Anzeiger des Westens (Western Informer)
The Anzeiger des Westens, established in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1835, was the first German-language newspaper to be published west of the Mississippi River. During its lifetime it served many German immigrants as an introduction to American politics, and was especially active in the decade before the Civil War, when the newly arrived refugees of the 1848 revolutions sought a new role for the Germans in a period of political flux.
The Anzeiger was a strong force in rallying the Germans of Missouri to support the Union cause in the opening stages of the Civil War. Until its merger with another paper in 1898, it remained a widely read political and social force in the Midwest.The first issue of the Anzeiger came off the press October 21, 1835; it remained a weekly until 1842, then became a triweekly, and was published daily from 1846 until the end of its life. The founder and first editor of the paper was Heinrich Bim- page, but the dominant editor from 1836 to 1850 was William Weber, a former law student from Jena who had taken part in the revolutions of 1830. Weber enlisted the help of prominent German leaders such as Friedrich Munch of rural Missouri and Gustave Philipp Koerner of nearby Illinois. The paper was known for its liberal antislavery position, a bold stance for a publication in a slave state.
In 1851 Heinrich Bornstein took over as editor and later publisher of the Anzeiger. In 1854 Bornstein, a fiery, radical Forty-Eighter, employed as an editor Carl Danzer, another Forty-Eighter. Bornstein also hired as editor in chief Karl L. Bernays, who had previously been associated with him in the publication of the radical Vor- wdrts (Forwards) in Paris. Bornstein spread his liberal opinions across the pages of the Anzeiger; his outspokenness aroused controversy, especially because of his strident anticlericalism, which raised antagonisms among religious elements and became a source of division in St.
Louis’s German community. Bornstein also was a strong promoter of German culture, publishing a literary supplement to the newspaper and promoting the German theater, which he managed for a time.After the passage of the Kansas- Nebraska Act of 1854, the paper threw its support to the free-soil section of the Missouri Democratic Party, led by Francis Preston Blair Jr., and ultimately, after 1856, supported the new Republican Party. When the southern states began to secede in 1860—1861, the St. Louis Germans were a strong element in keeping Missouri in the Union and remained as defenders of the Union after the outbreak of the Civil War.
In 1857 Danzer, after some differences with Bornstein, left the Anzeiger and founded the Westliche Post (Western Post), which became the strongest rival to the Anzeiger for the rest of the century. After the outbreak of the war, Bornstein served as a Union army officer, then accepted an appointment as U.S. consul at Bremen. He never returned to the United States. The Anzeiger languished during Bornstein’s absence and suspended publication in early 1863. Several months later, Danzer left the Westliche Post and revived the Anzeiger. He remained as editor until 1898.
In the post—Civil War era, the Anzeiger des Westens and the Westliche Post competed to be the principal German newspaper in St. Louis. Both circulated through the expanding West, especially into Illinois and westward into Missouri, Iowa, and Kansas.
Both published weekly and Sunday editions and generally followed liberal Republican politics. The Anzeiger had the steady editorship of Danzer, while the Westliche Post had at various times associations with Emil Preetorius, Carl Schurz, and Joseph Pulitzer. The circulation figures of the two newspapers were about the same, each approaching 30,000 in the late 1890s. In 1898 the Anzeiger des Westens merged with the Westliche Post; the Anzeiger then was issued as the evening edition of the merged papers, under the title Abend-Anzeiger (Evening Informer).
It ceased publication on April 30, 1912. The Westliche Post continued publication until 1938.James M. Bergquist
See also Forty-Eighters; Koerner, Gustave Philipp; Newspaper Press, German Language in the United States; Schurz, Carl
References and Further Reading
Arndt, Karl J. R., and May E. Olson. German- American Newspapers and Periodicals, 1732-1955: History and Bibliography. Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer, 1961.
Bergquist, James M. “The German-American Press.” The Ethnic Press in the United States: A Historical Analysis and Handbook. Ed. Sally M. Miller. New York: Greenwood, 1987.
Geitz, Henry, ed. The German-American Press. Madison, WI: Max Kade Institute, 1992.
Rowan, Steven, ed. and trans. Germans for a Free Missouri: Translations from the St. Louis Radical Press, 1857-1862. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983.
Wittke, Carl. The German Language Press in America. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1957.