Der Liberale Beobachter Und Berks, Montgomery Und Schuylkill Caunties Allgemeine Anzeiger (Reading, Pa.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
595 issues from 1839 to 1851, published in Reading, Pennsylvania, digitised for Chronicling America.
In September 1839, during the twilight of America’s Jacksonian period, Der Liberale Beobachter und Berks, Montgomery und Schuylkill Caunties allegemeine Anzeiger (“The Liberal Observer and General Gazette of Berks, Montgomery and Schuylkill Counties”) entered an already crowded field of weeklies in Reading, Pennsylvania. The town’s four other newspapers – two in German and two in English – all reflected Berks County’s Democratic political bent, so the new publication gave a dissenting view as the area’s first Whig newspaper.
During its quarter-century run, the Liberale Beobachter closely reflected the views of German immigrant Arnold Puwelle, its founder, publisher, and editor. Puwelle was born in Prussia’s Westphalia province in 1809 and came to America in the 1830s. He worked as a stone mason in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, but also dabbled in newspaper publishing, running the weekly Freiheits Waechter (“Freedom Watcher”) in Skippacksville for three years before moving to Reading and establishing the Liberale Beobachter. The circulation of the paper centered in Berks County but also included the German-dominated areas of southern Schuylkill County and northern Montgomery County. Pennsylvania’s third most populous county during this era, Berks had the commonwealth’s highest proportion of German-speaking people and was arguably the epicenter of the Pennsylvania German culture at this time.
In its first issue, the editorial stance of the Liberale Beobachter was made…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Reading, Pennsylvania, 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