editor encyclopedist statistician
Alexander Jacob was born on March 16, 1826 at Wiedenbruck, Westphalia, Germany (now Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany), and was baptized Jacob Balthasar Alexander. He was the son of a vinegar manufacturer, Friedrich Schem, and his wife, Adolphine von Felgenhauer.
Schem attended the Gymnasium at Paderborn (1839 - 43) and then studied Catholic theology at Bonn (1843 - 45) and at Tübingen (1845 - 46).
Ordained a priest on April 18, 1849, Schem officiated for two years as "Kaplan" in Bielefeld.
He emigrated to the United States in 1851. His first position was that of tutor in the home of the publisher, Friedrich Gerhard. In the same year he accepted a position as teacher of ancient and modern languages at the Collegiate Institute, Mount Holly, New Jersey. From 1854 to 1860 he was professor of Hebrew and modern languages at Dickinson College and in 1858 published, in collaboration with George R. Crooks, A New Latin-English School-Lexicon.
He resigned his professorship in order to devote himself entirely to literary and journalistic work in New York. In the pursuance of this work he wrote numerous articles for The New American Cyclopædia (1858 - 63), edited by C. S. Dana and George Ripley. He also published a work on church statistics, The American Ecclesiastical Year-Book (1860), which was followed by The American Ecclesiastical Almanac (1868) and The American Ecclesiastical and Educational Almanac (1869).
From 1860 to 1869 he was foreign news editor of the New York Tribune, as well as a collaborator in preparing the Tribune Almanac, the National Almanac, and The American Year-Book and National Register. On leaving the Tribune in 1869, he became editor-in-chief of the Deutsch-amerikanisches Conversations-lexikon (11 vols. , 1869 - 74). He was a contributor to Johnson's New Universal Cyclopædia, and in 1877 published, with Henry Kiddle, The Cyclopædia of Education. In addition to the above, he wrote a book on the Russo-Turkish war, The War in the East (1878), as well as numerous magazine articles.
His one larger non-encyclopedic work was The War in the East. It is written in a readable style remarkable for a man who was not writing in his native tongue.
He died in Hoboken.
Alexander Jacob Schem was the assistant superintendent of the public schools of New York. Besides the Deutsch-amerikanisches Conversations-Lexicon, he was a contributor to other cyclopedias of statistical, geographical, and religious articles. Schem was one of the longtime editors of the Methodist and of the Methodist Quarterly Review. Besides, he was the author of his famous book on the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), The War in the East (1878).
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
Schem was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1849, but later he became disillusioned with its dogma, and he separated from the Church.
Schem believed that the development of learning in nineteenth-century Germany was second only to that of Athens in the fifth century, and he worked consistently for a better understanding among Americans of German scholarship.
Schem was a man of extraordinarily wide reading in twelve languages and his home in Hoboken was the resort of many scholars. He is described as of stocky build, sociable in his habits, extremely tolerant in his views, and indefatigable in his labors.
Schem married the oldest daughter of Friedrich Gerhard in 1853.
