Johann August Sutter

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Memorial plaque in Sacramento for the 100th anniversary of settlement

Johann August Sutter , (born February 23, 1803 in Kandern ; † June 18, 1880 in Washington, DC ), was a Swiss merchant who became a large landowner and founder of the New Helvetia private colony in California . Sutter became a Mexican citizen in 1840. Gold was found at his sawmill ( Sutter's Mill ) in January 1848. This find triggered the California gold rush .

Name and family

Names

In the diverse literature on Sutter , his name is also given in a large number of variants. He was officially led in Switzerland under Johann August Suter. But he and his relatives wrote to Sutter . Sometimes, so z. B. during his school days in western Switzerland, Sutter himself also used the French form of the name Jean Auguste Sutter . Another French form he used was J. Aug. Soutter .

In the United States he called himself John Augustus Sutter, where the middle name ( middle name ) was often replaced by "A." or omitted entirely, so that the forms John A. Sutter and John Sutter can be found. In the Mexican documents he is called Juan Augusto Sutter .

family

Anna Sutter-Dübeld

The hometown of the Sutter family was Rünenberg in the Swiss canton of Basel-Landschaft , where it can be traced back to 1559. This was a race of farmers and ribbon weavers . Sutter's grandfather, Johann Jakob Suter, moved to Basel in 1742 and learned the craft of papermaking (paper maker ). He worked for the Häusler family in Basel, which not only ran a paper mill in Basel's St. Albantal but also a paper mill in Kandern, Baden.

Johann Jakob the Elder Ä. married in Basel, where his son Johann Jakob d. J. was born. Johann Jakob the Elder Ä. was transferred to Kandern as overseer and foreman. 1801 married Johann Jakob d. J., who at this point had already succeeded his father as foreman at the Kandern paper mill. In 1803 his son Johann August was born in Kandern.

On October 24, 1826, Johann August married Anna (Nanette) Dübeld in Burgdorf, with whom he had five children. The ceremony was carried out by the Reformed pastor and folk song writer Gottlieb Jakob Kuhn .

The following is an excerpt from the family list of the Sutter family:

  1. (Johann) Jakob Sutter (the elder) ⚭ 1774 Elisabetha Simon
    1. Johann Jakob Sutter (the Younger) (1776-?) ⚭ August 3, 1801 Christina Wilhemina Stober (1777-?)
      1. Johann August ⚭ October 24, 1826 Anna (Nanette) Dübeld (1805–1881)
        1. Johann August jun. (1826-1897)
        2. Anna Elise (Eliza) (1828–1895) 1. ⚭ Georg David Engler; 2. ⚭ Franz Xaver Link
        3. Emil Viktor (1830-1881)
        4. Wilhelm Alphons (1832–1863)
        5. Carl Albert Maximilian (1833-1839)
      2. Jakob Friedrich (1808–1844) ⚭ 1831 Maria Sophie Dübeld (sister of Anna)

To the Dübeld family

The Dübeld, the family of Sutter's wife Anna, were an old Burgdorf family. Anna's parents had a bakery, an inn and four daughters. The father, Samuel Dübeld, had died in 1815. Karl Schnell acted as guardian for the widow, Rosina Dübeld-Ris . who was governor of Burgdorf since 1831 and councilor of the canton of Bern since 1833 . It remains to be seen whether this helped Sutter to obtain a passport in 1834.

biography

Before emigration (1803 to 1834)

View of Burgdorf in the middle of the 19th century

Little is known about Sutter's youth in Kandern. It is believed that he attended the local school until he was 15. Then his father sent him to a school in Saint-Blaise near Neuchâtel , where he spent a year in 1818/19.

He then did a commercial apprenticeship in Emanuel Thurneysen's printing and publishing bookstore in Basel. After completing his apprenticeship (1823), he was not taken over by the company. Sutter found employment in a cloth shop in Aarburg , where he supposedly met his future wife. He followed her in 1824 to Burgdorf in the canton of Bern , where he initially worked as an assistant in a general store.

In 1828 Sutter bought a house on Schmiedengasse in Burgdorf and founded a cloth and yarn business. Since the business soon got into trouble, he took Benedikt Seelhofer on as a partner and founded the company Sutter & Cie. As early as 1832, the company ran into serious difficulties and had to negotiate a debt relief with the creditors , in which they waived 75 percent of their claims. The partner left with half of the warehouse, and Sutter sold the house to his mother-in-law Rosina Dübeld-Ris († 1835), who let him use it for interest.

Business was bad, the mountain of debts grew and the rent to the mother-in-law was also constantly in arrears. "On May 5, 1834, Sutter submitted a request to the district governor of Sissach to emigrate to North America, which the government council of Baselland also approved on May 8." On May 10, 1834, the mother-in-law sold the house and Sutter his repurchase right. On May 13, 1834, Sutter received a passport in French from the Burgdorf Oberamt, which named America as the destination of the trip. Sutter did not show up for a court date scheduled for June 4th. At the beginning of June, Anna Sutter received a letter from her husband from Le Havre , in which he said that he would not return. Mrs. Sutter filed for bankruptcy on June 9th, and on June 12th, 1834 (one month after the passport was issued), Sutter was put out to be wanted at the instigation of the Sumiswald Sparkasse . When exactly he left Burgdorf is not known, the authorities assumed June 8 or 9. It was assumed that Mrs. Sutter knew about her husband's escape and that she supported him. An auction took place on June 26, 1834 and bankruptcy proceedings were completed on October 5, 1834. On October 23, 1835, an investigation into fraudulent bankruptcy against Sutter was initiated in Burgdorf, as he was accused of having moved parts of the bankruptcy estate abroad and thereby deliberately harming the creditors. According to later accounts from Missouri, Sutter does indeed appear to have brought expensive clothing and inventories of textiles to America.

On the Road to California (1834 to 1839)

Johann August Sutter around 1835

On July 7, 1834, Sutter arrived in New York. From there he moved on via Cincinnati to Indiana and finally to Saint Louis . Gottfried Duden had advertised the German settlement in Missouri at home. After a short time he evaded his creditors there to Saint Charles (Missouri) . In the spring of 1835, Sutter went with a trade caravan from Saint Louis to Santa-Fe and returned in the fall with the intention of now organizing his own trade caravan, as he valued the income opportunities in this trade high. After long preparations, the caravan started on April 14, 1836, which initially united with other caravans at Independence (Missouri) . Sutter's part of the caravan is described as "a company of drunken greenhorns". Since the trade was made more difficult by the Mexican authorities and there was competition from Texas , there was no commercial success this time. The company that Sutter had formed in Saint Louis was making losses, and he was still able to make a profit by trading illegal horses with the Apaches . Since his reputation in Saint Louis - where he had persuaded a number of members of the German-speaking colony to invest in the caravan - Sutter moved his headquarters to Westport in the spring of 1837 , where he tried his hand at running a shop, hotel and farm, but economically failed again. His rapidly built-up activities were again financed by loans that he could soon no longer service, and so he sold parts and, in one case, twice. After this further failure, Sutter was forced to leave Westport again on April 1, 1838, and set out for California, from which he had heard promising reports in Taos, New Mexico . In Westport he had begun to enrich his life story in an interesting way and to pretend to be a former captain of the royal French Swiss Guard of King Charles X , which was fictitious. Sutter, who had waited on the Delaware Indian reservation after leaving Westport , joined the American Fur Company's supply column , which had started in Westport on May 1, 1838 and which meet the American fur hunters in the Wind River (Wyoming) area wanted to. He reached Fort Laramie on June 2 and the Popo Agie River on June 23 . He had expected to meet the fur hunters of the Hudson's Bay Company and their supply caravan there, with which he would then go on to Oregon . On July 12, 1838, Sutter was able to begin the journey to the then British Oregon with Francis Ermatinger, a dealer of the Hudson's Bay Company, and on July 15 they crossed the South Pass and reached Fort Hall at the end of the month and Fort Boise on August 15 (both fortified trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company). In late August they came to the Methodist Mission at Fort Walla Walla . The next stop was the Willamette Valley , from where Sutter went to Fort Vancouver . Here he met James Douglas (then the resident chief trader of the Hudson's Bay Company), from whom he received a general letter of recommendation. Sutter planned to travel on from Oregon to California, driving herds of cattle as trade goods. However, due to the impending winter, this could only be done in the spring, and Sutter did not want to wait any longer. There was no direct ship connection to California, so on the recommendation of the British he embarked for Hawaii to take a ship to California. On December 9th, he reached Honolulu and discovered that a Spanish ship destined for California had recently left port. Sutter initially used the waiting time for a ship to establish relationships. However, after no ship with destination California had shown up, he accepted the offer of a merchant to go to Novo-Archangelsk ( Sitka ) in Russia on a rented ship on April 20, 1839 and to sell goods there on behalf of him. On the return voyage he was allowed to direct the ship to California and arrived in the port of Yerba Buena (as San Francisco was then) on July 1, 1839 - 15 months after he left Missouri and five years after his arrival in America.

In California (1839-1865)

John A. Sutter about 1850

Sutter's plan was to establish a settlement in the Sacramento River valley . Sutter wanted to avoid the coastal areas populated by Hispanic Californians, albeit sparsely, so as not to be exposed to their influence. The Mexican governor Juan Bautista Alvarado advocated this and gave Sutter permission to settle in the Sacramento Valley as early as 1839 - before the land was allocated. Sutter began on August 13, 1839 with the construction of the main settlement of the colony - the later Fort Sutter near the confluence of the American River in the Sacramento River. On August 29, 1840, Sutter received Mexican citizenship and on June 18, 1841 the desired land allocation. In the same year he acquired the Russian colonies of Fort Ross and Bodega Bay . After the Mexican-American War , New Helvetia fell to the USA in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, along with the rest of the territory of what is now the US state of California. The same year the gold rush broke out after gold was found at a sawmill ( Sutter's Mill ) built by Sutter on Indian land . Like all entrepreneurs in California, the gold rush deprived him of his workforce, so that the harvests could no longer be brought in. Its buildings and plantations were damaged by the masses of undisciplined prospectors. In addition to these negative consequences, Sutter also experienced an enormous increase in the value of his property through immigration - especially in the area of ​​what is now Sacramento City, which enabled him to pay his high debts. Due to his own economic ineptitude and wastefulness as well as fraud by employees and business partners, he lost a large part of the remaining assets. The cost of a year-long legal battle with the United States over his land grants and their partial deprivation drained the remaining wealth. After his Hock farm was destroyed by arson in 1865, he also sold this property and left California, with which New Helvetia became extinct.

In Washington and Lititz (1865 to 1880)

After his Hock Farm was burned in California, Sutter and his wife moved in December 1865 to Washington, DC In 1866, he complained to the United States Congress a petition for the rejected by the supreme federal court second land donation and the angetanen it wrong one.

The three children of Johann August Sutter jun. and his first wife María del Carmen Rivas were looked after by their grandparents. John III (* 1852) attended the John Beck's School for Boys , a school of the Moravian Brethren in Lititz (Pennsylvania) . Anna Eliza and María del Carmen came to Linden Hall in 1867 , a Herrnhuter girls' boarding school in Lititz. In 1870 the Sutter couple began building a stately home in Lititz and moved here from Washington in 1871. Lititz is 150 kilometers northeast of Washington DC Sutter continued to live at the hotel in Washington for a time in order to advance his petition to the MPs and senators for compensation. After still pending a decision on the petition in 1876, he submitted a new one, recommended for acceptance by the House's Private Land Claims Committee , which provided compensation to Sutter of $ 50,000 - but the bill was dated House of Representatives never dealt with. In 1880, Sutter submitted a third petition, which was approved in April 1880 by committees of the House and Senate. In June Senator Daniel W. Voorhees launched a bill for Congress in favor of the petition, but Congress adjourned on June 16 and there was no vote on Sutter's cause - on June 18, 1880, Sutter died at the prestigious Mades Hotel in Washington. His wife died in Lititz in 1881. Both are buried in the cemetery of the Moravian Brethren in Lititz.

  • Johann August Sutter around 1880

  • Sutter's house in Lititz - he lived here from 1871 to 1880

  • Sutter died in the Mades Hotel in Washington in 1880

  • Grave in the cemetery of the Moravian Brethren in Lititz

General Sutter?

Major General John A. Sutter about 1854

According to contemporary sources, Sutter showed a preference for military posturing and he liked to take on military ranks. It is proven that he began his service as a cadet of the Republic of Bern on May 26, 1828 . On July 15, 1828 he became the second sub-lieutenant of the 1st Centrums Compagnie of the Reserve Infantry Battalion Nro. III and on March 16, 1831 promoted to First Lieutenant of the 2nd Centrums Compagnie. Sutter's own claim that he was the captain of the artillery of the Swiss Army is not substantiated. This also applies to the claim that he attended the military school in Thun and was a fellow student of Louis Napoléon there. In Missouri, he further adorned his life story and claimed to have been captain of the Royal French Swiss Guard of King Charles X , which was fictitious.

As the leader of a group of traders in the Santa Fe trade, he let himself be called captain - as is customary there - and carried this "title" even later. According to Sutter, the King of Hawaii, Kamehameha III. , 1839 to stay in Hawaii and take the office of Secretary of War.

In mid-1844, the Mexican governor of California, Micheltorena, appointed Sutter to the captain (Capitano) of the Mexican-Californian militia (Defensores de la Patria). In January 1845 he became commander in chief of the troops of the Sacramento Valley (approx. 200 men) - mainly his own Indian troops.

On August 16, 1846, Sutter was appointed lieutenant of the US Dragoons, where he only received the function of an aide to the American commander of his Fort Sutter with the Indian company.

In June 1852 the Sutter Rifles were founded. This Sacramento-based California State Militia militia company was named in honor of Sutter. On February 16, 1853, Sutter was elected one of the Major Generals of the California State Militia by the California Congress . Until 1861 there were repeated reports in the Californian press about General Sutter's appearance at parades and celebrations. Officially he only emerged as commander of the 5th Division (headquarters in Marysville) in the summer of 1856 in connection with the mobilization of the militia against the Vigilance Committee of San Francisco.

Sutter's military practice falls from 1839 to 1846 when he led numerous missions against Indian groups. Because of the superior armament, it was more about hunting than fighting.

Sutter and his military employers:

  • Republic of Bern - Second Lieutenant

  • Republic of Mexico - Captain

  • United States - Lieutenant

  • State of California - Major General

Sutter and the indigenous people

Contract negotiator and leader of the Maidu in whose territory New Helvetia was located. (The Nisenan = Southern Maidu were relatives of this Maidu)

Heinrich Lienhard (1822–1903) from Glarus , who worked in various functions at Sutter in New Helvetia from 1846 to 1850, wrote down his memories around 1870 as an eyewitness. The original, 238 pages in German handwriting, is kept in the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. Lienhard's report credibly shows the scandalous conditions in New Helvetia: Sutter's alcoholism, his assault on his workers and their sexual abuse. On the basis of Lienhard's report, the historian Rachel Huber states that the "New Helvetia" colony functioned on the basis of forced labor by the indigenous population. Sutter mentions "trafficking in indigenous children, primarily to pay off his debts," says Sutter a "central figure in the persecution and decimation processes of the indigenous population of California", and sees him jointly responsible for the genocide of the indigenous society of California, which began with the gold rush in 1848.

Afterlife

Appreciation

In the variety of literature about Sutter there is also a variety of different assessments of his person. To this day, the caricature images of the heroic pioneer of California, who went under in the storm of the gold rush without guilt and that of the unscrupulous colonialist who initiated the downfall of the Californian Indians, have had a lasting effect.

With Zollinger and Hurtado, a somewhat more realistic and balanced image of Sutter became predominant - his weaknesses and mistakes were not concealed, but generally a benevolent assessment and an emphasis on the injustice done to him, combined with the attribution of historical significance, predominates.

The sober contemporary assessments of renowned American scientists such as Hubert Howe Bancroft and Josiah Royce are less widespread . Bancroft, the editor and co-author of a standard work on California history, also conducted a long interview with Sutter in Lititz. He denies Sutter any historical significance and describes him as a selfish, vain person who was unable to make meaningful use of happy circumstances. The philosopher Royce describes Sutter's fate as the common one of a stubborn and unteachable dreamer and sees his person not as a hero, but as more picturesque than manly.

Without the accidental gold find on a site that Sutter used, it would have been forgotten, as would other early Californian pioneers from Germany and Switzerland such as B. Wilhelm Benitz .

Memorials

Sutter is named after a large number of geographical objects (e.g. Sutter County , Sutter Buttes , Sutter Creek ), public institutions (schools, streets) in California, Lörrach district (Kandern: Johann August Sutter Straße), Canton of Bern, Canton of Basel- Country.

The canton capital of the canton Basel-Land Liestal entered into a city partnership with the capital of California, Sacramento, in 1989, whereby the mutual relations with General Sutter formed the point of contact. However, Liestal only has to do with Sutter insofar as his home town Rünenberg (where he never lived) is in the canton of Basel-Land.

In Kandern - Sutter's birthplace - there is an association for the partnership between Kandern and Sacramento eV , but the city of Kandern has no official partnership with Sacramento.

The popularity of Sutter's Zerrbild also means that his name is used as a brand in tourism - General Sutter is something like the Bollenhut for the Black Forest for communities with any extensive reference to Sutter . In Lititz the inn "The Sutter" advertises with his name and in Sissach the General Sutter Distillery . The General Sutter Museum in Sissach is located on the upper floor of the Nebiker distillery.

Sutter himself never lived in his hometown Rünenberg in the canton of Basel-Land, but there has been a memorial for him since 1953. In connection with the demonstrations of the Black Lives Matter movement, demonstrators covered the memorial stone in Rünenberg with a bloody sheet in June 2020.

In 1987, the canton of Basel-Land supported the financing of a Sutter monument in Sacramento with 50,000 Swiss francs. In June 2020 this statue was dismantled.

In California, a number of places related to Sutter are designated as State Parks or Historical Landmarks. The three State Historic Parks are visited by approximately 400,000 tourists annually.

designation Place, county; Country status Remarks National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)
Sutter's fort Sacramento , California National Historic Landmark ; California Historical Landmark # 525 California state park 66000221
Sutterville Sacramento , California California Historical Landmark No. 593 No
Coloma El Dorado County , California National Historic Landmark; California state park Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park with Sutter's Mill and Marshall Monument 66000207
Sutter's Mill (Gold discovery site) Coloma , El Dorado County , California California Historical Landmark No. 530 belongs to Coloma (Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park) No
Hock Farm Yuba City , Sutter County , California California Historical Landmark No. 346 No
Fort Ross Jenner , Sonoma County , California National Historic Landmark; State Historic Park; California Historical Landmark # 346 California state park 66000239
Fort Ross Commander's House Jenner , Sonoma County , California National Historic Landmark 66000239
Johann Agust Sutter House Lititz , Lancaster County , Pennsylvania 82003795
Sutter Creek Sutter Creek , Amador County , California California Historical Landmark No. 322 Sutter Creek Grammar School and Five Mile Drive - Sutter Creek Bridge also on the National Register of Historic Places - no direct reference to Sutter 76000477; 86000734

Sutter as an artistic motif

Frédéric-Louis Sauser (stage name Blaise Cendrars) around 1912
In fiction

The historical novel L'Or , published in French in 1925, was and is central to Sutter's reception . La merveilleuse histoire du général Johann August Suter by the Swiss writer Blaise Cendrars . A German translation by Yvan Goll , Gold , appeared as early as 1925 . The fabulous story of General Johann August Suter . and in 1926 an English translation appeared. Since then, many editions have been published in various languages. The “miserable work from the historical” and the “highly facinating novel from the fictional standpoint” gave many other authors the impetus to deal with the history of Sutter, with mostly the aspects of the gold rush in the foreground. Invented by Cendrars alternative facts were often doing unaudited rumored , as well as new invented. In 1927, the first parts of Stefan Zweig's great moments of mankind were published with Five Historical Miniatures , with Zweig dealing with the history of Sutter in the chapter The Discovery of Eldorado . In 1930 the frenzied reporter Egon Erwin Kisch also dealt with Sutter's story. In 1953 the Basel-based writer Traugott Meyer published a dialect novel about Sutter's life. In 1961 the novel Der Kaiser von California by Luis Trenker was published , exploiting the success of his 1936 film. The Basel writer Jürg Weibel brought out a book about Sutter in 1980. Helen Liebendörfer's most recent August Sutter novel was published in 2016.

In the movie

The Soviet director Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein stayed in Hollywood in 1930 at the invitation of Paramount Pictures and was planning a film entitled Sutters Gold , for which he was inspired by the novel L'or by the Swiss writer Blaise Cendrars . Paramount rejected the idea, but Eisenstein continued to pursue it. When Eisenstein submitted his design, for which he had studied historical literature and the original locations for weeks, it received praise in professional circles, but the Paramount management disliked the basic statement that gold was the source of the destruction of man and nature. In addition, he did not like his treatment of the Indian question. Paramount proposed to Eisenstein a film adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy , and Eisenstein was happy to take up the suggestion. His draft for this was also rejected by Paramount and a campaign against Eisenstein and his political stance was launched among the American public. In 1931 Paramount terminated the contract with Eisenstein without realizing a project with him. The realization of Eisenstein's film idea would probably have influenced the entire reception of Johann August Sutter significantly and taken it in a different direction.

In 1936, the American director James Cruze realized Eisenstein's film idea with Universal Pictures under the title Sutter's Gold . Despite a record budget of 2 million US dollars, the film found little response in this version, which differed greatly from Eisenstein, and was an economic flop.

Also in 1936, Sutter's life provided the material for the German feature film Der Kaiser von California by and with Luis Trenker (production, screenplay, direction and leading role). This film adaptation is based on the French-language novel L'or by the Swiss writer Blaise Cendrars . In 1961 a novel by the main actor Luis Trenker was published, just like the film.

In the 1980s, Moshé Mizrahi's film company planned a project for a new Sutter film - but the project was never realized. In 1999 the Basel director Benny Fasnacht released his film General Sutter .

In the theatre

The Swiss playwright Caesar von Arx wrote The Story of General Johann August Suter in 1929 . Acting in two parts . Around the same time, the Swiss dramaturge and director Werner Wolff wrote a play entitled “General Suter”, which was not performed because of the play by Caesar von Arx. In 1932 the German author Bruno Frank followed with the "Play in a Prologue and Eight Pictures", The General and the Gold . The Chilean author Guillermo Calderón wrote the commissioned work “Goldrausch” for Theater Basel, which was performed in 2017. The work was not very well received, and there are hardly any remains of the historical Sutter.

In painting

Sutter liked to be painted. The best known is the oil painting by the Swiss painter Frank Buchser , which was created in 1866 and is in the Solothurn Art Museum .

In music

The Swiss pop musician Polo Hofer published the song Alles Gold vo Kalifornie in 2002 , in which he sings about Sutter's life.

literature

  • Bernard R. Bachmann: General JA Sutter: A life on the run forwards . Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-03823-140-1 .
  • Frances Fairchild: The Life and Times of Gen. JA Sutter and Other Historical Sketches . Bullock, Sacramento CA 1913 ( digitized, PDF )
  • Rachel Huber: "General Sutter", the obscure side of a Swiss hero story. In: Swiss Journal for History (SZG) , (ISSN 0036-7834), Volume 69 No. 3, 2019, pp. 418–433.
  • Albert L. Hurtado: John Sutter. A Life on the North American Frontier . University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK 2006, ISBN 0-8061-3772-X .
  • Heinrich Lienhard : “If you absolutely want to go to America, then go in God's name!” Memories of the California Trail, John A.Sutter and the gold rush of 1846–1849. 3. Edition. Zurich: Limmat 2011. pdf - Lienhard worked for Sutter for several years; the judgment of his compatriot is very unfavorable.
  • Martin Stohler : Johann August Sutter as an icon. In: “Water”, Baselbieter Heimatbuch 27, 2009, pp. 331–341.
  • Martin Birmann : General Joh. Aug. Suter. There were strange fates. Reflexes of transatlantic love activity. Association for the distribution of good writings at Emil Birkhäuser, Basel 1907. (The Sutter biography - in the original: Suter - was first published as a feature section in the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung in 1868. The report on Gäbi is about Gabriel Merz, an emigrant from Aargau and Birman's childhood friend, through whom Sutter's son Emil Viktor corresponded with the author, who was the guardian of Sutter's wife in the canton of Baselland . Gäbi Merz, now a pastor, was, according to Sutter's son, the only one who stuck to the Sutter family even during the crisis.)
  • James Peter Zollinger: Johann August Sutter. King of New Helvetia. In: Zürcher Illustrierte. Volume 14 (1938) - abridged version of the book publication; For links see Wikisource New Helvetia
  • Rudolf Bigler: General Johann August Sutter and his relations with Burgdorf. In: Burgdorfer Jahrbuch 1935, pp. 7–20 UB Bern
  • Werner Lüthi: 1848 - Gold in California. On the life story of General Johann August Sutter. In: Burgdorfer Jahrbuch 1998, pp. 21–48, digitized version of the Bern University Library

Web links

Commons : Johann August Sutter  - Collection of Images
Wikisource: New Helvetia  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see Lüthi p. 21; According to footnote 1, the official spelling for the family was "Suter", but Johann August and his relatives always write themselves with "tt"
  2. ↑ see Lüthi p. 23.
  3. ↑ see Zollinger p. 1068.
  4. ^ Reprint of the Spanish original of the land allocation in the Supreme court of the United States. No. 135 .: The United States, appellants, vs. John A. Sutter. Appeal from the District court US for the Northern district of California. United States, Washington: Govt. print. off., 1863?, pp. 74–75 (Spanish) (digitized)
  5. ↑ see Erhard Richter: On the 200th birthday of Johann August Sutter, the "Emperor of California". In: Das Markgräflerland, Volume 1/2003, p. 85 digitized version of the Freiburg University Library ; the year of the transfer is unknown.
  6. ↑ see Bigler p. 10.
  7. ↑ see Bigler p. 9.
  8. ↑ see Lüthi p. 22.
  9. ↑ Zollinger, p. 1068.
  10. ↑ Lüthi p. 29.
  11. ↑ Bigler p. 12.
  12. ↑ See Lüthi, p. 29.
  13. ↑ See Lüthi, p. 29, Bigler, p. 13 states May 8 or 9, but this does not match the date of the passport.
  14. ↑ See Zollinger, p. 1096.
  15. ^ According to Zollinger at Independence, after Hurtado at Council Grove .
  16. ^ Albert L. Hurtado: John Sutter. A Life on the North American Frontier . University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK 2006, p. 24 in the Internet Archive .
  17. ↑ See Hurtado, p. 26.
  18. ↑ BD Wilson, Doyce B. Nunis, Jr .: A Mysterious Chapter in the Life of John A. Sutter. In: California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 4 (December 1959), pp. 321-327 jstor .
  19. ↑ See Zollinger, p. 1099.
  20. ↑ See Hurtado, p. 29.
  21. ↑ See Zollinger, p. 1099.
  22. ↑ See Hurtado, p. 42.
  23. ↑ John A. Sutter, Jr., Allen R. Ottley: The Sutter Family and the Origins of Gold-Rush Sacramento. P. 133 Google digitized version
  24. ↑ Charles Mades ; on the comfort of the hotel see also Elmer Epenetus Barton (ed.): Historical and commercial sketches of Washington and environs: our capital city, "the Paris of America" in the Internet Archive
  25. ^ Regimental Book of the Republic of Bern, 1830
  26. ↑ Regimental Book of the Republic of Bern, 1832
  27. ↑ see Lüthi
  28. ↑ see Zollinger p. 1099.
  29. ↑ see Zollinger p. 1101.
  30. ↑ see Zollinger 1326
  31. ^ California Militia and National Guard. Unit Histories Sutter Rifles on the home page of The California State Military Museum ; accessed on March 23, 2020
  32. ↑ Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 4, Number 593, February 16, 1853, Senate February 14
  33. ↑ on the author Rachel Huber, MA see the homepage of the University of Lucerne; accessed on June 22, 2020.
  34. ↑ see Huber p. 427.
  35. ↑ see Huber p. 424/425.
  36. ↑ see Huber p. 424.
  37. ↑ see Huber p. 428.
  38. ↑ see Cendrars, Trenker etc.
  39. ↑ here the work of R. Huber is to be mentioned recently, but this was preceded by a number of other publications
  40. ^ See Hubert Howe Bancroft : History of California , Volume V. (1846-1848), San Francisco, The History Company, Publishers, 1886, pp. 738-740 in the Internet Archive
  41. ↑ see Josiah Royce : California, from the conquest of 1846 to the second vigilance committee in San Francisco [1856] A study of American character , Boston & New York 1886, pp. 41/42 in the Internet Archive
  42. ↑ see Commercial Register at the District Court of Freiburg Commercial Register Number VR 701658
  43. ^ Homepage of "The Sutter" in Lititz; accessed on April 13, 2020
  44. ^ Homepage of the General Sutter Distillery ; accessed on April 13, 2020
  45. ^ Homepage of the General Sutter Museum in Sissach; accessed on April 13, 2020
  46. ↑ General Johann August Sutter - Rünenberg, BL, Switzerland (with picture) on www.waymarking.com; accessed on March 28, 2020
  47. ↑ Michael Nittnaus: After the blood sheet protest against General Sutter: Historian calls for counter-monument. In: bz (Basel) of June 16, 2020; accessed on June 17, 2020
  48. ↑ see Huber p. 422
  49. ↑ Kailyn Brown: Statue of colonizer John Sutter removed after being defaced in Sacramento. In: Los Angeles Times June 16, 2020; accessed on June 17, 2020
  50. ↑ List of NHL by State
  51. ^ Office of Historic Preservation No. 525
  52. ↑ NRIS No. 66000221
  53. ^ Office of Historic Preservation No. 593
  54. ↑ List of NHL by State
  55. ↑ NRIS No. 66000207
  56. ↑ Office of Historic Preservation GOLD DISCOVERY SITE , No. 530
  57. ↑ Office of Historic Preservation HOCK FARM (SITE OF) , no. 346
  58. ↑ List of NHL by State
  59. ^ Office of Historic Preservation Fort Ross , No. 5
  60. ↑ NRIS No. 66000239
  61. ↑ List of NHL by State
  62. ↑ NRIS No. 66000239
  63. ^ Official spelling mistake in the National Register of Historic Places NRIS No. 82003795
  64. ↑ NRIS No. 82003795
  65. ↑ Office of Historic Preservation xx , No. 322
  66. ↑ NRIS No. 76000477
  67. ↑ NRIS No. 86000734
  68. ↑ Blaise Cendrars : Gold - The Fabulous Tale of General Johann August Sutter. ISBN 3-7160-2053-2 (Original: L'Or - La merveilleuse histoire du Général Johann August Suter . 1925)
  69. ^ Quotes from EA Kubler: Johann August Sutter in German literature. In: Monthly Issues for German Education, Volume 27, No. 4 (Apr., 1935), p. 123 online at jstor
  70. ↑ Stefan Zweig : The discovery of Eldorado. JA Suter, California. January 1848. In: Great moments of mankind . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, pp. 134-144; previous edition: Insel, Leipzig ( E-Text )
  71. ↑ Egon Erwin Kisch: The Ballad of Sutter's Fort. In: Egon Erwin Kisch: Paradise America. Landing in Australia. Berlin 1973 n219  - Internet Archive
  72. ↑ The Gänneral Sutter. D Läbesgschicht from Johann Auguscht Sutter baselbieterdütsch verzellt . Lüdin, Liestal 1953; last in: Collected Works. Volume 6. Sauerländer, Aarau 1991, ISBN 3-7941-3248-3 .
  73. ↑ Luis Trenker: The Emperor of California. Verlag der Freizeit-Bibliothek, Hamburg 1961, DNB 455105421
  74. ↑ Jürg Weibel: sowing without harvest. Legend and reality in the life of General Johann August Sutter. Night machine, Basel 1980, ISBN 3-85816-023-7 .
  75. ↑ Helen Liebendörfer: Jack of all trades: The adventures of General JA Sutter. Historical novel. Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-7245-2151-8 .
  76. ↑ see Marie Seton: Sergei M. Eisenstein a biography. New York, Grove Press, Inc. 1960, p. 161 in the Internet Archive
  77. ^ Sergei M. Eisenstein, Grigory V. Alexandrov, Igor Montagu: Sutter's Gold. Scenario based upon the novel "L'or" by Blaise Cendrars. In: Igor Montagu: With Eisenstein in Hollywood; a chapter of autobiography. 2nd Edition. 1974, pp. 150-206, can be borrowed from the Internet Archive
  78. ↑ see Marie Seton: Sergei M. Eisenstein a biography. New York, Grove Press, Inc. 1960, pp. 172-174 in the Internet Archive
  79. ↑ entry on IMBd; accessed on March 22, 2020
  80. ↑ Luis Trenker: The Emperor of California. Verlag der Freizeit-Bibliothek, Hamburg 1961, DNB 455105421
  81. ↑ entry on IMBd; accessed on March 22, 2020
  82. ↑ General Sutter at www.swissfilms.ch; accessed on March 28, 2020
  83. ↑ Theater Lexikon der Schweiz online; accessed on March 23, 2020
  84. ↑ Bruno Frank: The General and the Gold | The General and the Gold. Play in a prologue and eight pictures, Berlin, Three Masks, 1932, pdf .
  85. ↑ Annette Mahro: A caricature image of artist careers . Guillermo Calderón's "Gold Rush" at the Basel Theater. In: Badische Zeitung of January 14, 2017; accessed on March 22, 2020
  86. ^ Collection online of the Kunstmuseum Solothurn; accessed on April 13, 2020

Remarks

  1. ↑ In the literature, the date of birth is also February 15, but in the birth and baptismal register of the Kandern community there is an entry: “23. February 1803 early at 5 o'clock ”. Due to the time and the clearly visible use of other entries that the actual birthday and not the date of baptism were entered in Kandern, February 23rd is definitely to be regarded as a birthday. See Lüthi p. 22; there also the quote.
  2. ↑ At the time of Sutter's birth Kandern belonged to the margraviate of Baden . The Grand Duchy of Baden is often mentioned in the literature , but this is not entirely correct. At the time of birth, the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss was not yet legally effective. When he became this on April 27, 1803, Kandern initially belonged to the Electorate of Baden and only with the Rhine Confederation Act of July 12, 1806 did the Grand Duchy of Baden come into being.
  3. ↑ The Hüsler family from Basel has been running a paper mill in St. Albantal since 1532. The name was spelled differently over the years: Heusler, Häusler, Häussler. See also Sandra Schultz: Papermaking in the German Southwest: A New Industry in the Late Middle Ages, Berlin / Boston 2018, p. 216 (online) . Contrary to reports to the contrary in the literature, the Suter / Sutter family did not own any paper mills.
  4. ↑ The name Düb o ld is often found in the literature ; Here the spelling of Bigler (p. 9 et al.) is used, who as the archivist of Burgdorf had access to all files. In Lüthi (p. 24) the first name Annette is mentioned; at Bigler (p. 10) Anna, called Nannette. “Anna” and “Dübeld” are written on the joint gravestone of Johann August and his wife in Lititz.
  5. ↑ In the literature, only four children are sometimes reported, whereby Carl Albert, who died early, is forgotten.
  6. ↑ From this and from the entry in the Kandern church book it follows that Sutter was not a Roman Catholic, as he later claimed when he was naturalized in Mexico. When he was born in 1803, the Protestant regional church of the margraviate of Baden was still Lutheran. In 1821 the Lutheran and Reformed regional churches were united to form the United Evangelical Protestant Church in the Grand Duchy of Baden. The marriage took place in the Reformed Church of Burgdorf.
  7. ↑ Alphons joined the filibuster William Walker in 1855 . After its failure in 1860, Alphons returned to California and settled in Nevada City , where he died in 1863 - presumably of the late effects of a tropical fever that he contracted while working with the filibusters. See Oscar Lewis: Sutter's Fort. Gateway to the Gold Fields , Prentice-Hall, 1966, pp. 193/194 in the Internet Archive
  8. ↑ Sometimes there are references to a twin brother, Johann Heinrich, who did not exist.
  9. ↑ Thurneysen had acquired the paper mill in Kandern in 1819 and the apprenticeship was probably due to his father's position.
  10. ↑ In the literature there is talk of the spice dealership of the salt factor Aeschlimann in Burgdorfer Schmiedengasse, where he worked as a commercial clerk . This rather unimportant detail is only commented on here in order to give the reader of the Sutter literature an explanation of the terms that are unusual today.
  11. ↑ In Bigler, p. 13: "Immediately she called the money day." For the term money day see the German dictionary by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
  12. ↑ Sutter was not a general in the US Army. The California State Militia was created by An Act concerning the organization of the Militia of April 10, 1850. In: Statutes of California, passed at the first Session of the Legislature. Founded San José 1850, pp. 190–196. Google digitized version . Commander in Chief was and is the Governor of California, the actual management lies with the Adjutant General (1852–1864 William Chauncey Kibbe). Initially, the militia was divided into four divisions, each headed by a major general - later the number of divisions was increased, with the division being based on the counties. The militia was called up in civil unrest and especially for campaigns against the Indians - a related Major General Sutters' use is not known.
  13. ↑ Charly Chaplin recalled speaking of a "brilliant" design - see William Richardson: Eisenstein and California: The "Sutter's Gold" episode. In: California History, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Fall, 1980), p. 199 JSTOR
  14. ↑ Eisenstein also wanted to record the scene with the degrading feeding of the Indians that Lienhard described - see Sutter's Gold. Scenario p. 174.
personal data
SURNAME Sutter, Johann August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES General Sutter; Sutter, John Augustus; The Emperor of Californians
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Californian landowner of Swiss descent and founder of New Helvetia
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1803
PLACE OF BIRTH Kandern , Baden
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1880
Place of death Washington, DC