"Benjamin Franklin and the Germans. A Transatlantic Encounter in the Age of Enlightenment"
Guest Lecture by Jürgen Overhoff
April 12, 2019 - 7 p.m.
Benjamin Franklin had a variety of very interesting encounters with Germans both in North America and in Europe. In Pennsylvania, where Franklin lived for a large part of his life, German immigrants constituted almost half of the population. When Franklin traveled through Germany in the summer of 1766, he met German politicians, princes and citizens in their homeland. This talk explores Franklin’s different attitudes to Germans on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly looking at the way his perspectives developed and changed between 1740 and 1787.
Co-sponsored by the Center for German and European Studies, Friends of the Max Kade Institute, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic. Funding for this event is provided by the University Lectures Knapp Fund.