Anna Ottendorfer

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Anna Ottendorfer
New York State Newspaper Building (1875)

Anna Ottendorfer , b. Behr, used Uhl (born February 13, 1815 in Würzburg , † April 1, 1884 in New York City ) was a German-American publisher and philanthropist .

Life

Anna was born in Würzburg as the daughter of Eduard Behr, a shopkeeper of humble origin. Nothing is known of the time before their arrival in America. She came to America in 1837, where she moved to live with her brother on a farm in Niagara County, New York. A year later she married the printer Jacob Uhl (* 1806 in Würzburg). (Uhl had taken part in an uprising for democracy in Frankfurt in 1833 and was imprisoned for it. In 1835 it had therefore emigrated to New York.) In 1844 they had bought a printing company in New York, together with the contract, the “ New Yorker Staats -Zeitung ”, which appeared once a week. A year later they also bought the newspaper. Anna Uhl shared the editorial management with her husband, took over the business and even helped with typesetting and printing of the newspaper. They were very successful, so that the newspaper also appeared in other communities with a larger proportion of Germans. From 1849 it appeared daily from the 3x weekly edition. Uhl supported the German Revolution of 1848/49 in his newspaper and called for donations. When her husband died in 1852, Anna was able to continue running the newspaper on her own and was able to decline all offers to buy.

The State Newspaper's five-story Victorian-style building was located on Printer's Square on Park Row, in the immediate vicinity of the other major New York newspapers.

She then married the editorial staff member Valentin Oswald Ottendorfer in 1859 and together they made the state newspaper one of the most respected newspapers in the United States, whose circulation in the 1870s was comparable to that of the English-language New York Tribune and New York Times .

When the newspaper was converted into a stock corporation in 1879, Anna arranged for the employees of the “Staats” to participate through a 10% dividend. Later this was even increased to 15%.

This gave Anna Ottendorfer a great deal of wealth, which she used for charitable purposes. In 1875, for example, she gave $ 100,000 for the construction of a retirement home for women of German descent in Astoria on Long Island , which she named after her daughter Isabella, who died at the age of 26. With a further gift of $ 35,000, the Hermann Uhl Memorial Fund , named after her son, who died in 1881, was set up in 1881 to support the German language in American schools, mainly through the German-American Teachers' College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Thanks to her donation of $ 100,000, the German Hospital of New York City was able to open a new pavilion for women on Seventy-seventh Street and Fourth Avenue in 1882, and a reading room in 1884. Shortly before her death, a new building for a German hospital pharmacy was opened , a branch of the German Hospital for the care of day patients on Ninth Street and Second Avenue completed for the same amount again. Smaller amounts were given to other institutions in Brooklyn, New York, Newark, New Jersey, and elsewhere. In her will she bequeathed again to various German-American institutions with a total of $ 250,000 and $ 25,000 to be shared among the employees of the “Staats Zeitung”.

In 1883 Anna received a gold medal from the German Empress as thanks for the generous donation that she had made to the flood victims of 1882 and 1883.

Anna had six children with her first husband Jacob Uhl, two of whom died before her:

  • Emma Uhl (* 1841; † November 1, 1902 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) ∞ Brewery entrepreneur Adolf Schalk (* 1826)
  • Hermann Uhl (born March 8, 1842 in New York City; † February 13, 1881 there)
  • Edward Uhl (born October 12, 1843 in New York City, † August 1, 1906 there), continued to run the newspaper publisher
  • Isabelle Uhl (March 1, 1847 - March 19, 1873)
  • Mathilde Uhl (born July 31, 1848 in New York City; † June 4, 1937 in Vienna ) ∞ Friedrich Eduard von Riedl-Riedenstein (1832–1905)
  • Anna Uhl (March 31, 1850 - August 28, 1931) ∞ Charles Frederick Woerishoffer (1844–1886)

The marriage with Oswald Ottendorfer remained childless.

Anna Ottendorfer died in her home on East Seventeenth Street in New York City. Her funeral was recognized by the New York Times as the largest ever held for a woman in New York City. The town hall flag was flying at half mast and over 200 carriages drove in the procession. Anna Ottendorfer was buried in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn (Lot 4670, Section 91). Carl Schurz gave the eulogy.

The art collector and art historian Antoine Seilern und Aspang was a grandson of their youngest daughter Anna.

literature

  • Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography . Volume 4. Chernivtsi, 1927, p. 592

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ottendorfer, Anna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Uhl, Anna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American publisher and philanthropist
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 1884
Place of death New York City