Forty-Eighters
Encyclopedia
The Forty-Eighters were Europeans
European ethnic groups
The ethnic groups in Europe are the various ethnic groups that reside in the nations of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....

 who participated in or supported the revolutions of 1848
Revolutions of 1848
The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It was the first Europe-wide collapse of traditional authority, but within a year reactionary...

 that swept Europe. In Germany
German question
The German question was a debate in the 19th century, especially during the Revolutions of 1848, over the best way to achieve the Unification of Germany. From 1815–1871, a number of 37 independent German-speaking states existed within the German Confederation...

, the Forty-Eighters favored unification of the German people, a more democratic government, and guarantees of human rights. Disappointed at the failure of the revolution to bring about the reform of the system of government in Germany or the Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...

 and sometimes on the government's wanted list because of their involvement in the revolution, they gave up their old lives to try again abroad. Many emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 after the revolutions failed. They included Germans, Czech
Czech people
Czechs, or Czech people are a western Slavic people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries...

s, Hungarians, and others. Many were respected, wealthy, and well-educated; as such, they were not typical migrants. A large number went on to be very successful in their new countries.

Forty-Eighters in the USA

In the United States, many Forty-Eighters opposed nativism and slavery, in keeping with the liberal ideals that had led them to flee Germany. Several thousand enlisted in the Union Army
Union Army
The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army and the National Army...

, where they became prominent in the Civil War. In the Camp Jackson Affair, a large force of German volunteers helped prevent Confederate forces from seizing the government arsenal in St. Louis just prior to the beginning of the war.

Many Forty-Eighters settled in the Texas Hill Country
Texas Hill Country
The Texas Hill Country is a vernacular term applied to a region of Central Texas featuring tall rugged hills consisting of thin layers of soil atop limestone or granite. It also includes the Llano Uplift and the second largest granite monadnock in the United States, Enchanted Rock, which is located...

 in the vicinity of Fredericksburg
Fredericksburg, Texas
Fredericksburg is the seat of Gillespie County, in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 Census estimate, the city had a population of 10, 530...

, and voted heavily against Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

's secession. In the Bellville
Bellville, Texas
Bellville is a city in and the county seat of Austin County, Texas, United States, located in the southeastern part of the state. The population was 3,794 at the 2000 census. Bellville was named for Thomas Bell, one of Stephen F. Austin's earliest colonists, after he and his brother James Bell...

 area of Austin County, another destination for Forty-Eighters, the German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 precincts voted decisively against the secession ordinance.

More than 30,000 Forty-Eighters settled in the Over-the-Rhine
Over-the-Rhine
Over-the-Rhine, sometimes shortened to OTR, is a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is believed to be the largest, most intact urban historic district in the United States. Over-the-Rhine was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 with 943 contributing buildings...

 neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

. There they helped define the distinct German culture of the neighborhood, but in some cases also brought a rebellious nature with them from Germany. During violent protests in 1853 and 1854, Forty-Eighters were held responsible for the killing of two law enforcement officers.
In the Cincinnati Riot of 1853
Cincinnati Riot of 1853
The Cincinnati Riot of 1853 was triggered by the visit of Cardinal Gaetano Bedini, the emissary of Pope Pius IX, to Cincinnati, Ohio, USA on 21 December 1853....

, in which one demonstrator was killed, Forty-Eighters violently protested the visit of the papal emissary Cardinal Gaetano Bedini
Gaetano Bedini
Gaetano Bedini was an Italian ecclesiastic, Cardinal and diplomat of the Catholic Church.- Biography :Bedini was born in Senigallia into the peasant Bedini family of Ostra, the son of Alessandro Pellegrino and Marianna Spadoni.Last of 7 sons, Bedini was destined by his father to be a priest...

, who had repressed revolutionaries in the Papal States
Papal States
The Papal State, State of the Church, or Pontifical States were among the major historical states of Italy from roughly the 6th century until the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia .The Papal States comprised territories under...

 in 1849.

Many German Forty-Eighters settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

, helping solidify that city's progressive political bent and cultural Deutschtum. The Acht-und-vierzigers and their descendants contributed to the development of that city's long Socialist political tradition.

After the Civil War, Forty-Eighters supported improved labor laws and working conditions. They also advanced the country's cultural and intellectual development in such fields as education, the arts, medicine, journalism, and business.

Notable German Forty-Eighters in the US

  • Architects, engineers, scientists: Louis Burger, Adolf Cluss
    Adolf Cluss
    Adolf Cluss was a German-born American immigrant who became one of the most important architects in Washington, D.C., in the late 19th century, responsible for the design of numerous schools and other notable public buildings in the capital.He was born in 1825 in Heilbronn in the Kingdom of...

    , Henry Flad
    Henry Flad
    Henry Flad was a German-born civil engineer who mostly worked in the United States.-Biography:He was educated at the College of Spire, Rhenish Bavaria, and at the University of Munich, where he graduated in 1846...

  • Artists: Friedrich Girsch; Wilhelm Heine
    Wilhelm Heine
    Peter Bernhard Wilhelm Heine, better known as Wilhelm Heine was a German-American artist, world traveller and writer.-Early life:...

    ; Theodore Kaufman
    Theodore Kaufman
    Theodore Kaufman may refer to:* Theodore Kaufmann German-born artist, predominantly practicing in New York* Theodore N. Kaufman , American writer...

    ; Louis Prang
    Louis Prang
    Louis Prang was an American printer, lithographer and publisher. He is sometimes known as the "father of the American Christmas card".- Youth :...

    ; Henry Ulke
    Henry Ulke
    Henry Ulke was an American photographer and portrait painter.-Biography:Henry Ulke was born in Frankenstein, Prussia, and studied painting in Breslau, and also in Berlin under Wach...

    ; Adelbert John Volck
  • Businessmen, investment bankers: Solomon Loeb
    Solomon Loeb
    Solomon Loeb was a German American merchant in textiles and later a banker with Kuhn, Loeb & Co.. His father, a devout Jew, had been a small corn- and wine-dealer in Worms, which belonged to the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine. S. Loeb emigrated to the United States in 1849. He settled in...

    , Abraham Kuhn founders of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
    Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
    Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was a bulge bracket, investment bank founded in 1867 by Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb. Under the leadership of Jacob H. Schiff, it grew to be one of the most influential investment banks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, financing America's expanding railways and growth...

  • Generals in the American Civil War
    American Civil War
    The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

    : Louis Blenker
    Louis Blenker
    Louis Blenker was a German and American soldier.-Life in Germany:He was born at Worms, Germany. After being trained as a goldsmith by an uncle in Kreuznach, he was sent to a polytechnical school in Munich. Against his family's wishes, he enlisted in an Uhlan regiment which accompanied Otto to...

    ; Alexander Schimmelpfennig; Carl Schurz
    Carl Schurz
    Carl Christian Schurz was a German revolutionary, American statesman and reformer, and Union Army General in the American Civil War. He was also an accomplished journalist, newspaper editor and orator, who in 1869 became the first German-born American elected to the United States Senate.His wife,...

    ; Franz Sigel
    Franz Sigel
    Franz Sigel was a German military officer, revolutionist and immigrant to the United States who was a teacher, newspaperman, politician, and served as a Union major general in the American Civil War.-Early life:...

    ; Max Weber
    Max Weber (general)
    Max Weber was a military officer in the armies of Germany and later the United States, most known for serving as a brigadier general in the Union army during the American Civil War.-Biography:...

    ; August Willich
    August Willich
    August Willich , born Johann August Ernst von Willich, was a military officer in the Prussian Army and a leading early proponent of Communism in Germany. In 1847 he discarded his title of nobility...

    ; Frederick C. Salomon
    Frederick C. Salomon
    Frederick C. Salomon was a German immigrant to the United States who served as a Union brigadier general in the American Civil War.-Biography:He was born in Stroebeck near Halberstadt, Prussia...

    ; Adolph von Steinwehr
    Adolph von Steinwehr
    Baron Adolph Wilhelm August Friedrich von Steinwehr was a German-Brunswick army officer who emigrated to the United States, became a geographer, cartographer, and author, and served as a Union general in the American Civil War.-Early life:Steinwehr was born in Blankenburg, in the Duchy of...

  • Journalists, writers, publishers: Mathilde Franziska Anneke
    Mathilde Franziska Anneke
    Mathilde Franziska Anneke was a German feminist, socialist, and newspaper editor, owner, and reporter. Born Mathilde Franziska Geisler, her first marriage to Alfred von Tabouillot, a rich wine merchant, ended in divorce...

    ; Gustav Bloede (see Marie Bloede
    Marie Bloede
    Marie Bloede was a American author of German decent, who also published under the pseudonym Marie Westland.-Biography:...

    ); Rudolf Doehn
    Rudolf Doehn
    Rudolf Doehn was a German writer and journalist. He belonged to the Forty-Eighters who participated in the American Civil War as volunteers in the Union Army...

    ; Carl Adolph Douai
    Carl Adolph Douai
    Karl Daniel Adolph Douai , known to his peers as "Adolph," was a German Texan teacher as well as a socialist and abolitionist newspaper editor...

    ; Carl Daenzer
    Carl Daenzer
    Carl Daenzer [In Germany, Karl] founded the Westliche Post and was a long-time editor of the Anzeiger des Westens, two noted German-language newspapers in St. Louis, Missouri...

    ; Bernard Domschke; Christian Esselen (editor of Atlantis); Julius Fröbel
    Julius Fröbel
    Julius Fröbel was a journalist, diplomat and author. He was active in Western Europe, the United States and South America at different times in his life.-Biography:...

    ; Karl Peter Heinzen; Rudolf Lexow (founder of Belletristisches Journal); Niclas Müller
    Niclas Müller
    Niclas Müller was a German-American poet.-Biography:...

    ; Reinhold Solger
    Reinhold Solger
    Reinhold Ernst Friedrich Karl Solger was a historian, novelist, poet, political activist and lecturer...

    ; Emil Praetorius; Oswald Ottendorfer
    Oswald Ottendorfer
    Valentin Oswald Ottendorfer was a United States journalist associated with the development of the German-language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung into a major newspaper.-Education:...

    ; Friedrich Hassaurek
    Friedrich Hassaurek
    Friedrich Hassaurek was a United States journalist and ambassador.-Biography:He attended the Piaristen gymnasium. In the German revolutions of 1848, he served in the student legion, and was twice wounded...

    ; Theodor Olshausen
    Theodor Olshausen
    Theodor Olshausen was a German author, journalist and politician, prominent in the Patriotic Party in Schleswig-Holstein. He lived and worked for over a decade in the United States.-Biography:...

    ; Hermann Raster
    Hermann Raster
    Hermann Raster was a German Forty-Eighter, best known for his job as chief editor for the Illinois Staats-Zeitung between 1867 and 1891....

    ; Wilhelm Rapp
    Wilhelm Rapp
    Wilhelm Rapp was born on July 14, 1827, in what is now the Baden-Württemburg region of southwest Germany. As a student at Tübingen University Rapp participated in the German revolution of 1848, and was imprisoned for a year for his activities...

    ; Carl Heinrich Schnauffer
    Carl Heinrich Schnauffer
    Carl Heinrich Schnauffer was a poet, soldier and editor.He founded the Baltimore Wecker in the fall of 1851. Before this time, he was one of the editors of the Journal in the city of Mannheim in Baden, Germany. By taking part in the German revolution of 1848-49, he was compelled to leave his country...

    ; Kaspar Beetz; Carl Dilthey; F. Raine; Heinrich Börnstein; Charles L. Bernays; Emil Rothe; Eduard Leyh; George Schneider
    George Schneider (banker)
    George Schneider was an Illinois journalist and banker. He was a German refugee, one of the Forty-Eighters.-Early years:...

     (who was also a banker); Albert Sigel; Franz Umbscheiden
    Franz Umbscheiden
    Franz Umbscheiden was a revolutionary during the revolutions of 1848 who emigrated to the United States and became a journalist.-Biography:...

    ; Edward Morwitz
    Edward Morwitz
    Edward Morwitz was a physician and inventor in Germany and a newspaper publisher and physician in the United States.-Germany:...

     (who was also a physician)
  • Musicians: Carl Zerrahn
    Carl Zerrahn
    Carl Zerrahn was a German-born American flautist and conductor. His widespread activity in the region made him an influential figure in New England and Boston classical music, especially choral music, in the latter half of the 19th century...

    ; Carl Bergmann
    Carl Bergmann
    Carl Bergmann was a German-American cellist and conductor.-Biography:...

    ; Otto Dresel
    Otto Dresel
    Otto Dresel was an American pianist, music teacher and composer of German birth.-Biography:He studied with Moritz Hauptmann in Leipzig, and received guidance...

    ; Herman Trost (band leader in Sherman's army who later settled in Lexington, Kentucky, where he conducted the first band at the University of Kentucky; friend of John Philip Sousa
    John Philip Sousa
    John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of march composition, he is known as "The March King" or the "American March King" due to his British counterpart Kenneth J....

    )
  • Physicians: Abraham Jacobi
    Abraham Jacobi
    Abraham Jacobi was a pioneer of pediatrics, opening the first children's clinic in the United States. To date, he is the only foreign born president of the American Medical Association.-Biography:...

    ; Herman Kiefer
    Herman Kiefer
    Herman Kiefer was a physician, politician and diplomat of the United States.-Germany:He was the only son of a physician, Conrad Kiefer. His mother was a daughter of the gardener of the Grand Duke in Karlsruhe. Thus, he was brought up in a conservative environment and trained to respect the...

    ; Ernest Krackowizer; Hans Kudlich
    Hans Kudlich
    Hans Kudlich was an Austrian political activist, Austrian legislator, writer and physician.-Early life:...

    ; Wilhelm Loewe
    Wilhelm Loewe
    Wilhelm Loewe was a German physician and Liberal politician, also called Wilhelm Loewe-Kalbe or Wilhelm Loewe von Kalbe....

    , Gustav C. E. Weber
  • Poets: Konrad Krez; Edmund Märklin; Rudolf Puchner
  • Political activists: Lorenz Brentano
    Lorenzo Brentano
    Lorenzo Brentano was a journalist and a U.S. Representative from Illinois.-Biography:Born as Lorenz Peter Carl Brentano in Mannheim, Grand Duchy of Baden, Germany, Brentano received a thorough classical training and studied jurisprudence at the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg...

     (later a member of the Congress); Friedrich Hecker; Carl Schurz
    Carl Schurz
    Carl Christian Schurz was a German revolutionary, American statesman and reformer, and Union Army General in the American Civil War. He was also an accomplished journalist, newspaper editor and orator, who in 1869 became the first German-born American elected to the United States Senate.His wife,...

     (later US Secretary of the Interior); Gustav von Struve; Wilhelm Weitling
    Wilhelm Weitling
    Wilhelm Weitling was an important 19th-century European radical.Both praised and critiqued by disciples of the growing Marxist philosophy during the 19th century, Weitling was characterized as a "utopian socialist" by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, although Engels also referred to Weitling as the...

    ; Joseph Weydemeyer
    Joseph Weydemeyer
    Joseph Arnold Weydemeyer was a military officer in the Kingdom of Prussia and the United States, as well as a journalist, politician and Marxist revolutionary....

    ; Rudolf Dulon
    Rudolf Dulon
    Christoph Joseph Rudolf Dulon was a pastor of the Reformed Church and a socialist agitator in Bremen; later he was an educator in the United States.-Life in Germany:Dulon was descended from a Huguenot family...

    ; Edward Salomon
    Edward Salomon
    Edward Salomon was the eighth Governor of Wisconsin during the Civil War after the accidental drowning of his predecessor, Louis P. Harvey.Salomon was born in Ströbeck, Prussian Saxony...

    ; Louis F. Schade
    Louis F. Schade
    Louis F. Schade as a law student at the University of Berlin took part in the failed revolution of 1848. Sentenced to death for helping to erect barriers, he escaped from the Kingdom of Prussia...

  • Other: Margarethe Schurz
    Margarethe Schurz
    Margarethe Meyer-Schurz Margarethe Meyer-Schurz Margarethe Meyer-Schurz (born Margarethe Meyer; also called Margaretha Meyer-Schurz or just Margarethe Schurz; born 27 August 1833 in Hamburg; died 15 March 1876 opened the first German-language Kindergarten in the USA.- Life :...

     (founder of the first kindergarten
    Kindergarten
    A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...

     in the U.S.); Al Sieber
    Albert Sieber
    Albert Sieber was a German-American military figure, prospector, and Chief of Scouts during the Apache Wars.-Biography:...

     (known as "Chief of the Scouts" in Arizona, who fought at Antietam
    Battle of Antietam
    The Battle of Antietam , fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000...

    , Fredericksburg
    Battle of Fredericksburg
    The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, between General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside...

    , and Chancellorsville
    Battle of Chancellorsville
    The Battle of Chancellorsville was a major battle of the American Civil War, and the principal engagement of the Chancellorsville Campaign. It was fought from April 30 to May 6, 1863, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near the village of Chancellorsville. Two related battles were fought nearby on...

     with Hecker, Schurz, and Sigel, and then in the Battle of Gettysburg
    Battle of Gettysburg
    The Battle of Gettysburg , was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War, it is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac...

    ); Joseph Spiegel (founder of the Spiegel Catalog
    Spiegel catalog
    Spiegel is one of the USA's leading direct marketing companies. Spiegel began as a "wareroom" in downtown Chicago; it is a US$3 billion, international, tri-channel, specialty retailer....

    ); Hugo Wesendonck (founder of the Germania Life Insurance Company, now Guardian Life
    Guardian Life Insurance Company of America
    The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America is a Fortune 300 company founded in 1860 in New York, New York. It is the fourth largest mutual life insurance company in the United States.-Current business:...

    ); Pauline Wunderlich (fought at the Dresden barricades
    May Uprising in Dresden
    The May Uprising took place in Dresden, Germany in 1849; it was one of the last of the series of events known as the Revolutions of 1848.-Events leading to the May Uprising:...

    ); John Michael Maisch
    John Michael Maisch
    John Michael Maisch was a United States pharmacist, the "father of adequate pharmaceutical legislation."-Germany:...

     (father of adequate pharmaceutical legislation)

Notable Czech Forty-Eighters in the US

  • Prokup Hudek, one of the "Slavonic Artillerymen" of the 24th Illinois Infantry Regiment, and one of the co-founders of the Workingmen's Party of Illinois
  • František Korbel, winegrower in Sonoma County, California
  • Vojta Náprstek
    Vojta Náprstek
    Vojtěch Náprstek , was a Czech philanthropist, patriot and politician, as well as a pioneering Czech language journalist in the United States.- Background :...

    , Czech language publisher in Milwaukee
  • Hans Balatka, Moravian musician in Milwaukee and Chicago
    Chicago
    Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...


Notable Hungarian Forty-Eighters in the US

  • Alexander Sandor Asboth
  • Charles Zagonyi
    Charles Zagonyi
    Károly Zágonyi, known in the U.S as Charles Zagonyi, was a Hungarian military officer who served in the American Civil War as an aide to John C...

  • Julius Stahel
    Julius Stahel
    Julius H. Stahel-Számwald was a Hungarian soldier who emigrated to the United States and became a Union general in the American Civil War. After the war, he served as a U.S. diplomat, a mining engineer, and a life insurance company executive...

  • Albin Francisco Schoepf
    Albin Francisco Schoepf
    Albin Francisco Schoepf was an European-born military officer who became a Union brigadier general during the American Civil War, best known as the commanding officer of Fort Delaware, a wartime camp for Confederate prisoners of war.-Early life:Schoepf was born in Podgórze, Poland...

  • Phineas Mendel Heilprin
    Phineas Mendel Heilprin
    Phineas Mendel Heilprin was a Jewish scholar.-Biography:He early settled in Piotrków and subsequently in Tomaszów, where he became a manufacturer and merchant, but, in consequence of oppression by the Russian government, he removed in 1842 to Hungary...

  • Michael Heilprin
    Michael Heilprin
    Michael Heilprin was a Polish-American Jewish biblical scholar, critic, and writer, born at Piotrków, Russian Poland, to Jewish parents. His family was distinguished by its knowledge of Hebrew lore as far back as the sixteenth century. Michael Heilprin was a scholar who was familiar with more than...

  • Edward R. Straznicky
    Edward R. Straznicky
    Edward R. Straznicky was superintendent of the Astor Library 1872-1876.-Biography:He was educated at the University of Vienna, taking degrees in the departments of medicine and philosophy, and acquired by travel a familiar knowledge of modern languages...

  • Martin Koszta

Notable Irish Forty-Eighters in the US

  • Thomas Francis Meagher
    Thomas Francis Meagher
    -Young Ireland:Meagher returned to Ireland in 1843, with undecided plans for a career in the Austrian army, a tradition among a number of Irish families. In 1844 he traveled to Dublin with the intention of studying for the bar. He became involved in the Repeal Association, which worked for repeal...

  • John O'Mahony
    John O'Mahony
    John O'Mahony may refer to:*John O'Mahony , founder of the Irish Republican Brotherhood *John O'Mahony , Irish Fine Gael politician representing Mayo and twice an All-Ireland winner managing the Galway Football Team*Sean Matgamna , also known as John O'Mahony, Trotskyist theorist*Seán O'Mahony ,...

  • Lola Montez
    Lola Montez
    Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfeld , better known by the stage name Lola Montez, was an Irish dancer and actress who became famous as a "Spanish dancer", courtesan and mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who made her Countess of Landsfeld. She used her influence to institute liberal...

     (she fled from Bavaria
    Bavaria
    Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

     via Switzerland, France and England)

Forty-Eighters in England

Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini , nicknamed Soul of Italy, was an Italian politician, journalist and activist for the unification of Italy. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century...

 used London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 as a place of refuge before and after the revolutions of 1848.
In the early years after the failure of the revolutions of 1848, a group of German Forty-Eighters and others met in a salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...

 organized by Baroness Méry von Bruiningk in St. John's Wood, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The baroness was a Russian of German descent who was sympathetic with the goals of the revolutionaries. Among the people who attended her salon, hosted by herself and her husband Ludolf August von Bruiningk, were Carl Schurz
Carl Schurz
Carl Christian Schurz was a German revolutionary, American statesman and reformer, and Union Army General in the American Civil War. He was also an accomplished journalist, newspaper editor and orator, who in 1869 became the first German-born American elected to the United States Senate.His wife,...

, Gottfried
Gottfried Kinkel
Johann Gottfried Kinkel was a German poet also noted for his revolutionary activities and his escape from a Prussian prison in Spandau with the help of his friend Carl Schurz.-Early life:...

 and Johanna Kinkel
Johanna Kinkel
Johanna Kinkel was a German composer, writer, and revolutionary.Kinkel was born in Bonn. In 1840, after five months of unhappy marriage, she was divorced from the Cologne bookseller Matthieux. Her second marriage, in 1843, was to the German poet Gottfried Kinkel. They had four children...

, Ferdinand Freiligrath
Ferdinand Freiligrath
Ferdinand Freiligrath was a German poet, translator and liberal agitator.-Biography:Freiligrath was born in Detmold, Principality of Lippe. His father was a teacher. He left a Detmold gymnasium at 16 to be trained for a commercial career in Soest...

, Alexander Herzen
Alexander Herzen
Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen was a Russian pro-Western writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism", and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism...

, Louis Blanc
Louis Blanc
Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc was a French politician and historian. A socialist who favored reforms, he called for the creation of cooperatives in order to guarantee employment for the urban poor....

, Malwida von Meysenbug
Malwida von Meysenbug
Malwida von Meysenbug was a German writer, who was a friend of Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner. She also met the French writer Romain Rolland in Rome in 1890, and is the author of Memories of an Idealist. She published the first volume anonymously in 1869.Von Meysenbug was born at Kassel,...

, Adolf Strodtmann
Adolf Strodtmann
Adolf Heinrich Strodtmann was a German poet, journalist, translator and literary historian. He wrote an early biography of Heinrich Heine and emigrated to the United States for a time.-Biography:...

, Johannes and Bertha Ronge, Alexander Schimmelfennig
Alexander Schimmelfennig
Alexander Schimmelfennig was a German soldier and political revolutionary, and then an American Civil War general in the Union Army.-Early life and career:...

, Wilhelm Loewe-Kalbe and Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim
Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim
Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim was a German publicist and philosopher concerned with the ideas of liberalism, free trade and international law....

.

Carl Schurz reports “A large number of refugees from almost all parts of the European continent had gathered in London since the year 1848, but the intercourse between the different national groups — Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Russians — was confined more or less to the prominent personages. All, however, in common nourished the confident hope of a revolutionary upturning on the continent soon to come. Among the Germans there were only a few who shared this hope in a less degree. Perhaps the ablest and most important person among these was Lothar Bucher
Lothar Bucher
Lothar Bucher was a German publicist and trusted aide of German chancellor Otto von Bismarck.Bucher was born in Neustettin, Pomerania, his father being master at a gymnasium. After studying at the University of Berlin he adopted the legal profession...

, a quiet, retiring man of great capacity and acquirements, who occupied himself with serious political studies.”

Other Germans who fled to England for a time were Ludwig Bamberger
Ludwig Bamberger
Ludwig Bamberger was a German economist, politician and writer.-Early life:Bamberger was born in a Jewish family in Mainz.After studying at Gießen, Heidelberg and Göttingen, he entered law.-Career:...

,
Arnold Ruge
Arnold Ruge
Arnold Ruge was a German philosopher and political writer.-Studies in university and prison:Born in Bergen auf Rügen, he studied in Halle, Jena and Heidelberg. As an advocate of a free and united Germany he was jailed for five years in 1825 in the fortress of Kolberg, where he studied Plato and...

, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Franz Sigel
Franz Sigel
Franz Sigel was a German military officer, revolutionist and immigrant to the United States who was a teacher, newspaperman, politician, and served as a Union major general in the American Civil War.-Early life:...

.
Along with several of the above, Sabine Freitag also lists Gustav Adolf Techow, Eduard Meyen, Graf Oskar von Reichenbach, Josef Fickler and Amand Goegg. Karl Blind
Karl Blind
Karl Blind was a German revolutionist and journalist. He was born in Mannheim on 4 September 1826 and died in London on 31 May 1907.Blind took part in the risings of 1848. He was sentenced to prison in consequence of a pamphlet he wrote entitled "German Hunger and German Princes," but he was...

 became a writer in England.

Hungarian refugee Gustav Zerffi
Gustav Zerffi
George Gustav Zerffi, born with the surname Cerf or perhaps Hirsch was a Hungarian journalist, revolutionist and spy.-Biography:...

 became an English citizen and worked as a historian in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva was a Hungarian lawyer, journalist, politician and Regent-President of Hungary in 1849. He was widely honored during his lifetime, including in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a freedom fighter and bellwether of democracy in Europe.-Family:Lajos...

, a Hungarian revolutionary, toured England and then the United States, and then formed a government in exile in England.

Heligoland

In addition, the British possession of Heligoland
Heligoland
Heligoland is a small German archipelago in the North Sea.Formerly Danish and British possessions, the islands are located in the Heligoland Bight in the south-eastern corner of the North Sea...

 was a destination for refugees, for example Rudolf Dulon
Rudolf Dulon
Christoph Joseph Rudolf Dulon was a pastor of the Reformed Church and a socialist agitator in Bremen; later he was an educator in the United States.-Life in Germany:Dulon was descended from a Huguenot family...

.

Forty-Eighters in Holland

Ludwig Bamberger was in Holland for a time, as was Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim.

Forty-Eighters in France

Ludwig Bamberger settled in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 and worked in a bank from 1852 until the amnesty of 1866 allowed him to return to Germany. Carl Schurz was in France for a time before moving on to England. He stayed there with Adolf Strodtmann.

Forty-Eighters in Switzerland

The following were all refugees from Germany:
  • Friedrich Beust
    Friedrich Beust
    Friedrich Beust , German soldier and political activist and Swiss reform pedagogue, was the son of Prussian Major Karl Alexander von Beust. Beust was born in the Odenwald, in whose great forests, as a young man, he observed Nature in her large and small aspects and collected her creatures. He...

     settled in Switzerland
    Switzerland
    Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

     to work in early-childhood education. He lived and worked there until his death in 1899.
  • Gottfried Kinkel
    Gottfried Kinkel
    Johann Gottfried Kinkel was a German poet also noted for his revolutionary activities and his escape from a Prussian prison in Spandau with the help of his friend Carl Schurz.-Early life:...

     moved to Switzerland in 1866 after living in England. He was a professor of archaeology and the history of art at the Polytechnikum in Zürich
    Zürich
    Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

    , where he died sixteen years later.
  • Hermann Köchly
    Hermann Köchly
    Hermann Köchly was a German philologist and educational reformer.-Biography:He studied at Leipzig, taught at the Saalfeld Progymnasium and at the Dresden Kreuzschule...

     first fled to Brussels in 1849. In 1851, he was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Zürich. By 1864, he was back in Germany as a professor at the University of Heidelberg.
  • Richard Wagner
    Richard Wagner
    Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

    , the composer, first fled to Paris and then settled in Zurich. He eventually returned to Germany.

Forty-Eighters in Australia

In 1848, the first non-British ship carrying immigrants to arrive in Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

 was from Germany; the Goddefroy, on February 13. Many of those on board were political refugees. Some Germans also travelled to Australia via London.
  • In April 1849 the Beulah was the first ship to bring assisted German vinedresser families to NSW.
  • The second ship, the Parland left London on 13 March 1849, and arrived in Sydney on 5 July 1849
  • The Princess Louise left Hamburg March 26 of 1849, in the spring, bound for South Australia via Rio de Janeiro. The voyage took 135 days which was considered slow but nevertheless the Princess Louise berthed at Port Adelaide on August 7, 1849 with 161 emigres, including Johann Friedrich Mosel. Johann, born in 1827 in Berlin in the duchy of Brandenburg had taken three weeks to travel from his home to the departure point of the 350 tonne vessel at Hamburg. This voyage had been well planned by two of the founding passengers, brothers Richard and Otto Schomburgk who had been implicated in the revolution. Otto had been jailed in 1847 for his activities as a student revolutionary. The brothers along with others including Frau von Kreussler and D. Meucke formed a migration group, the South Australian Colonisation Society, one of many similar groups forming throughout Germany at the time. Sponsored by the scientist geologist Leopold von Buch, the society chartered the Princess Louise to sail to South Australia. The passengers were mainly middle-class professionals, academics, musicians, artists, architects, engineers, artisans and apprentices, and were among the core of liberal radicals, disillusioned with events in Germany.


Many Germans became vintner
Vintner
A vintner is a wine merchant. You pronounce it like this In some modern use, in particular in American English, the term is alsoused as a synonym for winemaker....

s or worked in the wine industry; others founded Lutheran churches. By 1860, for example, about 70 German families lived in Germantown, Victoria. (When World War I broke out, the town was renamed Grovedale.) In Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...

, a German Club was founded in 1854 which played a major role in society.

Notable Australian Forty-Eighters

  • Carl Linger
    Carl Linger
    Carl Linger was a German Australian composer who wrote the "Song of Australia". For his song he received a price of ten guineas.German-born intellectual Carl Linger, who had studied at the Institute of Music in Berlin, came to South Australia in 1849 on the Princess Luise. He settled in Gawler,...

    , the conductor and composer who wrote "Song of Australia"
  • Dr Moritz Richard Schomburgk
    Moritz Richard Schomburgk
    Moritz Richard Schomburgk was a German botanist.In 1844 he went on the Prussian-British expedition to Guyana and Brazil, led by his brother Robert. He collected for the Museum of the University of Berlin. After the political turmoil in Europe in 1848, he emigrated to Gawler, South Australia...

    , later director of the Adelaide Botanical Gardens
  • Hermann Büring, in the wine industry
  • Friedrich Krichauff, Chairman of the Agricultural Bureau

Peripatetic Forty-Eighters

  • Karl Hermann Berendt
    Karl Hermann Berendt
    Karl Hermann Berendt was a German-American physician, collector, explorer and investigator of Mesoamerican linguistics.-Biography:...

    , a German physician, emigrated to the United States
    United States
    The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

     and spent his time there and in Mesoamerica
    Mesoamerica
    Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...

     investigating Mayan linguistics
  • Ferenc Pulszky
    Ferenc Pulszky
    Ferenc Aurél Pulszky de Cselfalva et Lubócz was a Hungarian politician and writer.-Biography:He was born at Eperjes, now in Prešov in Slovakia. After studying law and philosophy at the high schools of his native town and Miskolc, he travelled abroad...

    , a Hungarian politician, who joined Kossuth on his tour of the United States and England, became involved in Italian revolutionary activities and was imprisoned, and then was pardoned and returned home in 1866

See also

  • German-American
  • German Australian
    German Australian
    German religious refugees represented the first major wave of German settlement in Australia, arriving in South Australia in 1838. Some were active as missionaries and explorers in Australia from early in the 19th century, and German prospectors were well-represented in the 1850s gold rushes...

  • Canadians of German descent
  • California Gold Rush#Forty-niners
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