The Pennsylvania German Broadside

< < Return to Book Page

Introduction

The Broadside in Germanic Europe

The invention of printing with movable type in Europe in the fifteenth century brought with it a cultural revolution that influenced every area of the life of our ancestors in Germanic Central Europe. It was essentially a revolution in communication, as is the current computer revolution that we are today in the very midst of, which is changing the world of the book into the world of the Internet.

The Renaissance was aided by print in spreading the Greek and Roman classics among the intelligentsia and promoting Renaissance humanism and classicism. The Reformation was also immensely aided and fostered by the print revolution. Luther’s, Zwingli’s, and Calvin’s writings and those of their associates and followers were spread in every direction. Tracts, liturgies, creeds and confessions, hymnbooks, and other religious productions spread the new faith, led of course by the Reformers’ rediscovery and vernacular translations of the Bible and its rapid diffusion through print. Even satire, caricature, and crude cartooning were pressed into service to aid the Protestant advance, although the Catholic Counter-Reformation produced counterblasts of the same, often somewhat gross, materials. Lampooning the “enemy” was a favorite occupation of woodcut producers, engravers, poetasters who wrote the accompanying verses, and printers. In this cultural and religious maelstrom of conflicting ideas and new approaches to Christianity the broadside played a major role. So let us look at the broadside in Europe, its terminology, its production and marketing, and its cultural significance.

The terminology of the broadside can be summarized as follows. The term “broadside” in English is the major designation; the later and lesser term “broadsheet,” used principally in the British Isles, is the minor designation. Both mean a piece of paper printed on one side, to be sold or distributed to interested clients. Related terms are “handbill” (as in the common but now somewhat archaic phrase, “Post no bills!”), flyer, leaflet, and poster. The last is usually a larger one-page sheet pasted against a flat surface to announce sales, circuses, theater productions, etc., or printed on stiff cardboard for display in store windows or other public venues.

Included under my definition of broadside is the second category of “print,” i.e., a one-page picture, often colored, with minimal text. Many of these bear religious motifs and serve the purposes of devotion or spirituality, at church or at home. Others are secular, sometimes humorous. And still others are portrait prints of individuals who are considered role models in a given society.

My definition of the broadside thus includes a range of ephemera—all printed on single sheets of paper. It is my personal opinion that British and American folklorists in particular have skewed the definition of the broadside by overemphasizing song and ballad broadsides as “street literature.” The range of the broadside properly embraces more than popular literature hawked on the streets. The Pennsylvania Dutch certificates of birth, baptism, confirmation, and marriage, and elegies and spiritual testaments, while not street literature, are legitimate broadsides that relate the individual to the community culture. One can also cite as broadsides legal forms, in German and English, for indentures, appointment of estate administrators, and certificates of naturalization. All of these were functional in the historic Pennsylvania Dutch culture of the past.

< < Return to Book Page