Wisconsin and the 1848 Revolutions in Europe

In a recent post ("Mideast: Resource Round-Up") the Lynx strongly recommended Ann Applebaum’s article suggesting that the current wave of upheavals in the Arab world is more like the revolutions in Europe in 1848 than any other era of unrest. For teachers this is potentially a "double-duty" article because there is also a link between Wisconsin in 2010 and Europe in 1848.

This connection is not simply comparative or inferential. It is real and indisputable because the historical chain begins with real people, mostly Germans, who participated the 1848 revolutions and then emigrated to America. Those who settled in Wisconsin, and in Milwaukee in particular, brought their ideas and ideals with them–their brains weren’t empty suitcases!

In Germans in Wisconsin, Richard Zeitlin explains that German immigration to Wisconsin occurred in three waves. The first wave included some farmers and artisans, but it was the Forty-Eighters who passed on a special legacy–for among them were a large number of "intellectuals, radicals, religious dissidents, advocates of Free Thought, and reformers of all kinds" (1) These free-thinkers dominated Milwaukee’s cultural and intellectual life for more than a generation, turning the city into the "German Athens" of America (2). The result was an intellectual infusion that is still detectable today. Fortunately, if you want to read more about this topic, Hani Holzman’s thesis, "The German Forty-Eighters and the Socialists in Milwaukee: A Social Psychological Study of Assimilation" is available online (3).

For the general context in which the ideas of European revolutionaries took root in Wisconsin--where they contributed one way or another to the Republican Party, the Progressive movement, and Milwaukee’s "Sewer Socialism" see the Turning Points page of the Wisconsin Historical Society web site. These are short articles, handy as references or for reading in class, but each has an ample collection of printable primary sources. While not focusing on the Forty-Eighters, they sum up Wisconsin’s labor history and progressive political tradition:

• 19th-Century Immigration http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-018/?action=more_essay
• Wisconsin and the Republican Party http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-022/?action=more_essay
• Progressivism and the Wisconsin Idea http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-036/?action=more_essay
• The Birth of the Labor Movement http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-030/?action=more_essay
• Milwaukee Sewer Socialism http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-043/?action=more_essay

　
For links to episodes in Wisconsin labor history and other protests see articles posted on the "Odd Wisconsin Archives" (http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/

• "Striking Out"  http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/001946.asp
• "The Ghosts of Protests Past." http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/004468.asp

　
Carl Schurz

On the national stage the most famous Forty-Eighter was Carl Schurz, whose Wisconsin connection is well-known to teachers and students in Wisconsin. In 1848 he was just 19 years old, a student in Bonn, when he joined a German revolutionary movement. In his Reminiscences Carl recalled the exhilaration that overtook him when he learned, in February 1848, that the French had toppled Louis Philippe (4). An excerpt is part of Internet Modern History Source Book. This primary source fits the life history approach as it illustrates so well how a young man became caught up in events.

In 1848 German was a collection of principalities and states. Carl’s group of revolutionaries had as their primary goal a unified nation-state. Their actions resulted in the detention of Carl’s teacher and mentor, Gottfried Kinkel. Though Carl and his friends managed to rescue Kinkel, the movement’s defeat forced them into exile. Among Carl’s fellow revolutionaries was Fritz Anneke, who would emigrate to Wisconsin with his wife Mathilde and settle in Milwaukee. Mathilde Anneke is revered in Wisconsin as one of the state’s foremost feminists (5).

Carl Schurz,accompanied by his wife, arrived in New York City in 1852. By 1855 they had moved to Wisconsin, where they lived in Watertown. Finding a political home in the newly formed Republican party, Schurz went on to campaign for Lincoln in several states and briefly served the Lincoln administration as envoy to Spain. During the Civil War, as Brigadier General Schurz, he was charged with leading a cohort of the Army of the Potomoc’s German-speaking troops (6). After the war he turned to journalism. A decision to become part owner of a German-language newspaper in St. Louis brought him to Missouri. In 1869 he was elected U.S. Senator from that state. Later he served in the administation of President Rutherford B. Hayes.

During the years that Carl and Margarethe lived in Watertown, she opened the first kindergarten in America (7). In school, of course, we heard much more about Margarethe’s kindergarten than we ever learned about Carl’s reformist and liberal (in the 19^th century sense) ideas. (DISCLOSURE: I attended Watertown High School, where social studies teachers in the 1960s were very circumspect about their political views.)

So let me insert here a plea for teaching more Wisconsin history in the state’s US history classrooms. We now have a fine new textbook for teaching state history in fourth grade but that’s insufficient. Students need exposure to state history as part of national and world history; they need to re-study it when they are old enough to handle topics too abstract or complicated for fourth graders. I’m sure a few teachers are doing this already, but whenever I’ve voiced this concern most people agree--more needs to be done.

Resources for Carl Schurz

Mesaros, Glenn. "Carl Schurz, German American." This biographical sketch is fairly detailed. It is followed by a noteworthy set of links to local newspapers and excerpts from the New York Times (1861) and Watertown Daily Times (2001). http://www.watertownhistory.org/Articles/CarlSchurz.htm
　
Brief biographies of Carl and Margarethe Schurz are part of the "Dictionary of Wisconsin History" and from "Carl Schurz you can access a description of the Carl Schurz papers. Click on "Browse People" at http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/index.asp?action=browse&term_type_id=1&term_type_text=People

Read more about Carl Schurz in Wisconsin Magazine of History articles available on the Wisconsin Historical Society site. Perhaps the best item is the translation of a diary Schurz kept as a young revolutionary (a great primary source for European and world history).

To print these, find the left column where it is says "view: document description" and change this to "view: complete print version" and click on GO (this brings up a PDF file).

1) Schurz, Carl. "The Surrender of Ratstatt." Wisconsin Magazine of History 12 (March 1920): 239-70. http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/wmh&CISOPTR=6585&CISOSHOW=6475&REC=4

• ARTICLE ABSTRACT (WHS): This diary was kept by Carl Schurz (1829-1906) during the climactic events of the German Revolution of 1848-49. Across the German states in 1848, large numbers of citizens demanded freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and an elected parliament. Leaders and participants in the democratic movement, if caught, were executed or sentenced to long prison terms; many fled to the U.S., where they were known as "Forty-eighters." A short-lived democracy centered in Frankfort was easily overthrown by the armies of Austria and Prussia. When soldiers in Baden mutinied rather than suppress the movement, they were quickly crushed by the Prussian army in May of 1849 at Rastatt. Schurz was on the barricades at Rastatt, where he kept this personal account. It was unearthed in Germany in 1928 by Wisconsin Historical Society director Joseph Schafer and first translated here.

2) Fish, Carl Russell. "Carl Schurz–The American." Wisconsin Magaine of History 12 (June 1929): 345-58.
http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/wmh&CISOPTR=6720&CISOSHOW=6590&REC=8

3) Schafer, Joseph. "Carl Schurz, Immigrant Statesman." Wisconsin Magazine of History 11 (June 1928): 373-94.  http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/wmh&CISOPTR=6331&CISOSHOW=6203&REC=9
　
Trefousse, Hans Louis. Carl Schurz, a Biography. 2^nd edition. Fordham University Press, 1998 (1^st edition 1982). Also at Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Xh88sn29RVwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=carl+schurz&ots=y9zuezPpZw&sig=A1C89MEkiByA_mRg9xK7adEcHiw#v=onepage&q&f=false

"Carl Schurz." Wikipedia. See for much detailed information and citations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schurz

For access to additional online material consult "Google: Timeline Results for CarlSchurz." http://www.google.com/#q=carl+schurz&hl=en&prmd=ivnsbo&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=buBnTYOdF8H38Ab5z_GsCw&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=17&ved=0CHcQ5wIwEA&bav=on.1,or.&fp=42ea6e12edc6080
　

Notes

1) Richard H. Zeitlin, Germans in Wisconsin. Revised and Expanded Edition (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 2000), pp. 6-7. Later waves were dominated by farmers and laborers displaced by industrialization.

2) For Germans in Milwaukee, see John Gurda, The Making of Milwaukee (Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Historical Society, 1999), especially Chapter 3 (for the Forty-Eighters, pp. 62-63, 96). For Milwaukee’s labor history (to which Poles and other immigrants made significant contribution), see Chapter 5. For Milwaukee socialism, see Chapter 6.

3) Hani M. Holtzman, M.A. Thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1948. URL: http://minds.wiconsin.edu/handle/1793/7106?show=full

4) Schurz, Carl. Reminiscences. New York: Doubleday, 1908. The excerpt is from Vol. I, pp. 112-14, 116-17. URL: http://www.fordahma.edu/halsall/mod/1848schurz.html

5) "Carl Schurz" in Wikpedia. For brief biographies of Fritz and Mathilde Anneke, use the "Dictionary of Wisconsin History" (click on "Browse People"). http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/index.asp?action=browse&term_type_id=1&term_type_text=People. See also Gurda (note 2).

6) Glenn Mesaros. He the fascinating detail that the officers of General Fremont’s corps, to which these troops were attached, wore Hungarian Forty-Eighters. To expand the Forty-Eighters in America theme, you might begin with Wikipedia’s "Forty-Eighters" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-Eighters)

7) Whether this was actually the nation's first kindergarten is sometimes disputed. The people of Watertown and nearby localities, however, proudly make this claim.