“German Freethought Communities in Missouri,” a platform presented by Dorris Keeven-Franke is now available on our podcast page.
With the age of Enlightenment, came reason, spreading across Europe, reaching Germany. With the Napoleonic wars had come oppression, famine, chaos; and when the military campaigns ended, Germans were faced with an even more horrific struggle – for freedom. The Universities were filled with young men engulfed in that battle, where they learned Latin by daylight, yet studied democracy secretly by lamplight. A dream emerged, born of the oppression, fueled by repression, for a place where all Germans could raise families, educate their children, and live a life free from fear. When rationalism arrived in the far western states of North America, those ideals took shape in talks in crude cabins and traveled the countryside on broadsheets and books – and freethought was born on the Missouri frontier.