Before the War for Independence only eight English newspapers were published in Pennsylvania, but there were ten German papers. It was the German, Pastorius, who wrote the first schoolbook in Pennsylvania; it was the German, Christoph Saur, who printed the first Bible in America in a continental European language.

The German monastery Ephatra had its own printing press in 1745, and also a paper factory and bookbindery; in 1749 it was able to publish a German translation of the "Martyr's Mirror," a work of fifteen hundred pages, the greatest literary enterprise of the colony.

No less a personage than Benjamin Franklin considered it necessary to print German books.

In America the Bible was printed three times in German and the New Testament seven times before they were printed in English.