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

Abstract

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 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.