, but they indicate the presence of vibrant German communities that were very sure of themselves, a lively German religiosity and culture, and an alternative kind of relationship between the English majority and the German minority culture. These broadsides reflect the efforts of English politicians to attract the German vote, they report alternative German perceptions of political issues, desires, and apprehensions about political discourses in colonial times and in the early republic, and, most importantly of all, they indicate how the authors of these texts understood Germans’ views of the political situation they lived in. In these sources we find no indication that German settlers after the French and Indian War ever considered themselves ‘‘strangers’’ in Pennsylvania. Recent studies of German political behavior in the colonial period lean heavily on statements and behavior of German Protestant clergymen like Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg, the senior of the Lutheran Church, and Michael Schlatter, an influential Reformed minister. From the perspective of the broadsides, the influence of the Protestant clergy has been overstated, for two reasons: the large majority of Germans did not belong to any settled Lutheran or Reformed congregation,8 and not one Lutheran or Reformed clergyman commanded regular access to the press. It is therefore no coincidence that the most influential German political texts published during the colonial and early national periods were not written by German pastors but by nonclerical people like Conrad Weiser and Christoph Saur. Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg’s son John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg illustrates the problem. Although his father was the most prominent German Lutheran pastor in the second half of the eighteenth century, he rebelled early and refused to be educated as a minister. In 1767 he did consent to be

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trained as a Lutheran pastor, and two years later he accepted a pastorage in Virginia. But in 1775, against the opposition of his father, he joined the Continental Army, and held military and political offices until his death in 1807. Frederick August Conrad Muhlenberg, his brother, left the clergy and joined the ranks of revolutionary politicians in 1779. Both kept a safe distance from their father and were unwilling to listen or accept his advice.9 This does not mean that German pastors were unconcerned about politics. Justus Heinrich Christian Helmuth (1745–1825), probably the most influential Lutheran pastor in Philadelphia after the American Revolution, certainly had no problem in publishing his thoughts on important political issues;10 but he was the exception rather than the rule. Yet it is probably no coincidence that in the localized politics in which Germans excelled, German pastors played no role,11 while German printers and journalists were particularly active.12 Our interpretive approach will not, as our analysis of religious broadsides did, focus on the expectations of customers. Instead we will analyze the authors’ perceptions of the political views of the people to whom they addressed their broadsides. This approach has to take into account the fact that within the political world broadsides are intentional public statements by particular groups or individuals who paid for them to be published.13 With their texts the authors wanted to shape their readers’ impressions, create images for them, and form their opinions. This quality of the broadsides suggests three overriding interpretative questions: What are the short-term and the long-term images created by German broadsides? Are they related to each other? Do these images respond to the wishes and aspirations not only of the German settlers but of American communities at large? There is a second approach that questions whether the broadsides themselves acquired meaning and function beyond the intentions of the authors. Published in a politically charged context—a heated election campaign, a time of revolutionary upheaval, a period of controversially discussed values—broadsides, independently of their authors’ intentions, affected the social, political, religious, and intellectual conditions of the times through the meanings and messages they conveyed and the reactions they evoked in readers. Thus, broadsides became part of a dynamic dialogue and process that transcended the meaning of the individual texts. A good example of what this meant are the broadsides published both by American revolutionaries and representatives of the British Army about the role, function, and meaning of Hessian mercenaries hired by the British government in 1776. These broadsides affected not only the position of these mercenaries, but, on the Revolutionary side, that of the German settlers. They became role models as well as unwilling partners in the war for independence. Both became threatened and uplifted, symbols and metaphors for abstract values like ‘‘freedom,’’ ‘‘liberty,’’ and ‘‘security of property.’’ In other words, broadsides display and originate functions well beyond their modest and linear meanings.14 The nature and function of political broadsides depend to a considerable extent on their linguistic, rhetorical, and metaphorical structures. In order to be effective, broadsides must not be verbose, and they often tend to express opinions and contexts in

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compressed language. The rhetorical structure of the text is designed to lead the reader quickly from catharsis to catharsis, and usually ends with a message that is disconcerting or uplifting. The text plays on culturally and historically conditioned metaphors that are meaningful to particular readers but often unimportant to the larger contemporary readership. A broadside by Andreas Emmerich from late November 1777 is a good example. It begins with the statement that American general Israel Putnam had recently published a broadside designed to seduce ‘‘the German soldiers . . . to perjure themselves.’’ The second sentence states why this attempt has to fail: ‘‘The German is steadfast and glories in being considered an honest man.’’ He sticks to his word and reacts with ‘‘Unwille und Missvergnu¨gen’’ (indignation and displeasure) against those who doubt his allegiance and fidelity.15 These first eleven lines summarize the idealized key features of the German soldier’s self-image, value system, and definition of himself in the wider political context. The somewhat longer middle section describes the monarchical sentiments of the German soldiers and thus attempts to evoke the same sentiments in the German-American reader. The king had been good to the settlers, but has been repaid by the ‘‘fury of their high spirits, ungratefulness and disobedience.’’16 The Hessian soldiers will help reinstitute law, order, and godly government in North America and destroy treacherous liberties. For these goals the German dies for the British king in the same way the British did for the Germans when they assisted them during the Seven Years’ War in preserving peace and liberties against foreign enemies. Therefore, American inducements are ‘‘ekelhaft’’ (nauseating) to the Hessian soldier and are only for the ‘‘Treulose, Gewissenlose, Verjagte und Meineidige’’ (unfaithful, unprincipled, banished, and perjured). In its dialectical structure and in the positive and negative qualities it names, the text evokes fundamental values of citizenship and social and political order, as well as the concept of a society of estates. The positive qualities pertain to the German soldier, the negative ones to the German settler in the rebellious ‘‘colonies.’’ The highly complex relationships are stereotyped and linked to a value system that German readers at the time understood. The six lines of the peroration culminate, ‘‘let us [i.e., Hessian soldiers] keep our honest name untarnished and await the end.’’17 The Hessian soldiers’ honesty, fidelity, and allegiance to their monarch are set against ‘‘das Ende,’’ the death that awaits the German settler who has forsaken these old German values. The text pithily defines cultural contexts, evokes value systems, and restructures, from the author’s perspective, the relationship between the German soldiers and the German settlers. The text becomes an agent.18 In contrast to prevailing English-language scholarship that speaks of ‘‘the Germans,’’ this study will question the concept of the politically monolithic nature of German settlers in Pennsylvania.19 A close reading and interpretation of the texts reveals, first, complex understandings of constitutional and political processes that are at variance with British perceptions of German political views, and second, the simple fact that Germans were disunited politically as well as socially. Germans belonged to different

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churches, flourished in different economic and cultural fields, and held opposing political views in the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods. The broadsides reveal differences of attitudes, opinions, and meanings that the contemporary English historical majority culture, echoed by modern scholarship, largely ignored.20 Some of these broadsides are written in a surprisingly clumsy German style, which illustrates on the one hand some of the problems the English majority culture had in accepting this ‘‘quaint’’ language and its speakers, soon to be called ‘‘Pennsylvania Dutch,’’ and indicates on the other the slow process of getting used to an unfamiliar political terminology.21 Other texts demonstrate increasing German familiarity with English terminology as well as energetic attempts to incorporate English political terms into their German linguistic experiences. A systematic analysis of early German publications and broadsides suggests that by the time of the French and Indian War Germans had developed a political terminology, partly through adopting words from English, either directly or in ‘‘Germanized’’ form (e.g., ‘‘klaren,’’ from ‘‘clear’’), and partly through literal translation of an English term (e.g., ‘‘Eigentu¨mer,’’ from ‘‘proprietor’’), that allowed them to adequately describe and understand Pennsylvania’s political world (table B.17). In most cases an English term was Germanized, as was also done with agricultural terms. The German ‘‘kruppen,’’ for instance, derives from the English ‘‘to crop.’’ This process was not yet acculturation as such, but created the preconditions for understanding Pennsylvania political culture. If it were acculturation, the German settlers’ political concepts would have been largely identical with those of English politicians in Pennsylvania. As will be shown, this was not the case. The broadsides profited from the creation of a German political language adequate to understand Pennsylvania politics. They were designed as part of a political dialogue within the German community and between the German and the English communities. Most of them were printed not because the printers expected a growing demand that would allow them to make a profit, but because a group or an individual ordered and paid for them. Except for broadsides featuring political songs, they were not affected by the market forces that played a large role in the printing and distribution of religious broadsides. Table B.18 offers an overview of all the broadsides that were part of the political dialogue. At first glance this table offers few surprises. The large number of broadsides printed in the last three decades of our period seems to support Nolt’s thesis that the Germans were ‘‘foreigners in their own land,’’ enmeshed in an internal dialogue. The scholars’ perception of the marginal role of Germans during the American Revolution, however, does not seem to square well with the fact that within this short period the largest number of German broadsides per annum were printed. The distribution in the five periods is not without interest (see table 17). The Revolutionary period scores highest, followed by the Confederation period, the Republican period, and the colonial period. While these small figures discourage further statistical analysis, they do suggest a new way of seeing Germans and their culture. First, in the colonial period Germans played a more prominent role in public discourse than hitherto imagined. Second, the

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Table 17 Frequency of broadsides within the five periods Periods Total Printed per year % of total

Colonial 1730–1773

Revolutionary 1774–1783

Confederation 1784–1787

Early Federal 1788–1801

Republican 1801–1830

Total 1730–1830

19 0.44 15.32

32 3.56 25.81

6 2.0 4.84

17 1.31 13.71

50 1.67 40.32

124 1.24 100.00

intensity of public discourse between 1784 and 1830 remained overall on roughly the same level. Third, the small number of broadsides makes close analysis of the few texts even more imperative—not numbers, but content must yield substantive insights into the political world of German settlers between 1730 and 1830. After these general observations, we will now look at the broadsides in chronological order before we turn once more to general problems like language and perceptions.

Colonial Politics, 1730–1773 This is the period in which the smallest number of German broadsides were produced, or at least from which they have survived the rigors of the times (see table 18). The distribution of these broadsides over the colonial period shows how much these texts were part of Pennsylvania’s political crisis culture (table 19). The first three time periods shown in table 19 represent serious political crises within Pennsylvania’s history. At least according to contemporary opinion, the first two crises were largely caused by the German voters’ consistent support of Quaker politics and opposition to the Proprietary Party. It is in this context that Conrad Weiser’s Ein Wohlgemeindter und Ernstlicher Rath an unsere Lands-Leute, die Teutschen (1741; fig. 33),22 the anonymous An die Deutschen, vornehmlich die zum Wa¨hlen berechtigten, in PhiladelphiaBucks- und Berks Caunty (1754?),23 and Christoph Saur’s Eine zu dieser Zeit ho¨chstno¨thige

Table 18 Analysis of broadsides in the colonial period

Categories* Political programs Assembly elections Political songs/poems Political news Taxes Total broadsides in categories* Total broadsides

Number

% of number of period (20  100)

% of number of broadsides (125  100)

12 6 4 3 1 23 20

52.63 31.57 15.79 15.79 5.26 — —

8.06 4.83 2.42 2.42 0.81 — —

Rank within period I II IIIa IIIb IV

Note: Four broadsides have been classified in more than one category; thus the total number of broadsides in ‘‘Categories’’ is higher than the actual number of broadsides.

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Table 19 Distribution of broadsides during political crises

Categories Political programs Assembly elections Political songs/poems Political news Taxes

War of Jenkins’ Ear 1739–1743

French and Indian War 1754–1755

Petition to Crown for change of government 1764–1765

New York election 1769

Revolutionary turmoil 1772–1773

1 — — — —

2 — — — —

8 3 2 2 —

— 3 1 — —

1 — — 1 1

Warnung und Erinnerung (1755)24 deserve close analysis. All three broadsides appealed to German voters and, as was usual, were most likely written in the weeks before the election in early October. While the dating of Saur’s and Weiser’s broadsides is secure, that of An die Deutschen is problematic. Some educated guesses are possible. One clue is contained in the fifth paragraph, which suggests a link between the City of Philadelphia’s intention to pass by-laws with the right to tax the city’s inhabitants. The author merges this concern with a wider political issue: the political panorama of the colony. The title contains a second clue: Berks County was established by a law passed on March 11, 1752,25 and the issue of increasing the number of counties in western Pennsylvania was debated in 1753/54. This makes it all but certain that this broadside was written not later than 1754. In 1741, Conrad Weiser (1696–1760) was probably the most visible of the German settlers in Pennsylvania. Since 1731 he had been the official Indian agent of the colony; he was the only German outside the judiciary who held a formal position under the proprietary government. In the eyes of William Penn’s oldest son, Thomas Penn, that government had fallen on bad times since his father’s death. During his stay in Pennsylvania between 1732 and 1741, Thomas Penn had gained firsthand experience of Pennsylvania’s politicians and political problems. Two issues in particular worried him. First was the simple fact that his father’s legacy, the Charter of Privileges (1701), had created a political culture in which the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on the one hand and the voters who elected most local and county and township officials on the other monopolized most of the offices in the house and in local government.26 Second, European power politics led in 1739/40 into a crisis first called the War of Jenkins’ Ear and then the War of Austrian Succession. Thomas Penn was well aware of the implications. He knew that after the Glorious Revolution his father had lost political control over his colony because William III and his political advisers believed that as a Quaker, Penn was not prepared to defend it against French attacks. Although a solution had been worked out with the Quaker politicians in the colony, who agreed to circumvent the Peace Testimony by voting ‘‘money for the King’s use,’’27 a more far-reaching solution, such as the establishment of a militia, was still lacking.28 Once news of war arrived in Pennsylvania, colonial politics was refocused on the issue of pacifism, which became the overriding concern in the election campaigns of 1741 and 1742.29

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In this context German settlers acquired a new importance. In the elections prior to 1740, German voters had largely supported Quaker politicians, feeling most comfortable, it seems, with the way Quaker politicians left local politics to them while being open to their concerns. In addition, religious groups like the Schwenkfelders, the Dunkers, and the Mennonites shared the Quaker Peace Testimony. The possibility existed, however, to split the German vote along denominational lines, since the Lutherans and members of the German Reformed Church did not share these pacifist tenets. Conrad Weiser was assigned the task of winning the latter away from the Quakers and over to the Proprietary Party. Weiser begins his argument with the claim that the forthcoming election is of vital importance for all who care about their property and their lives. Then he immediately jumps into the controversy. The previous year had been consumed by a struggle over ‘‘whether it is right to give Caesar his due?’’30 Hitherto, he reminds his readers, German electors had voted for candidates whose answer was no. The interesting twist here is whom Weiser designates as ‘‘Caesar.’’ Constitutionally, this should have been the proprietor and his lieutenant governor. Yet Weiser ignores the constitutional setup of Pennsylvania and instead claims that the assembly had consistently refused to grant any money to their ‘‘gna¨ digste Ko¨ nig’’ (most gracious king). He reminds his German readers that they had been welcomed in their colony and that recently their most gracious king had granted them, as Protestants, the same privileges the English enjoyed, without charging them a farthing for it. All of this surely obliged them to be thankful and to answer the question of whether they owed Caesar his due with a resounding ‘‘Yes.’’ Should they answer in the negative, it would surely earn them the governor’s ire. Weiser adds that even the most intelligent of the Quakers disapproved of the assembly’s noncompliance with the king’s instruction.31 Weiser adds that the danger of a war with France demands such a solution to the political crisis. In North America France possessed much land and great power, and French influence was strong among the Indian nations. Both the French and the Indians not only endangered Pennsylvania’s Indian trade but, more importantly, exposed the colonial frontier to Indian attacks and Indian savagery. These were good reasons not to vote for Quaker candidates. Some had spread the lie that if German settlers did not vote for Quakers, they would be enslaved again, as they had been in Germany. Weiser points out that many Quakers were honest people and that the Germans should be thankful for the Quakers’ participation in the government. But some of them, he continues, acted from greed. Men were needed who pursued not division but harmony. And besides, whomever one voted for, the large majority of them would be English, and the English, as is well-known, love freedom more than anything. Four thoughts structure Weiser’s broadside: the subject’s duty to honor his king, the military might of the French, the savagery of the Indians, and the reestablishment of harmony. All four play on fundamental convictions of the German settlers, who had learned from childhood to give unquestioned obedience and allegiance to one’s ruler, to fear the power of tyrannical and Catholic France, as well as the brutality and savagery

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Figure 33 Ein Wohl-gemeindter und Ernstlicher Rath an unsere Lands-Leute, die Teutschen ([Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1741]). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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of the Indians, and that harmony was a precondition for happiness. Four keywords dominate the text: ‘‘peace’’ and ‘‘security,’’ which had brought the Germans to Pennsylvania; ‘‘liberty,’’ which was to be maintained; and ‘‘Schlaverey’’—a fascinating composite of the English ‘‘slavery’’ and the German ‘‘Sklaverei’’—from which they had only recently escaped and which was falsely used as an argument by the political adversary. These terms suggest a simple matrix of political values that would, according to Weiser’s perception of the German settlers’ politics, govern their decision. Equally indicative is what Weiser does not say: while focusing on the commandment of Paul in his letter to the Romans, Weiser omits mentioning that the conflict between the assembly and the governor was less about the king’s demands than about the politically divergent views between Quaker and proprietary politicians. The second broadside that reflects German electoral politics is linked to the political role of the Philadelphia Common Council and to the problem of representation.32 An die Deutschen opens with a stern admonition to readers to pay close attention to what the text says, for a small slip might endanger their ‘‘liberty.’’ The author then recounts that ‘‘eine Neuerung’’ (a new proposal) had been made which even ‘‘seine Großachtbarkeit’’ (the governor) had gone out of his way to support—a fact that surely would open German readers’ eyes to the danger of the proposal. The author next reminds the readers of what had happened in 1700 when an assembly was elected with a majority of the proprietor’s partisans. That assembly had passed a law decreeing that all land grants were to be resurveyed. The law ‘‘beraubt’’ (robbed) many people of their land, the author states, and many others had to pay twice for theirs. Fortunately, the Crown eventually disallowed the law. But now the city council of Philadelphia was about to arrogate to itself the right to tax the city’s inhabitants. Thus far, worthy and virtuous freemen had blocked such a nefarious scheme, but if the electors voted for the proprietor’s partisans now, the new assembly would surely grant the city council this coveted privilege and the poor inhabitants would be taxed out of their property. In addition, the writer warns, the assembly would grant the newly created frontier counties the privilege of electing eight candidates who, together with the representatives on the Proprietary ticket, would gain the majority in the house in the next election.‘‘[T]hen the rights and privileges of the old counties would be irretrievably lost’’ and the electors would permanently lose the ‘‘Segens der Freiheit’’ (blessings of liberty). Remember, the broadside concludes, those ‘‘men who have for such a long time protected you so manfully and virtuously against the jaws of severest oppression.’’33 The text is signed ‘‘Ein Liebhaber der Freiheit’’ (A lover of liberty). While Weiser’s broadside uses arguments that were familiar to people who had formed their political views in Europe—obedience was owed to the ruler, danger was to be avoided, and people owed gratitude for privileges—this broadside also invokes key terms of a political theory that was understandable only within a North American setting: people’s ‘‘liberties’’ (plural!) as well as their property were endangered if they voted for certain ‘‘Proprietarische Miethlinge’’ (proprietary hirelings). The author establishes a relation between voting for or against a set of men, the maintenance or

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destruction of liberties, and the security of the voter’s property. This relation rests on the assumption that German settlers were participants in a political system in which their voice was decisive in upholding their ‘‘liberties.’’ In England and in Europe this was not a concern of the common man, who did not have the privilege of participating in government or codetermining the scope of his rights and liberties. In Pennsylvania the constitution of the country granted him the right to share in the process of electing an assembly, which had the right to decide on the amount of taxes as well as on the rights and privileges of voters. The Germans addressed by this broadside had become citizens in a land that provided them with a voice in deciding how much money they were to contribute to the state—in Europe a classical concern reserved for the ruler—and granted them the opportunity to uphold their liberties and properties. Put differently, by 1754 the Germans had developed a political terminology that enabled them to formulate key tenets of Pennsylvania political culture. In September 1755, before the election of the new assembly, Christoph Saur composed and published a broadside that displays an even more complex perception of the political rights and privileges of German settlers in Pennsylvania. He reacted to recent publications in which the right of the Germans to participate in the political decision process had been strongly questioned. The large influx of German settlers in the five years before the outbreak of the French and Indian War had alarmed most English politicians in the colony. Benjamin Franklin was one of the first, and in a letter to Peter Collinson, an influential English Quaker, he expressed concerns after the German reaction to his plan to organize a voluntary militia had been rather lukewarm. His views on the German immigrants were not flattering: Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation, and as Ignorance is often attended with Credulity when Knavery would mislead it, and with Suspicion when Honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, ’tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain. Their own Clergy have very little influence over the people; who seem to take an uncommon pleasure in abusing and discharging the Minister on every trivial occasion. Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it; and as Kolben says of the young Hottentots, that they are not esteemed men till they have shewn their manhood by beating their mothers, so these seem to think themselves not free, till they can feel their liberty in abusing and insulting their Teachers. Thus they are under no restraint of Ecclesiastical Government; They behave, however, submissively enough at present to the Civil Government which I wish they may continue to do.34 Franklin’s concern focused on three aspects: first, most of the German immigrants were so poor that they lacked education and knowledge; second, their lack of knowledge of the English language hindered the removal of the Germans’ ‘‘prejudices’’

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against the English; and third, Germans were not ‘‘used to Liberty’’ and therefore did not know how to ‘‘make a modest use of it.’’ For Franklin, this raised the danger that Pennsylvania would be turned into a bilingual society35 and would therefore be unable to withstand French aggression should war between England and France break out, as everybody in North America was convinced was likely. In such a situation a large number of Germans who, it was thought, cherished political notions closer to those of the French than of the freedom-loving English represented a threat to the very being of Pennsylvania and thus the British Empire in North America. Christoph Saur had not read this letter, but in 1755 he knew that such ideas were floating about in the Atlantic world. Word may have reached him of a manuscript Franklin had been circulating since 1752 among American and English friends in which Franklin had summarized his ideas about the ‘‘increase of mankind.’’ In 1755 the manuscript was almost simultaneously published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in London as well as in Boston in a pamphlet by William Clarke (1709–1760) on the nefarious designs of the French in North America.36 In this little piece, famous for its clearsighted speculative analysis of diverging demographic trends in Europe and America, Franklin raised the following questions: ‘‘why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.’’37 Remarks like these did not please German settlers, yet worse was the implied charge that Germans were a threat to English liberties and to the well-being of the colony.38 Many English considered the Germans’ allegiance to the English Crown questionable and feared that they had been brought up so close to France that the archenemy may have influenced their political views. Moravian missionaries in the 1740s were widely considered disguised Catholics determined to seduce Native Americans to the French interest. New York justices of the peace had forced the closure of Checomeco, a Moravian mission station, and the New York House of Representatives had passed a law that reflected this charge and forbade any unlicensed mission work among Native Americans.39 But only after the Anglican clergyman William Smith, in a pamphlet widely circulated in England and in North America, not only repeated these charges but suggested that the German settlers be disfranchised until they had learned the ABC’s of English political culture, did polemics against German settlers reach crisis proportions.40 For Smith the Germans were an ‘‘uncultivated Race . . . liable to be seduced by every enterprising Jesuit, having almost no Protestant clergy among them to put them on their guard and warn them against popery.’’41 The Germans, Smith charged, had arrived in Pennsylvania in such numbers that ‘‘I know nothing that will hinder them either from soon being able to give us Law and Language, or else, by joining with the French, to eject all the English inhabitants.’’42

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For Christoph Saur this political scenario looked menacing. It was clear that the military crisis in which the British colonies and England found themselves after the French had defeated the British in the summer of 1755 lent credibility to almost everything that could contribute to improve the chances of turning defeat into victory. Saur had a personal reason, too, for speaking out: in his pamphlet Smith had singled him out as a printer ‘‘who was once of the French Prophets in Germany, and is shrewdly suspected of being a Popish Emissary.’’43 According to Smith, Saur had been hired by the Quakers to assure the Germans that if they did not vote for Quaker candidates in the elections ‘‘all the Miseries they suffered in Germany with heavy Aggravations would be their Lot.’’44 Saur begins Eine zu dieser Zeit ho¨chstno¨thige Warnung und Erinnerung (fig. 34) by saying that he had read all the English pamphlets in which the ‘‘wohlbegru¨ ndete Rechte’’ (well-grounded rights) of the German settlers had been attacked. The views of these authors, he says, have no place in a ‘‘freyen Governement’’ (free government). Saur then proceeds to discuss the major arguments of William Smith as the principal opposition writer. Smith had asserted that the proprietor granted the first settlers ‘‘Freiheiten und Privilegien’’ (liberties and privileges) in order to induce them to come and settle in Pennsylvania. But now that the province had become rich, it was time ‘‘to take away their liberties for which they have paid so dearly by means that they call ‘Checks to the power of the People,’ which means that we have to check the common people and take away the power they have.’’45 Saur criticizes Smith’s proposal to reserve the right to vote to those Germans who had learned English and the essentials of English political culture. For Saur this amounted to turning upright German settlers into sycophants and smooth lackeys ready to do the proprietor’s bidding. According to Saur, the opposition was determined to destroy the ballot vote and return to viva voce voting as a means to influence and corrupt the election. Saur further charges that the opposition wanted to abolish the right to have sheriffs and coroners elected and instead have them appointed by the governor. This would ensure that jury selection could be rigged and therefore partisan. Saur then accuses the opposition of being determined to diminish the rights of the assembly by transferring the right of adjournment to the governor. He blames Smith for suggesting that the right of the assembly to hear petitions be abolished. And lastly, Saur decries Smith’s intention to change the composition of the assembly so much in the proprietor’s favor that the new majority would be able to pass a militia law aimed not at protecting inhabitants from the enemy but at ensuring that ‘‘your rights and privileges be given up and delivered into the hands of your internal enemies.’’46 Saur then describes his perception of the Charter of Privileges and the rights all men in Pennsylvania enjoy: ‘‘Liberty,’’ he writes, is our natural right, a right which God and nature demand from you that you uphold. Your rulers have received the power to protect and not to oppress you. Your government is constituted in such a way that you have received the one half

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Figure 34 [Christoph Saur I], Eine zu dieser Zeit ho¨chstno¨thige Warnung und Erinnerung an die freye Einwohner der Provintz Pensylvanien von Einem, dem die Wohlfahrt des Landes angelegen und darauf bedacht ist ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saurl, 1755]). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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of the right to determine the contents of ordinances and laws. . . . Nature and the fundamental laws of the land have given you the sole right to determine what happens with your property and what else you possess. Only you represent the counterbalance and command the power to induce the other half of government to stay within the bounds assigned to them. And if they transgress those boundaries, it is your fault and it is you who have to call the assemblymen to account as the tools of oppression and punish them, and the assemblymen themselves similarly can prevent the magistrates and their superiors from robbing you under the pretense of executing and following the law.47 Saur’s argument is surprisingly complex and advanced, at least in comparison to current political thought within English colonial Pennsylvania politics.48 He bases his political views on the natural rights that all possessed and the fundamental rights granted by the Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges.49 Every inhabitant possessed the right to participate in government through his vote in the assembly election; at the same time, he had the duty to uphold and safeguard Pennsylvania’s constitutional order by making the assemblymen accountable for their actions. The voters had the duty to control the assembly in the same way that the assembly had the duty to control the executive as the other half of government. Natural rights, duties, and accountabilities were the foundation of Pennsylvania’s government. Both the legislative and the executive branches of government had the natural tendency to extend their power at the expense of the people, and only the principle of mutual checks prevented the perversion of the Charter. Clearly, the broadside suggests acquaintance with political philosophers ranging from Pufendorf on natural law and John Locke on property and political rights to Viscount Bolingbroke on the importance of the legislature in containing corruption and the executive’s never-ending quest for more power. Although it is unlikely that Saur had heard or read Montesquieu on the necessity of constitutional powers to act as a control and a check on each other, his argument paralleled important insights of this French philosopher.50 Closer to home, some of his thoughts, particularly those on the accountability of members of the assembly to their voters, betray a familiarity with English Commonwealth constitutional thought and republican principles. At the same time, his emphasis on the importance of legislative control of the executive indicates that Saur was no friend of the constitutional model advanced and propagated by defenders of Sir Robert Walpole.51 The sophistication of Saur’s arguments strangely contrasts with the perception of American politicians like Benjamin Franklin and William Smith that German settlers were totally ignorant about the nature of Pennsylvania political and constitutional thought, the importance of assembly elections, and the duties of the assembly and the governor. One must assume that Saur in this election broadside did not make arguments or advance political theories which his German readers were unfamiliar with and

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therefore unable to understand, for this would certainly have defeated its primary purpose. Therefore, Saur’s, Franklin’s, and Smith’s writings point to a dramatic gap in the perception of German settlers’ political views, culture, and knowledge. Fortunately, the problems inherent in this gap were swept away by the dramatic events immediately after the election of October 1755, when wave after wave of Indian warriors overran the Pennsylvania frontier and left trails of burnt farms, houses, and barns as well as dead settlers, many of them Germans.52 The heavy toll German settlers paid for their alliance with the Quaker Party permanently damaged that alliance, while it removed the suspicions with which Germans were viewed by the Proprietary Party and the governor himself. The effects of this change became obvious in 1764 in the fiercest political fight in Pennsylvania’s history, that over the right to tax the proprietary estates.53 Three events converged: first, enraged frontiersmen (the ‘‘Paxton Boys’’) descended on Philadelphia determined to kill the Moravian Christian Indians and force the assembly and government to afford effective protection against Indian warriors;54 second, the controversy between the proprietor and the house reached an impasse. And third, on March 24, 1764, the assembly passed a series of resolutions that culminated in the decision to petition the Crown to take over the government of the colony. The assembly appointed Benjamin Franklin to travel to London, present the petition for a change of government to the Crown, and, in the ensuing negotiations, try to prevent the Crown from eliminating key features of the Charter of Privileges, such as the guarantee of liberty of conscience.55 The German settlers were participants in both controversies. Two political songs focused on the Paxton Boys riots. Eine lustige Aria, u¨ber die letztgeschehene Unruhen in Philadelphia (fig. 35),56 to be sung to the German melody ‘‘Ihre scho¨nen ho¨ret an,’’ a very popular student song of the eighteenth century,57 characterizes the demands of the Paxton Boys as justified. The song is made up of five verses and an epilogue. The first verse narrates the story of a ‘‘mob from the north,’’ called ‘‘Pecksen Bay’’ in the second verse, that came down to ‘‘capture wild swine’’ but found them protected by many ‘‘guns.’’ The second verse reports how the ‘‘Pecksen Bay’’ spread horror in the region. Then the key issue is stated: ‘‘The savages are called friends but the tame [are called] enemies, although they bothered no one and did not ask anything unjust[.] The savages do ravage, for which they are honored and say they are baptized and like us saved.’’58 If that was so, the third verse continues, one should ‘‘not eat them’’ (the ‘‘savages’’ had been called ‘‘swine’’) but rather order them out of the country, which would, the author adds, be a most honorable deed. Nevertheless, the author continues, it is quite possible that all of this is God’s visitation on us, which makes the poor sweat. The fourth verse denounces the carriages loaded with ‘‘Fleisch, Brodt, Holtz’’ (meat, bread, and wood) for the Indians as further additions to the tax burden, which ‘‘die Leute zwingen’’ (oppresses the people). Moreover, people had to run to staging areas when they heard the ringing of the bells proclaiming new danger. The final verse states that ‘‘a white will not approve assisting the savages’’ but rather the ‘‘whites should be protected’’

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Figure 35 Eine lustige Aria, u¨ber die letztgeschehene Unruhen in Philadelphia ([Philadelphia: Heinrich Miller, 1764]). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

when ‘‘the enemy flashes [his weapons]’’; that alone would ‘‘settle the conflict’’ and ‘‘fulfill the people’s desire.’’59 The song uses double meanings and crude metaphors to indicate the feelings of those involved in the controversy. It clearly favors the demonstrators from Paxton Township; it calls the measures taken to protect the Christian Indians overdone, unnecessary, and an additional burden on an already overburdened people. To the author, protecting the Indians and vilifying the demonstrators mean that the world is turned upside down. To readjust the world, the Indians, he states bluntly, should be banished

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from the country. That would make the land secure and also open land hitherto inhabited by the Indians to white settlers. The epilogue to the poem, stating that all Indians should settle in one central place outside Philadelphia, which would mightily please the white settlers, does not soften the harsh message. The song has four political messages: that the frontier inhabitants’ demand for more effective protection is justified; that Indians are savages and deserve to be treated as such; that protection of savages is wrong even if they are baptized; and that the Indians should be banished from Pennsylvania. Thus, the Aria is a criticism of the government’s failure to adequately secure the safety of the frontier settlers, of the Quakers for their peace testimony, and, at least indirectly, of the Moravians for meddling with savages and claiming that they deserve special treatment. Within Pennsylvania’s political landscape this German poem described a political position against that of the Quaker Party but identical with that of the Proprietary Party and the frontier inhabitants.60 The second political song, Ein scho¨n weltlich Lied, which was to be sung to the tune ‘‘Ein Soldat bin ich eben, und steh vor meinem Feind,’’61 deals with the same subject but is a much more direct attack on the Quakers’ role in the crisis. It upbraids the Quakers for hypocrisy in boasting that they would defend the Moravian Indians but retreating when put to the test by the ‘‘Landvolck,’’ the people from Paxton Township. ‘‘Fechten ich euch nicht sah’’ (I did not see you fight), the song concludes. This song clearly reflected the gap between a significant group of German voters and the Quaker Party. The two political songs carry an important message: not only had the German community in the colony—principally in Philadelphia (city and county) as well as in Berks, Bucks, and Lancaster Counties—become part of the Pennsylvania political community, but German-language publications like broadsides were now part of the political discourse. While earlier publications focused on Germans playing a supportive role for the Quaker or the Proprietary Party, these two political broadsides suggest that they had found their own voice within Pennsylvania’s political scene. The two printers, Johann Henrich Miller and Anton Armbru¨ster, were obviously convinced that enough German settlers were interested and possibly involved in this controversy that it was worth publishing two broadsides and, they hoped, making some money with them.62 The Paxton Boys riots were a media event of major proportions. Benjamin Franklin cashed in on them with A Narrative of the Late Massacres, in Lancaster County, of a Number of Indians, Friends of this Province, By Persons Unknown. With some Observations on the same,63 which was published around January 30, 1764, and it is likely that the two German songs were printed at the same time. Within a few weeks the larger political crisis that had been smoldering in the colony since 1755 reached its peak.64 On March 24, the assembly passed the resolutions condemning the proprietor’s instructions as the root cause of the political impasse and resolved to petition the Crown to take over the government of the colony. The petition was agreed to on March 29, 1764. Almost immediately afterward the controversy spilled

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over into the public ‘‘in both the Languages of the Province,’’ as Benjamin Franklin phrased it on September 28, 1764, in his broadside To the Freemen of Pennsylvania.65 The petition to the Crown was circulated first in English and soon in a German translation published by the printer Anton Armbru¨ster.66 Armbru¨ster justified the publication by saying that ‘‘many Germans did not understand the English petition that is at present circulating. Since no reasonable man would sign something he does not understand, one has had the English petition truthfully translated.’’67 A counterpetition was also translated and published by Henrich Miller on July 21, 1764.68 Germans played a double role in the election campaign. On the one hand, partisans of the Proprietary Party used Benjamin Franklin’s description of the Germans in his Observations on the Increase of Mankind in an effort to drive a wedge between Franklin and his German supporters. How far they succeeded is unclear.69 On the other, the reasoned argument in the only German-language broadside in this heated election campaign may have had more impact in drawing voters away from Franklin. The anonymous author of Ho¨ret ihr deutsche Bu¨rger in Philadelphia, daß euch GOtt auch ho¨re!70 advocated a ticket that significantly differed from that in the 1763 election (see table 20). The author, possibly Anton Armbru¨ster,71 demanded that four of the ten candidates for Philadelphia city and county (Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Galloway, Henry Fox, and John Hughes) be dropped and that two Germans (Henry Keppele and Friedrich Antes) and two other English politicians be elected. The author argued that the colony had had enough strife and controversy and now urgently needed assemblymen who would work for peace and harmony. Franklin, Galloway, Fox, and Hughes, the author states, were the principal men who had advocated the petition to the Crown and should therefore be struck from the ticket; he also accuses them of corruption and embezzlement of public money, and Galloway and Fox in particular with having suggested that troops be stationed in Pennsylvania. Finally, he singles out Franklin as an archenemy of the Germans, whom he had described as ‘‘grob und viehisch’’ (rude and brutish).

Table 20 Ticket changes according to the broadside Ho¨ret ihr deutsche Bu¨rger Election results of 1763: City Benjamin Franklin Samuel Rhoads Election results of 1763: County Isaac Norris Joseph Fox Joseph Galloway John Hughes Rowland Evans John Dickinson Plunket Fleeson Joseph Richardson

Election results of 1764: City *Thomas Willing *George Bryan Election results of 1764: County Isaac Norris† Joseph Fox *Henry Pawling† John Hughes *Henry Keppele† John Dickinson† *Amos Strettle† Joseph Richardson

* Members newly elected in 1764. † Winning candidates who had been nominated in the broadside Ho¨ret ihr deutsche Bu¨rger.

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The agitation against Franklin and Galloway was quite successful. Of the eight candidates the German broadside championed, six were elected and only two, the German Friedrich Antes and the English Henry Harrison, were rejected by the voters. That German voters had much to do with the result was the opinion of Franklin himself. On October 11, 1764, he reported to his friend in England, Pennsylvania’s agent Richard Jackson: The Proprietary Party by great Industry against great Security carried the Election of this County and City by about 26 Votes against me and Mr. Galloway; the Voters near 4000. They carried (would you think it!) above 1000 Dutch from me, by printing part of my Paper sent to you 12 Years since on Peopling new Countries where I speak of the Palatine Boors herding together, which they explain’d that I call’d them a Herd of Hogs. This is quite a laughing Matter. But the Majority of the last Assembly remain, and will I believe still be for the Measure of Changing the Proprietary of [sic] a Royal Governor.72 These results are remarkable. The controversy over the petition to the Crown, the excitement about Franklin’s remarks about Germans, and the German desire to have some of their own to represent them in the assembly all combined to mobilize the electorate to an unheard-of extent. Of the almost 4,000 votes, Isaac Norris got the largest number (3,874 votes), while John Hughes just scraped by with 1,925. Joseph Galloway lost with 1,918 votes, while Friedrich Antes received 1,914 and Franklin received 1,906.73 The figures illustrate that while a decade earlier the German vote was discussed only as a kind of helpmate for the Quaker Party, it had now gained independent status and weight. German voters enjoyed enough clout to influence the election of key members of the assembly. The crisis triggered by efforts to change Pennsylvania’s government was overshadowed some months later by the arrival of the news that the British Parliament had passed the Stamp Act. Like the other colonial assemblies, in August 1765 Pennsylvania’s assembly received a circular letter from Boston that suggested forming a congress to devise suitable reactions to the bill. The letter was debated in the Pennsylvania assembly on September 2; with the smallest possible majority the house agreed to send delegates to the congress, which was to convene in New York. In the following heated election campaign, the two issues, change of government and the Stamp Act, converged. Given the weight of the German vote, it is not surprising that the controversy was reflected in German broadsides published in September 1765. The opening salvo was fired by Christoph Saur II,74 who in 1758 had taken over his father’s printing business. In his broadside addressed September 18 to the Wertheste Landes-Leute, Sonderlich in Philadelphia Bucks und Berks-Caunty, Saur fiercely criticized efforts to change the government, accused the assembly of foot-dragging on the Stamp Act issue, and suggested a rather complex strategy for the forthcoming election. His strategy was based on the conviction that the prerogatives, liberties, and privileges granted to Pennsylvania’s inhabitants by

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the Charter of Privileges of 1701 should be preserved at all costs. For Saur this could only be achieved if efforts to turn Pennsylvania into a Crown colony were defeated. He therefore demanded that members of the assembly who had agreed to a change of government be dropped from the ticket for the coming election. Saur realized, however, that doing this across the colony would give the Proprietary Party a majority in the house, which would produce ‘‘bedenckliche Folgen’’ (alarming consequences), including the passage of a militia act and similar measures that would hurt the pacifist constituency of the colony. He therefore argued for a limited change of the ticket: ‘‘it would be enough if the change were restricted to the three counties mentioned in the head [of the broadside], thus there would be a slight majority of votes and our prerogatives safe. To elect a new assembly throughout the land [i.e., colony] would not be advisable, for it might have alarming consequences. . . . Should a precarious balance be maintained in the house, the horrible consequences’’ that the followers of Benjamin Franklin described could be avoided.75 He added that he had purposefully not published his thoughts in the German newspapers because those circulated throughout the colony. The broadside, he implied, would only be distributed to Germans in those three counties, Philadelphia, Bucks, and Berks. Saur proposed to accomplish his most important political goal, the preservation of the Charter of Privileges, through two measures: first, by advising that the members from Bucks, Berks, and Philadelphia who had voted for a change in government— twenty-six members in all—be exchanged for members who opposed such a change. Since the latter would most likely be partisans of the proprietor, this would have meant that the assembly would be split between an equal number of members for and against the change. Yet Saur was aware that although all members (except for the members of the Proprietary Party) had agreed to the original resolutions on which the petition for a change of government was based, a significant number of them had second thoughts when it came to appointing an agent in England. As a second measure he therefore advocated the reelection of these dissidents.76 Saur’s broadside also contained a broader message: that German voters were a third force in Pennsylvania politics who combined elements from the platforms of both parties. How to translate this idea into votes and representatives commanded much of Saur’s attention. In the meantime, Saur’s public criticism of the assembly caused an uproar. Within days the supporters of the petition for a change in government secured the assembly’s consent to publish its resolutions of September 2, 1765, on the Stamp Act in a German broadside.77 Yet the broadside contained only the unanimous resolutions of the house against the Stamp Act, not the vote on the delegation to the Stamp Act Congress, and thus did not address Saur’s complaint, as his friends were no doubt quick to point out. It was addressed, however, by a number of candidates who, on September 25, responded to Saur’s broadside. David Deschler and Johannes and Daniel Wister informed the electors in their broadside An die Deutschen, vornehmlich die zum Wa¨hlen berechtigten, in Philadelphia- Bucks- und Berks Caunty that Saur was wrong in suggesting that Franklin had been given authority to conduct his negotiations in London as he saw fit.

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They printed the resolution, which tied Franklin to the specific condition that the privileges and prerogatives of Pennsylvania’s inhabitants were not to be endangered in his dealings with the Crown. They likewise pointed out that in the discussion about the delegation to the Stamp Act Congress, the members for Bucks County had not disputed the necessity of protesting against the Stamp Act to the Crown, but had insisted that Pennsylvania should send its own petition directly to the Crown and not join the other colonies in this worthy endeavor.78 Whatever the effects of this controversy on the election were, it clearly demonstrated the self-consciousness and independent weight of the German vote in Pennsylvania. That was not so much due to the abilities of Christoph Saur II as to the fact that his argument proved persuasive and attractive to German voters and English politicians alike. Saur’s broadside was well-reasoned, sharp, occasionally polemical, but most importantly firmly focused on one political principle that appealed to many German and English voters alike: the preservation of the Charter of Privileges. It is also an expression of the fundamental principles that Saur’s father had formulated in 1755.79 Identification with a central part of Pennsylvania’s history, the Charter of Privileges, characterized most Pennsylvania Germans’ politics; an alternative and more problematic tactic characterized the politics of German voters in the colony of New York in the bitterly fought election of 1769. Three German broadsides document German perceptions of and ideas about their role in New York politics: the song Nun Will ich Valediciren Nun So Will ich; a broadside entitled Zur nach right, signed by one of the most prominent New York politicians and lawyers, John Morin Scott; and as an answer to this broadside, Nutzliche Gegen Nachricht, an die samtliche Hoch-Teutsche in der Stadt New-York, von zwey Wohlmeinenden Lands Leuten, authored by opponents of Scott. The latter two broadsides were probably translations of texts originally published in English.80 Nun will ich Valediciren (fig. 36) is a curious piece. Obviously based on a German song, although the source has not yet been located, it mixes rather awkward verses with others that suggest an accomplished author. The song discusses two complaints: first, that in New York German voters have been denounced as ‘‘Feuer Braent’’ (firebrands), and second that they have been accused of being willing to sell their body and soul for a penny. In the fourth verse the song vows that Germans will vote for ‘‘Meister Cruger, De Lancey: / Meister Walton und Jaunsey.’’ The rest is a curious mix of praising the candidates and bonding nationally with the German settlers. This same theme shapes the first line, ‘‘Wachet auf ihr Teutsche Brueder’’ (Wake up, you German brethren), as well as the concluding demand that the ‘‘Nation,’’ meaning the German nation, rise from its slumber. The sixth verse invokes ‘‘Teutsches Blut’’ (German blood), the seventh promises that Germans will come to the election as ‘‘Maenner’’ (men), and the eighth asserts that no one can hinder the Germans from giving their vote to whom they want, for it is a shame, the verse continues, for their children to be thus denounced. The verse concludes, ‘‘Auf du teutsche Nation: / Anders leitst du Spott und Hohn’’ (otherwise you will earn mockery and scorn). The ninth verse asserts that

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Figure 36 Nun will ich Valediciren Nun So Will ich ([New York: John Holt, 1769]). The Library Company of Philadelphia.

no German would permit his honor to be taken away. The tenth verse praises king and queen ‘‘Weil Sie Sind von Deutschen Blutte’’ (because they are of German blood) and asserts that Germans vow allegiance and fidelity to them. The eleventh verse suggests a toast to the ‘‘Teutschen Nation’’ and the ‘‘Vatterland’’; the last hails the candidates.81

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This song was surprisingly popular, being one of the few election broadsides for which two different editions exist. At the same time it was effective in provoking a response. Within days John Morin Scott, who was not mentioned by name in the song, responded with his Zur nach right, a short text in a strange mixture of German and English. Morin complains of the unjust accusation ‘‘that I had denounced the High Dutch of this town as firebrands.’’ He assures his readers ‘‘that according to my best recollection and knowledge I never used such words or expressions.’’ At the same time he asks the Germans for their vote for the ticket ‘‘on the next voting or election day.’’82 This text, dated January 11, was also published on January 23, 1769, in the New York Gazette and Weekly Post Boy. The other side responded promptly with Nutzliche Gegen Nachricht, composed by ‘‘Zwei Hoch Teutsche.’’ The authors link their piece to the others by asserting that it did not really matter whether John Morin Scott had called the Germans ‘‘Feuer Braende,’’ for it was undoubtedly true that he and his friends had denounced them as ‘‘Hartnakigte, Halstarrige und obstinate Leutge’’ (obstinate, stiffnecked, and stubborn people). They add that, even worse, the Germans had been called ‘‘Dissenters’’ although ‘‘every rational Lutheran and Reformed Christian knew well that both denominations were chief or so to speak original denominations.’’83 They hope that the Germans will unite on this occasion in order to prove that among the characteristics assigned to them was obstinacy in sticking to their values. The text concludes with the joke that Scott had asked his ‘‘German water porter [i.e., ‘‘Wassertra¨ger,’’ sycophant] . . . to translate these from English into German, though he can neither spell nor read.’’84 In the election at the end of January, the ticket supported by the authors of Nutzliche Gegen Nachricht carried the day. How effective the poem and the diatribes against Scott and his friends were is difficult to say. Of greater interest for our argument are the selfperceptions the texts reflect: Germans in New York bonded by invoking their common national and ethnic background, and they resented being characterized as emotional and irrational persons without principles. They stressed that they belonged to the confessions acknowledged by the peace of 1648, which could be seen as being ‘‘am naechsten mit der Englischen Kirche’’ (closest to the Anglican Church). They emphasized their manliness, their and their children’s honor, and the distinctness of their language. The final barb against Scott’s medley of German and English made that clear enough, although their own ability to produce proper German did not match Christoph Saur II’s in his 1765 broadside. On the other hand, outside of a casual reference to Germans’ ability to safeguard their ‘‘eigene Interesse,’’ all three texts are devoid of references to political or constitutional principles. In comparing this exchange with the German broadsides published in Philadelphia in 1764 and 1765, one other characteristic stands out: while the Germans in Pennsylvania identified themselves with a key element of Pennsylvania’s history and thus merged with those who defined their rights, privileges, politics, and heritage through the Charter of Privileges, the New York Germans stressed their separate ethnic, religious, and cultural identities.

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Two elements mark the Pennsylvania German attitude to politics at the end of the colonial period: a remarkably sophisticated perception of their role as citizens in a republic, as demonstrated by Christoph Saur II’s broadside, and an energetic identification with the key constitutional document and the rights and privileges it guaranteed. It could be argued that Saur’s sophistication was not shared by German settlers in general, but that would be to misunderstand the nature of political broadsides. Saur was an important political figure, and his writings and journalistic efforts were widely read, struck receptive chords with his readers, and were thus hugely effective. He had a great deal of experience, knew his readers well, and certainly would not have gone to the trouble of carefully drafting and printing at his own expense something that he knew would go over his readers’ heads. Unfortunately, the business papers of the elder and younger Saur did not survive the revolutionary turmoil, so we will never know how many copies they printed of their political broadsides. But the elder Saur himself stated that he wanted to reach the German settlers in the three counties of Philadelphia, Bucks, and Berks, which must have involved a print run of at least one thousand copies. It is probably safe to assume that his son’s broadsides in the 1760s had similar print runs. The print runs of political broadsides are not indications of their market value, but expressions of the political influence of their author and originator. In the absence of direct documentation, it is important to reconstruct the political attitudes of authors by carefully interpreting both the texts of the broadsides and the political context. If the argument was effective, we should be able to recognize the results. The effectiveness of the elder Saur’s arguments in the 1750s and his son’s in the 1760s is attested by the election results and by the testimony of Saur II’s leading opponents, William Smith and Benjamin Franklin. German attitudes toward and conceptions of Pennsylvania politics, as far as both are reflected in German broadsides, evolved in three clearly defined stages. Initially German perceptions were largely shaped by the cultural memories and concepts they had brought from Germany. Conrad Weiser’s broadside was effective precisely because it evoked key terms like ‘‘monarchy,’’ ‘‘obedience to Caesar,’’ and ‘‘harmony.’’ The next stage is marked by Christoph Saur I’s broadside of 1755. This Whiggish and largely Lockean document shows how far German cultural values had merged with constitutional concepts vital to Pennsylvania politics. Now the center was not the monarch but the voter, who was responsible for the preservation of rights and privileges, as in return the elected body was responsible for the good behavior of the executive. This step also marked the emergence of the German vote as an independent force. The third stage was marked by German political behavior in the fierce crisis of 1764/65. Now the German broadsides and German voting behavior showed that beyond the theoretical political concepts they were able to position themselves in a difficult political field, orchestrate their strategy, and, through skillful alliances and tactics, carry the points about which they cared most strongly—the preservation of the Charter of Privileges of 1701.

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Germans in Pennsylvania never evoked the common bond of ethnicity and nationality as their counterparts in New York did. No broadsides in Pennsylvania appealed to ‘‘the German settlers.’’ By the 1750s it became clear that they were not united in their political attitudes. Instead, they increasingly began to move closer to the two opposing political groups, the Proprietary and the Quaker Parties. Ten years later the contours of a new German political program became visible. It combined elements of both parties with the cultural, religious, and political memories of the settlers. German settlers wanted to preserve their cultural identity, their independence in local affairs, and the liberties and privileges they had acquired by gaining citizen status in Pennsylvania. They all agreed—with the possible exception of some prominent Protestant pastors like Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg85—that the right to liberty of conscience was nonnegotiable. These convictions were identical with the program of the Quaker Party. Another element of German self-perception emerged in this crisis: Germans turned their intense resentment at being labeled ‘‘stupid boors’’ into the positive image of ‘‘the farmer.’’ This self-perception, which at least partially evolved as the counterimage to Benjamin Franklin’s and William Smith’s denigration of Germans in 1754–55, had large implications, as the political discourse in the early nineteenth century was to demonstrate. There were two key political areas in the 1760s where many German settlers parted ways with the Quakers. First, Germans’ experiences during the French and Indian War had taught them that rights had to be defended with weapons too, and German frontier settlers began to move into the Proprietary camp. And second, the ranks of these voters swelled when the Quaker Party decided in 1764 to break with the Proprietary Party and seek the protection of the Crown. By 1775 German political persuasions had changed again. Christoph Saur II and most of the German clergy hoped that God would make the impossible possible and preserve their rights under the Charter of Privileges and the British king as the authority God had set over them. The printer Henrich Miller represented the Revolutionary side, at the price of serious estrangement with the leading Moravian bishop Johann Ettwein (1721–1802). Unable to define a common position, most politically influential Germans fell silent and retreated into what later would be called ‘‘inner emigration.’’ For a number of years they allowed others to talk about them as metaphors for revolutionary and truly American values. That is the story of the following section.

Revolutionary Discourse, 1774–1783 As relations between the colonies and England turned sour, broadsides began to reflect particular strands of this complex development. In the two years before the Declaration of Independence, five German political songs commented on events; in the following two years the most important problem discussed in German broadsides involved German soldiers in the British and Continental armies. Only a few broadsides focused on the revolutionary process proper—and these more indirectly than directly. Related

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to this discussion were the few sheets that reflected the making of a state constitution for Pennsylvania. After a discussion of the political songs, our focus will be on the broadsides that discuss the role of German soldiers in the Revolutionary War. Content analysis allows rough dating of the five songs. Ein Lied von dem gegenwa¨rtigen Zustand in America mentions the Quebec Act, the Intolerable Acts, and the blockade of Boston, but not military clashes between British soldiers and Revolutionaries, and considers reconciliation still a distinct possibility. It was thus most likely printed in the last months of 1774. Evil and good are clearly defined: America is good, the king’s counselors, who perverted justice and caused America to suffer, are bad, and the pope is a horror. The author pleads with the king to treat America with clemency. In verses four and five he bewails the Quebec Act because it will subject America to the pope’s ‘‘oppressive’’ rule. In this situation America had to prepare for the worst; to preserve America’s rights, therefore, its representatives ensured that the militias were sufficiently exercised. Should war break out, the author maintains, infamy would fall on England, while America would be saved from tyrants and ‘‘bleibet frey’’ (remain free). European powers, however, such as France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and Prussia, would attempt to snatch pieces of America. If the king would ‘‘wehren’’ (call back) his ‘‘Knechten’’ (servants) in Parliament (the author obviously believed that the king was still so powerful that the members of Parliament would do his bidding), the controversy could still be ended, peace would return, and the king’s revenues would improve. In the last verse the author pleads with God to induce the king to prevent war in North America.86 Three messages stand out in this song: that the king can still turn the tide, that the colonists are strongly anti-Catholic, and that America is prepared to fight for its rights but hopes for reconciliation. The second song, Ein Lied gegen das unrechte Verfahren des Ko¨nigs, gegen America, was probably published in May 1775 in Philadelphia.87 In twenty-one verses it relates the injustice of the king and England toward America and America’s righteous resolve to fight the ‘‘tyrannische Knecht’’ (tyrannical servants) of the king. By now British cruelty had done so much damage to perceptions of the king that the author asked whether it was possible to continue loving him. A large part of the song focuses on the military might and preparedness of Americans, the exercising of the militias, and the provision of inhabitants with arms. Christians and Jews are prepared to fight (‘‘Der Jud wie Christ, Ha¨lt sich geru¨st’’).88 The last four verses return to the issue of justice. If the king persists in his injustice, America is determined to fight to the last man (‘‘So lang ein Mann noch fechten kann’’), and God as judge of the world will reveal who is right. The author concludes with the prayer that the king and Parliament repent their unjust deeds, for which America would be grateful. Two aspects characterize this song: the question of whether Americans can still love a king who has started war against them, and military preparations in America. The eroding confidence in the king testifies to the fact that at least some Germans were at the forefront of Revolutionary radicalism.89 The hope that a full-fledged war can be prevented is still present, but expressed in

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terms of just and unjust war, which can only be prevented if God interceded with king and Parliament. This song was reprinted at least once, indicating that it had caught the mood of at least some German buyers. That was also probably true of the third song, Ein Lied von Lord Nord, which appeared probably toward the end of June 1775, since it mentions as the last event the appointment of Washington as ‘‘Feld Marshal’’ (field marshal, i.e., commanding general).90 The song describes Lord North as the king’s friend and calls him ‘‘Haman,’’ the wicked counselor of King Ahasuerus. This description is coupled with the hope that North will receive his just desserts ‘‘unter der Englischen Kron’’ (from the English Crown), which of course implies that the king is still willing and able to recognize the evil done to North America and correct it as Ahasuerus had done by having Haman hanged. The middle section of the song describes the terror of the British Army, and particularly General Gage’s evil acts as a ‘‘tyrant’’ in torturing women and children. These shameful deeds would hopefully be curbed by Washington, ‘‘ein tapferer Held, Schla¨get die Feind zu Feld’’ (a brave hero who conquers his enemy on the battlefield). The last verses warn the ‘‘junges Blut’’ (young blood) that war is horrible and full of suffering. It ends with the crackling sound of exploding grenades in the young warriors’ ears. This song reads like a compilation of individual pieces that do not quite fit. America will fight, but war is horrible; North is bad, but the king will punish him and leave at least the possibility open that peace will be preserved in the end. Though it is neither soul-rousing nor hope-inspiring, it was reprinted once. The fourth song, Das Trauer Lied der unterdru¨ckten Freyheit, published around the same time, was less successful. The song follows the pattern established in sermons and other writings:91 Americans (and this term is used deliberately) had in the last two centuries come to a ‘‘wu¨stes Land’’ (desert land), which they cultivated and made their own. In England this peaceful land aroused ire and envy; compacts were violated and swords drawn by a bloodthirsty Royal Council. First the Stamp Act was passed, and then blood was shed at Charlestown (meaning the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775). Indeed, never had it been heard that a mother, England, had massacred her children, the colonies. Could it be a sin if ‘‘the sons of liberty protected life, liberty, and property from the enemy’s murderous shouts’’?92 The answer: no! ‘‘Justice,’’ the song asserts, is inscribed on the Americans’ victory banner and ‘‘Innocence’’ on their standard.93 America will triumph and overcome the toughest resistance if its virtue does not diminish and all continue to fight for their fatherland. Through thunder, fire, flash, and destruction the American motto will remain ‘‘Dead or free I will be.’’94 For the author of this song and those who purchased and sang it, God was on America’s side, the die was cast, and although the fight would be hard, victory was assured, for America could live only in liberty, not in slavery. This is the only German Revolutionary broadside that wholeheartedly employs radical Revolutionary rhetoric. But in contrast to the earlier, less radical broadsides, it was not reprinted even once—testimony to the reluctance of many Germans to commit themselves to the Revolutionary cause.

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This rousing message contrasts with the rather subdued title of Das Trauer Lied der unterdru¨ckten Freyheit (Mourning song of oppressed liberty) and even more so with the last song published around that time, Christliches Buß-Lied, gestellt auf den 20ten Julius 1775 in Nord-Amerika gehaltenen Fast-Tag.95 The Christliches Buß was printed as a penance song for the fast day proclaimed on July 20, 1775, by the Continental Congress after the Battle of Bunker Hill. The verses interpret the turbulence and suffering of the times as the result of the backsliding of a once happy America, described in glowing terms in the third and fourth verses. Only repentance and regeneration of the heart, and certainly not words, will turn God again to America to save her from a devastating war and reestablish peace. On the surface this song is modeled on sermons that explain the world’s miseries as the result of sin, corruption, and disobedience of God’s commands. Only a thorough reformation, the song says, will reestablish the happiness that formerly reigned in America. On a deeper level this means that America is not the wronged land but the evildoer, and it is not about to be enslaved by a corrupt British ministry but deservedly punished for her sins. The song knows nothing of rights and liberties that are worth fighting and dying for to secure America a bright future. Only if ‘‘we search after the hidden treasure in our heart’’ will all the skullduggery, deceit, and clamor for murder in our land vanish.96 These last three songs address different moods and attitudes. Ein Lied von Lord Nord reflects the indecisiveness of many Germans who still perceived themselves as the German subjects of King George, the German sovereign of the empire, Elector of Hanover, and member of the Holy Roman Empire. The Trauer Lied der unterdru¨ckten Freyheit fires the enthusiasm of the ardent Revolutionary German with its proclamation of final victory and soul-rousing rhetoric. Finally, the Christliches Buß, which was not reprinted, reflects the subdued loyalism of those Germans who belonged to peace churches—the Society of Friends, the Mennonites, the Moravians, the Dunkers—or who, like some Lutherans and leading clergymen, felt that America was straying from the right path and violating the biblical command to be obedient to the authority set over it. Until autumn 1775, however, probably a majority of the German settlers identified with a cautious pro-Revolutionary position, which was perfectly in tune with their pro–Charter of Privileges position. Until the Battle of Bunker Hill, printers were able to publish songs that reflected the different attitudes of the German settlers; after that seminal date, however, printing Loyalist songs became too dangerous. Everywhere Committees of Inspection and Observation now carefully monitored public sentiments.97 The Christliches Buß remained the only form in which Loyalist sentiments could be expressed. Outside New York City no printer after the summer of 1775 dared publish Loyalist and, in the eyes of Revolutionaries, treasonous sentiments. With the arrival of Hessian troops the nature of the discussion in German broadsides changed. Suddenly the memory of suffering and persecution associated with Old Europe became a presence in North America. Yet interestingly enough, while this should have horrified Moravians, Mennonites, and members of other peace churches,

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the reverse seems to have been the case. The arrival of the troops shocked many Lutherans and Reformed; it also probably drove a good deal of them into the arms of the Revolution, though we will never know for sure. One other aspect is also quite surprising: not one German broadside on the American side was composed by a German author; they were all translations. German settlers in America, in other words, remained silent. On the British and Hessian side, on the other hand, two broadsides were written and signed by one of the most important Hessian officers, Andreas Emmerich (1737–1809). Hitherto this ‘‘German war of words’’ has been known only as a highly successful American psychological warfare campaign that may have induced up to ten thousand German mercenaries to defect to the American side. The discovery of British broadsides answering the American ones, however, makes it clear that the American psychological warfare was part of a larger conflict in which European and American principles and values were pitted against each other.98 The Continental Congress greeted the German regiments in August 1776 with three broadsides. The first, Manifest des Generalkongresses an die fremden Truppen,99 directly addressed the troops, telling them that they were about to help England oppress and enslave Americans who were only fighting for what nature, reason, and the British Constitution demanded and God had approved. With God on America’s side, the Continental Congress did not fear what human beings would do to them. Americans knew that they had done no harm to Hessians and asked them how they could justify their deeds on Judgment Day. The authors hoped they would not help the British in their efforts to oppress North America, and reminded them that their countrymen had fled from oppression in Germany to America as a place of liberty. If the Hessian soldiers did the same and put down their arms, they would receive free land, pay no taxes for ten years, and enjoy all the rights and privileges of freeborn Americans and complete freedom of worship. But if they refused this offer and assisted America’s enemies, they would be considered neither persons of honor nor soldiers and the Continental Army would be given the clearest orders to refuse them quarter. The second broadside, Im Congreß, den 14ten August 1776,100 focused on the tainted motives of the German princes who had lent England their troops in return for generous subsidies: they had sold ‘‘the blood of their subjects for money.’’101 After their ordeal, the broadside suggested, the soldiers might prefer land, liberty, security, and the enjoyment of good and mild laws to their tyrannical princes. It also pointed out that the Hessians would be fighting against a people that had done nothing terrible except to refuse to exchange liberty for slavery. Since the British Parliament had passed a law that encouraged Americans to desert their army and ruled that they would be impressed into the British Navy if caught on the high seas, Congress had decided to offer German soldiers willing to leave the British Army ‘‘free exercise of their religion, and with . . . rights, liberties, and freedom from taxation’’ in addition to a grant of fifty acres of land.102 Two weeks later, the Continental Congress issued the third broadside, Im Congreß, den 27sten August, 1776, which offered German soldiers different quantities of

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land according to their rank when they left the British Army, from one hundred acres for a sergeant to one thousand for ‘‘einen Oberst’’ (colonel).103 In these broadsides the Continental Congress employed progressively harsher and more precise language at the same time that it improved on the offer of land to the German deserters—‘‘deserter’’ being a term that was of course carefully avoided. The first broadside drew a contrast between assisting the British to oppress and enslave and living in a land of freedom. Neither Christian commandments nor wisdom nor honor, it pointed out, obliged German soldiers to help subjugate a hard-pressed people. The second broadside suggested that they might prefer not to participate in a war that violated all Christian and ethical values. The third broadside expressed hope that German soldiers would be willing to exchange dishonest service in the British Army and disgust for their rulers for love of mankind and the blessings of peace, liberty, property, and a mild government. The vague promise of land and the enjoyment of rights, privileges, and freedom of religious worship in the first broadside was succeeded by offers of increasingly generous allotments of land in the second and third broadsides. Finally, all three broadsides offered more or less glowing descriptions of America. According to the first, nature, reason, and the British Constitution had shaped the mild government of America; God was on America’s side; America had become a haven of liberty and security for German immigrants, who were living ‘‘under their grapevines and fig trees in the most perfect liberty.’’104 The second broadside added that the wise constitutions of the American states extended the protection of law to all who came to live there. If the Hessians joined the American ranks, they would enjoy the benefits of all civic and religious liberties and be granted freedom and happiness—which the British were trying to destroy. The third broadside flattered the German soldiers for their noble sentiments, telling them they knew of human rights and the inestimable value of liberty and yearned to participate in the blessings of peace, liberty, and property. Only the first and third broadsides linked the generous offers of land and rights to conditions: the first threatened that rejecting the offer would result in strict orders to deny German soldiers quarter and to deal with them as men without honor, not as soldiers; the third concluded that they had to take up the offer before Congress rescinded it. Little is known about how these broadsides were distributed, but it is likely that in many cases German settlers functioned as distribution agents. They could not only read the texts but would, if they approved of the intent, act as important disseminators; they would be able to pick out a potential deserter, just as a Hessian soldier, in conversation with a German settler, would be able to explore his chances of desertion in America. The involvement of settlers would probably strengthen their attachment to the Revolutionary (or alternatively to the Loyalist) cause and thus diminish the number who were watching the conflict between Britain and America with apprehension and whose feelings toward either side were probably marked by reluctance and aloofness.105 The topics discussed in the broadsides relevant to German settlers and their situation in North America were precisely those a potential deserter would want to explore.

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Certainly, much depended on how the German settlers confirmed or even highlighted the broadside’s words. Discussions about life in America and the evolution of the conflict were inevitable.106 George Washington, aware of the difficulty in distributing these broadsides, quickly discovered means to overcome it. On August 19, 1776, he asked Congress to ‘‘furnish me with a larger quantity [of broadsides] than I already have.’’107 A week later he informed Congress with some satisfaction that ‘‘the Papers designed for the foreign Troops, have been put into several Channels, in order that they might be conveyed to them, and from the Information I had Yesterday, I have reason to believe many have fallen into their Hands.’’108 Another popular way to bring broadsides to the enemy was by using flags of truce or pretending to bring merchandise into cities like New York or Philadelphia that were occupied by the British. Clearly there was a lively traffic between the occupied city and the surrounding countryside: at a general court martial presided over by Colonel Courtlandt on February 25, 1778, the court acquitted Philip Bocker, Joseph de Haven, and Michael Milanberger of the charge of repeatedly trying to enter Philadelphia with provisions, while Jacob Cross was sentenced to one hundred lashes on his bare back for stealing two calves and bringing one to Philadelphia.109 The English quickly copied these methods to disseminate their version of the origins of the conflict and how it could be solved. Their broadsides turned the tables on the Revolutionaries: without even mentioning American attempts to seduce Hessian soldiers to desert, the British broadsides were directly aimed at the German settlers in the Middle Atlantic states. Well aware that many Germans were reluctant to embrace the Revolutionary cause, these broadsides appealed to their patriotic sense, their monarchical sentiments, and their supposed loyalty to the British monarch. In attempting to exploit supposed weaknesses in the attitudes of the Germans, the authors of these texts were convinced that the Germans were still living very much in the cultural, intellectual, and political world of the Holy Roman Empire that Conrad Weiser had evoked in 1741. Three days after Congress distributed a general Address to the Citizens of the American States, a broadside signed ‘‘Camillus’’ was printed in New York under the title An das Publicum. Betrachtungen u¨ ber den gegenwaertigen aufruehrischen Zustand von AMERICA, an dessen Einwohner insgesamt gerichtet.110 The copy preserved in the British National Archives is endorsed by a contemporary hand with the remark ‘‘800 Published & Dispersed in Jersey and Pennsylvania.’’111 The broadside narrates the conflict from the British side: originally England had protected America against enemies, and although His Majesty’s delegates in America had repeatedly proposed conciliation, all had been in vain. ‘‘The colonies started a war against their mother country; this war must be energetically pursued until America submits to her constitutionally decreed government.’’112 In what the author considered a wise and good measure, German troops had been hired to attain this goal. By their actions the rebellious Americans had lost their liberty; the war measures would restore to them their accustomed freedom under the British Constitution and liberate Americans from the most shameful kind of

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republican tyranny. England had experienced such tyranny under Oliver Cromwell, the author continued, and that experience had taught Englishmen that a republican constitution was totally unsuited to a great empire. Only monarchy could preserve the subjects’ freedom. Therefore, the author exclaimed, ‘‘betho¨rte und betrogene Americaner’’ (poor infatuated and betrayed Americans), abstain from such a course, which must bring you perdition! Give up your wrong notion that England wants to enslave you. Accept the declarations of His Majesty’s delegates, consent to the reestablishment of peace and enjoy again its blessings in a reunion with the British Empire. Then the British army and navy will be recalled and resume their former role as protector of America, to the honor and glory of the British Empire. The American side immediately responded with a broadside dated ‘‘Bucks Caunty, den 14ten December, 1776,’’ which described British atrocities in gory detail. To enhance credibility, names were given and the specific circumstances of such actions described. For example, ‘‘Last Wednesday three women arrived on the shores of Jersey greatly agitated; they were fetched by a party of American soldiers; it became then evident that they had been atrociously treated. The youngest of them, a girl of about fifteen years, had been raped that very morning by a British officer.’’113 Like the broadside released by Congress on December 10, 1776, in both English and German,114 this sheet was designed to rally dispirited English and German inhabitants of the middle colonies to the American cause and boost morale after the crushing defeats of the Continental Army in the last three months. The British side repaid this effort in similar coin. Andreas Emmerich, a German officer in the British Army who commanded a Chasseur regiment and later authored a treatise on partisan warfare,115 published a broadside especially addressed to the Germans in the Middle Atlantic states.116 In the first part he asserted that the rebellion as well as the war were the dirty work of a handful of rebels led by ‘‘Hancock, Adams, the first a weak and ignorant fellow, the other a scoundrel.’’117 These men had seduced the unknowing multitude with their boasts about liberty. Making a new argument, he accused Hancock and Adams of secretly transferring money to France and Switzerland in case they needed to seek refuge. In the second part Emmerich appealed to the Germans’ patriotism and support of monarchism. He was surprised, he asserted, that the Germans had not yet risen, arrested these ringleaders, brought them to British Army headquarters, and thus made an end to this rebellion. Now was the time, he concluded, to take action and to declare loyalty to the king. Those who waited too long would be dealt with as rebels, but those who came forward now would receive the king’s pardon. Shortly after this broadside was distributed, the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury reported ‘‘that many thousands from the Provinces of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania have already come in and claimed the benefit of the late Proclamation of his Majesty’s free Pardon.’’118 Emmerich’s broadside achieved three goals. First, it reinforced English expectations that supposedly Loyalist German settlers represented a large pool of potential soldiers for the British Army, which if successfully tapped would substantially weaken the

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rebels’ cause. Second, it put the American side on notice that enticing Hessians to desert could backfire since the British were able to make an attractive case for German settlers. Third, like the Hessian soldiers, the German inhabitants suddenly found themselves not only courted by both the British and the revolutionaries, but threatened with dire consequences if they did not fulfill Revolutionary or Loyalist expectations. These German broadsides linked the settlers to one of the key issues of the war: the recruitment of soldiers. At the same time, the settlers themselves were elevated by the revolutionary broadsides into living symbols of what distinguished America from German states: a life in liberty, security, and unfettered freedom of worship in a land where the farmer owned his own land and worked for himself, not for a landlord or a nobleman. The British broadsides countered with the image of the German as one who acknowledged and venerated his king as the source of his rights and privileges, was honest and loyal, loved order, and detested rebellions. The American Revolutionary values and advantages were the subjects of a broadside published by the president of the Pennsylvania Council of Safety, Thomas Wharton Jr., on January 1, 1777, addressed An das Publicum but especially to the German inhabitants of Philadelphia.119 The occasion was Washington’s successful raid on Trenton on December 26, 1776, which had resulted in the capture of ‘‘bey Tausend Hessen’’ (almost a thousand Hessians). Wharton admonished the inhabitants to treat these prisoners so well that upon their return to the British Army they would open the eyes of British soldiers with their narratives of what they had seen. He described the miserable lot of the Hessian soldiers, who had been carted out of their fatherland and sold to a foreign king like cattle, and whose pay was so miserable that they were forced to resort to plundering in order to survive—although their behavior was still better than that of the British soldiers. Since these Hessians had now escaped the control of the British officers, they ought to be regarded no longer as enemies but as friends. Only England and the British Army, Wharton insisted, were the enemies of America. This was the occasion and the time to weaken the enemy by making its mercenaries the friends of America. In order to accomplish this, ‘‘the disadvantaged and betrayed Hessians have to be treated in the friendliest manner as a people with whom we wish to be joined in cultivating American land and forests, building manufactures and commerce, and defending liberty and independence against arbitrary and foreign power.’’120 That the possession of land was one of the most important attractions of America was indirectly confirmed by the commanding general of the British Army, Sir William Howe. In a broadside dated October 8, 1777, shortly after the British had taken possession of Philadelphia, Howe promised Germans who wanted to ‘‘escape the misery that accompanies confusion and tyranny and contribute to the restitution of the blessings of peace and good order under a just and mild government’’ land ranging from fifty acres for privates to two hundred acres for noncommissioned officers if they enlisted in a German regiment of the British Army.121 They were to be assigned either in the ‘‘colony’’ (that of course was the language of the mother country, which refused to

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accept the Declaration of Independence) in which they enlisted or in any other colony His Majesty chose. The lands were to be free of quitrents for ten years.122 Again Germans were caught in the dialogue of broadsides, for on the same day the Continental Congress published in English and German a resolution that forbade any contact with, assistance to, or help for the British Army. Anyone caught was to be dealt with as a traitor and enemy and condemned by the military courts to death. In addition, the Congress empowered all justices of the peace to arrest anyone who was moving between the lines and spreading ‘‘lies and false rumors’’ with the intention to dishearten the inhabitants.123 John Brown was such a person who tried ‘‘every Artifice and device to delude the People,’’ as George Washington wrote in late November 1777 to the Continental Congress. Under the pretense of delivering a message from General Howe, Washington complained, Brown had left Philadelphia and traveled all around Pennsylvania before returning to the city.124 By mid-February 1778 the situation had not improved. ‘‘The communication between the city and country, in spite of every thing hitherto done, still continuing, and threatening the most pernicious consequences,’’ Washington wrote to the commander of a militia regiment stationed in the vicinity of Philadelphia, ‘‘I am induced to beg you will exert every possible expedient to put a stop to it.’’125 Clearly, Washington was worried about the effects British propaganda would have on the morale of the civilian German and English population. At the same time, there were signs that American tactics for favorably impressing Hessians began to produce results. On November 16, 1777, General Israel Putnam published a broadside addressed to Hessians ‘‘wherein,’’ as Andreas Emmerich phrased it in his reply, ‘‘with flimsy pretenses, fabrications, and empty promises the ignoble attempt is made to seduce the German troops of the British Army to perjure themselves.’’126 Putnam had expressed pity for the Hessian soldiers because they bloodied their hands with Americans, with whom they had no quarrel, and were treated by the British soldiers with contempt while being sent onto the most dangerous missions by the British commanders. These maligned Hessians would be welcomed by the Americans, Putnam wrote, as their ‘‘Mitbru¨der and Einwohner’’ (brothers and inhabitants). After the war those who wanted to return to Germany would be transported back at America’s expense, and those who stayed would receive all the rights and privileges of American citizens.127 In his broadside Emmerich, nettled by Putnam’s insinuations, countered the American attractions—land, liberty, freedom of worship—with the values that governed a German soldier’s life and thought.128 He was a man of honor, faithful to his rightful sovereign, and abhorred treachery. He would stick to these values while the German settlers awaited their end—death. Putnam offered a life of peace and happiness and endowed Hessian deserters with rights and privileges without themselves having to endure, as the Hessian soldiers did, British ridicule in risking their lives for them. Both Putnam and Emmerich suggested death as the ultimate punishment, both elevated their political values and positions in society to the status of the ultimate good for

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themselves and society, and both demanded resolution and determined action. Their visions were radical alternatives and mutually exclusive. Emmerich’s broadside marked the end of the exchange from the Hessian and British side. But on April 29, 1778, half a year after Burgoyne’s capitulation at Saratoga and at the time the news of the French-American treaty of amity reached North America, the Continental Congress issued one final broadside, An die Officier und Soldaten in Diensten des Ko¨nigs von Großbritannien.129 Fittingly, it opened with the bold declaration that the American states were fighting not only for their own interest but ‘‘for the rights of mankind and therefore deserve the protection and assistance of all persons.130 America’s success would make the nation a refuge for all against tyranny and protection for their happiness. The broadside then repeated, extended, and specified the earlier offers of land for the various military grades. In addition, Congress assured Hessians that if they changed sides they would be free from further military service unless they voluntarily enlisted again,131 in which case they would be placed at a grade above their original one. The broadside concluded with another eulogy of the rights, liberties, happiness, and blessings of ‘‘the fruit of your honest labor, of an absolutely secure [title to the] property of your donated land, blessings which should extend to your children and their heirs.’’132 The European values of honor, fidelity, and allegiance to the rightful sovereign were pitted against the American values of human rights, liberty, freedom of worship, and security of property. In the final analysis these marked the outer borders of the value systems within which this war was played out in the broadsides. Hessian soldiers who refused American temptations were living examples of what those European values meant: a well-ordered society led by a beloved prince who was just and equitable to all his subjects and for whom it was worth dying. Defeating the Americans meant sustaining the old European order. German settlers and Hessian deserters who rejected Hessian and British pleas were examples of the alternative model, which claimed the future for itself and was meant for all mankind. Both models used the same material inducement to entice the ‘‘other’’ to join their ranks: land. The American side offered land as the beginning and basis for a new life characterized by security of property and the way to individual liberty and happiness; the British side offered land as a reward for returning to the service of the monarch. In this war for the German soul, both Hessian soldiers and German settlers were elevated to symbols of the basic values that fueled the war; at the same time they were exploited by both sides because success in this battle of rhetoric would, it was thought, materially influence the outcome of the conflict. The broadsides’ messages, symbolic nature, and modes of distribution were directed to but one group: the Germans who could read them. The material inducements of the broadsides offered designated the German readers as objects of and subjects in this battle. Although modern accounts have very little to say about German settlers or about the mercenaries—a term that robs the Hessian soldiers of their ethnic peculiarities—this controversy suggests that at least in the Middle Atlantic states both groups represented a major problem for both

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sides. Considering the large percentage of Hessian soldiers in the British Army133 and of German settlers in the American population of the Middle Atlantic states, the attention devoted to this problem is not surprising. What is surprising is that German settlers did not join the debate. Given their no doubt able pens and their access to printers, this silence indicates significant insecurity in the large majority of them. Whatever modest sympathy they had for one side or the other was obviously not enough to bring them into the war of words. Only those who were firmly committed to either cause, like Christoph Saur II for the Loyalist side and the two sons of Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg for the Revolutionary side, actively joined the ranks. Saur became official printer of the British Army in Philadelphia, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg a general in the Continental Army, and Frederick August Conrad Muhlenberg one of the leading postrevolutionary politicians.

Constitutional Disagreements, 1776–1788 A number of broadsides, which we will not discuss here, dealt with military matters. They are essentially time-bound administrative orders without any larger meaning for the role of Germans in the War of Independence. That, however, cannot be said of the broadsides that focus on constitutional issues. The earlier of these relate to the Pennsylvania state constitution,134 and the later to the federal Constitution of 1787.135 Although none of these broadsides mention the war and its effects, their tactics, proposals, and perceptions were at least indirectly influenced by the war and the problems it posed. In Pennsylvania anti-Loyalist and anti-pacifist feelings were running high, and as a result an especially large number of inhabitants in general and Germans in particular lost the right to vote and to participate in the constitution-making process.136 Although not among the first states to do so, Pennsylvania elected a convention that between July 15 and September 28, 1776, agreed on a constitution. A number of features mark this process as exceptional compared to other states.137 First, in the months before the constitutional convention began its work, bitter controversies had divided Pennsylvania into three camps: the ‘‘Radicals,’’ who called themselves ‘‘Whigs’’ or ‘‘Constitutionalists’’; the moderate supporters of ‘‘independency,’’ who styled themselves ‘‘Republicans’’; and those who supported English policy and were called by their opponents ‘‘Loyalists’’ or ‘‘Tories.’’ The Whigs usually grouped pacifists with the Loyalists. Second, the constitutional convention was elected by probably fewer than three thousand voters due to the requirement that all voters had to take an oath of allegiance to the newly independent state. Third, contrary to some other states, Pennsylvania did not submit its constitution to the people, nor did the constitution contain clauses that allowed changes without surmounting serious obstacles. The eighteen days between publication of the final draft and its final adoption on September 28, 1776, were too short a time span to allow a critical and thorough public discussion of the draft, and not long enough to allow proposals for alterations to be submitted.138 Until 1790 many

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of the political disputes within Pennsylvania stemmed from these problems. Loyalists or those who harbored Loyalist feelings doubted the necessity of a new constitution; for them the Charter of Privileges prescribed the ideal form of republican government. Republicans thought the unicameral system granted too much power to the ‘‘people’’ in legislature and decried the potentially weak and ineffective executive. And the Whigs or Constitutionalists defended their constitution tooth and nail and rejected all suggestions for changes.139 Modern research has discussed the political disputes and controversies in Pennsylvania between 1776 and 1790 as principally an affair of the English-speaking population. The German settlers’ role is described as ‘‘conservative’’ or insignificant.140 This view can be traced back to the Revolutionary period itself. John Adams, for example, in an April 1777 letter to his wife, Abigail, characterized the Pennsylvania Germans thus: ‘‘The Germans, who are numerous and wealthy in this state and who have very imperfect Ideas of Freedom, have a violent Attachment to Property. They are passionate and vindictive, in a Degree that is scarce credible to Persons who are unacquainted with them, and the least Injury to their Property excites a Resentment and a Rage beyond Description.’’141 Benjamin Rush styled the German settlers simply as ‘‘an uninformed body of people.’’142 The German broadsides that were issued as part of the political controversies about the state constitution suggest that this interpretation needs to be modified. In 1776 and 1777 two German broadsides on political issues were published. The first, VerhaltungsVorschriften an die Repra¨sentanten der Stadt Philadelphia in der Assembly, was a translation of the instructions to the representatives at a meeting of moderate critics of the constitution in Philadelphia. These were agreed upon on November 8, 1776, and published in both English and German. The instructions requested that as far as possible the new constitution retain features of the old Charter of Privileges of 1701, replace the unicameral system with two houses, strengthen the executive, modify the rules for improving and changing the constitution, and finally ensure that the revised constitution be submitted to the scrutiny and vote of the electorate.143 How many German voters in Philadelphia city and county subscribed to these views is difficult to say, but the broadside indicates that the leading Republican figures believed it worth their effort and money to translate and publish their ‘‘Resolves’’ in German in order to attract German support. Neither these nor similar proposals from counties and militia companies impressed the assembly.144 This lack of response induced the critics of the constitution to launch a new campaign.145 In mid-May 1777 the Philadelphia newspapers printed the text of a ‘‘memorial’’ that, according to the title, was circulating among the inhabitants of the city.146 A verbatim translation in German was printed on June 11, 1777, in the German paper Der Philadelphische Staatsbote.147 The memorial was divided into two parts. The first part sharply criticized the legislative and executive powers for their lack of energy and activity in the crisis the state faced when the British Army approached Philadelphia. The second part focused on the constitution of 1776. This second part was published

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alone by Francis Bailey in Lancaster, most likely some days earlier, as a memorial to the ‘‘hochgeehrten Glieder, des Pennsylvanischen Staats’’ (well-esteemed representatives of the state of Pennsylvania) (fig. 37).148 Lancaster County played a key role within Pennsylvania politics for at least two reasons. First, it was the second-largest county in the state. In the census of 1790 it had 35,192 inhabitants, compared to 51,916 in Philadelphia County. The census also found that 26 percent of Pennsylvanians had German names. Second, Lancaster itself, with about 3,600 inhabitants, was the largest inland town in the United States between 1770 and 1800. In 1788 63 percent of Lancaster’s heads of family were German.149 During the occupation of Philadelphia, the Continental Congress met for some time in Lancaster, and in 1789 the town was promoted, albeit unsuccessfully, as the seat of the future capital of the Federation.150 Political statements issued from the county or borough were thus no trifling matter within the state. Bailey’s broadside refrained from criticizing actual politics but minced no words about the deficiencies of the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776. The authors bluntly stated that the constitution was ‘‘ga¨nzlich ungleich’’ (totally unsuited) to meet the exigencies of government. They reminded the representatives of the fundamental republican principle that an elected assembly had no right to change a constitution without the express authorization of the people. They demanded, therefore, that the assembly call a new convention authorized to revise the deficient constitution of 1776, and that the revised constitution then be submitted to the people for their approval. There are some remarkable differences between the English and the German versions of the November 1776 instructions to the Philadelphia representatives and the June 1777 memorial. Both English texts criticize in detail the political behavior of the assembly and key features of the constitution. The German version of the latter text, on the other hand, pointedly refrains from detailed criticism but concentrates on fundamental issues: the constitution of 1776 was inadequate, as the people had to authorize amendments to the constitution, and the new constitution or amendments to the old were to be submitted to the people’s judgment (this repeats arguments from the earlier broadside). The authors do not presume to know how the people would decide in this matter, and therefore they refrain from including specific concerns. They do, however, remind the assemblymen that since, for conscience’s sake, they could not take the oath demanded of them, they were restricted from voting and thus never had a chance to express their views on the proper form of government. Unfortunately, it is not known how many copies of this broadside were printed.151 The criticism of the oath indicates that the memorialists were probably among those who had not been willing to renounce their old sovereign. As they indicate in their memorial, however, they were now willing to support the government and participate in the drafting of the new constitution, and presumably to give up their skeptical attitude toward the revolutionary state. However, their promise to support the government is given with the qualification, more extensive than in the English version, ‘‘as far as they are able and if agreeable to their religious constitutions.’’152 This qualification

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Figure 37 An die hochgeehrten Glieder der Assembly, des Pennsylvanischen Staats. Das Memorial verschiedener Einwohner der Graffschaft Lancaster giebt mit aller gebu¨hrenden Hochachtung zu erkennen ([Lancaster, Pa.: Francis Bailey, 1777]). Photo: author.

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may have reflected the authors’ desire to convince as many Dunkers, Moravians, and Mennonites as possible to join them and thus, they hoped, to bring these peace churches back to the ‘‘people,’’ who as sovereigns had the right to determine the fundamental features of the republic. The gist of this memorial was nicely supplemented by a more statesmanlike German broadside published at roughly the same time by an ‘‘Ackermann’’ (farmer). This text is most likely not derived from an English political campaign, but originally written in German. The German author, who describes himself as an elderly and experienced man who had enough vigor left to share his thoughts with the public but lacked the energy to accept a public office once more (some nice rhetorical tropes), shares key tenets of the Republicans. Spiced with noble sentiments and general remarks about the failings of mankind, the broadside, along the line suggested by the memorialists, voices general and serious misgivings about the constitution.153 His argument repeats and strengthens the general reasoning of the June 1777 broadside: it fundamentally criticizes the constitution but avoids personal attacks and acrimony, which would have worsened the difficult situation the state was in at that time. The occupation of Philadelphia from September 1777 until June 1778 silenced the debate on the constitution, but after the British Army had returned to New York, the assembly’s decision to ask the voters whether a new constitutional convention should be called quickly led to a revival of the debate. The publication of the assembly’s resolution of November 28, 1778, in a German broadside reveals why this measure rekindled the controversy: the procedural rules for the poll of voters’ opinions were so complicated and tied to so many conditions that many felt the poll was nothing but a face-saving device by the assembly to quiet the clamor for a constitutional convention.154 Nevertheless, the ‘‘Constitutionalists’’ accused the assembly of attempting to destroy the constitution, and successfully organized a mass petition movement that induced the assembly on February 27, 1778, to rescind the vote of the previous November.155 With this success the radical Constitutionalists had finally reached their goal: complete control of the assembly. Since the Council of State was elected by the assembly, the ‘‘Radicals,’’ to use Brunhouse’s term, controlled Pennsylvania’s politics—at least for the next four years. The high point was the so-called Fort Wilson incident on October 4, 1779, in which a militia company clashed with prominent Republicans at the house of James Wilson, an eminent lawyer and critic of the constitution; only the timely arrival of the mounted militia, the City Light Horse, prevented a bloodbath.156 Germans were among the more radical members of the militia company. Reports of the incident in the press offer no further clues.157 More important for future development were the structural changes the assembly accomplished: with the total control of the executive and legislature, the Whigs were able to complete the process of democratization of key state institutions like the College of Philadelphia, the last bastion of conservatism. A November 1779 act changed the College into the University of the State of Pennsylvania and temporarily made it a

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radical stronghold. Another act completed the transformation from colony to republican state by declaring that ‘‘all rights to the soil and arrears of purchase money of lands’’ owned by the Penn family ‘‘devolved on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, that all collection of quitrents was abolished,’’ and that the Penn family would be granted one hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling as damages to be paid after the war.158 With these two accomplishments the Whigs’ program had run its course. In the same year the changes in the mode of election envisioned in the constitution began to take effect. In November 1779 counties elected representatives for the first time based on the number of taxpayers. Hitherto all counties had enjoyed equal representation in the assembly. The changes were significant: those counties with voting populations predominantly of English and German origin—Philadelphia city and county, Chester, Lancaster, York, and Cumberland—which formerly elected forty-two representatives, now sent fifty-three to the assembly, while the other counties together sent nineteen instead of their former thirty. The change was particularly pronounced for Lancaster County, whose delegates in the house increased from six to eleven. The influence of the old counties was increased at the expense of the newer counties, where the more radical Presbyterian Scots and Scot-Irish had dominated elections.159 The influence of the German voting population was also increased. This greater influence did not affect, it seems, German attitudes toward the most important issue of the day: the constitution of 1776. Freymu¨thige Gedanken u¨ber die sogenannte ‘‘Anrede von der Minorita¨t im Rath der Censoren,’’ written by a ‘‘freye[n] Deutsche[n] Bu¨rger des Staats’’ (free German citizen of the state) and published in June 1784, essentially affirmed earlier broadsides’ moderate criticism of the constitution. It was prompted by the harsh criticism of the minority of the Council of Censors of the majority’s recommendations for significant changes to the 1776 constitution. Appointed by election, the Council of Censors had been created by section 47 of the constitution with the function of assessing the constitutionality of legislative and executive measures. The council was to report its findings and recommendations every seventh year. The majority’s recommendations essentially repeated the criticisms made in November 1776 and June 1777 and again demanded that the unicameral legislature be abandoned in favor of a bicameral system and that the executive council be replaced by a governor. These changes would have satisfied most moderate critics and brought the Pennsylvania constitution in line with those of most other states of the Confederation. In their rebuttal, the minority of the Board of Censors suggested, among other things, that, if necessary, armed resistance should be used to preserve the constitution of 1776 in its entirety.160 The German broadside opens with a remarkable comment on the minority’s position. The author, who was obviously very well informed about constitutional issues in general and the Council of Censors in particular, suggests that the English authors had published their ‘‘unverscha¨mte’’ (shameless) lies in German161 with the intention of misleading German readers for their own wicked English purposes. His long experience

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in and knowledge of Pennsylvania politics, he asserts, confirmed his impression that ‘‘the English only wanted to use the Germans as their tools in order to gain their own profitable ends. As long as we dance to their tunes they welcome Germans. They believe that they know the German character so well that they can manipulate them. The most important characteristic of the Germans they perceive to be that they are easily inflamed. This prompts them,’’ so the English believe, ‘‘to act without thinking. Whoever impresses them first will succeed in guiding their behavior.’’ It is therefore his job to inform the German readers of the scandalous and maliciously false charges of the minority of the censors. This criticism of English rhetorical strategies is of particular importance because it was written by Frederick August Conrad Muhlenberg (1750– 1801), the president of the Council of Censors and probably the most prominent German politician in Pennsylvania.162 Muhlenberg continues, firmly but calmly, to dispassionately rebut the charge that the establishment of a second legislature will amount to creating a house of lords and that the substitution of a governor for the executive council would create a kind of monarchy if not a tyranny. On each point the author defends the majority’s proposals, which he characterizes as moderate, sensible, and in line with the constitutional arrangements in the other states. This broadside is remarkable for a number of reasons. Even if it had not been signed by a ‘‘deutsche Bu¨rger’’ (German citizen), its style identifies it as the production of an author whose mother tongue was German. Second, its whole argument affirms the author’s contention that he is an experienced and knowledgeable politician. Third, the text illustrates—as Christoph Saur’s broadside of 1755 had done—a strong sense of attachment to the commonwealth and an obligation to contribute to its well-being. The signature, ‘‘ein deutsche[r] Bu¨rger des Staats Pennsylvania,’’ signals that the process initiated in the 1750s of conscientiously placing Pennsylvania Germans within the political order of the commonwealth not as second-class inhabitants but as culturally and ethnically self-conscious citizens had been completed. In short, the authors of the German broadsides over the last three decades had found their own voice in Frederick August Conrad Muhlenberg, the most prominent German politician in Pennsylvania and, until his death in 1801, in the U.S. Congress.163 At the same time, Muhlenberg’s criticism suggests that English prejudices first voiced in the 1750s about German stupidity, malleability, and character deficiencies still lingered on. These broadsides defined a consistent position within the political spectrum of the new state, one that sought to combine the civil and religious rights and privileges of the colonial constitution with the sensible and republican features of the new political order. At the same time, it rejected the leveling tendencies of the radical Whigs and too great a reliance on Bolingbroke’s paradigm, which supposedly characterized the constitution of 1776, that all executive power had a tendency to lead toward corruption and the establishment of tyranny. Some of these general features continue to structure the texts of German broadsides like Eine Addresse der Endsunterschriebenen, published during the debate about the federal Constitution of 1787 and its ratification. Again, the most pointed criticism is

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directed against decisions made hastily rather than through careful deliberation. The ‘‘deutsche Bu¨rger’’ argues against lessening the people’s control over legislative and executive powers, and against an overabundance of innovations at the expense of wellproven regulations. On the other hand, the translation into German of Centinel No. 1, one of the influential Anti-Federalist broadsides authored by Samuel Bryant (1759– 1821), suggests that at least some Pennsylvania politicians believed that localist political convictions were still prevalent among German settlers and could be appealed to in this situation.164 Much of Bryant’s criticism centered on John Adams’s notion of the balance of powers as the overriding principle of the Constitution. Against Adams he asserted that ‘‘the form of government which holds those entrusted with power, in the greatest responsibility to their constituents’’ is ‘‘the best calculated for freemen. . . . In such a government the people are the sovereign, and their sense of opinion is their criterion of every public measure.’’ The complex system embodied in the federal Constitution necessarily, Bryant argued, confused the people, produced divisions, and thus strengthened the rich, who were united: ‘‘But if, imitating the constitution of Pennsylvania, you vest all the legislative power in one body of men (separating the executive and the judicial) elected for a short period, and necessarily excluded by rotation from permanency, and guarded from precipitancy and surprise by delays imposed on its proceedings, you will create the most perfect responsibility.’’165 Indeed, the Anti-Federalist preference for ‘‘small republics’’ over ‘‘a despotic aristocracy among freemen’’ did not contradict earlier German political convictions that valued the importance of localist politics.166 If Bryant’s reasoning struck a receptive chord with German settlers, that does not mean that all or most of them were anti-Federalists at heart. Bryant’s most influential antagonist was none other than John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, who advocated speedy ratification of the federal Constitution of 1787 and, as president of the Pennsylvania Ratification Convention, was in an excellent position to further his views.167 But it is equally clear that the German predilection for localist politics secured at least sympathy for the Anti-Federalists from many German settlers. Within a few months events were to show that the labels ‘‘Republican,’’ ‘‘Constitutionalist,’’ ‘‘Federalist,’’ and ‘‘AntiFederalist’’ did not carry much more weight with the German than with the nonGerman voters. In November 1788, both political parties nominated their candidates for the forthcoming first election to the Federal House of Representatives. The Republicans—or alternatively, Federalists—met at Lancaster and nominated among the eight candidates Frederick August Conrad Muhlenberg; in turn, the Constitutionalists or Anti-Federalists met in Harrisburg and nominated among their eight candidates John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg and Daniel Heister. While the Federalists’ nomination of Frederick made sense, the nomination of John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg—brother of Frederick, former Revolutionary general, and longtime member of Pennsylvania’s Executive Council—was, in the light of his known Federalist leanings, a surprise. When both tickets were published in the Philadelphia papers, German officeholders obviously decided that both tickets did not adequately reflect the weight of their countrymen.

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They dropped two English lawyers from the Federalist ticket and added John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg and Daniel Heister, and dropped one English candidate from the Anti-Federalist ticket to make room for Frederick August Conrad Muhlenberg. Thus both tickets carried the same number of German candidates.168 In a German broadside the unknown authors of these changes pleaded with their countrymen to accept them as a means to secure the large German voting population adequate representation in the federal House of Representatives.169 The authors considered the original inclusion of two English candidates on the tickets ‘‘condescending’’ and insulting to the German settlers: ‘‘Our whole intention is not only to promote the honor, but also the benefit of the Germans in general, when we endeavour to have some of our nation in the new government,’’ they argued. ‘‘Will not the Germans have business with the new government as well as others? Is it not known that many of our countrymen are unacquainted with the English language, and will be in need of both interpreters and advocates, if their business shall gain the desired determination?’’ In the ensuing election, the German voters impressively demonstrated their numerical strength, their unity, and their disregard for English-dominated party politics. Frederick August Conrad Muhlenberg received the largest number of votes of any candidate, while John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg and Daniel Heister narrowly defeated the two lawyers they had replaced on the Anti-Federalist ticket.170 After this first congressional election, the series of German broadsides on general constitutional and election issues ceased. The development that had started with the first election broadside of Conrad Weiser in 1741 had reached its peak: slowly the German settlers had emancipated themselves from their role as supporting cast for the Quaker political elite of the colony, now state—a role that had, in reality, been based on a deal that guaranteed the German settlers a large share of local and regional selfgovernment in return for their support of the Quaker candidates in colonial elections. By the mid-1750s they had begun to formulate their own political perceptions. During the Revolutionary War, German settlers once more became subjects in a political and military dialogue that held them up to the Hessian soldiers as living symbols of the rights, freedoms, and liberties enjoyed by the settlers in North America, in the hope that many of the soldiers would forgo the drudgery of war for the sweet fruits of farming their own soil in the land of the free. Parallel to this public discourse, in 1777 the German settlers entered the discussion about the nature of the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776. The process by which they had by this time defined their own perception of Pennsylvania politics was supplemented between 1777 and 1788 by their discovery within the new political communities of the meaning of their political and cultural heritage, which yet remained distinct from that of the English majority. Some significant trends characterized this development. First, German settlers slowly began to insist on their own perceptions of colonial and then state politics. And second, they usually avoided radical political positions. Of course, there were German settlers who participated in the Paxton Boys riots, as well as in the activities of the more radical militia associations, such as during the Fort Wilson incident. But on the whole German

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settlers tended to favor the middle way. For the most part they held back when the political controversies between Whigs and Tories became heated after 1774, and remained onlookers in the fierce battles between ‘‘Constitutionalists’’ and ‘‘Republicans’’ in the late 1770s. And when in 1784 Frederick August Gabriel Muhlenberg finally gave up his attitude as a bystander, his suggestions focused on moderate rather than dramatic changes to the Pennsylvania constitution. German settlers favored a functioning central federal government and, as Muhlenberg made clear, a functioning Pennsylvania executive. But most importantly, they favored local and regional selfgovernment. What that implied was made clear by an anonymous broadside dated September 7, 1787:171 strict control of the local and regional officers of government. The broadside reveals that the county treasurer had embezzled large sums of money from Northampton’s taxpayers. The author describes himself as ‘‘your fellow citizen, who was born and educated among you and who still lives among you; his fate is closely connected to yours.’’172 He is tied to the soil and to his neighbors, is one of them and shares their fate, and thus he feels obliged to uncover treachery and corruption when they occur among them. The author then subjects the tax collector’s role to searching scrutiny and concludes that the taxpayers of Northampton County had been overcharged by £152,154.15.04 in continental paper money and £2,886 in hard currency. At a time when everyone felt suffocated by the heavy tax load, some officials whose duty it was to ease the load lined their pockets at the citizens’ expense. Political and civic duties demand, the author of the broadside suggests, that citizens expose such fraud and thus contribute to the maintenance of efficient and good government in their homeland. As in earlier times, local and regional interests and concerns would largely define the political vision of German settlers in the next four decades.

Germans, Farmers, Americans: The Politics of the Broadsides, 1789–1830 Broadsides say a lot about people’s political perceptions, but they are not very reliable guides to the politics of a region, a county, or even a state. Their chances of survival were always slim, and this is particularly true for political broadsides. In September 1804 John Ritter, as just one of a number of printers in Reading who likely had their share of this business, printed at least eight hundred election sheets and another five thousand ‘‘election tickets,’’ none of which has survived.173 On September 29, 1808, the editors of Der Wahre Amerikaner, the Republican newspaper in Lancaster, complained bitterly of the party of James Ross, the Federalist candidate, that ‘‘with pamphlets, handbills, and newspapers they try to blind and confuse the thinking people.’’174 The few accounts of printers that have survived make it clear that in the early Republic both the Federalists and the Republicans made full use of the press. There is ample evidence that broadsides offered some advantages over newspapers. Thus, one broadside writes that in York County a rumor had been circulating for days ‘‘that handbills had been

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printed which would be released only the day before the election to prevent opponents from answering the lies they contained. It is indeed only too true that refuge is taken to this dishonorable and blameworthy method to win an election.’’175 Fortunately, the author continues, in a distant village a copy of such a broadside was found, authored no doubt by the wily lawyer and former Federalist John Gardner, which permitted the timely rebuttal of his lies.176 Yet after the 1790s election strategists seem to have made more use of newspapers than of broadsides. In the month before an election, the large majority of articles in newspapers like Der Wahre Amerikaner were propaganda pieces for candidates of a particular party, to a much greater extent than in the eighteenthcentury newspapers. These election campaigns were fought with a bitterness that bordered on paranoia and character assassination. The papers were filled with libelous insinuations, styling the opponent as a threat to the constitution, an advocate of tax hikes, a lover of drink, an enemy of religion and the common man, and much more.177 The same slurs and defamations used against James Ross were used by his defenders in the broadside Bauern, sehet hierher. Americaner, Laßt nicht eine einzige Stimme verloren gehen . . . Eure Constitution steht auf dem Spiel, published most likely in late September or early October 1808 by Georg and Peter Albrecht in Lancaster.178 Indeed, newspapers played a vital role in election campaigns, which explains why printers often were identified as leaders of political parties: Benjamin Grimmler was the spokesman for the Democrats in Lancaster, and Albrecht for the Federalists. In York County Adam Ko¨nig controlled the two local papers in the interest of the Democrats. His opponents were forced to publish their objections to him in a broadside: ‘‘Adam Ko¨nig controls the two democratic papers and prints only such articles as he likes.’’179 Carl L. Hu¨tter was the undisputed spokesman of the Democrats in Allentown, yet even he confessed that he had almost been outmaneuvered by his opponents: ‘‘Since it was impossible to publish before the election another edition of the newspaper printed by this printer, and since lawyer Jarrett, assisted by the lying printer J. Scholl, this bragging gambler, distributed among you [the electors] various kinds of handbills, we have to inform you of the following facts. . . . Seven handbills has the lying printer already published against the printer of this paper, against Mr. Henry King and the Republicans.’’ Hu¨tter repaid the ‘‘Lu¨genbothen Drucker’’ with the same kind of slander he complained of.180 This shift in strategy, as well as the nature of the election campaigns, makes it impossible to reconstruct politics on the basis of German broadsides in those regions of the Middle Atlantic states in which German settlers formed a sizable part of the electorate. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the broadsides that focus on politics allow a sketch of the basic political perceptions of German authors, who in writing them hoped to catch the attention of German settlers. Two perceptions in particular stand out: of the German voter and representative as a farmer, of his concern with local administration. However, this does not mean that there are no broadsides that discuss national political issues or gubernatorial election campaigns. At least three broadsides dealt with the hotly contested election campaign between the incumbent president John Adams and his

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challenger, Thomas Jefferson;181 and later campaigns for the governorship in Pennsylvania, particularly those of 1808182 and between 1817 and 1823,183 produced similar numbers of broadsides. The election campaign of 1808 produced broadsides because a German settler, Simon Schneider (in English, Snyder), stood as candidate for Pennsylvania governor, while the campaigns of the 1820s attracted attention because charges of local corruption touched a nerve for German settlers. Probably the single most important element that shaped German political consciousness according to the broadsides was their self-perception as ‘‘Bauern’’ (farmers). There are ten broadsides that describe and celebrate this image,184 which linked the self-image of German settlers in the early republic to their self-perception in the colonial period, as well as to their denunciation as ‘‘boors’’ by leading English Pennsylvania politicians like Benjamin Franklin and the Reverend William Smith.185 It likely began with the bitter controversy of 1764–65 over Franklin’s pithy remark about Germans, which cost him his seat in the assembly. That the song in praise of farmers Merket auf ihr Christenleut! Was ich sing zu dieser Zeit was printed twenty times between 1760 and 1830 demonstrates not only its popularity, but the fact that it touched a vital chord in Germans.186 The song celebrates farming as the most important and honorable estate of society; the farmer produced the food that sustained mankind, and without the products of his sweat mankind could not subsist.187 Thus he, more than any other class of men, fulfilled the command that God had given Adam and Eve: go out and till the soil—a command that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries legitimized the continuous expansion of farming land not only by English, Irish, and Scottish settlers, but by Germans as well. Even if Germans’ exalted view of farming lacked the fundamental constitutional qualities associated with Thomas Jefferson’s yeomen,188 it provided them with a frame of reference from which to judge American politics. It could be argued that ‘‘farmer’’ was a political term not only for German but for English, Irish, and Scottish voters too. However, this is not borne out by a search of English newspapers published in Pennsylvania for the year 1808. The key political terms in articles on the election that year are ‘‘freeholder,’’ ‘‘Republican,’’ and ‘‘Federalist,’’ but nowhere did we find ‘‘farmer’’ as a link to a candidate’s community or a metaphor for his social values and context. Remarkably, in German broadsides ‘‘Bauer’’ was used by both Republicans and Anti-Federalists as well as Federalists and Federal Republicans. Thus, in a September 1801 broadside addressed to ‘‘Werthe Freunde and Mitbu¨rger’’ published in Lancaster, according to Benjamin Grimmler’s handwritten note on the broadside, by ‘‘Johann Albrecht in der Deutschen Aristokratischen Druckerey’’ (Johann Albrecht in the German aristocratic printshop) as ‘‘aristokratische Lu¨ gen’’ (aristocratic lies),189 the candidates on the Federal list are described as follows: Edward Hand is ‘‘a farmer in Lampeter Township. . . . Over many years he has pursued a farm life and agriculture, and has proven himself to be a good and industrious farmer’’;190 Brice Clark ‘‘of Donegall is a good, honest, and industrious farmer’’;191 Patterson Bell ‘‘of Drumore Township—a man of good character, good gifts and understanding, and is a honest and industrious farmer. He received a good education in his youth and

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thereafter stuck to farming. We therefore can be assured that a man of such a good character will serve us with honor in the assembly’’;192 Daniel Buckley ‘‘is from Salisbury Township, and has been for many years our assemblyman, who has served us with the greatest fidelity and is a good farmer. A man with a good brain, a speaker, and wellknown to us all.’’193 Two of the candidates, both lawyers, are praised only for their expertise as officeholders and legislators.194 In the 1808 election for governor of Pennsylvania, the term ‘‘farmer’’ was extended to its widest social significance. The candidates were James Ross and Simon Schneider. Neither was in fact a farmer: Ross was a lawyer, and Schneider, a German settler, was a tanner. Yet the broadside Bauern Seht her styled Ross as a ‘‘friend of the Constitution,’’ a ‘‘supporter of free trade,’’ of ‘‘equal rights and liberty,’’ and of ‘‘liberty of conscience,’’ who was opposed by Schneider, the ‘‘supporter of the embargo and enemy of the farmer.’’ The broadside argued that President Jefferson’s embargo was hurting the farmer and asked why exports to non-French and non-English ports were not permitted. If they were, the farmers could sell their produce at respectable prices instead of seeing it rot in their barns. These political demands, it was claimed, reflected the interests of the farmers as well as—as an aside made clear—of the merchants, who could spend their pennies in buying up the farmers’ produce.195 During the last weeks of the campaign, Benjamin Grimmler, in his paper Der Wahre Amerikaner, explored in his colorful terminology the far-flung implications of the ‘‘farmer’’ metaphor: Schneider was described as a ‘‘craftsman and farmer,’’196 ‘‘the candidate of farmers and craftsmen,’’197 ‘‘a good Republican and friend of farmers and craftsmen . . . a lover of republican simplicity’’198 who opposed those who decried ‘‘laboring people as rabble.’’199 Schneider belonged to ‘‘the laboring people,’’200 who were of course ‘‘honest and fair’’;201 he was one of the ‘‘leather apron men,’’202 a ‘‘craftsman.’’203 Such a ‘‘steady and good American’’204 had to be ‘‘a friend of the rights of the poor man,’’205 a ‘‘friend of the unarmed people,’’206 who would never betray children of their rightful heritage and detested ‘‘vaingloriousness.’’207 Such a wonderful candidate was naturally ‘‘a friend of peace, of religion, of liberty, and of order’’208 who ‘‘loves Christian principles’’209 and was a ‘‘warm admirer of Christian religion’’210 who demanded that state employees believe in God.211 That he was also a protector and friend of those who had fled from persecution in Europe to America was only logical.212 Schneider, the man of the people, was against tax hikes,213 abhorred ‘‘squandering of money,’’214 advocated the right of all to vote, not just freeholders,215 and would avenge those who had been denounced as ‘‘donkeys, geese, and swine.’’216 The criteria that German farmers looked for in a candidate were based on their own social values: they were pious, worked hard, believed in liberty and order, cherished harmony, detested pretentiousness and aristocracy—values for which, in their view, America stood. They did not care for liberal or lofty intellectual ideas, but believed that they had to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. They did not look down on others and resented being looked down upon. In short, they had imbibed a heavy dose of social equality. Some of these values become clearer when viewed through the terms

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associated with Schneider’s opponent, James Ross (1762–1847). Ross had served in the U.S. Senate from 1794–1803 and had already run unsuccessfully for governor in 1799 and 1802.217 In October 1808 he would lose again, probably because of the epithets with which his political opponents showered him. The most damaging of them described him as an ‘‘aristocrat and aspiring tyrant,’’218 a ‘‘powdered braggart,’’219 an ‘‘aspiring parvenu,’’220 an ‘‘aristocrat and sneerer at the poor people,’’221 and an ‘‘enemy of the common people.’’222 For the German voters, these terms represent the opposite of the values associated with a farmer. These epithets were linked with concrete political criticism and expectations. Simon Schneider was praised as a ‘‘guardian of the Constitution’’223 who advocated the broadest possible franchise,224 stood for the liberty of the press,225 and above all was ‘‘a devotee of Washington’s and Jefferson’s love of liberty’’226 —a catch-all argument that associated Schneider with the Revolution and with Jefferson’s republican values. Ross, on the other hand, was ‘‘one of the bitterest enemies of Jefferson and republicanism’’227 and was against the Pennsylvania constitution228 and for a standing army229 and the restriction of the franchise to freeholders230 —in short, ‘‘an enemy to liberty.’’231 What probably weighed even more with German voters was the simple fact that Ross was ‘‘a lawyer,’’232 which made him in their minds a ‘‘clamorous office seeker,’’233 a ‘‘hunter after federal offices,’’234 who wanted to raise the salaries of state employees,235 was a ‘‘friend of taxes,’’236 an ‘‘excise collector of 1799,’’237 a ‘‘property assessor,’’238 and a ‘‘stamp tax master.’’239 That such a slimy person was willing to appoint to state offices people who did not believe in God,240 that indeed, he was ‘‘against Christianity,’’241 would have surprised no good German farmer. Finally, Ross supported the hated Jay Treaty242 of 1794 between the United States and Great Britain and attempted to deceive the German voters through his token opposition to the embargo, which he, like the rest of the Federalists, had voted for in the first place.243 It is surprising that in the fierce struggle about language within the Lutheran congregation in Philadelphia between 1803 and 1820,244 the language issue or indeed the issue of belonging to either the German or the American nation did not play a role in election handbills or newspaper articles. Even Justus Heinrich Christian Helmuth, the first pastor of the congregation and a staunch opponent of the introduction of English in the services, carefully pointed out ‘‘that the issue that now demands our undivided attention is not a political question but a matter that concerns our and your eternal souls.’’245 While the five broadsides that deal with this controversy are filled with cultural prejudices—the defenders of German as the liturgical language defamed their opponents as ‘‘englisirte Exdeutsche’’ (anglicized ex-Germans) and ‘‘hinterlistigen Eirischdeutschen’’ (perfidious Irish-Germans)246 —they, too, carefully avoid the charge that their opponents are unpatriotic. Instead they accused the proponents of English of wanting to steal the property of the church, of dishonesty, and of double talk. There is no doubt that the issue was loaded with dangers: in the widest sense, it raised the question of whether a good German could also be a good American Republican and citizen. That issue had been raised by the Anglican Reverend William Smith

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in 1755 in his acerbic treatise A Brief State of the Province of Pennsylvania. But German behavior during the French and Indian War settled the issue once and for all,247 and not even during the American Revolution was this charge repeated. But the fact that there were no political broadsides warning of a potential German lack of patriotism does not mean that being German was not an issue in some elections. After the 1760s the issue appeared in three forms: first as the charge that the English majority tried to deny the German settlers adequate representation in the assembly, or later in the House of Representatives;248 second, as the charge that English politicians considered Germans rash and simple-minded and attempted to betray them;249 and third, German broadsides did not consider it a character fault if a political candidate was of German descent. In the contest in 1808 between James Ross and Simon Schneider, for instance, a broadside published in York that defended Ross’s political record and candidacy directly addressed the issue: ‘‘Some older persons say that they wanted to vote for Snyder since he is a German. But we hope that you will not allow others to betray you with such an argument. We want neither a German nor an English we want an American. All that we should wish for is the well-being of the country and not query whether it is German or English.’’250 Behind these metaphors and epithets, these denunciations, praises, and characteristics, stood a political philosophy that tied the German settlers to their heritage while also designating them as stern defenders of key values of the American Constitution. The cultural heritage they brought to North America had been defined by their experience with haughty German noblemen who rode roughshod over their fields, forced them to cart the nobility’s produce to their mansions, castles, and mills, and made them pay fees and taxes in addition to those laid on them by the king of Wu¨rttemberg or the dukes of Baden. Worst of all, these rulers had forced the way clear for the nobility’s carriages and made the average German citizens bow before the most pitiful creature of the ruling class, who did not even know how to handle an axe or milk a cow.251 Lawyers were the lackeys of these noblemen, licking their feet while trampling on the common laboring men.252 Christoph Saur in the 1740s and 1750s refreshed Germans’ memories of these experiences.253 In Pennsylvania, Germans enjoyed social equality and equal rights before the Revolution, and these were enshrined in the 1776 Bill of Rights of Pennsylvania and the 1787 federal Constitution. Defending the Constitution and remembering their heritage defined a large part of the German settlers’ political philosophy in judging candidates in state and national elections. This value system made them sensitive to any kind of social bias. While this feeling defined them as Jeffersonians or later as Jacksonians, at the same time their piety made them reject the liberalism that we associate with Jeffersonian republicanism. Religiously and socially, the German voters were staunch conservatives; had the Federalists not acquired the taint of being considered social snobs, money jobbers, job seekers, and advocates of strong government with little regard for the rights of the common man, the political philosophy of the German settlers would have made them sincere and honest Federalists. Within the rather confused political alignments of the first three

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decades of the nineteenth century, the German settlers fitted neither the Jeffersonian Republican nor the Republican Federal tickets. They were, if they must be categorized, a cross-breed between Jeffersonian egalitarianism and Andrew Jackson’s common man, with the sincere piety of John Adams thrown in. Put differently, the German settlers had carved and shaped their own political convictions, in which elements of the majority parties’ ideas could be discerned as well as bits and pieces that tied the Germans to their own history and experiences.

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Each day we pass a tree at the first street crossing to the left of our house, and every so often a little sheet of paper stuck to the tree catches our attention. Sometimes it tells of a lost cat, at another time it advertises a social group for new parents or a household item for sale. Occasionally there are pictures, and usually these little advertisements are printed—today it is easy to produce enough copies on a laser printer for one’s own needs. But why have they been posted? Because the owner misses his cat, parents are worried that their child will grow up single and isolated, the household item is not needed anymore but is too good to throw away. Everyone who posts them has an interest and a particular concern or worry. We walk by each day and pay little attention—until a couple of days later we see the cat in our garden and call the number on the little sheet. Or one day we see that the little table for sale is just what we had been looking for. We call about it, we talk, we agree on the price, and we, as well as the person who has sold the table to us, are happy. What happens, in other words, is that we react to the sheets on the tree when they catch our interest and attention; when we need them. The words ‘‘interest,’’ ‘‘attention,’’ and ‘‘need’’ are key words in this process and in this study. These terms need social relationships with other people in order to become operative. As soon as we react to the broadside, that relationship is established—but not before. Everyone, no matter how intelligent, rich, busy, old, or young, has ‘‘interests,’’ pays ‘‘attention,’’ and has ‘‘needs.’’ These three terms apply to us all and help define our society, as they help define the society with which this study has dealt. Every one of the German settlers in early modern North America, not a special group within them, shared ‘‘interests’’ and ‘‘attention’’ to his or her own little world and needs. Whether they received special attention from their neighbors or not, they are all included in the range of problems and questions discussed in these pages. The only qualification a person needed for sharing a broadside was the ability to read and understand German. Literacy and knowledge of language are the two factors that determine who is included in this study and who is excluded. Coupled with the ability to be

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‘‘interested,’’ to pay ‘‘attention,’’ and to express or feel ‘‘need,’’ they define the qualities of the German settlers who play such a large role in this book. These sheets, prints, or papers that we defined as broadsides are part of our life now as they were in the early modern period, though less so now because we have additional means of communication. Nevertheless, we know little about them. In the four chapters of this book we have tried to elucidate the production, function, and raison d’eˆtre of these broadsides. In the first chapter the biographical portrait of the German printers as the producers of these broadsides suggested why so many broadsides contained religious texts: most of the German printers before 1800 were, for a time at least, active members of churches, and some were linked through apprenticeships. After 1800, however, printers’ religious affiliation became less important. Printers distributed some of their products, particularly almanacs, through a network that included the Middle Atlantic region, Maryland, and the Shenandoah Valley. A second and probably more important method of distribution was provided by the services of merchants who ran something like mail order businesses. Peddlers were another means for getting print products to customers, particularly in the rural areas, but very likely they were less important than has been assumed. Finally, on market days printers opened stalls where they offered their products to the townspeople and to farmers who came in from their villages. The longevity of broadsides, which was never great, and who paid for their production led us to a search of account books. These revealed that large numbers of broadsides for electoral or military purposes were printed, of which very few have survived. A number of reasons account for this: broadsides that advertised a particular event like an auction or a market usually lost their function after the event had passed; on the other hand, broadsides whose text discussed issues that were not time-bound—religious questions, hymns, or medical or constitutional problems—retained their function and importance for the owner much longer and in some cases were even passed on to the next generation. A much larger number of time-transcending than time-bound broadsides have survived. The discussion about longevity prompts a further important differentiation: not only the function of a broadside suggests important consequences but also the question of who initiated the production. If the broadside was paid for by someone who wanted to achieve a particular purpose, such as a politician, a pastor, a seller of, for example, real estate, or an advertiser, then it was distributed by that person. For specific political reasons, in 1765 Christoph Saur II limited the distribution of a political broadside to the three Pennsylvania home counties. A large number of broadsides, however, were not initiated by private persons but printed at the initiative of the printer, who hoped to at least break even with the proceeds from their sale. The careful discussion of these broadsides revealed particular reasons why a printer would decide to invest money in a given publication. One of the most important results of this study is that printers very carefully observed markets and analyzed the needs of their customers before they ventured money on a broadside. We discussed the mechanisms of this relationship between customer and printer in the chapters above.

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As table B.1 shows, this study is based only on German broadsides that reflect and envision certain problems, sectors, and fields of German life in the Middle Atlantic region. All the results of this study are subject to this qualification. First, the silences described in this book are in a sense as much a part of German life as are those subjects that were described in broadsides. Second, the clusters of broadsides highlight certain fields—religion most particularly—while downplaying others. Other studies will have to focus on other material, such as newspapers, books, and treatises published in German in Pennsylvania, that was based on the cultural life of German settlers and on their ordinary economic concerns. The broadsides in many ways reflect the extraordinary features of life—and that marks a highlight as well as a limitation of this study. All the spheres of daily life that were imagined between 1730 and 1830 are reflected in German-American broadsides discussed in the second chapter: love, marriage, pregnancy and raising children, adolescence and education, cultural activities, running a farm and agricultural economics, protecting the health and property of loved ones, getting old and finally passing away. The broadsides on love and courtship, the few on marriage, and the Adam and Eve broadsides all suggest that gender relations of German settlers were less hierarchically structured than those of contemporary English couples. The large number of broadsides that implore God for protection indicate a remarkably strong sense of insecurity and anxiety toward the daily dangers. Similar publications do not exist in contemporary English print culture. Additionally, German settlers seem to have been more worried about the health of their farm animals than about that of their families, a state of mind that the energetic advertisements of medical doctors and pharmacists tried to overcome—probably with only limited success. For these settlers their lives were in God’s hands, and trying to live according to his commands structured their lifestyles as well as their ideas about education, adolescence, and confirmation. Life was a serious business with few enjoyments and luxuries, a simple truth reflected in even the cultural activities. The yearning for eternal happiness, the fight to save one’s own and others’ souls, the dependence on God for solace and comfort when in need, the fervent hope for the coming of Christ, and the everlasting presence of hell and eternal damnation emerge in the third chapter as key elements of the religious world of many German settlers. A Protestant pastor in the early nineteenth century who had lived in Pennsylvania for four years reported that the radically Pietist poet Jung-Stilling was one of the few authors who were widely read by German settlers in Pennsylvania.1 Indeed, one of the most extraordinary broadsides reports the confession of a slave girl, Elizabeth Moore, who had killed her secondborn; after an ecstatic vision of the New Jerusalem, she killed her firstborn in order to save him from the sins and lusts of this world. Interestingly, although religious enthusiasm was rampant in those years, this broadside was economically unsuccessful. An examination of this broadside offers concrete hints why it was never reprinted, even though Germans bought hundreds of sheets relating the sorry tale of Susanna Cox. German perceptions were tempered by culturally determined factors in both cases, as well as by anxieties raised by Moore’s confession. That Germans

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viewed African slavery by and large with a certain lack of interest may have been another factor. In our study, the contours emerged of German settlers who were coping with their own cultural heritage, managing their lives with hard work, dedicating themselves to piety, craving protection, and hoping for spiritual salvation. Theirs was a life steeped with a belief in the presence of God, invoked in house blessings and heavenly letters, full of anxiety against which they prayed and organized spiritual and magic shields, and often marked by compassion for sinners like Susanna Cox and Joseph Miller. One of the most important results of this analysis was the strong eschatological hope that characterized these broadsides—a hope that grew and became ever more specific and concrete as time went by. It was not just a part of the Second Great Awakening but, most likely and more importantly, an outgrowth of the perception of being part of an Atlantic community of believers who waited for the Second Coming of their Savior. Jung-Stilling represented one link to the saved in Europe; another was the publication of the epistles of Johann Michael Hahn and of excerpts from the writings of Gerhard Tersteegen.2 For Hahn, the New Jerusalem was the next meeting place for the saved of the Atlantic world. Their epic tales of the joys of the New Jerusalem matched the horrors of eternal damnation in hell, not only in the pictural representations but in the many prayers, devotional pieces, and hymns printed and avidly read in house devotions at that time. Most broadsides clearly were printed for consumption not in one particular denomination or in church services but within the house, either by the individual or in house devotions. This suggests that in the absence of Protestant clergy, house devotions were the center of religious devotions; and this probably accounts for the large number of religious broadsides. The political dimension in which these German settlers lived, the way their political perceptions were structured around the image they cherished of themselves as farmers, suggests the values that revealed themselves in their reactions to the conditions they had endured in old Europe. The analysis of the politics of German settlers raised the question of their self-perception in an English majority culture. Particularly, the German way of judging English-speaking candidates by culturally defined standards and values showed that they had developed a political value system that encompassed ideas brought from Europe as well as key constitutional concepts embodied in the Pennsylvania constitution as well as the federal one. The discussion of German perceptions of North American politics produced a number of important insights. Likely the most important and most commonsensical remains the simple fact that German political concepts were focused throughout the period on life in their rural counties. First, the pact between German settlers and the Quaker Party rested on the agreement that Germans were free to regulate their lives in their communities while Quaker politicians took care of their concerns on the colonial level. After the Germans emancipated themselves from the Quaker Party in midcentury, the local nature of their political perceptions remained one of their constant concerns up to the nineteenth century. Second, and this is part of the local nature of

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politics, in the last years before the Revolution Germans elevated their self-perception as farmers to their ideal representative figure in the republican representative system. Third, and again this reaches back to the 1750s, Germans adopted key Pennsylvania constitutional concepts embodied in the Charter of Privileges as their own political value system. Liberty of conscience, equality, and liberty in general were values that were linked in a negative way to their European background. What they had missed in Europe they had found in North America, and they were determined to cherish and maintain these as their values. German political alliances both before and after the Revolution were guided by these constitutional ideas. Interestingly, during the Revolution itself others articulated these values for the German settlers in answer to British attempts to lure German settlers into the British Army. Finally, Germans seem to have preferred to focus on fundamental problems and shy away from concrete political controversies: they valued harmony in state and federal politics above strife. This contrasts with the astounding bitterness of local political controversies. Clearly, in the nests these Germans had built, searching for the right solutions was of vital importance. By and large they seem to have left the fight for the larger common good to their more numerous English neighbors. Broadsides speak loudly to specific interests, situations, anxieties, and needs. At the same time, they also conceal areas and activities whose daily presence also structured the lives of Germans. The broadsides say very little about the large English majority that surrounded the German settlements in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. True, many of the political broadsides make connections to English/colonial and national politics, and some even play the ethnic card to score points with German voters. But in a sense these points of contact were simply unavoidable in a nation controlled not by non-English-speaking immigrants, no matter their numbers, but by the largest language group. Before 1830, Germans seem to have entertained only a mild interest in presidential politics. The election campaign of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson did produce a larger than average number of German broadsides, and the presidential ambitions of Andrew Jackson were also watched with considerable attention. But if one compares this with German excitement over local and regional political issues focusing on corruption, the monopolizing of offices, or the stifling of public discussion, it becomes clear that presidential and national politics were not at the top of German settlers’ political priorities. At least initially, German speakers had to take note of the English majority related to real estate and landed property in general. The real estate market prior to 1780 was managed with the assistance of bilingual broadsides that advertised sales of land and farms. After 1790 these bilingual advertisements simply disappeared. Broadsides advertising sales in the three counties with large German populations were in German only; the real estate market thus became exclusively a German affair. Aside from a few other economic regions where the overlapping of English and German interests was unavoidable, the most glaring silence related to religious issues. Although Methodists did make inroads into German communities, and some Lutheran and Reformed churches did

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exist that were shared with English denominations, there is no sign of that in German religious broadsides. They project an almost hermetically secluded world in which the German believer intimately and exclusively bonded with his German God. Among the six hundred broadsides described in chapter 2 (see table B.1), only five indicate points of contact with an English denomination—and one of the five is a pointed comment on an English description of major German denominations as ‘‘dissenting churches.’’ These silences pointedly suggest that Germans, in their religious, cultural, medical, and partially in their economic and political dealings, did well without their Englishspeaking neighbors and yet felt at home in Pennsylvania. Culturally, economically, religiously, and politically, they had constructed their own world. In effect, the loudest silence of all in the broadsides is that about old Europe. Efforts to sell English or European ballads to German settlers failed, with only two exceptions. The first, which originated in Hungary, is the wondrous story of a virtuous maid who was transported to heaven and returned unaged after a hundred years. And the second is the story of the greedy Bohemian farmer who violated the Sabbath and was punished by being stuck to the stump of a tree. Of course, some settlers may have longed for the Heimat of the Old World. Yet collectively there is no doubt that the Germans had carved their own turf in North America, identified with American key values, and buttressed these identifications with their negative memories of Baden and Wu¨rttemberg. They were happy and at home ‘‘in their own land.’’

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APPENDIX A

Georg Hohmann’s Broadsides

Ein scho¨ n neu geistlich Lied Von dem Nichtsseyn des menschlichen Lebens . . . Gedruckt in diesem Jahr da’s anda¨chtig Singen sehr no¨thig war. Neu verfaßet und gedruckt fu¨r Georg Hohmann. (N.p., n.d.), no. 425. First line: Mensch sag an was ist dein Leben? eine Blum und du¨rres Laub . . . [Remark at bottom: ‘‘Gedruckt in diesem Jahr, da’s anda¨chtig Singen sehr no¨thig war. Neu verfasst und gedruckt fu¨r Georg Hohmann, welcher seine Dienste anbietet um Spru¨che, Gebeter und Lieder aufzusetzen, und um geneigte Kundschaft bittet.’’] Eine Trauergeschichte oder ein neues Lied u¨ber eine grausame Mordthat . . . Districkt Taunschip . . . den 8ten Jenner, 1811. Neu verfaßet und gedruckt fu¨ r Georg Hohman. . . . (N.p., 1811), no. 442. First line: NUN ho¨ret allesamt ihr Christen. [Remark at bottom: ‘‘Der ungelehrte Herumtra¨ger wurde bewogen, zur besseren Warnung fu¨ r solche schreckliche Laster, dieses Lied neu drucken zu lassen, nachdem er verschiedne Worte desselben besser zum singen eingerichtet, und drey neue Verse dazu gemacht hatte, welche jetzt zum ersten Mal in der Welt erscheinen. District Taunnschip, Berks County, Pennsylvanien, den 8. Jenner 1811 Georg Hohmann. Neu verfasset und gedruckt fu¨ r Georg Hohmann, welcher seine Dienste anbietet um Spru¨che, Gebeter und Lieder aufzusetzen und um geneigte Kundschaft bittet.’’] Eine Trauergeschichte oder ein neues Lied u¨ber eine grausame Mordthat . . . Districkt Taunschip . . . den 8ten Jenner, 1811. Neu verfaßet und gedruckt fu¨r Johann George Hohman. . . . (N.p., 1811), no. 441. First line: Nun ho¨ret allesamt ihr Christen. [Remark at bottom: ‘‘Der ungelehrte Herumtra¨ger wurde bewogen, zur besseren Warnung fu¨ r solche schreckliche Laster, dieses Lied neu drucken zu lassen, nachdem er verschiedene Worte desselben besser zum singen eingerichtet, und drey neue Verse dazu gemacht hatte, welche jetzt zum erstenmal in der Welt erscheinen. District Taunschip, Berks Caunty, Pennsylvanien, den 8. Jenner 1811 Georg Hohmann. Neu verfasset und gedruckt fu¨ r Georg Hohmann, welcher seine Dienste anbietet um Spru¨che, Gebeter und Lieder aufzusetzen und um geneigte Kundschaft bittet.’’]

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Ein neu Trauer-Lied, wie man vernommen von einem Menschen, der nach dem Tod ist wieder kommen. Diese Begebenheit hat sich vor nicht langer Zeit zehn Meilen von Carlisle zugetragen . . . Neu verfaßet und gedruckt fu¨r Georg Hohman. . . . (Harrisburg, Pa.: Johann S. Wiestling?], n.d.), no. 366. First line: Ach, ho¨rt ihr Menschen-Kinder! ho¨rt an ein neues Lied! [Remark at top: ‘‘Diese Begebenheit hat sich vor nicht langer Zeit zehn Meilen von Carlisle zugetragen; die Namen der Personen sind verschwiegen, um der noch lebenden Familie zu schonen’’] [Remark at bottom: ‘‘Neu verfasset und gedruckt fu¨r Georg Hohmann, welcher seine Dienste anbietet um Spru¨che, Gebeter und Lieder aufzusetzen und um geneigte Kundschaft bittet.’’] Ein Neues Trauer-Lied. wie man vernommen, von einem Menschen, der nach dem Tode ist wieder kommen. Diese Begebenheit. (N.p., n.d.), no. 1211. First line: Ach ho¨rt ihr Menschenkinder! ho¨rt an ein neues Lied . . . [Remark at top: ‘‘Diese Begebenheit hat sich vor nicht langer Zeit zehn Meilen von Carlisle zugetragen; die Namen der Personen sind verschwiegen, um die noch lebenden Familie zu schonen’’] [This print lacks the remark at bottom ‘‘Neu verfasset und gedruckt fu¨r Georg Hohmann, welcher seine Dienste anbietet um Spru¨che, Gebeter und Lieder aufzusetzen und um geneigte Kundschaft bittet.’’] Himmels-Brief, welcher mit goldenen Buchstaben geschrieben, und zu sehen ist in der St. Michaelis Kirche zu St. Germain . . . , Hellersta¨dtel, Northampton Caunty. (Hellertown, Northampton County, Pa., [1811]), no. 333. First line: Also gebiete ich euch, daß ihr des Sonntags nicht arbeitet . . . [Remark at bottom: ‘‘Der Himmelsbrief von Magdeburg ist diesem nachgedruckt, und ist nicht in Magdeburg gesandt worden, sondern in Grodoria, welches Georg Hohman bezeugt. In Druck gegeben von Georg Hohmann bey Hellersta¨dtel in Northampton Caunty. Es kann aber niemand beweisen, dass dieser Himmelsbrief falsch sey, und von Menschen erdenckt worden sey, denn vor dem ju¨ngsten Gerichtstage werden viel Zeichen und Wunder geschehen, damit ist zu merken, dass die Zeit nahe ist, und viele Wunder schon geschehen sind. Georg Hohmann brachte diesen Brief im Jahre 1802 aus Deutschland nach Amerika, sonst war noch keiner bekannt; aber ein Deutscher brachte einen abgeschriebenen vor 45 Jahren nach Amerika.’’] Because two printing errors are corrected in this broadside, it must be later than the following no. 1038. Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadsides, 212–15, erroneously considers it the first edition of a Himmelsbrief issued in North America. Himmels-Brief. welches mit goldenen Buchstaben geschrieben, und zu sehen ist in der St. Michaelis Kirche zu St. Germain, wird genannt Grodoria, allwo der Brief u¨ber die Taufe schwebet. Wer ihn angreifen will, von dem weichet er, wer ihn abschreiben will,

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zu dem neiget er sich, und thut sich selber auf . . . GOTT, der du deine Lust . . . Gott bescheret . . . JESUS Christ zu finden ist . . . Georg Hohmann . . . 1820. . . . (N.p., n.d.), no. 1038. First line: Also gebiete ich euch, daß ihr des Sonntags nicht arbeitet . . . [Remark at bottom: Same as on preceeding print except that the date for Hohmann’s arrival in America is given as 1820, which we interpret as a typical typesetting error.] Drei scho¨ne, neue und fromme Lieder . . . Zum Druck befo¨rdert von Johann Georg Homann, in Berks Caunty. ([Lancaster, Pa.: Hermann W. Villee, ca. 1825–29]), no. 1048. First line (1): O Su¨nder thu dich bekehren . . . ; First line (2): Ich habe viel gelitten . . . ; First line (3): Fu¨hlt das heiligste Entzu¨cken . . . [Dazu Vorbemerkung: Dankgefu¨hle und Vorsa¨tze der Confirmanten, auf den 10ten Tag des Monats May 1815, in der Merzer Kirche] [Remark at bottom: ‘‘Zum Druck befo¨rdert von Johann Georg Hohmann in Berks Caunty’’]

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APPENDIX B

Statistical Tables

table b.1 Categories of broadsides classified according to origin 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.2 2.3.1 2.3.2 2.3.3 2.3.4 2.3.5 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 3.1.1 3.2.1 4.1 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 5.1.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.7 5.8 6 7

Local controversies Propaganda for election campaigns Current affairs The American Revolution Events in Europe Government proclamations Devotional poems and hymns Funeral poems and sermons Adam and Eve Religious disputes Christmas Passion Easter Pentecost Confirmation Liturgical texts House blessings Church administration Folk spirituality Moral poems Patent medicine Prescriptions for medical treatment Advertisements Book trade Cattle trade Textile fabrication Advertisements for real estate market Husbandry Servants and slaves Dye recipes Theft and fraud announcements New Year poems and songs Outrageous incidents Songs about criminals and suicides Secular songs Love poems School and education Lottery Various Personal documents

6 74 44 44 9 8 314 30 59 8 18 24 6 9 50 5 39 24 127 44 129 12 18 23 4 13 54 6 6 9 4 113 35 112 76 45 44 4 4 29 1682

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table b.1 (Continued) Texts brought mostly to printers Texts mostly composed, copied, or written by printers Texts probably printed in partnership with composer

500 757 425

29.73% 45.00% 25.27%

table b.2 Towns with printers who produced German-American broadsides, 1728–1830, sorted by state Place of printer and bookshop

State

Number of printers

Time span

Cambridge Baltimore Frederick Hagerstown Lincolnton Raleigh Salem Salisbury Princeton Albany New York Waterloo Canton Cincinnati Lancaster Osnaburg Allentown Carlisle Chambersburg Chestnut Hill Doylestown Easton Ephrata Friedensthal Germantown Gettysburg Greensburg Hanover Harrisburg Lancaster Lebanon New Berlin Norristown Orwigsburg Philadelphia Pittsburgh Pottstown Reading Reamstown Schellsburg Selinsgrove Somerset Sumneytown Sunbury

Mass. Md. Md. Md. N.C. N.C. N.C. N.C. N.J. N.Y. N.Y. N.Y. Ohio Ohio Ohio Ohio Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa.

3 16 6 7 1 1 2 7 1 1 9 1 4 4 3 1 5 6 7 2 1 5 10 1 6 2 4 5 17 24 6 5 1 5 58 11 2 15 1 1 1 1 1 1

1826 1768–1830 1778–1821 1796–1829 1800 1814–1821 1828–1830 1797–1827 1828 1788 1749–1830 1828 1821–1830 1830 1813–1830 1826 1810–1830 1807–1827 1809–1829 1763–1794 ? 1806–1830 1745–1830 1763–1767 1738–1830 1806–1830 1816–1830 1793–1823 1797–1830 1752–1830 1807–1830 1817–1830 1807–1812 1826–1830 1728–1830 1811–1830 1819–1827 1789–1830 ? 1821–1828 1830 1810–1817 1830 1814–1818

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table b.2 (Continued) Place of printer and bookshop

State

Upper Mahanoy Township Wilkes-Barre York New Market Winchester Middlebury

Pa. Pa. Pa. Va. Va. Vt.

Number of printers

Time span

1 1 9 6 1 1

? 1826 1796–1830 1809–1829 1804–1805 1822

Source: Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, and GermanAmerican Language Broadside database.

table b.3 Clients of Michael Billmeyer: Pastors and printers Emanuel Shultz John Albright & Co Georg W. Mentz M. Helfenstein John Frederick Ernst William Hiester John H. Helfrich Jacob Senn Gottlob Jungmann Andrew Billmeyer Christian Jakob Hueter Elizabeth Billmeyer Eichhorn & Repplier G. Helmbold & J. Geyer John Shryock & Aston Simon Hailman Frederick Lange William Leibert John Philip Stock William Forster Thomas Pomp John Conrad Ja¨ger M. Runkel

Reverend

Tulpehocken Myers Town [Lancaster] Philadelphia

Reverend Reverend Reverend Reverend Reverend Printer Printer & Bookseller

Printers Printer Printer Reverend Reverend Reverend Reverend Reverend Reverend

Hudson, York Elizabethtown near Lancaster Weissenburg Township Bucks County near Samuel Seller Reading York Town [York] Lancaster York Town [York] Reading Philadelphia Chambersburg Chambersburg Somerset County Germantown Chambersburg Stoverstown, Va. Easton Hanover Township, Northampton Co. Germantown

Source: Michael (?) Billmeyer, Wholesale Bookdealer Account Book, 1797–1801, BM B-130, Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown.

table b.4 Peddler’s licenses in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1732–1830 Session of court

Name of peddler

Description

November 1730

William Wilkin

‘‘Trade with Indians’’

August 1732

Hugh Young

With one horse

August 1732

Robert Baker

With one horse

Source Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 29. Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 39. Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 39

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table b.4 (Continued) Session of court

Name of peddler

Description

Source

August 1733

Hugh Young

With one horse

August 1735

John Steer

Without

August 1735

John Lockart

Without

August 1735

Robert Canady

Without

August 1736

Hans Michael Hoffacre

Without

August 1737

Henry Shults

With one horse

August 1738

William White

With one horse

August 1738

James Connor

With one horse

August 1738

Samuel Stephens

With one horse

August 1738

William Cunningham

With one horse

May 1739

William Snoden

With one horse

May 1739

William Wight

With one horse

August 1739

John Collins

With one horse

August 1739

William White

With one horse

August 1740

John Kenady

Without

November 1740

Robert Murray

Without

August 1757

William Baxter

Without

August 1757

John Mordach

Without

August 1757

Matthew Dunlap

Without

August 1757

Joseph Harpner

Without

November 1757

Alexander McGrew

Without

November 1757

Fredrich Hyle

Without

November 1758

Martin Hoffman

Without

February 1771

Henry Caldwell

With one or more horses

February 1772

Henry Caldwell

With one or more horses

February 1774

James Algeo

With one or more horses

Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 68 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 148 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 148 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 148 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 191 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 205 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 226 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 226 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 226 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 226 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 251 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 251 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 261 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 261 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 292 Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, fol. 299 Docket Book No. 3, 1756–1760 Docket Book No. 3, 1756–1760, fol. 30 Docket Book No. 3, 1756–1760, fol. 30 Docket Book No. 3, 1756–1760, fol. 30 Docket Book No. 3, 1756–1760, fol. 41 Docket Book No. 3, 1756–1760, fol. 41 Docket Book No. 3, 1756–1760, fol. 51 Docket Book No. 6, 1770–1775, fol. 28 Docket Book No. 6, 1770–1775, fol. 90 Docket Book No. 6, 1770–1775, fol. 243

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table b.4 (Continued) Session of court

Name of peddler

Description

Source Docket Book No. 6, 1770–1775, fol. 243 Docket Book No. 8, 1782–1787, fol. 172 Docket Book No. 8, 1782–1787, fol. 193

February 1774

Lazarus Isaac

With one or more horses

November 1784

Alexander Benjamin

With one horse

February 1785

John Kuch

With one horse

Source: Lancaster County Quarter Sessions Docket Book No. 1, 1729–1742, No. 2, 1742–1756, No. 5, 1770–1775, No. 8, 1782–1787.

table b.5 Peddler’s petitions in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1722–1830 Name James Paterson James Paterson John Burt Thomas Perrin Joseph Cloud Jonah Davenport John Burt George Goodman Alexander Richardson Charles Conner George Mason Terrance O’Neal William Young Charles Conner George Mason Bryan Neale John Lockhard Charles Conner Bryan Neale Joseph Bourgoin

Alexander Richardson Richard Murray William Young Joseph Bourgoin Alexander Richardson William Black James Ross William Young Charles McMichael John Swanner Daniel Stewart James Adams Robert Anderson James McAllison Charles McMichael John Swanner John McClure

Residence Conestoga Conestoga Conestoga Conestoga Caln Conestoga Conestoga Ridley

Newtown

Willistown/Edgmont

Vincent

License for

Date

Indian trader Indian trader Indian trader Indian trader Indian trader Indian trader Indian trader Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler

November 1722 November 1723 May 1724 November 1724 May 1725 February 1725 August 1726 February 1728/29 February 1729/30 May 1730 May 1730 May 1730 May 1730 May 1731 May 1731 May 1731 May 1731 1732 (circa) 1732 (circa) May 1733

Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler

May 1733 May 1735 May 1735 August 1736 August 1737 February 1737/38 February 1737/38 February 1737/38 August 1742 November 1742 February 1742/43 November 1743 May 1743 December 1743 August 1743 November 1743 February 1743/44

Comments

Previously servant of Evan Lewis

263

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CITIZENS IN A STRANGE LAND

table b.5 (Continued) Name Robert Anderson Charles McMichael Samuel Cross Charles McMichael Charles McMichael Samuel Cross Robert Anderson Samuel Cross Charles McMichael George Connall Henry Hetherinton

Charles McMichael Henry Hetherinton Neal McLaughlin Patrick Whinnery James Hunter Charles McMichael Samuel Nealey Matthew Dunlap James Hunter Charles McMichael James McMordie Charles McMichael Samuel Patterson Richard Hall Charles McMichael Thomas Clarke Francis McBride Charles McMichael John Millis Samuel Patterson John Shaw John Prince John Johnston Charles Rodden William Little Samuel Patterson Nichola Fain John McCarty Jacob Sleer David Brooks Archibald Brown William Hopkins John Trim Charles Welsh Michael McKeever Michael McKeever Michael McKeever Jacob Rice Charles Welsh

Residence

Londonderry

London Grove Kennett

West Nantmeal

Chichester

West Nantmeal Providence

Kennett East Caln Oxford

East Bradford Pikeland Darby Tredyffrin East Whiteland Sadsbury West Chester

Vincent

License for

Date

Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler

May 1744 August 1744 August 1745 August 1745 August 1746 February 1746/47 August 1748 August 1748 August 1748 August 1749 May 1749

Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler

August 1749 February 1749/50 February 1749/50 February 1749/50

Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler

November 1750 November 1750 February 1750/51 November 1751 November 1751 November 1751 November 1751 November 1752 May 1752 February 1753 November 1753 May 1754 August 1754 November 1754 May 1754 August 1754 May 1754 February 1755 February 1756 February 1758 May 1759 August 1759 November 1760 February 1760 November 1772 February 1773 August 1801 August 1802 May 1802 February 1803 February 1805 February 1806 1807 February 1808 August 1809

Comments

Previously a peddler in New England

Previously a weaver

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APPENDIX B

table b.5 (Continued) Name

Residence

William Kennedy Thomas Middleton Thomas Middleton Thomas Middleton Thomas Middleton Thomas Middleton Philip John Thomas Middleton Thomas Middleton Joseph Coggins George Cornish Jarvis Humphrey Thomas Middleton

License for

Upper Oxford New London New London New London New London New London East Goshen New London New London

Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler Peddler

New London

Date

Comments

August 1815 October 1820 February 1822 February 1825 February 1826 February 1827 June 1828 February 1828 February 1829 November 1830 November 1830 October 1830 February 1830

Source: Feehrer and Rollison, ‘‘Peddlers and Indian Traders License Papers.’’

table b.6 Prices of single sheets, handbills, directions, and information charged by John Ritter & Comp., 1804–1814 Description of broadside

Size of order

Total cost in cents

Price per sheet in cents

5000 700 200 400 300 200 300 100 1000 600 200 60

1000 371 150 450 350 250 400 150 1500 1200 400 450

0.20 0.53 0.75 0.88 1.17 1.25 1.33 1.50 1.50 2.00 2.00 7.50

Election tickets Taufscheine Handbills Deputy meeting handbills Gold Tinktur Mother drops Electioneering handbills Doctor bill Directions for Bateman’s Drops Information on the cowpock Directions for Harlem Gel Handbills half-sheets

Source: Ledger of John Ritter and Co., 1804–1814, F11MP A337 1804–14, Berks County Historical Society Reading.

table b.7 Year

Broadsides advertising real estate, 1760–1830 Total

Numbers

Philadelphia

Lancaster

Lebanon

York

German

English/ German

Court order

Sheriff

1761–1765 1766–1770 1771–1775 1776–1780 1781–1785 1786–1790

2 2

82, 29 35, 1934

2 1

— 1

— —

— —

1 —

1 2

— 1

— 1

2 6

1 5

1 —

— —

— —

1 1

1 5

— 3

— 3

1791–1795 1796–1800

1 7

174, 191 219, 235, 229, 228, 238, 250 255 285, 286, 290, 1640, 291, 293, 302

1 2

— —

— —

— 1

— 1

1 6

1 2

1 2

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table b.7 (Continued) Total

Numbers

Philadelphia

Lancaster

Lebanon

York

German

English/ German

Court order

Sheriff

1801–1805

5

—

1

—

2

1

3

1

1

1806–1810 1811–1815

1 5

— —

— 2

— 3

— —

— 3

— 2

— —

— —

1816–1820 1821–1825

1 5

— —

— 2

— 3

— —

1 3

— 2

— —

— —

1826–1830

9

1553, 1782, 1661, 1660, 358 1781 434, 436, 461, 484, 486 559 1788, 639, 1659, 637, 665 676, 672, 1714, 735, 727, 726, 737, 734, 751

—

8

1

—

6

1

—

—

12

15

7

3

18

24

8

8

Year

Total

46

Source: Database.

table b.8 Death of owners as motive for sale

Time period

Death of owner

German owner

English owner

Owners who sell personally

3 0 1 3 2 5 12

2 0 0 4 2 5 12

2 0 8 5 4 3 3

1 0 7 6 4 3 3

1760–69 1770–79 1780–89 1790–99 1800–09 1810–19 1820–30 Source: Database.

table b.9 Nature of property advertised in broadsides Time period 1760–69 1770–79 1780–89 1790–99 1800–09 1810–19 1820–30 Total

House

Barns, stables

Cultivated land

Uncultivated land

Cattle and fruit

Household implements

Farm implements

City lots

2 0 4 3 4 4 7 24

2 0 1 3 3 3 5 17

3 0 2 7 4 5 8 29

1 0 1 4 4 3 1 14

1 0 0 0 1 1 8 11

2 0 0 1 1 3 5 12

2 0 0 0 1 3 4 10

1 0 3 1 1 1 0 7

Source: Database.

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APPENDIX B

table b.10 Broadsides on courtship, love, disappointments, and parodies Gender

Status

Message

Prints

Nos.

Male Male

Bachelor Bachelor

First beginnings Parody on a lover

2 4

Male

Bachelor

Sufferings of lover

18 (of which 12 have three poems)

Male

Bachelor

6

Male—Female

Bachelor

Male

Bachelor

Male—Female

Nobleman

Male

Bachelor

Male

Bachelor

Female—Male

Wife and husband

Enjoyed her love but has to leave now Lover wishes sign (kiss) from beloved Song of joy for love answered by beloved Seduction of maid and death Loving bachelor to his loving female friend Lover suffers because beloved is absent Loving wife to beloved husband

Male Male Male/Female Total

Bachelor Bachelor Bachelor/spinster

Disappointed lover Disappointed lover Parody on love

965, 1595 957, 1151, 1182, 1856 915, 916, 1115, 1116, 1109, 1111, 1112, 1114, 1815, 1864, 917, 1113, 1408, 1110, 1119, 1461, 1491, 1299 1117, 1118, 1577, 1176, 1703, 1893

1

1610

1

921

1

1385

5

1107, 1108, 1476, 1658, 1918

1

1300

5

1103, 1104 (man to woman and woman responds), 1105, 1106 (only woman), 912 (only man to woman) 1121 1098, 1099 537, 1149

1 2 2 50

Note: The numbers in the fourth column are the number of printings; the figures in the last column are reprints of the same text.

table b.11

Haussegen broadsides, 1760–1830

Title

No. of printings

Broadside nos.

Jesus wohne in meinem Haus

1066, 1284, 1286, 1285, 1015, 1838

6

Geistlicher Haus Seegen: In Gottes Nahmen geh ich aus

987, 201, 327, 1687, 337, 376, 433, 460, 508, 1013, 1711, 984, 1670, 861

14

Printers Johann P. Wiestling, Harrisburg (1), Sage, Reading (1), John Baumann, Ephrata (1) Benjamin Meyer, Lancaster (1), John Baumann, Ephrata (5), Samuel Baumann, Ephrata (3), Bruckmann, Reading (1)

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table b.11

(Continued)

Title

Broadside nos.

Geistlicher Haus Segen des hl. Apostels Jacobi Jesu wohne in meinem Haus, weiche nimmermehr daraus Haussegen: Guter Gott Dir ich befehle Haus Segen: In den drey allerho¨chsten Nahmen Gott segne dieses Haus und alle die da gehen ein und aus Christlicher Haus und Friedens Seegen unseres Herrn Jesu Christi Christlicher Haus-Seegen: Nebst der Zwo¨lf Stunden Geda¨chtnuß

No. of printings

986

1

984, 1682

2

985, 199, 225

3

1014, 1634, 1681, 1892, 1819, 1818, 1667, 680, 1203, 1011, 1012 1233

Printers

H. W. Villee, Lancaster (1)

11

Gra¨ter u. Blumer, Allentown (2), John Ritter & Comp, Reading (5)

1

867

1

1798, 866, 1683, 198, 318, 865, 864

7

Ephrata Community (3), F. W. Scho¨pflin, Chambersburg (1)

table b.12 Heavenly letters and other protection broadsides in figures Type

Protection against . . .

Commandment of . . .

Total number of broadsides

% of total of heavenly letters

Keeping of Sunday as day of the Lord

72

59.02

35 4 4

28.69 3.28 3.28

1

0.82

1

0.82

Help in self-defense

1

0.82

Against pain

1

0.82

Against fire

1

0.82

Rothlaufen, Schußbloter, Wundbrand, Kopfweh Against poison and pains

1

0.82

1

0.82

Magdeburg letter King of Egypt Wild fire Powerful holy prayer from Cologne Sieben Heilige Himmelsriegel Himmelsbrief fu¨r Kluge Hausva¨ter Wenn sich einer wehren muß Saint Lawrence lay on a grate Segen in Feuersbrunst Rothlaufen verliere deine Hitze God has created everything

Fire Fire, skin disease All dangers

Fire, disease Keeping Ten Commandments

122

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APPENDIX B

table b.13 Broadsides on wool-carding machines No.

Title

Location

Description

Price per pound

Owners/operators

With other mills

Year

388

Kart Maschine

Linville’s Creek, Rockingham County, Va.

Machine for breaking and carding wool

Edward A. Gibbs, Samuel Baumann

10 cents per pound, 5 cents for hatters

1809

389

WollkartMaschine

An Herrn William Byrds am Smith Creek Mu¨hle zwei ein halb Meilen von New Market, Shenandoah County, Va.

Wolle zu brechen und in Wolle zu karten

Andreas Bord, James Walker

If cash paid 6 pence, if credited 10 pence, for ‘‘hatters considerably cheaper’’

1809

428

Woll Kart Maschinen

An der Mu¨hl Creek sieben Meilen von New Market, Shenandoah County, Va.

Zwei neue Woll Kart Maschinen

Michael Ziegler, William Gibbs

6 penns das Pfund baares Geld

Bei Michael Zieglers Gipsmu¨hle

1810

439

Kart Maschine

Rockland Township bei Reading, Pa.

New machine for carding wool

Samuel Lobach und Sohn

6 pence

Walk Mu¨hle

1811

467

Maschine um Wolle zu zopfen und Karten

Bei Johann Zerkels Sa¨gemu¨hle am kleinen Shenandoah Fluß eine Meile von New Market, Shenandoah County, Va.

A new Picking and Carding Machine mit Boston Karten

Jacob und Georg Gipf, Thomas Tusey

Keine Angabe

1813

465

Woll-Kart Maschine

Bei Herrn Philip Scha¨fers Platz an der Cub Run in Rockingham County, Va.

Eine Woll-Kart Maschine

David Gut, Abraham Beery

6 pense das Pfund

1813

463

Wollkart Maschine

In Harrisonburg (Rockingham County) nahe bey Capt. Pens seiner Ga¨rberei, Va.

Daniel Muntz, Samuel B. Hall

8 cent das Pfund wenn baar bezahlt wird

Nahe bei Capt. Pens Ga¨rberei

1813

468

Wollkart Maschine

An seiner Mu¨hle am Shenandoah River about one mile from the Brock’s Gap and about one Mile and a half from Mr. Custer’s store, in Shenandoah County, Va.

Georg Lo¨hner

6 pens das Pfund

An seiner Mu¨hle

1813

Neue Wollkart Maschine

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table b.13 (Continued) Price per pound

With other mills

James Walker

6 pens furs Pfund

Bey Herrn Peter Maucks Hanf Mu¨hle

1813

Das Wollkarten betreiben

J. und M. Goodrich

‘‘gewo¨hnliche Preis von sechs Pens, und fu¨r Wolle von zwey oder mehr Farben zu mengen sieben Pens und einen halben’’

Bey Herrn Johann Stovers

1813

Am North Shenandoah River in Rockingham County, VA, about 3/4 Meilen von Pla¨ns Mu¨hl und 3 Meilen von New Market, Va.

Vollkommen gute Wolkart Maschinen. Die Brechmaschnine hat gemeine Wollkart Maschin Karten, eine Drommelwalze und Uhrwerk

Baumann und Forrer

6 Pens das Pfund

1814

North Shenandoah River in Rockingham County about three fourths of a mile from Plains Mill, Va.

With drum cylinder and clock work and the finisher with cotton cards

Bauman und Klein

6 pence das Pfund

1815

No.

Title

Location

Description

Owners/operators

466

Wollkart Maschinen

An der Tom’s Bruck nahe bei der Hauptstraße von Strasburg nach Woodstock jeweils sechs Meilen von beiden Orten, in Shenandoah County, Va.

Ganz neue Wollkart Maschinen . . . Maschinen von der besten Qualita¨t und neuesten und verbessertem Plan sind

464

Wollkarten

An der Na¨rrow Passage Creek zwei Meilen oberhalb von Woodstock, in Shenandoah County, Va.

476

Wollkart Maschinen

490

Wollkart Maschine

Year

Source: Database.

table b.14 Hand carding and machine carding in selected counties in Pennsylvania and Virginia, 1810

Counties Lancaster County, Pa. Berks County, Pa. York County, Pa. Pennsylvania average per county Shenandoah County, Va. Rockingham County, Va. Virginia average per county

Hand cards

Machine cards

Pounds of wool carded

Value of wool carded in U.S. $

1,144 4,832 7,595 4,524

29 81 17 42 6

77,970 406,200 62,100 182,090 ? ?

17,334 41,200 6,151 21,562 70,813 111,138 90,976

Woolen goods in families, yards made 32,744 71,812 60,180 54,912 ? 25,764

Spinning wheels 12,436 14,534 10,488 12,485 7

Source: American State Papers 010 Finance Vol. 2, 693–95, 13th Congress, 2nd Session, Publication No. 407.

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Looms 841 566 978 795 606 764 685

APPENDIX B

table b.15 Contours of the settlers’ private ‘‘religiosity’’ Categories

Number of broadsides

% of subcategory

531 422

79.47

I

77 32

14.50 6.03

II III

Devotional and religious broadsides Devotional poems and hymns Devotional texts Funeral sermons and poems Folk spirituality The church year Confirmation Christmas Passion Pentecost Easter House blessings Church administration Religious disputes Liturgical texts

% of main category

Rank within subcategory

Rank within main category

62.25

127 113 50 21 23 10 7 45 25 6 6

I

14.89 13.25

II III

44.25 18.58 20.35 8.85 6.19

I II III IV V 5.28 2.93 0.70 0.70

IV V VI VII

Source: Statistics compiled by Anne von Kamp, project bibliographer.

table b.16 Classification

Broadsides on the story of Joseph in Egypt Title

Place

Printer

Year

No.

E

Der barmherzige Heiland im Vorbilde Josephs

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

1915

E

Der barmherzige Heiland im Vorbilde Josephs

Upper Mahanoy Township

Timotheus Montelius

Ca. 1840

820

PB

Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern

Harrisburg

G. S. Peters

1830

747

PB

Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern

Harrisburg

Moser & Peters

1827

698

PB

Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern

Harrisburg

G. S. Peters

1829

728

PB

Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern

Harrisburg

G. S. Peters

1827–1830

1044

PA

Joseph in A¨gypten

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

1067

E

Ein Joseph Lied

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

1074

E

Joseph und seine Bru¨der

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

1068

E

Joseph und seine Bru¨der

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

1070

E

Joseph und seine Bru¨der

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

1769

E

Joseph und seine Bru¨der

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

1069

E

Joseph und seine Bru¨der

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

1573

EM

Joseph’s Lied

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

1072

E

Joseph’s Lied

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

521

E

Das Joseph-Lied

n.p.

n.p.

n.d.

1073

Notes: E  Example poetry; EM  Example poetry with melody; PB  Pauper bible; PA  Parable.

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table b.17

Acculturated political terminology, 1741–1764

Year

Political term or loan word

English term

Source

1741 1741 1741 1743 1743 1745 1748 1748 1753 1753 1753 1753 1753 1753 1753 1754 1755 1764

Assembly-Ma¨nner Governeur Assembly Charter Freyman Courten Assemblee Tax Assamblee Freyhalter Frieholder Representation Justus Scherif Constabel Großachtbarkeit Assa¨mble-Ma¨nner Proprietor

Assemblymen Governor Assembly Charter Freeman Court days Assembly Tax Assembly Freeholder Freeholder House of Representatives Justice of the Peace Sheriff Constable Governor Assemblymen Proprietor

Weiser, Wohl-gemeindter Weiser, Wohl-gemeindter Weiser, Wohl-gemeindter Saur, Neue Charter [Saur], Almanach, 1743 [Saur], Almanach, 1745 [Saur], Verschiedene Wahrheiten, 12 [Saur], Verschiedene Wahrheiten, 12 [Saur], Almanach, 1753 [Saur], Almanach, 1753 [Saur], Almanach, 1753 [Saur], Almanach, 1753 [Saur], Almanach, 1753 [Saur], Almanach, 1753 [Saur], Almanach, 1754 An die Deutschen [Saur], Ho¨chstno¨thige Warnung [Armbru¨ster], Eine Anrede, 2

Sources: Conrad Weiser, Ein Wohl-gemeindter und Ernstlicher Rath an unsere Lands-Leute, die Teutschen ([Philadelphia: B. Franklin, 1741]), no. 1775; Der neue Charter, oder schrifftliche Versicherung der Freyheiten, welche William Penn Esq. den Einwohnern von Pennsylvanien und dessen Territorien gegeben. Aus dem englischen Original u¨bersetzt (Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur, 1743), Evans No. 5271; [Christoph Saur], Verschiedene christliche Wahrheiten, und kurtze Betrachtung u¨ber das ku¨rtzlich herausgegebene Bu¨chlein genannt Lautere Wahrheit. Aufgesetzt von einem Handwerksmann, in Germanton ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur, 1748]), Evans No. 6233; [Christoph Saur], Eine zu dieser Zeit ho¨chstno¨thige Warnung und Erinnerung an die freye Einwohner der Provintz Pensylvanien von Einem, dem die Wohlfahrt des Landes angelegen und darauf bedacht ist ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur, 1755]), no. 70; Der Hoch-deutsch americanische Calender auf das Jahr nach der gnaden-reichen Geburth unsers Herrn und Heylandes Jesu Christi 1741 . . . Eingerichtet auf die Sonnen Ho¨he von 40 Graden und zwar vor Pennsylvanien: jedoch an denen angrentzenden Landen ohne mercklichen Unterschied zugebrauchen ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur]), for 1743, 1753, 1754; Eine Anrede an die deutschen Freyhalter der Stadt und County (Philadelphia: Anton Armbru¨ster, 1764), Evans No. 9577; An die Deutschen, vornehmlich die zum Wa¨hlen berechtigten, in Philadelphia- Bucks- und Berks Caunty ([Philadelphia, 1754?], no. 1824.

table b.18 German political broadsides Local elections War appeals War events Federal Constitution Tax problems State constitution Political news Political corruption Presidential elections Military orders Proclamation Political poems/songs German troops Congressional elections

1730–1773

1774–1783

1784–1787

1788–1801

1801–1830

1730–1830

0 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 0 0 0 3 0 0

0 2 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 7 3 4 8 0

0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0

2 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 2 0 1 0 0 0

0 0 3 0 0 0 2 3 5 0 2 2 0 11

2 2 3 3 3 4 5 6 7 7 7 9 8 11

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APPENDIX B

table b.18 (Continued) Regional elections Political program State assembly elections Total in categories

1730–1773

1774–1783

1784–1787

1788–1801

1801–1830

1730–1830

0 12 6 25

0 6 0 34

1 0 0 6

2 1 8 20

8 1 22 59

11 20 36 144

Note: Some broadsides were classified in more than one category. Therefore, totals do not correspond to the actual number of broadsides.

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NOTES

Full bibliographic information on the broadsides cited below and discussed in the text will be available in Eck, Kamp, and Wellenreuther, Bibliography of German-American Broadsides, and in the database at http:// www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digital/manuscripts.html. When citing or discussing a particular broadside, I have spelled its printer’s name as it appears there. However, when speaking more generally of the printer, I have used the standard English spelling of his name. Thus, the spelling of certain names varies in the text. Variant spellings are cross-referenced in the index.

Preface and Acknowledgments 1. See Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property, 98–99. 2. Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves; Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside.

Introduction 1. ‘‘[N]achdem wir meistens in dieses Land um Frieden und Sicherheit willen geflu¨chtet sind, und theils unser Stu¨ck Brodt leichter zu gewinnen als in Teutschland, wir nicht allein dieses alles gefunden.’’ Conrad Weiser, Ein Wohl-gemeindter und Ernstlicher Rath an unsere Lands-Leute, die Teutschen ([Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1741]), no. 1775. The manuscript of this broadside is in Conrad Weiser Papers, vol. 1, fol. 8, collection no. 700, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; the printed broadside is dated September 20, 1741. 2. Hippel, Auswanderung aus Su¨dwestdeutschland; Ha¨berlein, Vom Oberrhein zum Susquehanna; Wokeck, Trade in Strangers. On German images of America in general and Pennsylvania in particular see Wellenreuther, ‘‘Tradition and Expectation,’’ and Diekmann, Lockruf der Neuen Welt. 3. The political events in Pennsylvania at that time are ably described and analyzed by Tully, William Penn’s Legacy. 4. On this mortality see Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys, 209n38. 5. See the list of ship arrivals with the numbers of immigrants in Wokeck, Trade in Strangers, 45–46. 6. Schwartz, ‘‘Mixed Multitude,’’ 160–62. The Pennsylvania law of 1743 became part of the revised general naturalization act enacted by the British Parliament; ibid., 162. On the peace churches and their selfperception and role in colonial Pennsylvania see Stievermann, ‘‘ ‘Little Flock.’ ’’ 7. The best analysis of the immigration of these radical Pietist churches is provided by Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys, chap. 4. On the Quaker Peace Testimony see Wellenreuther, Glaube und Politik, and MacMaster, Horst, and Ulle, Conscience in Crisis. 8. The best analyses of German settlement patterns are Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys, 80–99, and Lemon, Best Poor Man’s Country, chap. 3 et passim. 9. See above, note 1. 10. Notice calling for payment of consideration money, No. 23, 1738 (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1738), no. 41. According to Miller, Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Printing, the German broadside was printed parallel to its English version. Franklin charged Thomas Penn 15 shillings for two hundred copies of the German advertisement. 11. Benjamin Padlin, Eine Ernstliche Ermahnung, An Junge und Alte: Zu einer ungeheuchelten Pru¨fung ihres Hertzens und Zustandes . . . Ku¨rtzlich aus Engeland nach America gesandt, und wegen seiner Wichtigkeit Aus dem Englischen ins Deutsche treulich u¨bersetzt; Von einem Liebhaber der Wahrheit (Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur, 1738), no. 40; see Earnest and Earnest, To the Latest Posterity, 23 and 323n31, where they note that the author of this broadside was in reality the Quakeress Benjamina Padley. For an analysis and interpretation of this broadside see below, 156.

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12. Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing. 13. Ibid., vol. 1, ix. 14. For a fuller version see table 1. 15. For a more specific characterization and description of the bibliographical entries, see the introduction to Eck, Kamp, and Wellenreuther, Bibliography of German-American Broadsides. 16. ‘‘Ich halte es nicht wahrscheinlich, dass die deutsche Sprache hier je aussterben wird. Auf dem Lande sieht’s anders aus, wie in den Ku¨stenstaaten. Dort wu¨rde es den Kindern der Deutschen zu schwer werden, sich des Deutschen zu entwo¨hnen und zu scha¨men. Auf dem Lande na¨mlich haben sich die Deutschen in manchen Gegenden so zusammengezogen, daß man hier große Gemeinden findet, in denen theils gar keine Englische wohnen, theils auch die englischen Schulen ganz fehlen, und in welchen die Gemeinden noch so echtdeutsch sind, wie in Schwaben oder der Pfalz, und es wol noch lange bleiben werden. . . . Die wahren deutschen Landwirthe bleiben stets gern unter den Deutschen, und ziehen selten oder gar nicht unter die ¨ ber Englischen, denen sie den Namen Eirische geben und so umgekehrt.’’ Dr. Johann Christoph Kunze, ‘‘U den erweiterten Wirkungskreis der o¨ffentlich besta¨tigten (incorporated) deutschen Gesellschaft zu Philadelphia. Eine Rede gehalten im Jahre 1782,’’ in Brauns, Praktische Belehrungen, 448–49. 17. For an early summary of these controversies see Brauns, Praktische Belehrungen, 351–69; the controversy in Philadelphia is ably described and analyzed in Baer, Trial of Frederick Eberle. 18. Except for very isolated instances almost nothing is known about the migration of broadsides from Germany to the New World, although there are clear linguistic indications that some must have been brought over from Europe. 19. Herzog August Bibliothek, ‘‘Einblattdrucke im Index Sachgebiet,’’ http://dbs.hab.de/wbb/regsearch .php?offset0&range50&st1Einblattdruck&st2&m1schlagwort&m2&trunc1%25&trunc2 (accessed February 17, 2009). 20. Catalogue of the St. Gallen Bibliotheksnetz sub ‘‘Einblattdruck,’’ http://aleph.sg.ch/F/7GEG8CDNDT 33KG67G9QNRALJ19CYCNI872GM6SSGNQ7GTXMHB3-12108?funcfind-b&find_codeWRD&re questEinblattdruck&x0&y0 (accessed February 17, 2009). 21. http://www.buchwissenschaft.info/search.mhtml?requesttitles&previous0&sessionid0123489 42270&resultsetid12348942270x3&domainDome (accessed February 17, 2009). 22. Auswahlbibliographie zur Geschichte des Einblattdrucks in der fru¨hen Neuzeit. Erarbeitet im Rahmen des DFG-Projekts ‘‘Erschliessung und Digitalisierung der fru¨hneuzeitlichen Einblattdrucke der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek Mu¨nchen’’ (Munich: Bayerische Staatbibliothek, November 2003), http://www.bsb-muen chen.de/fileadmin/imageswww/pdf-dateien/Literatursuche/bibliogr.pdf (accessed February 17, 2009). 23. See the printers’ usage in the accounts cited in chapter 1. 24. Zedler, Grosses Vollsta¨ndiges Universal-Lexicon; Adelung, Grammatisch-kritischen Wo¨rterbuches. 25. These and the following paragraph are based on Walther, ‘‘Flugblatt.’’ 26. Schwitalla, ‘‘Pra¨sentationsformen.’’ 27. Schottenloher, Flugblatt und Zeitung, vol. 1; Henkel, Zeit fu¨r neue Ideen. 28. Mu¨nkner, Eingreifen und Begreifen, 9; Harms, ‘‘Forschungsgeschichte.’’ 29. Wroth, Colonial Printer; Warner, Letters of the Republic, 24, 59. 30. Shields, Civil Tongues, 219–20. 31. Berger, Broadsides and Bayonets; see too Lowance and Baumgardner, Massachusetts Broadsides. The database Early American Imprints I lists 7,322 English broadsides up to 1800. Some of these are edited by Winslow, American Broadside Verse. 32. Der Reggeboge has been published by the Pennsylvania German Society since 1967. 33. Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside; Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves. Both authors discuss the historiography of German-American broadsides at length and with great competence. 34. Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves, xiii–xiv. 35. Stopp, Birth and Baptismal Certificates. 36. See Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves, 11–14, for their whole section on definitions. 37. Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, xiii. 38. Printer account books show that merchants and bookdealers ordered and bought them wholesale from printers; see chapter 1. 39. A rich collection of these printed forms for bonds filled in with the proper names and other information is in Manuscript Room Documents 31, Boxes 1–7 (1804–27), Berks County Historical Society, Reading. 40. K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic.

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41. The relevant literature on English printers in the colonies and states is cited in chapter 1. Although Benjamin Franklin probably produced the first German broadside (see above, 2–3), his work as a printer is barely mentioned. 42. Stoudt, Pennsylvania German Folk-Art; Bach, Voices of the Turtledoves.

Chapter 1 1. See esp. Warner, Letters of the Republic; Amory, Bibliography; Loughran, Republic in Print. On the problematic nature of these terms see Howsam, Old Books, 17–19 et passim. The scholarship on print culture, books, and printing in the British colonies is ably summarized in the contributions to Amory and Hall, Colonial Book, especially Green, ‘‘English Books and Printing in the Age of Franklin,’’ 248–98, and Roeber, ‘‘German and Dutch Books and Printing,’’ 298–313. 2. Loughran, Republic in Print, 3. 3. Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing. 4. For figures on English-language printing in North America in the eighteenth century see Amory and Hall, Colonial Book, esp. Amory, ‘‘A Note on Statistics,’’ 504–18. 5. This is the crop: Adams, ‘‘Colonial German-Language Press’’; Cazden, Social History; Dolmetsch, German Press; Wilsdorf, Early German-American Imprints. 6. On the volume of German book trade see Bo¨rsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Buch und Buchhandel in Zahlen. 7. Bo¨rsenblatt.net, July 3, 2008, http://www.boersenblatt.net/210917/ (accessed July 3, 2008). 8. See below, 255–57. 9. See below, 33–34. 10. American libraries usually spell the name with a ‘‘C.’’ We suspect that Johannes Koppelberger lived in Lebanon County. 11. See below, 108. 12. Biographical data from the Digital Catalogue of the Library of the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, digital image no. 14 (‘‘Ein Warnungs-Lied u¨ber den schwarzen Flecken’’). Schuller drew ‘‘Taufscheine’’ and probably peddled them too. Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 49, 228; and Stopp, Birth and Baptismal Certificates, 4:71. 13. See below, 109. 14. See below, chap. 4. 15. On Montelius see below, 37, 84, 86–87. 16. See Kamp, ‘‘German Sources.’’ 17. 1. Corinth. 1 v. 81 [sic]. Das Wort vom Creutz ist zwar eine Thorheit denen die verlohren werden (Ephrata, Pa.: Jacob Matzenbacher, 1772), no. 109. 18. See Das Raben-Geschrey, durch Br. Andreas Schneeberger auf Antitum. 1776 ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, ca. 1776]), no. 130; Schw. Barbara Schneeberger Trauer-Lieder ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, before 1770]), no. 1256; Die Stimme der Turteltaube, durch Sch. Barbara Schneeberger auf Antitum. 1776 ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1776]), no. 129; Wurde abgesungen den 31ten August, 1793: Bey B. A. S. auf dem ja¨hrlichen Fest, an der Antitum ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1793]), no. 262. 19. See below, 165. 20. See next section. 21. A general survey of German-language printers and their products in Colonial North America is Adams, ‘‘Colonial German-Language Press.’’ The most complete discussion of German-American printers is provided by Wilsdorf, Early German-American Imprints. This study provides basic biographical data on most printers (in a few cases not correct) and fairly complete descriptions of what they printed. Silver, American Printer, totally ignores German-American printers, as do by and large Wolf, Book Culture, and Remer, Printers and Men of Capital. 22. This is an oversimplification warranted only by the dominant position of the Henkel family in the Shenandoah Valley; for a more detailed account of Shenandoah Valley printers see Dolmetsch, German Press, chap. 1. 23. On the Henkel family and their connections see Baur, Letters of Paul Henkel; Gienow, ‘‘Decline of the German Language’’; Carpenter and Smith, ‘‘David Henkel’’; L. Smith, ‘‘Early Career.’’

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24. Salomon Henkel functioned as publisher in 1809, and Sylvanus Henkel and Samuel Gottfried Henkel were in partnership in 1823. The other four were Andreas N. Henkel (1790–1870), Ambrosius Henkel, Salomon Henkel (1777–1847), Sylvanus Henkel, and Samuel Gottfried Henkel. 25. I. Thomas, History of Printing, 424–26, believes that Miller learned the printing trade from Christoph Saur II, which is most unlikely because printing at Ephrata started in the early 1740s, when Saur II was far too young to be able to teach it to others. In fact, it was around that time that the elder Saur taught his young (and only) son bookbinding. On the Saur printing house see Hocker, Sower Printing House, and on the younger Saur’s activity as a leading member of the radical Pietists in Pennsylvania see Stievermann, ‘‘ ‘Little Flock.’ ’’ 26. Christian was most likely the brother of John Baumann, but the evidence seems unclear; Durnbaugh, Brethren Encyclopedia, 1:98–99, is silent on this issue. 27. See below, 86, 165, 169. 28. All genealogical data on the Saur and the Bauman families are from Durnbaugh, Brethren Encyclopedia, vols. 1–2, and from Spohn, ‘‘Bauman/Bowman Family.’’ 29. See below, 18. 30. Alexander Mack was a key member of the Brethren in the Germantown congregation; his father, Alexander Mack (1679–1735), had been a founding member of the Schwarzenau Brethren in Germany and was instrumental in leading the group to Pennsylvania. See Meier, Schwarzenauer Neuta¨ufer, and on the elder Mack see Willoughby, Counting the Cost. 31. Durnbaugh, Brethren Encyclopedia, 2:736–37, 1145–46. 32. Ibid., 2:1146; Saur had printed the Heidelberger Katechismus. 33. McMurtrie, First Printers of York, 10–11. Surprisingly little seems to be known about Michael Billmeyer. He set up two of his sons in Philadelphia, where they first seem to have run a bookshop. Unsuccessful in that trade, they continued as general merchants. Michael Billmeyer was economically probably more important as a wholesale bookdealer. Weiser and Smith, St. Michael’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, 2:211; Earnest and Earnest, To the Latest Posterity, 63; Tinkcom, Tinkcom, and Simon, Historic Germantown, 110; J. Wenger, ‘‘Billmeyer’’; Cazden, Social History, 60; Rampelmann, Im Licht der Vernunft, 128–32, 157; Smith and Smith, ‘‘Many Called It Home’’; Flory, Literary Activity, 321–27. On the Billmeyer family see Cannon, ‘‘Evidence of the Billmeyer Families of York County.’’ 34. See Mix, Krieg, and Weyers, Deutsch-amerikanische Kalender. 35. Michael (?) Billmeyer, Wholesale Bookdealer Account Book, 1797–1801, BM B-130, Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown. 36. Officially his name was Johann Henrich Miller, but in his publications he calls himself Henrich Miller, which is the name we use in this study. 37. Lineback, ‘‘Diary of Johann Heinrich Mu¨ller,’’ 2. On inspection, what Lineback styles a diary is actually an autobiography. 38. Henrich Millers, des Buchdruckers in Philadelphia, no¨thige Vorstellung an die Deutschen in Pennsylvanien etc (Philadelphia, Pa.: Henrich Miller, 1778), no. 159. 39. Mu¨hlenberg’s acquaintance and later friendship with Johann Conrad Steiner dates from his membership in the committee that was asked in 1749 to mediate the dispute between Steiner, Michael Schlatter, and the Reformed Congregation in Philadelphia. See Aland, Wellenreuther, et al., Korrespondenz Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenbergs, 1:333–37. 40. When this partnership was officially formed is unclear. Both signed jointly as publishers of the proclamation of William Dewees, Sheriff of Philadelphia County, dated February 28, 1776, that fixed the day for the by-election for the seat vacated by Benjamin Franklin for March 2, 1776; no. 134. According to Charles Evans, the two printers published their last joint publication in 1781 (Evans 24279). 41. The largest collection of publications issued by Charles Cist is in the Library of the Antiquarian Society. 42. In that year he published Helmuth, Trauer-Music. 43. The biographical data on Albrecht are taken from the biography drawn up after Albrecht’s death, MAB Box Memoirs, Lancaster 25, Archives of the Moravian Church, Bethlehem. On April 10, 1779, the Pennsylvania Packet carried an advertisement headlined ‘‘Philadelphia April 8. A Robbery! Two Hundred Dollars Reward.’’ In the advertisement the subscriber, John Albright, reported that he had been attacked the previous night by three robbers who robbed him of ‘‘my pocket-book, and my silver shot and knee buckles.’’ Albright then listed the other items stolen, including various sums of money of different legal tenders and a note of hand ‘‘for an hundred pounds, dated at Lancaster. Ditto for twelve pounds, dated at Philadelphia.’’ The advertisement concluded, ‘‘The above reward will be given for securing the robbers and the said articles, by

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applying to me at Mr. Bailey’s printing office in Market Street. John Albright,’’ from which it can be assumed that at that time Albrecht was employed as a journeyman in Francis Bailey’s office. Francis Bailey moved his office back to Lancaster in 1779; Albrecht then changed employers, since the biography explicitly states that ‘‘im Jahr 1787 zog er hierher nach Lancaster, und richtete sich auf eine eigene Druckerey ein, die er zu jedermanns Zufriedenheit verwaltete, und sein Fleiß und Accuratesse wurde mit augenscheinlichem Segen gecro¨nt’’ (in the year 1787 he moved to Lancaster and set up a printing press, which he worked to everybody’s satisfaction; his industry and punctuality were crowned with visible blessings). 44. Pfleger, Ethnicity Matters, 14–20. 45. On Miller’s religious fervor see his autobiography, cited above, note 37. 46. See above, note 43. 47. See Wellenreuther, ‘‘Printer of a New Generation.’’ 48. See below, 21–22 and 25–30. 49. This sketch is based on Wellenreuther, ‘‘Printer of a New Generation.’’ 50. Eine neue Sammlung scho¨ner Arien marks the limit in Ritter’s production of secular texts. 51. Albrecht’s publications reflect much more than those of other printers the religious world of the Moravians. But he, too, published secular almanacs and agricultural material. 52. Christian Jacob Hu¨tter, both in Lancaster and later in Easton, continued to print much religious material, but he, too, turned to practical guides for farmers and other secular works. See Rauch, Des deutschen Bauers. 53. Aside from little articles in local history journals, the state of scholarship is aptly summarized by Amory and Hall, Colonial Book, especially the contributions by James N. Green (199–223), A. Gregg Roeber (298– 313), and Elizabeth Carroll Reilly and David D. Hall (387–403). Remer, Printers and Men of Capital, represents the exception. Remer shows that large Philadelphia printers tried to distribute their products through establishing dependencies of their firms in inland towns, or by selling their products wholesale to inland printers. See the discussion on these issues below. On the distribution and sale of books in New England see Amory, Bibliography. Amory mentions a peddler who ‘‘used to go up and down the Country selling of Books’’ and acquired a considerable estate. The data on peddlers in Pennsylvania do not suggest that they acquired fortunes; see below. 54. An Act for regulating peddlers, vendues, etc., was passed on February 14, 1730. Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1:179–80. 55. General Quarter Sessions Docket, Book 4–7, Session Oct. 1751, fol. 97, York County Archives, York. 56. Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 2:99–100. 57. Pedlars Licences issued by the Judges of the Court of Quarter Sessions of Dauphin County, 1830–1855, looseleaf, RG 47, Records of County Government, Dauphin County, State Archives, Harrisburg. According to ‘‘Computing ‘Real Value’ over Time with a Conversion Between U.K. Pounds and U.S. Dollars, 1830 to Present’’ (http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/exchange/result_exchange.php), £5 in that year was worth U.S. $23.80. On the value of money and its exchange rates see too McCusker, How Much Is That in Real Money? 58. Pedlars Licences issued by the Judges of the Court of Quarter Sessions of Dauphin County, 1830–1855, single leaf, RG 47, Records of County Government, Dauphin County, State Archives, Harrisburg. 59. Ibid. 60. General Quarter Sessions Docket, Book 12, fol. 36; Book 13, fol. 161; Book 1806–1814, fol. 215, York County Archives, York. 61. One of the few studies of peddlers is Wright, Hawkers and Walkers. Yankee peddlers are the subject of Dolan, Yankee Peddlers; see too on clock peddlers Rainer, ‘‘ ‘Sharper’ Image,’’ 89–110, and see above, note 53. 62. See above, note 58. 63. General Quarter Sessions Docket, Book 1 and 3: 1749–1785, fols. 80, 97; Book 4, fol. 27; Book 12, fol. 36; Book 13, fol. 161; Book 14, fols. 31, 123; Book 1806–1814, fol. 215, York County Archives, York. 64. John Ritter Cash Book, 1819–1821, F11 MK R 614B, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. 65. Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 22–23. There are indications that Hohmann may have given up peddling and turned to writing and printing. See below. 66. On markets and fairs see below. 67. Manuscript Room Documents 31, Box 6 (1828–31), Folder 1828.6, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. 68. No. 1144.

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69. Wholesale ledger of general merchandise, 1792–1797; books and stationery, 1798–1817, merchant unknown, Philadelphia, MR329, Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society, Easton. This is the official catalogue entry of Christian Jacob Hu¨tter’s ledger, which we have identified with the help of James N. Green, Librarian of the Library Company, Philadelphia, whose kindness is gratefully acknowledged. We would likewise like to acknowledge the great kindness of the staff of the Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society, Easton, in providing a digital copy of the ledger for our use. 70. Up to now only the book imports from the Hamburg scholar and bookseller Daniel Christoph Ebeling have been described in some detail. See in general Stewart, Literary Contributions of Christoph Daniel Ebeling; Overhoff, ‘‘Christoph Daniel Ebeling’’; Cazden, ‘‘Provision of German Books in America.’’ 71. Musical books and sheets were bought by a Mr. Michaeli and Joseph Schweishaupt from Nazareth, Justine Jansen, Rev. John Herbst from Lititz, Samuel Benjamin Vierling from Salem, N.C., Jacob van Vleck, Joseph Oerter, Georg Beckel, Dr. Eberhard Freitag from Bethlehem, and G. Friedrich Weiza¨cker, Fr. Steinmann, William Cornmann, William Hensel, Eduard Mott, and David Hall, no address known. Music sheets were ordered by John Morris from York, Peter Getz from Lancaster, Jacob Getz from Columbia, and John Schneider & Co. from Reading. 72. Tench Coxe’s orders were dated March 15, 1800, for £0.15.02 1/2; July 15, 1800, for £4.10.00; August 12, 1800, for £1.10.0; January 3, 1801, for £0.06.00; May 16, 1801, for £1.06.03; June 6, 1801, for £1.06.03, and June 17, 1801, for £1.06.00. The order from July 15 was for printing ‘‘250 pamphlets’’; the rest were for stationery. Frederick August Muhlenberg’s orders were dated January 9, 1800, for £1.06.00; May 5, 1800, for £00.08.06; July 17, 1800, for £1.13.09; August 4, 1800, for £0.07.06; August 12, 1800, for £0.11.03; August 11, 1800, for £2.04.09; November 11, 1800, for £0.12.06; December 15, 1800, for £0.01.07; January 13, 1801, for £1.16.00; February 17, 1801, for £1.17.06. The order from December 15 was for printing of forms, and that from January 17 was for a ‘‘terrestrial globe’’; the rest were for stationery. 73. See above, note 72. 74. On the country store and its role and function in the distribution of goods in general and printed matter in particular, see D. Wenger, Country Storekeeper. 75. The last part of the ledger is unpaginated. Entries are therefore cited by date—although they do not always follow in chronological order. 76. Bean, History of Montgomery County, 451. 77. Dahlinger, Pittsburgh, 41, 155. 78. Journal des Luxus und der Moden 14 (1799): 118. 79. See below, 111–114. 80. See below, 37–38. 81. See below. 82. This is our assumption; the time that elapsed between the arrival of the order and the dispatch of the goods is unknown. 83. Entry under October 21, 1801, in Hu¨tter’s ledger; see above, note 69. 84. See below. 85. This probably refers to [Schulze], Verbesserte und erleichterte griechische Grammatica. 86. Reading and Allentown were much closer than Lancaster. 87. Johannes Rose, Mineralisches Pferd-Pulver ([Lancaster, Pa.], n.d.), no. 1159 (in light of the entry in Hu¨tter’s ledger [see above, note 69], it is debatable whether the place of printing is correct), 2nd. ed., no. 307; Sassafras-Oel . . . ist zu haben bei Dr. Johannes Rose in Lancaster ([Lancaster, Pa., 1792]), no. 259. 88. See the purchases of G. L. Wagner, peddler, on April 11, 1821, from John Ritter: ‘‘36 plain Taufscheine,’’ ‘‘6 Arien and Lieder,’’ ‘‘24 plain Haussegen,’’ and ‘‘6 colored Taufscheine.’’ John Ritter Cash Book, 1819–1821, F11 MK R 614B, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. 89. Christian Bru¨stle added to the broadside Ein Ermahnungs-Lied an James Quin ([Lebanon, Pa.: Joseph Hartman, 1827]), no. 704, the remark ‘‘Durch die Gnade Gottes herausgegeben von Christian Bru¨stle, von Deutschland, den 4. Februar 1827’’ (Edited, by the grace of God, by Christian Bru¨stle of Germany on February 4, 1827). By his own testimony, Johann Georg Homann [Hohmann] initiated the production of the broadside Drei scho¨ne, neue und fromme Lieder . . . Zum Druck befo¨rdert von Johann Georg Homann, in Berks Caunty, no. 1048; claimed he had brought over from Germany the heavenly letter Himmels-Brief. welches mit goldenen Buchstaben geschrieben, und zu sehen ist . . . GOTT, der du deine Lust . . . Gott bescheret . . . JESUS Christ zu finden ist (1820), no. 1038; claimed he had composed a song about the murder at Carlisle, Ein neu Trauer-Lied, wie man vernommen von einem Menschen, der nach dem Tod ist wieder kommen. Diese Begebenheit hat sich vor nicht langer Zeit zehn Meilen von Carlisle zugetragen, no. 366; claimed he had composed or at least

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revised Ein scho¨n neu geistlich Lied von dem Nichtsseyn des menschlichen Lebens, no. 425; and reprinted, probably in a revised version, the story of the cruel murder of a young woman in Eberstein, Germany, Eine Trauergeschichte oder ein neues Lied u¨ber eine grausame Mordthat . . . Districkt Taunschip . . . den 8ten Jenner, 1811, no. 441, and no. 442. 90. For the surprisingly large stock of books, stationery, and pharmaceutical products in John Ritter’s store see the Inventory Book of John Ritter’s Book Store, 1827, F11 NK R 614B, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. The list is 42 fols. long. 91. Hamilton, ‘‘Reading Adler.’’ 92. John Ritter, Cash Book of Reading Newspaper (Adler), F11MP N558, 1804–1806, entries for 1804, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. We are most grateful to Irvin Pathman for his introduction into the mystery of the John Ritter Company and his help in finding our way through the large business paper collection in the Berks County Historical Society. 93. Defined as a single leaf printed either on one or on both sides. 94. One of the very few works on the price of printing is David Kaser’s edition of The Cost Book of Carey & Lea, 1825–1838. This contemporary source states the costs of the books Carey & Lea published, but it does not state the price for broadsides or odd jobs, printing of handbills, etc., paid for and ordered by walk-in customers. 95. In 1814 John Rose was charged $10.00 for a ten-year subscription; in 1808 William Stahle was debited $2.00 for the Reading Eagle, and $4.00 in 1812. 96. This count is based on the number of advertisements in the Readinger Adler for Thursday, February 7, 1815, no. 945. 97. See chapter 4. 98. Ledger of John Ritter and Co., 1804–1814, F11MP A337 1804–14 et passim, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. 99. See below, 242. 100. See below, 265. 101. Durnbaugh, Brethren Encyclopedia, 1:522–23; http://genforum.genealogy.com/gaby/messages/34.html (accessed May 29, 2008). 102. Ein scho¨nes Lied (Reading, Pa.: Johann Ritter und Comp., n.d.), no. 1302. Another broadside, a New Year’s greeting card, has the note at the bottom ‘‘fu¨r den Verfasser’’ (for the author). It is the only broadside with such a note. Neujahrs-Wunsch. Da nun das neue Jahr geht an. . . . (Reading, Pa.: Johann Ritter und Comp., n.d.), no. 1699. 103. Ausbund, 2nd ed. (1808), 417–18. 104. Biographical data are from Glatfelter, Pastors and People, 1:42–43. 105. Confirmations-Lied von dem Ehrw. Doct. F. W. Geissenhainer (n.p., n.d.), no. 1748. 106. An meine Konfirmanden . . . F. W. Geissenhainer. Vinzent, May 1821. Konfirmazionslied. . . . ([Downington, Pa.?, 1821]), no. 593. The only known copy of the broadside lacks the song itself. If our assumption is correct that he reprinted ‘‘Fu¨hl das heiligste Entzu¨cken,’’ then his claim to authorship of the song is wrong. 107. On Hohmann see Cazden, Social History, 42–43. 108. Cazden, ibid., 43, cites an advertisement by Hohmann in the Readinger Adler for February 23, 1813, in which he describes himself as ‘‘a poor man, namely the undersigned, who has long been ill and not yet recovered, and therefore come upon difficult times.’’ 109. Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 212–15, suggests this. 110. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has a manuscript copy of this pamphlet, erroneously dated 1752. (PHi)Am.8115, HSP. 111. It may not be coincidental that the previous year saw the publication of Catechism, or, A short abridgement of Christian doctrine. 112. These inventories are housed in the Bucks County Archives. We have found German books, mostly Bibles, Arndt’s Wahres Christentum (i.e., Arndt, Des hocherleuchteten Theologi [Evans 6630]), and ‘‘sundries,’’ which we interpret as little texts, including religious broadsides, in Wills and Administrations, Bucks County, in inventories no. 3125, Jacob Hetherlin; no. 3262, Peter Grumbaker; no. 3412, Justice Linderman; no. 3417, Nicholas Keiser; no. 3701, Henry Shenkle; no. 3695, John Switzer; no. 3783, Elizabeth Engle. In some inventories the executors were a bit more specific: no. 4431, Frederick Houck, lists ‘‘summarily five books’’; no. 4633, Peter Longinacre, lists the Book of Martyrs in German; no. 4676, Sarah Hoderman, owns ‘‘a Dutch Bible, Hymnbooks’’; no. 4676, Jacob Holderman, owned ‘‘printed books’’; no. 4694, Barbara Switzer, possessed ‘‘a bible and other books’’; no. 4761, Veronica Switzer, was owner of the History of Martyrs and five hymnbooks;

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no. 4780, Henry Mowre, listed ‘‘Psalm Book and other Books’’; while no. 4952, Elizabeth Hoffecker, left her heirs ‘‘two Dutch Bibles, three histories, 16 books, A spiritual Lottery.’’ All Bucks County Archives, Doylestown. 113. Rev. John Ernst to Melchior Steiner, May 5, 1781, August 21, 1781, September 27, 1780, October 21, 1781, November 12, 1781. Rev. Johann Ernst Papers, Falconer Swamp, 1780–1786, AM.06252, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Ernst gave as reasons for these orders: ‘‘Mit dem Bu¨cher Handel mo¨chte ich mich aber nicht einlassen, doch sehe ichs als meine Pflichten an, so viel als mo¨glich behu¨lflich zu seyn, daß dem in meiner Gemeine befindlichen großen Mangel an Gesangbu¨chern etc etc abgeholfen, und das junge Volck zum Mitsingen in der Kirche gereizt und angehalten werde’’ (I do not really want to start a book trade, but I consider it my duty to be as supportive as possible in order to alleviate the great dearth of hymnals etc. etc. to enable the young folks to join and induce them to sing along in church). Letter of October 21, 1781, ibid. 114. G. D. Billmeyer, Book Store Account Book, 1814–1819, fol. 13, BM B-303, Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown. 115. Ibid., fol. 7. Samuel Weiser was the youngest son of Conrad Weiser, Pennsylvania’s Indian agent during the colonial period. 116. On Billmeyer see above, note 33. 117. Other clergymen listed as customers were Dr. Jonathan Rahauser, fol. 3; M. Helfenstein, fol. 14; John Frederick Ernst, fol. 20; William Hiester, fol. 27; John H. Helfrich, fol. 27; Jacob Senn, fol. 28; Daniel Kurtz, fol. 53; Frederick Lange, fol. 69; John Philip Stock, fol. 76; William Forster, fol. 81; Thomas Pomp, fol. 89; John Conrad Ja¨ger, fol. 90; M. Runkel, fol. 103. All fol. numbers refer to G. D. Billmeyer, Book Store Account Book, 1814–1819, BM B-303, Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown. 118. Those in Virginia were Dr. Peter Sensenig, ‘‘Arzt,’’ fol. 9; John Ott, City of Washington, fol. 16; Jacob Swoop, Staunton, fol. 54; William Forster, Stoverstown, fol. 81; John V. Thomas, Stationer, Alexandria, fol. 84. Fol. numbers refer to G. D. Billmeyer, Book Store Account Book, 1814–1819, BM B-303, Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown. 119. Those in Maryland were Dr. Jonathan Rahauser, Hagerstown, fol. 3; John Brotzman, Hagerstown, fol. 7; John Croneis, Frederick Town, fol. 8; Geiger & Harry, Hagerstown, fol. 34; Nicholas Tshudy, Baltimore, fol. 36; Peter Hefly, Hagerstown, fol. 41; Warner & Hanna, Baltimore, fol. 52; Daniel Kurtz, ‘‘Reverend,’’ Baltimore, fol. 53; Jacob D. Dietrich, Hagerstown, fol. 79; Joseph Krems, Baltimore, fol. 80; John Heflich, Hagerstown, fol. 91; Michael Dieffenderffer, Baltimore, fol. 108; Jacob Harry, Hagerstown, fol. 122. Fol. numbers refer to G. D. Billmeyer, Book Store Account Book, 1814–1819, BM B-303, Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown. 120. Henry Miller, New Germantown, fol. 56. G. D. Billmeyer, Book Store Account Book, 1814–1819, BM B-303, Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown. 121. Henry Lutheisser, New York City, fol. 11; Maley & Cuyler, Albany, fol. 21; Peter Teutner, New York City, fol. 40. Fol. numbers refer to G. D. Billmeyer, Book Store Account Book, 1814–1819, BM B-303, Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown. 122. Fol. 109, G. D. Billmeyer, Book Store Account Book, 1814–1819, BM B-303, Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown. 123. This passage is based on the analysis of the wholesale ledger of general merchandise, 1792–1797; books and stationery, 1798–1817, merchant unknown, Philadelphia, MR329, Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society, Easton. See above, note 69. 124. I do not know of any study of the distributive systems for the earlier period. Doerflinger’s Vigorous Spirit, a superb study of Philadelphia merchants in the colonial period, discusses only how the merchants acquired their goods from the farmers of the hinterland outside Philadelphia. 125. Remer, Printers and Men of Capital, 126–27, 141–44. 126. Wholesale ledger of general merchandise, 1792–1797; books and stationery, 1798–1817, merchant unknown, Philadelphia, MR329, Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society, Easton; see above, note 69. For the Grammatic Geissenhainer ordered, see above, note 85 and text. 127. [Michael Hart], Merchant’s Ledger, 1793–1795, Easton, Pennsylvania, 658.87 H326, Ledgers, Northampton County Historical Society, Easton. 128. Ibid., fols. 16, 51. Samuel Sitgreaves (1764–1827) was a prominent lawyer in Easton and a Pennsylvania representative in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1795 to 1798. On the local level he held a series of important offices. It is unclear which book entitled French Revolution Sitgreaves ordered. On September 26, 1795, the book trader and printer William Young charged the firm Hoff & Derrick for ‘‘2 Concise History of

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the French Revolution £ 0.7.0,’’ a sum from which ‘‘the commissions are deducted,’’ according to the postscript. William Young Business Papers, Box 3, Folder ‘‘Business Papers, 1795,’’ F-138, 1177, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 129. Sitgreaves most likely ordered the novel Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth, by Mrs. Rowson of Philadelphia. 130. Francis Bailey, Day Book and Ledger, 1794–1829, fol. 39, Robert and Francis Bailey Records, collection no. 108, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 131. Scott, New and Universal Gazetteer. On gazetteers in the early national republic see Cohen, ‘‘Statistics and the State,’’ and White, ‘‘National Gazetteers of the United States.’’ Although Cohen does not discuss the gazetteers, they were in the library of Thomas Jefferson. ‘‘Books on American Geography in Thomas Jefferson’s Library,’’ http://www.monticello.org/jefferson/lewisandclark/americabooks.html. 132. I do not know of any biography of Johann Eckstein. He seems to have gained some prominence quickly, because he belongs to the group of artists who founded the Columbianum in 1794; see Craven, ‘‘Origins of Sculpture.’’ 133. For example, Henrich Miller, Buchdrucker in der Zweyten-strasse . . . hat folgende Bu¨cher zu verkaufen ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller], 1767), no. 95; Andreas Geyer, Buchbinder . . . Hat mit den allerletzten Schiffen aus Deutschland folgende Bu¨cher bekommen ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1773]), no. 1771; Diese Neue Bu¨cher und Waaren sind bey Christoph Lochner, Buchdrucker und Handelsmann, von Basel kommend, Um einen billigen Preis . . . zu bekommen ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller?, 1774]), no. 77; Es ist so eben zum Viertenmal im Druck heraus gekommen . . . bey Johann Albrecht und Comp. In der Neuen Buchdruckerey zu Lancaster, in der PrinzStrasse. Der Neue, Gemeinnu¨tzige Landwirtschafts Calender auf das Jahr Christi 1791 ([Lancaster, Pa.: Johann Albrecht und Comp., 1790]), no. 247; Francis Hasenclever . . . zu Philadelphia, Hat neulich folgende scho¨ne Sammlung von Bu¨chern aus Deutschland erhalten . . . ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1773]), no. 114; Georg Christoph Reinholdt, Buchbinder in der Markt-strasse . . . zu Philadelphia, hat folgende Bu¨cher zu verkaufen ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1773]), no. 117; Verzeichniß Neuer Bu¨cher, welche um billigen Preiß zu haben sind bey Georg Christoph Reinholdt, Buchbinder in der Markt-strasse ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller], n.d.), no. 1828; Jacob Lahn, Hat zu verkaufen in seinem Buchladen, in Lancaster . . . folgende schon gebrauchte Bu¨cher, um beygesetzte niedrige Preiße ([Lancaster, Pa.: Jacob Lahn und Johann Albrecht, 1792]), no. 260; Ein Verzeichniß der Deutschen und Englischen Bu¨cher, etc., Die gedruckt und zu haben sind, in der Deutschen und Englischen Druckerey von Ambrosius Henkel und Co. in Neu-Market, Schenandoah Caunty, Virginien. August 10th 1813 ([New Market, Va.: Ambrosius Henkel & Co., 1813]), no. 462. 134. Freemasonry in Pennsylvania, 190. 135. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, 143. 136. Bill of Robert Heron, Philadelphia, May 23, 1795, William Young Business Papers, Box 3, Folder ‘‘Business Papers, 1795,’’ F-138, 1177, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Considering the following letter from George Smith to William Young of October 30, 1806, this was a very good salary: ‘‘Sir this man rom Boltemore has Bin at me for work he sase he had 18 Shilling per week wee can gitt him for 2 Dollars per week if you want me to Give him work Send word.’’ Folder ‘‘Business Papers, 1806,’’ ibid. 137. On Rebecca Griscom see Timmins and Yarrington, Betsy Ross. 138. Francis Bailey, Day Book and Ledger, 1794–1829, fol. 211, Robert and Francis Bailey Records, collection no. 108, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Little is known about Jacob Eckfeldt. In 1792 a Jacob Eckfeldt subscribed to the Turnpike Road from Philadelphia to Lancaster. Landis, ‘‘Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike.’’ 139. Advertised with the title ‘‘1696 Early: 1907 Mourning Funeral Card of Alex Early’’ by the company Ancestorville. Antiques and Genealogy, http://ancestorville.com/familyhistory-redfield-to-fish.html (accessed July 26, 2008). 140. Christian Weber. Ward gebohren in Earl Taunschip . . . 1731 . . . gestorben . . . 1820 ([Ephrata, Pa.?, 1820]), no. 572; Starb In Bedminster Taunschip, Bucks Caunty . . . 1823 . . . Barbara Fretz (n.p., [1823]), no. 630. 141. ‘‘[I]hrer Beerdigung wurde zahlreich beigewohnt’’; ‘‘wurde eine Rede gehalten u¨ber die Worte aus der Offenbarung Johannes.’’ 142. Ledger of John Ritter and Co., 1804–1814, F11MP A337 1804–14, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. 143. William Young Business Papers, Box 4, Folder ‘‘Business Papers, 1827,’’ F-138, 1177, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 144. Harlemer Oel. Medicamentum Gratia Probatum (n.p., n.d.), no. 1881. 145. See below for a discussion of German settlers’ perception of medical doctors and their medications.

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146. See table B.1, lightly shaded entries. 147. Entries for 1804 from John Ritter, Cash Book of Reading Newspaper (Adler), F11MP N558, 1804–1806, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. 148. Ledger of John Ritter and Co., 1804–1814, F11MP A337 1804–14, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. 149. Entries for 1809 are from John Ritter, Cash Book of Reading Newspaper (Adler), F11MP N558, 1809, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. 150. Entries for 1820 from John Ritter Cash Book, 1819–1821, F11 MK R 614B, Berks County Historical Society, Reading. 151. The others were Karl August and Carl Andreas Bruckmann, Gottlob Jungmann, and, after 1810, Heinrich Sage. 152. See table B.1, medium-shaded entries and Outrageous incidents, Songs about criminals and suicides, Secular songs, and Love poems. 153. See above for a discussion of the price for printing sheets. For a summary of the information on sale prices of these broadsides see 265, table B.

Chapter 2 1. A comparison of the texts of broadsides with advertisements in German newspapers like Der Wahre Amerikaner, published in Lancaster, revealed no differences between the two. 2. Broadside nos. 285, 219, 235, 238, 1640, 1553. 3. A satisfactory answer would require a systematic analysis of newspaper advertisements, which is outside the limits of this study. 4. Es wird Versteigert werden . . . Ein ko¨stlich Stu¨ck, welches u¨ber Sechs Hundert Acker, meistentheils Holzland, entha¨lt, gelegen in den Taunschips Manheim und Germany . . . Johann Steinmetz. Den 27sten October, 1790 (Philadelphia: Melchior Steiner, 1790), no. 250. 5. Land zu verkaufen . . . R. H. Hammond, [Libanon d]en 18, Sept, 1824 ([Lebanon, Pa., 1824]), no. 639. 6. On Tench Coxe, his partnership with Nalbro Frazier, and their trading and land speculation activities see Cooke, Tench Coxe, chaps. 4 and 16. 7. Es ist zu Verkaufen, oder auf Anbauungs-Bedingungen zu Verlehnen . . . den 8ten Jenner, 1788 (Philadelphia: Melchior Steiner, 1788), no. 229. Contrary to the assumption that this land was located within the Susquehannah Company district or in the Wyoming Valley, the names of the two creeks prove that it was located in what today are Buckingham and Manchester Townships in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, which in 1788 was part of Northampton County. 8. Ibid. The governor of Pennsylvania published proclamations in April 1793 that announced the improvement of the navigation of the Susquehanna and the Delaware Rivers; roughly at the same time other proclamations announced projects to improve the roads in the newly settled parts of Pennsylvania. These proclamations were printed in a tract written to attract potential immigrants from Europe. See Cooper, Some Information Respecting America, 39–47. This information had been supplied by Coxe, who published at the same time A View of the United States of America, which enlarged on this subject. 9. Es ist zu Verkaufen, oder auf Anbauungs-Bedingungen zu Verlehnen. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. On the Northwest Ordinance and its origins and implementation see Wellenreuther, ‘‘ ‘First Principles of Freedom.’ ’’ 13. ‘‘[E]in großer Strich Landes von der besten Gu¨te im Staate Ohio.’’ Zu Verkaufen Ein großer Strich Landes Von der besten Gu¨te im Staat Ohio . . . Daniel De Benneville (n.p., [1819]), no. 559. The sale was not advertised in newspapers. 14. Blanton, Medicine in Virginia, 83; Virginia Legislative Papers, esp. 42–43; Hoyt et al., Revolutionary War Pension Applications, 311. 15. ‘‘[S]echs Meilen von Philadelphia, an der Turnpikestraße, die nach Willowgrove fu¨hrt.’’ De Benneville, Zu Verkaufen Ein großer Strich Landes. 16. William Lyttle was born in Kentucky and moved from there to Cincinnati. See Johnson et al., Dictionary of American Biography, 11:538, s.v. ‘‘Lytle, William Haines.’’ 17. ‘‘Dieses Land liegt an der kleinen Miamee neben der Stadt Williamsburg, in Clermont County. . . . Die Gegend in der diese La¨ndereyen liegen, ist ziemlich angebaut. . . . Die große westliche Poststraße geht

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durch dieselbe und die Stadt und Landstraßen in verschiedene Richtungen. . . . In Williamsburg ist ein Postamt, und die westliche Post geht zweymal in der Woche von Chillicothe´ nach Cincinnati durch die Stadt und La¨ndereyen. Auch sind zwey Druckereyen in der Stadt, in jeder von welchen eine Zeitung gedruckt wird. . . . Caffeeba¨ume u.s.w. nebst einem Untergewa¨chs von Paupau und Spiceholz.’’ De Benneville, Zu Verkaufen Ein großer Strich Landes. 18. Zu Verkaufen Eine Anzahl kostbarer Landesstriche in den Grafschaften Frederick und Shanandoe, im Staat Virginien ([Philadelphia, 1798]), no. 293. The address is not listed in the Philadelphia directories published in the 1790s. 19. Butcher, ‘‘Cultural Backgrounds’’; Long, Pennsylvania German Family Farm, 76, 82–86; Fegley, Farming, Always Farming, 69–70; and in general Brumbaugh, Colonial Architecture of the Pennsylvania Germans. On the internal division of German town houses see Wellenreuther, Go¨ttingen 1690–1755, chap. 3. 20. On the Middle Atlantic region see Jones, American Colonial Wealth, the inventories for New York, ibid., 2:1097–153, and Shammas, Pre-industrial Consumer, chap. 6. For farmers’ possessions in early modern ¨ berleben in Laisouthern Germany see Schad, Buchbesitz im Herzogtum Wu¨rttemberg; Medick, Weben und U chingen, 451–67. The evidence for this summary is presented in table B.9. 21. The wills indeed usually stated that the farms passed to the children with the other property on the death of the father. Usually, however, the eldest son did not, as in the English case, receive the farm outright but had to pay within a prescribed period significant sums of money to his younger brothers. For a short description see Gilbert, ‘‘Pennsylvania German Wills,’’ 67–68. 22. Keyser, Account Book of the Clemens Family, 90–119. 23. Ibid. 24. For a fuller discussion of the household in a German farm see the analysis of Pennsylvania Dutch wills in Gilbert, ‘‘Pennsylvania German Wills,’’ 74–79. 25. ‘‘[A]llerhand Haus- und Ku¨chengera¨thschaften, zu umsta¨ndlich alles hier zu melden.’’ Zu verkaufen, auf o¨ffentlicher Versteigerung . . . Zwey frischmelkende Ku¨he . . . Henrich Heilman, Henrich Merk, Executoren . . . 1830 ([Lebanon, Pa.]: Jacob Sto¨ver, [1830]), no. 751. 26. Oeffentliche Versteigerung . . . Haus-Uhr . . . George Wolff. Den 31sten Januar, 1829 (Lancaster, Pa.: Johann Ba¨r, 1829), no. 734. 27. On books mentioned in wills of Pennsylvania Dutch inhabitants see Gilbert, ‘‘Pennsylvania German Wills,’’ 86–91, and above, 37 and note 112. 28. For example, the broadside Lieben und geliebt zu werden Ist das gro¨ste Glu¨ck auf Erden (n.p., n.d.), no. 1105. 29. On ‘‘shooting the New Year in’’ and New Year’s Day customs in general see Yoder, Discovering American Folklife, 283–95. 30. ‘‘Du sollst mich lieben, Andre meiden. . . . Laße mich de[i]n Liebsten seyn. . . . Ich bin Dir stets von Herzen hold.’’ 31. Ein ganz neuer und scho¨ner Neujahrs Wunsch, besonders aufgesetzt, damit alle junge Leute ihren Ma¨dchen das Neujahr anschießen ko¨nnen (n.p., n.d.), no. 965. This broadside was reprinted at least once; see no. 1595. 32. Edle Liebe, sei gepriesen (n.p., n.d.), no. 921. 33. Drei Liebes-Erkla¨rungen (n.p., n.d.), no. 915. Other eds.: nos. 916, 917, 1111, 1109, 1110, 1112, 1114, 1864, 1115, 1116, 1113. 34. Nos. 1113, 1408, 1110, 1119, 1299, 1815, 1491. 35. ‘‘Und wann wir einander lieben wollen. . . . So mu¨ssen wir stille schweigen.’’ 36. Nos. 1117, 1118, 1577, 1576, 1703, 1893. 37. American readers may be familiar with the popular German song, made popular in a version by Elvis Presley, ‘‘Muß I denn, muß I denn zum Sta¨dtele hinaus,’’ which describes just this situation for Germans. 38. Nos. 1107, 1108, 1476, 1658, 1918. 39. No. 1918. 40. No. 1108. 41. Nos. 1103, 1104 (man to woman and woman responds); 1105, 1106 (only woman); 912 (only man to woman). 42. Nos. 1385, 1121, 1141 (Ein Lied von einer erschro¨cklichen Mord-that an einer armen Magd, a song that was reprinted numerous times); see below, 108–9. 43. It is clear that this broadside was brought over from Germany. This does not invalidate the argument, however, because the Pennsylvania printer had to choose from a large number of similar broadsides in which

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the seducer continued to enjoy a long life after the seduced young woman’s death. For other German ballads of this kind see Petzold, Ba¨nkellieder und Moritaten; Meysels, Schauderhafte Moritaten. 44. Eleonore, oder die erschreckliche Begebenheit eines Ma¨dchens, das wegen seinem erschossenen Liebhaber in Verzweiflung gerathen ist, und Gott freventlich gela¨stert hat; und wie fu¨rchterlich ihr Ende gewesen ist ([Hanover, Pa.], n.d.), no. 924. 45. See the discussion of the Susanna Cox broadsides below. 46. Trauer-Gesang u¨ber eine Mordthat, Die ein Bra¨utigam an seiner Braut veru¨bt, 1788. NUN ho¨ret allzusamm, Ihr Christen, Frau und Mann (n.p., n.d.), no. 1760. 47. Lieben und geliebt zu werden Ist das gro¨ste Glu¨ck auf Erden, no. 1105. 48. Edle Liebe, sei gepriesen. 49. See Roeber, Hopes for Better Spouses. 50. Am Tage der ehelichen Verbindung des Herrn William Steinmetz mit der . . . Jungfrau Maria Billmeyer, den 21sten Februar, 1807 ([Germantown, Pa.: Michael Billmeyer, 1807]), no. 369; Dem Herrn Joseph Ehrenfried am Verbindungstage mit Madame Anna Smith . . . Lancaster, den 6ten May, 1807 ([Lancaster, Pa., 1807]), no. 1736. 51. Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property, 194. 52. Nos. 423, 822, 829, 821, 1847, 1811, 303, 825, 823, 827, 826, 824, 94, 1814, 1902, 828. On the political implications of this broadside see chapter 6. 53. See Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire, 161–63. 54. See chapter 4. 55. In 1999 the American book and antiques dealer Kovels sold an illuminated English house blessing broadside dated 1785 for $4100, and in 2006 a German house blessing broadside, probably by Ritter of Reading and undated but probably from around 1830, for $550. 56. ‘‘Meine Kindlein, solches schreibe ich euch auf daß ihr nicht Su¨ndiget, und ob jemand Su¨ndiget, so haben wir einen Fu¨rsprecher bey dem Vatter, Jesum Christum, der gerecht ist, Und derselbige ist die verso¨hnung fu¨r unsere Su¨nde.’’ Geistlicher Haus-Segen (n.p., [1811 or earlier]), no. 1682. 57. See Stoudt, Pennsylvania German Folk-Art, 106–12. 58. On these house blessings see Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves, 148–51 et passim; Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 194–207. 59. See table B.11. 60. For example, no. 865. 61. For a complete list of the twelve insets, without, however, the applications see Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 202. Yoder prints complete translations of the main texts of the three types of house blessings discussed here: ibid., 201–5. For a similar interpretation of this house blessing see Stoudt, Pennsylvania German Folk-Art, 224. 62. See above, note 58. 63. In the context of chain letters, VanArsdale’s Annotated Bibliography on Chain Letters is probably the best bibliography on the literature of Himmelsbriefe. See Stu¨be, Der Himmelsbrief; Heimann, ‘‘Schreibt Gott.’’ 64. The literature on this subject is huge. On the early medieval concept see Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly; on concepts at the time of the Reformation see Herms, Grund und Gegenstand des Glaubens; on the ideas of Martin Luther see Ruokanen, Doctrina divinitus inspirata. On Quaker concepts see Nuttall, Holy Spirit, and Nuttall, Studies in Christian Enthusiasm; on the concept of the ‘‘Inspired’’ in the early eighteenth century see Rock, Wie ihn Gott gefu¨hret, and Schneider, Propheten der Goethezeit; on the Moravian use of the lot see Wessel, Delaware-Indianer und Herrnhuter Missionare; and on Mormon concepts see Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Teachings. 65. ‘‘[S]o von Gott selbsten geschrieben . . . mit goldenen Buchstaben . . . und von Gott durch einen Engel gesandt.’’ 66. ‘‘Ich JESUS habe dieses selbsten und mit meiner eigenen Hand geschrieben, wer es widerspricht und mich la¨stert, derselbe Mensch soll keine Hilfe von mir zu erwarten haben.’’ 67. ‘‘Der Himmelsbrief von Magdeburg ist diesem nachgedruckt und ist nicht in Magdeburg gesandt worden sondern in Grodoria, welches Georg Hohmann bezeugt. In Druck gegeben von Georg Hohmann in Hellersta¨dtel in Northampton Caunty. Es kann aber niemand beweisen, dass dieser Himmelsbrief falsch sey und von Menschen erdenkt worden sey, denn vor dem Ju¨ngsten Gerichtstage werden viel Zeichen und Wunder geschehen, damit ist zu merken, dass die Zeit nahe ist und viele Wunder schon geschehen sind. Georg Hohmann brachte diesen Brief im Jahre 1802 aus Deutschland nach Amerika, sonst war noch keiner bekannt; aber ein Deutscher brachte einen abgeschriebenen vor 45 Jahren von Deutschland nach Amerika.’’

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No. 333. Hohmann’s report that forty-five years ago another immigrant had brought a handwritten Himmelsbrief to America implies an admission that the Himmelsbrief that came down in Magdeburg in 1783 had predecessors. 68. See above, 33–36. 69. On European precedents see chapter 1, note 16. A thorough search in the online catalogues of German, Austrian, and Swiss libraries has thus far located not one single copy. 70. See above, 256. 71. See above, 255–57. 72. ‘‘Herausgegeben von Ezechiel Herrman und zum zweitenmal in Amerika im Druck erschienen.’’ 73. Nos. 840, 846, 842, 841. 74. See Schmoller, ‘‘Konflikt’’; the endnote is in Ein Brief so aus den Wolken herab und in die Stadt Magdeburg niedergelassen worden ist . . . im Jahr 1783. Herausgegeben von Ezechiel Herrman und zum zweitenmal in Amerika im Druck erschienen (n.p., n.d.), no. 840. Other eds.: nos. 846, 842, 841. Unfortunately, none of the broadsides has a colophon. 75. The following broadsides have been tentatively assigned printers and dates: Carl August Bruckman, Reading, Pa., ca. 1820–25, nos. 849, 186, 1787; Mannasseh Schneider, Doylestown, Pa., nos. 648, 1909; Daniel W. Lepper, Samuel E. Stettinius, Hanover, Pa., 1800, no. 1027; Joseph Hartman, Lebanon, Pa., ca. 1820, no. 857; Michael Billmeyer, Germantown, Pa., ca. 1800, no. 1040; Carl Friedrich Egelmann, Reading, Pa., ca. 1830, no. 1635; Gustav S. Peters, Harrisburg, Pa., ca. 1830, no. 755. The only one with a colophon is no. 595, which was printed by Peter Montelius, Reamstown, Pa., in 1821. 76. Unfortunately, the entries in the account books are too unspecific to allow more precise statements. 77. Himmels-Brief, welcher mit gu¨ldnen Buchstaben geschrieben, und ist zu sehen . . . Gott, der du deine Lust . . . GOTT bescheret (n.p., n.d.), no. 1927. 78. Our database of broadsides lists 127 separate sheets, each of which represents a separate print run. How large these runs were is difficult to say. They could be anything from 100 to probably 1,000 copies. Based on the print run of Hohmann’s first Himmelsbrief (see above, 33), the total printing would have been 127 x 800  101,600 sheets; if we assume an average print run per edition of 200 copies, the total number of copies until 1830 was still about 25,000. 79. ‘‘Freut Euch nicht, wenn Euer Nachbar arm ist, habt vielmehr Mitleiden mit ihm, so wirds euch wohlgehen. Ihr Kinder ehret Vater und Mutter so wirds euch wohl gehen auf Erden.’’ 80. ‘‘Ich wahrer Gott vom Himmels-Thron, Gottes und Marien Sohn. Amen. Dies ist geschehen zu Magdeburg, im Jahr 1783.’’ 81. ‘‘Je gro¨ßer die Noth, je na¨her ist Gott. . . . Herr Jesu Christ mein Trost und Freud, ich trau auf Dich zu jeder Zeit.’’ 82. ‘‘Drum traue Gott und denk dabei, daß jede Stund die letzte sey.’’ 83. No. 595. 84. Eine wahre Geschichte, oder eine probirte Kunst, in Feuers-Gefahr wie auch in Pestelenz Zeiten zu gebrauchen (n.p., [1815]), no. 500. 85. ‘‘[I]ch gebiete dir Feuer, du wollest legen deine Glut bey Jesus Christus, theires Bluth das er fu¨r uns vergossen hat fu¨r unsere Su¨nd und Missethat.’’ 86. ‘‘Household Blessing,’’ broadside for a washing machine, 1863, American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I, no. 22125. 87. Lack of knowledge of English was still a political concern in the early nineteenth century and played a role in election campaigns. See below chapter 4. 88. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries fears about nature’s forces were widespread in England. See K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic. 89. We are relying on Rublack, ‘‘Pregnancy, Childbirth.’’ 90. ‘‘Mutter Thomas, welche eine alte erfahrene Hebamme in Lancaster war.’’ Essentia Hysterica ([Lancaster, Pa., 1790]), no. 248. 91. The research on these issues is rather limited even in English, but see Klepp, ‘‘Colds, Worms, and Hysteria.’’ 92. Maisch, Notdu¨rftiger Unterhalt und geho¨rige Schranken, 291, as cited in Rublack, ‘‘Pregnancy, Childbirth,’’ 97. On mortality of English women in childbirth in early modern North America see Ulrich, ‘‘Midwifery and Mortality.’’ On similar experiences among Schwenkfelder women in North America see Henderson, ‘‘Eighteenth-Century Schwenkfelders’’; and generally on the experience of German women in eighteenth-century North America see Hucho, Weiblich und fremd, 193–96, where, however, the thesis that

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the death rate for German women was the same as that for English women is based on fairly slim literary evidence. 93. See Wilson, Pious Traders in Medicine, 72. 94. ‘‘Unruhigseyn der Mutter, Wahnsinn, Schwindel, Hauptweh.’’ These symptoms and disturbing effects of pregnancies agree with those described in English American medical manuals in the first decades of the nineteenth century. See Bard, Theory and Practice of Midwifery, 96–97, 100–101 et passim, and J. Burns, Principles of Midwifery, 1:177–300, for a much more detailed description. The two treatises differ in one important respect: Bard’s explicitly states, ‘‘Thus pregnancy is attended with sickness, and labour with pain, which, unless excessive, so far from being considered as disease, and therefore to be suppressed, are either the necessary consequences of greater advantages and enjoyments, or somehow essential to future health and safety, and require only to be regulated.’’ Bard, Theory and Practice of Midwifery, 99. On how German women experienced pregnancy see Lorenz, ‘‘Schwangerschaftswahrnehmungen und Geburtserfahrungen,’’ and with a wider perspective, Duden, Geschichte des Ungeborenen. Burns, on the other hand, considers these effects of pregnancies ‘‘in most instances, troublesome or inconvenient symptoms . . . , which are called the diseases of pregnancy, and which, in some women, proceed so far, as not only to deprive them of all enjoyment and comfort, but even to produce considerable fear of their safety.’’ Principles of Midwifery, 1:178. While Bard explicitly states that these effects of pregnancy are not to be considered diseases, Burns calls them ‘‘diseases of pregnancy.’’ One could argue that Bard’s conception was closer to the German one, which favored a protective and noninterventionist attitude, while Burns suggests a greater willingness to intervene: ‘‘when any of the effects are carried to a troublesome extent, then we are applied to, and may palliate, though we cannot take them away.’’ Ibid. Scholten has argued that this greater tendency toward interventionist medical practice led toward changing childbirth from ‘‘an open affair to a restricted one’’ in which ‘‘male physicians began replacing midwives.’’ Scholten, ‘‘ ‘Importance of the Obstetrick Art,’ ’’ 444. 95. Essentia Hysterica. 96. Mutter-Balsam-Elixier. Dieser Mutter Balsam Elixier ist ein vortreffliches Mittel in allerley Mutterumsta¨nden ([Lebanon, Pa.?], n.d.), no. 1164. On Lineweaver, see Egle, History of the Counties of Dauphin and Lebanon, 285–86 (separate page count for Lebanon County; Egle spells the name ‘‘Lineaweaver’’). 97. Klepp, ‘‘Revolutionary Bodies,’’ has argued that the increasing fear of pain during childbirth, coupled with the awareness of danger to the life of the mother, were motives for women to increasingly turn toward methods to limit the number of births. On means to relieve pain after 1830 during childbirth see Leavitt, Brought to Bed, chap. 5. 98. On childbirth in English North America see Scholten, Childbearing in American Society; Wertz and Wertz, Lying In. 99. Tennent, Ein jeder Sein eigner Doctor. See Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:76. In the 1760s and ’70s Christoph Saur published in his Almanac the sections of a herbarium with descriptions of the medicinal use of herbs. This has now been edited by W. Weaver, Saur’s Herbal Cures, but the impression created by this title that Saur himself published the individual sections in a book is wrong. 100. Wohl-eingerichtetes Vieh-Arzney-Buch; Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:182. 101. Kurtzgefaßtes Arzney-Bu¨chlein fu¨r Menschen und Vieh; Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:308. For the other editions see nos. 795, 843, 881, 961, 973, 1066, 1106, 1343, 1941. 102. Hirte, Ein Neues, auserlesenes, gemeinnu¨tziges Hand-Bu¨chlein; Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:337. A slightly expanded edition was published the following year under the title Der Freund in der Noth. Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:358. On Tobias Hirte see below, notes 288–89. 103. Kurzgefaßtes Weiber-Bu¨chlein (1798); Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:441. The actual author was not Aristotle; various medieval authors, referred to collectively as the Pseudo-Aristotle, used Aristotle’s name to capitalize on his reputation. The Dominican monk Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200–1280), one of the most celebrated medieval scholars, rediscovered the writings of Aristotle. His treatise on pregnancy was reprinted regularly between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, see Albertus Magnus, Weiber geheimnuß. 104. ‘‘[A]llerley Krankheiten und gebrechen des menschlichen Leibs.’’ Baynon, Der Barmherzige Samariter; Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:443. 105. ‘‘[Z]um Gebrauch und Unterricht der Deutschen Amerikanischen Wehemu¨tter.’’ 106. Unterricht fu¨r Hebammen zum Gebrauch der Vorlesungen in der Churpfa¨lzischen Ammenschule zu Manheim; Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:460–61.

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107. For a survey of English-language advertisements and broadsides of medicines see Helfand, ‘‘Advertising Health to the People.’’ 108. The difficulties in getting expert medical advice and proper medication are described in detail by Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg. After his wife, Anna Maria, suffered very serious burns in an accident on February 2, 1781, Mu¨hlenberg, who at the time lived in New Providence, sent a boy to fetch Dr. Morgan, who lived six miles away. The boy had to turn back, however, because flooding prevented the crossing of two creeks. Mu¨hlenberg himself then prepared an ointment with linseed oil and eggs according to a recipe of Dr. Carl, but that proved useless. Dr. Morgan arrived the next day and brought medicine that alleviated the pain a little. Mu¨hlenberg next asked a neighbor to prepare an ointment according to the recipe of Dr. Tissot, which further helped the pain. Another neighbor sent for his son, Dr. Christian Friedrich Martin, who sent a couple of bottles of calcium carbonated water and a pot filled with plaster. On February 9 a medical doctor from Lebanon arrived and recommended an ointment made from resin, tallow, wax, and linseed oil, which considerably alleviated the pain. At the suggestion of others, Mu¨hlenberg sent for ‘‘Master Thomas Heimberger’’ beyond the Schuylkill River, who had treated his daughter Polly before. Heimberger sent his son, who stayed for two days and dressed the wounds twice. Mu¨hlenberg to his son Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Mu¨hlenberg in Lancaster, March 17, 1781, in Aland, Wellenreuther, et al., Korrespondenz Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenbergs, 5:390–93. Two weeks later the son sent a letter with detailed medical advice to ease the pain and further the healing process (ibid., 396–97). 109. Dolmetsch, German Press, is the standard account of German printing in the Shenandoah Valley; unfortunately, Dolmetsch excludes medical broadsides from his discussion. On the Henkel family in general see chapter 1, notes 23–24. 110. No. 1237; it was supposed to cure gall and kidney colics. 111. No. 1351; it was supposed to cure cramps and anemia, and particularly pregnancy problems. 112. No. 1352; it was supposed to cure problems during pregnancy, breast diseases, and constipation. 113. Dr. Henry William Stoy was born in Herborn, Germany, arrived in Philadelphia in 1752, and settled as pastor of the Reformed congregation first in Philadelphia and, after his dismissal in 1758, as successor to Philip Wilhelm Otterbein (1726–1813) in Lancaster. In 1757 he married Elizabeth Maus. After the Seven Years’ War Stoy returned to Germany, studied medicine there, and returned in 1767 to the colonies, settling in Lebanon, where he practiced medicine and served as pastor of the Reformed congregation. After his death his widow continued to market his medicine against rabies. Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 109–11. 114. Porter and Rousseau, Gout. 115. Winkler, ‘‘Fox Rabies,’’ 3–22. 116. Mittel fu¨r den tollen Hundsbiß (n.p., [1809]), no. 1751. 117. It could be argued that the many birth and baptismal certificates that were produced in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are proof to the contrary. Such an interpretation, however, ignores the function and meaning of these certificates as mementoes and celebrations of the entrance into and beginning of life, similar to certificates of confirmation. 118. Das Leben und Alter der Menschen. Die Stufenjahre des Menschlichen Lebens von der Wiege bis zum Grabe . . . alphabetischen Gedichte (Carlisle, Pa.: Moser und Peters, 1826), no. 675; 1827 ed., no. 690; 1829 ed., no. 729; 1830 ed., no. 1904; and 1830 ed., no. 1097, published in Harrisburg by Gustav S. Peters. See below, 92–93. 119. ‘‘Eh noch das Kind fu¨nf Jahr erreicht, / An Unschuld es dem Lamme gleicht.’’ 120. However, the most popular baptism song, ‘‘Ich bin getauft ich steh im Bunde,’’ which reflects the Reformed concept of baptism, was printed three times: by Joseph Hartman in Lebanon in 1818, no. 544; by Johann Herschberger in Chambersburg, no. 1053; and by John S. Wiestling in Harrisburg, no. 1052. Godparents received a so-called Patenbrief after the baptism; see Bey diesem heilgen Bade zeugt Der ho¨chste GOTT, der nicht betreugt (n.p., [1790?]), no. 251. Neither Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, nor Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves, mentions these Patenbriefe. 121. ‘‘Bist Du jung, denk an Dein letztes Ende / Nimm der Weisheit gute Lehren an / Und der reinen Wahrheit Dich verpfa¨nde / Such nach ihr als Ju¨ngling und als Mann.’’ 122. Religiously this is well expressed in a poem or song composed by Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Mu¨hlenberg, the son of Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg and a pastor in Lancaster, Hertzliche Bitte an die Kinder von einem Kinder-Freund . . . Auf das heil. Pfingstfest. Lancaster: den 3ten Junius 1770 (Lancaster, Pa., 1770), no. 105. 123. Kinder Bethet und lebet fromm ([Reamstown, Pa.?]: Peter Montelius, [1821?]), no. 1081. Other collections of prayers include Morgen-Lied (n.p., n.d.), no. 1719, also ([New Market, Va.: Henkel, 1820]), no. 575; Das glu¨ckselige Kind (n.p., n.d.), nos. 1008, 1007.

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124. Pflichten der Kinder gegen ihre Eltern ([Reamstown, Pa.?]: Peter Montelius, [1820–23]), no. 1713. 125. Jesus segnet Kleine, Kinder ([Reamstown, Pa.?]: Peter Montelius, [ca. 1821?]), no. 1059. 126. ‘‘[N]u¨tzlichen Kenntnisse, ihm den Willen Gottes und die Religion Jesus Christi, den Weg der Tugend, die Fro¨mmigkeit und des ewigen Lebens bekant, und ihn fu¨r die Gescha¨fte und Pflichten des Lebens fa¨hig und geschickt machen.’’ Herzliche Bitte an die Kinder von einem Kinder-Freund ([Ephrata, Pa.], 1781), no. 1710. 127. Pflichten der Schu¨ler gegen ihre Lehrer ([Reamstown, Pa.]: Peter Montelius, [ca. 1820–23]), no. 1756. 128. Der Glaube [sic] (Reamstown, Pa.: Peter Montelius, 1822), no. 1712. 129. Schul-Gebeter . . . Riemstaun, Februari den 24sten 1821 (Reamstown, Pa.: Peter Montelius, 1821), no. 597; on schooling, learning, and methods of teaching in colonial America see the excellent study by Monoghan, Learning to Read, chaps. 7–8, and on teaching in German schools esp. 208–11; and the instructions and descriptions for teaching in German schools in Dock, Einfa¨ltige und gru¨ndlich abgefaßte Schulordnung. 130. Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 2:1244. We have counted printings, which means these ABC books were not new editions but usually reissues, often a bit enlarged. See Kleinefelter, A B C Books. 131. Das ABC: Willst Du bald ein Doktor werden, ohne große Mu¨h (n.p., n.d.), no. 770, also 836, 1649 (most likely a Peter Montelius imprint); Ein neues A. B. C. Lied. A Ist ein Amtmann versta¨ndig und klug ([New Market, Va.: Henkel, 1817]), no. 539, also 771; In diesem deutschen Alphabet, Viel guter Lehr geschrieben steht ([Allentown, Pa.: Heinrich Ebner, 1820]), no. 562 (no copy is known to exist). See Monoghan, Learning to Read, chap. 8. 132. ‘‘C das Creutz mit Freud tust fassen’’; ‘‘die Tugend andre lehren.’’ 133. See Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 298–99; and Ancestors of Mark Allen Rebuck, http:// www.personal.psu.edu/staff/t/a/tar2/mark/pafg07.htm254, no. 74, Peter Montelius (accessed August 1, 2012). 134. ‘‘Die Buchstaben heißen zusammen: Nur liebe Gott allein.’’ [Peter Montelius?], Betrachtung u¨ber das ABC (n.p., n.d.), no. 836. 135. Dolmetsch, German Press, does not comment on this verbal slip. 136. Ein Neues A. B. C. Lied, no. 539. The same text was reprinted with significant variations by the same printer around the same time, no. 771. 137. Christliches Alphabet. Ach Herzens Jesu hilf mir doch (n.p., n.d.), no. 869. We have found a surprisingly large number of copies of this sheet, which suggests that it had a fairly large print run. 138. Goldnes A, B, C (n.p., n.d.), no. 1701. 139. Im Nahmen der allerheiligsten Dreyfaltigkeit! Das gu¨ldene ABC fu¨r Jederman, der gern mit Ehren wolt bestahn (Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1772), no. 110; Das Gu¨ldene ABC Fu¨r Jedermann, der gern mit Ehren wollt bestahn. Im Namen der allerheiligsten Dreyfaltigkeit! ([Ephrata, Pa.: Joseph Bauman, 1820]), no. 568. 140. Das Gu¨ldne ABC Fu¨r Jedermann, Der gern mit Ehren wollt bestahn. Im Namen der allerheiligsten Dreyfaltigkeit! (Reading, Pa.: C. A. Bruckman, [1816?]), no. 1764. 141. ‘‘In diesem deutschen Alphabet, viel guter Lehr geschrieben steht, es ist gestellt mit ganzem Fleiß, ku¨rzlich und lieblich Reimenweis, Drum solls ein jeder lesen gern, und was darinn ist daraus lern.’’ Text from the Bruckman version; the spelling differs in the Bauman version. 142. See above, note 56, for this house blessing. 143. Von einem tugendsamen Leben, wird diese Vorschrift Nachricht geben ([Hanover, Pa.: Daniel Wilhelm Lepper and Samuel Endrey Stettinius, ca. 1800]), no. 1425. This broadside was reprinted by Friedrich Wilhelm Scho¨pflin in Somerset, Pa., or Chambersburg, Pa., around 1815, no. 1424. 144. See above, 87. 145. Deutsche Hohe Schule (n.p., [1787]), no. 226. 146. Scho¨ne Geistliche Auserlesene und Sinnreiche Ra¨thsel-Stu¨cklein, aus Gottes Wort zusammengezogen (n.p., [1820]), no. 565; and ([Hanover, Pa.: J. P. Starck and Daniel Philip Lange?], n.d.), no. 1283. 147. The answer is Adam and Eve. 148. The answer is 2 Moses 22[:28] (Exodus 22:28). 149. The answer is Bileam’s (Balaam’s) ass, 4 Moses 22[:28] (Numbers 22:28). 150. On the traditional interpretations of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise as well as the interpretation in German-American broadsides in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries see below, 103. 151. For a discussion of the wider contexts and meaning of the story of Joseph see below, 178–83.

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152. ‘‘Bezahle mir Lieb dafu¨r, / Berg dich in den Wunden tief, mein.’’ Joseph und seine Bru¨der (n.p., n.d.), no. 1070, verse 6, last two lines. Identical texts in nos. 1068, 1069, 1769, 1573. 153. ‘‘Gekreuzigt zum Schauspiel der Leut / Durchgraben mein’ Ha¨nde und Fu¨ß / Das Blut aus den Wunden mir quillt / Der heilsame Balsam nun fließt / Fu¨r eine verwundete Welt.’’ Ibid., last four lines of verse 5. 154. ‘‘[D]a sie nun waren bescha¨mt / Erzeigt er sich freundlich voll Huld.’’ 155. For a more extensive discussion of the contents see below, 178–83. 156. ‘‘Gerecht war seine Lebenszeit / und tugendhaft sein Sterben / Oh mo¨chten wir an Fro¨mmigkeit / an ihm ein Beispiel nehmen.’’ Die Historie von Joseph & seinen Bru¨dern. Worinn wir die wundervolle Leitung Gottes erblicken, in allen Leiden, Widerwa¨rtigkeiten, im Glu¨ck und Unglu¨ck, etc. (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, 1830), no. 747. Peters produced two other editions alone and one in partnership with Moser; see nos. 698 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Moser und Peters, 1827), 728 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Gustav S. Peters, 1829), 1044 (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, [ca. 1827–30]). 157. In the broadside that describes the stages of life, the inset illustrates the temptations of a young man, and again the half-naked woman is used as a symbol. See below. 158. On English renderings of the Joseph story see below, 180–81. 159. Rattermann, ‘‘Gustav Sigismund Peters’’; W. Weaver, Sauerkraut Yankees, 3–5; Rosenberry, ‘‘G. S. Peters,’’ 5, 12, stating that no color printings of the Joseph broadside had come to light; Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 17–18. 160. ‘‘[W]orin wir die wundervolle Leitung Gottes erblicken, in allen Leiden, Widerwa¨rtigkeiten, im Glu¨ck und Unglu¨ck.’’ 161. Anfangsgru¨nde der ganzen Universal-Historie, von Anfang der Welt bis auf diese Zeit (Hagerstown, Md.: Jacob D. Dietrich, 1806), no. 362. 162. Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:582, no. 1544. On Dietrich see Wayland, German Element, 163–67; Dolmetsch, German Press, 9; Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves, 31, 144–45, where the authors reproduce Dietrich’s chronology; Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 124–25. 163. ‘‘[K]o¨nnen Eltern ihre Kinder, junge Leute einander, und Lehrer ihre Schu¨ler unterrichten.’’ Anfangsgru¨nde, headnote. This headnote and the following remarks about time frame, divisions of the chronology, and the sections of history demonstrate that Dietrich was familiar with German chronologies and that he may have copied in particular a chronology published in 1705; for a list of the chronologies with full text see Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, digital library, Chronologisches Werkverzeichnis, http://www.sfb-frueheneuzeit.uni-muenchen.de/projekte/zusatz/HistorischeTabellenwerke/Chronologische%20Liste.htm (accessed December 8, 2008). Around 1700 a number of chronologies were published that Dietrich could have used; a good example is Neu erla¨uterte Zeit- und Jahr-Rechnung. Martin Gierl kindly helped with this paragraph. 164. ‘‘Die Historie des alten Testaments vom Jahr 1 bis 4000 und die Historie des Neuen Testaments vom Jahr Christi 1 bis 1807.’’ 165. ‘‘Mit diesem Saeculo fa¨ngt die neue Historie an. Die Reformation in Teutschland geht an 1517. . . . regieret und reformiered Heinrich 8te defensor fidei von 1509–1547.’’ 166. ‘‘In Frankreich entstund die schrecklichste aller Revolutionen 1789, Napoleon Bonaparte errichtete daselbst sein Kaiserthum welches durch seinen ma¨chtigen Emporschwung das Gleichgewicht aller europa¨ischer Ko¨nigreiche zertru¨mmerte, und selbst Holland, die Schweiz, Geneva und Italien unter seine Botma¨ßigkeit brachte.’’ 167. Dippel, ‘‘American Revolution.’’ 168. The teacher could of course have purchased schoolbooks and textbooks on history in a German bookshop. We have found, however, only one book printed in North America specifically designed for use in schools. See below, note 174. 169. ‘‘Was wird am Gerichts-Tag vorgehen? . . . Teufel und Su¨nder finden sich / Am Richtplatz Jesu Christ, / O da wird man heulen. . . . Fromme und Engel finden sich / Oh da wird man jauchzen. . . . Was fordert Jesus von uns um freudig am Gericht zu erscheinen? . . . . Kinder oh Kinder liebet mich in der untern Welt / dann will ich euch lieben . . . zur rechten in der Ho¨h. . . . [L]iebt ihn dann / in dieser untern Welt / dann wird er uns segnen . . . in alle Ewigkeit.’’ Fu¨r Unterrichts-Kinder (n.p., n.d.), no. 963. The title of the broadside is cut off from the image. Neither the Earnests nor Yoder seem to know this broadside. 170. On repetition as a didactic method in English colonial schools see Monoghan, Learning to Read, 137, 153, 225. 171. [Klagelied eines Lehrers] (Skippackville, Pa.: Joseph Jung, n.d.), no. 1620. The title and at least the first eight lines of the poem are missing. No complete copy is known to exist. Very little is known about Joseph

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Jung. The Library Company of Philadelphia holds publications from Jung as printer in Doylestown for the period from 1837 to 1848. The Klagelied was probably published after 1830. 172. Ein Schul-Lied (n.p.: [Joseph Jung?], n.d.), no. 1676. It was probably published between 1830 and 1848. The bottom line of the broadside reads, ‘‘Zum Andenken von Henry Young, Lehrer.’’ 173. It is difficult to know what precisely teachers had available to use in teaching. For the inventory of a teacher who owned a map of North America and ‘‘lots’’ of old books, ‘‘a large book,’’ and a ‘‘large Bible’’ see F. Weiser, ‘‘World of Friedrich Krebs,’’ esp. 55. 174. The only German book printed in North America specifically for use in schools and for educating children at home, other than the one authored by Christopher Dock, was Neu Eingerichtetes Schul-Bu¨chlein from 1789. About half of the pages were filled with rules and examples about the alphabet and how to read and write. Extensive word lists made the student familiar with spelling as well as the pronunciation of foreign and Latin words. The second-largest section was filled with a Lutheran catechism, an extensive treatise of the Christian teachings, Christian proverbs, and the Apostle’s Creed. Half a page was given to the names of the most important countries in the four continents (i.e., Europe, Asia, Africa, and America), and about two pages were filled with Roman and Arabic numerals giving the rules for addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. 175. C. G. Ra¨tzer, Doktor Ballhausen’s Bittere Gallen- u. Magen-Tropfen ([Philadelphia, ca. 1820]), no. 1530. 176. It Honig-Brust-Balsam. Erfunden durch den gewesenen Sir John Hill . . . zu haben an Doktor Georg Leineweber’s Drogereyenstohr in Libanon ([Lebanon, Pa., 1820]), no. 585. 177. See Susanna Beckerin, Ward an das Licht dieser Welt gebohren . . . die heilige Tauffe . . . Den 3. September, 1769 ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur II, 1769]), no. 99. Susanne Becker was born, according to the broadside, in 1754 and baptized in 1769. 178. Abschieds Lied (n.p., [ca. 1830]), no. 773. Other broadsides in which the song appears: Abschieds-Lied von einer Schule (n.p., n.d.), no. 925, giving Johannes Ellendien as the author; Confermations [sic] Lied (n.p., n.d.), no. 884, identical text with additional verse; Confirmations-Lied (n.p., n.d.), no. 883, identical text with additional verse and Baumann doves (probably before 1800); Abschieds-Lied ([Reading, Pa.: Carl Friedrich Egelmann, ca. 1830]), no. 405; Lehrer und Confirmanten nehmen voneinander Abschied ([Sunbury, Pa.: John George Youngman, ca. 1815]), no. 1252, giving J. P. Schindel as the author; Lieder zur Urbauung (n.p., n.d.), no. 1738; Zum Andenken (n.p., n.d.), no. 1778, giving Johannes Ellendien as the author; Confirmations-Lied No. 1 (n.p., n.d.), no. 887; Confirmations-Lieder der Confirmanten des Ehrw. Wm. T. Gerhard (n.p., n.d.), no. 885; Confirmations-Liedier (Bethlehem, Pa.: Heinrich Held, [1825]), no. 1669; Confirmations-Lieder (Easton, Pa.: Heinrich Held, [1824–27]), no. 893; Confirmations-Lieder. Gesungen von den Confirmanden des Ehrw. Herrn Zeller (Allentown, Pa.: A. Blumer, [1830]), no. 418. 179. Examples are Das Geistreiche Lied welches Bey Confirmation und Einsegnung der Kinder in Schenandoha Caunty Virginien . . . 1793 ([Frederick, Md.]: M. Ba¨rtgis, 1793), no. 1663; Gebet-Lieder Bey der Confirmation in Libanon auf Himmelfahrt, den 31sten May, 1821 ([Lebanon, Pa.: Joseph Hartman, 1821]), no. 1197; GebetLied Der Confirmanden, vor der feierlichen Einsegung [sic] gesungen . . . Libanon, Samstags den 26ten May 1827 ([Lebanon, Pa.: Joseph Hartman, 1827]), no. 705. 180. For examples see above, note 178. 181. Examples are Erinnerung An den heute bey der feyerlichen Confirmation erneuerten Taufbund (n.p., n.d.), no. 1871; Confirmations-Lieder, no. 893; and see above, note 178. On confirmation see Dienst, ‘‘Konfirmation.’’ 182. Other examples are Reformed hymns for confirmation, Confirmations-Lieder (n.p., [after 1830]), no. 1907. And an example from the Lutheran Church is Erinnerung An den heute bey der feyerlichen Confirmation erneuerten Taufbund. 183. ‘‘Lockt uns die verderbte Welt / zu der Jugend Lu¨sten.’’ 184. Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern, no. 728 (excerpt). 185. Das Leben und Alter der Menschen, no. 675. 186. In 1 Corinthians 11:15, Saint Paul describes the proper Christian woman as having long hair. 187. Das Su¨nden Sterbebette (n.p., n.d.), no. 1342. Other eds.: no. 1341; another ed. with title Eines Su¨nders Sterbebette but the same text, no. 1344; nos. 1345, 1343, 1724. 188. ‘‘[D]ie Augen rollten schreckensvoll, in ihrem Kopfe wild und toll.’’ 189. ‘‘Der Tod brach ihrer Scho¨nheit Glanz / Der Ho¨llen Angst verzerrte ganz / der zarten Jugend ihre Zier. . . . Die Seele floh zur Ho¨lle nun / Der Leib war schwarz und faulte schon.’’ 190. ‘‘Ihr Jungen Leute merkt Euch dies: Ihr su¨ndigt und Euch trifft gewiß / auch Gottes Rache fru¨h genug / Ihr sinket unter Gottes Fluch.’’

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191. The representations of the Fall belong in the wider sense to the adaptations of the Bible for children. See Bottigheimer, The Bible for Children, esp. chaps. 3 and 13. The author does not mention the broadsides discussed here. On German broadsides with Adam and Eve representations see the Pennsylvania Dutchman for 1952 and 1956; Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 294–95; Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves, 200– 203. On the continental European precedents of Adam and Eve broadsides see Pieske, ‘‘European Origins,’’ esp. 10–13. 192. See Genesis 3:7 and for the curse 3:19. The whole story is related in chapter 3. 193. On the broadside Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen see below in this chapter. The Adam and Eve broadsides are listed in the database under the following numbers: 1898, 775, 794, 1153, 1152, 1631, 1589, 1544, 1532, 785, 790, 791, 793, 792, 786, 796, 787, 1836, 534, 1835, 1491, 535, 531, 530, 533, 532, 529, 1629, 604, 795, 789, 788, 799, 797, 1590, 781, 782, 798, 1675, 1800, 1799, 450, 404, 1776, 1630, 1739, 1789, 406, 407, 432, 431, 504, 779, 776, 777, 780, 784, 1795, 1768. 194. For the lower figure we assume a print run per copy of two hundred, and for the larger figure we assume the print run Hohmann used for his broadside. See above, 34. 195. See Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 294, for a similar observation. 196. ‘‘Dort steht der Baum voll scho¨ner Fru¨chte.’’ 197. ‘‘Wurden sie bald gewahr / daß sie nackend gewesen / scha¨mten sich beide gar.’’ 198. ‘‘Adam Du bist gefallen, Du und Dein ganz Geschlecht / Mußt nun in Kummer wallen / und bleibt der Su¨nde Knecht.’’ 199. ‘‘Ein Feindschaft will ich setzen / zwischen Dir und Dem Weib / Es soll Dein Haupt verletzen / ein Sohn aus ihrem Leib.’’ Italics added. While the broadside speaks of ‘‘the woman’’ (‘‘Dem Weib’’), the Bible text consistently refers to ‘‘his’’ woman, not ‘‘the’’ woman. See Genesis 2:23–24, 3:6, 8, 17, 20, 21. 200. Thus this argument follows Martin Luther’s efforts to shift the blame for the fall from Eve to Adam. Bottigheimer, The Bible for Children, 199. 201. Genesis 3:16. 202. Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property, 182–83. 203. At least none are mentioned in the databases Early American Archives or Evans, Early American Imprints. We have likewise found no English Adam and Eve broadsides in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. The only English Adam and Eve broadside we have seen is reproduced in Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves, 200. The figures identify the broadside as the work of Samuel Baumann. 204. The hieroglyhick [i.e., hieroglyphick] Bible, 14–16. 205. See chapter 4. 206. ‘‘Weil ich ein Leb’n bekommen hab / voll Freud und lieblich Wesen. . . . / Eine kleine Zeit ist noch dahin / Da Christus wird erscheinen / Mit allen seinen Engelein / O was wird das fu¨r Freude sein / Wann wir zusammen kommen.’’ Ein scho¨n geistlich Lied ([Ephrata, Pa.: Baumann?, ca. 1820]), nos. 1275, 1274, 1276, 1277. 207. Ein neues Trauer-Lied, Enthaltend die Geschichte der Susanna Cox, die in Reading wegen den Mord ihres Kindes hingerichtet wurde (n.p., n.d.), no. 1206. Other eds.: nos. 1271, 1531, 1677, 397, 396, 1207, 1205, 1200, 1189, 1753, 1186, 1191, 1199, 1919, 1204, 1185, 1190, 1192, 1193, 1194, 1196, 1632, 1622, 1707, 1184, 1826, 1195, 1202, 1187, 1198, 1678. 208. Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 46–49, cites at length the account of a man who had witnessed the execution as an eleven-year-old boy. Susanna Cox did not, as the ballad reports, address the crowd. But addresses from the gallows were an essential part of such ballads and therefore one was inserted. 209. ‘‘Als Ehemann hat er sie verfu¨hrt,’’ says the ballad. 210. Nor could it be said that such moral outrage was peculiar to German settlers. The North American Review, in a long article on Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s writings, had this to say about his Faust: ‘‘This work, though it exhibits vice in all its deformity, as essentially mean and hideous, is still not of a purely moral tendency; and though abounding in sallies of genius, accurate delineations of man, and exhibitions of the heart, with all the strength and weakness of the passions, it is still liable to censure for its occasional levity, and its too daring extravagance.’’ Bancroft, ‘‘Life and Genius of Goethe,’’ 311. 211. Johannes Koppelberger, Ein neues Lied Von der Mord-Geschichte des Joseph Miller (n.p., [1822?]), no. 612. Other eds.: nos. 608, 613, 610, 614, 617, 607, 1601, 1862, 615, 618, 616, 1633, 611, 619, 167. 212. Grabbe, Vor der großen Flut. 213. Eine Trauergeschichte oder ein neues Lied u¨ber eine grausame Mordthat (n.p., [ca. 1795]), no. 280. Other eds.: nos. 441, 442 (credited to Johann George Hohman and printed in 1811); nos. 1370, 1363, 1369, 1367, 1371, 1365, 1372, 1366, 1368, 1364.

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214. Nos. 441, 442. It is not known which of these is the first printing and which is the second. 215. Eine grausame Geschichte oder Lied von einem Mo¨rder, Philip Bebel, welcher gewohnt hat in Maryland, nicht weit von Friedrich-Taun, an der Pfeif-Kriek, und hat Ausgangs Aprils, 1785, Seine Frau welche schwanger war, und 4 Kinder mit einer Axt erschlagen. (n.p., n.d.), no. 205. Other eds.: nos. 206, 204, 208, 207, 563, 1235. 216. Trauer-Gesang u¨ber eine Mordthat, Die ein Bra¨utigam an seiner Braut veru¨bt, 1788, no. 1760. Other eds.: nos. 280 (ca. 1795), 499 (1815), 527 (1816), 1359, 1361, 1362 (Ephrata Community?), 1367, 1363, 1367, 1368, 1370, 1371, 1365, 1372, 1369, 1364, 1366. On the European background see Gilgenast, ‘‘ ‘Sorrowful Song About a Terrible Murder.’ ’’ 217. Ein Lied von einem Mo¨rder, Namens Johannes Schild . . . der seinen Vater und Mutter mit einer Axt auf das grausamste hingerichtet hat . . . den 12ten August, im Jahr 1812 . . . Johan Valentin Schuller ([Reading, Pa.?, 1812]), no. 457. 218. Bekenntnisz des James London, welcher den 8ten August 1818, in Harrisburg hingerichtet worden, fu¨r die Ermordung der Jenny Austin ([Harrisburg, Pa., 1818]), no. 543. 219. Beka¨ntniß, Oder die lezten Lebens-Stunden von John Lechler, Welcher . . . 1822 . . . wegen der Ermordung seiner Frau, Ma¨ry Lechler, vom Leben zum Tod gebracht wurde ([Lancaster, Pa.: S. C. Stambaugh?, 1822]), no. 602. 220. No. 924. 221. Die wunderbare Geschichte von Concordia, eines Commedanten [sic] Tochter, welche 120 Jahren entfu¨hret war, und meinte es wa¨ren nur etlichen Stunden (n.p., n.d.), no. 1467. Other eds.: nos. 1139, 252 (1796), 336 (1802), 1474, 1473, 1665, 435 (1811), 1396, 1465, 1472, 1466, 1475, 1464, 1471, 1469, 1470, 1587, 1797 (1810–20), 1861. 222. Der im Walde sitzende bo¨hmische Bauer (n.p., n.d.), no. 905. Other eds.: nos. 323 (1800), 411 (1810), 1616, 1645, 1917, 1253. 223. Bekanntmachung. Ich Michael Bauman von Manheim tounschip . . . (Lancaster, Pa.: Francis Bailey, [1775]), no. 121; Meine Herren und Damen . . . Johannes Frey (n.p., n.d.), no. 958. 224. ‘‘Diese Automata oder ku¨nstliche Ma¨nner, nachdem sie ihre Activita¨t auf mancherley Art, auch durch Ueberwerfung u¨ber eine Stange Eisen die horizontal liegt, gezeigt haben, beschließen ihre Arbeiten mit dem sogenannten gefa¨hrlichen Sprung oder Uebersatz in freyer Luft, ru¨ckwa¨rts und vorwa¨rts, und begru¨ßen die Gesellschaft, welche, wie der Verfertiger sich schmeichelt, mit diesem außerordentlichen mechanischem Kunststu¨cke zufrieden seyn wird.’’ Ein neues Schauspiel Durch die Herren Egalite ([Philadelphia, 1795]), no. 1810. 225. Verzeichniß Neuer Bu¨cher, welche um billigen Preiß zu haben sind bey Georg Christoph Reinholdt, Buchbinder in der Markt-strasse ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller], n.d.), no. 1828 (probably from the 1780s); Georg Christoph Reinholdt, Buchbinder in der Markt-strasse . . . zu Philadelphia, hat folgende Bu¨cher zu verkaufen ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1773]), no. 117; Francis Hasenclever . . . zu Philadelphia, Hat neulich folgende scho¨ne Sammlung von Bu¨chern aus Deutschland erhalten ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1773]), no. 114; Andreas Geyer, Buchbinder . . . Hat mit den allerletzten Schiffen aus Deutschland folgende Bu¨cher bekommen ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1773]), no. 1771; Henrich Miller, Buchdrucker in der Zweyten-strasse . . . hat folgende Bu¨cher zu verkaufen ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1767]), no. 95; Diese Neue Bu¨cher und Waaren sind bey Christoph Lochner, Buchdrucker und Handelsmann, von Basel kommend, Um einen billigen Preis . . . zu bekommen ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller?, 1774]), no. 77. 226. Ein Verzeichniß der Deutschen und Englischen Bu¨cher, etc., Die gedruckt und zu haben sind, in der Deutschen und Englischen Druckerey von Ambrosius Henkel und Co. in Neu-Market, Schenandoah Caunty, Virginien. August 10th 1813 ([New Market, Va.: Ambrosius Henkel & Co., 1813]), no. 462; Jacob Lahn, Hat zu verkaufen in seinem Buchladen, in Lancaster . . . folgende schon gebrauchte Bu¨cher, um beygesetzte niedrige Preiße ([Lancaster, Pa.: Johann Albrecht und Jacob Lahn, 1792]), no. 260. 227. We have been unable to trace this two-volume translation of the fifth English edition. Most German libraries, however, hold a translation of the sixth edition. 228. See Rechnung fu¨r die Pennsylvanische Gemeinde in America [1746–1768], Faszikel M 4 G 2, fol. 312–14: Pro Memoria dated July 25, 1765, concerning the book order of book trader Reinhold with list of books sent and list of books to be sent; order of March 25, 1765, fol. 316; and yearly lists of books sent to Reinhold, in Rechnungen fu¨r die Vereinigten egangelischen Lutherischen Gemeinen in Pennsylvanien von den Jahren 1776–1805, M 4 G 4, Archive Franckesche Stiftungen, Halle. 229. Dusch wrote and published numerous plays and moral tracts. 230. Most likely the Hamburg edition of 1774. 231. Wellenreuther, Ausbildung und Neubildung, 644–45. My findings here agree with the books Samuel Rex offered in his country store in Schaefferstown, Pa.; see D. Wenger, Country Storekeeper, 51–54.

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232. Mu¨ller called himself M. von Itzehoe. Mild criticism of the nobility also characterized Johann Christian Kru¨ger’s play Herzog Michel. 233. See chapter 1. 234. Part of a series edited by Johann Tobias Ko¨hler. 235. Hanway, Herrn Jonas Hanway zuverla¨ßige Beschreibung seiner Reisen. 236. On travel accounts of England by German authors see Maurer, O Britannien! 237. Venette, a physician from La Rochelle in France, was better known in France, England, and Germany for his Tableau de l’Amour. 238. However, the Staatsbibliothek Berlin owns Johann Baptista Anthes’s tract Zufa¨llige Gedanken vom Zweck der Ehe. 239. The preparation for the marriage takes up 138 pages of No¨lting’s work! 240. According to the Halle online catalogue, this was printed as part of a collection compiled by Thomas Andreas Kratzenstein, Biblisches Spruch-Buch. This work is undated, but a date of sometime in the early 1750s seems likely. 241. On products of Pennsylvania farms see Lemon, Best Poor Man’s Country, chaps. 6–7; and the essays and literature cited in Vernacular Architectural Forum, Architecture and Landscape of the Pennsylvania Germans. 242. On sales broadsides and their analysis see above, 51–60. 243. For a brief survey see McMurry and Garrison, ‘‘Barns and Agricultural Change,’’ esp. 69. 244. The first edition appeared in 1710. 245. See above, 66–69. 246. See below, 221, 229. 247. Der Bauren-Stand ([Ephrata, Pa.: Johann Baumann, 1800–1809]), no. 824. Other eds.: nos. 423, 822, 821, 829, 1847, 1822, 303, 825, 827, 823, 826, 94, 814, 1814, 1902, 828, 922, 1853, 1150, 1301. 248. On the curse of God in the Pennsylvania Adam and Eve broadsides see above, 103–5. 249. Vier scho¨ne neue Lieder (n.p., n.d.), Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Mu¨nchen; Drey scho¨ne Lieder, Library Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. 250. Another possible time period would be 1708–11, when war destroyed large parts of western and southern Germany and central and western Europe experienced the worst subsistence crisis of the century. 251. ‘‘Betet und arbeitet das ist, setzet euer ganzes Vertrauen in Gott, rufet Ihn eifrigst um seinen Segen an, aber strengt auch zugleich eure Kra¨fte an, bestellet jede Sache geho¨rig und ordentlich.’’ Von den Vorurtheilen bey den Landleuten. Einige Sprichwo¨rter fu¨r Bauern (n.p., n.d.), no. 1886. 252. A broadside that advertises a device for speeding up the fattening of cattle is omitted here because in the long run it obviously did not win acceptance. Eine große Ersparniß fu¨r Bauern und Viehma¨ster. Die patentirte Keil-Maschine . . . Thomas Josephson Simpson ([Baltimore, Md., 1820]), no. 564. Other eds.: nos. 1323, 1602. 253. Bekanntmachung fu¨r Luxus und Oeconomie (Easton, Pa.: Christian Jacob Hu¨tter, [before 1811]), no. 833. Another broadside praised the Bethlehem nursery products: Bekanntmachung ([Easton, Pa.: Christian Jacob Hu¨tter], n.d.), no. 1802. 254. Bewa¨hrte Mittel zur Erhaltung allerley Obstba¨umen . . . Cornelius Hegerti, Baumpflanzer und Ga¨rtner zu York in England (n.p., n.d.), no. 863. The catalogue of the British Library suggests a link between the broadside and the Harmonists. BL Catalogue, vol. 238, 238. 255. Die Vereinigten Staaten von America, An alle, die diese Patent-Briefe sehen mo¨gen . . . Amos Hart . . . 1829 (Somerset, Pa.: G. Maurer, 1829), no. 738. 256. Der Hengst Junge Juniper wird die bevorstehende Jahrszeit . . . 1sten Jenner 1774 ([Lancaster, Pa.: Francis Bailey, 1773]), no. 609. The broadside was printed in English and German. Quoted from the English text. 257. Wellenreuther, Von Chaos und Krieg, 351–56. 258. Das vortreffliche Schaff-Pferd Stumpstowner Bald (Lebanon, Pa.: Heinrich Sage, 1810), no. 413. In 1794 Johannes Schwahr Jr. advertised the services of his stallion Ball-Zucht for prices similar to those demanded in 1810 for the Stumpstowner Bald. Ball-Zucht, wird diese Jahrszeit zu Ma¨hren gelassen werden . . . in Hempfield Taunschip, Lancaster Caunty . . . Den 8. April 1794 ([Lancaster, Pa., 1794]), no. 274. 259. Recepte fu¨r Pferde (n.p., n.d.), no. 1822 (the date is most probably around 1790); Unfehlbare Mittel fu¨r die Heilung der Krankheiten Der Pferde (Lebanon, Pa.: J. Hartman, [1815–25]), no. 1394. 260. The first one is Baumann, Kurz gefasstes Roß-Arzney Bu¨chlein; Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:500. The first more extensive treatise published in North America was Freitag, Der Deutsche Pferd-Arzt; Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 2:618–19, no. 1656. This treatise was not just edited but written by Dr. Freitag, a Moravian physician and an old friend of Christian

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Jacob Hu¨tter. It describes the diseases in logical order but does not say much about how horses were supposed to be fed. Neither J. White, Compendium of the Veterinary Art, nor Bracken, Farriery Improved, is much concerned with feeding, minerals, or the yellow water, and neither English author seems familiar with the importance of minerals as a general supplement. 261. See above, note 259. 262. Christian Ritter’s Europa¨isches Pferde-Pulver ([Reading, Pa., 1805]), no. 356. 263. Daniel Meintzer, Mineralen fu¨r Pferde PULVER ZU MACHEN (n.p., n.d.), no. 1849; and Unfehlbare Mittel fu¨r die Heilung der Krankheiten Der Pferde. 264. Johannes Rose, Mineralisches Pferd-Pulver ([Lancaster, Pa.], n.d.), no. 1159. 265. Wellenreuther, Ausbildung und Neubildung, 279–80. Franklin’s broadsides were dated April 26, 1755. See Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 6, http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp (accessed December 2008). 266. See, for example, Mu¨hlenberg’s descriptions of the barest necessities in his letter from Providence on June 14, 1779, to the elders of the Lutheran congregations at Pikestown, Pikesland, Pottsgrove, and Providence. Aland, Wellenreuther, et al., Korrespondenz Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenbergs, 5:209–10. 267. See above, pp. 56–57. 268. ‘‘Weilen viele Leute hierzu Lande nicht wohl rechnen ko¨nnen, und es ihnen oft u¨bel geht, wann sie Butter, Fleisch, Speck etc kaufen.’’ Erkla¨rung dieser Tafel (n.p., [1800–1804]), no. 1885, fol. 1. 269. These are all mentioned in broadsides that advertised the sale of farms. See above, 53–54. 270. A wide variety of vegetable seeds was offered by Wilhelm Sta¨hle in Reading in Frische Garten Saamen . . . William Sta¨hle (Reading, Pa.: G. Adolph Sage, [1828/29]), no. 960. 271. No broadsides mention either eggs or chickens, but from other sources it is clear that most farms had chickens. 272. A broadside advertising the sale of a farm at East Hempfield Township, near Lancaster, mentions milk cows. Oeffentliche Versteigerung . . . Pferde und Pferds-Geschirr . . . David Kauffman, Andreas Kauffman . . . 1826 (Lancaster, Pa.: John Bear, [1826]), no. 676. 273. At a visit to the farmers’ market in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, in early May 2007 we found all the items mentioned in the broadside. 274. ‘‘[A]uf dem Draht . . . welcher vom Courthausthurm bis zum Schildpfosten der Wilden Gans Jagd wird gestreckt werden.’’ 275. Jahrmarkt . . . Auf Befehl des Managers. April 19, 1825 ([York, Pa., 1825]), no. 657. Hotten, Slang Dictionary, 236; Maitland, American Slang Dictionary, 187. 276. York had received the privilege of holding a market twice each week, but the borough charter was silent about a yearly market. See Carter and Glossbrenner, History of York County, 132. 277. In general see Tryon, Household Manufactures, 251–52 et passim; Cole, American Wool Manufacture, 1:94–107. On the Shenandoah Valley and its settlement and economic development see Mitchell, Commercialism and Frontier, chaps. 5, 7; Hofstra, Planting of New Virginia, chaps. 6–7; Koons and Hofstra, After the Backcountry. 278. Kart-Maschine . . . Samuel Lobach und Sohn. Den 23sten April, 1811 (Reading, Pa.: J. Ritter & Co., [1811]), no. 439. 279. Philip Steffy, Neue Erfindung. Um Wolle, Baumwolle und Leinen Blau zu fa¨rben ([York, Pa., ca. 1820– 30]), no. 1564. Phil[l]ip Steffy (1794–1890) was born in Chanceford Township, York County, where he was baptized on November 3, 1794, and married on January 6, 1815. He and his family migrated sometime in the late 1830s to Claremont in Richland County, Illinois, where he died in 1890 and was buried in Linden Lawn Cemetery. Based on these dates, the broadside was probably printed in York. ¨ berleben in Laichingen. 280. On weaving in southern Germany see Medick, Weben und U 281. On hymns and on house devotions see chapter 3, and on horrid tales see below. 282. McMurry and Garrison, ‘‘Barns and Agricultural Change,’’ 67. 283. John Frederick Whitehead and Johann Carl Bu¨ttner described their experiences as German indentured servants during the American Revolution. Bu¨ttner ran away after he felt badly treated. See their accounts in Klepp, Grubb, and Pfaelzer de Ortiz, Souls for Sale, esp. 186–90, 227–30. 284. Forty Dollars REWARD (Frederick Town, Md.: Matthias Bartgis, [1794]), no. 263. Quoted from the English part of the broadside. 285. Tobias Hirte, Sclaven-Handel. Die Menschlichkeit beleidiget (Philadelphia: Samuel Saur, 1794), no. 272; Es wird o¨ffentlich versteigert werden . . . ein gesunder Neger, ehemals das Eigenthum des verstorbenen James M’Etheny . . . James Armstrong, Executor. Den 26sten September, 1797 ([Lancaster, Pa., 1797]), no. 287 (thus far

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no image of the broadside has been found); An die Einwohner der Stadt York, und deren Nachbarschaft, bis auf 10 Meile weit (York, Pa.: C. Schlichting, 1803), no. 1524; Das Todesurtheil von Elisabeth Moore und John Charles, und das Letzte Bekenntniß von Elisabeth Moore . . . 1809, zu York in Pennsylvanien, hingerichtet wurden (n.p., [1809]), no. 1743. 286. Hirte, Sclaven-Handel. 287. For a brief analysis of the pictorial representations see Lacey, ‘‘Visual Images of Blacks,’’ esp. 157. 288. Hirte was the son of John Tobias Hirte (1707?–1770) and Marie Klose Hirte (1710–1767), who both came from Moravia via Herrnhut to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where both died. Hirte was born October 14, 1748, and certainly spent his youth in Bethlehem, since he was twenty-one when his father died there. Hirte seems to have left the Moravian Church; he is not listed as a member in Lancaster, York, Bethlehem, or Philadelphia, all places where he lived. He owned a shop in Philadelphia and seems to have owned an orchard and a summer house in Lebanon. Late in his life he returned to the church. Diarium der Gemeinde in Bethlehem, vol. 28, fols. 424–28; Catalogus der Gemein- und Societaets-Glieder in Philadelphia wie auch deren Kinder derselben verfertiget im April 1790, MAB Phil. I, Catalogues, 1744–1836, and Catalogus der Ledigen Bru¨der, MAB Beth SB 49, 1749–1755, Archives of the Moravian Church, Bethlehem; Ritter, Moravian Church in Philadelphia, 247–50. 289. Warnung, vor Falschem Seneca-Oel. Indianisch-French-Crieck-Seneca-Oel. Ein vortrefliches und bewa¨hrtes Medicament, Ist zu haben in Philadelphia, bey Tobias Hirte ([Philadelphia: Samuel Saur, 1794]), no. 275; Hirte, Ein Neues, auserlesenes, gemeinnu¨tziges Hand-Bu¨chlein (Evans 24396); Arndt and Eck, First Century of German Language Printing, 1:337. 290. On the complex attitude of Moravians to slavery in the West Indies and in North Carolina see Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival; and especially Sensbach, A Separate Canaan. 291. An die Einwohner der Stadt York; Carter and Glossbrenner, History of York County, 139–42. 292. Es wird o¨ffentlich versteigert werden. 293. Ellis and Evans, History of Lancaster County, 1006–13, esp. 1008. 294. Das Todesurtheil von Elisabeth Moore und John Charles. 295. ‘‘Postnatal Psychosis,’’ http://www.everybody.co.nz/page-5f97cf46-253e-4d36-a745-bfa5e2a71753.aspx. 296. Revelation 21:6, 22:1, 17. 297. ‘‘[W]u¨rde er vielleicht das Saufen und andere Laster treiben und dabey zu einem bo¨sen Ende gereichen. . . . [w]ann er jung gestorben er unzweifelbar in den Himmel kommen wu¨rde.’’ 298. ‘‘[A]rme kleine Creatur. Jetzt bist du noch hier, aber deine Seele wird bald im Himmel seyn.’’ 299. Der Wahre Amerikaner, May 6, 1809, no. 232, fol. 3. 300. Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves, 110, mention that the library of Franklin and Marshall College owns a facsimile of the English broadside. 301. Die Wege zum Ewigen Leben oder zum Ewigen Verderben. Das Neue Jerusalem (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, [ca. 1830–31]), nos. 1454, 1592, 1742. 302. On such a vision that fueled demonstrations in Charleston, S.C., during the American Revolution, see Wellenreuther, Ausbildung und Neubildung, 561, and Wellenreuther, Von Chaos und Krieg zu Ordnung und Frieden, 450. 303. The Federal Census for York for 1840 lists three George Mundorfs, one aged between five and ten years, one between twenty and thirty years, and one between fifty and sixty years. http://files.usgwarchives.net/ pa/york/census/1840/pg292.txt (accessed January 10, 2009). 304. ‘‘[I]hnen zeitliche christliche Unterweisung geben, welches ihre Pflicht ist. . . . Ich hoffe, Gott hat mir vergeben, dann meine Missethaten habe ich aus Unwissenheit getan.’’ 305. There is much speculation about the identity of the printer. According to the index of printers we have compiled on the basis of these broadsides, the most active printers in York at that particular time were Michael Billmeyer and Christian Schlichting, who may have been in partnership then. 306. See E. P. Thompson’s classic Making of the English Working Class. 307. See above, 106. 308. Nolt, Foreigners in Their Own Land, 43–44 et passim. 309. Mit vierzig fa¨ngt der Sorgenpfad bald an Die Ha¨lfte ist erreicht von unserm ird’schen Leben Mit fu¨nfzig haben wir nur niederwa¨rts zu streben Wohl dem der doch vergnu¨gt die sechzig za¨hlen kann. Im siebzigsten muß man oft fu¨r Ka¨lte klagen

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Mit achzig wird dann stets ein Stock beim Gehen getragen Weil wir dann matt und schwach, und Hilfe no¨tig ist. Mit neunzig mu¨ssen wir uns dann mit Kru¨cken qua¨len; Und sollten wir vielleicht auch hundert Jahre za¨hlen, So sind wir matt und schwach und fu¨r das Grab geru¨st. Das Leben und Alter der Menschen. Die Stufenjahre des Menschlichen Lebens von der Wiege bis zum Grabe . . . alphabetischen Gedichte (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, [ca. 1830]), no. 1904, poem at the top of the broadside. Other eds.: nos. 675, 690, 729, 1097. 310. ‘‘Mit dreißig zieht er in den Krieg, stark wie ein Ochs erring den Sieg.’’ 311. See above, 106–7. 312. ‘‘Ziehe dir, o frommer Christ, die Lehren / Hier aus dem so ausgestellten Bild; / Lerne Gott und Religion verehren, / Ja, dann kannst du sterben wann du willst.’’ Das Leben und Alter der Menschen, poem at bottom, last verse (our translation). The poem at the bottom is completely translated by Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 297–98. 313. On the German Lutherans’ concept of property and inheritance see Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property, 148–74, et passim. 314. Der Johannes Henner muß geben ein Pfund . . . (n.p., n.d.), no. 815. A handwritten note on the back of the broadside states, ‘‘June 17, 1833, received of Mary Hennern,’’ which suggests that the broadside was printed sometime in the 1820s. 315. Kommt es einst mit mir zum Sterben, nun so setz ich keine Erben, und mach auch kein Testament, meine na¨chsten Blutsverwandten, gute Freunde und Bekannten, wird mein Nachlaß gern gego¨nnt. Der letzte Wille des hochfu¨rstlichen Printzen Diederichs von Anhalt Dessau, des alten Regierenden Fu¨rsten von Dessau und Preussischen Genral[sic]-Feld-Marschall sein Sohn, geschrieben im Jahr 1753 ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur I, 1753]), no. 67. 316. Nos. 67, 964 (ca. 1805?), 1671 (after 1830), 913 (1825), 1305. 317. Drum will ich, bey Ja und Nein! Vor dem Zapfen sterben. Nach der lezten Oelung soll Hefen noch mich fa¨rben Engelcho¨re weyhen denn Mich zum Nektarerben; ‘‘Diesen Trinker gnade Gott! Lass ihn nicht verderben!’’ Zech-Lied (n.p., n.d.), no. 1479. 318. Etwas wider die Geldliebe, oder die verderblichen Folgen der Habsucht (n.p., n.d.), no. 940. Other eds.: nos. 1672, 1064. 319. Eine wahre Geschichte (n.p., [1820]), no. 561; 2nd ed. no. 586. 320. Earnest and Earnest, Flying Leaves, 188, suggest that the bird may represent the babies’ souls. Yoder, Pennsylvania German Broadside, 269–70, is silent on the issue. 321. Strine and Yessler Families of York County, Pa., http://jsfecmd.info/strineweb-p/p422.htm (accessed September 23, 2012).

Chapter 3 1. For a recent study of the Second Great Awakening see Hankins, Second Great Awakening, and for the wider context Noll, America’s God. 2. Our computation is based on the population data in Wattenberg, Statistical History, 22–37, 1168. The states included were those of the ‘‘Philadelphia Field: New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.’’

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3. For the number of Lutheran pastors see Glatfelter, Pastors and People, 2:190–91, 194, 196, 197, 202, 433, 435, 436. 4. See above, 99–102. 5. This is subject to further analysis. Once the origins of these songs have been established, we can be more precise about their relationship to church services. 6. Konfirmazionslied (n.p., n.d.), no. 1086. 7. Drei scho¨ne, neue und fromme Lieder . . . Zum Druck befo¨rdert von Johann Georg Homann, in Berks Caunty ([Lancaster, Pa.: Herman W. Villee, ca. 1825–29]), no. 1048, and Confirmations-Lieder. Gesungen von den Confirmanden des Ehrw. Herrn Zeller (Allentown, Pa.: A. Blumer, [1830]), no. 418. 8. No. 1086. 9. See Wellenreuther, Ausbildung und Neubildung, 329–31. On Pietism in America see the excellent survey by Roeber, ‘‘Pietismus in Nordamerika.’’ 10. Trost Lied, fu¨r ein Nachfolger JESU (n.p., n.d.), no. 1391. 11. Ein Scho¨n JEsus-Lied ([Ephrata, Pa.: Johann Baumann], n.d.), no. 1260. 12. Ein Unpartheyisches Gesang-Buch, 417–18; Lutherisches Gesangbuch fu¨r Kirche, Schule und Haus, no. 396. See http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/19122.html. 13. Niemeyer, Große Missionsharfe, vol. 1. 14. http://www.notensatz-s-fischer.de/txt_daten/Partiturverzeichnis_Missionsharfe_2.pdf. 15. Call number A 81808. 16. Call number E 139359. 17. Call number Slg Wernigerode Hb 4340. 18. Staatsbibliothek Berlin, call number 13 in: Yd 7877 R. 19. Call number 28 in: Yd 7926 R. 20. L. Schmidt, ‘‘Niedero¨sterreichische Flugblattlieder,’’ lists three broadsides: see no. 73, p. 140; no. 267, p. 173; and no. 293, p. 155 (for 1848). 21. According to Catholic belief the bells are taken to Rome on Thursday and returned Sunday night; thus bells are not rung during those days. 22. Veitschegger, ‘‘Jesus eine Henne? Osterbra¨uche.’’ 23. Aland, Wellenreuther, et al., Korrespondenz Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenbergs, 5:826–28, 833, 838–39. 24. This is what nurtured the bitter controversies in Lutheran congregations in the 1750s and early 1760s. See Wellenreuther, ‘‘Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg,’’ 127–32. 25. Devotional texts are discussed below in the sections ‘‘The Edifying Nature of Devotional Broadsides,’’ ‘‘Ephrata’s Voice, 1740–1830,’’ and ‘‘Death and Hope for Eternal Life.’’ Texts as images are discussed in the section ‘‘Textual Images and Images as Text: Inspiration as Revelation.’’ Eschatological broadsides are discussed in the section ‘‘Radical Broadsides and Print Culture.’’ 26. See above, 68. 27. While many pastors and theologians both in North America and in Europe supplied hymnals and collections of sermons and biblical texts for house devotions, the subject of house prayers and house devotions has largely been ignored by historians. On German Pietists see Gestrich, ‘‘Ehe Familie, Kinder im Pietismus,’’ 498–521, esp. 507–8; Gestrich, ‘‘Pietistisches Weltversta¨ndnis,’’ 556–84, esp. 573ff. In Germany the definition and concept of ‘‘Andacht’’ (house devotion) did not escape the secularizing tendencies of the second half of the eighteenth century. See the introduction to Boysen, Sammlung einiger geistreicher Lieder, for a Pietistic definition, and Ulber, Der rechtschaffene Naturalist, 499, xii–xviii, for a definition of devotion that focuses on nature as God’s work and a means to understand God. Ulber’s concept of devotion influenced a number of other authors in the second half of the eighteenth and the nineteenth century. A good example of a definition of devotion influenced by new philosophical concepts is [A. H. Niemeyer], Timotheus, pt. 1, 206; pt. 2, 253, esp. 252–56. On the relationship between eschatological attitudes and guides for house devotions among Wu¨rttemberg Pietists in the early nineteenth century see Kannenberg, Verschleierte Uhrtafeln, 100–119. 28. See above, 25–40. 29. On peddlers and how broadsides were acquired see above, 36–37. 30. Hasenclever probably advertised Mosheim, Heilige Reden u¨ber wichtige Wahrheiten der Lehre Jesu Christi; Cramer, Neue Sammlung einiger Predigten; Reinbeck, Betrachtung u¨ber die in der Augsburgischen Confession; Jerusalem, Sammlung einiger Predigten. 31. Schmolck, Herrn Benjamin Schmolckens; Zollikoffer, Neuero¨ffneter Himmlischer Weyrauch-Schatz; most likely Starke, Synopsis Bibliothecae Exegeticae; Scrivers, Gott geheiligtem Bet-Altar Frommer Christen; Struensee,

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Gebet-Beicht-und Communion-Buch; Lassenius, Taegliche Kirchenandachten; Cubach, Bett-, Buß-, Lob- und Dankopfer. 32. Freylinghausen, Geistreiches Gesang-Buch; Vollsta¨ndiges Marburger Gesangbuch. 33. Arndt’s Wahres Christentum was repeatedly reprinted both in Germany and in North America in the eighteenth century. The first American edition, printed in 1751 by Benjamin Franklin, was Arndt, Des Hocherleuchteten Theologi. 34. Hu¨bner, Johann Hu¨bner’s zweymal zwey und fu¨nfzig auserlesene Biblische Historien. 35. Sander, Erbauungsbuch zur Befo¨rderung wahrer Glu¨ckseligkeit; see too Gesammelte Lieder. By far the most popular hymnal for private devotions in Germany was Verbessertes Gesang-Buch, which went through over eighty editions in the nineteenth century. 36. Der Fru¨hling ist herbey gekommen ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur I, 1738]), no. 37; Geistliches Abend Lied (n.p., n.d.), no. 996; Ein geistlich Lob-Lied (n.p., n.d.), no. 1606; Ein geistliches Lied (Hagerstown, Md.: Johann F. Koch, [1790]), no. 246 (a song that promises God’s assistance in emergencies); Tisch-Gebether (Himmel’s Church, Pa.: Peter Montelius, [1830]), no. 761; Kinder Bethet und lebet fromm ([Reamstown, Pa.?]: Peter Montelius, [1821?]), no. 1081; Lob Gottes und Gebete (Reamstown, Pa.: Peter Montelius, 1821), nos. 592 and 1148; Dieses sind drey scho¨ne Gebete fu¨r Alte und Junge alle Tage nu¨tzlich zu gebrauchen (n.p., n.d.), no. 1880; Der Geistliche Weinstock Jesus Christus, an dem Pfahl des Creutzes angeheftet, la¨ßt von sich auswachsen sieben gru¨ne Bla¨tter, welche sind seine sieben letzte Worte, und fu¨nf edle Weintrauben (n.p., n.d.), no. 983; Ta¨gliches Gebet zur Ehre Gottes (n.p., n.d.), nos. 1580 and 1846; Das 2 Gebet. Ein Abendsegen (York, Pa.: William C. Harris, [ca. 1816–18]), no. 1494; Auf den allgemeinen den 7ten Decem. 1780 gehaltenen Fast-Tag ein Buß-Gedicht (n.p., [1780]), no. 170; Christliches Buß-Lied, gestellt auf den 20sten Julius 1775 in Nord-Amerika gehaltenen Fast-Tag ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller?, 1775]), nos. 127, 126 (a song that conforms to basic Loyalist sentiments, attributing the Revolutionary troubles to the moral decline of North America); Dankund Bet-Tag am 13ten April, 1815 ([Reading, Pa.?, 1815]), no. 493; Erndte-Lied ([Lancaster, Pa.]: B. Grimler, [1805–29]), no. 934; Der Fru¨hling ist herbey gekommen; Ein geistlich Gedicht Auf den in Nord-America den 28ten November 1782 gehaltenen Ba¨ttag ([Ephrata, Pa.?: Ephrata Community?, 1782]), no. 176; Ein Lied fu¨r den Fastund Bettag auf den 18ten November, 1808 ([New Market, Va.: Ambrosius Henkel, 1808]), no. 380; Lied Ueber die Erscheinung des Cometen, im Jahr 1811 (n.p., [1812]), no. 1859; Ein Lied, Ueber die Vollziehung der Strafe des Cometen im Jahr 1811 ([Ephrata, Pa.?: Baumann?, 1812]), no. 444; Von den Cometen, welche 1824 u¨ber America gestanden ([Reading, Pa.: Johann Ritter & Co., 1824]), no. 643; Johann Valentin Schuller, Ein Warnungs-Lied u¨ber den schwarzen Flecken, wo sich dies 1816te Jahr, im Monat April und May, eine Zeitlang hat sehen laßen in der Sonne (n.p., [1816?]), no. 1807; Wider die Nahrungs-Sorge ([Ephrata, Pa.?], n.d.), no. 1460; Zwey wahrhafte von gantz besondern Himmels-Zeichen!!! Welches erstere sich bey der Haupt- und Seestadt Riga in Lifland zugetragen . . . Das andere ist gesehen worden zu Kirschberg ([Baltimore, Md.: Nikolaus Hasselbach, 1765]), nos. 1647, 24. 37. For example, Benjamin Padlin, Eine Ernstliche Ermahnung, An Junge und Alte: Zu einer ungeheuchelten Pru¨fung ihres Hertzens und Zustandes . . . Ku¨rtzlich aus Engeland nach America gesandt, und wegen seiner Wichtigkeit Aus dem Englischen ins Deutsche treulich u¨bersetzt; Von einem Liebhaber der Wahrheit (Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur, 1738), no. 40; [Israel Eckerlin], Die Richtschnur und Regel eines Streiters Jesu Christi, welcher in die ewige Scha¨tze der Weißheit verlibet ist (Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1745), no. 55; [Israel Eckerlin], Ein sehr geistreicher Spiegel, als worinnen das rechte Bild des einsamen Lebens erscheinet, und was eigentlich desselben Beschaffenheit seye, wann es seine rechtma¨ssige Sache darstellet und ans Licht gibt ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1745]), nos. 56, 57; Eberhard Ludwig Gruber, So Bleibt Ein Redlich Hertz (n.p., [after 1830]), no. 1009; ES ist noch nicht am End, der Jammer bleibt noch stehen ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1762]), no. 79; JEtzt ist mein vieler schmertz, den ich so lang getragen ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1747]), no. 80 (relating the conversion experience, in which God is forced through the misery of the sinner to accept him); Ein sehr kraeftiges Heiliges Gebeth, welches zu Co¨lln am Rhein mit goldenen Buchstaben geschrieben und aufgehalten wird (n.p., n.d.), nos. 1319, 1320, 1321, 1723 (a Catholic devotional prayer; see below, note 54, regarding the European original); 1. Corinth. 1 v. 81 [sic]. Das Wort vom Creutz ist zwar eine Thorheit denen die verlohren werden (Ephrata, Pa.: Jacob Matzenbacher, 1772), no. 109 (a devotional text printed with a curious graphic design); [Gerhard Tersteegen], Ein Auszug, aus des G. Tersteegens, seinen Schriften. Die Uebung der liebreichen Gegenwart Gottes (Ephrata, Pa.: Joseph Bauman, 1818), no. 542 (an extract from Tersteegen’s writings and a hymn suitable to the text); Ein bewa¨hrtes Mittel scho¨n zu werden (n.p., n.d.), no. 233 (describes in the form of a medical prescription the method to attain eternal life); Johannes Engel, Diese Regel soll nur eine Anweisung an das Testament seyn ([Ephrata, Pa.: Joseph Bauman, 1826]), no. 673 (excerpts from the author’s writings describing true Christian behavior and concluding with

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an account of the author’s conversion, with two hymns added); Eine wahre Geschichte von einem alten Bruder und einem ju¨ngeren Bruder, die unter einer Gemeinschaft gefunden sind. Von A¨rgerniß, Gewalt der Schlu¨ssel und bru¨derlicher Verso¨hnung . . . 1827 ([Ephrata, Pa.: Joseph Bauman, 1827]), no. 696; Des erweckten Su¨nders Frage: Was soll ich thun, daß ich sellig werde (n.p., [around 1770]), no. 1495; Des Heutigen Signals Charmen: Ein dreyfaches Echo . . . im 1813ten Jahr ([Ephrata, Pa.: Jacob Ruth], 1813), no. 472; Wann wird doch einst die Finsternis vergehen ([Ephrata, Pa.: Samuel Baumann, ca. 1810]), no. 1450 (Baumann used the ornament that appears in this broadside in 1810). 38. Sterblicher du gehst vorbey, wo man mich hat hingeleget ([Ephrata, Pa.: Christian Baumann, 1790]), no. 245; Sehnsucht ([Allentown, Pa.?], n.d.), no. 1318; Die Kreuzigung Christi (New Berlin, Pa.: [George Miller, ca. 1828]), no. 1791; Johannes Joder, Anfang des christlichen Lebens ([Reading, Pa.?, after 1830]), no. 1650; Aufruf an die Christen (n.p., n.d.), no. 1651; Einladung fu¨r eine bußfertige Seele (n.p., n.d.), no. 923; Vertrauen auf Die Vorsehung Gottes (n.p., n.d.), no. 1409; Wo ist ein Gott wie unser Gott (n.p., [1815]), no. 487; Zwey scho¨ne lehrreiche Lieder (Harrisonburg, Va.: Laurentz Wartmann, 1816), no. 525. 39. Offt hast du mir zugeruffen ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur I, 1738]), no. 39; Von Isaacs Aufopferung ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur], n.d.), no. 1426; Der Frommen Trost (n.p., n.d.), no. 1852; Ein Bittend Lied, an den Scho¨pfer (n.p., [1775?]), no. 137; Ein Betstund-Lied fu¨r die Christen (n.p., n.d.), nos. 837, 838 (with a short paraphrase of 1 Peter 5:8–9); Auf der 81ten Seite im kleinen Notenbuch. No. 6 . . . Die 1ste Epistel St. Johannis (n.p., n.d.), no. 1545 (in English and German; prints the song ‘‘Komm, oh Komm, du Geist des Lebens’’ and verses from 1 John 4:7–10); Auf meinen Jesum will ich sterben (n.p., n.d.), 1154; Erbauliches Lied (n.p., [1800]), no. 324; Der erho¨hete Gott-Mensch (n.p., [ca. 1825–30]), no. 930; Jacobs Trauerlied, u¨ber die Reise seines ju¨ngsten Sohnes Benjamin nach Egypten ([Lancaster, Pa.: Johann Albrecht & Co.?, 1790]), nos. 1804, 581 (1820); Ein geistliches Lied von Abraham und seinem Sohn Isaac (n.p., [1820]), no. 997; Gott ich preise deine Gu¨te (n.p., n.d.), no. 1843; JEsus klagt u¨ber die abgefallenen Christen, Offenbarung 2, 4 (n.p., n.d.), nos. 1062, 1063 (although this song has a particular biblical reference, it is a general lamentation, with strong eschatological tendencies, on the decline of Christianity); Joseph’s Lied (n.p., n.d.), nos. 1072, 1073, 521 (ca. 1816); Ko¨nig Saul verfolget David (n.p., n.d.), 1084; Nur alleine Jesus (Lancaster, Pa.: J. Ehrenfried, [1815]), nos. 482, 569 (ca. 1811–12); Das obere Jerusalem (n.p., n.d.), no. 1232; Psalm-Gesang Ps. 42 (Economy, Pa.: J. C. Mu¨ller, 1827), no. 693; Ueber der Scho¨pfung, dem Su¨ndenfall, der Verheissung, dem Evangelio. Ein Reim nach dem Alphabet von W. Harms ([New Market, Va.: A. Henkel, ca. 1816]), no. 512; Vier scho¨ne und trostreiche BußLieder, Nebst Einem Lob- und Liebs-Gesang zu JEsu (n.p., n.d.), no. 1615; Wohlthaten Jesu (first line: ‘‘GOTT hat die Welt geliebet Hallelujah’’) (n.p., n.d.), no. 1463 (the hymn quotes the Nicene Creed). Pietist hymns were considered important means to attain sanctification in house devotions; see Dohm, ‘‘Heiligkeit im Diesseits.’’ 40. Ein scho¨n Lied zur Aufmunterung eines Christlichen Lebens ([Philadelphia: Anton Armbru¨ster, 1763]), no. 76 (a hymn on the importance of humility in the daily life of a Christian); Der Tannenbaum, Ein geistlich Gedicht ([Ephrata, Pa.: Johann Baumann, ca. 1800–1810]), nos. 1347, 1608; Ein musicalisches Lied ([Harrisonburg, Va.: Laurentz Wartmann, ca. 1816]), no. 522 (a song in which the singer prays for God to grant him neither riches nor poverty but just modest means; the model for his desire is Solomon); Von der Geduld der Christen (n.p., n.d.), no. 1420 (describes patience as an important principle that helps to ease almost everything, and a Christian duty that Jesus exemplified for us and in which he should guide us); Ein scho¨nes Lied. Gespra¨ch zwischen dem Tod und dem Menschen (Reading, Pa.: J. Ritter, n.d.), no. 1296 (probably printed between 1802 and 1830); Ein geistlich Lied (n.p., n.d.), no. 979; Die Ewigkeit ([Reading, Pa., 1790?]), no. 945; Gedanken an GOTT (n.p., n.d.), no. 972; Auf der 81ten Seite im kleinen Notenbuch; Erbauliches Lied; Ein geistliches Lied von Abraham und seinem Sohn Isaac; Von Isaacs Aufopferung; Jacobs Trauerlied; Gott ich preise deine Gu¨te; JEsus klagt u¨ber die abgefallenen Christen; Joseph’s Lied; Ko¨nig Saul verfolget David; Das obere Jerusalem; Psalm-Gesang Ps. 42; Ueber der Scho¨pfung; Lied vom Gerichtstag (n.p., n.d.), no. 1863 (a description of the Last Judgment); Vom ju¨ngsten Gericht und der Verdammniß . . . Riemstaun, Februari den 6ten 1821 (Reamstown, Pa.: Peter Montelius, 1821), no. 598; Vier scho¨ne und trostreiche Buß-Lieder; Wohlthaten Jesu; Sehnsucht nach Oben (n.p., n.d.), nos. 1626, 1314, 1315; Eine Unterweisung von der Nichtigkeit des menschlichen Lebens ([Ephrata, Pa.?: Ephrata Community?, ca. 1770]), no. 1928; Gedanken eines sterbenden Gla¨ubigen (n.p., n.d.), nos. 973, 974. 41. Eine Vorstellung von Begebenheiten, welche sich auf die Kirche GOttes und die Welt beziehet, durch emblematische Figuren ([Philadelphia]: Samuel Saur, 1794), nos. 1773, 459; Eine neue Charte und sinnliche Abbildung von der engen Pforte und dem schmalen Wege ([Baltimore, Md.: Samuel Saur, 1795]), no. 277; Das ewige Leben und die ewige Verdammniß. Das Neue Jerusalem (Lancaster, Pa.: H. W. Villee, [182?]), nos. 942, 941 (Lancaster, Pa.: Baab and Villee, [1826–29]), 944, 943, 1693, 1694 (Lancaster, Pa.: Baab and Villee, [1825–27]), 1933 (n.p.,

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[ca. 1830]), 757 (n.p., [ca. 1830]); Die Stufen des Menschlichen Lebens . . . in Reimen gebracht nach dem Alphabet von W. Harms ([New Market, Va.: A. Henkel, ca. 1816]), no. 513; Das Leben und Alter der Menschen. Die Stufenjahre des Menschlichen Lebens von der Wiege bis zum Grabe . . . alphabetischen Gedichte (Carlisle, Pa.: Moser und Peters, 1826), nos. 675, 690 (Carlisle, Pa.: Moser und Peters, 1827), 729 (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, 1829), 1097 (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, [ca. 1830]), 1904 (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, [ca. 1830]); Die Wege zum Ewigen Leben oder zum Ewigen Verderben. Das Neue Jerusalem (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, [ca. 1830–31]), nos. 1454, 1592, 1742. 42. Jesus Christus stirbt fu¨r unsere Su¨nden (n.p., n.d.), no. 1060; Die Kreuzigung Christi (Lancaster, Pa.: H. W. Villee, [182?]), no. 1092; Christi Einzug in Jerusalem (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, [ca. 1830]), nos. 746, 650; Christi Taufe im Jordan, Lu. 3, 21, etc. (n.p., [after 1830]), no. 862; Die Historie von Joseph & seinen Bru¨dern. Worinn wir die wundervolle Leitung Gottes erblicken, in allen Leiden, Widerwa¨rtigkeiten, im Glu¨ck und Unglu¨ck, etc. (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, 1830), nos. 747, 698, 728, 1044; Ich sahe ein Lamm stehen oben auf dem Berge Zion ([Ephrata, Pa.?: Johann Baumann?], n.d.), no. 1055 (Jesus stands between two hills filled with texts surrounded by symbols and text); Die verschiedenen Wege nach dem ewigen Leben oder dem endlosen Verderben. Das Neue Jerusalem (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, [ca. 1830–31]), no. 1406. 43. Seht doch am Creutzes-Holtz nur euren JESUM an, Er hat ja eure Schuld bezahlt und abgethan (n.p., 1747), no. 61; John Wesley, Auf Befehl von dem Ko¨nig der Ko¨nige . . . Das Welt-Gericht oder der Ju¨ngste Tag (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, 1829), nos. 731, 1459; Geistlicher Irrgarten, Mit Vier Gnadenbrunnen (Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1762), no. 188, identical in text but not in ornamentation with nos. 81 ([Ephrata, Pa.?: Ephrata Community], 1784), 184 ([Ephrata, Pa.?: Ephrata Community?], 1785), 227 (Ephrata, Pa.: [Ephrata Community], 1788), 1766 (New Market, Va.: Ambrosius Henkel, 1808), 440 (Reading, Pa.: Johann Ritter & Co., 1811), 988 (Harrisburg, Pa.: G. S. Peters, [1827–30?]), 1542 (n.p., n.d.), 992 (Sumneytown, Pa.: E. Benner, [after 1830]), 989 (Somerset, Pa.: G. Maurer, n.d.), 990 (n.p., n.d.), 993 (Chambersburg, Pa.: W. Ruby, [1826–29?]), 1623 (Allentown, Pa.: Gra¨ter und Blumer, [after 1830]), 991 (n.p., n.d.); Haben andre vielen Jammer, ruh ich sanft in meiner Kammer . . . E. G. 1786 ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community], 1786), no. 214; Ein kleiner Abriß von denen Irr- und Abwegen, derer von Gott gerufenen Seelen . . . Gestellt von Ezechiel Sangmeister (Ephrata, Pa.: Joseph Bauman, 1820), nos. 566, 1543. 44. On such talks in a Christian, Pietist household in Wu¨rttemberg in the early nineteenth century see Gleixner, Beate Hahn Paulus, 26 et passim. 45. Louis de Bloi, Dreyzehen Regeln, Wie man nach der vollkommenen Liebe GOTTES trachten solle; Aus Ludovico Blosio. Verdeutscht von Bernhart Peter Karl (Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur, 1741), no. 45; Das kleine A, B, C, in der Schule Christi, aus denen Wercklein des gottseligen Thomae a Kempis, In Reimen verfasset, und mit der H. Schrifft concordiret. Im Jahre Christi 1742 ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur I, 1742]), no. 50; Gru¨ndliche Anweisung zu einem heiligen Leben. Von einem Geistlich-gesinneten lang verstorbenen Lehrer. Ubersetzt 1747 (Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur, 1748), no. 62; Lebens-Regul Wie sie zu Rom aus Pa¨bstlichem Befehl an der Pa¨bstlichen Cantzley-Thu¨r angeschrieben stehet ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1764]), no. 86. 46. Lied Ueber die Erscheinung des Cometen, im Jahr 1811; Ein Lied, Ueber die Vollziehung der Strafe des Cometen im Jahr 1811; Von den Cometen, welche 1824 u¨ber America gestanden; Schuller, Ein Warnungs-Lied u¨ber den schwarzen Flecken; Wider die Nahrungs-Sorge; Zwey wahrhafte von gantz besondern Himmels-Zeichen!!! 47. Auf den allgemeinen den 7ten Decem. 1780; Christliches Buß-Lied, gestellt auf den 20sten Julius 1775, no. 127. 48. Von der Creuzigung JEsu Christi! ([Ephrata, Pa.: Samuel Baumann or Joseph Bauman], n.d.), nos. 1416, 1415. 49. Vom Leiden Christi ([New Market, Va.: A. Henkel, ca. 1816 or 1817]), no. 515; Von dem Leiden Christi (n.p., [1800]), no. 1414. 50. Joseph und seine Bru¨der (n.p., n.d.), nos. 1769, 1068, 1069, 1070, 1573; Joseph’s Lied. 51. It is certainly possible that pastors had such broadsides printed at their own expense in order to encourage members of their congregations to organize or attend house devotions. The few instances of such activities are mentioned in chapter 1; printers’ account books do not suggest that other pastors ordered such religious broadsides. 52. [Eckerlin], Die Richtschnur und Regel eines Streiters Jesu Christi; [Eckerlin], Ein sehr geistreicher Spiegel; JEtzt ist mein vieler schmertz; ES ist noch nicht am End, der Jammer bleibt noch stehen; 1. Corinth. 1 v. 81 [sic]; Die Stimme der Turteltaube, durch Sch. Barbara Schneeberger auf Antitum. 1776 ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1776]), no. 129; Andreas Schneeberger, Das Raben-Geschrey durch Bruder Andreas Schneeberger auf Antitum ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, ca. 1776]), no. 130; Schw. Barbara Schneeberger Trauer-Lieder

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([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, before 1770]), no. 1256; [Andreas Schneeberger], Wurde abgesungen den 31ten August, 1793: Bey B. A. S. auf dem ja¨hrlichen Fest, an der Antitum ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1793]), no. 262; COPIE Eines Briefs oder eine Antwort auf die Frage: Ob alle Menschen die zur Seelichkeit gelangen . . . Jacob Martin ([Ephrata, Pa.: Joseph Baumann?, 1805?]), nos. 346, 1715, 1716, 1717; Wann wird doch einst die Finsternis vergehen; Gedanken u¨ber den Zustand der Kirche, (sonderlich in Europa,) in der nahen Stunde der Versuchung, die u¨ber den ganzen Weltkreis kommen wird . . . Yalc. Avilas (n.p. [possibly Ephrata, Pa.], [1826–30]), no. 426; Des Heutigen Signals Charmen; [Tersteegen], Ein Auszug; Engel, Diese Regel soll nur eine Anweisung an das Testament seyn; Eine wahre Geschichte von einem alten Bruder und einem ju¨ngeren Bruder. 53. On this movement see Wellenreuther, Glaube und Politik. 54. Ein sehr kra¨ftiges Heiliges Gebet, welches zu Co¨lln in der Domkirche mit goldnen Buchstaben geschrieben steht (Cologne, [ca. 1750]), 1 Bl.: Ill, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Einbl. VII, 24 sid. The American title is almost identical; although we do not know the date or place of publication, it is probably safe to say that it and the subsequent editions were published in Maryland, where at that time the largest number of Catholics lived. There were four American editions, nos. 1319, 1320, 1321, 1723. 55. On whether this was Saur’s first or second publication from his newly established press see Durnbaugh, ‘‘Sauer Family.’’ 56. One of the very few copies is owned by the Swarthmore College Library, call no. BX7738.P125 W2. 57. ‘‘[D]ie sich im Leiblichen und Geistlichen vest und sicher gesetzt’’; ‘‘auf Christum den Felsen gegru¨ndet sind.’’ We are grateful to Dr. Su¨nne Juterczenka for providing biographical information on Benjamina Padley. 58. Rowntree, ‘‘Benjamin Lay.’’ 59. On Woolman see Woolman, Journal and Major Essays. 60. On the reform movement within the Pennsylvania Society of Friends see Wellenreuther, Glaube und Politik, chaps. 7–8. 61. On the German origins of the Inspired see Meier, Schwarzenauer Neuta¨ufer. Eventually the Inspired formed the Church of the Brethren. 62. [Johann Adam Gruber], Einfa¨ltige Warnungs- und Wa¨chter-Stimme An die gerufene Seelen dieser Zeit. Verfaßt im Jahr 1741. Von einem Geringen ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur I, 1741]), no. 47. 63. Fogleman, Jesus Is Female, 221, probably because it was reprinted by the decidedly anti-Moravian Lutheran pastor of Frankfurt Johann Philip Fresenius. See Fresenius, Bewa¨hrte Nachrichten von Herrnhuter Sachen, 3:297–303. 64. The first part of this pamphlet is dated December 1741. The pamphlet was probably printed in early 1742 and thus qualifies as one of the earliest critical voices against the Moravians’ ecumenical efforts. 65. ‘‘[E]r wird uns aufnehmen bey dunckler Stund, Und sta¨rcken den Glauben zu halten den Bund.’’ 66. ‘‘[D]er durch stro¨hmen von innen euch kann . . . versa¨umen den wahren Genuß.’’ 67. Wellenreuther, Ausbildung und Neubildung, 329–31; Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, chap. 1. 68. The latest and most convincing account of Ephrata is Bach, Voices of the Turtledoves. 69. [Eckerlin], Ein sehr geistreicher Spiegel; [Eckerlin], Die Richtschnur und Regel eines Streiters Jesu Christi. 70. On the ambivalent relationship of Saur to Beissel and Ephrata see Chronicon Ephratense, 66–67. The Chronicon suggests that throughout the 1740s and early 1750s relations between the two were rather poor. For autobiographical remarks of Eckerlin see ibid., 33–34, 54. 71. ‘‘[Den] Heremitten-Stand im Lager unter vielen Versuchungen in ein klo¨sterliches Leben [zu]verwandel[n].’’ Ibid., 91. 72. Ibid., 88–157, esp. 144–56; according to the Chronicon the ouster of Eckerlin was much less dramatic than as Sachse described it. Eckerlin left the cloister on September 4, 1745. On Israel Eckerlin see Sachse, German Sectarians, 1:135, 191, 383–84, 2:22, 215, 411; Bach, Voices of the Turtledoves, 51–52, 131, 133; Durnbaugh, Brethren Encyclopedia, 1:421. 73. ‘‘[D]ie Schwestern . . . verbrannten alle Lieder und Schriften unter ihnen, welche von seiner Hand gestellet waren, darunter sonderlich zwo Schriften waren, die eine genannt: der Wandel eines Einsamen, die andere aber: die Regul und Richtschnur eines Streiters Jesu Christi, also sammleten auch die Bru¨der alles, was von ihm herstammete, und u¨ber antworteten es einem Bruder zum Verbrennen.’’ Chronicon Ephratense, 156. 74. ‘‘Absonderung des Geists des Gemu¨ts von allen sinnlichen Dingen als welche bestehen in Ho¨ren, Sehen, Schmecken, Riechen und Empfinden.’’ 75. For a lucid description and analysis of the importance and meaning of Sophia to the mystics and in the writings of radical Pietists up to Conrad Beissel see Bach, Voices of the Turtledoves, chap. 4.

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76. ‘‘Dann wann Gott den Menschen wiedergefunden hat, so hat Gott seine verlorene Jungfrau wieder an dem Menschen, und der Mensch hat seine Jungfrau wieder in Gott. So stehet dann die ewige Weisheit dar, und ist unsere Schwester und Braut und der Sohn Gottes ist unser erstgeborenener Bruder. So sind wir wieder Kinder Gottes und seiner Liebe, und ist gefunden, was Adam verloren, als er von der Jungfrau zum Weibe gefallen.’’ 77. Kirschner, ‘‘From Hebron to Saron,’’ 49. In a letter dated September 3, 1743, Weiser railed ‘‘against the prevailing pomp and luxury, both in dress and magnificent buildings’’ at Ephrata. On Weiser’s time in Ephrata see Chronicon Ephratense, 58–61, 67–70. 78. ‘‘[E]in hitziger Werber um die Jungfrau [Sophia] . . . , so ging doch sein Bemu¨hen nur dahin, dieselbe unter seine Manns-macht zu bringen.’’ Chronicon Ephratense, 110. 79. ‘‘[D]urch diese Vertrautheit [mit Beissel] hat der Prior die Bru¨der so Schranckenma¨sig regieret, dass, wann einer gegen ihm eine Hand aufhub, es eine ausgemachte Sache war, dass er sich ha¨tte an Gott vergriffen, und sein ewiges Heil verscherzt.’’ Ibid., 112. 80. ‘‘Welt-fo¨rmige Haushaltung zum Unterhalt des natu¨rlichen Lebens . . . die Bru¨der zu Knechten, die Schwestern aber zu Ma¨gden gemacht wurden.’’ Ibid., 117. 81. ‘‘[G]eistliche Armuth/Nackendheit/Verlassenschaft und Entblo¨sung von allen erschaffenen Dingen. . . . Gnaden-Stuhl.’’ 82. ‘‘Daß solches zum ewigen Heil und Wohl durch seine Gnade mo¨ge beschicket werden. . . . [D]urch sein Verdienst und Mittler-Amt. . . . [A]llerseligste Weg des Wols und des Fridens.’’ 83. On the Ephrata press see Spohn, ‘‘Bauman/Bowman Family.’’ 84. It should be added that in the 1740s in particular many religious pamphlets were issued; see Wellenreuther, Ausbildung und Neubildung, 335, 469–73. 85. Gleixner, Beate Hahn Paulus, passim. 86. A sixth broadside, Ein sehr kraeftiges Heiliges Gebeth, was no doubt addressed to the few Catholics in the colony and the larger Catholic community in Maryland. 87. Gruber, So Bleibt Ein Redlich Hertz. On the beginning of the Schwarzenauer Neo-Baptists and the leading role of Eberhard Ludwig Gruber see Meier, Schwarzenauer Neuta¨ufer. 88. ‘‘[D]er Weg ist schmal, der zum Leben fu¨hret und wenig sind ihr, die ihn finden’’ (Matthew 7:14); ‘‘Laßt uns mitziehen, dasß wir mit ihm sterben’’ (John 11:16). Cited from the Martin Luther and the King James Bibles. 89. For other examples see below, 174–92. 90. Seachrist, ‘‘Snow Hill.’’ 91. Die Stimme der Turteltaube; Schneeberger, Das Raben-Geschrey. 92. Johann Baumann (1765–1809) was the founder. The printing press was continued by his son Samuel Baumann (1788–1820) and Samuel’s first cousin Joseph Bauman (1789–1862), who first moved the Ephrata press from the cloister to his own home in about 1817 and in 1830 to Shepherdstown, Cumberland County. http://www.lancasterlyrics.com/i_the_baumans/index.html (accessed October 23, 2007); Spohn, ‘‘Bauman/ Bowman Family.’’ 93. COPIE Eines Briefs; Wann wird doch einst die Finsternis vergehen; Gedanken u¨ber den Zustand der Kirche; Des Heutigen Signals Charmen; [Tersteegen], Ein Auszug; Engel, Diese Regel soll nur eine Anweisung an das Testament seyn; Eine wahre Geschichte von einem alten Bruder und einem ju¨ngeren Bruder. 94. COPIE Eines Briefs. 95. [Tersteegen], Ein Auszug. 96. ‘‘Ob alle Menschen die zur Seelichkeit gelangen zuvor ins inwendige Leben mu¨ssen versezt warden.’’ 97. ‘‘Der Mensch nach seinem ersten Ursprung ist geschaffen (oder Concentrirt) aus der ganzen Scho¨pfung Gottes . . . na¨mlich aus der Quinta Essentia [i.e., Begierde, Bewegnis, Angstqualita¨t, Feuerblitz, Liebe, Hall oder Schall, Versta¨ndnis] aller zeitlichen und ewigen Gescho¨pfen.’’ He explains man’s origins from the three ‘‘Haupt- oder Universal Principia . . . das Principium der Feuer-Welt, . . . der Englischen Licht-Welt und drittens [in] das Principium der Elementarischen und Astralischen Welt.’’ The soul, in such a context, is ‘‘frei mit ihrer Imagination zu wirken in welchem Principium sie will. . . . Wann die Seele ins inwendige Leben versetzt wird, so ist sie wieder beweglich im innwendigen Himmel, in Gottes Licht, und spielt mit Jungfrau Sophia im inneren Grunde. . . . So ist nun obgemeldetes inwendiges Leben eine Ausgeba¨hrung des inwendigen Lebens in der neuen Creatur, alwo Gott wohnet in seiner ewigen Liebe . . . und so jemand nur in den geringsten Grad der Seelichkeit versetzt wird, so ist gemeldtes Licht in solchem Grad in Centro in ihm ausgebohren, und steht also folglich im Genuß des inwendigen Lebens.’’

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98. ‘‘[A]nba¨ten, verherrlichen, lieben, und uns ihm gantz u¨bergeben. . . . Beystand und Trost seyn . . . in der Stunde deines Todes, wann dich alle Freunde verlassen.’’ 99. [Tersteegen], Ein Auszug. 100. A study of religious activities as manifested in the publications emanating from Ephrata and Snow Hill in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is sorely missing. Bach, Voices of the Turtledoves, does not deal with the period after 1770. A resurgence of eschatological thought in Wu¨rttemberg, Germany, is the subject of Kannenberg, Verschleierte Uhrentafeln. 101. The concept of mission, its changing position within early modern power relations and rule, and the emergence of a new understanding of mission at the end of the eighteenth century are discussed in Wellenreuther, ‘‘Mission.’’ 102. The dating of Gedanken u¨ber den Zustand der Kirche is based on the fact that Michael Hahn’s piece on Revelation was published in 1825 (Hahn, Briefe von der ersten Offenbarung Gottes). We have been unable to identify the author, Yalc. Avilas. It is unlikely that Reinhard, Gedanken u¨ber den Zustand der protestantischen Kirche (1796), to which is annexed Sack, Gedanken u¨ber den Zustand der protestantischen Kirche, was the archetype for the American broadside, because Sack was a follower of the philosopher Christian Wolff and in his many writings did not express any eschatological expectations. 103. This song is also reprinted individually in Erbauliches Lied. 104. Newton, Dissertations. 105. Jung-Stilling, Die Siegsgeschichte der christlichen Religion. Brauns, Praktische Belehrungen, 214, notes: ‘‘Von Philadelphia bis Reading, Easton und Lankaster findet man viele deutsche Schriften im ascetischen Fache, und insbesondere werden hier die Schriften Jung-Stillings so fleißı´g gelesen, als einst unter uns die Schriften eines Lafontaine, oder jetzt die von Walter Scott’’ (Between Philadelphia, Reading, Easton, and Lancaster many German texts were published in the ascetic mode, and especially the writings of Jung-Stilling are read as avidly as some time ago the writings of a Lafontaine or now those of Walter Scott). 106. Schmucker, Prophetic history of the Christian religion explained. Schmucker was a member of the Pennsylvania Lutheran Ministerium and from 1809 until 1852 pastor of the Lutheran congregation in York, Pennsylvania. On him see Rast, ‘‘Pietism and Mission,’’ and Do¨rfler-Dierken, Luthertum und Demokratie, 364–67. 107. Hahn, Briefe von der ersten Offenbarung Gottes. 108. Hahn was not ordained. He experienced a number of visions and conversions, began to preach in the late 1770s, and founded conventicles, the so-called Hahn’sche Gemeinschaften. See Fritz, Radikaler Pietismus in Wu¨rttemberg; Kannenberg, Verschleierte Uhrtafeln, 104 et passim. According to Fritz, Hahn was the most widely read author of eschatological writings in Wu¨rttemberg in the 1820s. 109. ‘‘[W]ird finden, daß diese Lichter, Dan. 12, 4, Amos 3, bedenkliche Abend- und Morgensterne sind, am Horizont unserer wichtigen Zeit der Auswanderung, daß bald ein allgemeines Schu¨tteln folgen wird, bis die Tochter Zion vom Staube falscher Lehren, und den Banden ihres Halses befreyet.’’ Fritz, Radikaler Pietismus in Wu¨rttemberg; on the context of Hahn and emigration see Lehmann, ‘‘Endzeiterwartung und Auswanderung,’’ and Kannenberg, Verschleierte Uhrtafeln, 68–82 et passim. 110. Particularly referring to the circle of Johann Jakob Schu¨tz and his Saalhofpietisten. See Deppermann, Johann Jakob Schu¨tz. 111. On Pastorius and the radical Pietists in Frankfurt and their plans for emigration see Diekmann, Lockruf der Neuen Welt, 37–55. 112. Kelpius founded a colony of hermits near Philadelphia on the Wissahickon Creek. The colony slowly dissolved after his death in 1708. A few of the hermits later joined Conrad Beissel’s movement. See Kelpius, Method of Prayer. 113. ‘‘Da kehrt man sanft und stille ein / in Christi Schoß sanft kindlich klein. . . . So werden Wunder Ding gesehen / im Innern Grund ihm offen stehen.’’ 114. Engel, Diese Regel soll nur eine Anweisung an das Testament seyn. 115. ‘‘Wort vorgetragen wird, zur Buße zu rufen. . . . [S]ich kindlich offenbaren, eins gegen das andere.’’ 116. For additional poems and hymns in this category see above, note 40. 117. Sterblicher du gehst vorbey. 118. Sehnsucht; Einladung fu¨r eine bußfertige Seele, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Ringe recht wenn Gottes Gnade’’; Joder, Anfang des christlichen Lebens, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Oh Heiliger Geist kehr bei uns ein.’’ 119. Wo ist ein Gott wie unser Gott, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Kommt Bru¨der kommt, wir eilen fort.’’ 120. Aufruf an die Christen, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Auf auf ihr Bru¨der und. . . .’’ 121. Zwey scho¨ne lehrreiche Liede, first song to be sung to the tune ‘‘Ihr jungen Helden aufgewacht,’’ second song to the tune ‘‘Wer nur den lieben Gott la¨sst walten.’’

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122. Die Kreuzigung Christi. 123. In addition to the poems and songs listed above, the following eleven songs belong in this category: Offt hast du mir zugeruffen, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Oh starcker Gott’’; Ein Bittend Lied, an den Scho¨pfer, to be sung to its own tune; Nur alleine Jesus, first song to be sung after the tune ‘‘Alle Menschen mu¨ssen sterben,’’ second song to the tune ‘‘Wer nur den lieben Gott la¨sst walten’’; Ueber der Scho¨pfung; Auf meinen Jesum will ich sterben, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Wer nur den lieben Gott la¨sst walten’’; Der Frommen Trost, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Bleib bei mir liebster Freund’’; Der erho¨hete Gott-Mensch; Gott ich preise deine Gu¨te; JEsus klagt u¨ber die abgefallenen Christen, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Ihr jungen Helden aufgewacht’’; Das obere Jerusalem, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Gott des Himmels und der Erde’’; Vier scho¨ne und trostreiche Buß-Lieder; Wohlthaten Jesu. 124. Von Isaacs Aufopferung, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Es ist ein wunder-scho¨ne Gab’’; Ein geistliches Lied von Abraham und seinem Sohn Isaac, text identical with Jacobs Trauerlied, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Nun Danket alle Gott.’’ 125. Ko¨nig Saul verfolget David. 126. Joseph’s Lied. 127. On these broadsides see below, 178–82. 128. Ein Betstund-Lied fu¨r die Christen, to be sung to the tune ‘‘Ihr jungen Helden aufgewacht’’; Auf der 81ten Seite im kleinen Notenbuch. 129. Psalm-Gesang Ps. 42. 130. Der Mensch pru¨fe aber sich selbst, und also esse er von diesem Brot . . . 1. Cor. 11, 28 (n.p., n.d.), no. 1158. 131. Der Tannenbaum, Ein geistlich Gedicht; Joseph’s Lied, see above, 153; Auf meinen Jesum will ich sterben, see above, 153 and note 123; Der Frommen Trost, see above, 153 and note 123; Vier scho¨ne und trostreiche BußLieder; Wohlthaten Jesu; Gedanken eines sterbenden Gla¨ubigen. 132. Der Tannenbaum, Ein geistlich Gedicht. 133. The mention of a ‘‘ruler’’ suggests a European origin for this broadside. 134. See above, 168–69. 135. Ein Geistlich Lied, welches der Verstorbene Bruder Johannes Landes gemacht hat ([Ephrata, Pa.: John Bauman, 1801 or later]), no. 1709. 136. ‘‘[K]urz ist die Zeit, der Tod geschwind.’’ 137. Gespra¨ch zwischen Todt, Doctor und der Edeldam (n.p., n.d.), no. 1003. The narrative suggests a European origin for this broadside. 138. Ein scho¨n geistlich Lied ([Ephrata, Pa.: Baumann?, ca. 1820]), nos. 1275, 1274, 1276 (the illustration points to H. W. Villee, Lancaster, Pa., ca. 1825–29, as printer), 1277. The German version may, though this is unproven, be a rough translation of an English poem. 139. Auf der 81ten Seite im kleinen Notenbuch; Ein scho¨n Lied zur Aufmunterung eines Christlichen Lebens; Ein scho¨n geistlich Lied ([Ephrata, Pa.?: Ephrata Community?, ca. 1770]), no. 1282; Von der Geduld der Christen; Ein musicalisches Lied. 140. Ein musicalisches Lied; Eine Unterweisung von der Nichtigkeit des menschlichen Lebens. 141. Eine Unterweisung von der Nichtigkeit des menschlichen Lebens. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid. 144. Ibid. 145. Ein scho¨n geistlich Lied, no. 1282. 146. The database Early American Imprints lists hundreds of such guides in English, including Reyner, Precepts for Christian practice; Mather, The good old way; C. Ellis, Christianity in short; Hall, The Christian (Evans 9688); Matthews, The Christian’s daily exercise. 147. See above, 67–76. 148. Der Sieg ist hoch vom Himmel her, ein starker und Allma¨chtiger ists, der die Kriege fu¨hret ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1765]), no. 59; Seht doch am Creutzes-Holtz nur euren JESUM an. We have identified the latter as a Saur publication based on a comparison of the letter ‘‘E’’ with Saur’s 1741 publication Bekantmachung, no. 48. 149. ‘‘Luzifer mit seinem gantzen Su¨nden-Heer.’’ 150. ‘‘Der Sieg hoch vom Himmel her. . . . Lucifer mit seinem ganzen Su¨nden Heer.’’ 151. This likewise implies that only Christoph Saur could have produced such a sophisticated work, since at that time only he had German types.

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152. Most likely composed by Nikolaus Decius in the 1530s. Biographisch-Bibliogaphisches Kirchenlexikon, vol. 1, 1239–40 (online edition). 153. ‘‘Doch Jesum glaubens-voll, auch euren Heiland nennen.’’ 154. ‘‘Laß mich wie Wachs noch ganz zerfliessen, in dieser deiner Liebesglut.’’ 155. The colophon of the first edition states, ‘‘Philadelphia, Pa.: Gedruckt by Henrich Miller, im Jahr nach der Erlo¨sung aus dem Irrgarten und Ero¨ffnung der Himmelsthu¨r.’’ 156. ‘‘Im Jahr nach der Erlo¨sung aus dem Irrgarten und Ero¨ffnung der Himmelsthu¨r.’’ 157. Mazes date back to ancient Greece and were a particularly prominent feature of floors in medieval cathedrals. They began to gain wider popularity and social significance in the seventeenth century. See Lassenius, Lust- und Irrgarten eines gewissenlosen Amorrhei; Schnabel, Der im Irrgarten der Liebe Herum taumelnde; Immermann, Der im Irrgarten der Metrik herumtaumelnde Cavalier. 158. Der Him[m]el ist mein Stuhl und die Erde meiner Fu¨se Schemel ([Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Community, 1786]), no. 213. 159. On the biblical Joseph figure in literature see Golka, Joseph—biblische Gestalt und literarische Figur. Literary productions in German include Hecker, Joseph als ein Vorbild Jesu Christi (ca. 1747); Boguslawski, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1782); Duval, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1820); Vogel, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1847); Ploennies, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1866); Frohmut, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1894); Bin Gorion, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1917); Rainis, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1921); Prugel, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1950); Wiemer, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1964); Georgeot, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1966); Lemke and Lemke-Pricken, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1978); Steinmann and Steinmann, Joseph und seine elf Bru¨der (1989); Auld, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (2001). 160. See Bartlett, Poems (1732); Davenport, Meditations on several divine subjects (1748); History of Joseph and his brethren (ca. 1735–56); Handel, Israel in Egypt (1740) and Sacred oratorios (1799); Extract of a letter wrote by a pious person (1773?); Joseph, governor of Egypt (1798). 161. Kunzen, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1757); Metastasio, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1782) and Der egyptische Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1830); Me´hul, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1893); Koerppen, Joseph und seine Bru¨der (1969); Mu¨nden and Antes, Der Joseph und seine Bru¨der (2004). Handel’s oratorio aside, in 1727 Johann Mattheson wrote an oratorio entitled Gegen seine Bru¨der barmherzige Joseph; see Marx, Johann Mattheson, and Leopold and Scheideler, Oratorienfu¨hrer, 458. 162. Nos. 698 (1827), 747 (1830), 1044 (ca. 1827–30); the printing quality of no. 747 is especially good. 163. No. 728 (1829). 164. See above, 102. 165. A comparison with the English version shows that this part of the story is certainly not copied from it. 166. See above, 93. 167. Gleixner, Beate Hahn Paulus, 114–15 et passim. 168. ‘‘Selig ist der und heilig, der Theil hat an der ersten Auferstehung; u¨ber solche hat der andere Tod keine Macht.’’ 169. We are grateful to Professor Roeber for drawing our attention to these iconographic contexts and their meaning. 170. See Majestas Domini, Hitda Codex, ca. 1000 for St. Walpurga, Meschede, now in Universita¨ts and Landesbibliothek Darmstadt, Germany. The image is reproduced at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universit% C3%A4ts-_und_Landesbibliothek_Darmstadt (accessed January 18, 2008). 171. Chapter 2, section ‘‘Daily Life in the German House III: Learning to Be a Christian.’’ 172. ‘‘Wir ko¨nnen mitten unter den Gescha¨fften des Lebens . . . einige Augenblicke ganz auf Gott gerichtet seyn . . . und wir sind wahrhaftig anda¨chtig gewesen, ohne dass jemand außer uns, wie auch gar nicht zur Sache geho¨rt, etwas von unsrer Andacht wusste oder ahndete. . . . Wo Andacht ist, da pflegt auch Ruhe der Seele zu seyn. In dem Aufruhr der Leidenschaften erhebt sich selten die Ruhe zu Gott, oder ihre Erhebung gleicht einer jeden andern Empfindung in diesem Zustande, die keinen vorzu¨glichen Werth hat, und keine merkliche Spur zuru¨ckla¨sst.’’ [Niemeyer], Timotheus, pt. 1, 53–54. 173. Silverman, Life and Times of Cotton Mather. 174. ‘‘[W]as wohlgetan und was Gerechtigkeit, wodurch ein Mensch zum Himmel wird bereit.’’ Das fromme Ma¨gdlein (n.p., [after 1830]), no. 962. 175. ‘‘Ihr Eltern! Bringet fru¨he Eure Kinder zu Jesu. Last es nicht genug seyn, das sie auf seinen Namen getauft sind, sondern bringt sie ihm ta¨glich im Gebeth. Redet mit ihnen sobald sie es fassen ko¨nnen, von dem menschenliebenden und freundlichen Heilande, ziehet sie auf in der Zucht und Ermahnung zum

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Herrn. . . . Sorget dafu¨r, dass sie von Jesu Christo den Segen empfangen.’’ Jesus segnet Kleine, Kinder ([Reamstown, Pa.?]: Peter Montelius, [ca. 1821?]), no. 1059. 176. Der Glaube (Reamstown, Pa.: Peter Montelius, 1822), no. 1712. 177. Himmels-Brief, nach welchem sich jeder kluge Hausvater mit seiner Familie genau richten soll (n.p., [1815]), no. 494. 178. See above, 93–98. 179. See the numerical summary in table 16. 180. Eine Vorstellung von Begebenheiten; Ich sahe ein Lamm stehen oben auf dem Berge Zion; Auf Befehl von dem Ko¨nig der Ko¨nige. 181. Revelation 17:3–5. 182. The dates follow the classical patterns outlined in the numerous chronologies published in the early modern period. See Historische Tabellenwerke (ca. 1545–1735) of the Digitalisierungszentrum of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, http://www.muenchener-digitalisierungszentrum.de/ (accessed February 5, 2008). And see, for example, Hufnagel, Historia in tabulis, table 1. 183. ‘‘Hierauf erfolgt die Ero¨ffnung der Siegel, und das Blasen der Trompeten, welches hier durch mathematische Proportionen vorgestellt wird. In wie ferne diese mit den Begebenheiten, die sie vorstellen sollen, u¨bereinkommen, ist dem Urtheile eines jeglichen, aufrichtigen und versta¨ndigen Mannes u¨berlassen, der die Sache unpartheyisch untersucht.’’ 184. Kannenberg, Verschleierte Uhrtafeln, 21–27, 188–91. 185. SISIS no. 00001704, undated, Digitalisierungszentrum of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The Bavarian copy is uncolored. Its size is 31 x 39 cm, and that of the American broadside is 32 x 40.5 cm. 186. On the tree of life in iconography see M. Schmidt, Warum ein Apfel, 26–36. 187. Auf Befehl von dem Ko¨nig der Ko¨nige . . . das Welt-Gericht oder der Ju¨ngste Tag (Harrisburg, Pa: Gustav S. Peters, n.d.), no. 1459. 188. But see Sterbebrief der Maria Liechti. 189. The attribution is based on the Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (ESTC). On Rowland Hill see Sidney, Life of Rev. Rowland Hill. Hill was cofounder of the Religious Tract Society and an active member of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the London Missionary Society. 190. Information from the ESTC. 191. All quotations are from the English text version; see above, note 189. 192. ‘‘Das folgende wurde von dem Ehrw. John Wesley, von London, geschrieben, im Jahr 1774; und wurde zum Ko¨nig von England geschickt, zu der Zeit wenn das Ju¨ngste Gericht auf dem Theater aufgefu¨hrt wurde, welches seit dieser Zeit nicht mehr gespielt worden ist.’’ 193. Das neue Jerusalem (n.p., [ca. 1830]), no. 757. 194. On peddlers as intermediaries see chapter 1.

Chapter 4 1. Rothermund, ‘‘German Problem’’; G. Weaver, ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’; Roeber, ‘‘ ‘Origin of Whatever Is Not English’ ’’; Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, chaps. 4–7. 2. Le Roy and Leininger, Die Erza¨hlungen von Marie Le Roy und Barbara Leininger, 12–14 (Evans 8347). 3. On this crisis see Hutson, Pennsylvania Politics. 4. See below the analysis of the broadsides published in 1764 and 1765. 5. It is probably not accidental that the study recalls Handlin’s seminal yet problematic study The Uprooted. 6. See too Ha¨berlein, Practice of Pluralism. 7. For the older view of the role of Germans in Pennsylvania politics see Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics, 17–19, 41, 187–88. For a slightly more sophisticated view see Newcomb, Political Partisanship, 82–83. Tully, Forming American Politics, 295–304, on the other hand, interprets German political behavior and concepts solely in relation to what he terms ‘‘civil Quakerism.’’ Longenecker, The Christopher Sauers, chap. 4, defines German politics within a dichotomous perception of Pennsylvania politics in which the Saurs always opted for the party of freedom and rights. 8. See above, 141. 9. See Aland, Wellenreuther, et al., Korrespondenz Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenbergs, vol. 5.

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10. Justus Heinrich Christian Helmuth, Geliebte Mitbru¨der und Glaubensgenossen in Northampton Caunty . . . Philadelphia, den 28. Ma¨rz 1799 ([Philadelphia, 1799]), no. 297, where he warns Germans not to join the Fries Rebellion against taxes. 11. Both Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, and Nolt, Foreigners in Their Own Land, view Pennsylvania German politics largely through the eyes of German Lutheran and Reformed pastors, whose actions and role hold center stage in their analysis. 12. See below, 240–41. 13. See above, 43–46. 14. See below, 226–32. 15. ‘‘[D]ie deutschen Truppen. . . . zum Meineid zu verflu¨hren. . . . Der Deutsche ist standhaft und sucht seinen Ruhm darin ein ehrlicher Mann zu bleiben.’’ Andreas Emmerich, [An die Deutschen in America.] Es ist ein Blatt unter dem Namen einer Proclamation von General Putnam, datiert den 16. November 1777, ausgestreuet worden ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur Jr. and Peter Saur, 1777]), no. 144. The German text says ‘‘ihm seine Treue wankend zu machen’’; ‘‘Treue’’ here clearly means not just fidelity, but ‘‘Treue’’ to one’s sovereign. ¨ bermuts mit Undank und Ungehorsam.’’ 16. ‘‘Raserei Deines U 17. ‘‘[L]asset uns unsern ehrlichen Namen und erwartet das Ende.’’ 18. Emmerich, [An die Deutschen in America], no. 144. Emmerich’s broadside is neither dated nor does it say where it was printed. But it must have been published within days after Putnam’s broadside was circulated and was most likely printed in Germantown, which was occupied by the British Army. 19. Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property, is the outstanding exception. 20. The exception again is Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property. 21. In Wu¨rttemberg as well as in Baden and the Palatinate the political cultures had generated a political language and terminology largely foreign to the political culture of the British colonies. Germans responded to the new political terminology in America either by translating verbatim—‘‘freeholder’’ into ‘‘freihalter’’—or by adopting the English term wholesale. For a more detailed discussion of this issue see Wellenreuther, ‘‘On Lehnwo¨rter.’’ 22. Ein Wohl-gemeindter und Ernstlicher Rath an unsere Lands-Leute, die Teutschen ([Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1741]), no. 1775. Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, 129, erroneously dates this broadside 1755; on Conrad Weiser see Wallace, Conrad Weiser. 23. An die Deutschen, vornehmlich die zum Wa¨hlen berechtigten, in Philadelphia- Bucks- und Berks Caunty ([Philadelphia, 1754?]), no. 1824. 24. [Christoph Saur], Eine zu dieser Zeit ho¨chstno¨thige Warnung und Erinnerung an die freye Einwohner der Provintz Pensylvanien von Einem, dem die Wohlfahrt des Landes angelegen und darauf bedacht ist ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur I, 1755]), no. 70. The attribution to Saur is based on the fact that William Smith attacked Saur personally in his Brief State, to which Saur responds in this broadside. See below. See Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, 128–30, for the role of the German Relief Society in this context. 25. Montgomery, Political Handbook, 9. 26. On the Charter of Privileges and Liberties and its effect on Pennsylvania’s political culture see Young, ‘‘Evolution of the Pennsylvania Assembly,’’ and on the election of county officials see Keller, ‘‘Rise of Representation.’’ 27. Wellenreuther, ‘‘Political Dilemma.’’ 28. Hershberger, ‘‘Pacifism and the State’’; Wellenreuther, Glaube und Politik. 29. Parsons, ‘‘Bloody Election.’’ 30. ‘‘Obs recht sey dem Keiser Zins zu geben oder nicht?’’ 31. Conrad Weiser is referring to James Logan’s criticism of the political stance of the Society of Friends. For Logan’s criticism see Wellenreuther, Glaube und Politik, 131–32. 32. Diamondstone, ‘‘Philadelphia’s Municipal Corporation.’’ 33. ‘‘[S]o sind die Rechten und Freiheiten der alten inneren Counties auf ewig verloren. . . . Ma¨nner, welche euch so lange, so mannhaft und so tugendhaft vor dem Rachen der ha¨rtesten Unterdru¨ckung bewahret haben.’’ 34. Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, May 9, 1753, in Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 4, http:// franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp. Franklin’s reference is to Kolben, Beschreibung des Vorgebu¨rges der Guten Hoffnung. The first English translation appeared in 1731: Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope. 35. In his report on the charity scheme to establish schools for German settlers to learn English, William Smith actually envisioned the possibility of a bilingual society in Pennsylvania, in which the English children would learn German and the German children English. See Smith, Brief History of the Rise and Progress, 10.

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36. [Clarke], Observations On the late and present Conduct of the French, 13–14; Gentleman’s Magazine 25 (1755): 483–85. 37. Franklin, ‘‘Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind,’’ in Observations On the late and present Conduct of the French, quoted from Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 4, 225–35, http://franklinpapers.org/ franklin/framedVolumes.jsp. 38. On this charge see Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, chaps. 5–7. 39. Hertrampf, ‘‘Unsere Indianer-Geschwister,’’ 99–103. 40. Smith, Brief State, 38, on the Moravians, and 42, where Smith suggests, first, that the English Parliament pass a law that would require an oath of allegiance from all members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, which would have excluded all Quakers from the assembly; and second, that Parliament ‘‘suspend the Right of Voting for Members of the Assembly from the Germans, till they have a sufficient Knowledge of our Language and Constitution.’’ 41. Ibid., 17. 42. Ibid., 31. 43. Ibid., 28. 44. Ibid., 29. 45. ‘‘[I]hnen ihre Freyheit wieder abzunehmen die sie theuer bezahlt haben auf solche Weiße wie sies nennen ‘Checks to the power of the People,’ das ist, wir mu¨ssen dem gemeinen Volck Einhalt thun und ihnen die Macht benehmen, die sie haben.’’ [Saur], Eine zu dieser Zeit ho¨chstno¨thige Warnung und Erinnerung, recto. Adams, ‘‘Colonial German-Language Press,’’ 179–80, erroneously dates this pamphlet to 1764 and therefore ignores the controversy with William Smith. He correctly characterizes the broadside as a disquisition on ‘‘a basic principle of Whig political theory’’ (ibid., 180). Dating the pamphlet to 1764 implies, too, that Adams assumed that Saur II and not Saur I was the author of the pamphlet. Adams’s thesis, that Whiggish thinking became part of German political thought only in the context of the 1764 election, is false; it was part of German political thought by the beginning of the French and Indian War. 46. ‘‘[E]ure Rechte und Privilegien sollen aufgegeben und u¨berlieffert werden in die Ha¨nde eurer Einheimischen Feinde.’’ [Saur], Ho¨chstno¨thige Warnung, 2. 47. ‘‘Die Freyheit . . . ist unser natu¨rliches Recht. Ein Recht, welches zu behaupten, der GOTT der Natur und Tugend euch auffordert, und wird euch auch unterstu¨tzen, dass ihr solche erhalten und behalten ko¨nnet. Eure Regenten haben die Gewalt bekommen euch zu beschu¨tzen, und nicht euch zu unterdru¨cken. Eure Regierung ist so eingerichtet, dass ihr die Ha¨lffte der Verordnungen und Gesetze zu machen bekommen habt: Und ihr habt durch die Natur und durch die Grund-Regeln eines Landes-Rechts das ganze EigenthumsRecht u¨ber euren Beutel und Uibriges was ihr besitzet. Ihr allein seyd das grose Gegen-Gewicht, und habet die Macht dem andern Theil der Regierung einzureden, und zu machen, dass es in seinen gebu¨hrenden Schrancken bleibe. Wan es seine Grentzen zu weit und zu lang u¨berschreitet so ist es Eure Schuld, und ihr seyds, die dadurch eure Assamble-Ma¨nner [als deren Pflicht und Nutzen es ist] die Werckzeuge der Unterdru¨ckung zur Rechenschafft fordern ko¨nnet, und sie zu straffen habt; und sie die Assemblee-Ma¨nner ko¨nnen die Magistraten und Ober-Machten abhalten, daß sie nicht unter dem Vorwand der Rechten und Gesetze den Ra¨ubern und Plu¨nderern der Menschen beystehen’’ (bold in original). Ibid. 48. Tully, Forming American Politics, chaps. 4–5; Newcomb, Political Partisanship, chaps. 3–4. 49. The Charter is conveniently reprinted at http://www.constitution.org/bcp/penncharpriv.htm (accessed January 15, 2009). 50. Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois was first published in English in 1750 and translated into German in 1753. See Montesquieu, Spirit of laws, and Des Herrn von Montesquiou Werk von den Gesetzen. 51. On the acceptance of Pufendorf ’s natural rights concept in North America, see Augat, ‘‘Die Aufnahme der Lehren Samuel Pufendorfs,’’ 43–70; Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle, on Bolingbroke’s political thought; Bailyn, Ideological Origins, and Robbins, Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman, on the influence of Commonwealth political theories on the eighteenth century; Bailyn, Origins of American Politics, on corruption as a prime factor in colonial politics; and Wellenreuther, ‘‘Korruption,’’ on Walpole’s constitutionel model. Saur’s broadside has thus far escaped close analysis as a statement of constitutional and political views. See Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, 129. 52. Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, 130–34. 53. The standard account of this crisis is Hutson, Pennsylvania Politics. 54. On the Paxton Boys riots see Dunbar, Paxton Papers; Jacobs, Paxton Riots; and Frantz, Paxton. We have not yet seen Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost.

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55. Hutson, Pennsylvania Politics, chap. 3. The lieutenant-governors were tightly bound to the instructions of the proprietors, in this case of Thomas Penn. In the 1760s and 1770s the two younger brothers of Thomas Penn, John Penn and Richard Penn, were both acting governors in Pennsylvania, and they had much more leeway in their decisions than ordinary lieutenant-governors enjoyed. Thus, scholars have usually used terms like ‘‘Proprietary Party,’’ ‘‘proprietor,’’ and ‘‘governor’’ interchangeably when addressing issues in which all three were involved. The controversy of 1764/65 clearly was such an issue because it was essentially triggered by a proprietary instruction. It was Franklin’s mission in London to rid the colony of these proprietary instructions. 56. Eine lustige Aria, u¨ber die letztgeschehene Unruhen in Philadelphia ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1764]), no. 22. 57. The Deutsches Lied archive of German songs lists ‘‘Ihr scho¨nen ho¨ret an. Erwa¨hlet das studieren,’’ a student song from the fifteenth century; a version with a new melody by J. G. Scholtze in 1763; and one with a melody perhaps composed by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1736. http://www.deutscheslied.com/de/songs.htm. 58. Die Wilden nennten man Freunde Die Zahmen aber Feinde Die doch niemand beschwert Auch nichts Unrechts begehrt Die Wilden thun verheeren, Dafu¨r thut man sie ehren Und spricht sie seynd getaufft Und wie wir erkauft. 59. Ein Weisser wirds nicht bill’gen Daß man darin soll will’gen Zu stehn den Wilden bey. . . . Man soll die Weissen schu¨tzen Wie sehr die Feinde blitzen So wird der Streit gestillt Der Leut ihr Will erfu¨llt. 60. The broadside is proof that Henrich Miller, a Moravian, was neither a pacifist nor unwilling to print texts critical of Moravians or of converted Indians under the charge of Moravians. On Miller see chapter 1 and MAB Fonds PP MH, Papers of Henrich Miller, Archives of the Moravian Church, Bethelehem, and Lineback, ‘‘Diary of Johann Heinrich Mu¨ller.’’ 61. Ein scho¨n weltlich Lied ([Philadelphia: Anton Armbru¨ster, 1764]), no. 90. We have been unable to identify the melody. 62. Other voices, of course, were represented in other print media, most importantly Saur’s newspaper and some pamphlets in German. 63. Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 11, 42–69. 64. The narrative here follows that of Benjamin Franklin in a March 14, 1764, letter to John Fothergill, a prominent Quaker and medical doctor in London. ‘‘The Assembly receiv’d a Governor of the Proprietary Family with open Arms, address’d him with sincere Expressions of Kindness and Respect, open’d their Purses to him, and presented him with Six Hundred Pounds; made a Riot Act and prepar’d a Militia Bill immediately at his Instance; granted Supplies and did every thing that he requested, and promis’d themselves great Happiness under his Administration. But suddenly, his dropping all Enquiry after the Murderers, and his answering the Deputies of the Rioters privately and refusing the Presence of the Assembly who were equally concern’d in the Matters contain’d in their Remonstrance, brings him under Suspicion; his Insulting the Assembly without the least Provocation, by charging them with Disloyalty and with making an Infringement on the King’s Prerogatives, only because they had presumed to name in a Bill offered for his Assent, a trifling Officer (somewhat like one of your Tool-Gatherers at a Turn pike) without consulting him; and his refusing several of their Bills, or proposing Amendments needlessly disgusting; these Things bring him and his Government into sudden Contempt; all Regard for him in the Assembly is lost; all Hopes of Happiness under a Proprietary Government are at an End; it has now scarce Authority enough left to keep the common Peace; and was another Mob to come against him, I question whether, tho’ a Dozen Men were sufficient, one could

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find so many in Philadelphia, willing to rescue him or his Attorney-General, I won’t say from Hanging, but from any common Insult. All this, too, has happened in a few Weeks!’’ Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 11, 101–5. 65. Printed in Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 11, 365. 66. An Seine Ko¨nigliche Majesta¨t, in Dero Rath. Die Bittschrift der Erblehenleute und Einwohner der Provinz Pennsylvanien ([Philadelphia: Anton Armbru¨ster, 1764]), no. 89; the English edition is in Evans 9875. 67. ‘‘Weil viele Deutsche die Englische Bittschrift, die jetzt zum Unterschreiben herumgetragen wird, nicht verstehen, und kein versta¨ndiger Mann etwas unterschreiben wird, das er nicht verstehet; so hat man diese Bittschrift treulich verdeutschen lassen.’’ 68. Seiner Ko¨niglichen Erhabensten Majesta¨t im Hohen Rath, nahe sich Diese demu¨thigste Vorstellung und Bitte von Seiner Majesta¨t gehorsamst-getreuen Unthertanen, den freyen Einwohnern der Provinz Pennsylvanien ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1764]), no. 91. 69. But see Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, 158–60, who argues, with good reason, that probably due to the backstage support of Heinrich Melchior Mu¨hlenberg and other Lutheran pastors, a large number of German Lutherans voted for the Proprietary ticket. 70. Ho¨ret ihr deutsche Bu¨rger in Philadelphia, daß euch GOtt auch ho¨re! ([Philadelphia: Anton Armbru¨ster, 1764]), no. 87. Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property, 284–86, discusses this broadside at some length. His ascription of authorship to Christoph Saur II, however, is unconvincing for a number of reasons. First, in 1765 Saur expressly wrote in his Wertheste Landes-Leute, Sonderlich in Philadelphia Bucks und Berks-Caunty that he ‘‘bey voriger Election so still und unpartheyisch betragen [habe]’’ ([Germantown, Pa.: Christoph Saur II, 1765]), no. 92. Saur dated the broadside ‘‘Germantown, den 18ten September 1765.’’ Second, it would have been most unlikely for Saur to have a text of his printed by Anton Armbru¨ster, his competitor. Third, the crudeness of the language of the 1764 text betrays another hand than Saur’s. The fact that he was not the author of this broadside does not mean that he disagreed with its contents, however. The most likely author would be Anton Armbru¨ster, who had already printed the counterpetition An Seine Ko¨nigliche Majesta¨t as well as Ho¨ret ihr deutsche Bu¨rger in Philadelphia. A number of longer pamphlets in German published during this election campaign are discussed in Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, 156–59. 71. Anton Armbru¨ster presents something of a problem. He arrived in the mid-1740s from Germany and soon became a business associate of or a journeyman for Benjamin Franklin. For a while he published, probably with Franklin’s assistance, a German-language newspaper that tried to compete with Christoph Saur’s paper. The venture does not seem to have been successful. Armbru¨ster’s business career reached a low in 1761–62; no publications of his during those years appear in the catalogue of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS). Then suddenly his output took off. The AAS owns six of his publications from 1763, a staggering forty-nine from 1764, and twenty-seven from 1765. Then his output quickly dropped again: four titles from 1766 appear in the catalogue, two from 1767, one from 1768, and none thereafter. An analysis of the Armbru¨ster publications in the Early American Imprints database yields roughly the same results. A closer look at the publications from 1764 and 1765 shows that in these two busy years Armbru¨ster scrupulously printed both pro- and anti-Franklin and pro- and anti-change-of-government pamphlets both in English and in German—see, for example, Evans 41456, 9561, 9581 (anti-Franklin), 9577 (pro-Franklin), 9575 (antiFranklin), 9655 (pro-Franklin). His ups and downs seem to have been the result of financial problems. On June 13, 1763, Armbru¨ster wrote a letter to Benjamin Franklin in which he complains that Franklin had not answered his previous letter begging him for a loan. Now he entreats him to ‘‘send orders to procure me the sum you gave me some hopes of ’’ because ‘‘I do assure you the distress is very great and if you do not rescue me, I shall be a great sufferer in my business.’’ Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 10, 289. If Armbru¨ster received the financial support he asked for, it would explain his higher printing output in 1764 and 1765. But he probably overreached himself again with the many publications he produced in those years. On October 29, 1765, Armbru¨ster signed a legal document in which he acknowledged that on October 31, 1764, he had signed a bond for £88.05.00; he now signed over all his printing shop equipment to Franklin as security that he would repay with interest the sums he had received in October 1764. On October 7, 1772, Franklin asked Richard Bache whether Armbru¨ster had yet paid his debts to him, and Bache replied on January 4, 1773, that ‘‘Armbruster hath never paid any thing, nor is it likely that he ever will pay any thing, he has been in Jail, and is an idle, drunken good for nothing Fellow; The Types he had were distrained for Rent, and by my Mother replevied, in Consequence of which she was obliged to pay £35. to get possession of the Types, and it is a Doubt with me whether they are worth this Sum.’’ Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 10, 314, and vol. 11, 4. In the 1780s Armbru¨ster once more pleaded with Franklin for financial assistance, but Franklin does not seem to have replied. Armbru¨ster died in 1796. Adams, ‘‘Colonial German-Language Press,’’ 162–64, 181,

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191; Frasca, Benjamin Franklin’s Printing Network, 111–14, 145, 174; Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, 93–94, 157; Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property, 190, 286. 72. Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 11, 397–98. 73. The election results are printed in ibid., 390. 74. On Christoph Saur II see chapter 1. 75. ‘‘Und hierzu mo¨chte es hinla¨nglich seyn, wann nur in den oben-gemeldeten drey Caunties eine Wechselung gescha¨he, so wu¨rden unsere Vorrechte versichert; dann durch das ganze Land eine neue Assemblee zu erwehlen, wolte ich nicht rathen, es mo¨chte auf der anderen Seite bedenckliche Folgen nach sich ziehen. . . . Bleibt dieses Gleichgewicht im Haus der Assamblee, so kann ich nicht sehen . . . woher wir glauben sollen, dass wir ein einiges von den fu¨rchterlichen Ungeheuern zu befu¨rchten haben, womit uns des M. Francklins Anha¨nger drohen.’’ Saur, Wertheste Landes-Leute. 76. The controversy over the change of government again spilled over into the public with the printing of a protest by a number of assembly members against the formal appointment of Benjamin Franklin as Pennsylvania’s agent in England. The protest was published in both an English and a German broadside. Protestation gegen die Bestellung Herrn Benjamin Franklins zu einem Agenten fu¨r diese Provinz ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1764]), no. 23. The signers were John Dickinson, William Allen, George Bryan, Henrich Keppele, David MacCanaughy, John Montgomery, Isaac Saunders, Amos Strettel, George Taylor, and Thomas Willing. Franklin’s response to this protest was likewise published in German: Anmerkungen u¨ber eine neuliche Protestation gegen die Bestellung Herrn Benjamin Franklins zu einem Agenten fu¨r diese Provinz ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1764]), no. 21. 77. In der Assembly, Samstags den 2ten September, 1765, Vormittags . . . Sta¨mpfel-Taxen (Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, [1765]), no. 30. 78. An die Deutschen, vornehmlich die zum Wa¨hlen berechtigten, in Philadelphia- Bucks- und Berks Caunty (Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1765), no. 27. 79. See above, 207–11. 80. Nun Will ich Valediciren Nun So Will ich ([New York: John Holt, 1769]), no. 100 (probably published in early January); John Morin Scott, Zur nach right ([New York, 1769]), no. 101; Nutzliche Gegen Nachricht, an die samtliche Hoch-Teutsche in der Stadt New-York, von zwey Wohlmeinenden Lands Leuten ([New York, 1769]), no. 106. Only Scott’s was published in a newspaper. 81. On the political context of this controversy see Tiedemann, Reluctant Revolutionaries, 130–35. The author does not consider the role of the German vote. 82. [D]as ich solte die Hochdeutschen in dieser Stat, solte feur braende geheisen habe. . . . [D]as ich solckes nimmermaker, bey meiner besten Erkaenntnis oder getenckens solche worde oder Expressions. . . . [A]n den nechsten Stimoder wahl Dag.’’ 83. ‘‘[J]eder vernunftiger Lutherischer and Reformirter Christ whol weis, dass beide Religionen, haupt und so zu sagen Original Religionen sind.’’ Nutzliche Gegen Nachricht. Scott and his party had attempted to split their adversaries by suggesting that the ‘‘Dissenters’’ should be allowed to name two candidates of their own. This suggestion was rejected. The discussion was related to the larger issue of the foundation of a college and the nature of denominational versus interdenominational politics. 84. ‘‘[T]eutschen Wassermann . . . solche aus dem Englischen ins Teutsche zu u¨bersetzen, der . . . weder buchstabiren noch lesen kann.’’ Ibid. The quotations from this broadside show that the authors’ knowledge of German also left something to be desired. 85. Mu¨hlenberg repeatedly tried to get the colonial government to strengthen the hands of the Protestant pastors in controversies with their congregations. Splitter, Pastors, People, Politics, 156 et passim. 86. Ein Lied von dem gegenwa¨rtigen Zustand in America ([Lancaster, Pa.: Francis Bailey, 1774]), no. 119. 87. Ein Lied gegen das unrechte Verfahren des Ko¨nigs, gegen America ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1775]), nos. 125, 124. Place of publication and attribution to Miller are based on verse 9, where the author claims that even Quakers and Mennonites are preparing for war. Christoph Saur was by that time clearly a Loyalist. 88. See Pencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America. 89. Questioning loyalty to the king was until early 1776 an attitude that caught the attention of the Committees of Inspection and Observation and usually drew severe sanctions. See Wellenreuther, ‘‘Associations,’’ 49; Marion Stange, ‘‘Defining a Nation: Patriotic Associations, 1774–1776,’’ in Wellenreuther, Revolution of the People, 67–89, esp. 75–76. 90. Ein Lied von Lord Nord (n.p., [1775]), no. 1921. 91. Das Trauer Lied der unterdru¨ckten Freyheit (n.p., [1775]), no. 128. See Wellenreuther, ‘‘From the Past to the Future.’’

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92. ‘‘[D]ie tapfre Freyheit So¨hne / Leben, Freyheit, Eigenthum / Vor des Feindes Mord Getho¨ne / Zu beschu¨tzen, schlugen um.’’ 93. ‘‘Recht ist unsere Sieges-Fahle / Unschuld unser Feld Panier.’’ 94. ‘‘Tod oder frey, will ich seyn.’’ 95. Christliches Buß-Lied, gestellt auf den 20ten Julius 1775 in Nord-Amerika gehaltenen Fast-Tag ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller?, 1775]), nos. 127, 126 (after 1830). Considering the general tenor of the song, we ought to ascribe it to Christoph Saur rather than to Henrich Miller as the most likely printer. But we do not know of any broadside or political publication of Saur in 1774 or 1775—Saur’s first political publication after 1774 is the 1777 proclamation of Lord Howe. The broadside therefore must have come from the press of Henrich Miller, despite the fact that he was a staunch defender of the Revolutionaries at that time. 96. ‘‘[D]aß wir nach dem verborgnen Schatz in unserm Herzen spu¨ren.’’ 97. Wellenreuther, ‘‘Associations.’’ 98. The only study is Berger, Broadsides and Bayonets, 102–24. The estimate of the desertion rate and the quotation in the text are from ibid., 124. Berger does not mention the British responses to the American broadsides directed to German settlers in North America. 99. Christliche Herren und Mitbru¨der [subtitle:] Manifest des Generalkongresses an die fremden Truppen ([Philadelphia, ca. August 14, 1776]), no. 140. 100. Im Congreß, den 14ten August 1776 ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller?, 1776]), no. 1556; English original text printed in Journal of the Continental Congress, 5:653–55. 101. ‘‘[D]as Blut ihres Volks um Geld zu verkaufen.’’ ¨ bung ihrer respektiven Religionen geschu¨tzt, und mit den Rechten, Freyheiten, und 102. ‘‘[F]reye[n] U Befreyungen.’’ 103. Im Congreß, den 27sten August, 1776 ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller?, 1776]), no. 141; English original text printed in Journal of the Continental Congress, 5:707–8. 104. ‘‘[U]nter dem Schatten ihrer eignen Weinsto¨cke, und Feigenba¨ume in der vollkommendsten Freyheit.’’ 105. On December 10, 1776, the Continental Congress issued a general message to the inhabitants of the former colonies, especially Pennsylvania and New Jersey, reminding them of the causes of the war and the stakes involved and encouraging them to continue the fight. The text was distributed in English and German. Die Repra¨sentanten der Vereinigten Staaten von America, im Congreß versammlet, An das Volk u¨berhaupt, und an die Einwohner Pennsylvaniens und der angrenzenden Staaten insbesondere ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1776]), no. 132; English original text printed in Journal of the Continental Congress, 6:1018–20. The English version was reprinted in the Loyalist New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury on December 30, 1776, where it was described as being characterized by ‘‘Panic and Inconsistency.’’ 106. The scheme to entice German soldiers to desert is discussed in Butterfield, ‘‘Psychological Warfare in 1776.’’ On desertion see Ward, War for Independence. Ward estimates the rate of desertion for Germans from the Continental Army at 10 percent, and the overall rate of desertion from the Continental Army as probably even higher. 107. George Washington to Continental Congress, August 19, 1776, in Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, 5:463. 108. Ibid., 5:491. 109. George Washington Letterbook No. 3, images 80–81, George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, online edition, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwhome.html. 110. An das Publicum. Betrachtungen u¨ber den gegenwaertigen . . . ([New York]: M’Donald & Cameron, [1776]), no. 93. 111. TNA, C05/1108(43). 112. ‘‘Die Kolonien haben nun Krieg zu fuehren angefangen wider den Mutter-Staat; dieser Krieg muss fortgesezet werden, mit Lebhaftigkeit und Nachdruck, bisz America der Landesverordnung gemaesen Regierung sich unterwuerffig machet.’’ 113. ‘‘Letzern Mittwoch kamen drey Weibsleute nach dem Ufer von Jersey in grosser Noth herunter, eine Parthey von der Americanischen Armee holten sie heru¨ber; da denn erhellete, daß sie alle sehr waren mißhandelt, und die ju¨ngste von ihnen, ein Ma¨dchen von etwan fu¨nfzehn Jahren, denselbigen Morgen durch einen Brittischen Officier genothzu¨chtiget worden.’’ Der Fortgang der Brittischen und Hessischen Truppen ([Philadelphia, 1776]), no. 136, probably printed by Henrich Miller. The first line is the dateline ‘‘Bucks Caunty, den 14ten December, 1776.’’ The name ‘‘Mr. Nathan. Seidel’’ is written in a contemporary hand. Seidel was at that time the leading elder and bishop of the Moravians at Bethlehem. 114. Die Repra¨sentanten der Vereinigten Staaten von America, no. 132.

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115. Emmerich, Der Partheyga¨nger im Kriege; Emmerich, The partisan in war. 116. Emmerich, [An die Deutschen in Amerika], Es ist allgemein bekannt, daß die Einwohner des vornehmsten Theils vom Britischen Amerika ([New York?, 1776]), no. 142. 117. ‘‘Hancock, Adams, der erste ein schwacher, unwissender Kerl, der andere ein Erzbo¨sewicht.’’ Ibid. 118. New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, no. 1314, December 30, 1776, 2. 119. An das Publicum. Im Sicherheits-Rath, Philadelphia, den Ersten Jenner, 1777 ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1777]), no. 1779. 120. ‘‘[D]ie sehr benachtheiligten und betrogenen Hessen, welche jetzt in unserer Gewalt sind, auf die freundlichste Art zu behandeln, als ein Volk, von welchem wir wu¨nschen, daß sie sich mit uns vereinigen wollten in Anbauung der fruchtbaren Waldungen von America, und Ausbreitung seiner Manufakturen und Handlung, und Vertheidigung seiner Freyheit und Unabha¨ngigkeit wider alle Anfa¨lle fremder und willku¨hrlicher Gewalt.’’ 121. ‘‘[S]ich von dem Elend zu retten, welches Verwirrung und Thyranney begleitet und an der Wiederherstellung des Seegens von Frieden und Ordnung sammt gerechtem und gesetzma¨ßigem Gouvernement mitzuwirken.’’ 122. Eine durch Seine Excellenz Sir William Howe, Ritter vom Bad, General und Oberbefehlshaber etc. herausgegebene Proclamation (Philadelphia: Christoph Saur Jr. and Peter Saur, 1777), no. 149. In these as in other offers and expectations the British lagged continually behind actual developments. Payment of quitrents had in fact stopped in early 1775 at the latest and was never resumed. Mentioning the payment of quitrents reminded German readers that there were definite benefits to remaining true to the American side. 123. Bey dem Congreß, Den 8ten October, 1777 ([Lancaster, Pa.: Francis Bailey, 1777]), no. 148. 124. George Washington to Congress, November 23, 1777, George Washington Letterbook, vol. 3, image 108, George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, online edition. 125. George Washington to John Lacey Jr., February 18, 1778, George Washington Letterbook, vol. 5, images 65–66, George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, online edition. 126. ‘‘[W]orin man unter allerhand Scheingru¨nden, Erdichtungen und leeren Versprechungen den unedlen Versuch macht, die deutschen Truppen der englischen Armee zum Meineid zu verfu¨hren.’’ Israel Putnam’s broadside is mentioned with its date of publication in Emmerich’s answer, Es ist ein Blatt unter dem Namen einer Proclamation. 127. The text of Putnam’s broadside is reproduced in Arndt and Olson, German Language Press of the Americas, 72, from a copy in the Deutsch-Amerikanische Magazine, vol. 1, 401. How successful these campaigns were is unclear. Evans, ‘‘Lancaster Borough,’’ after a systematic search in church registers in Lancaster, found fewer than fifteen Hessians who had married out of about eight hundred Hessian soldiers who had been imprisoned in Lancaster between 1776 and 1783. The author nevertheless believes that ‘‘many of the exprisoners settled in Lancaster County’’ after the war. 128. For an interpretation of this broadside see above, 197. 129. Im Congreß, den 29ten April, 1778. An die Officier und Soldaten in Diensten des Ko¨nigs von Großbritannien, so keine Unterthanen des genanten Ko¨nigs sind ([Philadelphia, 1778]), no. 161. 130. ‘‘[F]u¨r die rechte der menschheit und verdienen daher den schutz und beystand aller menschen.’’ 131. In the broadside Im Congreß Den 22ten May, 1778 (Lancaster, Pa.: Frantz Bailey, [1778]), no. 155, Congress asked the states to free Hessians who had deserted from militia duties. 132. ‘‘[D]er fru¨chte eurer ehrlichen Arbeit, eines absoluten eigenthums eurer geschenkten la¨ndereien, die sich auf eure kinder und kindes kinder erstrecken sollen.’’ 133. After 1776 German soldiers usually constituted at least 50 percent of the British Army. For specifics see Wellenreuther, Von Chaos und Krieg, 174. 134. Bey einer Versammlung einer Anzahl Philadelphischer Bu¨rger . . . den 8ten November 1776 . . . VerhaltungsVorschriften an die Repra¨sentanten der Stadt Philadelphia in der Assembly ([Philadelphia: John Dunlap, 1776]), no. 131 (English version Evans 15019); An das Volk in Pennsylvania. Erster Brief ([Philadelphia: Henrich Miller, 1776/77]), no. 165; An die hochgeehrten Glieder der Assembly, des Pennsylvanischen Staats ([Lancaster, Pa.: Francis Bailey, 1777]), no. 145; Freymu¨thige Gedanken u¨ber die sogenannte ‘‘Anrede von der Minorita¨t im Rath der Censoren,’’ denen freyen und unabha¨ngigen Deutschen Bu¨rgern des Staats von Pennsylvanien, u¨bergeben von Einem freyen Deutschen Bu¨rger des Staats ([Philadelphia: Melchior Steiner, 1784]), no. 1777. 135. An die Einwohner von Pennsylvanien ([Philadelphia: Francis Bailey, 1787]), no. 218; Eine Addresse der Endsunterschriebenen, Glieder des letztern Hauses der Representanten der Republik Pennsylvanien, an ihre Constituenten . . . 29sten Sept. 1787 ([Philadelphia, 1787]), no. 222. 136. Wellenreuther, Von Chaos und Krieg, 81–86.

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137. For a thorough analysis of state constitution making see Adams, First American Constitutions, and for a recent survey see Wellenreuther, Von Chaos und Krieg, chap. 5. 138. In order to avoid this mistake the Constitutional Convention of 1789/90 ordered ‘‘that three thousand five hundred copies of the said Constitution be printed in the English language, and one thousand five hundred of the same in the German language, for the information of the citizens of this state.’’ Minutes of the Convention of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 222. The preliminary draft was published after the convention had adjourned on February 26, 1790; the convention reconvened on August 9 and finally adopted the constitution on September 2, 1790. 139. Wellenreuther, Von Chaos und Krieg, 493–502. 140. Brunhouse, Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 3; Parsons, The Pennsylvania Dutch, 179. 141. John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 28, 1777, in Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, 2:227. 142. Benjamin Rush to Charles Nisbet, August 27, 1784, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:336. 143. Bey einer Versammlung einer Anzahl Philadelphischer Bu¨rger. On the meeting of November 8, 1776, and the strategy of the Republicans see Brunhouse, Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 20–21. 144. On the associations in Pennsylvania as political units see Rosswurm, Arms, Country, and Class. 145. Shaeffer, ‘‘Public Consideration,’’ analyzes only the constitutional assembly’s reaction to the public discussion of the published first draft of the constitution in September 1776. The agitation after the publication of the final version of the constitution in November 1776 is discussed by Brunhouse, CounterRevolution in Pennsylvania, 27ff. 146. Pennsylvania Evening Post, May 17, 1777, 272; Pennsylvania Packet, or the General Advertiser, May 20, 1777. Part of this campaign was the pamphlet Observations on the present Government of Pennsylvania. Evans attributes this pamphlet to Benjamin Rush; see Benjamin Rush to Anthony Wayne, Philadelphia, June 18, 1777, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:150–51, in which Rush says that he authored the pamphlet. The first paragraphs of the first letter in this pamphlet sound much like An das Volk in Pennsylvanien. Erster Brief. See below, note 153. 147. Der Philadelphische Staatsbote, June 11, 1777. 148. An die hochgeehrten Glieder der Assembly, des Pennsylvanischen Staats. A handwritten contemporary note says, ‘‘June 3 1777 German Memorial for a new Convention.’’ 149. Stemmons, Pennsylvania in 1800, xx; Wood, ‘‘Town Proprietors of Lancaster,’’ esp. 354. On Lancaster generally see Wood, Conestoga Crossroads, and Ha¨berlein, Practice of Pluralism. 150. Wood, Conestoga Crossroads, 250–54. 151. The accounts of Francis Bailey mentioned by Parker, ‘‘Philadelphia Printer,’’ do not report Bailey’s business dealings in Lancaster. 152. ‘‘[N]ach ihren Vermo¨gen, und soweit es ihre Religions-Verfassung verstattet.’’ 153. An das Volk in Pennsylvanien. Erster Brief. Evans states that this broadside was published by Henry Miller in Philadelphia in 1774. But that date is impossible because ‘‘Ackermann’’ specifically addresses the constitution of 1776 and mentions the agitation for a new convention to modify it. This suggests a publication date of mid-1777. The addition Erster Brief (first letter) suggests that the author planned a series of essays on the constitution of 1776. 154. In der General Assembly von Pennsylvanien, Samstags, den 28sten November, 1778 (Philadelphia: Steiner & Cist, 1778), no. 160. The voter was to cast a ballot declaring his opinion on whether a constitutional convention should be called, and another ballot on who should represent him in such a convention. The box with the second set of ballots was only to be opened if a majority in the first vote prevailed. In addition, the assembly informed the reader of the nine key issues the constitutional convention would focus on in its revision of the constitution. 155. See Brunhouse, Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 52–60. 156. See ibid., 75–76. On the Fort Wilson incident see Alexander, ‘‘Fort Wilson Incident.’’ 157. This incident evoked very little response in the newspapers; for the only immediate reaction see ‘‘To the Printer,’’ Pennsylvania Packet, October 16, 1779, fol. 2. 158. See Brunhouse, Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 79–90. On the compensation of the Penn family by the Pennsylvania and English governments see Treese, Storm Gathering. 159. Brunhouse, Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 253. 160. See the majority’s report, A Report of the Committee of the Council of Censors, and the minority’s report, To the Freemen of Pennsylvania. The Protocol of the Council of Censors was published in German as Tagebuch des Raths der Censoren. 161. The German translation of this pamphlet seems to be lost.

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162. Brunhouse, Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 161, 279–80, cites the evidence for this attribution of authorship. 163. See the biographical article in American National Biography, vol. 16, 54–56. 164. An die Einwohner von Pennsylvanien. 165. Cited from the English original, reprinted in Jensen, Ratification of the Constitution by the States: Pennsylvania, 161. 166. Ibid., 162, 164. On Anti-Federalist thought see Turner, The Antifederalists. Much of the Anti-Federalist writings are contained in Storing, Complete Anti-Federalist. On Samuel Bryant’s views at that time see in addition Cornell, ‘‘Reflections on ‘The Late Remarkable Revolution in Government.’ ’’ 167. McMaster and Stone, Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution, 213. Muhlenberg received thirty votes and his closest rival, Thomas McKean, twenty-nine. 168. On these county conventions see Luetscher, Early Political Machinery, 128–30. The ticket was agreed on by a caucus, a small group of politicians, and was then usually published in the papers and submitted to local and regional conventions for agreement. Their resolutions were published too. 169. An die Deutsche Einwohner in Pennsylvanien ([Philadelphia, 1788]), no. 230. The German original seems to be lost. The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, November 19, 1788, no. 3057, fol. 2, however, printed an English translation of the German broadside, from which the following citations are taken. 170. The election results are printed in Bunhouse, Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 343–44. 171. An die Einwohner der Caunty Northampton . . . den 7ten September 1787 (n.p., [1787]), no. 223. 172. ‘‘[E]uer Mitbu¨rger, so bey euch geboren und erzogen worden, und noch jetzt unter euch wohnet; dessen Schicksal mit dem eurigen genau verbunden ist.’’ 173. See chapter 1, note 151. 174. ‘‘[M]it Pamphlets, Hand bills und Zeitungen suchen sie den ehrlich denkenden Leuten Sand in die Augen zu streuen.’’ 175. ‘‘[D]aß Handbills seyen gedruckt, welche nur den Tag vor der Wahl herausgegeben werden sollten, so daß keine Zeit u¨brig bleiben wu¨rde die Unwahrheiten in demselben zu widerlegen. Es ist in der Tat nur zu wahr, daß Zuflucht zu dieser scha¨ndlichen und unehrbaren Art die Wahl zu gewinnen, genommen worden.’’ 176. An die Erwa¨hler von York Caunty . . . Viele Stimmfa¨higen . . . York, October 9, 1826 ([York, Pa., 1826]), no. 686. 177. These are characterizations common in the articles in Der Wahre Amerikaner in September and the first half of October 1808. 178. Bauern, sehet hierher. Americaner, Laßt nicht eine einzige Stimme verloren gehen . . . Eure Constitution steht auf dem Spiel ([Lancaster, Pa.: Georg and Peter Albrecht, 1808]), no. 383. 179. ‘‘Adam Ko¨nig hat die zwey democratischen Zeitungen in seinen Ha¨nden und druckt nur solche Sachen die ihm gefallen.’’ An die Democratischen Erwa¨hler von York Caunty . . . Viele Democraten ([York, Pa.: Daniel Billmeyer?, 1826]), no. 456. 180. ‘‘Da vor der Wahl keine Zeitung mehr erscheinen konnte aus dieser Druckerey, und da Lawyer Jarrett mit Hilfe von der Lu¨genbothen Druckerey J. Scholl, dem angebenden Ga¨mbler . . . unter euch herumgeritten sind mit Handbills aller Art . . . so mu¨ssen wir Euch vor der Wahl noch folgende Thatsachen melden. . . . Sieben Handbills hat der Lu¨genbothen Drucker schon herausgegeben gegen den Drucker dieser Zeitung, Herrn Heinrich King und die Republikaner.’’ Republikaner, Wahrheit mus bestehen . . . Gedruckt in Carl L. Hu¨tter’s Freyheits Druckerey ([Allentown, Pa.: Carl. L. Hu¨tter, 1825]), no. 647. 181. Feuer-Werke. Da dadurch die Wahl Thomas Jefferson und Aaron Burr, als President . . . entschloss sich . . . Stadt Reading . . . Feuer-Werke u.s.w. anzustellen ([Reading, Pa., 1800]), no. 315; Jefferson ist Pra¨sident! Postscript zum Readinger Adler ([Reading, Pa.: Jacob Schneider & Co.?], 1801), no. 1794; Eine Zuschrift an die Deutschen in Friedrich, Waschington und Allegheny Caunties . . . Ein republikanischer Bu¨rger. Friedrichstaun, den 23sten October, 1800 ([York, Pa.?: Andreas Billmeyer?, 1800]), no. 305. 182. An die freyen, und besonders die in York Caunty wohnenden demokratischgesinnten Republikaner ([York, Pa., 1808]), no. 386; An die Freyen Erwa¨hler von York Caunty . . . York, den 27sten Sept. 1808 ([York, Pa., 1808]), no. 387; An die Leute welche Gewissenshalber kein Gewehr aufnehmen wollen ([Lancaster, Pa.: Georg and Peter Albrecht, 1808]), no. 378; Bauern, sehet hierher. 183. Rundschreiben (n.p., 1817), no. 1563; Ein Lied ([Reading, Pa.?, 1819]), no. 552; Tugend, Freyheit und Unabha¨ngigkeit . . . Ein Pennsilvanischer Bauer, der sich nie scha¨mte ein Deutscher zu sein (n.p., [1820]), no. 582; Der Kontrast. Bauern von Northampton . . . Ein Haushalter. Northampton den 2ten October 1820 ([Northampton, Pa.?: 1820]), no. 590; An das Volk von Pennsylvanien. Eine Adresse an die Mennonisten,

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Qua¨kers, und Mitglieder anderer religio¨ser Gesellschaften, welche sich ein Gewissen daraus machen Waffen zu tragen. Von einem Menonist (n.p., [1823]), no. 626. 184. Nos. 1179, 329, 331, 383, 541, 557, 590, 582, 641, 686. For a detailed analysis see below. 185. See above, 205–6; G. Weaver, ‘‘Benjamin Franklin.’’ 186. Nos. 423, 829, 821, 822, 1847, 1811, 303, 824, 827, 823, 825, 826, 94, 1814, 1902, 828, 922, 1853, 1150, 1301. 187. See above, 117, 240–45. 188. ‘‘Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, & and they are tied to their country & wedded to its liberty & interests by the most lasting bonds.’’ Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, Paris, August 23, 1785, in Jefferson: Political Writings, 549; R. Burns, Success in America, chaps. 1–2. 189. Werthe Freunde und Mitbu¨rger . . . Charakter eines jeden Assemblymanns . . . von Einem warmen Freund seines Landes ([Lancaster, Pa.: Johann Albrecht, 1801]), no. 331. 190. ‘‘[E]in Bauer in Lampeter Taunschip. . . . Wa¨hrend vielen Jahren hat er sich dem Bauernleben und Ackerbau gewidmet, und sich als ein guter fleißiger Bauer bewiesen.’’ 191. ‘‘[V]on Donegall, ist ein ordentlicher, ehrlicher und fleißiger Bauer.’’ 192. ‘‘[V]on Drumore Taunschip,—ein Mann von einem guten Charakter, der gute Gaben und Verstand besitzt, und ist ein ehrlicher und fleissiger Bauer. Er hat von Jugend auf eine regula¨re Lernung bekommen, und nach diesem sich zur Bauerey gehalten. Wir du¨rfen dahero versichert seyn, dass ein Mann mit solchen guten Charakter, uns mit Ehre in der Assembly bedienen wird.’’ 193. ‘‘[I]st von Salisbury Taunschip, und schon lange her einer unserer Assemblymen gewesen, welcher uns mit der gro¨ßten Treue bedient hat, und ein guter Bauer ist.—Ein Mann der guten Verstand besizt, ein Redner gewesen, und von uns allen bekannt ist.’’ 194. The two are John Miller and Charles Smith, both from Lancaster. 195. Summarized and quoted in translation from Bauern, sehet hierher. 196. ‘‘Handwerksmann and Bauer.’’ Der Wahre Amerikaner, September 3, 1808. 197. ‘‘[D]er Candidat der Bauern und Handwerksleute.’’ Ibid., September 17, 1808. 198. ‘‘[E]in guter Republikaner und Freund der Bauern und Handwerksleute. . . . [E]in Liebhaber republikanischer Einfachheit.’’ Ibid., September 24, 1808. 199. ‘‘Schaffleute das Lumpengesindel.’’ Ibid., October 8, 1808. 200. ‘‘[D]ie Schaffleute.’’ Ibid., September 3, 17, 1808. 201. ‘‘[E]hrlich und redlich.’’ Ibid., September 10, 1808. 202. ‘‘Schurzfellma¨nner.’’ Ibid., September 10, 17, 1808. 203. ‘‘Handwerksmann.’’ Ibid., September 10, 1808. 204. ‘‘[S]tandhafter und guter Amerikaner.’’ Ibid., September 17, 1808. 205. ‘‘[E]in Freund der Rechte des Armen Mannes.’’ Ibid., September 24, 1808. 206. ‘‘Freund der gewehrlosen Einwohner.’’ Ibid., September 24, 30, October 8, 1808. 207. ‘‘Aufgeblasenheit.’’ Ibid., September 24, 1808. 208. ‘‘[E]in Freund des Friedens . . . der Religion, der Freiheit und der Ordnung.’’ Ibid., September 3, 24, 30, 1808. 209. ‘‘[L]iebt Christliche Grundsa¨tze.’’ Ibid., September 10, 24, 1808. 210. ‘‘[W]armer Verehrer der Christlichen Religion.’’ Ibid., September 10, 24, 30, 1808. 211. Ibid., September 24, 1808. 212. Ibid. 213. Ibid., September 3, 1808. 214. ‘‘Verschwendung.’’ Ibid., September 24, 1808. 215. Ibid., September 17, 24, 1808. 216. ‘‘Esel, Ga¨nse und Schweine.’’ Ibid., October 8, 1808. 217. Brownson, Senator James Ross; Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress, s.v. ‘‘Ross, James,’’ http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?indexR000448 (accessed September 6, 2008). 218. ‘‘Aristocraten und seynwollende Tyrannen.’’ Der Wahre Amerikaner, September 10, 1808. 219. ‘‘[G]epuderte Großhansen.’’ Ibid., September 30, 1808. 220. ‘‘Seynwollende Wohlgeborenen.’’ Ibid., September 3, 1808. 221. ‘‘Aristocraten und Spo¨tter u¨ber die armen Leute.’’ Ibid., October 8, 1808. 222. ‘‘Feinde des gemeinen Volkes.’’ Ibid., September 17, 30, 1808. 223. ‘‘Beschu¨tzer der Konstitution.’’ Ibid., September 24, 30, 1808. 224. Ibid., September 17, 24, 1808.

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225. Ibid., October 8, 1808. 226. ‘‘[E]in Anha¨nger von Washingtons und Jeffersons Freiheitsliebe.’’ Ibid. 227. ‘‘[B]itterste Feind von Jefferson und Republikanismus.’’ Ibid., September 10, 1808. 228. Ibid., September 17, 1808. 229. Ibid. 230. Ibid., September 17, 24, October 8, 1808. 231. ‘‘[E]in Feind der Freiheit.’’ Ibid., September 17, 1808. 232. ‘‘[E]in Rechtsanwalt.’’ Ibid., September 10, October 8, 1808. 233. ‘‘Lermende A¨mtersucher.’’ Ibid., September 10, 1808. 234. ‘‘Federal Amtsja¨ger.’’ Ibid., September 24, 1808. 235. Ibid., September 17, 1808. 236. ‘‘Freund von Steuern.’’ Ibid., September 3, 10, 17, 24, 30, 1808. 237. ‘‘99er Accisesammler.’’ Ibid., September 3, 10, 1808. In 1799 a highly unpopular excise law had been passed. 238. ‘‘Ha¨usermesser.’’ Ibid., September 3, 10, 30, 1808. Another aspect of the excise law. 239. ‘‘Stempelmeister.’’ Ibid., September 3, 10, 17, 24, 30, 1808. 240. Ibid., September 24, October 8, 1808. 241. ‘‘[G]egen Christentum.’’ Ibid., September 24, 1808. 242. Ibid., September 17, 1808. 243. Ibid., September 30, 1808. Little did it matter that the Embargo Act had been passed during Jefferson’s administration in 1807. 244. See Baer, Trial of Frederick Eberle. 245. ‘‘[D]ass die Sache, welche jetzt unsere ganze Aufmerksamkeit auf sich zieht, keine politische Streitfrage ist, sondern die Angelegenheit unserer und Eurer unsterblichen Seelen betrifft.’’ Justus Heinrich Christian Helmuth, ‘‘Ansprache der privilegirten Mosheimschen Gesellschaft zu Philadelphia an die Glieder der evangelisch-lutherischen deutschen Gemeinde zu und bei Philadelphia,’’ in Brauns, Praktische Belehrungen, 429–39, esp. 429. 246. Helmuth, ibid., 432, 434. On the defamatory nature of the term ‘‘Eirischdeutsche’’ see Baer, Trial of Frederick Eberle, 86. The database contains the following broadsides that deal with this controversy: Geehrte Bru¨der! . . . Februar den 14ten, 1803 ([Philadelphia, 1803]), no. 338; Deutsche Herren Bru¨der! ([Philadelphia, 1803–6]), no. 906; Eine Erkla¨rung derer, welche wu¨nschen, daß in unserer deutschen lutherischen Gemeinde der Gottesdienst wie bisher nur in der deutschen Sprache ([Philadelphia, 1806]), no. 354; An alle Mitglieder der Deutsch-Lutherischen Gemeine in und um Philadelphia ([Philadelphia, 1815]), no. 489; Ansprache der incorporirten Mosheimschen Gesellschaft an alle Glieder der Deutschen Evangelisch-Lutherischen Gemeine in und bey Philadelphia . . . den 30sten September, 1815 ([Philadelphia]: Conrad Zentler, [1815]), no. 507, reprinted in Brauns, Praktische Belehrungen, 429–39. 247. See above, 205–6. 248. Ho¨ret ihr deutsche Bu¨rger in Philadelphia; see above, 214–15, 240–41. 249. Freymu¨thige Gedanken u¨ber die sogenannte ‘‘Anrede von der Minorita¨t im Rath der Censoren’’; see above, 282–83. 250. ‘‘Einige alderne Personen sagen, weil Schneider ein Deutscher ist, wollen wir fu¨r ihn stimmen aber wir hoffen, ihr werdet nicht auf solche Art euch betru¨gen lassen, wir wollen weder Deutsch noch English, wir wollen einen Amerikaner! Alles, was wir wu¨nschen sollten ist, das Gut vom Lande, und nichts nach Englisch oder Deutsch fragen.’’ An die Freyen Erwa¨hler von York Caunty. 251. On the cultural experiences emigrants from Wu¨rttemberg brought over to the colonies see Hippel, Auswanderung aus Su¨dwestdeutschland, 148–210, 281–321; Ha¨berlein, Vom Oberrhein zum Susquehanna, 69–79. 252. On this cultural baggage see Wellenreuther, ‘‘Contexts for Migration.’’ 253. See above, 201–11.

Conclusion 1. Brauns, Praktische Belehrungen, 214. 2. Hahn, Sendschreiben von einem Freund.

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Manuscript Sources Archives of the Moravian Church, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania A Tag Buch des Buchladens in Bethlehem Vom 8ten September 1759 bis 15ten Julii 1761 Bethlehem Book Store, 1756–1833, shelf 218A, Book Store, folder 4 Receipts: 1806–1810, 1818–1819 Catalogus der Gemein- und Societaets-Glieder in Philadelphia wie auch deren Kinder derselben verfertiget im April 1790, MAB Phil. I, Catalogues, 1744–1836 Catalogus der Ledigen Bru¨der, MAB Beth SB 49, 1749–1755 Diarium der Gemeine in Bethlehem, Bd. 28, vom Jahr 1770 Charles Cist, MAB Mem. Beth (1805), Box 6 MAB GN 1778, Beilage VII MAB Box Memoirs, Lancaster 25 MAB Bethcong 486, Printshop 1753 MAB Fonds PP MH, Papers of Henrich Mu¨ller (Henry Miller) Berks County Historical Society, Reading, Pennsylvania Jacob Ritter, Account Book, April 1800[–1822] Ledger of John Ritter and Co., 1804–1814, F11MP A337 1804–14 John Ritter, Cash Book of Reading Newspaper (Adler), F11MP N558, 1804–1806 John Ritter Cash Book, 1819–1821, F11 MK R 614B John Ritter Cash Book, 1827–1870, F11 MP A 337 John Ritter, Ledger, 1822–1824, F11 NK R 614A Inventory Book of John Ritter’s Book Store, 1827, F11 NK R 614B Manuscript Room Documents 31, Folder 1804–1808, 1809–1813, 1814–1816, 1817–1820, 1821–1823, 1824– 1827, 1828–1831 Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown, Pennsylvania Michael (?) Billmeyer, Wholesale Bookdealer Account Book, 1797–1801, BM B-130 G. D. Billmeyer, Book Store Account Book, 1814–1819, BM B-303 Daniel L. Billmeyer, Wholesale Book Dealer’s Account Book, 1819–1822, BM B-131 Chester County Archives, Westchester, Pennsylvania Inventory nos. 5346 to 6791 Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Autobiography of Jacob Ritter, Jr., 1784, Am.1305 Michael Billmeyer Ledger, fols. 150, Amb.1747 Robert and Francis Bailey Records, 1794–1856, collection no. 108 Francis Bailey, Day Book and Ledger, 1794–1829 Journal of Francis Bailey and Robert Bailey and others, 1799–1856 Francis & Robert Bailey, Memorandum Book, [1795–1827] Day Book, 1794–1797 Matthew Carey Diary, vol. 26: Feb. 1, 1791, Jan. 1796, June 1820, Nov. 1821; vol. 27: 1810–1819, Sig. 227 Conrad Weiser Papers, vols. 1–3, collection no. 700 Rev. Johann Ernst Papers, Letters, Am 06262

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Rev. Johann Ernst Papers, Falconer Swamp, 1780–1786, Am.06252 William Young Business Papers, Boxes 3 and 4, F-138, 1177 Lancaster County Historical Society, Lancaster, Pennsylvania Lancaster County Quarter Sessions Docket Book Nos. 1–10, 1729–1803 John Calathan Account Book, 1808–1830, MG 266, The Daybook and Ledger Collection, Series 5, Box 1 Account Book of Marks Groff, 1822–1825, MG 266, The Daybook and Ledger Collection, Series 3 An Inventory of the Household and Kitchen Furniture which were of Charles Heinitsch, late of the Borough of Lancaster Apothecary deceased. Taken and Appraised by the Subscribers this First Day of February 1804, father of Augustus Heinitsch, MG 266, The Daybook and Ledger Collection, Series 3, Box 4 Charles Heinitsch Day Book, 1791–1803, MG 266, The Daybook and Ledger Collection, Series 3, Box 4, Folder 23 ‘‘Ledger Index of Charles Heinitsch, 1799[–1803].’’ MG 266, The Daybook and Ledger Collection, Series 3, Box 4, Folder 24 Small Day Book, 1827–1828, F. H. Heinitsch, Lancaster, MG 266, The Daybook and Ledger Collection, Series 3, Box 4, Folder 28 Isaac Whitelock’s Day Book 1753–1776, MG 266, The Daybook and Ledger Collection, Series 3, Box 12, Folder 68 The National Archives, London CO 5/1108, Correspondence of the Secretary of State from New York, 1776–1777 CO 5/1140, Correspondence of the Secretary of State to Governor of New York, Letter Book, 1776–1781 CO 5/1141, Letter Book: Correspondence between Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Colonies with Governors and Officials of New York. Out-Letter, 1768–1782 Letters to Secretary of State for the Colonies with Governors and Officials from America: Part II New Jersey CO 5/155, Letters and Petitions to the Secretary of State for North America, Miscellaneous, 1776–1778 CO 5/246, Private Letters to and from the Secretary of State for North America, 1771–1777 TNA 30/8/133, Part I: Private Letters to William Pitt the Younger T1/484, Treasury Board Papers and In-Letters T1/511, Treasury Board Papers and In-Letters WO 28/8, Letters and Returns of Officers. Folder: German. Letters from Field Officers for the Year 1783 WO 4/601, War Office. Secretary-at-War. Out-Letters. Desertion [Letter Book] Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society, Easton, Pennsylvania Wholesale ledger of general merchandise, 1792–1797; books and stationery, 1798–1817. Merchant unknown, Philadelphia, MR329 [Michael Hart] Merchant’s Ledger, 1793–1795, Easton, Pennsylvania, 658.87 H326, Ledgers Jacob Mixsell and Sons, Easton, Pennsylvania, Merchant Day Book 1827–1830, 658.87/M687, Ledgers, vol. 1 State Archives, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania RG 47, Records of County Government, Dauphin County, Record Book of Peddler’s Licenses Issued, 1786–1809, 1830–1855 York County Archives, York, Pennsylvania Salomon Meyer 15242 Soldiers and Pedlars Licences: Philip Freeman, Peddler’s Bond for 1785, 1786, 1787 General Quarter Sessions Docket, Book 1 and 3: 1749–1785; Book 4–7; Book 12, 13, 14; Book 1806–1814

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Albertus Magnus. Weiber geheimnuß: von Weibern, vnnd Geburten der Kinder, Sampt jhren Artzneyen, Jetzunder auffs neuwe mit sonderem fleiß durch einen der Artzney erfarnen gebessert vnd gemehret. Darzu mit scho¨nen Figuren gezieret. [Frankfurt am Main]: Lonicer, Cnipius Andronicus & Steinmeyer, 1579. Anthes, Johann Baptista. Zufa¨llige Gedanken vom Zweck der Ehe und von deren Begriff bei Gelegenheit eines Rechtshandels worinnen krum und schief gewachsenen Ma¨dchen die Ehe streitig gemacht wird. Frankfurt am Main: Eichenberg, 1774. Arndt, Johann. Des hocherleuchteten Theologi, Herr Johann Arndts, Weiland General-Superintendentens des Fu¨rstenthums Lu¨neburg, etc. Sa¨mtliche Sechs geistreiche Bu¨cher Vom Wahren Christenthum, Das ist: Von heilsamer Busse, Hertzlicher Reue und Leid u¨ber die Su¨nde, wahrem Glauben, auch heiligem Leben und Wandel der rechten wahren Christen. Neue Auflage mit Kupfern, Samt richtigen Anmerckungen, kra¨fftigen Gebetern u¨berf alle Capitel, und einem sechsfachen Register. Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin and Johann Bo¨hm, 1751. (Evans 6630) Bancroft, George. ‘‘The Life and Genius of Goethe.’’ North American Review, n.s., 20 (October 1824): 303–25. Bansa, Johann Matthias. Kleine Bilder Bibel sowohl Alt- als Neuen Testamentes: Mit 235 Merianischen Kupferstichen gezieret, und zur Ermunterung und Erbauung vor die Liebe Jugend in Poesie erkla¨ret. Frankfurt am Main, 1746. Verlegt und gedruckt bey W. Wheit und W. Boyer, 1826. Bard, Samuel. A Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Midwifery, containing practical instructions for the management of women, during pregnancy, in labour, and in Child-Bed. 5th ed. New York: Collins, 1819. Bartlett, John. Poems on the following subjects: viz. Joseph sold into Egypt. His Interpreting Dreams: And selling Corn unto his Brethren, &c. His discovering himself to his Brethren; in a Dialogue between Joseph and Judah. Nathan sent to David. The complete history of Jonah. The history of Susanna and the two elders With general Observations. Upon What is Man? A Catalogue of Vertuous Women, mentioned in the New Testament. Time’s Lecture to Man. Canterbury: J. Abree and W. Aylett, 1732. Baumann, Johann. Kurz gefasstes Roß-Arzney Bu¨chlein. Ephrata, Pa.: J. Baumann, 1802. Baur, Richard H., ed. Letters of Paul Henkel. St. Louis: Concordia Historical Institute, 2003. Baynon, Eliam. Der Barmherzige Samariter, Oder Freund und Bru¨derlicher Rath, allerley Krankheiten und gebrechen des menschlichen Leibs, innerlich und a¨ußerlich zu heilen, mit geringen und verachteten Mitteln und Arzneyen, die aber durch lange Zeit bewa¨hrt erfunden worden. Und nunmehr, aus schuldiger Christlicher Liebe, aufrichtig, dem gemeinen verlassenen Mann zum besten an den Tag gegeben . . . 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Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. Page numbers followed by ‘‘f,’’ ‘‘g,’’ or ‘‘t’’ indicate figures, graphs, or tables, respectively. Abraham (Old Testament), 170 Adam and Eve, in broadsides creation story, 103–5 depictions of Eve, 182, 250 as first farmers, 66, 91, 115 sin of, 106, 110, 112, 117, 134, 158, 290 n. 150, 293 nn. 191, 200 Adams, John, 233, 239, 247 and 1800 presidential election, 242–43, 252 Adelung, Johann Christoph (author), 6 administrative notice broadsides, 42 advertising broadsides booksellers’, 28, 39, 40, 43–44, 111–15, 152 cost of, 32, 33, 40 farming-related, 117, 118–19, 126–27 pharmaceutical, 42–43, 77, 78–82, 98–99 real estate sales, 50, 52g1–2, 53, 54, 135, 252 afterlife, broadsides regarding, 88, 117, 132, 146, 151. See also happiness, eternal; Judgment Day agriculture. See farmers and farming, German-American Albert, Benedict (peddler), 23 Albertus Magnus, 78, 288 n. 103 Albrecht, Johann (printer) apprenticeship, 20, 22 publications printed by, 20t, 21, 30, 243, 279 n. 51 Albrecht, George and Peter (printers), 242 Albright, John, report of robbery, 278–79 n. 43. See also Albrecht, Johann Allentown, 280 n. 86 German-American printers in, 17, 21, 69–70 almanacs, 117, 288 n. 99 distribution of, 28–29, 249 printers of, 17, 18–19, 18t, 279 n. 51 America. See United States; and individual states American Broadsides and Ephemera (database), 76 American Revolution, 56, 300 n. 36. See also political broadsides, American Revolution German-Americans’ roles in, 120, 198, 221–32, 314 n. 98 animals. See livestock Antes, Friedrich, 214, 215 Antes, Henry, 157 Anti-federalist (newspaper), 30 Anti-Federalists, 239, 240, 243 apprenticeships, 12, 17–22, 249

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INDX

Aristotle, 288 n. 103 Armbru¨ster, Anton (printer) newspaper published by, 312–13 n. 71 political broadsides printed by, 213, 214, 312 n. 70 Armstrong, James, 129 Arndt, Johann (author), 37, 88, 152, 281 n. 112, 300 n. 33 Arndt, Karl Richard, 11, 300 n. 35 auction broadsides, 40, 42, 43. See also estate sale broadsides Augsburg confession, 71 Austin, Jenny, murder of, 109 Auswahlbibliographie zur Geschichte des Einblattdrucks in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (bibliography), 5–6 authors, broadside, 9, 12–14, 134. See also individual authors Avilas, hymn authored by, 168 Baab, Jacob (printer), 24–25 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 311 n. 57 Bache, Richard, 312–13 n. 71 Bailey, Francis (printer) apprentices and journeymen working for, 20, 278–79 n. 43 broadsides by, 234–36, 235 ledgers of, 17, 39–41, 316 n. 151 ballads. See murder ballad broadsides; songs, on broadsides baptism, 83, 99, 138, 168, 289 n. 120 baptismal certificates, 7, 289 n. 117 Baptist Church, 22, 99, 193 Bard, Samuel, 288 n. 94 Battle of Armageddon, 172 Bauman, Joseph (printer), 17, 304 n. 92 broadsides printed by, 88, 165–66, 169 Baumann, Benjamin (printer), 17, 22 Baumann, Christian A. (printer), 17, 22, 88, 278 n. 26 Baumann, Jacob and Ruth, Des Heutigen Signals Charmen, 168 Baumann, Johann/John (printer), 17, 88, 99, 278 n. 26, 304 n. 92 Baumann, Samuel (printer), 17, 304 n. 92 broadsides printed by, 166, 168 Baumann family (printers) broadsides printed by, 67, 68, 70, 73, 165 religious affiliations, 14 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek broadside collection, 5–6

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Baynon, Eliam, medical treatise by, 78 Bebel, Philip, murder story of, 108–9, 110 Beissel, Conrad (printer and author), 161, 305 n. 112 death of, 165, 184 power struggle with Eckerlin, 158, 159 publications by, 13, 157 Saur I’s relationship to, 303 n. 70 Bell, Patterson, 243–44 belles lettres, 28, 111–12, 114. See also books; poems, on broadsides Bengel, Johann Albrecht (author), 186, 188 Benneville, Daniel de, real estate advertisement by, 56–57 Berger, Carl, 314 n. 98 Berks County establishment of, 200 German Americans in, 2, 24, 213, 216 Bible children’s editions of, 293 n. 191 illustrated editions, 180, 185 orders for, 11, 29 used in house devotions, 88, 156, 161–62, 166, 169–70, 177, 183 biblical broadsides, 33. See also Adam and Eve, in broadsides chronology of events, 186–87, 187 educational, 89, 90, 91–93, 96–97, 98 used in house devotions, 69, 71, 153–54, 299 n. 27 Billmeyer, Andrew (printer), 18, 22 Billmeyer, Daniel (printer), almanacs printed by, 18–19, 18t Billmeyer, George D. (printer), account books of, 37 Billmeyer, Mary Leibert, 18 Billmeyer, Michael (printer), 278 n. 33, 297 n. 305 account books, 37–38 almanacs printed by, 29 apprenticeship, 18–19 marriage of daughter Maria, 65–66 religious affiliation, 14 birth certificates, 7, 289 n. 117 Bocker, Philip, 227 Bo¨hme, Jacob (author), 165 Bolingbroke, Viscount, 210, 238 books. See also almanacs; booksellers and bookstores; hymnals belles lettres, 28, 111–12, 114 children’s, 93, 290 n. 130, 292 n. 174 distribution of, 25–36, 27t, 38 English-language, 11 from Europe, 25, 28, 115 from Germany, 25, 28, 112 history, 291 n. 168 how-to, 113–14 medical, 36, 77–78 music, 280 n. 71 religious, 36, 111–12, 152 travel, 28, 112–13 booksellers and bookstores, 282 n. 113 additional products offered by, 25, 29, 30

broadside advertisements from, 28, 39, 40, 43, 44, 111–15, 152 contemporary trends in, 11–12, 12t distribution and sales, 14, 22, 29, 276 n. 38, 282 n. 113 printer-owned, 9, 14, 20, 21, 38 Bowse, Andrew (peddler), 23, 24 Brandmu¨ller, Johann Ludwig (printer), 19 Brandmu¨ller, Johann (Moravian printer and missionary), 19 breeding, broadsides advertising, 118–19, 119, 127, 295 n. 258. See also livestock Brethren, Church of, 17–18, 22, 70, 177. See also Schwarzenau Brethren broadsides, German-American, 46, 51, 93, 115. See also printers and printing, German-American; and individual types of broadsides authors of texts, 9, 12–14, 134 as communication mechanism, 44, 49 costs of, 25–36, 43–46, 49–50 definitions of, 3, 6, 7, 8, 249 distribution of, 11–12, 14, 36–48, 249 English, 193, 275 n. 10 functions of, 39–43, 44, 50, 51, 199t, 200t, 249 from Germany, 276 n. 18, 285–86n43 market for, 12, 36–48 needs covered by, 8–10, 27, 30 originators of, 43–48, 49, 50, 134, 249, 281 nn. 94, 102 overview of, 2–5 personal associations with, 248–49 radical, 192–93 research on, 3–10 sales of, 22–25, 81, 109, 168, 276 n. 38 survival of, 39–43, 44, 49, 249 time frames for, 43, 44, 49, 51,199t17, 200t, 249 broadsides, German-American, examples of, 13, 148 An die hochgeehrten Glieder der Assembly, des Pennsylvanischen Staats. Das Memorial verschiedener Einwohner der Graffschaft Lancaster giebt mit aller gebu¨hrenden Hochachtung zu erkennen, 234–36, 235 Anfangsgru¨nde der ganzen Universal-Historie, 93–96, 94 Auf Befehl von dem Ko¨nig der Ko¨nige, 186, 189–92, 190 Betrachtung u¨ber das ABC, 86 Christlicher Haus-Seegen: Nebst der Zwo¨lf Stunden Geda¨chtnuß, 68, 69, 70 Das Leben und Alter der Menschen, 82, 83, 83–84, 85, 101–2, 102, 134–35, 182, 298 .n. 312 Das Todesurtheil von Elisabeth Moore und John Charles, und das letzte Bekenntniß von Elisabeth Moore 1809, zu York in Pennsylvanien, hingerichtet wurden, 129–33, 130 Das vortreffliche Schaff-Pferd Stumpstowner Bald, 118–19, 119 Der Bauren-Stand, 115–17, 116 Der Him[m]el ist mein Stuhl und die Erde meiner Fu¨se Schemel, 178, 183–85, 184 Die Historie von Joseph und seinen Bru¨dern, 101, 101, 102, 105, 178–83, 181, 182, 185

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Die Richtschnur und Regel eines Streiters Jesu Christi, 158, 159–61, 160 Die Wege zum Ewigen Leben oder zum Ewigen Verderben, 132 Eine lustige Aria, u¨ber die letztgeschehene Unruhen in Philadelphia, 211–13, 212, 311 n. 60 Eine Vorstellung von Begebenheiten, 186–88, 187, 189 Eine wahre Geschichte, 74–76, 75, 136–38, 137 Eine zu dieser Zeit ho¨chstno¨thige, 199–200, 205–11, 208–9, 217, 219, 220, 238, 310 nn. 45, 51 Ein neues Trauer-Lied, Enthaltend die Geschichte der Susanna Cox, 106–8, 107 Ein Scho¨n JEsus-Lied, 147 Ein sehr geistreicher Spiegel, 158–59, 161 Ein Wohl-gemeindter und Ernstlicher Rath, 199, 201–4, 202–3 Erkla¨rung dieser Tafel, 120–21, 122–23 1. Corinth. 1 v. 81 [sic].Das Wort vom Creutz ist zwar eine Thorheit denen die verlohren werden, 163, 164 Gebet-Lied der Confirmanden, 99–100, 100 Gedanken u¨ber den Zustand der Kirche, 166–68, 167, 305 n. 102 Ho¨ret ihr deutsche Bu¨rger in Philadelphia, 214–15, 214t, 312 n. 70 Jahrmarkt . . . auf Befehl des Managers, 121, 124, 124–25 ‘‘Joseph’s Second Dream’’, 181 Joseph und seine Bruder, 91–92, 96, 98, 101 ‘‘King of Egypt’’, 74–76, 75 Konfirmazionslied ‘‘Fu¨hl das heiligste Entzucken,’’ 34, 144, 146, 281 n. 106 Liebes Erkla¨rungen!, 61–63, 62, 105, 110, 250 Magdeburg Briefe, 72–74, 286–87 n. 67 Mineralisches Pferd-Pulver, 121 Nun will ich Valediciren Nun So Will ich, 217–19, 218 Scho¨ne geistliche auserlesene und Sinnreiche Ra¨tzelStu¨cklein, 89–91, 90 Sclaven-Handel. Die Menschlichkeit beleidiget, 128, 128–29 Seht doch am Creutzes-Holtz nur euren JESUM an, Er hat ja eure Schuld bezahlt und abgethan, 175–77, 176 Tinctura Assafoeditae Composita Zusammengesetzte Asandtinktur . . . Dr. Salomon Henkel, 80 Trost Lied, fu¨r ein Nachfolger JESU, 145 ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen,’’ 13, 34, 103, 146–51, 147, 171 Brown, John, 230 Bruckman, C. A. (printer), broadsides printed by, 35–36 Bru¨stle, Christian (author), 13, 36 Bryant, Samuel (author), Centinel No. 1, 239 Buckley, Daniel, 244 Bucks County, German Americans in, 37, 213, 216, 217 Burns, John, 288 n. 94 Butler, Johann Georg, book order by, 29 Buttner, Johann Carl, 296 n. 283 Calvin, John, 71 Camp, David N. (peddler), 23 Carey & Lea (publishers), 281 n. 94 catechisms, 18, 36

Catholics, 36 beliefs of, 70–71, 132, 299 n. 21 devotional broadsides published for, 156, 300–301 n. 37, 303 n. 54, 304 n. 86 ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ version, 149–51 cattle. See livestock chapmen. See peddlers, German-American Charter of Privileges (Pennsylvania, 1701), 200 German-Americans’ identification with, 219, 252 preservation of, 211, 216, 217, 220–21, 224, 233 Saur I’s writings on, 207, 210 Chester County, 24, 237 childbirth, 76–78, 82–83, 287–88 n. 92, 288 n. 97. See also pregnancy children. See also education; educational broadsides Bibles and devotional texts for, 152, 293 n. 191 Christian education of, 83–98, 155, 183–86, 192, 293 n. 191 death of, 106–9, 129–32, 136–38, 137, 173, 174 Christ broadsides on, 67, 68, 154–55 Cross of, 163, 169–70, 174, 175–77, 184, 185 salvation through, 10, 157, 161, 171–74, 175, 177, 179, 250 second coming of, 10, 106, 166, 168, 172, 186–92, 251 story of, 82, 183–84 Christians, 180, 292 n. 186. See also baptism; confirmation broadsides; and individual denominations ascetic, 156, 158, 159, 163–65, 305 n. 105 conversion experiences, 133, 169, 172, 189 courtship among, 65 covenanted vs. noncovenanted, 143 doctrines of, 71, 102, 146 educational broadsides for, 46, 82, 98, 105, 154–55, 192, 292 n. 17; children’s, 83–98, 155, 183–86, 192 farm life in context of, 66–76, 117, 133, 169, 172, 189 hymns of, 300–301 n. 37, 301 n. 40 pious lifestyle, 35, 74, 88–89, 96–97, 102, 106, 110, 117, 135 churches, 12, 174. See also individual denominations festivals in, 141–42, 153–54 Peace, 2, 224, 236 scarcity of, 140, 150, 151, 195 Cist, Charles (printer), 19, 20, 22 Cist, Mary Weiss, 19, 20 citizenship, German American, 2, 275 n. 6 Clark, Brice, 243 Clarke, William (author), 206 Clemens family, 59 College of Philadelphia, 236 confessionalization, concept of, 102, 143, 146 confirmation broadsides, 46, 99–104, 141, 143, 151, 289 n. 117, 292 n. 181 Constitutionalists, 232, 233, 236, 239, 241 constitutions. See Pennsylvania, constitution of 1776; United States, constitution of 1787 conversion, 146–49, 168, 172, 173, 188–89 Elizabeth Moore’s, 131, 133 hymns describing, 169–70, 174

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Council of Censors, 237–38 courtship broadsides, 60–66, 105, 110, 250 Cox, Susanna hanging of, 33, 106, 132 murder story, 48, 107, 109–10, 114, 133–34, 138, 250–51, 293 n. 208 Coxe, Tench (merchant) book orders, 27, 280 n. 72 real estate advertisement, 55–56, 57–58 crime broadsides. See murder ballad broadsides; sensationalist broadsides Cross, Jacob, 227 culture in daily life, 105–14 English, 11, 195, 251, 309 n. 24 German, 115, 195, 198–99 German-American, 9, 11–12, 30, 211 Pennsylvania Dutch, 7–8, 10 political, 198, 199, 309 n. 18 of printing, 192–93 religious, 149–52, 193 Cumberland County, 17, 237 customers, German-American. See also merchants, German-American; peddlers, German-American; printers and printing, German-American acquisition methods, 22 expectations of, 14, 36, 47–48, 180, 185, 186, 196 geographic distribution of, 26t7–8, 27 needs and interests of, 27, 28–29, 82, 88, 171, 174, 179–80, 249 printers’ relationship to, 8–10, 14, 29, 37, 47–48, 114, 174, 193, 249 worldviews of, 46, 50, 188 Dauphin County, peddlers in, 24 David (Old Testament), 170 death. See also funeral notice broadsides of children, 106–9, 129–32, 173, 174 preparation for, 134–39, 171–74 death certificates, 8 Decius, Nikolaus (author), 307 n. 152 Democrats, 242 Der Adler (newspaper), 30, 33 Deschler, David (author), 216 deserters, American Revolution, 41, 43, 44, 49, 226, 230, 231, 314 nn. 98, 105 devotional broadsides. See also house devotions broadsides on death and eternal life, 171–74 edifying nature of, 152–55 Ephrata Cloister publications, 156–71 hymns, 142–52, 161, 166, 169–71, 171–74, 171t, 175 illustrations on, 155, 171, 175t market for, 155, 192–93 originators of, 21, 302 n. 51 poems, 157, 165, 169–70, 171 prayers, 152, 156, 169–70 prose, 153, 168, 169–70, 171 Dewees, William, proclamation of, 278 n. 40

dictation, doctrine of, 71 Dietrich, Jacob D. (author), 93–96, 291 n. 163 Dissenters, 219, 313 n. 83 doctors. See physicians, broadsides advertising Donald, Alexander W. (peddler), 24 dry goods, sales of, 20, 24, 25, 38 Dunkers (religious sect), 2, 33–34, 201, 224, 236 Earnest, Corinne and Russell, study by, 7, 8, 9 Easton, German-Americans, 17, 20, 21, 25, 38 Eck, Reimer C., 3, 11 Eckerlin, Gabriel, 158 Eckerlin, Israel, 157–58, 159, 303 n. 72 Eckfeldt, Jacob, funeral notice order, 40–41, 43, 283 n. 138 Eckstein, Ferdinand, 40 Eckstein, Johann, 40, 283 n. 132 economic broadsides, 43, 44 regarding currency exchange, 120–21, 122–23 economy of broadsides, 47–48, 151 rural, 13, 36–43 education, 106, 138. See also apprenticeships; school broadsides; teachers and teaching Christian, 46, 82, 98, 105, 154–55, 183–86, 192, 292 n. 174, 293 n. 191 moral, 91–93, 133–34 education broadsides, 83–98 ABC, 84, 86–88, 98 authorship of, 13 on history, 93–96, 98, 291 n. 163 election broadsides, 45–46, 240, 249, 252, 278 n. 40. See also political broadsides advantages over newspapers, 241–42 campaign of 1808, 243–46 and German-American settlers, 1–2, 48, 210–11, 241–47 elegiac broadsides, 6 Ellendien, Johannes (author), 99 Embargo Act of 1807, 244, 245, 319 n. 243 emigration, 1–2, 108, 109, 168, 221 Emmerich, Andreas, Revolutionary War broadsides, 13, 197, 225, 228–29, 230–31, 309 n. 18 Engel, Johannes (author), 169 England culture of, 11, 195, 309 nn. 21, 24 naturalization law, 2 English settlers. See settlers, German-American, English settlers’ criticisms of; settlers, German-American, separation from English settlers entertainment, 9, 105, 114, 125 Ephrata Cloister, 10, 303 nn. 70, 72, 77, 92 broadsides printed in, 4, 13, 67, 69, 88, 140, 146, 156–71 German-American printers in, 14, 16, 17, 22, 278 n. 25 monasticism in, 158, 177, 184 Ernst, Johann/John (pastor), 37, 282 n. 113 estate sale broadsides, 50, 53, 59–60. See also auction broadsides; real estate sales broadsides

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ethnicity, 114–15, 195, 221, 252 Ettwein, Johann (bishop), 221 Europe, 231, 253, 284 n. 8. See also England; Germany books from, 25, 28, 115 broadsides from, 7, 72–73, 92, 108, 110, 117, 149, 177–78 crises in, 1, 200, 295 n. 250 hymns from, 149, 150–51 nondenominational religious culture, 9, 149–52 politics in, 1, 200, 204 Evans, Charles, 278 n. 40 event announcement broadsides, 39–42, 43, 44, 49, 153–54, 249

Gaby, Martin, Sr. (pastor and author), 13 broadside orders placed by, 33–34, 35, 36, 37, 46 Gaby, Susanna Price, 34 Gage, Thomas, 223 Gallagher, Felix (peddler), 24 Galloway, Joseph, 214, 215 Gardner, John, 242 Garrison, J. Ritchie, 127 Geissenhainer, Anna Maria Reiter, 34 Geissenhainer, Frederick W., II (pastor), 34 Geissenhainer, Friedrich Wilhelm, I (pastor), 13, 33, 34, 37 broadside orders placed by, 35, 36, 37, 38, 46 Geissenhainer, William (pastor), 30 gender relations. See men; women German Americans. See customers, German-American; emigration; farmers and farming, GermanAmerican; merchants, German-American; pastors, German-American; settlers, German-American Germanton, 3. See also Germantown Germantown, German-American printers in, 15 Germany, 295 n. 250, 309 n. 21 broadsides from, 6, 188, 193, 276 n. 18, 285–86n43 Geyer, Andreas (bookseller), 111 God. See also Adam and Eve, in broadsides; Bible; Christ; Holy Spirit, in house blessing broadsides authority conferred by, 221–26 beliefs in, 63, 161–62, 165, 175, 244–46, 251 covenant with, 99, 138, 143, 146, 172–73, 187–91 household devotions to, 65–66, 68–69, 71–74, 76, 84, 87, 117 punishment from, 106, 110 relationship to, 165–66, 168 salvation through, 92–93, 102, 133, 136, 169–70, 178 visions of, 131 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust, 293 n. 210 Gottingen project, 3–4, 6, 8–10 gout, 81 Gru¨ter and Blumer (printers), 69–70 Great Awakening. See First Great Awakening; Second Great Awakening greed, broadsides depicting, 109–10, 136, 165, 201 Grimmler, Benjamin, 242, 243, 244 Griscom, Rebecca, 40 Groff, Johannes, 118–19 Gruber, Eberhard Ludwig (author), So Bleibt Ein Redlich Herz, 162 Gruber, Johann Adam (printer), 78, 93, 157, 162

Fachdatenbank Buchwissenschaft, 5 fairs. See markets families, German-American. See children; house devotions broadsides, families’ participation in; settlers, German-American, daily life of; and individual families farmers and farming, German-American. See also Adam and Eve, in broadsides, as first farmers; real estate sales broadsides acquisition of books and broadsides, 24, 36–43, 161 broadsides related to, 51–60, 114–34 Christian context, 66–76, 117, 133, 169, 172 daily life of, 55, 66–76 guides for, 279 nn. 51, 52 image of, 138, 221, 243, 244, 251, 252, 318 n. 188 inheritance by, 59–60, 135, 285 n. 21 as merchants, 27, 28, 37, 38 poems on, 66, 115–17, 116 politics of, 115, 241–47 Federalists, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 246 First Great Awakening, 157, 166, 193 Fort Wilson incident, 236, 240 Fox, George, 71 Fox, Henry, 214 Fraktur certificates, 7, 8 Franklin, Benjamin, 77, 120, 311–12 n. 64, 312–13 n. 71 broadsides printed by, 3, 275 n. 10, 277 n. 41, 296 n. 265 and Pennsylvania petition to Crown, 211, 213–14, 216–17, 311 n. 55, 313 n. 76 and Philadelphia election of 1764, 214–15, 220 remarks about German immigrants, 194, 205–6, 210–11, 221, 243, 278 n. 40 Franklin and Marshall College (Lancaster), 89 Frazier, Nalbro (merchant), real estate advertisement, 55–56, 57–58 Freeman, Philip (peddler), 23, 24 Freitag, [Dr.], 295–96 n. 260 French and Indian War, 56, 120, 201, 310 n. 45 Germans’ suffering during, 162–63, 178, 194, 211, 221, 246 Fresenius, Johann Philip (pastor), 303 n. 63 Fretz, Barbara, funeral notice for, 41 Freylinghausen, Johann Anastasius (author), 13 funeral notice broadsides, 40–41, 43, 44

Haag, Bernhard, wife’s murder, 109 Haberstich, Michael, 129 Hahn, Johann Michael (author), 168, 186, 251, 305 nn. 102, 108 Hamsher, John, 28, 38 Hand, Edward, 243 handbills. See also broadsides, German-American election, 241–42, 245 military, 41–42 printing of, 32–33, 39, 40, 281 n. 94

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Handel, George Frideric, Israel in Egypt, 178 happiness, eternal, 143, 161. See also afterlife, broadsides regarding broadsides on attainment of, 9, 33, 156, 157, 158, 159 yearning for, 134, 169–70, 250 Harmonists, 118. See also Pietists Harrisburg, German Americans in, 14, 23, 24–25, 78 Harrison, Henry, 215 Hart, Amos, 118 Hart, Michael (merchant), 38 Hartman, Joseph (printer), 289 n. 120 Hasenclever, Francis (bookseller), 111–12, 152, 299n30 Haug, Jacob, 127 Haven, Joseph de, 227 heavenly letter broadsides (Himmelsbriefe), 9–10, 13, 35–36, 71–74, 110, 280–81 n. 89, 287 n. 78. See also house blessing broadsides (Haussegen) Hegerty, Cornelius, 118 Heilmann, Heinrich, real estate advertisement by, 59 Heimberger, Thomas, 289 n. 108 Heister, Daniel, 239, 240 Helmuth, Justus Heinrich Christian (pastor), 20, 196, 245 Henkel, Ambrosius (printer and bookseller), 111, 126 Henkel, Paul (pastor and printer), 14, 79 Henkel, Salomon (physician), 79, 87 Henkel family, 14, 277 n. 22, 278 n. 24 Henner, Georg and Mary, 135 Henner, Johannes, 135, 298 n. 314 Henner, Mary, 135, 298 n. 314 hermetic theology, 140, 165–66, 168–69, 253 Heron, Robert and Ferdinand, book order by, 40 Herrman, Ezechiel, heavenly letter edited by, 73 Herschberger, Johann (printer), 289 n. 120 Herzog August Bibliothek broadside collection, 5 Hessian soldiers, 315 nn. 127, 131, 133 broadsides on, 196, 197, 222, 224–32, 240 Hiester, Thomas (printer), 32 Hill, Rowland (pastor), 190, 191–92, 308 n. 189 Hiltzheimer, Jakob (merchant), 118 Hirte, John Tobias and Mary Klose, 297 n. 288 Hirte, Tobias, 78, 297 n. 288 anti-slavery broadside, 128, 129, 134, 138 history broadsides, 93–96, 94, 98, 291 n. 163 heavenly letters printed by, 72, 73, 287 n. 78 Hohmann, Johann Georg (printer, author and peddler), 24, 279 n. 65, 281 n. 108 broadside orders placed by, 33, 34–36, 46 publications by, 13, 108, 280–81 n. 89 Holy Spirit, in house blessing broadsides, 67, 68, 163, 178, 185 horses. See breeding, broadsides advertising; livestock Horsfield, Timothy, 117–18 house blessing broadsides (Haussegen), 13, 66–70, 76, 88, 152, 174, 251. See also devotional broadsides; heavenly letter broadsides (Himmelsbriefe) farming’s prominence in, 91, 115 illustrations on, 66–67, 68–69, 70, 286 n. 55 texts of, 185–86

house devotions broadsides, 35, 140–93, 299 n. 27, 306 n. 123. See also devotional broadsides Christian education through, 155, 183–86, 192 on death and eternal life, 171–74 Ephrata Cloister publications, 156–71, 175, 177, 183–85 families’ participation in, 141, 151–52, 162, 174, 178 hymnals for, 151, 152, 183–86, 300 n. 35 hymns for, 142–52, 153, 170–71, 251 illustrations on, 153, 174–92 pastors’ roles in, 36, 302 n. 51 Howe, Sir William, 229–30, 314 n. 95 hucksters. See peddlers Hughes, John, 214, 216 Hu¨tter, Carl Ludwig (printer), 17, 21, 242 Hu¨tter, Christian Jacob (printer and bookseller), 17, 20–21, 28–29, 38, 112 ledgers of, 9, 25–30, 26t6–8, 37, 280 nn. 69, 75 publications printed by, 21t, 22, 25, 279 n. 52 Hu¨tter, Maria Magdalena Huber, 20–21 hymnals, 18, 142, 142t, 150 for house devotions, 151, 152, 299 n. 27, 300 n. 35 hymns, on broadsides, 33–34, 127, 249. See also devotional broadsides, hymns; house devotions broadsides, hymns for composers of, 13, 35 confirmation, 99–100, 292 n. 182 printing of, 36, 37 themes of, 171t, 175t immigration. See also emigration English settlers’ concerns regarding, 115, 194, 195, 205–7, 233 language problems, 2, 4–5, 11, 115, 287 n. 87 in Pennsylvania, 1–2, 284 n. 8 indentured servants, 24, 108, 114, 127, 129, 296 n. 283. See also slavery Indians lands taken from, 55, 56 missionary work among, 206, 213, 311 n. 60 prejudices against, 212–13 inspiration, doctrine of, 71 Inspired (Inspiriete), congregation of, 157, 162, 177 Isaac (Old Testament), 170 Jabez, Brother. See Miller, Johann Peter (printer) Jackson, Andrew, 246, 247, 252 Jacob (Old Testament), 182–83 Jefferson, Thomas and 1800 presidential election, 243, 252 Embargo Act of 1807, 244, 245, 319 n. 243 German Americans’ interest in, 246, 247 Joseph (Old Testament), 91–92, 96, 98, 100, 101, 102, 105, 170, 178–83 Jotham, Brother. See Eckerlin, Gabriel Judgment Day, 72, 96, 97, 106, 156, 169–70, 172, 186–92. See also afterlife, broadsides regarding; happiness, eternal Jung, Heinrich (a.k.a. Young, Henry), 97

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Jung, Joseph, 97, 291–92 n. 170 Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich, 188, 250, 251, 305 n. 105 Ka¨mmerer family (printers), 19 Kamp, Anne von, 4 Keefley, John (peddler), 23 Kelpius, John, 168, 305 n. 112 Keppele, Henry, 214 Kessler, Carl A. (printer), 30 Kettering, William (physician), 82 King, Henry, 242 Kirk, Thomas (printer), 190–91 Klepp, Susan E., 288 n. 97 Ko¨nig, Adam (publisher), 242 Koppelberger, Johannes (author), 13 Kruger, Johann Christian, Herzog Michel, 295 n. 232 Kunze, Johann Christoph (pastor), 4–5 labels, printing of, 30, 42, 43 Lafontaine, Jean de, 305 n. 105 Lahn, Jacob (bookseller), 111–12, 113, 152–53 Lancaster (city and county), 25, 79, 89, 280 n. 86. See also Hu¨tter, Christian Jacob (printer and bookseller) booksellers in, 28, 112 broadsides printed in, 4, 51, 59 German Americans in, 2, 24, 30, 79, 113, 213, 315 n. 127; printers, 14, 16, 17, 20–22, 30 politics in, 234, 237, 242 land, sale of. See real estate sale broadsides Landes, Johannes, Ein Geistlich Lied, 172 language(s), 127, 245 of broadsides, 51, 52 English, 11, 197, 205, 240, 277 n. 4, 289 n.107, 316 n. 138 German, 113, 154–55, 198 immigrants’ problems with, 2, 4–5, 11, 115, 287 n. 87 Latter-Day Saints, Church of, 71 Laumann, Ludwig (bookseller), 28 laws naturalization, 2, 275 n. 6 regulating peddlers, 22–23, 279 n. 54 Lay, Benjamin, 156 Lebanon (city and county), broadsides published in, 4, 17, 51, 59 Lechler, John and Mary, murder story, 109 Leibert, Peter (printer) apprenticeship, 17, 18 religious affiliation, 13–14, 22 Leininger, Barbara, captivity tale, 194 Lepper, Daniel Wilhelm (printer), 88 Le Roy, Marie, captivity tale, 194 Libby, James (peddler), 23 liberty of conscience, 210, 211, 221, 252 as political issue, 1, 196, 204–5, 206, 207–10 life, eternal. See also afterlife, broadsides regarding; happiness, eternal; Judgment Day broadsides on, 46, 49, 154–55, 161, 171–74 hymns on, 146–49, 300–301 n. 37

Lineweaver (Leineweber), Georg, 77 literary broadsides, 110–12. See also books; booksellers and bookstores livestock, 124–25, 296 nn. 271, 272. See also breeding, broadsides advertising raising and caring for, 118–20, 126, 134, 138, 250, 295 n. 252, 295–96 n. 260, 296–97 n. 260 Lochner, Christoph (bookseller), 111, 115 Locke, John, 210 London, James, murder story, 109 lottery scheme broadsides, 40, 42, 43 love, broadsides depicting, 33, 60–66, 105, 110, 250 Loyalists broadsides expressing sentiments of, 224, 232, 233 hymns expressing sentiments of, 300 n. 36 Saur II’s affiliation with, 232, 313 n. 87 lust, 65, 98, 143, 146, 148, 158 broadsides depicting, 100–103, 101, 102, 106, 135, 177, 182, 250, 291 n. 157 Luther, Martin, 71, 293 n. 200 Lutheran Church, 5, 18, 84, 129, 157, 252–53, 299 n. 24. See also Reformed Church ABC broadsides, 87–88 American Revolution and, 224, 225 confessionalization concept, 102, 146 confirmation in, 99–103, 143, 292 n. 182 hymns, 149, 150 membership in, 70, 195 number of congregations, 141, 141t politics in, 159, 201 Mach, James M. (peddler), 23 Mack, Alexander, Jr. (printer), 17, 278 n. 30 Mack, Alexander, Sr. (printer), 278 n. 30 Mack, Maria, 17 Magdeburg Briefe, 72–74, 286–87 n. 67. See also heavenly letter broadsides (Himmelsbriefe) ‘‘St. Michael’s Church’’ version, 72, 74 magic, 36, 70–71 mail-order businesses, 25, 38, 280 n. 82. See also merchants, German-American Mann, Thomas, Joseph und seine Bru¨der, 178 markets for broadsides, 12, 36–48 farmers’, 24, 30, 120–25, 124, 296 nn. 273, 276 Marlborough Township, book orders from, 27, 28 marriage, broadsides on, 60–66, 105, 250, 295 n. 239. See also courtship broadsides Martin, Christian Friedrich (physician), 289 n. 108 Martin, Jacob (author), COPIE Eines Briefs, 165, 168 Maryland broadsides published in, 249, 303 n. 54, 304 n. 86 German Americans in, 252, 282 n. 119 Mather, Cotton, 186 Mayer, Benjamin (printer), 78 mazes, 177, 178, 307 n. 157 McKean, Thomas, 317 n. 167 McMurry, Sally, 127

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medical broadsides, 44, 76–83, 249, 288 n. 99. See also pharmaceutical broadsides animal-related, 119–20, 121 illnesses covered, 81–82, 81t producers and locations, 17, 79t10–11 Meintzer, Daniel, 120 memorialists, 234, 236 men balanced relationship with women, 105, 110, 250 courtship broadsides’ depiction of, 60, 62, 64 Mennonites, 70, 99, 129, 313 n. 87 hymns of, 149, 151 as peace church, 2, 201, 224, 236 merchants, German-American, 12, 30. See also booksellers and bookstores; peddlers, German-American as alternatives to peddlers, 24–25 booksellers’ connections to, 25, 27 broadsides sold by, 36, 249, 276 n. 38 farmers working as, 27, 28, 37, 38 Merk, Heinrich, real estate advertisement by, 59 Methodists, 132, 133, 140, 192, 193, 252 midwives, handbooks for, 78 Milanberger, Michael, 227 military broadsides, 41–42, 43, 44, 249. See also American Revolution; Hessian soldiers; political broadsides Miller, C. William, 275 n. 10 Miller, Henrich (Henry) (printer), 221, 278 n. 36, 311 n. 60, 316 n. 153 apprenticeship, 19, 278 n. 25 as bookseller, 111, 113 medical booklet published by, 78 political broadsides printed by, 213, 214, 314 nn. 95, 113 religious affiliation, 13, 20, 21, 22 titles printed by: Christliches Buß-Lied, 314 n. 95; Geistlicher Irrgarten mit Vier Gnadenbrunnen, 177–78 Miller, Johann Peter (printer), 17 missionaries, Moravian, 166, 206, 213, 311 n. 60 Montelius, Margaret Stitzer, 87 Montelius, Peter (printer) broadsides printed by, 13, 74, 84, 86–87, 89, 186 work as teacher, 37, 97 Montesquieu, Baron de, 210 Moore, Elizabeth, murder story of, 130, 132, 134, 138, 140, 146, 172, 250 morals education in, 91–93, 103 tales depicting, 27, 47–48, 65, 108, 111–12, 134, 138 Moravian Church, 26, 70, 129, 151, 221, 314 n. 113 beliefs, 71, 82, 155 Losungen, 19–20 missionaries from, 166, 206, 213, 311 n. 60 opposition to, 157–58, 213, 303 nn. 64, 65 as peace church, 2, 224, 236 printers affiliated with, 19–22, 25, 279 n. 51 tree nursery run by, 117–18 Moser, Peter (printer), 82, 291 n. 156

Mu¨hlenberg, Anna Maria, 289 n. 108 Muhlenberg, Frederick August Gabriel, 27, 196, 232, 241, 278 n. 39, 280 n. 72 and U.S. House election, 238, 239, 240, 317 n. 167 Mu¨hlenberg, Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst (pastor), 77, 82, 289 n. 122 Mu¨hlenberg, Heinrich Melchior (pastor), 4, 19, 120, 150, 289 n. 108, 296 n. 266 on political issues, 195, 221, 312 n. 69, 313 n. 85 sons of, 77, 232 Muhlenberg, John Peter Gabriel (pastor) political broadsides by, 195–96, 232 and U.S. House election, 239, 240 Mu¨ller, Joseph, murder story of, 108, 109, 110, 134, 138, 251 Mundorf, George, 132 murder ballad broadsides, 33, 35, 47, 65, 106–10, 129–34, 136, 280–81 n. 89, 285–86n43. See also Cox, Susanna, murder story of; Moore, Elizabeth, murder story of nationality, bonds of. See ethnicity Native Americans. See Indians naturalization, Pennsylvania act of 1743, 2, 275 n. 6 New Jersey, German-American printers in, 14 New Jerusalem. See also afterlife, broadsides regarding; happiness, eternal broadsides on attainment of, 49, 173 joys of, 172, 251 paths to, 161, 188–90, 190, 191, 192 visions of, 146, 169–70, 250 New Market, Virginia, German Americans in, 79, 111 printers, 14, 87, 126 newspapers, 316 n. 157 advertising in, 32–33, 52–53 broadsides’ advantages over, 241–42 German-language, 312–13 n. 71 printers of, 17, 18 New Testament. See Bible; biblical broadsides Newton, Thomas, 168 New Year, shooting in, custom of, 61 New York, German-Americans in, 14, 217, 219, 221 Niemeyer, August Hermann, 185–86 Nolt, Steven M., 195, 198 Norris, Isaac, 215 North, Lord, 223 Northampton County, German Americans in, 2, 284 n. 7 North Carolina, German-American printers in, 15 Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 56 novels, 28, 112, 114 oaths of allegiance, 2, 232, 310 n. 40 Ohio farm sales in, 56–57, 58 German-American printers in, 14, 15 Old Testament. See Bible; biblical broadsides Otterbein, Philip Wilhelm, 289 n. 113

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pacifism, 1–2, 200, 216, 232 churches advocating, 2, 224, 236 Padley, Benjamina (author), 156, 275 n. 11 Padlin, Benjamin. See Padley, Benjamina papal infallibility, doctrine of, 71 Parkinson, Richard, Of turnip & pea fallows, 19 Pastorius, Francis Daniel, 168 pastors, German-American, 13, 14 as customers for religious broadsides, 18, 36–37, 46, 282 n. 117 as originators of broadsides, 36, 302 n. 51 political involvement of, 195–96, 221, 309 n. 11, 312 n. 69, 313 n. 85 scarcity of, 152, 251 Patton, John, 40 Paul, Saint, 204, 292 n. 186 Paulus, Beate Hahn, 161–62, 183 Paxton Boys riots, 211–13, 212, 240, 311 n. 60 peddlers, German-American, 12 broadsides sold by, 22–25, 30, 36, 130, 249 laws regulating, 22–23, 279 n. 54 Penn, John, 311 n. 55 Penn, Richard, 311 n. 55 Penn, Thomas, 1, 200, 275 n. 10, 311 n. 55 Pennsylvania, 50 constitution of 1776, 220, 222, 232–41, 246, 251–52, 316 nn. 145, 153, 154 farm sales, 55–56, 57–58 German-American printers in, 14–22 immigration in, 1–2, 284 n. 8 naturalization act of 1743, 2, 275 n. 6 petition to Crown to take over government, 211, 213–14, 215, 216–17, 221, 313 n. 76 politics in, 2, 194–95, 198, 199–221, 240, 243, 308 n. 7, 317 n. 168 rural life, 36–43 Stamp Act Congress delegation, 216–17 U.S. House of Representatives election, 239–40, 317 n. 167 Pennsylvania Dutch culture, 7–8, 10 Perry County, peddlers in, 23 Peters, Gustav Sigmund (printer), 82, 92–93, 180, 192, 291 n. 156 pharmaceutical broadsides, 25, 30, 38, 42–43, 250, 289 n. 108. See also medical broadsides; physicians’ broadsides advertising on, 42–43, 77, 78–82, 98–99 illnesses covered, 81t Phener, Jacob, 41 Philadelphia (city and county) election of 1764, 214–15, 214t, 220 German Americans in, 216, 229; churches, 5, 19, 26–27; printers, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 213, 279 n. 53 state representatives election, 237 taxation laws in, 200, 204 physicians’ broadsides, 78–82, 81t Pietists, 65, 118, 151, 180, 301 n. 39 broadsides reflecting, 46, 156, 183

and Christian education of children, 87–88, 183–86 confirmation of, 99, 143 eschatological beliefs of, 10, 140, 152, 157, 166, 168–74, 193 house blessings by, 69, 70 radical, 157, 159, 162, 166, 168, 169–70, 174, 177, 192–93 theology of, 161, 163, 165–66 ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ popular with, 146, 148, 149 Pittsburgh, German-American printers in, 14, 28 poems, on broadsides, 13, 28, 87 on courtship and marriage, 60–66 on farming, 66, 115–17, 116 religious, 74, 104, 157 political broadsides, 194–253. See also election broadsides American Revolution, 7, 163–65, 221–32; from British army, 227–28, 229–30, 252; from Continental Congress, 225–27, 228, 229–30, 230, 231, 314 n. 105; on Hessian mercenaries, 196, 197, 222, 224–32, 240 authors and originators of, 198, 220 categories of, 199t18 colonial, 44–45, 199–221 on constitutional issues, 232–41, 249 distribution of, 199, 200t frequency of publication, 199t17 German-American, 241–47, 308 n. 7, 309 n. 11 structure of, 196–97 politics, 11, 287 n. 87, 313 n. 83. See also individual political parties colonial, 199–221 European, 1, 200, 204 German-American, 6, 46, 48, 105–6, 194–99, 251–52, 309 n. 11, 310 n. 45 handbills’ importance in, 32–33 local and regional, 239, 240–41, 242, 251–52 in Pennsylvania, 2, 115, 194–95, 198, 199–221, 240, 308 n. 7 presidential, 242–43, 252 prayer broadsides, 33, 84, 98, 117, 151, 153, 156. See also heavenly letter broadsides (Himmelsbriefe); house blessing broadsides (Haussegen) preachers. See pastors, German-American pregnancy, 76–78, 81, 82, 288 nn. 94, 103. See also childbirth Price, Conrad, 34 printers and printing, German-American, 6, 9, 11–48, 50, 186, 196. See also broadsides, GermanAmerican; customers, German-American, printers’ relationship to authors, 9, 12–14, 134 as booksellers, 9, 14, 278 n. 33 broadside production by, 36–43, 93, 249, 287 n. 75 culture of, 192–93 master-apprenticeship lineages, 17–22 in North America, 14–22, 15t, 16 odd-job, 31–32, 39, 42–43, 281 n. 94 peddlers as distributors for, 24–25

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printers and printing (continued ) prices charged by, 25–36, 43–46 profit-making goal of, 47–48, 151, 154, 171, 213, 249 religious affiliations, 13–14 sales of broadsides by, 81, 109, 168, 170, 174, 276 n. 38 settlers’ relationship to, 36–43 Proprietary Party, 216, 311 n. 55 German-Americans’ involvement with, 199, 201, 211, 221, 312 n. 69 in Philadelphia election of 1764, 214–15 Quaker Party’s differences with, 2, 204, 213 protection broadsides, 9, 74–76, 75, 88–89, 250 Protestant churches, German-American, 22, 71, 75 broadsides from, 46, 69, 88, 162 pastors, 195–96 ‘‘Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen’’ version, 150–51 Pseudo-Aristotle, 78, 288 n. 103 publishing. See books; broadsides, German-American; printers and printing, German-American Pufendorf, Samuel von, 210 Putnam, Israel, 197, 230, 309 n. 18, 315 n. 127 Quaker Party, 2, 207 in colonial elections, 207, 240 German Americans’ involvement with, 199, 200–201, 211, 215, 221, 240, 251 Proprietary Party’s differences with, 2, 204, 213 Quakers, 71, 129, 174, 310 n. 40, 313 n. 87 broadsides regarding, 156, 275 n. 11 pacifism of, 201, 213, 224 politics of, 200–1 Quebec Act of 1774, 222 quitrents, 230, 237, 315 n. 122 rabies, 81–82, 289 n. 113 Radicals, 232 Rapp, Johann Georg, 118 Ra¨tzer, C. G. (pharmacist), 98 reading, 105–14. See also books; booksellers and bookstores Reading (city and county), 23, 113, 280 n. 86. See also Ritter, Johann (printer) broadsides printed in, 4, 88 German-American printers in, 14, 16–17, 22, 30, 33, 35, 45–46, 69, 286 n. 55 real estate sales broadsides, 51–60 advertising, 50, 52g1–2, 53, 54, 135, 252 farm descriptions in, 58–60, 296 n. 272 languages published in, 52g2, 53g3, 56–57, 59 locations of, 54–56 motives for sale, 52, 53g3 time frames for, 53, 59 types of properties, 53g4, 54g, 55 redemption contracts. See indentured servants Reformed Church, 84, 88, 129, 201, 225, 252–53, 278 n. 39. See also Lutheran Church confessionalization concept, 102, 146 confirmation in, 99–103, 143, 292 n. 182 hymns of, 149, 151

membership in, 70, 117, 195 number of congregations, 141, 141t organizational structure of, 157, 219 printers in, 18, 19 Reinhold, Georg Christoph (bookseller), 111 religious broadsides, 6, 33–34, 48, 49, 83–105, 198, 253. See also devotional broadsides; Ephrata Cloister, broadsides printed in; house devotions broadsides authorship of, 13–14 on education, 83–98 political views in, 46, 196 prevalence of, 9–10, 39, 249, 250–51 printing of, 17, 21–22, 36 secular broadsides contracted with, 192 transdenominational, 140–42, 148–49, 155, 169 Religious Tract Society, 308 n. 189 Remer, Rosalind, 279 n. 53 Republicans, 239, 241, 242, 243, 247 on constitutional issues, 232, 233, 236 Revelation, book of (Bible), 41, 131–32, 166, 172, 175, 186–89, 305 n. 102 Revolutionary War. See American Revolution Ritter, Johann (printer) broadsides printed by, 22, 30, 38, 67, 69–70, 73, 241, 286 n. 55 ledgers of, 17, 31–32, 33, 34–35, 37, 41, 42–43, 45–46 sales to peddlers, 24, 36 Robb, George (peddler), 23, 24 Roeller, Conrad (pastor), 34 Rose, Daniel, 32 Rose, John/Johannes, 30, 32, 38, 120, 281 n. 95 Rosenberry, Edward L., 7 Ross, James, 241, 242, 244, 245, 246 Roughwood Broadside Collection, 7 Rush, Benjamin, 233, 316 n. 146 Sabbatarian community, 157, 165 Sachse, Julius, 157, 158, 303 n. 72 sale announcement broadsides. See auction broadsides; estate sale broadsides; real estate sales broadsides Samuel Lobach and Son (merchants), 126 Saul (Old Testament), 170 Saur, Christoph I (printer), 9, 105, 159, 246, 303 n. 70, 309 n. 24 almanacs printed by, 18–19 broadsides printed by, 3, 13, 84, 156, 171, 195, 308 n. 7, 310 n. 51 lineages of, 17–18, 278 n. 25 religious affiliation, 13, 22, 177 Saur, Christoph II (printer) almanacs printed by, 18, 288 n. 99 apprenticeship of, 17–18 broadsides printed by, 13, 146, 221, 249, 308 n. 7, 312 n. 70 lineages of, 20, 22, 278 n. 25 Loyalist affiliation, 19, 232, 313 n. 87 newspaper published by, 312–13 n. 71 religious affiliation, 13, 22

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Stamp Act broadside, 215–17, 219, 220 William Smith’s attacks on, 310 n. 45 Saur, Samuel (printer), 78, 128–29 Schild, Johannes, murder story of, 109 Schlatter, Michael (pastor), 195, 278 n. 39 Schlichting, Christian (publisher), 18, 297 n. 305 Schmucker, Johann Georg (pastor), 168, 305 n. 106 Schnee, Jacob (pastor), 17 Schneeberger, Andreas and Barbara, songs by, 164–65 Schneider, Jacob (publisher), 30 Schneider, Simon, 243, 244–45, 246 Schoeneck Library broadside collection, 7 Scholl, J. (printer), 242 Scholten, Catherine M., 288 n. 94 Scholtze, J. G., 311 n. 57 school broadsides, 13, 84–98, 186 Scho¨pflin, Friedrich Wilhelm (printer), 88 Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel (poet), 6 Schuller, Johann Valentin (author), 13, 109 Schu¨tz, Johann Jakob, Saalhofpietisten, 305 n. 110 Schwahr, Johannes, Jr., 295 n. 258 Schwarzenau Brethren, 156, 162, 278 n. 30. See also Brethren, Church of Schwenkfelders, 201 Scott, John Morin (author), Zur nach right, 217, 219 Scott, Joseph (author), United States Gazetteer, 39 Scott, Sir Walter, 305 n. 105 Second Great Awakening, 140, 166, 168, 193 secular broadsides, 48–83, 105–39 culture and leisure, 105–14 daily life, 66–83 farm life, 114–34, 279 n. 52 real estate sales, 51–60 religious broadsides contrasted with, 192 stages of life, 134–39 Seidel, Nathanael, 314 n. 113 sensationalist broadsides, 13, 47, 65, 106–10, 127, 133, 138 sermons, 152, 161, 299 n. 27 settlers, German-American. See also farmers and farming, German-American; Franklin, Benjamin, remarks against German Americans; Hessian soldiers acquiring and distributing broadsides, 36–43, 49–59 American Revolution and, 98, 120, 221–32, 314 n. 98 daily life of, 44, 48, 59–60, 66–73, 171–74, 250; adolescence, 99–105, 106, 111; childhood, 83–98, 98–99, 105–6; culture and leisure, 9, 125, 105–14; education, 83–98; health, 76–83, 99–100; reading, 105–14; religion, 10, 66–76, 99–105, 148–52, 155, 157; stages of life, 134–39, 291 n. 157 English settlers’ criticisms of, 115, 194, 195, 205–7, 233 frontier, 194, 201, 204, 211, 213, 221 interest in broadsides, 36–48 politics of, 46, 48, 194–99, 247, 251–52, 308 n. 7, 310 n. 45 printers’ relationship to, 36–43 regional concentrations of, 2, 4–5 separatism from English settlers, 10, 138–39, 174, 193, 195, 253

unchurched, 140–41, 150, 151, 195 values of, 106, 109–11, 113–14, 174, 201, 204, 231, 244–45, 251–52 voting patterns of, 2, 199–221, 237, 242 worldview of, 142–43, 145, 146, 148, 188 shares, company, broadsides announcing, 43, 44 sheet music, sales of, 25, 38, 280 n. 71 Shenandoah Valley (Virginia), 58, 126, 249, 252 German-American printers in, 14, 79, 277 n. 22, 289 n. 109 Shields, David P., 6 sin, broadsides depicting, 100–103, 102, 173, 174, 250. See also Adam and Eve, in broadsides, sin of; greed, broadsides depicting; lust; murder ballad broadsides Sitgreaves, James, 33, 38 Sitgreaves, Samuel, 282–83 n. 128, 283 n. 129 slavery, 114, 251. See also indentured servants broadsides against, 127, 128, 128–34, 138–39, 166, 204 Smith, Frederick, 32 Smith, William, 309 n. 35, 310 n. 40 remarks against German immigrants, 206–7, 210–11, 220–21, 243, 245–46, 309 n. 24, 310 n. 45 Snow Hill (Ephrata Cloister branch), 164–65, 166, 168 Society of Friends. See Quakers solace, broadsides offering, 9, 170 soldiers. See also deserters, American Revolution; Hessian soldiers Solomon (Old Testament), 301 n. 40 songs, on broadsides. See also hymns, on broadsides; murder ballad broadsides; sheet music, sales of biblical, 171–74 composers of, 13, 141–42 courtship, 60–66 Ephrata Cloister, 164–65 European, 253 for house devotions, 153, 170, 306 n. 123 non-denominational, 148–52 political, 198, 221–24 Sophia the Virgin, 158, 159, 161, 165 Spener, Philip Jacob, 143, 151, 168 spiritualists, 56, 71, 141, 162 Spooner, Alden (printer), 190 Spyker, John, 32 St. Gallen Klosterbibliothek broadside collection, 5 Sta¨hle, Wilhelm, 296 n. 270 Stahle, William, 33, 45, 281 n. 95 Stamp Act of 1765, 215–17 stationery, sales of, 25, 29, 30, 38 Steffy, Philip, 126–27, 296 n. 279 Steiner, Johann Conrad (pastor), 19, 278 n. 39 Steiner, Melchior (printer), 19, 20, 22, 37 Steinmetz, Johann, real estate advertisement by, 54 Steinmetz, William and Maria Billmeyer, marriage of, 65–66 Stettinius, Samuel Endredy (printer), 78, 88 Stilling, Johann H. J. (pastor and poet), 168 Stopp, Klaus, study by, 7, 8

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Stoy, Elizabeth Maus, 289 n. 113 Stoy, Henry William, 81, 82, 289 n. 113 Swoope, Benjamin (peddler), 22 Tannhoff, Werner, 3 teachers and teaching, 83–84, 87, 91–93, 95–96, 97–98, 99, 292 n. 173. See also apprenticeships; education; education broadsides Tennent, John, Every Man His Own Doctor, 77 Tersteegen, Gerhard (poet), 13, 88, 165, 169, 192–93, 251, 300–301 n. 37 Test, George, 130, 132 Thiel, Charles Jacob Sigismund (printer). See Cist, Charles (printer) Thirty Years’ War, broadsides’ role in, 6 Tories, 232, 241. See also Loyalists travel literature, 28, 112–13 Uhlem, Martin (peddler), 24 Ulber, Christian Samuel, 299 n. 27 Unitas Fratum. See Moravian Church United Lutheran Ministry, Melchior Steiner as printer for, 19 United States constitution of 1787, 232, 238–40, 246, 316 n. 138 first House of Representatives election, 239–40, 317 n. 167 University of the State of Pennsylvania, 236–37 values. See morals; settlers, German-American, values of Vermont, German-American settlers in, 14 Villee, Herman William, Adam and Eve broadside, 104 Virginia. See Shenandoah Valley (Virginia)

Weiser, Samuel (merchant), 28, 37, 38 Weiss, Jacob and Rebecca, 19 Wellenreuther, Hermann, 3 Wesley, John, 191–92 Wessel, Carola, 3–4 Wharton, Thomas, Jr., Revolutionary broadside by, 229 Whigs, 241, 310 n. 45 on constitutional issues, 232, 233, 236, 237, 238 Whitefield, George, 157 Whitehead, John Frederick, 296 n. 283 Wiestling, John S. (printer), 289 n. 120 Wilcox, Abraham (peddler), 23 Willig, Georg, 25 Wilson, James, 236 Wister, Johannes and Daniel, An die Deutschen, 216–17 Wolff, Christian, 305 n. 102 women. See also Adam and Eve, in broadsides; childbirth; Cox, Susanna; Moore, Elizabeth, murder story of; pregnancy; Sophia the Virgin balanced relationship with men, 105, 110, 250 broadsides published by, 156, 275 n. 11 Christian model of, 292 n. 186 courtship broadsides’ depiction of, 60, 62, 64 murder stories involving, 106–10 temptations represented by, 100–103, 101, 102, 182, 291 n. 157 Woolman, John, 156 wool production, 114, 117, 126–27, 134 Wroth, Lawrence C., 6 Yoder, Don, study by, 7–8, 9, 286 n. 61 York (city and county), 59, 129, 132 broadsides printed in, 4, 51 election campaigns in, 237, 242 farmers’ markets in, 125, 296 n. 276 German-American printers in, 17, 297 n. 305 peddlers in, 22, 23, 24 Yost, Daniel, books ordered by, 27, 27t, 28 Yost, David, 28, 38 Young, William (printer and merchant), 40, 42, 283 n. 136

Wagner, G. J. (peddler), 24 Walpole, Sir Robert, 210 Warner, Benjamin (printer), 38 Warner, Michael, 6 War of Austrian Succession (1740–48), 1, 200 Washington, George, 223, 227 Weber, Christian, funeral notice for, 41 Weidmann, Johannes, 127 Weiser, Conrad (printer), 38, 159, 304 n. 77 broadsides printed by, 1–2, 13, 195, 199, 201–4, 220, 227, 240

Zedler, Johann Heinrich, 6 Zentler, Conrad (printer), 14, 20, 22, 73 Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Count, 157

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