[lg policy] First version of the Declaration of Independence to be printed: in German?

[Harold Schiffman]

All,

Today in the Washington Post there appeared a cartoon called "Flashbacks" by
Patrick M. Reynolds.
In 4 panels he describes how in colonial Philadelphia a German immigrant
named Heinrich Miller left
the employ of Benjamin Franklin to start a German language newspaper called
the *Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote*.  On July 4, 1776, as soon as the
Declaration of Independence was adopted, John Hancock,
President of the Continental Congress, ordered that copies be printed.  He
is shown handing the ms. to
someone and instructing him to "make sure that a handwritten copy [...] goes
down to Miller's print shop.  Tell him to translate it and publish it in his
German newspaper."

Miller and his assistants work all night "translating, setting type, and
printing."  The next morning, the German newspaper became the *first* to
publish the Declaration of Independence.

I had never heard this story before; the source of the story  is supposedly
a book entitled "The German-American Experience" by Don Heinrich Tolzmann,
paperbound, $44.95, from the Red Rose Studio,
www.redrosestudio.com.

I wish I could reproduce the cartoon but I can't find it on-line at the
Washington Post. I will try to scan it and put copies in our "images"
subdirectory. Anybody else ever heard  this claim?

HS


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