Sängerfest
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.
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.
[2] Pestalozzi's protégé Hans Georg Nägeli was a composer, music teacher and songbook publisher[3] who made numerous journeys across Germany from 1819 to encourage the formation of male singing groups for social reform.
[8][9] 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.
[13] Christian church organizations known as Christlicher sängerbunds adapted the sängerfest for religious gatherings and helped spread its popularity throughout Europe, North America and Australia.
On Sunday, 29 May 1894, the all-day Russische Saengervereinigung was held in Rückenau under the direction of Polish conductor Friedrich Schweige with assistance from Aron Gerhard Sawatsky, director of the Andreasfeld Mennonite Brethren Church.
On 29 May there were breakfasts for attendees, an estimated 50 vocal presentations by individual choirs, prayer services and sermons, lunch for 2,000 people and afternoon snacks.
[18] 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.
[21] 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).
[25] 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.
After the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865, Thielepape raised the Union flag of the "Stars and Stripes" over the historic Texan battle site and former church mission, the Alamo in San Antonio and distributed wine and songbooks.
[31][35][36][37] 22nd and 24th President Grover Cleveland, his wife, and guests took a special train from Washington, D.C. on "Independence Day", 4 July 1888, forty miles northeast to see a Baltimore event.
[39] On 15 June 1903, 26th President Theodore Roosevelt and Ambassador Herman Speck von Sternberg[40] attended a sängerfest of 6,000 individual singers at Baltimore's Armory Hall.
[43] When Newark, New Jersey, hosted the 21st National Sängerfest, held on 1–4 July 1906 in Olympic Park, 25,000 people showed up to hear the music, many arriving on chartered trains.
Five thousand singers from more than a hundred sängerbunds representing forty cities from New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware competed for a $20,000 prize offered by Kaiser Wilhelm II.
