The Letter and the Spirit: Pennsylvania-German Calligraphy, Manuscripts, and Spiritual Life, ca. 1750-1850
On Tuesday, 13 December 2016, Alexander L. Ames – doctoral candidate in American History and Museum Studies at the University of Delaware – visited the Center for German-American Educational History. In his talk, he gave an impressive overview on his current research project entitled “The Letter and the Spirit: Calligraphy, Manuscripts, and Popular Piety in German Pennsylvania (1683–1855)”.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Pennsylvania became a safe haven for thousands of members of the Lutheran and Reformed churches, it also became a center for the production, exchange, and use of illuminated manuscripts featuring excerpts from Holy Scripture, hymns, and other spiritual texts. The majority of them was not produced by clergymen but by lay people and also by schoolchildren. However, these documents must not be dismissed as simple folk art, as Alex Ames pointed out. They rather played a key role in Pennsylvania-German popular piety until around 1850. By presenting numerous examples of early German-American manuscripts and printed works, he explored the questions: Why did Pennsylvania’s German-speakers cultivate this art form? What do the documents reveal about spirituality and religious experience? And how can early German-American books and manuscripts help to think about the history of faith, piety, and religious education with a transatlantic perspective?
The talk took place in the seminar room of the “Book Studies” (former Institut für Buchwissenschaft und Textforschung) at the English Department. Many thanks to Simon Rosenberg for his collaboration!