Francis Daniel Pastorius

Franz Daniel Pastorius ( born September 26, 1651 Summer Hausen, † September 27, 1719 in German Town) was a German lawyer. He founded the German overseas migration and was the only German writer of the Baroque in America.

Life

Franz Daniel Pastorius was the son of Melchior Adam Pastorius (1624-1702), lawyer and mayor of Windsheim, and his wife Magdalena (1607-1657) was born. The father converted from Lutheranism to the Catholic Church in 1649. Franz Daniel Pastorius studied 1668-1676 Law at the Universities of Altdorf near Nuremberg, Strasbourg and Jena in order to then a doctorate. The legal daily work in Windsheim did not like him from the start, and on the recommendation of the Superintendent Johann Heinrich Horb 1679 he moved to Frankfurt am Main. There he found access to the radical pietist circle around Johann Jakob Schütz. Through the mediation of Philip Jacob Spener, he accepted a position as tutor to a young nobleman with, with whom he traveled from 1680 to 1682 by France, England, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

First German settlement in America

Founded in 1682, the circle around the contactor Frankfurt Land Company, on whose behalf Pastorius traveled the first German immigrants in August 1683 the ship America to Philadelphia to buy in Pennsylvania for society country. When, on October 6, 1683 instead of the hoped-for friends from Frankfurt 13 families from Krefeld on the galleon Concord, the " German Mayflower " in the port of Philadelphia arrived, which were made up of Reformed, Quakers and Mennonites, Pastorius organized for this group yet the purchase of land (61 km ²). Even in the year of arrival in 1683, the settlement was founded German Town, the first German settlement in North America. Pastorius worked there as a community leader, designed the official coat of arms, mediated knowledge of the viticulture and horticulture and taught as a teacher. Commissioned by German settlers, he also wrote letters in their home.

Protest against slavery

On February 18, 1688 Abraham Isacks op den Graeff, Herman Isacks op den Graeff, Gerrit Based Erich Pastorius and initiated the first protest against slavery in America. Pastorius had good contacts with William Penn, the governor of Pennsylvania. In 1687, he was elected to the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, which he served until 1691. Penn also brought him to the line of the higher Quaker school in Philadelphia ( 1698-1700 ).

Work

From his inclinations ago Pastorius was not a politician, but more baroque private scholar and poet. He was the author of several publications in German and English, including a much-publicized description of Pennsylvania from 1700 and an elementary book for English, which was the first textbook in Pennsylvania.

Marriage and issue

Franz Daniel Pastorius married on November 6, 1688 Änneke Klostermann (* about 1663 in Mülheim an der Ruhr). Their children were:

  • Johann Samuel ( born January 30, 1690 in German Town, † 1722)
  • Heinrich ( born 1 February 1692 in German Town)

Miscellaneous

  • A painting in the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Franz Daniel Pastorius shows kneeling before Indians.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, an American Quaker poet, Pastorius immortalized in his poem " The Pennsylvania Pilgrim " (1872 )
  • "Operation Pastorius " was the code name of an organization that einschleuste 1942 German saboteurs in the United States.
  • The late bassist Jaco Pastorius (1951-1987) was a direct descendant.
  • Michael Klemm wrote the play " America" ​​, a play about Franz Daniel Pastorius, the first German emigrants to America and founder of the city German Town in Pennsylvania (summer Hausen 2002)

Works (selection)

  • Umständige geographical description of the last of all invented Provintz Pensylvaniae in which end- gräntzen Americae located in the Western world. Andreas Otto, Nuremberg 1700 - digitized version of the Georg August University of Göttingen
  • A New Primmer or Methodical Directions to attain the True Spelling, Reading and Writing of English, New York 1698
  • Four Boasting Disputers of this World Briefly Rebuked, New York 1698
  • Actual description of the neuerbaueten at the Spitz of East Lake Residentz Russian city Saint Petersburg. Frankfurt / M. and Leipzig, 1718
  • Seventeenth Century American Poetry, ed. v. H.T. Meserole, New York 1968
  • Deliciae Hortense ( poems), ed. v. Christoph Schweitzer, Columbia SC 1982
Sommerhausen Germantown, Philadelphia Legal science Radical Pietism Abraham op den Graeff Independent scholar Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie Neue Deutsche Biographie Integrated Authority File
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