I was ferreting around the Internet looking for, among other things, quotes by Benjamin Franklin about German immigrants, and I came across a write-up at Dialog International. The things Ben Franklin thought and said are at this post on the site. The post begins with the statement: “Immigrants to America have always been feared and hated.” It’s striking, isn’t it, how political turmoil regarding immigration spans the centuries? Newcomers are consistently the outsiders. Gotta get a handle on that (rather than, for instance, a wall).
Meanwhile, the Dialog International site where I found the above post intrigued me. The tone is rational, clearheaded, and humanitarian in scope. I clicked on about me and learned the blog theme is: “Free thinkers who are interested in cross-cultural dialogue.” The term “Free thinkers” triggered a memory. The word Freidenker, freethinker, is generally synonymous with “atheist.” Back in the 1830s and 1840s, this rationalist perspective was also prevalent in the rural village of Freinsheim, according to writings of the then-pastor Johann Georg Bickes. In a description of his parish, Bickes wrote of: “a pernicious spirit of unbelief… Here, as everywhere, there are those who are led astray by false enlightenment, following their own arrogance. They do not pay attention to the word of God, and are infected by the pernicious spirit of unbelief and frivolity, of carelessness, of arrogance and contempt of divine laws.”
Further investigation led me to this statement in the German-language Wikipedia: “Freidenker sind im heutigen Sinn Menschen, die sich an wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen orientieren und zu einem nichtreligiös geprägten Humanismus bekennen. … Freidenker bestehen zwar auf ihrer Unabhängigkeit von Glaubensregeln wie Tabus und Dogmen, beziehen sich aber ausdrücklich auf ethische Grundsätze von Freiheit, Gleichheit, Toleranz und Gewaltverzicht.” [Translation]: “In the modern sense, Freethinkers are people oriented to a non-religiously influenced humanism based on scientific findings. … Indeed, Freethinkers insist on their independence from religious rules, such as taboos and dogmas, relying instead on the ethical principles of liberty, equality, tolerance and nonviolence.”
Historically, in the 1840s in the Bavarian Rhineland and surrounding areas, Freethinkers were German intellectuals who wished to overthrow their religious and political autocracies in favor of a constitutional democracy. These men read Thomas Paine, author of “Common Sense,” “The Rights of Man” and “The Age of Reason,” a man who also inspired humanitarian zeal in America’s founding fathers. When the 1848 revolution was suppressed, many German intellectuals emigrated (or were forced to flee). In Cleveland, Ohio, ex-patriated Germans formed a Society of Freemen and beginning in 1853, held an annual Thomas Paine celebration.
In a Wikipedia entry on Freethought, I found the following: “[German 1848er immigrant] Freethinkers tended to be liberal, espousing ideals such as racial, social, and sexual equality, and the abolition of slavery.” What followed was a short-lived but heartening “Golden Age of Free Thought.”