Illinois Staats-Zeitung (Chicago, Ill.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,812 issues from 1863 to 1899, published in Chicago, Illinois, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Illinois Staats-Zeitung (ISZ) was a German-language immigrant newspaper that existed in various formats from 1848-1922. At first a weekly paper, it added a daily run (except Sunday) beginning in 1851, and it published a daily evening edition, the Abendblatt der Illinois Staats-zeitung 1891-1894 and Abendblatt from 1894-1899. The paper was founded by Forty-Eighters: progressive revolutionaries who were forced to flee Germany and seek refuge elsewhere—including Chicago, where they quickly became the largest ethnic group. Forty-Eighters such as Editor Georg Schneider brought modern values to the paper, arguing against slavery, anti-immigrant discrimination, and liquor regulations. When the Republican Party was formed in 1854, the ISZ became a firm supporter, and “the leading Republican paper of the Northwest.” Even though most German immigrants at the time were Democrats, the ISZ grew rapidly, and within a decade, it became the biggest German-language paper west of New York.
Anton C. Hesing bought the paper in 1867. He brought Hermann Raster, a well-known correspondent from the New Yorker Abend-Zeitung, aboard as editor, and the two of them began an effort to use the ISZ to convince German Americans to support Republicans. The pair became major players in the Illinois Republican Party, especially Hesing, who acted as the political boss for Chicago Germans from the 1860s to 1875. The first German to hold elected office in Illinois, Hesing leveraged his power to put Germans…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Chicago, Illinois, 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