Missouri Germans Consortium

German-American Day is a U.S. holiday observed annually on October 6, which celebrates our German American heritage. It commemorates the date in 1683 when 13 German families landed in Philadelphia who founded the first German settlement, Germantown, Pennsylvania. Celebrated widely in the nineteenth century, German-American Day died out in during WWI because of  the anti-German sentiment that prevailed at the time. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan, proclaimed October 6 as German-American Day in honor of the 300th anniversary of German immigration and culture to the United States.