Main content
Oswald Seidensticker papers
Notifications
Held at: German Society of Pennsylvania: Joseph P. Horner Memorial Library [Contact Us]611 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19123
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the German Society of Pennsylvania: Joseph P. Horner Memorial Library. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Oswald Seidensticker (1825-1894) was born in Göttingen, Hanover, Germany. After graduating from the University of Göttingen with the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1846, he and the remainder of his family joined his father in America, where he had been forced to emigrate that same year due to his political activism. Seidensticker worked for several years as a teacher in Massachusetts and Brooklyn, N.Y., before marrying Emma Logo and returning to Philadelphia in 1858. Seidensticker founded a private school in Philadelphia, and in 1867 became the first professor of German Languages and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked until his death in 1894.
Seidensticker joined the German Society of Pennsylvania in 1858, and from 1863 to 1870 served as Librarian of the Society. In 1867 he founded the Archive, and began collecting printed and manuscript material documenting German American history. Through his research and writings, Seidensticker essentially founded the field of German American studies. In addition to his many publications in the field, two especially important works are: Geschichte der Deutschen Gesellschaft von Pennsylvanien, a comprehensive history of the German Society and the bibliography The first Century of German Printing in America, 1728-1830. Seidensticker also founded the Deutscher Pionier Verein in 1880 to further the study of German American history.1
1. Seidensticker, Oswald. Geschichte der Deutschen Gesellschaft. Philadelphia : Graf & Breuninger, 1917.
Subject
- German Americans--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia
- German Americans--Societies, etc
- Germans--United States
- United States--Emigration and immigration--History--Sources
Place
- Publisher
- German Society of Pennsylvania: Joseph P. Horner Memorial Library
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Rae Blanchard
- Finding Aid Date
- 2025.04
- Access Restrictions
-
This collection is open for research.
- Use Restrictions
-
Copyright restrictions may apply. Please contact the German Society of Pennsylvania with requests for copying and for authorization to publish, quote or reproduce the material.
Collection Inventory
0.4 Cubic feet 2 flat boxes.
Custom-made manuscript box containing a bound volume of handwritten bibliographic notes on German-American publications, covering approximately 1728 to 1848, with some clippings and notes laid in. Presumably preliminary work for Seidensticker's book, <emph render="italic">The first century of German printing in America, 1728-1830</emph> (1893)
Lecture notes for Archäologie with Prof. K. Fr. Hermann dated 1844. A printed course outline is bound in at the front (Schema akademischer Vorträge über Archäologie oder Geschichte der Kunst des classischen Alterthums, Göttingen, 1844)
Lecture notes for Analysis with Prof. Ulrich dated 1844-1845. Includes mathematical equations and diagrams
Title, <emph render="italic">Philologische Excerpte</emph>, taken from the cover page. The book is written in German, French, and Greek
Title, <emph render="italic">Pathologie des Alphabets</emph>, taken from the cover page. Notes under headings of the letters of the alphabet. Written in German with words in Greek, Latin, Old High German, and Gothic. An undated slip of note paper with a printed memo from Emma L. Seidensticker, concerning a meeting of the Ladies Aid Society to the German Hospital, has been slipped in at the back
Title, <emph render="italic">Excerpte aus Schiller, Tieck, Herder</emph>, taken from the cover page. Quotations are in German. An English newspaper clipping titled "The Colored Race Problem / Full Text of Judge Gordon's stirring Address" (ca. 1891-1893) has been laid in at the back
A fifteen page biography on Nathaniel Hawthorne. The cover is signed by Clara Seidensticker
0.35 Cubic feet 2 flat boxes.
111 copy sheets of documents in the Seidensticker Collection of the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Göttingen. Made by Dr. Elliott Shore, co-director of the Library Project and sent to the German Society on November 11, 1995. Contains: correspondence (primarily written in English), various writings, and German newspaper clippings. Some topics are flagged, such as the copies of Seidensticker’s obituaries and his notes on the German-American Archive
Various documents of Seidensticker’s. This includes: his baptismal certificate; membership certificates for the German Society of Pennsylvania, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Historical Society of Wisconsin; a Gymnasium report; university certificate; U.S. citizenship certificate; two photographs of himself; correspondence; and newspaper clippings