Konrad Nies

Background

Konrad Nies was born on October 17, 1861 in Alzey, Germany. He was the third of the four sons of Franz and Katharina Margarethe (Breyer) Nies. His father was a prosperous baker.

Education

Nies attended the public school of his native town, was apprenticed for two years to a dry-goods merchant at Worms, and at the age of seventeen entered an actors' training school at Leipzig. For a short time he attended Doane Academy at Granville.

Career

Nies played for brief engagements in a stock company at Aachen and in guest performances at Chemnitz and Kaiserslautern, but even the roving life of a young actor could not satisfy his inveterate Wanderlust, and in August 1883 he emigrated to the United States, making his headquarters at first with his brother Philip at Newark, Ohio.

Through his boyhood friend, Fannie Bloomfield (later Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler), he secured introductions to various people in Chicago and Milwaukee and became a traveling representative of the Freidenker Publication Company.

For a short time after his marriage Nies lived at Omaha, Nebraska, where he began to edit a monthly publication of his own.

In 1888 he became a teacher of German in the Newark, Ohio, high school, but his literary ambition soon took him to New York, where, during the years 1888-90, he continued his monthly, Deutsch-Amerikanische Dichtung, devoted to the cultivation of German literature in America. His first volume of verse, Funken, was published at Leipzig in 1891.

He visited his home in Germany in the summer of 1892. Meanwhile he had developed tuberculosis of the larynx from which he sought relief in brief residences at Palenville, New York, and Orlando, Florida. In 1894-95 he visited the literary centers of Germany and Austria, became acquainted with many persons of note, but avoided the men and methods of the naturalistic movement. He lectured on "German Literature in America" in Berlin, Breslau, and Wiesbaden.

Discontented, he returned to America and took over the direction of the Victoria Institute, a private school for girls in St. Louis. But he was not the man to stick to one task for any length of time. He began traveling again far and wide over the United States and Canada, lecturing and reading poetry wherever Germans resided in large numbers. He thus visited at least seventy-three cities on the North American continent, returning to some of them more than ten times. In this way he became known and liked everywhere. By his example and by inspiring others he hoped to keep alive the appreciation of German poetry among the Germans of America.

Between 1900 and 1905 he published at St. Louis four short verse-dramas: Deutsche Gaben (1900), Rosen im Schnee (1900), Im Zeichen der Freiheit (1902), and Die herrlichen Drei (1905). While he was desperately ill again in 1900-02, his friends collected funds which enabled him to rest and travel abroad during 1905-07. He now published a second volume of poetry, Aus Westlichen Weiten (Leipzig, 1905). To this period belongs his ardent and, in the end, disillusioning, friendship with a young Russian noblewoman, Olga Khripounoff.

Partly because of his own shiftlessness his family life was wrecked, many friends estranged, and valuable connections severed. A modest inheritance from his mother, however, enabled him once more to unite with wife and children under one roof. He took up residence in San Francisco in 1909. For the peace of his soul he turned to spiritualism, theosophy, and later to the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner. The economic problem of his life he hoped to solve by founding a quasi-communistic colony in California, but the plan did not materialize. With the help of generous friends in Denver, Colorado, he acquired a cottage on the southeastern slope of Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, California. There, in his "Waldnest, " overlooking San Francisco Bay, he spent the last seven years of his life in solitude, poverty, and greatest simplicity. During these years he wrote some of his most mature poetry, Welt und Wildnis. This period of retirement was interrupted when Nies was called to become editor-in-chief of the Colorado Herald during the critical year 1916-17. It was his dearest hope that the country of his adoption would not take up arms against the country of his birth. Disappointment made him age rapidly and visibly.

He was conservative in the selection of subject matter and form of his poetry. Some of his finest poems have been inspired by various aspects of American life and nature, notably the ballad, "Die Rache der Wälder, " calling attention to the destruction of American forests.

Achievements

• Nies achieved unusual mastery of the sonnet; he introduced the "quintine" as a stanza and rhyme-sequence into German literature. He was the most talented and accomplished of German poets who had made America their permanent home.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Deutsche Gaben: Ein Festspiel zum "Deutschen Tag" (Classic Reprint) (German Edition)

    (Excerpt from Deutsche Gaben: Ein Festspiel zum "Deutschen...)

Personality

Nies had a lovable, winning, even inspiring personality; yet he was irresponsible and unreliable in his dealings with many, including those nearest to him. He had a remarkable command of written and spoken German. He wrote English well, but spoke it with a noticeable accent.

Connections

In Milwaukee he met Elisabeth Waldvogel, whom he married in 1887. She remained loyal to him throughout all the vicissitudes of his career and supported him by her labor when he himself was too ill to work. They had two children, a son and a daughter.

Father:

Franz Nies

baker

Mother:

Katharina Margarethe (Breyer) Nies

Spouse:

Elisabeth Waldvogel

Friend:

Fannie Bloomfield