George Washington and German: To hear an English language report from NPR about Emanuel Leutze, the German artist who painted the famous picture of Washington crossing the Delaware River ("Don't stand up in the boat, George!"),

click on this link (streaming .mov, 8.8MB)

Further information:

Metropolitan Museum of Art: "Explore & Learn" presentation of "George Washington Crossing the Delaware"

Wikipedia articles about the painting and the painter.

The painting is so well known that for decades it has been the source of satire and caricature. Here is an example from February 2009, comparing Pres. Obama dealing with the economic crisis to Washington crossing the Delaware:

It's interesting to think that Washington was on his way to defeat the British forces at Trenton, NJ; that army was composed largely of German mercenaries (Hessians) who had been forced into service by the ruler of the tiny principality of Hesse and sold into British service.

German (Prussian) military officers served as advisors to Washington; the most famous was Von Steuben, whose memory was celebrated in America until recent years as Von Steuben Day in October. You may be familiar with the scene in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off where Matthew Broderick gets into the middle of a Von Steuben Day parade and sings an outrageous version of "Danke Schoen." Sic transit gloria mundi!

There is a common myth that there was once an election in which a measure to change the official language of the United States from English to German was defeated by just 2 votes. The overt message is that it is important to vote; the covert message is that learning German is a horrible fate. The tale may be derived from July 1776, when the brand new US government ordered that the Declaration of Independence be published in German. The Declaration was signed in Philadelphia, the current capital. British troops were nearby, but there were many German settlers in the area. They were considered likely to be supporters of independence, or at least not particularly loyal to Great Britain (even though George III was German by family background).

Useful vocabulary:

Declaration of Independence = Unabhängigkeitserklärung

Civil War = Bürgerkrieg OR Sezessionskrieg (in German culture, Bürgerkrieg suggests internecine war, the bitter conflict within a society, everywhere, rather than region against region)