Valentin Oswald Ottendorfer

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Valentin Oswald Ottendorfer, 1860

Valentin Oswald Ottendorfer (born February 28, 1826 in Zwittau , Moravia , Austrian Empire ; died December 15, 1900 in New York City , United States ) was a German -born American journalist and patron of Moravian origin. He founded orphanages and hospitals, shelters for the poor and libraries.

Life

Oswald Ottendorfer was born into a cloth weaver family as the youngest of six surviving children. His parents sent him to the Piarist grammar school in Litomyšl . After graduating from high school, he studied law in Prague , and later philosophy at the universities in Vienna and Heidelberg . The subjects of law and philosophy shaped his democratic worldview.

During the unrest of 1848 he fought with the students on the barricades in Prague, Vienna and other German-Austrian cities. He corresponded with the Russian anarchist Bakunin and was wanted by the Vienna police with a wanted poster . He then decided to emigrate to the USA.

New York State Newspaper Building (1875)

Since he did not speak the English language, he made his way in New York as a laborer in the port. He soon found a job as a journalist at the German-language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and became friends with the publishers Jacob and Anna Uhl , who had also emigrated to New York from Germany.

The death of Jacob Uhl at the end of the 1850s brought about family changes for Ottendorfer, who had meanwhile become the chief editor: He now also took over the publishing house, he married the widow Anna Uhl and became the father of their six children.

Ottendorfer traveled to European health resorts to cure various ailments. In Austria-Hungary, however, he was still on the wanted list, was not allowed to enter, nor was he allowed to visit his hometown Svitavy. An amnesty for the revolutionaries of 1848 was only given after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867.

At the end of the 1870s, Anna and Oswald Ottendorfer had achieved prosperity and a great reputation. He was even proposed to run for New York mayor, but he turned it down. Anna Ottendorfer had already started several charities. Both acted according to the motto: "Those who have healthy hands have a duty to help those who need it."

Ottendorfer House in Svitavy (Zwittau)
Plaque at the Ottendorfer House

In the old hometown of Svitavy, too, there was a lack of many things, especially in the health and education sectors. The city council gladly accepted Ottendorfer's offer: The donated hospital was inaugurated in 1886, as was an orphanage and a poor house. The city honored the founder with a street named after him, on which a statue with his bust was also placed.

At the place where he was born, Ottendorfer had a new house built for a library, a red brick building in historicist style, the Ottendorfer House , which with its ballroom on the upper floor also offers a worthy setting for lectures and concerts. The library was inaugurated in August 1892 in the presence of Ottendorfer and one of his stepdaughters. It comprises 23,000 German-language volumes and became the model for numerous other public libraries in Moravia. Ottendorfer also left a number of similar institutions in his second home, the USA.

In 1890, Herman Ridder became managing director of the Staats-Zeitung, which he soon acquired from Ottendorfer.

Ottendorfer died in his New York apartment in 1900. His grave is in Greenwood Cemetery. The Ottendorfer House in Svitavy has been preserved when President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk visited the city in 1929 and made his first visit there.

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personal data
SURNAME Ottendorfer, Valentin Oswald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist and patron
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH Zwittau , Moravia
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1900
Place of death New York City