Gustav Schleicher

Gustav Schleicher
(Llano County Museum)

Gustav Schleicher

Gustav Schleicher , also called Gustave or Gustavus (born November 19, 1823 in Darmstadt , Hesse , † January 10, 1879 in Washington, DC , USA ) was a German-American engineer , entrepreneur , lawyer and politician .

family

Gustav Schleicher was the son of a grand ducal Hessian politician.

He married Elizabeth Tinsley Howard in 1856. The couple had seven children.

Life

After completing his school education in Darmstadt, Gustav Schleicher studied engineering and architecture at the University of Giessen . There he became a member of the Corps Starkenburgia in 1841 . After graduating, he worked as a civil engineer in railway construction .

In 1847 he and his friend Ferdinand von Herff belonged to a group of intellectuals , the "Society of the Forties", who emigrated to Texas and founded the commune "Bettina" on the north bank of the Llano River ( Llano County ), which they named after the writer Bettina von Arnim named. In this commune they wanted to live as " free thinkers " according to the ideas of the communist ideal and - freely based on the motto of the French Revolution - they gave themselves their own motto "friendship, freedom, equality". They despised any conventional system of government.

However, Schleicher soon lost his illusions: The commune could not function if intellectuals only discussed things but did not learn to work and are not used to this at all, but still want to have enough to eat. Instead, he contacted the settlers of neighboring villages and operated a sand mill ( shingle mill ), which he had built shortly after his arrival in Huaco Springs near New Braunfels ( Comal County ), and began as a surveyor for other German settlers to help their property and acquire property.

In 1850 Schleicher moved to San Antonio in Bexar County , where he and others founded the Guadalupe Bridge Company, which was to build a customs bridge over the Guadalupe River between San Antonio and New Braunfels. This group also founded the "San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railway". As an engineer, he participated in the construction of the railway line from Port Lavaca ( Calhoun County ) to San Antonio. He was also a co-owner of a restaurant in San Antonio and a member of various social and community organizations, for example the Texan "Singers' Association". Schleicher is described as a tall man who liked to dance.

On December 8, 1852 he became an American citizen, so that he could be one of the first German MPs in the House of Representatives from Texas in the years 1853-1854 . Between 1854 and 1861 he worked again as a surveyor for the Bexar Land District, which included the main area between San Antonio and El Paso . During this activity he also acquired rights to larger tracts of land, mainly in the Edwards Plateau.

In May 1856 he bought the weekly German-language San Antonio newspaper from Adolph Douai (1819–1888), a teacher and socialist also from Germany , renamed it San Antonio Staats-Zeitung and at least in 1859 served with his brother-in-law Heinrich Dresel , (probably) brother of Gustav Dresel (1818–1848), as editor. In the same year he also co-founded the San Antonio Water Company and in 1860 the Alamo College . From 1859 to 1861 he was also a Texas Senator for the eighth legislature. Although Schleicher was a Democrat and supported the Union together with Sam Houston before the Civil War , his contemporaries saw him as an advocate of the secession movement after the southern states split off . He became captain of the Confederate Army and served in the engineering corps of General John Bankhead Magruder (1807–1871). During this time some forts were built on the Sabine Pass.

After the Civil War, he worked as a lawyer in San Antonio. In 1866 he was a partner in the Columbus, San Antonio and Rio Grande Railroad and again worked as an engineer on the construction of the Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific Railway from Indianola to Cuero ( DeWitt County ). However, he first had to found this village as a stopover on the railway line and soon afterwards he moved there himself in 1872.

Gustav Schleicher's tomb, National Cemetery San Antonio
(Photo: David N. Lotz)

Without his own help, he was nominated by the Democrats as a member of the 6th District for the US House of Representatives in 1874 and elected to the US Congress on March 4, 1875 . He was after Eduard Degener (1809-1890) one of the first German-born MPs in the US Congress. His first act as an MP was - typically an engineer - the installation of an elevator, but he soon made a name for himself as a clever politician and campaigned for border protection between Texas and Mexico . He was a member of the Committees for Indian Affairs, railways and canals; in his second term he was also a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Only after a difficult election campaign within his own party against John Ireland (1827-1896) could he be re-elected in 1878. But already on January 10, 1879, Schleicher died in his office in Washington DC With great pomp and ceremony he was buried in the national cemetery in his hometown of San Antonio (Section A, Grave 140).

Schleicher's descendants now live in Uvalde , Uvalde County .

Honors

After him were Schleicher County and the Schleicher bridge in Texas named.

literature

• Gustave Schleicher. Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of Gustave Schleicher . United States Government Printing Office , Washington (DC) 1880
• Christine Schott: Gustavus Schleicher. A Representative of the Early German Emigrants in Texas . In: West Texas Historical Association Year Book . Volume 28, 1952
• Gustav Schleicher, in: Chapter 18 The Southern States . In: Gustav Körner : The German element in the United States of North America 1818–1845 , 2nd edition, E. Steiger & Co., New York, 1884, p. 365f.

Web links

• Gustav Schleicher in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Hubert Plummer Heinen: SCHLEICHER, GUSTAV. In: The Handbook of Texas Online. The Texas State Historical Association, TSHA Online, May 6, 2016, accessed September 18, 2017 . 
• Congress biography

Individual evidence

1. ^ Kösener corps lists 1910, 57 , 110