Johan Stallo
Encyclopedia
John Bernhard Stallo (Sierhausen, March 16, 1823 – Florence, January 6, 1900) was a German-American academic, jurist, philosopher, and ambassador.
in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg
(Germany) on March 16, 1823, the son of a schoolmaster, Johann Heinrich Stallo (1797–1840) and his wife, Anna Maria Adelheid Moormann (1798–1861). Stallo studied at home and at a free, Catholic normal school at Vechta
. Because the family lacked the funds to send him to a Gymnasium (secondary school), Stallo emigrated to the United States in 1839, establishing himself in Cincinnati, Ohio
, not far from his uncle, the Utopian socialist, Franz Joseph Stallo,http://www.honkomp.de/damme-auswanderung/chapter2.htm, where many other family members would settle.
Stallo taught German and Mathematics at the newly renamed St. Xavier College
http://www.xu.edu/ (formerly a Jesuit "lyceum" called "The Atheneum") from 1841-1844. He published his first book, ABC, Spelling and Reading Book, for the German Schools of America, which apparently sold very well. He then taught mathematics and science at another Jesuit institution, St. John's College (founded in 1841, now Fordham University
http://www.fordham.edu/ and not to be confused with St. John's University, New York, founded in 1870) in Fordham, New York from 1844 to 1848. At St. John's, Stallo wrote his first major work, General Principles of the Philosophy of Nature (1848). This book, which he later dismissed as 'youthful', was apparently a restatement of Hegel's philosophy of nature.
Stallo married Helena Zimmerman of Cincinnati in 1850, with whom he had ten children, five of them surviving childhood.
) (1852–1855). He was active in politics and was later known as one of the "Ohio Hegelians",http://www.thoemmes.com/american/ohio_hegel.htm who included August Willich
, Moncure Daniel Conway
and Peter Kaufmann.
A Democrat for many years, Stallo broke with this party over slavery, and supported Abraham Lincoln
and the new Republican Party
during the American Civil War
. He helped organize the "Stallo Regiment" from the German-American community. Stallo's becoming a Republican was all the more surprising because few Catholics did so in the 1850s. Stallo however was a fairly Liberal Catholic and at times has been described as a free thinker. He represented the trustees of Holy Trinity Church in their struggle to maintain control of the Church against the attempt by the Archbishop of Cincinnati
to establish the Roman Catholic Canon law method of having all diocese properties held by the bishop.
(later governor of Ohio) and Thomas Stanley Matthews
(later an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court). Stallo closed his argument by saying
"The spires will point to the heaven, the unmuffled church bells will speak of God, as before; the ‘free Bible’ will have free sway, but in a free State, in free churches or religious schools, by the
side of free secular schools. And I hope my friend will not regard it as a calamity if the son of a Presbyterian or Methodist, after his intercourse with the child of a Jew, Catholic, or unbeliever, should turn to the Scriptures with the feeling that the truth is broader than the leaves of any book…"(Brumberg,2003)
The Board nevertheless lost in a two-to-one vote of the Superior Court and was injoined from enforcing its vote on Bible reading. Stallo's arguments on appeal to the Ohio Supreme Course led to a unanimous reversal of the lower court and reinstatement of the ban on Bible-reading, in 1872.
movement of 1872. He was rewarded for his support of the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland
, in 1884, by appointment as Ambassador (`Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary') to Italy (1885–1889).http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/po/com/10888.htm According to Andrew Dickson White
(Autobiography), Stallo was an exemplary diplomat:
'I was most pleased with the tribute ...[ Ubaldino Peruzzi
].. paid to the American minister at Rome, Judge Stallo of Cincinnati. He declared that at a recent conference of statesmen
and diplomatists, Judge Stallo had carried off all the honors—speaking with ease, as might be necessary, in Italian, French, and English, and finally drawing up a protocol in Latin.'
After Cleveland lost his first re-election campaign to Benjamin Harrison
in 1888, Stallo retired to Florence
, Italy and there assembled a collection of his essays written in German, Reden, Abhandlungen und Briefe. Stallo died in Florence, January 6, 1900.
http://www.enscp.fr/expo/friedel.html.http://www.annales.org/archives/x/cfriedel.html Among many others, the second edition was read by Bertrand Russell
http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/514_10.html, who awarded it three footnotes in his An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897).http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/b/bib/bibperm?q1=ABR3016.0001.001 Russell’s footnotes brought Stallo to the attention of the German physicist Ernst Mach
, who saw in Stallo a kindred philosophical and scientific spirit. Mach initiated a correspondence with Stallo, cut short by the latter's death, whereupon Mach arranged for a German translation by Hans Kleinpeter, to which Mach contributed a foreword. Die Begriffe und Theorien der Modernen Physik was published in 1901 (Barth, Leipzig) and re-issued in 1911 with a short new foreword by Kleinpeter. This translation introduced Stallo to a German audience and helped establish The Concepts as an important contribution to the philosophy of physics. A modern American edition, based on the 1888 edition, was edited by the American physicist and father of "operationalism", Percy Williams Bridgman
(Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1960).
Early life
Stallo was born in SierhausenDamme, Germany
Damme is a town in the district of Vechta, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approx. 25 km south of Vechta, and 36 km northeast of Osnabrück.-References:...
in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg
Oldenburg (state)
Oldenburg — named after its capital, the town of Oldenburg — was a state in the north of present-day Germany. Oldenburg survived from 1180 until 1918 as a county, duchy and grand duchy, and from 1918 until 1946 as a free state. It was located near the mouth of the River Weser...
(Germany) on March 16, 1823, the son of a schoolmaster, Johann Heinrich Stallo (1797–1840) and his wife, Anna Maria Adelheid Moormann (1798–1861). Stallo studied at home and at a free, Catholic normal school at Vechta
Vechta
Vechta with a population of nearly 32,000 is the biggest city and also the capital of the Vechta district in Lower Saxony, Germany.It's well known all around Europe for the 'Stoppelmarkt' fair, which occurs every summer and has a history dating back to 1298....
. Because the family lacked the funds to send him to a Gymnasium (secondary school), Stallo emigrated to the United States in 1839, establishing himself in Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
, not far from his uncle, the Utopian socialist, Franz Joseph Stallo,http://www.honkomp.de/damme-auswanderung/chapter2.htm, where many other family members would settle.
Stallo taught German and Mathematics at the newly renamed St. Xavier College
Xavier University (Cincinnati)
Xavier University is a co-educational Jesuit university in the United States located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The University is the sixth-oldest Catholic university in the nation and has an undergraduate enrollment of about 4,000 students and graduate enrollment of 2,600 students. Xavier is primarily...
http://www.xu.edu/ (formerly a Jesuit "lyceum" called "The Atheneum") from 1841-1844. He published his first book, ABC, Spelling and Reading Book, for the German Schools of America, which apparently sold very well. He then taught mathematics and science at another Jesuit institution, St. John's College (founded in 1841, now Fordham University
Fordham University
Fordham University is a private, nonprofit, coeducational research university in the United States, with three campuses in and around New York City. It was founded by the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York in 1841 as St...
http://www.fordham.edu/ and not to be confused with St. John's University, New York, founded in 1870) in Fordham, New York from 1844 to 1848. At St. John's, Stallo wrote his first major work, General Principles of the Philosophy of Nature (1848). This book, which he later dismissed as 'youthful', was apparently a restatement of Hegel's philosophy of nature.
Stallo married Helena Zimmerman of Cincinnati in 1850, with whom he had ten children, five of them surviving childhood.
Politics and Law
Stallo returned to Cincinnati and was there admitted to the bar in 1849, practicing law (in the firm of Stallo and Kittridge) except for a brief stint as judge of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas (in Ohio, a "trial court of general jurisdiction", according to Black's Law DictionaryBlack's Law Dictionary
Black's Law Dictionary is the most widely used law dictionary in the United States. It was founded by Henry Campbell Black. It is the reference of choice for definitions in legal briefs and court opinions and has been cited as a secondary legal authority in many U.S...
) (1852–1855). He was active in politics and was later known as one of the "Ohio Hegelians",http://www.thoemmes.com/american/ohio_hegel.htm who included 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...
, Moncure Daniel Conway
Moncure Daniel Conway
Moncure Daniel Conway was an American abolitionist, Unitarian clergyman, and author.-Early life and education:Conway was born of an old Virginia family in Falmouth, Stafford County...
and Peter Kaufmann.
A Democrat for many years, Stallo broke with this party over slavery, and supported Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
and the new Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
during 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...
. He helped organize the "Stallo Regiment" from the German-American community. Stallo's becoming a Republican was all the more surprising because few Catholics did so in the 1850s. Stallo however was a fairly Liberal Catholic and at times has been described as a free thinker. He represented the trustees of Holy Trinity Church in their struggle to maintain control of the Church against the attempt by the Archbishop of Cincinnati
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati covers the southwest region of the U.S. state of Ohio, including the greater Cincinnati and Dayton metropolitan areas. The Archbishop of Cincinnati is Most Rev...
to establish the Roman Catholic Canon law method of having all diocese properties held by the bishop.
The Cincinnati Bible War
Stallo argued a famous and successful case favoring separation of church and state in the Ohio public schools. In late 1869, a newly-elected Cincinnati School Board decided to ban hymn-singing and Bible reading in the city's public schools. A conservative group brought suit against the Board to block the ban. Defended by a blue-ribbon defense team comprised by Stallo, George HoadlyGeorge Hoadly
George Hoadly was a Democratic politician. He served as the 36th Governor of Ohio.Hoadly was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on July 31, 1826...
(later governor of Ohio) and Thomas Stanley Matthews
Thomas Stanley Matthews
Thomas Stanley Matthews , known as Stanley Matthews, was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from May 1881 to his death in 1889. Matthews was the Court's 46th justice...
(later an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court). Stallo closed his argument by saying
"The spires will point to the heaven, the unmuffled church bells will speak of God, as before; the ‘free Bible’ will have free sway, but in a free State, in free churches or religious schools, by the
side of free secular schools. And I hope my friend will not regard it as a calamity if the son of a Presbyterian or Methodist, after his intercourse with the child of a Jew, Catholic, or unbeliever, should turn to the Scriptures with the feeling that the truth is broader than the leaves of any book…"(Brumberg,2003)
The Board nevertheless lost in a two-to-one vote of the Superior Court and was injoined from enforcing its vote on Bible reading. Stallo's arguments on appeal to the Ohio Supreme Course led to a unanimous reversal of the lower court and reinstatement of the ban on Bible-reading, in 1872.
Later political life
He took part in the Liberal RepublicanLiberal Republican Party (United States)
The Liberal Republican Party of the United States was a political party that was organized in Cincinnati in May 1872, to oppose the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant and his Radical Republican supporters. The party's candidate in that year's presidential election was Horace Greeley, longtime...
movement of 1872. He was rewarded for his support of the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...
, in 1884, by appointment as Ambassador (`Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary') to Italy (1885–1889).http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/po/com/10888.htm According to Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, who was the co-founder of Cornell University.-Family and personal life:...
(Autobiography), Stallo was an exemplary diplomat:
'I was most pleased with the tribute ...[ Ubaldino Peruzzi
Peruzzi
The Peruzzi were bankers of Florence, among the leading families of the city in the 14th century, before the rise to prominence of the Medici. Their modest antecedents stretched back to the mid 11th century, according to the family's genealogist Luigi Passerini, but a restructuring of the Peruzzii...
].. paid to the American minister at Rome, Judge Stallo of Cincinnati. He declared that at a recent conference of statesmen
and diplomatists, Judge Stallo had carried off all the honors—speaking with ease, as might be necessary, in Italian, French, and English, and finally drawing up a protocol in Latin.'
After Cleveland lost his first re-election campaign to Benjamin Harrison
Benjamin Harrison
Benjamin Harrison was the 23rd President of the United States . Harrison, a grandson of President William Henry Harrison, was born in North Bend, Ohio, and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana at age 21, eventually becoming a prominent politician there...
in 1888, Stallo retired to Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, Italy and there assembled a collection of his essays written in German, Reden, Abhandlungen und Briefe. Stallo died in Florence, January 6, 1900.
The Concepts of Modern Physics
During the post-war period Stallo wrote his most famous work, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics, first published in 1882. The Concepts deals with the role of 'concepts' in physical theory, arguing that they must be treated as provisional and warning of the mental traps of mistaking concepts for facts; this book represents an early example of the modern philosophy of science. It went through three American editions in Stallo's lifetime, which were simultaneously published in England. A French translation http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-90126 was issued in 1884, with a foreword by Charles FriedelCharles Friedel
Charles Friedel was a French chemist and mineralogist. A native of Strasbourg, France, he was a student of Louis Pasteur at the Sorbonne...
http://www.enscp.fr/expo/friedel.html.http://www.annales.org/archives/x/cfriedel.html Among many others, the second edition was read by Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/514_10.html, who awarded it three footnotes in his An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897).http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/b/bib/bibperm?q1=ABR3016.0001.001 Russell’s footnotes brought Stallo to the attention of the German physicist Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves...
, who saw in Stallo a kindred philosophical and scientific spirit. Mach initiated a correspondence with Stallo, cut short by the latter's death, whereupon Mach arranged for a German translation by Hans Kleinpeter, to which Mach contributed a foreword. Die Begriffe und Theorien der Modernen Physik was published in 1901 (Barth, Leipzig) and re-issued in 1911 with a short new foreword by Kleinpeter. This translation introduced Stallo to a German audience and helped establish The Concepts as an important contribution to the philosophy of physics. A modern American edition, based on the 1888 edition, was edited by the American physicist and father of "operationalism", Percy Williams Bridgman
Percy Williams Bridgman
Percy Williams Bridgman was an American physicist who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures. He also wrote extensively on the scientific method and on other aspects of the philosophy of science.- Biography :Bridgman entered Harvard University in 1900,...
(Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1960).
Works
- General Principles of the Philosophy of Nature, with an Outline of Some of Its Recent Developments Among the Germans, Embracing the Philosophical Systems of Schelling and Hegel, and Oken's System of Nature. Boston: W. Crosby and H.P. Nichols, 1848. "General Principles" was received with great interest by the New England Transcendentalists, in particular Ralph Waldo Emerson, who referred to Stallo's book in his journals. Of interest was Stallo's argument that thought was fundamentally identical with the universe. The book was reviewed in the Massachusetts Quarterly by Theodore ParkerTheodore ParkerTheodore Parker was an American Transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church...
, who called it "a grand solid book." http://books.google.com/books?id=d4oOAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=stallo+general+principles&source=bl&ots=QgU4nhFc8b&sig=2iub7EmrJbmCqSg_jm3wPlZdD0E&hl=en&ei=nkqgS7L5HYnaNsSDjNEM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false - Reply to Prof. O.A. Brownson's lecture on non-intervention, before the Mercantile Library Association of Cincinnati. A lecture delivered in Smith & Nixon's Hall, Cincinnati, February 20, 1852 Cincinnati, Pub. for the Committee, by C.A. Morgan & Co., 1852. Refers to Orestes Augustus BrownsonOrestes BrownsonOrestes Augustus Brownson was a New England intellectual and activist, preacher, labor organizer, and noted Catholic convert and writer...
(1803–1876) on the uprising in HungaryHungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
in (1848–1849). - Thomas Jefferson Cincinnati, O. : Gedruckt in der Offizin des "Pionier", 1855.
- Alexander von HumboldtAlexander von HumboldtFriedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt...
: eine Gedächtnissrede Cincinnati : Theobald und Theurkauf, 1859. - Minor, John D., and others. The Bible in the public schools, pp. 420. Clarke : Cincinnati, 1870. Contains the opinions and decisions of the superior court of Cincinnati, with the arguments of George Hoadley, Rufus King, Stanley Matthews, George R. Sage, William M. Ramsey, and J. B. Stallo. Cited by Monroe Bibliography of Educationhttp://www.archive.org/details/bibliographyofed00monruoft
- The secularization of public education. Cincinnati: R. Clarke, 1870 Cited in Will Seymour Monroe Bibliography of Education , p. 134.http://books.google.com/books?id=QpcpWq3zjdAC&pg=PA134
- State Creeds and Their Modern Apostles. A Lecture Delivered in Rev. Mr. Vickers' Church, Cincinnati, on the Evening of April 3, 1870. Cincinnati: R. Clarke 1872. (Rev. Thomas Vickers, Pres., Univ. Cincinnati, 1877-1884http://www.uc.edu/president/vickers.html)
- The Primary Concepts of Modern Physical Science.
-
- The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics. New York and London, 1882; 2nd ed. 1884;http://books.google.com/books?id=MMsEAAAAYAAJ 3rd ed. 1888; Cambridge, Mass., 1960.
- Reden, Abhandlungen und Briefe. New York: E. Staiger, 1893.http://details.archive.org/redenabhandlunge00staluoft/