GERMAN-AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETIES: THEIR
ACHIEVEMENTS AND LIMITATIONS¹
By ALBERT B. FAUST †
The earliest getting together and
organization of German settlers in the
Atlantic seaboard colonies occurred
on that memorable second Christmas
day December 26, 1764 in Philadel-
phia, twelve years before the signing
of the Declaration of Independence,
the founding of the first " German So-
ciety," charitable and humanitarian
in its object and achievement.
The Society's greatest usefulness
was attained during its very first
period, when in May 1765 they suc-
ceeded in getting a law passed under
the governorship of John Penn—" the
First Fruits of the German Society "
(in the words of Christopher Saur),
prohibiting extortionary practices of
shipmasters, providing more space
and better food on the immigrant
ships, and the services of an official
interpreter, who with a select com-
mittee could board the arriving ships
and examine grievances, explain the
laws of redemptionist services and
keep a protecting eye on the arrivals.
The first president was Johann Hein-
rich Keppele, who had come to Phila-
delphia on a ship that lost 250 per-
sons, or three-fourths of its passengers
during the crossing. The redemp-
tionist system was not abolished until
the nineteenth century, but the ex-
ample of the Pennsylvania German
Society was followed by similar pro-
tective organizations, first by Charles-
ton, South Carolina in 1766. (In the
European archives these ports were
referred to as the landing places for
the "Insul Pennsylvania," and the
"Insul Carolina" respectively, both
believed to be West Indian islands.)
Then followed New York in 1784.
Baltimore may have preceded as early
as 1783, but unfortunately the records
are lost. Louis P. Hennighausen in
his fine work on the History of the
German Society of Maryland² gives
good reasons for the earlier date, not
the much later recorded date 1817.
Then followed Saint Louis and New
Orleans in 1847, Cincinnati 1854, Chi-
cago 1855, showing at a glance the
trend of German immigration for a
century.
Since we mentioned Hennighausen's
History of the German Society of
Maryland we may pause a moment
to recall that the ideal of protection
of the German immigrant was carried
on during the late nineteenth century
and beyond, by the determined stand
taken against the barbarous oyster
dredgers in the Chesapeake Bay, who
inveigled foreign and particularly Ger-
man recruits into inhuman service
without pay or mercy, and continued
to do so until exposed and brought to
their just punishment by the untiring
efforts of "our" Louis P. Hennig-
hausen and his watchful agents of the
German Society. It is a record to be
proud of, continuing the spirit of the
German Societies of the eighteenth
century in defense of the redemption-
ers, against equally atrocious enemies
who could be thwarted in their dire
practices only by the process of law
and punishment, whereby Hennig-
hausen and his skillful agents often
endangered their own lives. It is a
noteworthy record of historical and
social distinction and an example to
be upheld by future generations, con-
cerning not alone the German but all
foreign elements subjected to the
same inhuman oppression.
Germans wherever they came to-
1
Address delivered in Baltimore at the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Society for the
History of the Germans in Maryland, February 25, 1946.
s
Head at the meetings of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland and published by
that Society in 1909.
[21]
gather in larger numbers during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries
founded societies in the interests of
their social life. Their singing socie-
ties spread throughout the land and
elicited favorable comment; they were
fond of gymnastics, and their Turner
organizations frequently had an im-
portant political influence. That is an
important chapter by itself, which has
sometimes been recognized by Ameri-
can historians (as in Saint Louis dur-
ing the Civil War), but on the whole
grudgingly. The Turners unquestion-
ably have also had a leading influence
on the introduction of indoor gymnas-
tics in the public schools of the
country.
There have always been an untold
number of masonic organizations and
mutually protective clubs in the past
and continuing the present time, as
an examination of the Wegweiser
durck die Vereinswelt von New York
und New Jersey sowie angrenzenden
Gebieten, published annually by the
New Yorker Staatszeitung und Her-
old proves. The Middle West could
undoubtedly publish something simi-
lar. As an illustration permit me to
call attention to a single instance,
which may not be as familiar to all of
us as it deserves to be historically,
viz.; Der Deutsche Orden der Haru-
gari. It was founded in 1847 by a
dozen men who came together in New
York and proclaimed as their pur-
pose: "To preserve the German lan-
guage in the United States, to give
the German speaking people the op-
portunity to advance their spiritual
and material interests and to improve
and ennoble their social condition."
It was a sort of mutually protective
organization, based on the contribu-
tions received from its members and
in proportion to their contributions.
It insured its members against the
calamities that might befall widows
and children, and men unable to work
through illness or accident. Very
liberal provision was made for cases
of real need. The organization grew
at once by leaps and bounds. The
name, deduced from the old word
"haruc" meaning forest or grove,
and a tradition supposed to have been
found in the chronicles of the Cimbri
(those ancient foes of the Romans:
Cimbrians and Teutons) that the
name was given to their leaders of
worship. A high point of influence of
the Harugari-Order was reached in
1871, when the order had 235 lodges,
of which there were 56 in New York,
61 in Pennsylvania, 22 in New Jer-
sey, 19 in Maryland, and extending
over the whole Middle West, reaching
south, to Tennessee, West Virginia
and Louisiana (one each). Total
membership reached 20,000; property
in round numbers valued at $450,000.
They published a very good journal
in Reading, Pennsylvania under the
editorship of H. W. Rosenthal, (first
issue in 1869 called Die deutsche
Eiche.) The Harugari-Order was well
known at home and abroad; it has
survived, though no longer as influen-
tial as in earlier days.
This central idea of mutual protec-
tion based on contributions by the
membership was shared by many
long-lived German-American Socie-
ties, among them the famous Charles-
ton "German Friendly Society"
founded in 1766. History as such was
incidental; it was oftener made than
studied. But when were the begin-
nings made for the study of the his-
tory of the Germans in the United
States? Did our worthy founders of
the Society for the History of the
Germans in Maryland invent the
idea? All honor to them for their
keen insight into the importance of
learning oneself through the study of
one's environment and native stock.
It has been my privilege to read
the minutes of the Society for the
History of the Germans in Maryland,
from the beginnings in the year 1886
to the present time (1946), and it
has been fascinating reading for the
most part. But there is no definite
answer to the question: where and
when was the start made for the
study of the history of the Germans
in the United States? Nevertheless,
the clue can be found there. A devo-
[22]
tion to research in historical records
requires a type of mind above the
common run of bread-winners, and
our founders were of this rarer type.
Let us name them, to hold them in
venerated memory: the illustrious,
beloved John Gottlieb Morris (origi-
nally " Moritz"), first and longest
president; the able, courageous and
versatile Louis P. Hennighausen; his
namesake the Reverend F. Ph. Hen-
nighausen, the faithful secretary; the
eminent Dr. Louis H. Steiner, physi-
cian, scientist and organizer of the
Enoch Pratt Free Library; the genial,
witty and gifted Edward F. Leyh; the
kind-hearted, intelligently active and
helpful Charles Raddatz; the men-of-
affairs Christian Ax, Charles Weber,
Georg W. Gail; the eloquent preacher
and outstanding educator of his time,
the Rev. Henry Scheib; what an
array of unusual and distinguished
personalities! They were conscious of
what they were planning and con-
vinced of its value. But the stimulus
of the West was necessary to counter-
act the old established traditions of
the East. Let us turn to the West for
a more favorable setting.
The valley of the Ohio, with Cin-
cinnati as a center had since early in
the nineteenth century (David Zieg-
ler was the first mayor of Cincinnati
in 1802) and conspicuously since the
thirties, assumed a degree of impor-
tance that outdistanced the native
element in commerce, manufacture
and general prosperity, pushing the
Anglo-American element ever farther
westward as frontiersmen, so that the
strong German element became aware
of its power and declared its social
independence. That was done by the
founding of the Deutsche Pionier
Verein of Cincinnati in 1868, and the
concurrent publication of a monthly
journal which was destined to record
the history of Western pioneer life
and settlement, with the German par-
ticipation in the upbuilding of the
West as no other historical source.
The eighteen volumes that appeared
between 1868 and 1886, called Der
Deutsche Pionier are the most pre-
cious source extant for us of German
descent in the United States. No
library on Americana-Germanica can
do without them. During the first
years the Deutsche Pionier was edited
by a number of men such as Brühl,
Mack, Rümelin, Knortz, but after
four years the historian Heinrich Ar-
min Rattermann took hold and laid
the emphasis on historical investiga-
tion, for which he maintained a high
standard recognized throughout the
country, soliciting contributions from
the best investigators throughout the
land, including Seidensticker (Penn-
sylvania), Kapp (New York), Munch
(Missouri), Eickhoff (Washington,
D. C.), Koerner (Illinois), Hanno
Deiler (Louisiana), and others.
The first volume contains a char-
acteristic sketch, which I beg your
indulgence for presenting to you. It
is a dedication to the then oldest Ger-
man pioneer (this was in 1868) liv-
ing in Cincinnati, whose name was
Jakob Gülich, born in Hamburg, 1784.
After a time he settled down in Balti-
more, where he had learned the trade
of sugar refining. In 1816 Martin
Baum, the great German shipping
magnate on the Mississippi control-
ling the commerce between Cincin-
nati and New Orleans, visited Balti-
more in search of a good superinten-
dent for his sugar making at home.
He was directed to a young German
who had learned and mastered the
trade there. Baum hastened thither
and addressed Gülich: "Hascht Du
nicht Luscht nach Cincinnati zu
gehe?" Gülich replied he was en-
gaged for the next year and could not
leave without the permission of his
principal. Baum turned to the em-
ployer, and when the latter heard
that it was a question of leaving far
to the west, out of reach of compe-
tition for him, he gave his consent.
Baum to Gülich: "Well, wieviel
willscht du denn habe?" Gülich
asked for $1500 and all his traveling
expenses and his pay to start im-
mediately. Baum reduced that to
$1,350, but it took Gülich until the
end of October to reach his destina-
[23]
tion, postchaise from Baltimore to
Pittsburgh, then by boat down the
Ohio to Cincinnati which took twenty
days more. Baum got a good superin-
tendent who easily earned his wages
and more. Gülich was a well-educated
man; he later served as a preacher in
the German Reformed Church of Cin-
cinnati, and was noted for his chari-
ties. An instance was the following:
when a boatload of twenty-three Ger-
man redemptioners arrived in Cincin-
nati, an unprincipled Irishman tried
to make a handsome profit out of
them. In Philadelphia the captain
had sold them to the Irishman for
$50 a head, and now the latter de-
manded $450 each, otherwise he
would sell them to Louisiana for slave
labor in an unhealthy climate. Gülich
stepped in with some friends, went to
court, set the immigrants free by pur-
chase, though the cost was more than
he could ever expect to get back. He
never did get back his outlay of over
$1000, but was well satisfied with
what he had done. It is not surpris-
ing that Gülich was celebrated in the
first volume of the Deutsche Pionier
as the oldest and most beloved of the
Cincinnati pioneers.
At first there was not entire un-
animity in the Deutsche Pionier Verein
in regard to the objects of the organi-
zation, witness the speech of the first
"Festredner" Rümelin at the first
anniversary, who said in good humor:
"So sehr ich mich zum Danke ver-
pflichtet fühle, indem das Komitee
mich zum Festredner des heutigen
Tages ernannte, so muss ich doch die
Bemerkung beifügen, dass ich mich in
einer eigentümlichen Klemme befinde;
denn es besteht in unserm Verein die
Regel, dass nicht über Religion und
Politik gesprochen werden darf. Wie
sehr man auch die allgemeine Treff-
lichkeit dieses Verbots, als ein Mittel
zur Erhaltung des Friedens, aner-
kennen mag, es bedeutet dennoch, für
mich wenigstens, eine Beeinträchti-
gung der Redefreiheit. Ein Vortrag,
in welchem man nicht von Kirche und
Staat reden soll, muss mager ausfal-
len; ich bitte Sie also dem Verbote die
Hauptschuld beizulegen, wenn meine
Rede Sie nicht befriedigen sollte."
In the year 1886 Ratterman an-
nounced that the Deutsche Pionier as
a monthly would cease publication,
but that with sufficient support he
would continue the work in a new
periodical called Deutsch-Amerika-
nisches Magazin. This was duly copy-
righted by H. A. Rattermann, and
dedicated to Oswald Ottendorfer,
owner of the New Yorker Staatszeit-
ung. Yet, Rattermann's fond hopes
were not realized, and only one volume
appeared. His example, however, was
imitated by others, and prominent
among them by the founders of our
society. They determined to continue
the idea in a different area of the
United States. Why did it not last in
Cincinnati? Various reasons may be
assigned. The old German stock
had disappeared, many had become
wealthy, they may have thought
that their frontier history had now
been written, in all events, be that as
it may, the valuable Deutsche Pionier
passed out of existence.
In reading the minutes of the early
years of our society, I was very
strongly impressed by the similarity
between the beginnings, objects and
organization of the western and east-
ern groups. In the constitution of the
Cincinnati organization we read:
Paragraph 1: Name und
Zweck des Vereins.
Der
Verein, dessen Zweck es ist, die Bande
alter Freundschaft zu erneuern und zu be-
festigen, wie auch die Geschichte und Erleb-
nisse der deutschen Pioniere von Cincinnati
und Umgegend für spätere Generationen durch
Sammlung desfallsiger Dokumente, Notizen etc.
aufzubewahren, führt den Namen: Deutscher
Pionier-Verein von Cincinnati.
Paragraph 2: Mitglieder.
Jeder eingewanderte Deutsche, welcher 25
Jahre in Cincinnati oder Umgegend gewohnt,
und das Alter von 40 Jahren erreicht hat,
kann durch Stimmenmehrheit aufgenommen,
und soll als Mitglied des deutschen Pionier-
Vereins betrachtet werden, wenn er die Verfas-
sung eigenhändig unterzeichnet und einen Dol-
lar für seine Mitgliedskarte bezahlt hat.
This meant: membership was not
[24]
arbitrarily awarded to anyone. It was
exclusive. A member must be Ger-
man, resident for 25 years (stiff re-
quirement) and 40 years of age
("Schwabenalter"), if elected by
majority vote of the members.
The remarkable fact is that the
response was wonderful. Over three
hundred persons were able to meet
the requirements, sign their names
and pay the dues.
Membership in the Eastern group
was also exclusive, dependent upon a
majority of votes by the members
present. The Maryland organization
named in its charter as its object:
"To gather, publish and preserve
material for the history of the Ger-
mans in Maryland." Its staff of offi-
cers was the same: president, secre-
tary, treasurer and an executive com-
mittee that was given large powers.³
It is interesting to note that in its
original charter the Maryland organi-
zation asked for a duration of forty
years (1886 plus 40 = 1926). The
Pionier Verein of Cincinnati lived
only half that long (less than twenty);
while its daughter has lived already
three times as long.
Now since our Society has arrived
at its sixtieth anniversary, we are
justified in taking a look backward
and ask: what has been accomplished?
We have published diligent investiga-
tions of Maryland colonial history,
including that of Western Maryland,
the Eastern shore, and the various
epochs in the history of the city of
Baltimore. Also separate publications
such as Herrmann Schuricht's His-
tory of the German Element in Vir-
ginia (1900), Louis P. Hennighausen's
History of the German Society of
Maryland (1909). We are arriving at
the crowning effort of this phase of
the work in the forthcoming "History
of the Germans in Maryland" by
Professor Dieter Cunz.
4
Some parts
have already appeared and assure us
of the merit and intrinsic value of the
whole when complete. The publica-
tion of this work will satisfy the de-
mand of many years, an expectation
looked forward to, and we may con-
gratulate ourselves on becoming wit-
nesses and contemporaries of this last-
ing achievement.
What else has been done? The
stimulating influence of the Society
has gone beyond its borders. The
minutes of April 15, 1891, record Pro-
fessor M. D. Learned's visit to the
convention called for the founding of
the Pennsylvania German Society.
Learned, then Professor at the Johns
Hopkins University, became an active
member of the "Society for the His-
tory of the Germans in Maryland"
on January 14, 1890, and was our
delegate to the Philadelphia meeting
in 1891. Our minutes record his re-
port on the hotly debated subject of
three classes of membership:
1)
Regular: No one shall be eligible as a
regular member, unless he be of full age,
of good moral character, and a direct
descendant of early German or Swiss
emigrants to Pennsylvania.
2)
Associate: German descent, but not
native in state of Pennsylvania not less
than 21 years. Cannot hold office, no
vote on property or location.
3)
Honorary members: Those that have
made history and genealogy their special
study.
On invitation of Seidensticker, the
Convention used the rooms of the
"German Society" of Philadelphia,
but Oswald Seidensticker himself
could not be a regular member, hav-
ing been born in Göttingen. Learned
(the author of the grammar of Penn-
sylvania German, etc.) resented not
being able to become a regular mem-
ber, similar to Professor Richard H.
Shryock, recently your guest speaker,
who could not (so he told me some
time ago) prove to the satisfaction of
some members that he descended
from Germans of Pennsylvania. Still
in spite of such idiosyncrasies, the
Pennsylvania German Society has
gone its way, and the Publications of
the Pennsylvania German Society,
now over forty volumes, belong to
3
Charter and By-laws of the Society are published in the present Report, pp. 7-8.
4
Published under the title The Maryland Germans, Princeton University press, 1948, 476 pp.
[25]
another series of historical contribu-
tions which the libraries of books
on Americana-Germanica cannot do
without. Our Society has always
maintained a friendly connection with
the one in Pennsylvania. Our minutes
record that our president J. G. Morris
and vice-president L. P. Hennighau-
sen attended the third annual meeting
of the Pennsylvania German Society
at York, Pennsylvania as "self-ap-
pointed representatives of this Soci-
ety " on October 11, 1893.
Memorable in our minutes is the
report on the visit and address of
Professor Oswald Seidensticker in the
early days: June 5, 1888, "With
great pleasure I have heard of the
organization of your Society. I con-
sider it the duty of the Germans to
take an active interest in the history
of their fellow countrymen in Amer-
ica. If they are indifferent to the part
which their kinsmen have acted in
the development of our adopted
country, what right have they to
complain that others do not display
more zeal. As German-Americans we,
in a certain sense, enter upon the
inheritance left by those who came to
this country before us and it is our
duty to inquire who they were, what
they aimed at, what they suffered,
what they achieved."
As Professor Seidensticker had held
out the hand of fellowship to our
Maryland Society and ever empha-
sized his warm interest in our welfare,
so when after his death (January 10,
1894) his successor was a man chosen
from our midst, the relationship
proved still more fruitful. Marion D.
Learned's excellent historical work on
"The Turner Lyric in the United
States," written here, was aided in its
separate edition by the Society for
the History of the Germans in Mary-
land and it became the medium
through which Learned was able to
propagate his larger plans for the
foundation of his important serial
publication, the Americana-German-
ica, followed by the German Ameri-
can Annals, another of the leading
historical annuals, lasting through six-
teen volumes to the end of Learned's
life and carrying on for a few years
more, though less vigorously.
Then there came a third series,
which was located in Chicago, origi-
nally edited by Emil Mannhardt and
called Deutsch - Amerikanische Ge-
schichtsblätter (1900), supported by
the "Deutsch-Amerikanische Histor-
ische Gesellschaft von Illinois," which
subsequently under the editorship of
Julius Goebel became an annual pub-
lication, a Jahrbuch of considerable
value, which ran a series of eleven
volumes until Goebel's death in 1931;
thereafter it was continued for a short
time by Max Baum, a last volume
appearing as Jahrgang 1932-1937.
So while there were, as late as ten
years ago, four series of publications
on the History of the Germans in the
United States, the situation at the
present moment is not so bright. The
Pennsylvania German Folklore Soci-
ety publications and our own Reports
are all that have survived. We might
add that sprightly bi-monthly journal,
well illustrated, The American Ger-
man Review, published by the Carl
Schurz Memorial Foundation in its
beautiful home the Old Custom
House Building, 420 Chestnut Street,
Philadelphia. A journal that seeks to
entertain as well as instruct, it is
worthy of our consideration for its
noble purpose and success. (Its sub-
scribers numbered 2972 in October
1943, 3245 during the following year).
The student of German-American
history has therefore a great deal to
fall back on which has already been
written. First and foremost are the
eighteen volumes of the Pionier
Verein of Cincinnati 1869-1886 (plus
Deutsch-Amerikanisches Magazin
1886-1887) generally called Der Deut-
sche Pionier. (This title should never
be given to the publication of similar
name which Karl Heinzen, the revo-
lutionary of 1847-1849, published for
many years with practically no sub-
scribers. That was really Karl Hein-
zen's Pionier only. Carl Wittke has
recently published a very appreciative
biography of Karl Heinzen called
[26]
Against the Current in which this
work is described in detail.) The Cin-
cinnati Deutscher Pionier and Ratter-
man's Deutsch-Amerikanisches Maga-
zin had a very decisive influence upon
the Society for the History of the
Germans in Maryland in 1886 when
the Society was founded. This was
like an inheritance that was carried
on by the Maryland Society and in-
fluenced all subsequent serial publica-
tions such as: Learned's German
American Annals, and the Jahrbücher
of the Illinois German Historical So-
ciety, and to some extent also the
publications of the Pennsylvania Ger-
man Society. The feeling that Ameri-
can historiography has not done jus-
tice to the part that the German-
American element has contributed to
the upbuilding of the American nation
and people, prevailed in these histori-
cal series and was subjected to close
scrutiny and historical treatment.
The successful handling of the subject
has perhaps in part at least stirred up
other foreign elements to a realization
of what they contributed to the
American make-up and given rise to
such books as: One America (1945)
by Francis J. Brown and Joseph S.
Roucek; We Who Built America
(1939) by Carl Wittke; A Nation of
Nations (1945) by Louis Adamic; all
of which voice the same demand for
historical recognition against the
traditional assumption that the his-
tory of the country was made exclu-
sively by the so called Anglo-Saxon
element, powerful though it may have
been. Not always have the claims of
the national minorities revealed the
same love of accurate historical in-
vestigation as has the German con-
tingent.
On the eve of an anniversary cele-
bration one is not in the habit of look-
ing backward only, as interesting or
satisfying as that might be. We want
to look forward also. Therefore we
naturally ask ourselves: What about
our future? After our ambition has
been realized, after the history of the
Maryland Germans has been written,
what are we going to do next? Shall
we consider our work done and shut
up shop? There are precedents for
that, but is that the desirable solu-
tion? Or, should we do as the Cincin-
nati Pionier Verein, seek new pastures,
turn to the West and Southwest for
new areas of investigation? So our
glances should turn to the neighborly
southern areas. If my personal ex-
periences be of any value, permit me
to refer to them.
Most persons of the present re-
member Professor William E. Dodd
only as ambassador to Germany,
1933-1937. Dodd was a poor diplo-
matist who failed completely in exer-
cising an ambassador's greatest privi-
lege: leading the two countries he
represents to a better understanding
of each other. Dodd's admiration of
Woodrow Wilson, expressed in his
eulogistic book Woodrow Wilson and
his Work endeared him to American
politicians and drew him into politics
where he did not belong. I knew
Dodd when he became professor of
history at the University of Chicago
back in 1908. He was born in Clay-
ton, North Carolina, took his Ph. D.
at the University of Leipzig where he
was a pupil of Karl Lamprecht. He
wrote in German: Jeffersons Rück-
kehr zur Politik. He felt a real appre-
ciation of the part played by the Ger-
man element in American colonial
history. When my book on The Ger-
man Element in the United States
came out in 1909 he was one of the
first to welcome it, and when I asked
him one day: "Do you think I exag-
gerated the influence of the Germans
in the south?" he said: "Why no.
You have underestimated it." That
often made me think, but I never
found time or opportunity to work at
that problem. I offer it now as a sub-
ject for investigation by future in-
vestigators of the Society for the His-
tory of the Germans in Maryland.
William Dodd was an authority on
the colonial history of the South, and
his word should not be taken lightly.
After his retirement from politics he
started working again on The Old
South, Struggles for Democracy, The
[27]
First American Social Order; but he
died in 1940 before he could complete
what he had in mind.
The German descendants of
Charleston, South Carolina have
themselves recently been active his-
torically by the publication of the
History of the Friendly Society of
Charleston, 1766-1916, compiled from
the original sources by George J.
Gongaware, since 1913 pastor of the
St. John's Lutheran Church. We
notice also a renewed interest in
South Carolina's favorite poet Henry
Timrod, : Laureate of the Confeder-
acy, by Henry T. Thompson (1928).
The Timrod family (originally the
German name Dimrot) for a hundred
years shared the weal and woe of
their home city Charleston.
Now in conclusion, let me say that
I think the Society for the History of
the Germans in Maryland is fortunate
in not being required by its constitu-
tion to publish serial publications at
stated intervals. Our Society has fre-
quently allowed long periods to elapse
before publishing its Reports. It may
publish when it listeth. That is a
good principle guaranteeing survival.
The editor of an historical series is
obliged to close when general interest
and subscribers fail,—we can live on
forever without anyone being dis-
turbed about periods of silence.
Finally, I wish to thank the Society
for the honor of having me address
them on this festive occasion, es-
pecially since I did it once before, at
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the
Society in 1911.
5
My best wishes
attend the Society for the next, the
seventy-fifth anniversary, but I can-
not guarantee being present then
since the years that rest upon my
back, if I survive that long, will
hardly count in my favor again. The
Society for the History of the Ger-
mans in Maryland is now the oldest
society engaged with the history of
the German element in the United
States. May it ever look back with
pride upon its past, and look forward
with confidence in its future! May
this venerable Maryland Society ever
retain its youth and its vigor!
5
Published in the Twenty-third Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland
(1929), pp. 5-13: "Undercurrents of German Influence in Maryland."
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