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| Photo from the first German Day celebration at Dobler Park |
On September 19, 1904, Albany’s first annual Deutsch Tag or German Day was held at Dobler Park and was “an unqualified success.”[1] The night before, the German Hall Association arranged an enormous vocal and instrumental concert at the Harmanus Bleecker Hall to inaugurate the first Deutsch Tag. A children’s chorus of 250 voices, a male chorus of 120, and a mixed chorus of 250 entertained the German citizens of Albany throughout the night. The Albany Argus praised the German concert, stating, “…yet it was nevertheless distinctively an Albany audience, the Germans have become so thoroughly assimilated in the civilization of the new world that all, whether born here or in the Fatherland, are Americans.”[2] German Day celebrated the arrival of the “German Mayflower,” the Concord, and the subsequent establishment of the first German colony in America at Germantown, Pennsylvania. The colony was established on October 6, 1683 by Franz Daniel Pastorius and was composed of mainly religious refugees from the Palatinate.
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