October 16, 1907 · Hotel Majestic, Philadelphia · Wedding ceremony, reception, and banquet for Wilhelmina Zeisse and Aloys Schaufler, officiated by Rev. Edward Yates Hill (First Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia)
The pairing of a Presbyterian officiant (Rev. Edward Yates Hill of First Presbyterian Church) with the prominent German Imperial eagle on the cover reflects the assimilation of the bride and groom’s German heritage with American Protestant institutional life. Such hybridity was common in the German-American urban communities of the early twentieth century.
The cover features the German Imperial eagle (Reichsadler) in detailed embossed gold and black with red detailing on the tail and claws — the Hohenzollern crown atop. The composition is restrained and formal, with black-letter Gothic typeface throughout. The cover is one of the finest examples of German-American formal commercial printing in the NYPL collection.
The Zeisse–Schaufler wedding of October 16, 1907 was a German-American society wedding in Philadelphia. The choice to hold ceremony, reception, and banquet in a single hotel venue (rather than a church wedding followed by a separate reception) was a fashionable innovation of the period among Philadelphia’s prosperous immigrant communities.
Visual style: Embossed cover with German Imperial eagle in black, gold, and red on cream stock.
What you receive
- Three print sizes: 8×10, 11×14, 16×20 inches (300 DPI, ready for any home printer or framing shop).
- Two versions of each size: a pure print (no added text) and a museum print (with a small caption: restaurant or ship, year, and source).
- A 1–2 page PDF with the menu’s historical context.
- One ZIP file, instantly downloadable after checkout.
About the source
This menu is preserved in the Buttolph Collection of Menus at The New York Public Library and is in the public domain in the United States. The Menu Press has curated, digitally restored, and reformatted the work for modern printing.
