A Short German History of the Declaration of Independence

Die deutsche Übersetzung des gesamten Inhalts finden Sie hier. / You can find the German translation of the entire content here.

17th Century

The first German settlers, residing in the present-day United States of America, were already resident in 1562. The first permanent German settlement, founded in the year of 1683, is Germantown in Pennsylvania, a few miles north of Philadelphia. William Penn, who founded Pennsylvania in 1681 and Philadelphia in 1682, sold land to groups from Krefeld and Frankfurt (“Frankfurt Land Company”), who were administered by lawyer Francis Daniel Pastorius. Thirteen Mennonite families from Krefeld, the “Original 13“, crossed the Atlantic on board of the Concord in the fall of 1683. Pastorius was already waiting for them on October 6, 1683, on/at the shore of the Delaware River in Philadelphia with the allocated areas of land by Penn. The total population of the German settlement in Pennsylvania rose fast. 75,000 to 100,000 German-speaking settlers were living in the colony before the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). The population figures in Philadelphia are exemplary of this development.

**Historical map of Pennsylvania from 1687 incl. German Township.**

18^th Century

**Title page of the “Hoch-Deutsch Americanischer Kalender” printed by Johann Christoph Sauer.**

Printing played a crucial role for the inhabitants of Germantown almost right from the beginning. First, U.S. pioneers in printing, Andrew Bradford and Benjamin Franklin, provided with moderate success diverse German printing products. In 1734 Johann Christoph Sauer (Christopher Sower), son of a reformist (preacher) from Ladenburg am Neckar, settled in Germantown and established a German letterpress workshop with printing typefaces from the Egenolff-Lutherschen Schriftgießerei from Frankfurt am Main. It was the first time in the colonies that Fraktur was used in printing. Sauer was successful from the onset, as German readers were used to his print image. From 1739 onwards, he published German-language newspapers and in 1743 even a Bible (“Germantown Bible“), the first Bible printed in German in colonial America. His son continued his business. He gained a competitor with the arrival of Heinrich Möller (Henrich Miller), who published Der Wöchentliche Philadelphische Staatsbote from 1762 onwards—later known as Henrich Miller’s Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote—along with other political publications. In early 1776, the new German printing office run by Melchior Steiner and Charles Jacob Sigismund Thiel (Carl Cist) gained attention by publishing Thomas Paine’s revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense in German (“Gesunde Vernunft”) and, increasingly, government records in German.

Revolutionary Years around 1776

The revolutionary period began in 1763, when Great Britain began to reform the administration and taxation of its British North American colonies. Regional representatives of the first twelve colonies in what was called British North America convened a Continental Congress in Philadelphia to coordinate their response to British policies. The crisis and discontent with British colonial rule intensified with the beginning of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. Delegates from the colonies met again in Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress. A new solution emerged: separation from Great Britain and the founding of a confederation. On May 15, Congress voted to create state constitutions in each former colony and to suppress all forms of Crown authority. On June 7, Richard Henry Lee introduced for the delegation of Virginia the formal motion to break with Great Britain. Shortly afterwards, on June 11, Congress appointed the “Committee of Five”, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman, to draft a declaration for independence. Jefferson, known for his penmanship, became the principal author of the draft, which he then shared and discussed with the other members. No minutes of the drafting process exist; the only written accounts of the events are the memories by elder statesmen, Jefferson and Adams, which do not match. Congress edited the draft and cut roughly 500 words. The final version including its title was 1,337 words long. On July 4, 1776 the delegates of twelve of the thirteen colonies—now states—ratified a declaration, which would later be known as the Declaration of Independence.

The political cartoon (attributed to Benjamin Franklin) addresses the disunity of the Thirteen Colonies during the Seven Years’ War; several decades later, it was used to call on the American colonies to unite against British rule.

The Printing of the Declaration

John Dunlap produced the first print of the Declaration on July 4, 1776. His pamphlet was sent to governors, assemblies, and influential private persons in the newly founded states to spread the news of independence and to foster unity. On July 6, Benjamin Towne published the first newspapers version of the Declaration in his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Evening Post. On the morning of July 8, John Dunlap announced its proclamation in the Pennsylvania Packet.

As early as July 3, Christoph Sauer II announced the decisive resolution of Congress to declare independence in his Germantowner Zeitung. On July 5, Henrich Miller published in his Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote that the Declaration of Independence had been passed and was currently being printed. Steiner and Cist likely published their German translation of the Declaration in Fraktur as a broadside on July 8 (see im. 8). Most broadsides were not preserved. To our knowledge, only two copies still exist today: one at the Gettysburg College Library and another at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. On July 9, another German translation of the Declaration was published on the front page of Miller’s Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote. These translations informed the German-speaking population of Pennsylvania, which made up a third of the state’s overall population. The forms in which the Declaration was printed or reproduced, vary in their format, spelling, font size and punctuation. No official guideline on how to publish the text or its structure exists.

In the following weeks, broadsides are being distributed for proclamations in many townships and for George Washington’s troops. There is no record about readings of the German broadside. Nevertheless, the accuracy, expression and speed of the German translations are impressive. The first non-English version of the Declaration existed merely within days after its passage in Congress. However, no guidelines for translations of the Declaration existed.

During the summer of 1776, the Declaration was printed in newspapers in all thirteen former colonies, distributed as broadsides, read aloud, and shipped across the Atlantic. The first printed version of the Declaration reached Europe in August, arriving in London on August 16, where it was immediately excerpted, censored, and manipulated. Isaac Iselin from Basel was the first to provide a complete translation in German of the Declaration in Europe in October 1776. The valuable and more accurate translations by Miller, Cist, and Steiner would not surface again until 1987.

**The first German-language translation of the American Declaration of Independence.**

19th Century

In the following decades, the Declaration did not play a decisive role in what is today’s state territory of Germany. The delegates of the Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848/49 focused primarily on the U.S. Constitution of 1787. They used the Constitution as inspiration to structure a loose confederation of states and to draft a liberal constitution. Even in the U.S., the text of the Declaration only resurfaced in public discourse around its 50^th anniversary.

**The arrival of the Provisional Parliament at St. Paul’s Church on March 21, 1848, in Frankfurt**/M.

20th Century

German appreciation for U.S. constitutionalism, including the ideals of the Declaration, grew during the 20^th century. In particular, politician and legal scholar Hermann von Mangoldt wrote significant German contributions to the analysis of the U.S. constitutional system in the 1930s. As a member of the Parliamentary Council, which drafted the Grundgesetz (Basic Law) in 1948/49, he was also strongly influenced by the democratic ideals of the Declaration. A key example is Article 20 (4) (“Right to Resist“): “All Germans shall have the right to resist any person seeking to abolish this constitutional order if no other remedy is available.“

On May 15, 1976, the national ceremonial act to celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the Declaration took place in St. Paul’s Church in Frankfurt am Main. Present were German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Vice President of the United States of America Nelson A. Rockefeller. In his speech, Vice President Rockefeller thanked the German population for their strong participation in the festivities and called for a renewed commitment to the principles of freedom, democracy, and human rights.

21^st Century

The U.S. Declaration of Independence is one of the most influential documents of the modern era and marks the origin of the liberal constitutional tradition of the Atlantic world. Moreover, the Declaration also representsthe many Germans who have contributed to the founding and development of the United States of America. 250 years later, in 2026, we commemorate this landmark declaration, which first enshrined unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.