Celebrating German-American Day

 

Today is German-American Day, in recognition that on this date in 1683, William Penn brought the first German settlers to America—a group of 13 German Quaker and Mennonite families who founded Germantown. As Garrison Keillor notes in The Writer’s Almanac:

Penn the son called Pennsylvania his “Holy Experiment,” and he set about to find a group of righteous men to form a new society founded on Quaker ideals of nonviolence, freedom of religious worship, and equality for all. “Freedom of religion” and “equality” were conditional terms, however. While other religious traditions were tolerated in Pennsylvania, participation in government was restricted to Protestants; Catholics, Jews, and Muslims could not vote or hold office. And Penn’s promises of equality didn’t really extend to everyone: women couldn’t vote, and Penn himself was a slave-owner.

However, Penn’s first 13 German families had a different idea.  As Keillor notes, “Germantown became the birthplace of the anti-slavery movement in America five years later, when several town leaders sent a two-page condemnation of slavery to the governing body of the Quaker church.”

It is a good reminder that, while many settlers from the Old World brought their ideas of white supremacy and intolerance for others with them, some also brought traditions of peace and tolerance that came to be honored as national ideals.  We are still struggling with these issues, but German-American Day is a good time to ponder the broader impact of Quaker ideals on Americans’ ongoing struggle to honor equality as the context for celebrating freedom in all aspects of our lives.