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the period in question many European nations were making official efforts
to colonize and thus lay claim to the new American continent. Spain in
Florida, France in Canada and on the lower Mississippi, the Dutch in New
York, and England in what are now the New England states but Germany took
no official part in the colonization.
Why then did over 100,000 Germans settle in Pennsylvania alone, plus many
others in New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas?
The emigration became so large in fact that the German authorities passed
laws trying to slow or halt the exodus from their country. To understand the
why of this huge German emigration we must look at the world they lived
in.
Among the root causes of so many fleeing their homeland to an unknown
future was the aftermath of the Reformation and the resulting Thirty Years
War.
The Catholic Church from which the 16th century reformers emerged was a
complex one. Over the centuries, the church become deeply involved in the
political life of western Europe. The church's increasing power and wealth
plus the resulting intrigues and political manipulations produced a church
bankrupt as a spiritual force. The corruption of the clergy and the sale
of indulgences (forgiveness for future sins) further undermined the
church's spiritual authority. There was considerable and serious awareness
of a need for change before Luther is said to have posted his Ninety-five
Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, on October. 31,
1517.
Martin Luther went to the theological root of the problem--the perversion
of the church's doctrine of redemption and grace. Luther, a pastor and
professor at the University of Wittenberg, attacked the indulgence system,
insisting that the pope had no authority over purgatory and that the
doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel.
Scripture alone is authoritative and justification is by faith, not by
works.
Luther did not intend to break with the Catholic Church, only to reform
it. In 1521, Luther was tried before the Imperial Diet of Worms and when
he refused to recant was eventually excommunicated.
Luther provided a root but other reformers quickly arose such as Swingli
and Calvin to lead the Protestant Reformation that fractured Christian
church.
The Thirty Years War
In 1618, Ferdinand II, in his role as king of Bohemia, attempted to impose
Roman Catholic absolutism on his domains, and the Protestant nobles of
both Bohemia and Austria rose up in rebellion. Ferdinand won after a
five-year struggle but Sweden's Gustav Adolf II invaded Germany and
won many German princes to his anti-Roman Catholic cause.
Three denominations vied for dominance: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism,
and Calvinism resulting in a Gordian tangle of alliances as princes and
prelates called in foreign powers to aid them.
The principal battlefield for all these intermittent conflicts was the
towns and principalities of Germany, particularly the Palatine states,
which suffered severely.
Many soldiers of the contending armies were mercenaries who could not
collect their pay. This threw them on the countryside for their supplies.
The armies of both sides plundered, burned and raped as they marched,
leaving cities, towns, villages, and farms devastated.
Before the Thirty Years War the peasants and farmers were prosperous with
comfortable houses, capacious barns, horses and cattle. During the war
horses and cattle were carried away, houses and barns were burned. Even
crops were burned in the fields. The master of the house often tortured to
force him to give up any hoard of gold. One Swabian peasant tells us in
his diary that he was forced to flee his home thirty times.
One German historian, Frytag, cites some astonishing figures of the losses
and destruction. In the county of Henneburg, in the course of the war
seventy five percent of the inhabitants were destroyed, sixty six percent
of the houses, eighty five percent of the horses, and eighty two percent
of the cattle. In the years 1636 to 1638 the famine was so great that the
people were forced to satisfy their hunger with roots, grass and leaves.
cannibalism was not unknown. So great was the desolation that wolves
roamed unmolested where once were prosperous farms and vineyards..
The peace of Westphalia finally brought the conflict to an end in 1649.
So complete was the devastation that it took two hundred years to restore
the same level of agricultural prosperity.
In the years of 1674 to 1675 came war between France and Holland.
The Palatines lying between the two countries were again devastated. Louis
XIV sat out to render the Palatinate useless to his enemies. Once again
the fields were laid waste, the cattle carried off and the houses and
towns burned, but this was only a prelude.
In 1685 Philip William inherited the title of Elector of the Palatinate.
At this juncture Louis XIV laid claim to a large portion to the
Palatinate. When he could not prevail over the forces arrayed against him
he is quoted as saying, "if the soil of the Palatinate is not to
furnish supplies to the French it shall be so wasted that it would at
least furnish no supplies to the Germans."
At one time the commander of the French army gave half a million people
three days to move from the occupied territory. The people fled through
fields deep in snow, while houses, churches and villages were set to the
torch. At other times corn fields were ploughed under, orchards hewn down
and vineyards uprooted.
When Phillip William died in 1690 his son and successor was easily led by
the Jesuits. At the conclusion of the war between France and Germany the
Protestant church in the palatinate was virtually crushed.
Forced to turn their churches over to the Catholics or share the church
and bow the knee to the Catholic prelates and still suffering from the
desolation of several wars these protestants were ready for the promises
of the 'new world.'
Huhns,
The German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial
Pennsylvania, New York., 1900
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1998
Langer. The Thirty Years
War, New York, 1990
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