More than two centuries ago, General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben helped George Washington secure the birth of a nation.
So it is only fitting that New York's Steuben Parade should be named after him. Every year, the city's annual Steuben Parade in September attracts thousands to Fifth Avenue in a celebration of German-American heritage. One of the largest parades in the city, it is traditionally followed by an Oktoberfest in Central Park featuring live entertainment and German specialities, as well as celebrations in Yorkville, Manhattan, a German section of New York City.
This year's parade takes place on September 17, with German Ambassador Peter Ammon serving as one of its grand marshals. The parade is, moreover, part of a wider series of celebrations during a German-American Friendship Month leading up to German-American Day (October 6).
The Steuben Parade has been taking place in New York since 1958. Chicago - home to the nation's biggest German-style Christmas market - moreover hosts its own Steuben Day parade, which is featured in the American movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". And Philadelphia, a city steeped in German heritage, is also host to a smaller Steuben Parade held in its historically German-influenced northeastern section.
Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben (1730-1794), who was also referred to as the Baron von Steuben, was a Prussian-born military officer who served as inspector general and major general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is credited with being one of the fathers of the Continental Army by teaching the essentials of military drills, tactics, and disciplines. In the process, Steuben penned the Revolutionary War Drill Manual, the famous "blue book" that served as the standard United States drill manual until the War of 1812 and is still sometimes cited by US military experts, instructors and active duty members today.
While Steuben's life may have been anything but ordinary, the contributions of millions of other German-Americans across the generations cannot be underestimated. >From colonial printing presses to pianos to blue jeans to breweries to baseball to film noir to rocketships, they have made their mark on American history.
Starting with the first Germans (two glassblowers and a doctor/botanist) to arrive in the earliest English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608, to Carl Schurz to Babe Ruth to Albert Einstein to Billy Wilder to Doris Day to Kurt Vonnegut to Eric Braeden to Sandra Bullock to Bruce Willis to Tina Fey, any list of German-American names will invariably be long and eclectic.
"More Americans trace their heritage back to German ancestry than to any other nationality. More than seven million Germans have come to our shores through the years, and today some 60 million Americans - one in four - are of German descent," President Ronald Reagan said in the Proclamation establishing German-American Day on October 6, 1987.
"Few people have blended so completely into the multicultural tapestry of American society and have made such singular, political, social, scientific and cultural contributions to the growth and success of these United States as have Americans of German extraction."
Karen Carstens
Editor, The Week in Germany
Webteam Germany.info
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