TheForty-eighters (48ers) were Europeans who participated in or supported theRevolutions of 1848 that swept Europe, particularly those who were expelled from or emigrated from their native land after those revolutions.
In theGerman Confederation, the Forty-eighters favouredunification of Germany, a more democratic government, and guarantees ofhuman rights.[1] Although many Americans were sympathetic to their cause and saddened by their defeat, many Forty-Eighters wereFreethinkers who were more influenced by post-1789republicanism in France and the anti-religious ideas ofThe Enlightenment than by theU.S. Constitution. In particular, their traditional hostility towards tolerating religious practice orClassical Christian education often put them at odds with American republicanism's belief infreedom of religion and the independence of religious institutions fromcontrol by the State. Disappointed at their failure to permanently change the system of government in the German states or theAustrian Empire, and sometimes ordered by local governments to emigrate because of their involvement in the revolution, they gave up their old lives to live abroad. They emigrated toAustralia,Brazil,Canada, theUnited Kingdom, and theUnited States. They includedGermans,Czechs,Hungarians, and Italians, among many others. Many were respected, politically active, wealthy, and well-educated, and found success in their new countries.
After being advised byBernhard Eunom Philippi among others,Karl Anwandter emigrated to Chile following the failed revolution. In 1850 he settled inValdivia.[2] He was joined there by numerous other German immigrants of the period.
Germans migrated to developing midwestern and southern cities, developing the beer and wine industries in several locations, and advancing journalism; others developed thriving agricultural communities.
Galveston, Texas, was a port of entry to many Forty-eighters. Some settled there and in Houston, but many went to theTexas Hill Country in the vicinity ofFredericksburg. Due to their liberal ideals, they strongly opposedTexas'ssecession in 1861. In theBellville area ofAustin County, another destination for Forty-eighters, theGerman precincts voted decisively against secession.[3]
More than 30,000 Forty-eighters settled in what became called theOver-the-Rhine neighborhood ofCincinnati,Ohio. There they helped define the neighborhood's distinctive German culture and in some cases also brought a rebellious nature with them from Germany. Cincinnati was the southern terminus of theMiami and Erie Canal, and large numbers of emigrants from modern Germany, beginning with the Forty-eighters, followed the canal north to settle available land in western Ohio.
In theCincinnati riot of 1853, in which one demonstrator was killed, Forty-eighters violently protested the visit of the papal emissary CardinalGaetano Bedini, who had repressed revolutionaries in thePapal States in 1849.[4] Protests took place also in 1854; Forty-eighters were held responsible for the killing of two law enforcement officers in the two events.[5]
Many German Forty-eighters settled inMilwaukee,Wisconsin, helping solidify that city's progressive political bent and culturalDeutschtum. TheAcht-und-vierzigers and their descendants contributed to the development of Milwaukee'ssocialist political tradition.[6] Others settled throughout the state.
In the United States, most Forty-eighters opposednativism and slavery, in keeping with the liberal ideals that had led them to flee Europe. In theCamp Jackson Affair inSt. Louis, Missouri, a large force of German volunteers helped prevent Confederate forces from seizing the government arsenal just before the U.S. Civil War began.[7][8] About 200,000 German-born soldiers enlisted in theUnion Army, ultimately forming about 10% of the North's entire armed forces; 13,000 Germans served in Union Volunteer Regiments from New York alone.
After theCivil War, Forty-eighters supported improved labor laws and working conditions. They also advanced the country's cultural and intellectual development in such fields as education, the arts, medicine, journalism, and business.
In 1848, the first non-British ship carrying immigrants to arrive inVictoria was from Germany; theGoddefroy, on 13 February. Many of those on board were political refugees. Some Germans also travelled to Australia via London. In April 1849, theBeulah was the first ship to bring assisted German vinedresser families to New South Wales.[25] The second ship, theParland,[26] left London on 13 March 1849, and arrived in Sydney on 5 July 1849.[27]
ThePrincess Louise left Hamburg 26 March 1849, in the spring, bound for South Australia via Rio de Janeiro. The voyage took 135 days, which was considered slow, but nevertheless thePrincess Louise berthed at Port Adelaide on 7 August 1849, with 161 emigres, including Johann Friedrich Mosel. Johann, born in 1827 in Berlin in the duchy of Brandenburg, had taken three weeks to travel from his home to the departure point of the 350-tonne vessel at Hamburg. This voyage had been well planned by two of the founding passengers, brothersRichard and Otto Schomburgk, who had been implicated in the revolution. Otto had been jailed in 1847 for his activities as a student revolutionary. The brothers, along with others including Frau Jeanne von Kreussler and DrCarl Muecke, formed a migration group, the South Australian Colonisation Society, one of many similar groups forming throughout Germany at the time. Sponsored by geologistLeopold von Buch, the society chartered thePrincess Louise to sail to South Australia. The passengers were mainly middle-class professionals, academics, musicians, artists, architects, engineers, artisans, and apprentices, and were among the core of liberal radicals, disillusioned with events in Germany.
Many Germans becamevintners or worked in the wine industry; others founded Lutheran churches. By 1860, for example, about 70 German families lived in Germantown, Victoria. (When World War I broke out, the town was renamedGrovedale.) InAdelaide, a German Club was founded in 1854, which played a major role in society.
Ludwig Bamberger settled inParis and worked in a bank from 1852 until the amnesty of 1866 allowed him to return to Germany.[28] Carl Schurz was in France for a time before moving to England.[29] He stayed there with Adolf Strodtmann.Anton Heinrich Springer visited France.
August Eduard Wilhelm Hector Achilles d'Orey (b. 1820, Wusterhausen/Dosse – d. 1872, Lisbon) was a participant in the Revolutions of 1848-49. After the revolutions failed, he fled to Portugal, where he settled and established himself as a merchant. Despite his relocation, he maintained close ties to his family in Germany, frequently returning to his homeland. His life, marked by political upheaval and cross-border connections, was highlighted in a 2018 exhibition at the Wegemuseum in Wusterhausen.[31]
Friedrich Beust settled inSwitzerland to work in early-childhood education. He lived and worked there until his death in 1899.
Albert Dulk, a dramatist, settled inGeneva after touring the Orient. He eventually returned to Germany.
Gottfried Kinkel moved to Switzerland in 1866 after living in England. He was a professor of archaeology and the history of art at the Polytechnikum inZürich, where he died 16 years later.
Hermann Köchly first fled to Brussels in 1849. In 1851, he was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Zürich. By 1864, he was back in Germany as a professor at the University of Heidelberg.
Johannes Scherr, novelist and literary critic, fled to Switzerland and eventually became a professor at the Polytechnikum in Zurich.
Richard Wagner, the composer, first fled to Paris and then settled in Zurich. He eventually returned to Germany.
"A large number of refugees from almost all parts of the European continent had gathered in London since the year 1848, but the intercourse between the different national groups – Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Russians – was confined more or less to the prominent personages. All, however, in common nourished the confident hope of a revolutionary upturning on the continent soon to come. Among the Germans there were only a few who shared this hope in a less degree. Perhaps the ablest and most important person among these wasLothar Bucher, a quiet, retiring man of great capacity and acquirements, who occupied himself with serious political studies."[34]
Other Germans who fled to the United Kingdom for a time wereLudwig Bamberger,[28]Arnold Ruge,Alexandre Ledru-Rollin andFranz Sigel. Along with several of the above, Sabine Freitag also lists Gustav Adolf Techow, Eduard Meyen, Graf Oskar von Reichenbach, Josef Fickler and Amand Goegg.[35]Karl Blind became a writer in Great Britain. BohemianAnton Heinrich Springer was in England for a time during his years of exile.
Hungarian refugeeGustav Zerffi became a British citizen and worked as a historian in London.Lajos Kossuth, a Hungarian revolutionary, toured England & Scotland and then the United States. He returned to Great Britain, where he formed agovernment in exile.
Ferenc Pulszky, a Hungarian politician, who joined Kossuth on his tour of England and the United States, became involved in Italian revolutionary activities and was imprisoned, and then was pardoned and returned home in 1866.
^Zucker, Adolf Edward (1963). "Schnauffer, Carl Heinrich".Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. VIII, Part 2. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 444–445.
^InThe German Element in the United States (Boston: Houghton and Mifflin, 1909, Vol. II, Chapter VII, p. 369),Albert Bernhardt Faust gives the following list of 48er journalists: Carl Schurz, F. R. Hassaurek, Carl Heinzen, Friedrich Hecker, Christopher Esselen, Lorenz Brentano, Theodor Olshausen, Hermann Raster, Friedrich Kapp, Franz Sigel, Oswald Ottendorfer, Wilhelm Rapp, Kaspar Beetz, Friedrich Lexow, Carl Dilthey, Emil Praetorius, F. Raine, H. Börnstein, C. L. Bernays, Karl D. A. Douai, Emil Rothe and Eduard Leyh. He also notes: "There were strong men among the political refugees between 1818 and 1848 prominent in journalistic work, as Friedrich Münch (Missouri), J. A. Wagener (Charleston, South Carolina), H. A. Rattermann (Cincinnati). It must be conceded, however, that the great progress in German journalism in the United States came with the advent of the political refugees of 1848, and immediately thereafter. A large number of new journals were founded by these 'forty-eighters', and as a rule they commanded a better German style and furnished a greater amount of desirable information in politics and literature. The presumption of the 'forty-eighters' in many cases offended the older class (of 1818–1848), and a journalistic warfare arose between the two parties ('die Grauen' and 'die Grünen'). The result, however, was favorable to the cause of journalism, and the Grays and the Greens, as explained before, soon united in the great struggle against secession and slavery."
Lattek, Christine.Revolutionary Refugees: German Socialism in Britain, 1840–1860, Routledge, 2006.
Wittke, Carl.Refugees of Revolution: The German Forty-Eighters in America, Philadelphia: Univ. of Penn. Press, 1952.at archive.org
Wittke, Carl. "The German forty-eighters in America: a centennial appraisal."American Historical Review 53.4 (1948): 711–725.online
Daniel Nagel,Von republikanischen Deutschen zu deutsch-amerikanischen Republikanern. Ein Beitrag zum Identitätswandel der deutschen Achtundvierziger in den Vereinigten Staaten 1850–1861. Röhrig: St. Ingbert, 2012.
Vol. 1, Chap. 13.
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