Date

7-22-2025

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)

Chair

Matthew Hill

Keywords

Pennsylvania Germans, Colonial Pennsylvania, Freedom, Liberty, Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft, Ferdinand Tonnies, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, Benjamin Franklin, William Smith, Christopher Sauer, Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Michael Schlatter, Freedom and Liberty, Liberty and Freedom, William Penn, Benjamin Furly, Quakers, Pennsylvania Quakers, German Pietists, German Lutherans, German Reformed, August Francke, Herrnhut, Halle, Germantown Pennsylvania, Francis Daniel Pastorius, Philadelphia, history of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania History, Philadelphia history, colonial history, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, Community and Society, Seven Years War, Pennsylvania Militia Act, Charity School Movement

Disciplines

History | History of Christianity

Abstract

The terms freedom, liberty, liberalism, republicanism, linguistics, culture, and religion are all strongly associated with the early history of Pennsylvania. Historians have documented aspects of German and Anglo-Pennsylvanians. Historians have written about the conflict between freedom and liberty with loose definitions. Others have mentioned these differences only in passing, as if the Germans did not figure as prominently in the overall narrative, or other cases, assuming that all people understood and experienced freedom in the same manner and defined it with the same meanings and context. In Pennsylvania during the late 17th century and throughout the 18th century, the Germans played a significant role in every aspect of life in Pennsylvania, with their numbers varying between 10% and as high as 50% of the colony's overall population at times. The colony's population fluctuated. The Anglo thinkers contributed complex ideas, while the Germans offered less in terms of intellectual input. This argument posits that there was an ideologically charged difference between the two ethnic groups, rooted in a fundamental disparity in their understanding of freedom and liberty. Still, each sourced their foundations differently: the Anglo in the ancients, classics, contemporaries, and the Germans in the Bible. The English, led by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Penn, William Smith, and later John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, employed the politics of language—the rhetoric inherent in the political application of language—to allow it the time needed to evolve before they fully understood how to apply it. The Germans were content with their already-established concept of freedom. They found their definitions and meaning in the Bible, their conscience's freedom, and the direction of their religious leaders. The Germans lived within the boundaries of their created lives. The English were determined to infringe on those lives and assimilate them into their world. This work emphasizes the significance of religious affiliations, interdenominational relations, political alignments, and leadership patterns that influenced the relationship between the Germans and the English. It will also focus on the fundamental difference between community and society, understood within the parameters of the linguistic and cultural nuances of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Historians should clarify that America's foundation involved multiple perspectives on liberty and freedom. It is a much more complex construction. America's history reflects the various interpretations of liberty and freedom. In the first century of American history, the Germans played a significant role in shaping the nation's identity, alongside the English and Scots-Irish.

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