Friedrich Raine

Friedrich Raine, 1887

Friedrich Raine , also: Frederic Raine (born May 13, 1821 in Minden ; † February 26, 1893 in Baltimore , Maryland ) was a German-American publisher, newspaper editor and Consul General of the United States in Berlin .

Live and act

Raine was born in Minden and attended the local community school. At just 13 years old, he became an apprentice in the bookstore of his uncle, F. Wundermann in Münster . He was given the opportunity to work on the “Westphälische Zeitung” published by Wundermanns Verlag. After completing his apprenticeship, he received an offer to work for the F. A. Brockhaus publishing house in Leipzig . He turned down the offer because he had decided to seek his fortune in America.

In autumn 1840 he followed his father, who had emigrated with his brother Wilhelm four years earlier, to the new world. In Baltimore, father and brother had started a religious leaflet called "Busy Martha" and had published a campaign paper under the title "The Democratic Whig". However, both companies had no future, so that in February 1841 the two brothers took over the printing company to publish a weekly political newspaper in German. The younger brother Wilhelm soon went to the West, and at the beginning of May 1841 Friedrich Raine succeeded in having his “German Correspondents” appear regularly.

A first attempt in 1844 to have the newspaper appear daily failed; the paper appeared two or three times a week for five years. With the sharp increase in German-speaking immigration in 1847/48, however, the Forty-Eighters formed a stable readership and Raine was able to publish a daily newspaper. In 1854, Friedrich Raine married Pamelia Bull from Harford County . The marriage remained childless.

Raine was now also politically active. In 1851, Mayor John Jerome appointed him representative of the city of Baltimore at the reception of the Hungarian patriot Lajos Kossuth in New York . In 1868 he was appointed Colonel on his staff by Governor Oden Bowie and has held the title of Colonel ever since . In the same year he became a city council member in Baltimore, where he represented the Ninth Ward (Ward). In 1868 he was chairman of the city council committee on the arrival of the first German steamship, which opened the Bremerhaven –Baltimore route as part of the agreement between the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and North German Lloyd . He was a representative of Baltimore on the board of directors of the Western Maryland Railway and a member of a commission appointed by Mayor Ferdinand Claiborne Latrobe to investigate and reform the city's schools. In the presidential elections of 1872 and 1876 he was a member of the electoral college . In 1872 he chaired Annapolis and gave the commemorative address to Horace Greeley, who died shortly after the election .

He was also heavily involved in the German-American community. At the Steubenfest, the celebration of the 150th anniversary and the celebration of the "German Day" of 1890 in Baltimore and 1892 in Philadelphia , he gave the speeches. It was largely due to his influence and efforts that the teaching of German was introduced in Baltimore's urban schools. He helped found social institutions such as the “General German Orphanage”, the “Greisenheim”, the “Schützen-Gesellschaft” and other German-American associations.

In April 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed him Consul General of the United States in Berlin, where he stayed for four years. After his return from Berlin in autumn 1889, he was able to celebrate his 70th birthday in a large circle in May 1891 and at the same time the 50th anniversary of the correspondent .

On February 24, 1893 he suffered a minor stroke and died the following Sunday morning.

literature

• In Memoriam , in: Annual Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland 7 (1892/93)

Web links

• Blog about the digitization project