Francis Daniel Pastorius

Early life

Franz Daniel Pastorius was born at Sommerhausen in the German Duchy of Franconia, to a prosperous Lutheran family. He received a Gymnasium education in Windsheim (also in Franconia), where his family moved in 1659. He was trained as a lawyer in some of the best German universities of his day, including the University of Altdorf, the University of Strasbourg and the University of Jena. He started his practice in Windsheim and continued it in Frankfurt-am-Main. He was a close friend of the Lutheran theologian and Pietist leader Philipp Jakob Spener during the early development of Spener's movement in Frankfurt. From 1680 to 1682, he worked as a tutor accompanying a young nobleman during his Wanderjahr through Germany, England, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Pastorius’ biography reveals increasing dissatisfaction with the authoritarian Lutheran church and state of his German youth in the Age of Absolutism. As a young adult his Christian morality even strained the relationship with his father Melchior Adam (1624-1702), a wealthy lawyer and burgomaster in Windsheim. These difficulties came to a head in 1677-79, years of tumult in this imperial city. After Pastorius had completed his doctorate in law, returned to Windsheim and begun his law career, his family and friends (with Hapsburg backing) suppressed a popular insurrection against abuses of oligarchic rule. It was in this context that he left his home in 1679, joined the Lutheran Pietists in Frankfurt, and repeatedly urged adherence to Christ’s Golden Rule. He emigrated to Pennsylvania four years later, but never went back to Windsheim.

To Philadelphia

In 1683, a group of Mennonites, Pietists, and Quakers in Frankfurt, including Abraham op den Graeff a cousin of William Penn, approached Pastorius about acting as their agent to purchase land in Pennsylvania for a settlement. Pastorius took passage to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, he negotiated the purchase of 15,000 acres (61 km²) from William Penn, the proprietor of the colony, and laid out the settlement of Germantown, where he himself would live until his death. As one of Germantown's leading citizens, Pastorius served in many public offices. He was the first mayor and also was a member of the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 1687 and 1691.

Writings

He wrote extensively on topics ranging from beekeeping to religion. He was "the first poet of consequence in Pennsylvania . . . [and] one of the most important poets of early America" (Meserole, p. 294). His extensive commonplace compilations provide insight into early Enlightenment culture in colonial Pennsylvania. He was also a skilled poet whose work appears in the New Oxford Book of Seventeenth-Century Verse ISBN 0-19-214164-3. Pastorius' most important book was his manuscript “Bee Hive,” which is now in the University of Pennsylvania's rare book room. It is his commonplace book, which contains poetry, his thoughts on religion and politics, and lists of books he consulted along with excerpts from those books. Also of interest is his Geographical Description of Pennsylvania, first published under the title, Umständige geographische Beschreibung der allerletzt erfundenen Provintz Pennsylvania (1700). This book also contains many of his letters home to Germany. His manuscripts include treatises on horticulture, law, agriculture and medicine.

Personal

Pastorius married Ennecke Klostermanns (1658-1723) on November 6, 1688. They had two sons: Johann Samuel Pastorius (1690-1722) and Heinrich Pastorius (1692-1726). Though raised as an upper-class Lutheran, he converted to Lutheran Pietism as a young adult in Germany. He grew increasingly liberal in Pennsylvania, espousing universalism and moving close to Quakerism.

Anti-slavery stand

In 1688 he drafted together with Garret Hendericks, Derick op den Graeff, and Abraham op den Graeff the first protest against slavery in America. Pastorius was a cosigner of the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery, the first petition against slavery made in the English colonies. Before the American Civil War, when abolition of slavery was gaining strength, Pastorius was ripe for celebration. The Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier celebrated Pastorius' life – and particularly his anti-slavery advocacy – in The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. Whittier also translated the Latin ode addressed to posterity, which Pastorius prefixed to his Germantown book of records.

Operation Pastorius

Despite the Quaker sympathies of Pastorius, his name was appropriated in 1942 by the Abwehr of Nazi Germany for "Operation Pastorius," a failed sabotage attack on the United States during World War II that included a target in Philadelphia.

Biographies

For generations Pastorius has won the affections of historians. In the early twentieth century, German-American scholars embraced him and the University of Pennsylvania professor Marion Dexter Learned (1857-1917) wrote a lengthy biography; Learned had access to papers that have subsequently been lost. In 1985 John Weaver documented the cultural background of Pastorius' childhood and youth, and his reasons for emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1683. More recently Princeton University professor Anthony Grafton has written about Pastorius as a representative of European intellectual culture. Grafton's presidential address to the American Historical Association in 2012 was on Pastorius. Weaver extensively revised his earlier research in a book (in PDF) available online.

Legacy

Writings by Pastorius