Louis Lange

Background

Louis Lange, the son of Andrew and Anna (Stiel) Lange, was born in a rural district of Germany in the Province of Hesse.

Education

He received elementary training in country schools.

Career

When Lange was seventeen he came to America and became an apprentice in the composing rooms of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, where he received the greater part of his education. In the summer of 1855 he entered the employ of the Michigan Staats-Zeitung of Detroit and stayed about two years. He then went to Mexico. On his return, he took up his residence in St. Louis, Missouri, where in 1859 he became printer and bookkeeper for Moritz Niedner.

On March 11, 1861, Niedner founded the Daily Missouri State Journal, with Lange as financial manager. The paper was sympathetic with the Confederate cause at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, and on July 13, 1861, was suppressed by order of Gen. Nathaniel Lyon. A regiment of Home Guards surrounded the newspaper office and removed the forms, type, parts of the press, and the morning edition of the paper to the headquarters of the regiment. It appears, however, that Lange was not himself committed to the Southern cause, and after the war he was known as a Republican. After being connected with the Missouri Republican (Democratic in politics) for about a year, he started in business for himself.

Niedner, in the meantime, had purchased a small literary magazine known as Die Abendschule, previously published in Buffalo, New York, and this unpromising journal he sold to Lange in the spring of 1863 for the sum of $200. In the early days Lange supported his journal from the proceeds of a job-printing office in the attic of his home. He gave the best years of his life to the development of this periodical, which he kept free from political views, feeling strongly that such matters had no place in a purely literary magazine. After it became firmly established and his corps of editorial writers well organized, he founded a small political paper called Die Rundschau, which was published for a short time in St. Louis. Later, transferred to Chicago, where it was edited and published by his eldest son, Louis Lange, Jr. , it became an important factor in German-American politics, and its editor was appointed United States consul successively at Annaberg and at Bremen, Germany, by President Cleveland.

Lange was an intimate of Carl Daenzer, Emil Preetorius, and Carl Schurz and was accustomed to meet with them every Wednesday afternoon in a little social group. He was active in the affairs of the Lutheran Church, and took an interest in religious education. He died in St. Louis, and was buried there.

Achievements

• Under Lange's editorship, magazine "Die Abendschule" grew from small beginning into a position of importance, becoming one of the leading German literary periodicals published in the United States. So well was it managed and edited that it gained wide circulation among German-Americans of the best class and attracted the patronage of Germans abroad.

Connections

Lange married Margarethe Schmidt in 1851. Six children were born to them.

Father:

Andrew Lange

Mother:

Anna (Stiel) Lange

Spouse:

Margarethe Schmidt

Son:

Louis Lange, Jr.