Muench, Friedrich b.June 25, 1799; Niedergemuenden, Hesse-Darmstadt d. December13, 1881; Dutzow, Missouri
German American frontier statesman, educator, preacher, successful farmer, and prolific author and essayist. Educated by his father, a Lutheran minister, Muench studied theology and philosophy at the University of Giessen, where he met Paul Folle- nius (Paul Follen) with whom his future would be closely tied.
While a student in Giessen, Muench was active in the student organizations that agitated for the creation of a German republic and democratic representation. When the organizations were suppressed and the Karlsbad Decrees passed in 1819, the political and social climate in which Muench grew up worsened. With censorship now legal, Muench returned to his village where he became an assistant minister in his father’s parish and then took it over upon his father’s retirement in 1825. Educated as an orthodox Lutheran, Muench’s commitment to liberty and personal freedoms led him to question his conservative religious leanings and he found himself drawn to a rationalist view of Christianity. With the everworsening conditions in Germany, Muench retired from his position in 1833 and decided to emigrate the following year.In the wake of Gottfried Duden’s influential work on life and conditions in the United States, Bericht uber eine Reise nach den westlichen Staaten Nordamerikas (Report on a Journey to the Western States of America and a Stay of Several Years along the Missouri [During the Years 1824, 1825, 1826, and 1827], 1829), large numbers of Germans began to immigrate to the United States, and because of the abysmal conditions in Germany, many intellectuals developed the idea of creating a democratic German state in the New World—especially in Missouri, Texas, and Wisconsin. Among these intellectuals were Muench and Folle- nius, who founded the Giessen Emigration Society, among the first societies dedicated to organized immigration to the United
States.
Muench and Follenius set sail on two vessels with approximately 500 others and arrived in Baltimore and New Orleans, respectively, in mid-1834, intent on settling in Arkansas. The groups soon disbanded upon arriving in the United States. Muench and Follenius changed their plans and decided to settle near St. Louis, Missouri, though they had little information about the state and were ill-equipped to lead the life of frontier farmers. Few settlers followed them, and they abandoned their aspirations of establishing a German democratic state.Despite these initial failures, Muench achieved great success in his small village, Lake Creek Valley, near Marthasville, in Warren County, sixty miles northwest of St. Louis. Pragmatic, Muench shifted his ideas from founding a “new” Germany to providing America a German flavor and influence. His village began to attract likeminded, primarily German intellectuals, who advocated democracy and rejected religious dogma and all forms of bigotry. Along with the German settlement in Belleville, Illinois, where the statesman Gustav Philipp Koerner made his home, they were known as “Latin Farmers,” because of their educated background. Muench became a successful farmer, viti- culturalist, teacher, and advocate of the German language. He wrote extensively on matters ranging from theological rationalism, education, and education reform to materialism, and achieved national recognition beginning in the 1850s for his political essays and broadsides. Under the pen name “Far-West,” Muench was a sought- after contributor to German-language newspapers across the nation. He became active in the founding of the Republican Party in the mid-1850s and published numerous articles advocating the abolishment of slavery and criticizing the anti-immigration stance of the American Party, commonly referred to as the “Know Nothings.” In 1856 he campaigned vigorously on behalf of the Republican candidate for president, John C. Fremont, giving speeches throughout the Midwest and East.
During the years of the Civil War, he served as a state senator in the Missouri state legislature and endured multiple death threats due to his antislavery stance and insistence on keeping the state in the Union.Throughout his life he remained closely identified with German immigrants and wrote numerous tracts and pamphlets encouraging and warning potential immigrants about life in his adopted country. In 1859 he published Der Staat Missouri geschildert mit besonderer Rucksicht auf teutsche Einwanderung (The State of Missouri: An Account with Special References to German Immigration), in which he described the state’s history, geography, climate, and aspects of daily life, such as agriculture, education, politics, and religion. The work reveals his empathy for the immigrant’s experience leaving his homeland and arriving in a country that may be barely understandable to him and an impressive understanding of American life and politics.
Having dedicated his life to fighting political and religious oppression, Muench wrote extensively on religion and remained active in religious matters and debates his entire life. The Missouri River valley was a locus of German American religious rationalism that opposed all forms of religious hierarchy, such as the Evangelical Lutherans, whose settlement was centered in Missouri, and the Catholic Church. As with social freedoms, Muench argued that there are indispensable, irrefutable rights with religion. Religion, he claimed, is based on the individual’s personal interpretation of his relationship with the Supreme Being. Though he often preached, he never presided over his own parish. In the prominent religious periodical, Licht-Freund (Light-Friend), Muench published influential essays on religious liberalism between 1843 and 1851, and served as its coeditor from 1846 to 1851, when it achieved the height of its influence. Up to his death, Muench continued to publish on and engage publicly in the religious and political controversies of the times.
Gregory H. Wolf
See also Duden, Gottfried; Koerner, Gustave Philipp; Travel Literature, German-U.S.
References and Further Reading
Muehl, Siegmar. “Shock of the New: Advising Mid-Nineteenth-Century German Immigrants to Missouri.” Yearbook of German-American Studies 33 (1998): 85-102.
Muench, Friedrich. Der Staat Missouri. New York and St. Louis: Farmers’ and Wine Growers’ Society, 1859.
Petermann, Gerd Alfred. “Friend of Light (Lichtfreunde): Friedrich Munch, Paul Follenius, and the Rise of German- American Rationalism on the Missouri Frontier.” Yearbook of German-American Studies 23 (1988): 118-139.
Schroeder, Adolf E. “The Survival of German Traditions in Missouri.” In The German Contribution to the Building of America. Ed. Karl J. R. Arndt. Hanover, NH: Clark University, 1977, pp. 289-313.