Christopher Saur and the First Bible in America

In seventeen forty-three, a printer named Christopher Saur produced something that had never existed before in the Americas: a Bible printed in a European language. Working from his press here in Germantown, Saur printed the complete text in German, serving the thousands of German-speaking immigrants who had no access to scripture in their own tongue. He also published the most widely read German-language newspaper in colonial Pennsylvania, and he used both the press and his personal resources to advocate for and assist fellow immigrants. Born in Germany, Saur had arrived in Pennsylvania in seventeen twenty-four and became one of the most influential printers in colonial America, a champion of the immigrant communities that were quietly reshaping the mid-Atlantic world.