Friederike Baer | Photo courtesy of Friederike Baer
On Wednesday, April 15, author and historian of the American Revolution Friederike Baer will deliver this year’s Max Kade Distinguished Lecture. A professor of history and head of the arts and humanities division at Penn State Abington, Baer will discuss questions of political history, migration, and transatlantic exchange in the context of Lafayette College’s Bicentennial celebration.
Baer’s lecture, which is presented by the Max Kade Center for German Studies, is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture.
“If you are interested in the past, present, and future of Lafayette College, Baer’s lecture promises to be of interest to you,” says Dennis Johannßen, assistant professor of German and director of the Max Kade Center for German Studies. “Her work has been widely discussed in the U.S. and beyond, and we are delighted she will give the lecture this year.”
Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired more than 30,000 German soldiers to fight in its war against the American rebels. Collectively known as Hessians, the soldiers and accompanying civilians—including hundreds of women and children—spent extended periods in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada in the north and West Florida in the south. Drawing on extensive research in private papers and official records authored by members of the German corps, Baer’s lecture will explore the key experiences of these individuals as they waged war on a distant continent against a people who had done them no harm—giving special attention to interactions between German soldiers and German-Americans.
Being that there was a large German-speaking community in Easton and the Lehigh Valley when Lafayette was founded—one of the reasons why German is included in Lafayette’s charter as a core program at the College—attendees will learn about Lafayette’s local and regional communities during the years that led to the College’s founding, Johannßen explains, including their languages, professions, everyday life, and international relations.
“These topics are a key focus of our curriculum in the Max Kade Center, the German program, and the Department of Languages and Literary Studies,” Johannßen says. “We hope the lecture will offer an opportunity for the wider community to reflect on some of the urgent issues of our present moment.”
Baer is the award-winning author of two groundbreaking books about German-speaking immigrant communities in Pennsylvania and the United States: The Trial of Frederick Eberle: Language, Patriotism and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community, 1790 to 1830 (New York University Press, 2008), which was awarded the St. Paul, Biglerville Prize in American Lutheran History; and Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War (Oxford University Press, 2020), which was honored with the American Roundtable of Philadelphia Annual Book Award, Inaugural American Battlefield Trust Prize for History Honorable Mention, and Society of the Cincinnati Prize.
Originally from Germany, Baer holds a Ph.D. in early American history from Brown University. Her research has been supported by organizations such as the American Philosophical Society, University of Michigan Clements Library, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Society of the Cincinnati.
Baer also served as a historical adviser and interviewee for The American Revolution, a documentary series by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt, which features artwork from Lafayette College’s collections.
Thanks to the generous support of the Max Kade Foundation, the Max Kade Distinguished Lecture is given annually by a scholar whose work fosters connections between German studies and other disciplines, discussing German-speaking histories and cultures in wider global contexts.
