LINCOLN SQUARE — On Saturday, members of Chicago's German-American community will don traditional costumes and parade up Lincoln Avenue in honor of Baron Friedrich von Steuben, tossing beads and candy along the route, and shutting down one of the North Side's major thoroughfares in the process.
Why?
Well, in short, we'd all likely still be singing "God Save the Queen" instead of "God Bless America" if Von Steuben hadn't whipped George Washington's Continental Army into shape.
A trained member of the Prussian army, the most advanced fighting force in the world at the time, Von Steuben volunteered his services to Washington and reported for duty in 1778 at Valley Forge, where the rag tag insurgents were licking their wounds.
Von Steuben introduced novel concepts like sanitation to the camp — "Hey, you might want to separate the latrines from the kitchen" — and drilled soldiers in maneuvers, bayonet fighting and musket loading. The last was no mean feat: It took 15 separate actions to load a musket.
He literally wrote the book, "Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States," that became the first manual for the U.S. Army, and he's frequently referred to as "the father of the U.S. military."
Von Steuben was also very likely gay, which is one of the reasons he got tossed out of Prussia in the first place. Though homosexuality was a crime in the U.S., Washington was so impressed with Von Steuben's ability as a military leader that he turned a deaf ear to rumors about the Prussian, ushering in "don't ask, don't tell" centuries before it became an actual policy.
Paging Lin-Manuel Miranda.
If the "Hamilton" creator can resurrect the reputation of the guy on the $10 bill, imagine what he could do with the story of Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand Steuben.
Saturday's Von Steuben Parade steps off at 2 p.m. at Irving Park Road and Lincoln Avenue. The route proceeds north on Lincoln before turning onto Eastwood Avenue, where it travels to Western Avenue before winding up at Lawrence.
