Great Day for Steuben Parade: This year's Grand Marshals were (from left): Christian Haub, Chairman of A&P; Parade founder Ted Dengler; Fox 5 news reporter Linda Schmidt; Parade General Director Lars Halter; and Staten Island-Brooklyn Congressman Michael McMahon.

By Walter Pfaeffle

German pride reigned on New York’s Fifth Avenue on Saturday as thousands of New Yorkers, out of state visitors and foreign tourists lined the street under clear blue skies to watch the 52nd annual Steuben Day Parade.

This year’s themes included the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 40th anniversary of the moon landing by German-American astronaut and Apollo mission commander Neil Armstrong, and the 60th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany.

“I am proud today to be a German-American,” said Linda Schmidt, whose grand parents came from Germany. Linda was one of this year’s four Grand Marshals. As Fox 5 news reporter, she is a familiar face to New Yorkers.

In the photo, Linda puts on her reporter's hat to interview a fellow Grand Marshal, Staten Island-Brooklyn Congressman Michael McMahon, for her television program. Watch it on MyFox video.

Despite his Irish name, McMahon is German on his mother’s side, and he proved it by making a brief speech from the grand stand in perfect, albeit slightly accented German.

The two other Grand Marshals were A&P Chairman Christian Haub, left, whose family controls the Tengelmann supermarket empire, and Parade founder Ted Dengler, below, who recently celebrated his 80th birthday.

Twenty-five groups from the tri-state area, California, Philadelphia and Germany marched the nearly 20 blocks from East 69th Street to 85th Street, many sporting and other traditional German costumes.

Representing northern Germany were 25 husars from the state of Schlswig-Holstein. They were accompanied by 26 of their friends.

It was long felt in northern Germany that the New York Steuben parade was too Bavarian. "We thought New Yorkers should see something other than lederhosen and dirndls," one delegate said.

The husars were cavalry-like irregular fighting units originating in the Balkans under the Habsburg empire.

But after the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), rulers of other states set up husar untis.

Some of the loudest cheers were in memory of a great German-American, baseball Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig.

It was seventy yars ago at Yankee Stadium Gehrig said farewell to baseball with his moving words: "Today, I consider myself the luckiest person on the face of the earth."

He died two years after his retirement of a debilitating illness named after him.

General Friedrich von Steuben, after whom the Parade was namend, whipped George Washington’s ragtag Continental Army into a disciplined fighting force in the winter of 1777/78 at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

The organizers threw in a surprise by bringing in a Trabant, popularly known as Trabi, left. This quaint looking automobile was produced in East Germany until the fall of the Wall.

For the first time, the Parade was joined by a delegation from the Bavarian village of Huettendorf, the home town of Johann Baron de Kalb, who joined Washington and Steuben at Valley Forge. Nine town, six counties and numerous streets in America are named after de Kalb.

A Donald Trump oganization float joined the Parade featuring Trump's Atlantic City-based Taj Mahal hotel-casino. If you in the area, visit the Oktoberfest at the Taj. Trump himself was Grand Marshal in 1999.

The Parade was slowed down by a traffic accident near 86th Street and the collapse by one of the participants from Germany as a result of a heart attack.

Photo: McMahon and his wife, with Bern E. Deichmann, right, President of the Washington-based German-American Heritage Foundation of theUSA.