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West Mt. Airy: Yesterday and Today
May, 2014 (Yesterday and Today in West Mt. Airy, Article 16)
WHY GERMANS CAME TO PENNSYLVANIA
by Susan Bockius
It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you Susan Bockius, the author of this month’s
Yesterday and Today column essay, entitled, Why Germans Came to Pennsylvania. Susan is a
Mt. Airy native. Her ancestors settled in Germantown in 1741! Susan has been writing most of
her adult life, with numerous published articles on topics like contemporary French stained glass
and commissioned studies on topics such as risk management and military intelligence. Recently
retired, she has turned her research efforts to understanding the world of her 17th and 18th
century forebears. I have known Susan for many years. I believe that you will find her writing
interesting, and a doorway into our neighborhood’s past. -- Burt Froom
WHY GERMANS CAME TO PENNSYLVANIA
The wave of German-speaking settlers to Pennsylvania was large, a phenomenon that
periodically alarmed both the colony and their countries of origin. By the time of the American
Revolution, it is estimated that German-speakers constituted one-third of the 160,000 to 190,000
people in Pennsylvania. By 1727, the colony had instituted recordkeeping of immigrants, to
which was added an oath of allegiance, in large part because of the large number of non-Englishspeaking immigrants.
On the other side of the ocean, Germany and Switzerland at various times restricted emigration,
as their countries seemed to be “emptying out” to foreign shores. A future article on one family’s
history will cite an instance of these restrictive actions.
We can discuss the German immigration as having both “push” and “pull” elements. Motivating
Germans to come to the new land, or the “push,” were years of grueling warfare involving their
towns and farmlands. These wars were called, successively, the Thirty Years’ War, the Nine
Years’ War, and the War of the Spanish Succession.
An earlier article in this series, “New Sweden on the Delaware,” October 2013, introduced the
Thirty Years’ War:
[The Thirty Years’ War] killed an estimated seven to eleven million people in Germany
and Austria¬ at least one-third of Germany’s population of 22 million in 1600. Marauding
armies stole food from the peasants, and destroyed villages and cities. There was widespread starvation… People became homeless refugees… [The Thirty Years’ War partly
explains the existence of Germantown, Pennsylvania as a refuge from war and disease.]
Berthold Brecht made the Thirty Years War the setting for his play Mother Courage and Her
Children. In his play, Brecht dramatizes an enduring testament to war’s barbarism and its
deprivation of the common people. It was common people like these who were willing to endure
the hardships of relocation to half a world away in order to escape what seemed endless warfare.
The “pull” would have been William Penn’s outreach in Holland and in the Rhineland Palatinate.
Penn “marketed” his new land, its agricultural abundance, its tolerance of religious difference,
and his political vision of a “Holy Experiment,” with his personal visits, agents, and descriptive
tracts in the language of his audiences.
RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL ROOTS
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The Holy Roman Empire, an entity underpinned by the Roman Catholic Church, governed
central Europe from the Middle Ages to Napoleon’s conquests. The Empire was ruled by an
elected monarch (sometimes also anointed by the pope), selected from among seven elector
princes, who represented both worldly and spiritual domains. The seven electors were the
Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the
Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. This was often a contentious
governing body. And, as religious differences rose with the Reformation, politics were further
complicated by religious differences.
In 1517, the monk Martin Luther (1483-1546) posted his 95 Theses on the church door in
Wittenberg, beginning the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation shifted from a purely
religious matter into the political sphere with the establishment of the Schmalkaldic League in
1531. This was a defensive union against the Holy Roman Emperor supported by Lutheran rulers
and the Palatinate. The Protestant alliance was challenged by the forces of the Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V. Periodic warfare between these combatants from 1546 to 1555 finally ended
with the Peace of Augsburg, which accepted Lutheranism within the Holy Roman Empire (but
not other Protestant faiths) and allowed princes to choose the official religion of their regions.
THE PALATINATE IN THE YEARS (1559-1742)
Palatinate is a term for the lands in southwestern Germany around portions of the middle and
lower Rhine River governed by one of the secular princes of the Holy Roman Empire. The term
Palatine has an historic imperial reference that, in the context of the Electors, meant something
like “Chamberlain to the Holy Roman Emperor.” The time period of this article’s focus begins
with the first Calvinist Palatine Elector in 1559 and ends with toleration in Palatinate lands in
1742.
So profuse were the numbers of immigrants to America from the Palatinate that all Germans who
came here in the early 1700s were called Palatines. The conditions in their homeland were so
well known that the phrase “Poor Palatines” came into use (as a term of pity, not of penury).
The rulers of the Rhineland Palatinate were distinguished by their early and staunch adherence to
Calvinism. (The Calvinist or Reformed tradition is a major branch of Protestantism that follows
the theological tradition and worship practices of John Calvin (1509-1564). Calvin preached and
wrote in Geneva.) The Calvinist line of electors began with Frederick III (ruled, 1559-1576). He
was called Frederick the Pious or the Good, for the justice and kindness with which he
administered his people.
A surviving story of this ruler touches my family. One Oliverius Bockius was a teacher at the
University of Heidelberg. In 1564, Oliverius traveled to the Netherlands to visit an associate.
Both the associate and he were arrested during a religious purge. Elector Frederick intervened
and Oliverius was allowed to return to his Heidelberg post. The memory of this Calvinist ruler
persists. The stained glass window shown here, created in 1907, pictures Frederick III.
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Palatinate Elector Frederick III. Pictured in a stained glass
window created in 1907, in the Reformed Church, Appenheim,
Germany. Photo by the author.
Frederick’s Calvinist heirs continued with his son Ludwig V (ruled 1576 to 1583) and Frederick
IV (ruled 1583 to1610).
THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR (1618-1648) IN THE PALATINATE
An earlier article in this series introduced the Thirty Years’ War and how it influenced Sweden’s
establishment of a colony in the new world. Here, we review how that war affected the
Palatinate.
The next in the succession of Palatine Electors was the Calvinist Frederick V, who ruled from
1610 to1623. Frederick was sought by Bohemia to be its Protestant king, and he accepted in
1619. The Catholic League opposed his election, and their forces easily defeated the Protestants
in 1620. From his brief reign, Frederick has been called the “Winter King.” Frederick fled
Bohemia. His undefended Palatinate lands were ravaged by the Catholic forces, then declared
forfeit. The Catholic Maximilian I of Bavaria took over Frederick’s Palatinate lands in 1623 and
continued his rule until 1648.
In 1630, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, entered the Thirty Years’ War to bolster the
Protestant cause. He invaded Germany and recaptured Palatine lands, while allied with France.
The Peace of Westphalia concluded the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. Everybody got something:
Sweden and France gained land, and the Dutch Republic and Switzerland were recognized as
independent states. The Calvinists were accepted, along with Lutherans and Catholics. Many
areas remained relatively integrated political regions, but the central swath of Germany was
further subdivided. The area in and around the Palatinate was among the most complex.
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Map of Central Europe following The Peace of Westphalia, 1648. Use zoom-in tool to enlarge map.
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POST THIRTY-YEARS’ WAR, PALATINATE
Following the 1641919638 Treaty of Westphalia, the Protestant line of succession in the
Palatinate resumed. Charles I Louis (ruled1649-1679) spent his reign replenishing his territories.
His heir and namesake, Charles II, ruled briefly (1680-1685), and was followed by Charles’
cousin, Phillip William (1690-1695), a Catholic. The return of a Catholic Palatine elector,
coupled with the marriage of Charles II’s sister to the Duke of Orleans, supported French King
Louis XIV’s aspirations to gain territory in the Palatinate.
THE NINE YEARS’ WAR (1688-1697) IN THE PALATINATE
Beginning in 1670, King Louis XIV began investigating the borders of his French territory.
Often his agents for this investigation concluded that treaties or other settlements had intended
that small portions of land should belong to France.
This “Reunions” policy grew into a full-blown offensive in 1688 when the armies of Louis XIV
crossed the Rhine. The German Princes, the Holy Roman Emperor, and other European powers
opposed him in the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697). In short order, Louis controlled Trier,
Mannheim, Worms, Heidelberg, Speyer, and the fortress of Mainz. The Germans mustered a
formidable opposition and the French scorched-earth retreat from the Rhineland resulted in the
torching of twenty major towns and numerous German villages. In 1689, the Germans positioned
three armies along the Rhine and took back what had been lost. But it was a hollow victory,
because their lands having been scourged in both the coming and the going.
By 1693, the combatants were in economic and social crisis: The stress of war had brought
economic hardship and widespread starvation, as harvests failed and famine spread widely. In
France and northern Italy, some two million people died of non-military causes. Starvation and
displacement invited disease: the bubonic plague visited again, as did typhus and scurvy.
The Seventeenth Century in Europe was also a distinctive climatic period, called by recent
researchers “The Little Ice Age.” Geoffrey Parker writes in The New York Times of March 23,
2014:
During the 17th century, longer winters and cooler summers disrupted growing seasons and
destroyed harvests across Europe. It was the coldest century in a period of glacial
expansion from the early 14th century until the mid-19th century. The unusual cold that
lasted from the 1620s until the 1690s included ice on both the Bosporus and the Baltic so
thick that people could walk from one side to the other... The fatal synergy between
human and natural disasters eradicated perhaps one-third of the human population.
In general exhaustion by 1696, both sides were eager for a negotiated settlement. The resulting
Treaty of Ryswick of 1697 granted Louis his desired Alsace, but removed him from Lorraine and
the right side of the Rhine.
THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION (1701-1714)
Charles II of Spain (1661-1700), the last king of the Spanish Hapsburg dynasty, chose the
grandson of Louis XIV to assume the Spanish throne, titled as Philip V. The other European
powers opposed this potential union of French and Spanish interests. The Holy Roman Empire,
Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Portugal and Savoy determined to secure the Spanish throne
for a candidate who would keep France and Spain divided.
Though not a contender in the struggle, the Palatinate was the ground on which portions of the
War of the Spanish Succession were fought. The French forces marched through the Palatinate to
join their Bavarian allies. The opposing British and Dutch confronted and defeated them in the
Palatinate in 1704. The field of war shifted away from the Palatine lands, and in 1713 the Treaty
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of Utrecht recognized Philip V of Spain, with his concurrence to renounce his place in the
French succession.
THE FINAL ELECTORS PALATINE
Meanwhile, in 1690, John William was named the successor to Palatine Elector Phillip. He
governed until 1716. His significant gift was to declare religious toleration throughout his lands
in 1705. The lands maintained this policy of toleration, even though the next elector, Charles III
Philip (ruled 1716-1742), was a Catholic.
SUMMARY OF CATASTROPHES
The years 1559-1742 in the Palatinate saw the official religion change five times, bringing
insecurity and often confiscation of property, imprisonment, and death. In the same six
generations, the Palatine lands experienced three wars and seven campaigns with devastating
effect on towns and villages. An American parallel would be to have our Civil War, which lasted
four years and killed 750,000 people, repeated 40 times. That the “poor Palatines” had the spirit
and determination to plan a life in a new land was an act of courage. “Poor Palatines”—Brave
Palatines! In a later article, we will look at how one family of Palatine immigrants fared in
Germantown.
Bibliography
Cramer, S. and F. Piper, Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica. Vol. 8. The Hague: Nijhoff,
1903-1914.
Diffenderfer, Frank Ried. The German Immigration into Pennsylvania through the Port of
Philadelphia, 1700-1755. Genealogical Publishing, 1988.
Immigration Trends are Divided Into Three General Periods. n.d. <www.sacredtexts.com/ame/elpg/elpg02.htm>.
Nine Years' War. n.d.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Years%27_War#Rhineland_and_the_Empire>.
Parker, Geoffrey. "Lessons From the Little Ice Age." The New York Times (2014).
Schmalkaldic League. n.d. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmalkaldic_League>.
The Quaker Province: 1681-1776. n.d.
<www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/overview_of_pennsylvania_history/
4281/1681-1776__the_quaker_province/478727>.
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