Saengerfest

The tradition & historical record

Sängerfest, also Sängerbund-Fest, Sängerfeste, or Saengerfest, meaning singer festival, is a competition of Sängerbunds, or singer groups, with prizes for the best group or groups. Such public events are also known as a Liederfest, or song festival. Participants number in the hundreds and thousands, and the fest is usually accompanied by a parade and other celebratory events. The sängerfest is most associated with the Germanic culture. Its origins can be traced back to 19th century Europe. Swiss composer Hans Georg Nägeli and educator Carl Friedrich Zelter, both protégés of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, established sängerbunds to help foster social change throughout Germany and Prussia. University students began to choose the art form as an avenue for political statements. As the sängerfest concept gained popularity and spread around the world, it was adapted by Christian churches for spiritual worship services. European immigrants brought the tradition in a non-political form to the North American continent. In the early part of the 20th century, sängerfest celebrations drew devotees in the tens of thousands, and included some United States presidents among their audiences. Sängerbunds are still active in Europe and in American communities with Germanic heritage. ¹

Students of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, a proponent of social reform, applied his teachings when founding some singing groups as an instrument for cultural change. One of his students was Carl Friedrich Zelter, who helped establish the sängerbund movement throughout Prussia in 1809. Pestalozzi's protégé Hans Georg Nägeli was a composer, music teacher and songbook publisher who made numerous journeys across Germany from 1819 to encourage the formation of male singing groups for social reform. Nägeli established several sängerbunds in Switzerland, which became the inspiration for the 1824 establishment of the Stuttgarter Liederkranz. Following the 1819 Carlsbad Decrees in Germany, male-only choral celebrations with hundreds or thousands of vocalists were popular with the masses and often part of political events. ¹

Composer Friedrich Silcher was directly influenced by Pestalozzi and Nägeli. He began using large choirs to express political viewpoints at least as early as 1824 when he and a group of Tübingen University students performed La Marseillaise to commemorate the storming of the Bastille. In 1827 at Plochingen, Baden-Württemberg, several male-voiced choirs combined for a regional liederfest. Sängerfests were part of the Hambach Festival of 1832. Christian church organizations known as Christlicher sängerbunds adapted the sängerfest for religious gatherings and helped spread its popularity throughout Europe, North America and Australia. They became popular in late 19th century Russia among Mennonite congregations. On 30 May 1893, a sängerfest of seven choirs was held in Rückenau in Molotschna, Ukraine. ¹

Mennonites established the northwest Philadelphia section of Germantown in 1683. The Philadelphia Männerchor founded by German immigrant Phillip Matthias Wohlseiffer in 1835 was the first German-American singing society organized in the United States where the sängerfest began to evolve as a form of civic entertainment. In 1836, Wohlseiffer founded the Baltimore Liederkranz, which became the first to accept women members (1838). In 1846, the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, group and the Baltimore, Maryland, group performed together at a public sängerfest. The "Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac" of 1891 listed numerous sängerbunds in the Brooklyn, New York area. On 21 June 1901, the Nord-Amerikanischer Sängerbund presented a sängerfest in Buffalo, New York, at the famous Pan-American Exposition (where 25th President William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz in a reception line in September 1901). A group in Buffalo hoped to help pay the expenses of the fest by forming the Buffalo Sängerfest Company, selling 1,600 shares of stock at $25 each. ¹

In 1838, the Cincinnati Deutscher Gesangverein was formed in Ohio, followed by the Cincinnati Deutsch Liedertafel in 1844. The Gesang und Bildungsverein Deutscher Arbeiter formed in 1846 and was the first Cincinnati group that allowed women. Groups from Ohio, Kentucky, Maryland and Indiana created the Nord-Amerikanischer Sängerbund in 1849 for a sängerfest hosted by Cincinnati, featuring the music of German composers. By 1908, it was estimated that 250,000 German Americans belonged to musical organizations, and 50,000 of those belonged to the Nord-Amerikanischer Sängerbund. The first post-Civil War sängerfest in Columbus, Ohio, took place 29 August – 1 September 1865 at Schreiner's Hall and the Opera House. ¹

Although some local festivals were canceled or suspended during the World Wars owing to rising anti-German sentiment, the triennial Sängerfest tradition has largely survived and many communities in areas with a significant German-American population have Sängerfests today. Two major German-American singing associations are the Nordöstlicher (North Eastern) Sängerbund and the much larger Nord-Amerikanischer (North American) Sängerbund. ¹

Nordöstlicher Sängerbund: The 49th Sängerfest was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 2006. The 50th Sängerfest, hosted by the Washington Sängerbund, took place on the 2009 Memorial Day Weekend in Washington, D.C. The 51st Sängerfest, hosted by the Lehigh Sängerbund, took place in June 2012 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The Bloomfield Liedertafel hosted the 52nd Sängerfest in 2015 in Pittsburgh, PA. Nord-Amerikanischer Sängerbund: The 61st Sängerfest of the Nord-Amerikanischer Sängerbund was June 2013 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with over 1300 singers. The 62nd Sängerfest took place 27–29 May 2016 in Pittsburgh, PA. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Sängerfest”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Saengerfest is competition of Sängerbunds, or singer groups, with prizes for the best group or groups, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²