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Reviewed by:
  • Sacred Song and the Pennsylvania Dutch by Daniel Jay Grimminger, and: Citizens in a Strange Land: A Study of German-American Broadsides and Their Meaning for Germans in North America, 1730–1830 by Hermann Wellenreuther
  • Karen Guenther
Daniel Jay Grimminger. Sacred Song and the Pennsylvania Dutch (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012). Pp. xxi, 213. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, $85.00.
Hermann Wellenreuther. Citizens in a Strange Land: A Study of German-American Broadsides and Their Meaning for Germans in North America, 1730–1830 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013). Pp. xv, 352. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, $94.95.

The two books included in this review essay both focus upon the language and culture of German settlers in Pennsylvania during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Daniel Jay Grimminger’s Sacred Song and the Pennsylvania Dutch [End Page 202] concentrates on the music of the Lutheran and Reformed settlers in Pennsylvania prior to the Revolution whose language and culture has continued to influence the Commonwealth in the twenty-first century. Hermann Wellenreuther’s Citizens in a Strange Land: A Study of German-American Broadsides focuses on one media used by German settlers in Pennsylvania and other colonies/states as a way to maintain their cultural identity.

Grimminger begins by explaining why he has chosen to call them Pennsylvania Dutch (Pennsylvaanisch Deitsch) instead of the more commonly used Pennsylvania German. Following Ernst Troeltsch’s church/sect typology, Grimminger identifies three distinct religious subgroups among the Pennsylvania Dutch: the Kirchenleute (church people), the Sektenleute (sectarians), and the Brüdergemeinen (Moravians). He briefly reviews the unique identity of the Pennsylvania Dutch in religion, material culture, language, food, celebrations, and food. Of particular interest is the establishment of union churches as a means to maintain German culture, and he identifies the union hymnal as the most significant outcome of these cooperative arrangements.

By the nineteenth century, traditional German church music had become a way for ministers to attempt to preserve their ethnic identity. Singing schools promoted the use of hymns, often in conjunction with Lutheran and Reformed parochial schools. Chorale books were especially important in Lutheran and Reformed churches; they aided in retaining the German language while reinforcing the theology of the two denominations. Tune books, however, provided more flexibility, as students could record musical notations and staff lines themselves. Consistently, they retained European influences, especially those used by Lutherans.

By the mid-nineteenth century, use of the English language had increased in the ethnically German churches, partly as a result of the decline of parochial schools following the passage of the Free School Act in 1834. Tune books, hymnals, and liturgies began to appear in both English and German. By the mid-1850s, tune books included pronunciation guides to improve the students’ English-language skills, concurrently transitioning away from traditional religious themes.

Grimminger’s volume is a fascinating study of the evolution of religious music from earliest German settlements in Pennsylvania into the twentieth century. Wellenreuther’s monograph, in contrast, examines the impact of one type of publication during the early years of German-language printing in North America. He creates a fictitious German-speaking farmer, [End Page 203] Peter Beimert, to describe the importance of broadsides in the daily lives of these settlers and the wide distribution of these materials. Courtship, land acquisition, house blessings, and medical advice all reinforced the religious beliefs of the settlers as well as helping them adapt to changes in society. ABC booklets for early education also were appropriate for Beimert and his family, along with Old Testament stories such as Adam and Eve (which Wellenreuther contends were used to educate youth about the physical features of the opposite gender). Songs related to baptism or confirmation, similar to the “sacred songs” discussed by Grimminger, also appeared on broadsides. Perhaps more important to the fictional Beimert were broadsides that advertised breeders, provided advice on the cultivation of crops, and promoted markets and fairs.

Similar to Grimminger’s focus on Lutheran and Reformed settlers and their hymnody, Wellenreuther discusses the importance of religious broadsides on these denominations. Most related to confirmation, yet broadsides also printed “devotional poems and hymns” sung by Lutherans. Many of...

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