Peter,Val J. b.April 24, 1875; Steinbach bei Lohr am Main (Bavarian Franconia), Bavaria d. February 19, 1960; Omaha, Nebraska
Peter created in the early twentieth century the last major chain of German-language newspapers in America. At its height, it included newspapers from Buffalo, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, St.
Paul, Omaha, San Francisco, and many smaller cities in the West. Peter followed the technique of acquiring failing newspapers, merging some of them, and consolidating the printing of them at his main office in Omaha. The enterprise suffered from increasing financial problems during the Great Depression and World War II, and eventually would be overcome by the steady decline in first-generation German immigrants. After 1945 circulation began to decline, and the chain closed down in 1982.Peter migrated to the United States with his parents in 1889, settling in Rock Island, Illinois. While in his teens he became a reporter for the weekly Rock Island Volkszeitung (People’s Newspaper), then became city editor of the daily Peoria (IL) Sonne (Sun). In 1904 Peter returned to Rock Island to purchase the Volkszeitung. In 1907, searching for new opportunities, he purchased the Omaha Westliche Presse (Western Press) and the next year combined it with the Omaha Tribune (Tribune). He sold the Rock Island paper and moved permanently to Omaha in 1909.
In Nebraska, Peter quickly became the chief spokesman for the National German- American Alliance, founded in 1901 as a federation that, it was hoped, would include all German cultural and social organizations in the effort to defend German culture. When the Nebraska alliance was organized in 1910, Peter became its first and only president. The alliance agitated in behalf of German American organizations against Prohibition and in defense of German language and culture. Peter’s Tribune was intensely involved in these efforts and, like other German newspapers, advocated support of the German Empire when war broke out in 1914.
Peter joined with many other editors in supporting the Republican Charles Evans Hughes for the presidency against Woodrow Wilson in 1916. This marked his departure from the Democratic Party, which he had previously supported. The paper moderated its views after theUnited States entered the war in 1917 and survived after the war ended. The paper played an active part in German war relief after the war. Disillusioned by Wilson’s peace efforts, the paper supported Republican candidates after the war, but moved to support the Democrat Al Smith in 1928, then remained generally Republican thereafter.
Having begun daily publication of the Tribune in 1912, Peter systematically began acquiring small weekly newspapers across Nebraska and Iowa. The Omaha paper’s circulation rose from 8,640 in 1913 to 22,610 in 1920 and, after a Depression slump, revived to 26,265 in 1940. Before World War II, Peter planned to develop several regional newspapers that would cover the American West, and for that purpose acquired German newspapers in Kansas City, St. Paul, and Denver. The problems created by the Great Depression and the war determined that these ambitions would never fully be realized, although Peter continued to believe that the West offered the greatest possibilities for new German immigration. In 1929 he acquired the Baltimore Correspondent; two of his sons went to Baltimore to publish it and for a while turned it into daily publication. He also purchased the Toledo Express, the Buffalo Volksfreund (People's Friend), the Chicago Katholisches Wochen- blatt (Catholic Weekly), and others. Many of the papers were declining in circulation, due mostly to the diminishing numbers of first-generation immigrants. During the late 1930s Peter moved to cut costs by merging some papers and consolidating the printing of all except the Baltimore paper in Omaha.
World War II was difficult for the papers, mostly because many advertisers deserted them. The newspapers avoided the difficulties of World War I, asserting their patriotism and avoiding all political and religious partisanship (although Peter himself was a staunch Republican and Catholic).
Peter organized German relief after the war and continued to acquire and merge other newspapers. He also started a new newspaper in San Francisco, the California Freie Presse (California Free Press). The Omaha and St. Paul newspapers had been merged under the title Volkszeitung-Tribune in 1941, and continued as the only daily in the chain until 1950, when it became semiweekly. When Peter died, the chain numbered seven papers. His family continued them and added new papers, mostly in the West, but the number had declined to eight when the chain ceased publication in 1982.James Bergquist
See also National German-American Alliance; 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 Val J. Peter Newspapers: The Rise and Decline of a Twentieth-Century German-Language Newspaper Empire.” Yearbook of German- American Studies 29 (1994): 117—128.
Luebke, Frederick C. Germans in the New World: Essays in the History of Immigration. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1990.