Richard Bartholdt

Richard Bartholdt (1925)

Richard Bartholdt (born November 2, 1855 in Schleiz , Principality of Reuss Younger Line ; †  March 19, 1932 in St. Louis , Missouri ) was an American politician of German origin. From 1893 and 1915 he represented the state of Missouri in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Richard Bartholdt attended the public schools in his Thuringian homeland, including the grammar school in Schleiz. In 1872 he emigrated to the United States, where he settled in Brooklyn . In his new home he did an apprenticeship in printing and worked in the newspaper business and as a journalist in the following years. In 1877 he moved to St. Louis, where he worked as a journalist and editor for various newspapers. In 1892 he was editor of the “St. Louis Tribune ”. From 1888 to 1892 Bartholdt was also a member of the Education Committee of the City of St. Louis, of which he had been president since 1890.

Politically, he was a member of the Republican Party . In 1896 he served as president of the Missouri regional Republican party convention. In the congressional election of 1892 Bartholdt was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC , in the tenth constituency of Missouri , where he succeeded Samuel Byrns on March 4, 1893 . After ten re-elections, he was able to complete eleven legislative terms in Congress by March 3, 1915 . During this time the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the ratification of the 16th and 17th amendments to the constitution took place . From 1895 to 1897 Bartholdt was chairman of the immigration and naturalization committee. Between 1897 and 1905 he headed the committee for the control of the levees on the Mississippi ; from 1905 to 1911 he was chairman of the committee for the management of public properties. For many years Bartholdt also chaired the arbitration group he founded in 1903 . In 1911 he was appointed special envoy to Kaiser Wilhelm II by President William Howard Taft to present him with a statue of Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben as a gift from Congress and the American people. In 1904 he was president of a convention of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in St. Louis.

In 1914, Bartholdt decided not to run for another Congress. During the First World War he served as president of the American Independence Union, which he helped to establish and which campaigned for the strict maintenance of the political neutrality of the USA during the war. In the following years he devoted himself mainly to literary matters. He also campaigned for the development of the planned language Esperanto . Richard Bartholdt died on March 19, 1932 in St. Louis.

Web links

Commons : Richard Bartholdt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Richard Bartholdt in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Richard Bartholdt in the database of Find a Grave (English)