New Yorker Staats-Zeitung
The New Yorker Staats-Zeitung (New York Public News) is the oldest German-language newspaper still operating in the United States as of 2005. Founded it 1834, it became during the late nineteenth century the largest-circulating German newspaper in the country and the third-largest newspaper of any kind in New York City.
It was also a powerful force in the politics of New York City. It survived the anti-German attacks in both world wars, and in 2005 circulates across the country as the foremost source of U.S. news in the German language.The newspaper was founded in the era of Jacksonian Democracy, when a group of German Democrats sought to add a German voice to a heated New York City municipal election. The first issue was published on December 24, 1834. The newspaper struggled under various editors and publishers in its early years. In 1844 Jakob Uhl, the owner of the printing shop that printed the paper, acquired ownership of the Staats-Zeitung. Over the next decade, Uhl and his wife, Anna Behr Uhl, developed the paper, aided by the rising German migration to New York. The paper maintained its status as the principal German supporter of the Democratic Party. Its location in the port of New York gave it quick access to news arriving from abroad, and it circulated to other German areas and was frequently quoted by other German-language newspapers. Uhl died in 1852, leaving the business management of the paper to his wife. For editorial assistance, she turned to a refugee of the 1848 revolutions, Oswald Ottendorfer, who had signed on as a reporter with the Staats- Zeitung in 1851. Ottendorfer became the chief editor in 1858 and married Anna Uhl in 1859.
The Staats-Zeitung, unlike many German papers of the time, remained a strong adherent of the Democratic Party during the turbulent politics of the 1850s. In the critical 1860 election, it supported Stephen Douglas.
During the Civil War, it adhered to the Union Democratic faction, in opposition to the “Peace Democrats” led by New York City’s mayor Fernando Wood. In the postwar years the newspaper was aligned with various reform Democratic groups against the city’s Democratic Tammany Hall machine. It supported other reformers in bringing about the downfall of the notorious “Ring” of William Marcy Tweed. The paper broke with the Democratic Party in 1896 when it refused to support the “free silver” candidate, William Jennings Bryan.Under the Ottendorfers, the newspaper rose to its greatest eminence and played a major role in New York society and politics. Oswald Ottendorfer served as editor and publisher from 1859 to 1900; Anna Behr Uhl Ottendorfer continued to manage the business affairs of the paper until her death in 1884. During the 1870s, the newspaper claimed to be the largest German-language newspaper in the world and the sixth-largest daily newspaper in the United States. The paper was published from its impressive building on Park Row, near the other major New York newspapers. Its circulation was around 50,000 in the 1870s, around 60,000 in the 1880s, and reached 90,000 in the 1890s, including the circulation of its evening edition, which was established in 1892 (Arndt and Olson 1961, 399—434). The Ottendorfers directly competed with the other large city newspapers—introducing the new techniques of mass-circulation journalism to the paper, including such technological innovations as the linotype and the rotary press, and journalistic features such as illustrations, Sunday editions, society news, and literary supplements. The Ottendor- fers acquired considerable wealth from the success of the newspaper and became important benefactors to German social and cultural institutions in New York City and elsewhere.
After the death of Oswald Ottendorfer in 1900, the Staats-Zeitung was sold to Hermann Ridder, previously the publisher of the Katholisches Wochenblatt (Catholic Weekly).
He had served as business manager of the Staats-Zeitung since 1890. He maintained the newspaper’s position as a strong supporter of the Democratic Party and actively served in local party positions in New York City. The paper generally avoided the Progressive movement in politics, identifying that movement with Prohibition, nativism, and pro-British opinions. The paper continued to reflect middle-class German interests and opposed the more radical working-class views expressed in papers like the Socialist New York Volkszeitung (People’s Newspaper). At the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, the paper supported the German side, often stating its position as against aggressive British imperialism.Hermann Ridder died in 1915, and the paper was taken over by his three sons, Victor, Bernard, and Joseph. When the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, the paper pledged its loyalty to the United States. But the newspaper received its share of anti-German agitation and suffered particularly because many important
advertisers withdrew their support. The paper survived the war, actually increasing its circulation figures, but in 1919 merged with its principal rival, the New York Herold, which then became the evening edition of the merged papers. The Ridders’ interests turned to the more promising field of English-language journalism, and they acquired the New York Journal of Commerce in 1926. This was the start of what later became the Knight-Ridder journalistic empire, and the Staats-Anzeiger (Public Advertiser) increasingly played a minor role as the Ridders went on to acquire other English-language newspapers. In 1934 the two editions of the paper were merged under the masthead New Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, a name that persisted until 1991, when the name Staats- Zeitung was restored.
On the eve of World War II, the Staats-Zeitung still maintained a staff of 200 and had a circulation around 80,000 (“History of a New York City Institution,” http://www.germancorner.com/NYS- taatsZ/history.html).
The war brought decreased support from advertisers and, of course, the complete shutoff of new immigration from Germany. The paper continued to try to adjust to a dwindling readership of first-generation immigrants by changing its character to a national newspaper; at times it published separate editions for Philadelphia and Florida. In 1953 the Ridders sold the paper to the Steuer family, and the paper became a triweekly, then a weekly. In 1989 it was taken over by the German journalist Jes Rau. The paper increasingly focused on German American social and institutional affairs, and the era of its rivalry with the principal English-language papers was far in the past.James M. Bergquist
See also New York City; Newspaper Press, German Language in the United States
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.” In The Ethnic Press in the United States: A Historical Analysis and Handbook. Ed. Sally M. Miller. New York: Greenwood, 1987.
Conolly-Smith, Peter. Translating America: An American Immigrant Press Visualizes American Popular Culture, 1895-1918. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004.
Wittke, Carl. The German Language Press in America. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1957.