Historian Friederike Baer focuses our attention on the varied experiences of the German auxiliaries in the American Revolution. Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired more than thirty thousand German soldiers to fight in its war against the American rebels. Collectively known as Hessians and accompanied by many civilians, including hundreds of women and children, they spent extended periods in locations as far-flung and varied as Canada and West Florida. Drawing on extensive research in German-authored private papers and official records, this talk examines the Hessians not merely as a fighting force but as a military community sustained through domestic labor, familial ties, and collective identity far from home. This program accompanies our current exhibition, Voices of Revolution, on view through January 10, 2027.
About the Speaker:
Friederike Baer, Ph.D., is an early American historian with a research focus on the American Revolution and Early Republic, especially the experiences of German-speaking people in North America between 1775 and 1830. She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University, where she studied under the late Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Gordon S. Wood. She has taught at the University of Georgia, Kutztown University, Temple University, and served as a project archivist at the American Philosophical Society. Since 2010, however, she has been at Penn State Abington, where she is currently a professor of history and division head for Arts and humanities. Dr. Baer is the author of two books and several journal articles and other works. Her first book, The Trial of Frederick Eberle: Language, Patriotism, and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community: 1790-1830, was published in 2008 and was awarded the St. Paul’s Biglerville Prize for the best book in Lutheran Church history. Her second monograph, Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War, was published in 2022 and was awarded the 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize, an annual award that recognizes an outstanding book that advances the understanding of the American Revolution and its legacy. Throughout her career, Dr. Baer has also been awarded several fellowships and research grants at the Clements Library, the American Philosophical Society, the DAAD, the German Historical Institute, the David Library of the American Revolution, Virginia Historical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and last but certainly not least, the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship to study in our research library here at Anderson House. Recently, she served as a historical consultant and was featured on Ken Burns’s documentary, The American Revolution.