Eine Erklärung
From the beginning, the Declaration of Independence was a multilingual document
Welcome to Declaration Stories, a weekly series of essays on different copies of the Declaration of Independence, running from July 2025 through the 250th anniversary in July 2026. This series is created by Dr. Emily Sneff, an early American historian, consulting curator, and leading expert on the Declaration of Independence.
Many historians have written about the Declaration of Independence. Most have focused on the drafting or the signing of this historic document, or its influence through time. In my forthcoming book, When the Declaration of Independence Was News (Oxford University Press, spring 2026) and the stories you will read here over the next year, I take a different approach. I focus on the people involved in the process of declaring independence. Every copy of the Declaration of Independence has a story to tell—about how the Declaration traveled, how it was printed and transcribed, how it was proclaimed in public squares, and how people reacted to it. I try to think about the experience of living through 1776. And this approach is deeply personal for me.
On both sides of my family tree, I have ancestors who were living in the greater Philadelphia area 250 years ago. Many of those people were Pennsylvania German—they were part of the German-speaking communities that resulted from multiple waves of immigration. When I look at these branches of my family tree, I wonder, how would they have learned about the Declaration of Independence? What would they have thought about independence? This second question is tricky to answer. But, in the special collections of the Musselman Library at Gettysburg College, there is a clue to help answer the first question.
Emily Sneff with the Steiner and Cist Broadside at Gettysburg College.
Courtesy, Carolyn Sautter
Within a few days of July 4, the Declaration of Independence was translated and printed in German in Philadelphia. This poster-sized copy of the Declaration in German is one of only two known surviving broadsides. The Declaration was also printed in the biweekly German newspaper in Philadelphia, the Staatsbote, on July 9. But the German broadsides are particularly captivating.
A broadside is a large printed sheet. Broadsides were designed to be read aloud or posted up in public spaces. They were also ephemeral—not meant to last. This means that the broadsides that survive from the American Revolution are remarkable pieces of evidence of how different communities learned about the developments of the war. Even if historians only have a limited number of extant broadsides to study, we can assume that a much larger number were produced. We can estimate, for example, that John Dunlap, the first printer of the Declaration, created a few hundred broadsides on July 4–5, 1776.
Melchior Steiner and Charles Cist created their broadsides of the Declaration of Independence in German a few days after John Dunlap’s first printing. Their printing office was on Second Street north of Arch Street in Philadelphia, one block from Dunlap’s office. They used a bold title, as he had done, to emphasize “A Declaration,” or “Eine Erklärung.” But whereas Dunlap had formatted the text in English in a single wide column, Steiner and Cist created two columns.
The existence of a German broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence suggests that the Declaration was proclaimed and posted up in communities where German was the predominant language. Translators worked quickly to ensure that these people had the same access to the news of independence as their Anglophonic neighbors. It is impossible to know if any of the German-reading people in my family tree saw one of these broadsides or heard the Declaration read aloud in the language that was most familiar to them. What is most important to remember, 250 years on, is that from the beginning, the Declaration of Independence was a multilingual document.
Broadside of the Declaration of Independence, Printed by Melchior Steiner and Charles Cist, July 1776, Special Collections and College Archives, Musselman Library, Gettysburg College.
Where to See It Online: Gettysburg College GettDigital Collections
Where to See It In Person: The Declaration’s Journey, Special Exhibition at the Museum of the American Revolution, October 2025–January 2027
