Edward Piszek

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2009

Christopher Saur was a pioneering printer in colonial Pennsylvania who in 1743 produced the first Bible printed in a European language in America — a German edition for the region's growing immigrant community. From his press came the most widely read German-language newspaper of the day, and he used it to champion German causes and aid fellow newcomers with his money and influence. His shop was a cornerstone of German-American life in the colonies.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2007

In the backyard of his Philadelphia home, film pioneer Siegmund Lubin made some of the nation's earliest motion pictures between 1897 and 1899. His subjects were the popular entertainments of the day — vaudeville and burlesque acts, boxing matches, circus and animal performers, even a filmed Passion Play. A German-Jewish immigrant and optician by trade, Lubin became an early force in the emerging American movie business.

Philadelphia, PA

This marker recalls two grand Philadelphia buildings that once stood on this ground before fire swept them away. The Harrison Stratton Mansion belonged to the era when the city's prosperous families raised stately residences reflecting the wealth of a booming industrial metropolis, while the Sunderland was one of the early apartment buildings that reshaped how urban Americans lived as cities densified around the turn of the twentieth century. Their loss to fire was a common fate in an age when timber framing, coal heat, and open flame made conflagration a constant threat to city blocks.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2001

In 1840 John Wagner carried lager yeast from Bavaria to Philadelphia and brewed what is remembered as the first true lager beer in the United States. Unlike the heavier ales then common, lager was cold-fermented and crisp, and it caught on quickly as waves of German immigrants brought both a taste for it and the skill to make it. Their breweries multiplied through the 19th century, helping build one of America's great industries.