Wilhelm Georg Rapp

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Wilhelm Georg Rapp (born July 14, 1827 or July 14, 1828 in Lindau (Lake Constance) , † March 1, 1907 in Chicago ) was a German-American writer and journalist .

Life

Wilhelm Georg Rapp was the son of the evangelical pastor and poet writer Georg Rapp (1798–1868) and his wife Augusta Rapp. He first developed at the theological seminary in Blaubeuren , and then studied theology at the University in Tübingen . During his studies in 1845 he became a member of the fraternity association Nordland Tübingen . At that time he was passionately enthusiastic about the liberal movement of 1848/49 and, as president of the democratic Tübinger Volksverein, attended the Reutlingen People's Assembly in May 1849. On this occasion he advocated a union of the revolutionaries of Württemberg and Baden and intended to fight for a politically free and unified German nation. In June 1849 he and about 50 students and workers from Tübingen came to the aid of the Baden revolutionary government, but fled to Switzerland four weeks later after the collapse of the company and gave lessons at the private school in Ilanz . During a secret visit to his parents in Trossingen , he was arrested in January 1851 and had to spend more than six months in Hohenasperg fortress . However, he was acquitted of treason in a court case and moved to the United States in the summer of 1852 .

From autumn 1853, Rapp edited the gymnastics newspaper in Cleveland and became a member of the board of the gymnastics association. In the fall of 1857 he took over the management of the Baltimore Wecker , which he led in a decidedly republican sense. When the American Civil War broke out in April 1861, he sided with the Unionists and barely escaped a southern lynch mob . He quickly left Baltimore , came into contact with US President Abraham Lincoln and moved to Chicago. He served as the Associate Editor of the Illinois State Newspaper from 1862 and expressed his opposition to slavery . After the end of the Civil War he was again editor of the Baltimore Alarm Clock in 1866 . 1870 worked successfully for the fund raised for the German wounded in America. The following year he welcomed the establishment of the German Empire . He was then persuaded by Anton Caspar Hesing , the publisher of the Illinois State Newspaper , to return to work for this journal in Chicago from January 1872 and followed Hermann Raster as editor-in-chief after his death (July 24, 1891).

Rapp campaigned for the preservation of Germanness in America both in public and in his works. The Germans in Illinois and Wisconsin owed their 1890 victory for their language and school mainly to his strong leadership . In 1895 Rapp became chairman of the German Citizens' Union and he was also one of the founders of the German-American Historical Society of Illinois . The journalist, married to Gesine Budelmann since 1869, died in Chicago in 1907.

Works

  • The autobiography of Thomas Jefferson , President of the United States of America , translation, 1853
  • Illustrated geography of North and South America , 1855
  • Memories of a German-American of the old fatherland. In speeches and letters , Chicago 1890

literature

Remarks

  1. ^ So Barbara Gant:  Rapp, Wilhelm Georg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 153 f. ( Digitized version ). After Daniel Nagel ( From Republican German to German-American Republicans: a contribution to the identity transformation in the German Forty in the United States from 1850 to 1861 , 2012, S. 585 ( online at Google Books )) Rapp was in on 14 July 1828 Leonberg born .
personal data
SURNAME Rapp, Wilhelm Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1827 or July 14, 1828
PLACE OF BIRTH Lindau (Lake Constance)
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1907
Place of death Chicago