As the place where Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer and Johann Georg August Wirth worked - both were included in the pantheon of the "100 Heads of Democracy" - as well as a selected "Place of the History of Democracy", Homburg plays a special role in Germany's black, red and gold history. At the same time, the density of all kinds of "American Traces" is as unusual as it is rich in tradition.
This is where the ideas that are still valid today were launched, which culminated in the "Hambach Festival" in 1832. The town itself was regarded in France as a "nest where the rebirth of Germany might be hatched". In addition, Homburg was one of the three army camps of the democratically-minded irregular troops in the Palatinate Uprising of 1849 and thus also the scene of a skirmish against the Prussian invasion troops. When the uprising failed, just as the German Revolution of 1848 had done, many of the belligerent democrats from the south-west found a new homeland in the United States of America. There, the "Forty-Eighters" had a lasting impact on the political development of the USA - and fought in the Civil War for the values of the Union under the banner of the "Stars and Stripes", which also replaced the swastika flag in the Saar Palatinate in 1945. On 4 July 2022, the "International Alliance for Peace and Cohesion in Europe" was also concluded in Homburg, which explicitly includes the US partners in Henrico County VA, the partner county of the Saarpfalz district, and emphasises the close, historical connection between the Saar-Palatinate region and the United States.
You can find out more about this on Friday 4 July, Independence Day in the USA, from 17:00 to 18:30 on the "Black, Red, Gold and Stars and Stripes" dialogue tour. As part of this themed walk organised by the German-American Institute (DAI) Saarland in cooperation with the German-American Circle of Friends (DAF) Saar-Palatinate and the Siebenpfeiffer Foundation, you will learn about striking and sometimes astonishing chapters of German-American history along selected sites of the history of democracy in Homburg, which is representative of many other places between the Saar and Palatinate. The meeting point is at 17:00 at the Homburg "Freiheitsbrunnen" (corner of Eisenbahnstraße/Am Rondell).
Thanks to the support of the DAI and the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, participation is free of charge. Registration is not required.