Baltimore Wecker (Baltimore [Md.])
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
2,500 issues from 1856 to 1867, published in Baltimore, Maryland, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Baltimore Wecker was one of three major German language newspapers in Baltimore, Maryland that flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was the most radical of its rivals, founded and edited by former German revolutionaries exiled after the failed uprisings of 1848. Its first publisher was Carl Heinrich Schnauffer, an experienced newspaper editor from Mannheim who found Baltimore’s large German immigrant population receptive to his socialist-leaning political philosophy when he commenced operations in 1851. He opposed slavery and this editorial position was continued after Schnauffer’s death in 1854 by editor and fellow 1848 revolutionary, Wilhelm Rapp. Rapp had worked for newspapers in both Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Cincinnati, Ohio before coming to Baltimore, where he aligned the Wecker to the new Republican Party. This did not sit well with conservative leaders in Baltimore and their allies among the rioters, who attacked Union troops passing through the city in April 1861. The Wecker’s offices and its workers on North Frederick Street were threatened with mob violence until the military occupation of the city made it safe to resume operations. Rapp moved to Chicago in 1861, where he edited that city’s Tägliche Illinois Staats-Zeitung newspaper. He returned to Baltimore to edit the renamed Täglicher Baltimore Wecker from 1867 to 1872 before resuming his position at the Illinois Staats-zeitung in Chicago until his death in 1907.
Carl H.…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Baltimore, Maryland, United States
- Language
- German
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress