Wilhelm Georg Rapp

Background

Wilhelm Georg Rapp was born on July 14, 1828 in Leonberg, Württemberg, Germany, the son of a Protestant minister, Georg Rapp, and his wife, Augusta Rapp.

Education

He studied at the University of Tübingen.

Career

While a student at the University of Tübingen, he became an ardent supporter of the revolutionary movement of 1848, and was sent by the "Demokratischer Verein" of Tübingen as their delegate to the convention at Reutlingen in May 1849. There he advocated the union of the revolutionists of Württemberg and Baden in the cause of a politically free and united German nation. Joining the Tübingen volunteers, he took part in the Baden insurrection, and after the collapse sought refuge in Switzerland.

At Ilanz in the Canton of Graubünden he taught in a private school, but while on a secret visit to his home in the Swabian highlands in January 1851 he was taken captive and transported to the prison of Hohenasperg, where he awaited trial for over a year. He was acquitted of the charge of high treason at Ludwigsburg and was set at liberty, but his refusal to recant deprived him of any chance of a career in his native land. He emigrated to the United States in 1852 and first attempted to support himself in Philadelphia at various odd jobs. In the following year he received an offer from the Turners, convening at Cleveland, Ohio, to edit their journal. As editor of the Turner-Zeitung, in Cincinnati from 1855 to 1856, and at the same time as president of the Turnerbund, the organized union of German-American athletic clubs in the North and West, he cast his political influence with the newly founded Republican party.

He traveled extensively in the West and East and became widely known as a political speaker. In 1857 he accepted the editorship of the German daily newspaper, Der Wecker, at that time the only newspaper in Baltimore supporting the Republican party. The Wecker had been founded a few years before by the Baden refugee Carl Heinrich Schnauffer. Rapp was attracted by the opportunity of carrying the fight against slavery and Know-Nothingism into the danger zone, and he waged his war with native vigor and characteristic courage.

In the turbulent month of April 1861, a Baltimore mob invaded the office of the Wecker and drove the editor out of that city. He returned to his newspaper before the occupation of Baltimore by General Butler, but soon accepted an invitation to join the editorial staff of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung in Chicago, where he became one of the most effective supporters of the government and Union among the large German population of the Northwest. After the war he returned to Baltimore as editor and part owner of the Wecker from 1866 to 1872.

The lure of a larger field of labor sent him again to Chicago, as editor and part owner of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, on the invitation of the principal owner, A. C. Hesing, and his brilliant editor-in-chief, Hermann Raster. When Raster died in 1891, Rapp assumed sole charge and for seventeen years led the German press of Chicago through local and national issues and events. When he died "in the saddle, " as he wished, having absented himself from his office only a few days before, he could well claim to be the Nestor among journalists of the German language press in the United States.

Achievements

• A number of his best speeches are contained in his Erinnerungen eines Deutsch-Amerikaners, which he published in 1890. His newspaper articles were written in plain and forceful language, and had great popular appeal.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Illustrirte Geographie von Nord und Süd-Amerika: nach den neuesten und besten Quellen bearbeitet (German Edition)

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

Personality

His style and personality were as one, sincere, virile, and scornful of polish. His writing was not confined to editorials on political questions or topics of the day. He was a conscientious book reviewer and a discriminating critic on literary and scholarly subjects. In his youth it had been his ambition to follow in the footsteps of the great Swabian poets, especially Schiller, Uhland, and Justinus Kerner, and while a student at Tübingen he had sent to the revered, aged poet, Kerner, a volume of his first lyrics. His youthful aspirations, however, were forgotten in his life-long daily struggle for united action for freedom and humanity both in his native and his adopted country.

Connections

He was married in Baltimore in 1869 to Gesine Budelmann. He and his wife had three daughters: Emilie, Frida, and Mathilda, and a son, William Jr.

Father:

Georg Rapp

Protestant minister

Mother:

Augusta Rapp

Spouse:

Frida

Spouse:

Emilie

Spouse:

Gesine Budelmann

Spouse:

Mathilda

Son:

William Jr.