Henry Boernstein n Europe, Heinrich Börnstein(November 4, 1805 – September 10, 1892) was a German revolutionary who served as the publisher of the ''
Anzeiger des Westens
The ''Anzeiger des Westens'' (literally "Gazette of the West") was the first German-language newspaper in St. Louis, Missouri, and, along with the '' Westliche Post'' and the '' Illinois Staats-Zeitung'', one of the three most successful German-la ...
'' in
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
, the oldest German newspaper west of the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...
. He was also a
political activist
A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some ...
, author, soldier, actor and stage manager, and was briefly yet closely acquainted with
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
during his tenure as publisher of the radical newspaper
Vorwärts
''Vorwärts'' (, "Forward") is a newspaper published by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Founded in 1876, it was the central organ of the SPD for many decades. Following the party's Halle Congress (1891), it was published daily as ...
. He played a major role in keeping Missouri in the Union at the start of the Civil War.
Biography
Europe
His family fled from
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
Austrian
Austrian may refer to:
* Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent
** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen, see Austrian nationality law
* Austrian German dialect
* Something associated with the country Austria, for example: ...
Galizia, now L'viv in Ukraine) in 1813, due to fighting between allied and French forces. He studied half-heartedly at the University of Lemberg and then read medical literature in Vienna. He acquired a special hostility to the Roman Catholic Church due to being required to attend Catholic catechism despite being a Protestant.
After leaving the university, Boerrnstein joined an Austrian army regiment stationed in
Olmütz
Olomouc (, , ; german: Olmütz; pl, Ołomuniec ; la, Olomucium or ''Iuliomontium'') is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 99,000 inhabitants, and its larger urban zone has a population of about 384,000 inhabitants (2019).
Located on th ...
,
Moravia
Moravia ( , also , ; cs, Morava ; german: link=yes, Mähren ; pl, Morawy ; szl, Morawa; la, Moravia) is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia.
The m ...
, for five years, before resigning his commission as a cadet and going to Vienna. There he became involved in journalism and theater.
He married the Hungarian actress Marie Steltzer (age 15 years) on November 13, 1829. After a period in Vienna, Boernstein went on tour as an actor to cities in the Austrian Empire such as Budapest, Lubjana, Agram agreb Trieste and Venice, and he served as supervisor of the municipal theaters in St. Pölten and Linz. He became both a successful theatrical entrepreneur and a popular actor. In 1841, he and his wife toured the principal cities of Germany with great success.
His radical political views enticed him to Paris, and in 1842 he took a German opera company there, which failed to flourish. He was a friend of Franz Liszt, Alexandre Dumas and Giacomo Meyerbeer. He managed an Italian opera company in Paris before starting a "translation factory" modifying French drama for performance in German.
In 1844 and 1845 he published the radical journal '' Vorwärts! Pariser Signale aus Kunst, Wissenschaft, Musik und geselligem Leben'' Advance! Paris Signals from Art, Science, Music and Social Life" later ''Vorwärts! Pariser Deutsche Zeitschrift'' Advance! Paris German Journal" It became the chief mouthpiece of
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
Arnold Ruge
Arnold Ruge (13 September 1802 – 31 December 1880) was a German philosopher and political writer. He was the older brother of Ludwig Ruge.
Studies in university and prison
Born in Bergen auf Rügen, he studied in Halle, Jena and Heidelberg. ...
, and Heinrich Heine. French authorities shut ''Vorwärts!'' down early in 1845, expelling or imprisoning most of those associated with the journal.
Boernstein remained in Paris, recording political events in France for newspapers that could not afford a reporter there. He was assisted by his perennial co-worker Karl Ludwig Bernays. Boernstein wrote articles for Horace Greeley's ''
New-York Tribune
The ''New-York Tribune'' was an American newspaper founded in 1841 by editor Horace Greeley. It bore the moniker ''New-York Daily Tribune'' from 1842 to 1866 before returning to its original name. From the 1840s through the 1860s it was the domi ...
'' (translated into English by
Charles Anderson Dana
Charles Anderson Dana (August 8, 1819 – October 17, 1897) was an American journalist, author, and senior government official. He was a top aide to Horace Greeley as the managing editor of the powerful Republican newspaper '' New-York Tribun ...
and Bayard Taylor) as well as for German journals in America such as the ''
Deutsche Schnellpost
Deutsch or Deutsche may refer to:
*''Deutsch'' or ''(das) Deutsche'': the German language, in Germany and other places
*''Deutsche'': Germans, as a weak masculine, feminine or plural demonym
* Deutsch (word), originally referring to the Germanic v ...
'' of New York. At the time of the February 1848 revolution in Paris, he became president of the ''Société des Democrats Allemands'', helping to organize a military unit under
Georg Herwegh
Georg Friedrich Rudolph Theodor Herwegh (31 May 1817 – 7 April 1875) was a German poet,Herwegh, Georg, The Columbia Encyclopedia (2008) who is considered part of the Young Germany movement.
Biography
He was born in Stuttgart on 31 May 1817, ...
to aid the revolt in Baden. He withdrew from the revolutionary movement when socialists insisted on a right to labor. Throughout the 1848 Revolution in Paris he collected pamphlets and newspapers on the streets every day. He gave this collection to the
St. Louis Mercantile Library
The St. Louis Mercantile Library, founded in 1846 in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, was originally established as a membership library, and is the oldest extant library west of the Mississippi River. Since 1998 the library has been housed at the ...
in 1853, where it remains today. He departed France in January, 1849, after
Louis Napoléon
Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...
was inaugurated as President of the Second Republic.
United States
After landing in New Orleans, Boernstein passed through St. Louis, Missouri, to the Swiss community of
Highland, Illinois
Highland is a city in Madison County, Illinois, United States. The population was 9,991 at the 2020 census. Highland began as a Swiss settlement and derived its name from later German immigrants.
Highland is a sister city of Sursee in Switzerl ...
, where he practiced as a water-cure physician until offered the editorship of the German-language newspaper ''Anzeiger des Westens'' Western Reporter"in St. Louis in March, 1850. He soon became its publisher and proprietor.
To promote circulation, he published many prominent European novelists and memoirists of the time as serials, and in 1850 he wrote a sensationalist anti-Jesuit novel, ''Die Geheimnisse von St. Louis'' 'The Mysteries of St. Louis'' translated subsequently into English, French and Czech. It was in the tradition of the "urban mystery" novels of
Eugène Sue
Marie-Joseph "Eugène" Sue (; 26 January 18043 August 1857) was a French novelist. He was one of several authors who popularized the genre of the serial novel in France with his very popular and widely imitated ''The Mysteries of Paris'', whic ...
(''Les mystères de Paris'', ''Le juif errant''). It had many editions in America and Germany, and it was revived in the 1870s in the context of Bismarck's Kulturkampf with the papacy.
Boernstein introduced a sensational journalistic style in his ''Anzeiger'', raising the ire of nativist mobs, led in one case by
Ned Buntline
Edward Zane Carroll Judson Sr. (March 20, 1821 – July 16, 1886), known by his pseudonym Ned Buntline, was an American publisher, journalist, and writer.
Early life and military service
Judson was born on March 20, 1821, in Harpersfield, New Yo ...
. The ''Anzeiger'' revived the political career of former US Senator Thomas Hart Benton, winning Benton one term in the House of Representatives on behalf of "Benton Democracy." Boernstein became an early supporter of the newly founded Republican Party, and he dramatized the fact that John Frémont was not on the ballot in Missouri in 1856 by having his followers vote for the Know-Nothing presidential candidate
Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800March 8, 1874) was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853; he was the last to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House. A former member of the U.S. House of Represen ...
"under protest," since the nativist position was incidentally in tune with his hostility to Catholicism.
Boernstein's freewheeling methods earned him enemies within the German community as well as among English-speakers. In 1857 ''Die westliche Post'' was founded as a competitor for support from "progressive" Germans.
At the start of the Civil War, Boernstein's enterprises included a brewery, a hotel, and several saloons. In 1859 he leased the Variétés Theater in St. Louis and launched it as an opera house. It closed when Boernstein went off to war in 1861.
In the months before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, political tensions in St. Louis deteriorated into armed confrontation, while pro-Southern elements plotted to seize the United States Arsenal. A military force was organized in the Arsenal in April 1861, under federal auspices by Congressman
Francis Preston Blair, Jr.
Francis Preston Blair Jr. (February 19, 1821 – July 8, 1875) was a United States Senator, a United States Congressman and a Union Major General during the Civil War. He represented Missouri in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, ...
, and Captain
Nathaniel Lyon
Nathaniel Lyon (July 14, 1818 – August 10, 1861) was the first Union general to be killed in the American Civil War. He is noted for his actions in Missouri in 1861, at the beginning of the conflict, to forestall secret secessionist plans of th ...
; Boernstein was elected colonel of the Second Missouri Volunteer Regiment (of four regiments). Before his election as colonel, his company escorted weapons and ammunition by boat from the Arsenal to Alton, Illinois. He participated in the arrest of the Missouri State Militia at Camp Jackson on May 10, 1861, and wrote a letter to Lincoln with a description of the subsequent shooting of civilians under riot conditions. When Lyon (now a Brigadier General) moved into the interior of Missouri in June, Boernstein commanded the force occupying Jefferson City, the state capital.
After the expiration of three months' federal service, Boernstein was appointed United States Consul in Bremen, Germany, by President Lincoln, although he returned briefly to St. Louis in 1862 in a vain attempt to save Blair's Congressional seat for the Republican Party.
Europe again
Boernstein served as US Consul in Bremen throughout the Civil War and was only replaced by President Andrew Johnson in 1866. Boernstein decided to remain in Europe, since the ''Anzeiger'' had been unexpectedly closed. In 1869-71 he leased the ''
Theater in der Josefstadt
The Theater in der Josefstadt is a theater in Vienna in the eighth district of Josefstadt. It was founded in 1788 and is the oldest still performing theater in Vienna. It is often referred to colloquially as simply ''Die Josefstadt''.
Following ...
'' in Vienna and later reviewed scripts of plays for the ''Stadttheater''.Börnstein, ''Memoiren'', vol. 2, 421-29. He worked in Vienna for a while as a photographer. He retired in 1878 to Baden bei Wien to write his memoirs; they were published in the Illinois ''Staatszeitung'' of Chicago and as a two volume book in two editions, in 1881 and 1884.
A street is named after him in the ''Strebersdorf'' district of Vienna. His grave in the Protestant cemetery of Vienna, ''Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof'', was obliterated by authorities in 1941.
Notes
References
*
Adam Arenson
Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...
, ''The Great Heart of the Republic: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
*
* Henry Boernstein, ''The Mysteries of St. Louis'', Friedrich Muench tr., Steven Rowan, Elizabeth Sims, eds. (Chicago: Kerr, 1990); German text in th Wright Series of American fiction Czech version is Tajnosti St. Louiské: roman (Racine, WI, 1878), google books.
* Henry Boernstein, ''Memoirs of a Nobody: The Missouri Years of an Austrian Radical, 1849-1866''. ed. and tr. Steven Rowan (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, distributed by Wayne State University Press, 1998) t translates vol. 1, pp. 443–48, vol. 2, pp. 1–402, 444-45 German text Heinrich Börnstein, Fünfundsiebzig Jahre in der Alten und Neuen Welt. Memoiren eines Unbedeutenden, 2 vols. (Leipzig, O. Wigand, 1881; 2d ed., 1884; reprint, with an English language preface by Patricia Herminghouse, New York: Peter Lang, 1986).
* Currently the major reference, with snippets from Stevens (1915) and Wittke (1952) as noted.
* Wilhelm Kaufmann, ''The Germans in the American Civil War'', edited by Don Heinrich Tolzmann with Werner D. Mueller and Robert D. Ward, Steven Rowan tr. (Carlisle, PA: John Kallmann Publishers, 1999). German text Deutschen im amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1911).
* Steven Rowan, James Neal Primm, ''Germans for a Free Missouri'': Translations from the St. Louis Radical Press, 1857-1862 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1983).
*
100 People Who Shaped St. Louis ''St. Louis Magazine'', December 2007.
* Alfred Vagts, "Heinrich Börnstein, Ex- and Repatriate," Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, 12 (1955/56), 105-27.
* ''Vorwärts!'' ''Pariser Signale aus Kunst''. ''Wissenschaft'', ''Theater'', ''Musik und geselligen Leben''. Ab 3.7.1844: Pariser Deutsche Zeitschrift, 1844-1845. ed. Heinrich Börnstein with L. F. C. Bernays, Arnold Ruge, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, facsimile reprint, introduction by Walter Schmidt. (Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1975).
*
Works
* ''Der Herzog von Olonne. Komische Oper in drei Aufzügen. Zum ersten Male aufgeführt in dem Théatre royal de l'opéra comique, am 4. Februar 1842. Die Musik ist von Auber. Nach dem Französischen der Herren Scribe und Saintine'' von Heinrich Börnstein. Schott, Mainz 184 MDZ reader (auch Königsberg 1843)
* Eugene Sue: ''Die Geheimnisse von Paris''. 8 Bde. und 4 Supplement-Bde. Mit Illustrationen von
Theodor Hosemann
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Theodor Hosemann (24 September 1807, Brandenburg an der Havel – 15 October 1875, Berlin) was a German Genre art, genre painter, draftsman, illustrator and caricaturist.
Life
Hosemann was the son of an officer in t ...
. Deutsch von A. Diezmann und Heinrich Börnstein. Meyer & Hofmann, Berlin 1843
* ''Franciska oder Das Kriegsgericht. Schauspiel in 3 Aufzügen. Nach dem Französischen von Heinrich Börnstein''. Bloch, Berlin 1843
* ''Arien und Gesänge aus: Carlo Broschi. Komische Oper in drei Akten. Nach dem Französischen "La part du diable" de Scribe. Music by Auber. Für die deutsche Bühne bearbeitet'' von H. Börnstein und C. Gollmick. Berlin 1843
* ''Des Teufels Antheil. Komische Oper in 3 Akten. Nach dem Französischen des Scribe'', by Heinrich Börnstein and Karl Gollmick. Musik von Auber. Schott, Mainz 184 MDZ- DFG * ''Die Geheimnisse von St. Louis''. 2 Bde. Hotop, Cassel 1851
* ''Haus-Bibliothek des Anzeigers des Westens,'' ed. by Heinrich Börnstein. Bd. 1–2, St. Louis, Mo. 185 Google books
* ''Mein Mann geht aus! Lustspiel in 2 Aufzügen frei nach Scribe''. Verl.-Coniptoir (Niemeyer), Hamburg 1857 (In: ''Das Theater d. Auslandes'' in Bearb. Bd 6, Lfg. 6)
* '' Friedrich Schillers Leben, der Charakter seiner Schriften und seines Strebens. Zum 100jähr. Geburtstage unseres Dichters, 10. Nov. 1859. Vorgetragen von Heinrich Börnstein bei der Schillerfeier in Saint Louis, Missouri''. Scharmann, St. Louis 1859
* ''Die Geheimnisse von St. Louis''. Bd. 1. Verlags-Bureau, Hamburg 186 MDZ Reader * ''Die Geheimnisse von St. Louis''. Bd. 2. Verlags-Bureau, Hamburg 186 MDZ reader * ''Die Geheimnisse von St. Louis''. Bd. 3. Verlags-Bureau, Hamburg 186 MDZ reader
* ''Die Geheimnisse von St. Louis''. Bd. 4. Verlags-Bureau, Hamburg 186 MDZ reader
* ''Italien in den Jahren 1868 und 1869'' 2 Bde. in 1 Bd. Otto Jahnke, Berlin 187 Vol. 1 Google books * ''Fünfundsiebzig Jahre in der Alten und Neuen Welt. Memoiren eines Unbedeutenden''. 2 Bde. Otto Wigand, Leipzig 1881 (2. ed. 1884 only Vol. 1 American Libraries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boernstein, Henry
1805 births1892 deathsGerman-American Forty-EightersAmerican political activists19th-century American diplomatsPeople of Missouri in the American Civil War19th-century American newspaper publishers (people)Publishers (people) of German-language newspapers in the United StatesUnion Army colonels19th-century American journalistsAmerican male journalistsJournalists from Vienna19th-century American male writers