Henry Boernstein | |
|---|---|
 Engraving from a photograph by Brown found inEdwards's Great West of 1860 | |
| United States Consul at Bremen | |
| In office 1861–1865 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | November 4, 1805 |
| Died | September 10, 1892(1892-09-10) (aged 86) |
Henry Boernstein [in Europe,Heinrich Börnstein] (November 4, 1805 – September 10, 1892) was a German revolutionary who served as the publisher of theAnzeiger des Westens inSt. Louis, Missouri, the oldest German newspaper west of theMississippi River. He was also apolitical activist, author, soldier, actor andstage manager, and was briefly yet closely acquainted withKarl Marx during his tenure as publisher of the radical newspaperVorwärts.[1] He played a major role in keeping Missouri in the Union at the start of the Civil War.
His family fled from his native city ofHamburg to Lemberg inGalicia in theAustrian Empire (nowLviv in Ukraine) in 1813, due to fighting between allied and French forces.[2] He studied half-heartedly at the University of Lemberg and then read medical literature in Vienna. He acquired a special hostility to the Roman Catholic Church due to being required to attend Catholic catechism despite being a Protestant.
After leaving the university, Boernstein joined an Austrian army regiment stationed inOlomouc,Moravia, for five years, before resigning his commission as a cadet and going to Vienna. There he became involved in journalism and theater.
He married the Hungarian actress Marie Steltzer (age 15 years) on November 13, 1829. After a period in Vienna, Boernstein went on tour as an actor to cities in the Austrian Empire such as Budapest, Lubjana, Agram [Zagreb], Trieste and Venice, and he served as supervisor of the municipal theaters in St. Pölten and Linz. He became both a successful theatrical entrepreneur and a popular actor. In 1841, he and his wife toured the principal cities of Germany with great success.
His radical political views enticed him to Paris, and in 1842 he took a German opera company there, which failed to flourish. He was a friend ofFranz Liszt,Alexandre Dumas andGiacomo Meyerbeer. He managed an Italian opera company in Paris before starting a "translation factory" modifying French drama for performance in German.
In 1844 and 1845 he published the radical journalVorwärts! Pariser Signale aus Kunst, Wissenschaft, Musik und geselligem Leben ["Advance! Paris Signals from Art, Science, Music and Social Life"], laterVorwärts! Pariser Deutsche Zeitschrift ["Advance! Paris German Journal"]. It became the chief mouthpiece ofKarl Marx and other Paris radicals of the time, includingFriedrich Engels,Karl Ludwig Bernays,Arnold Ruge, andHeinrich Heine. French authorities shutVorwärts! down early in 1845, expelling or imprisoning most of those associated with the journal.[3]
Boernstein remained in Paris, recording political events in France for newspapers that could not afford a reporter there. He was assisted by his perennial co-workerKarl Ludwig Bernays. Boernstein wrote articles forHorace Greeley'sNew-York Tribune (translated into English byCharles Anderson Dana andBayard Taylor) as well as for German journals in America such as theDeutsche Schnellpost of New York.[4] At the time of the February 1848 revolution in Paris, he became president of theSociété des Democrats Allemands, helping to organize a military unit underGeorg Herwegh to aid the revolt in Baden.[5] He withdrew from the revolutionary movement when socialists insisted on a right to labor.[6] Throughout the 1848 Revolution in Paris he collected pamphlets and newspapers on the streets every day. He gave this collection to theSt. Louis Mercantile Library in 1853, where it remains today.[7] He departed France in January, 1849, afterLouis Napoléon was inaugurated as President of the Second Republic.
After landing in New Orleans, Boernstein passed through St. Louis, Missouri, to the Swiss community ofHighland, Illinois, where he practiced as a water-cure physician until offered the editorship of the German-language newspaperAnzeiger des Westens ["Western Reporter"] in St. Louis in March, 1850.[8] He soon became its publisher and proprietor.
To promote circulation, he published many prominent European novelists and memoirists of the time as serials, and in 1850 he wrote a sensationalist anti-Jesuit novel,Die Geheimnisse von St. Louis [The Mysteries of St. Louis], translated subsequently into English, French and Czech. It was in the tradition of the "urban mystery" novels ofEugène Sue (Les mystères de Paris,Le juif errant). It had many editions in America and Germany, and it was revived in the 1870s in the context of Bismarck'sKulturkampf with the papacy.
Boernstein introduced a sensational journalistic style in hisAnzeiger, raising the ire of nativist mobs, led in one case byNed Buntline.[9] TheAnzeiger revived the political career of former US SenatorThomas Hart Benton, winning Benton one term in the House of Representatives on behalf of "Benton Democracy."[10] Boernstein became an early supporter of the newly founded Republican Party, and he dramatized the fact that John Frémont was not on the ballot in Missouri in 1856 by having his followers vote for the Know-Nothing presidential candidateMillard Fillmore "under protest,"[11] since the nativist position was incidentally in tune with his hostility to Catholicism.
Boernstein's freewheeling methods earned him enemies within the German community as well as among English-speakers. In 1857Die westliche Post was founded as a competitor for support from "progressive" Germans.[12]
At the start of the Civil War, Boernstein's enterprises included a brewery, a hotel, and several saloons. In 1859 he leased the Variétés Theater in St. Louis and launched it as an opera house. It closed when Boernstein went off to war in 1861.[13]
In the months before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, political tensions in St. Louis deteriorated into armed confrontation, while pro-Southern elements plotted to seize the United States Arsenal. A military force was organized in the Arsenal in April 1861, under federal auspices by CongressmanFrancis Preston Blair Jr., and CaptainNathaniel Lyon; Boernstein was elected colonel of the Second Missouri Volunteer Regiment (of four regiments). Before his election as colonel, his company escorted weapons and ammunition by boat from the Arsenal to Alton, Illinois.[14] He participated in the arrest of the Missouri State Militia at Camp Jackson on May 10, 1861, and wrote a letter to Lincoln with a description of the subsequent shooting of civilians under riot conditions.[15] When Lyon (now a Brigadier General) moved into the interior of Missouri in June, Boernstein commanded the force occupying Jefferson City, the state capital.[16]
After the expiration of three months' federal service, Boernstein was appointedUnited States Consul in Bremen, Germany, by President Lincoln, although he returned briefly to St. Louis in 1862 in a vain attempt to save Blair's Congressional seat for the Republican Party.[17]
Boernstein served as US Consul inBremen throughout the Civil War and was only replaced by PresidentAndrew Johnson in 1866. Boernstein decided to remain in Europe, since theAnzeiger had been unexpectedly closed. In 1869-71 he leased theTheater in der Josefstadt in Vienna and later reviewed scripts of plays for theStadttheater.[18] He worked in Vienna for a while as a photographer. He retired in 1878 to Baden bei Wien to write his memoirs; they were published in the IllinoisStaatszeitung of Chicago and as a two volume book in two editions, in 1881 and 1884.
A street is named after him in theStrebersdorf district of Vienna. His grave in the Protestant cemetery of Vienna,Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof, was obliterated by authorities in 1941.
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