Conrad Krez was an American poet and soldier. He was a poet of genuine, unforced feeling and, at times, of considerable technical skill. Most of his verse is autobiographical.
Background
Conrad Krez was born on April 27, 1828 in Landau, Bavaria, Germany. He was the son of Jean Baptiste and Luise Henrietta (Naas) Krez. His father had been an officer in the Bavarian army; when Prince Otto was made King of Greece in 1832, he accompanied him to Athens and died there in 1839. Konrad inherited his father's martial spirit and picked up all the romanticism and republicanism with which the winds of the time were laden.
Education
Krez completed the course in the Gymnasium at Speyer. On July 3, 1848, he matriculated as a student of law at the University of Heidelberg.
Career
In 1848 Krez joined General Ludwig von Tann's expedition to aid the Schleswig-Holsteiners in their revolt against Danish rule. He published in his native town a small volume of verse, Dornen und Rosen von den Vogesen. He tried vainly to join an expeditionary force to raise the siege of Montevideo and in the spring of 1849 was in the midst of the uprising in Baden and the Palatinate. The movement collapsed in July, and Krez, like many another future citizen of the United States, scuttled over the border into Switzerland, and went thence to France. The preface of his second volume of verse, his Gesangbuch (Strasbourg, 1850), was dated from Nancy on May 22. The book itself embodies the Zeitgeist with amusing completeness and is gay, sentimental, satirical, patriotic, antimonarchical, and anticlerical by turns. Though he wrote with his head full of Schiller, Heine, and the poets of the War of Liberation, Krez possessed a real gift for melodious verse, a lively fancy, and a sharp sense of humor.
In January 1851 he emigrated to New York, where he found employment and continued his study of law.
In 1854 he settled in Sheboygan, Wisсonsin, began the practice of his profession, and soon became prominent in civic affairs.
On March 7, 1863, he was commissioned colonel of the 27th Wisconsin Infantry. The regiment saw little actual fighting, but its losses by disease were heavy. Krez was a capable officer and toward the close of the war was brevetted brigadier-general. In August 1865, when his regiment was mustered out, he returned to Sheboygan and the next day opened his law office.
Unable to stomach a second Grant administration, he left the Republican party in 1872, and was collector of the port of Milwaukee on President Cleveland's appointment from 1885 to 1889.
Passionately devoted to the German language as the vehicle of German culture, he became in 1889 the fiery, militant leader of the Germans and Scandinavians of the state in their protest against the Bennett Law, an act to compel attendance at schools where the teaching was in English. For several terms he was a member of the state assembly and in 1892 was city attorney of Milwaukee. Poetry as a profession he had abandoned, but from time to time he wrote poems for his own delectation. Two of them, "Entsagung und Trost" and "An Mein Vaterland, " were published in the Gartenlaube and were widely read. "An Mein Vaterland" is almost perfect as the expression of the patriotism of the exiled forty-eighters. Aus Wisconsin is a collection of both his youthful and his later work, and is one of the most interesting volumes of verse written in German by an American.
Achievements
Connections
In 1852 he married Addie, daughter of Judge John A. Stemmler, who with six of their seven children survived him.