Robert Reitzel was a German-American poet, editor, and critic.
Background
Robert Reitzel was born on January 27, 1849 at Weitenau, Amt Schopfheim, Baden, Germany, the son of the village schoolmaster, Reinhard Reitzel, and his wife Katharina, née Uehline. He was named Robert in memory of Robert Blum, a victim of the Revolution of 1848, and the ideals held by the revolutionists made a profound impression upon his childhood.
Education
In the Gymnasium he devoted more time to the reading of literature than to his studies, and just before he was ready to enter the university he was dishonorably dismissed because of offenses against school discipline in the course of a tour which extended a considerable time beyond the vacation period.
Career
With the university and the professions closed to him, he emigrated to the United States in 1870. After some months of wandering he won the interest of a pastor of the Reformed Church in Baltimore who urged him to prepare himself for the ministry, and in April 1871, having passed an examination, he was elected pastor of the First German Reformed Church in Washington, D. C. As he began to prepare sermons regularly he moved consistently to a more liberal position than that held by the church; he says that his position as pastor was difficult also because of his marriage to Anna Martin, one of the numerous young ladies of the congregation. Eleven months after he had been inducted as pastor he was tried by a committee of clergymen and asked to resign. He now started a "free church" in which there were no dogmatic restraints on "the speaker, " but after a short time this venture failed, and he became an itinerant lecturer before German "free congregations" and "Turner" societies.
In 1884, during a visit to Detroit, some friends helped him to launch a weekly, Der arme Teufel, in which he found his life work. It came to be the most popular German-American publication outside the church circles and was read from coast to coast. In a number of cities Arme Teufel Klubs were organized; kindred spirits among literary journals in Germany frequently quoted from its columns, and on occasion certain numbers were forbidden the mails by the German postal authorities.
Though he wrote only in German he felt himself distinctly an American, and frequently expressed gratitude for the freedom of expression which he had found in the United States. In his verse he resembled perhaps most closely Heine, who insisted that the social note has a place in poetry. Among his poems there are also some in an Anacreontic strain, as well as purely personal lyrics filled with a manly, but melancholy resignation.
Like Heine, Reitzel spent the last years of his life confined to bed, but he continued to send out his paper with exuberant joy in life until the end. He died in Detroit.
Achievements
Views
Cherishing above all things liberty - freedom from kings and tyrants, from dogma and superstition, from moral laws and hypocritical conventions, he stood for the education of the masses, general enlightenment, and the call of beauty in the arts; while he opposed marriage, prohibition, nationalism, militarism, and oppressive capitalism. As literary critic, he had a catholic taste. Shakespeare, Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller received a great deal of his attention, but frequently he brought obscure writers out of their niches for the delight of his readers.
Personality
The essential feature of the journal was the personality of the editor.
A short stocky man with curly black hair and a powerful moustache (in profile his features recall Nietzsche), he was an enthusiastic and inspiring orator, but his gifts were displayed at their best in his editorial causeries. In these, he combined drollery, satire, romantic reminiscences from two continents, a wealth of poetic allusion, and an unabashed truth-telling that reveled in exposing sham and bigotry wherever they existed.
Interests
Writers
Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman
Connections
In 1872 he married to Anna Martin. Of his eight children, two daughters and a son survived him.