In Philadelphia’s Germans: From Colonial Settlers to Enemy Aliens, Richard N. Juliani examines the social, cultural, and political life, along with the ethnic consciousness, of Philadelphia’s Germans, from their participation in the founding of the colony of Pennsylvania to the entry of the United States into World War I. This book focuses on their paradoxical transformation from loyal citizens, who made great contributions as they became increasingly Americanized, to a people viewed as a foreign threat to the safety and security of the city and nation. It also considers the policies and treatment of government and views of the local press in reporting and interpreting the dilemma of German Americans during the transition.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1856.

The early immigration of Germans to Philadelphia increased to such an extent, that before the middle of the eighteenth century the English colonists became alarmed for fear that Pennsylvania might be alienated from the English crown, and be dominated by the German immigrants. Indeed, throughout the eighteenth century the greater part of the German immigrants landed at Philadelphia, and from there were distributed into other States. We should naturally expect, with so great a population of Germans in Philadelphia and the surrounding country, that these people would continually extend their influence, and constantly spread abroad their ideas of art, religion, music and literature. Let us consider for a moment the condition of the Germans who landed in this country. In 1683, moved by William Penn’s alluring proclamations of the glorious new world, as well as by the fact that freedom of conscience was granted in Pennsylvania to all, a band of German immigrants arrived in Philadelphia and founded Germantown. With the exception of the scholar, Francis Daniel Pastorious, there were no highly cultured men or women among them. These people were of the middle class, and were more interested in weaving and agriculture and religious salvation, than in the cultivation of the fine arts. The conditions in Germany were not conducive to culture. The country was just recovering from the Thirty Years’ War, and the strength of the people was being expended in building up the homes, and improving the land made desolate during that fierce struggle. At this time, too, the German people had little liberty, but rather were under the thumb of absolutism, which was at that time the great force in European countries. It was not an epoch favorable to the cultivation of the fine arts. There was no great literature, no great art, no great music. There was, however, a strong religious spirit, which is often the result of hardship and suffering. It is in the field of religion, too, that we find the best music during the seventeenth century, although it was not original in style, but simply a continuation of Luther’s music. The hymn-writers of that time, both Catholic and Protestant, are not to be despised, and we need mention but a few, whose songs have lived even to the present day: as Paul Fleming (1609-1640) and Paul Gerhardt (1606-1676), Protestant; Friedrich Spee (1591-1635) and Johann Scheffer (1624-1677), Catholics. It can be said, then, with some degree of surety, that the performance of music by the early German settlers in Philadelphia was confined, in the province of music, to hymns.

The Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory is a futuristic war novel set in USA, 1921, where America is overpowered by European powers like Germany. The subtitle of the book claims to be based on the extracts from the diary of James E. Langston who was a war correspondent of the "London Times." Moffett was concerned with the military unpreparedness of America in the face of growing suspicions about the German army and hence wrote this cautionary tale in the era where future war stories were hugely popular. In this book the hero is Thomas Alva Edison who must save the America from the impending threat of the Great War. Will he or won't he? Read on!

Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America’s emerging national identity. Instead of thinking about early American culture and literature as evolving continuously as a singular entity, the contributions to this volume conceive of it as an ever-shifting and tangled “web of contact zones.” They present a society with a plurality of different native and colonial cultures interacting not only with one another but also with cultures and traditions from outside the colonies, in a “peculiar mixture” of Old World practices and New World influences. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Rosalind J. Beiler, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Marie Basile McDaniel, Philip Otterness, Liam Riordan, Matthias Schönhofer, and Marianne S. Wokeck.

Considers (80) S. 2439.