RAMSEY COUNTY Minnesota’s German Forty-eighter Albert Wolff: Brilliant Career, Tragic Death LaVern J. Rippley A Publication of the Ramsey County Historical Society Hıstory —Page 12 Spring 2016 Volume 51, Number 1 “Brighter and Better for Every Person”: Building the New Salvation Army Rescue Home of St. Paul, 1913 Kim Heikkila, page 3 “Children of the Home.” This large portrait of twelve children is from the Salvation Army Rescue Home and Maternity Hospital annual report for the year ending September 30, 1916. The home, located on Como Avenue in St. Paul, cared for 207 children that year, 109 of whom had been born in the home. The inset photo is Adjutant True Earle, superintendent of the Home from 1913 to 1918. Photo courtesy of The Salvation Army USA Central Territory Historical Museum. RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY RAMSEY COUNTY President Chad Roberts Founding Editor (1964–2006) Virginia Brainard Kunz Editor Hıstory John M. Lindley Volume 51, Number 1 Spring 2016 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY THE MISSION STATEMENT OF THE RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS ADOPTED BY THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS ON JANUARY 25, 2016: James Miller Preserving our past, informing our present, inspiring our future Chair Jo Anne Driscoll First Vice Chair Carl Kuhrmeyer C O N T E N T S Second Vice Chair Susan McNeely 3 “Brighter and Better for Every Person”: Secretary Building the New Salvation Army Rescue Home Kenneth H. Johnson Kim Heikkila Treasurer William B. Frels 12 Minnesota’s German Forty-eighter Immediate Past Chair Albert Wolff: Brilliant Career, Tragic Death Julie Brady, Anne Cowie, Cheryl Dickson, Mari Oyanagi Eggum, Thomas Fabel, LaVern J. Rippley Martin Fallon, John Guthmann, Richard B. Heydinger, Jr., Sandy Kiernat, Judy Kishel, 18 Carl Florin, Ray Florén, David Kristal, Father Kevin M. McDonough, and Eleven Houses near Hamline University Nancy W. McKillips, Lisa Dickinson Michaux, Jonathan H. Morgan, Robert Muschewske, Barbro Sollbe and Ann Thorson Walton Chad Roberts, James A. Stolpestad, Ralph Thrane, Susan Vento, Jerry Woefel. 24 Book Reviews EDITORIAL BOARD Publication of Ramsey County History is supported in part by a gift from Anne Cowie, chair, James B. Bell, Thomas H. Clara M. Claussen and Frieda H. Claussen in memory of Henry H. Cowie Jr. Boyd, John Diers, Martin Fallon, John Guthmann, and by a contribution from the late Reuel D. Harmon James Miller, John Milton, Laurie M. Murphy, Robert Muschewske, Paul D. Nelson, Jay Pfaender, David Riehle, Chad Roberts, Steve Trimble, Mary Lethert Wingerd. A Message from the Editorial Board HONORARY ADVISORY BOARD William Fallon, William Finney, George Latimer, Joseph S. Micallef, Marvin J. Pertzik, uildings often tell stories. Historian Kim Heikkila shares the story behind the James Reagan. Bdrive to build the Salvation Army Rescue Home on Como Avenue, which was RAMSEY COUNTY COMMISSIONERS led by Adjutant True Earle and businessmen Joseph and William Elsinger. Designed Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt, chair by Clarence Johnston, the Home served many young women and their newborn chil- Commissioner Toni Carter Commissioner Blake Huffman dren as part of the Salvation Army’s outreach programs. Not far away from Como Commissioner Jim McDonough Avenue, near Hamline University, sit eleven houses constructed by a Swedish contrac- Commissioner Mary Jo McGuire Commissioner Rafael Ortega tor, Carl Florin, or his brothers, John and Gustav, all of whom lived in St. Paul in the Commissioner Janice Rettman early 1900s. Authors Barbro Sollbe and Ann Thorson Walton give us a rare look into Julie Kleinschmidt, manager, the family who constructed middle-class homes of that era in the popular bungalow Ramsey County style. Records from the St. Paul Building Permits Collection, available in the RCHS Ramsey County History is published quarterly by the Ramsey County Historical Society, 323 Research Center, helped with this article. This issue also contains a biographical profile Landmark Center, 75 W. Fifth Street, St. Paul, MN of Albert Wolff, a journalist with training in theology who came to St. Paul to escape 55102 (651-222-0701). Printed in U.S.A. Copy- right © 2016, Ram sey County His torical So ciety. the strife of 1848 in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. According to author LaVern ISSN Number 0485-9758. All rights reserved. Rippley, Wolff founded German-language newspapers in New Ulm, Chaska, and St. No part of this publication may be reprinted or otherwise reproduced without written Paul, encouraged emigrants to move to Minnesota for new lives in our invigorating permission from the publisher. The Society climate, and supported Abraham Lincoln’s Union. assumes no responsibility for statements made by contributors. Fax 651-223-8539; e-mail address: Anne Cowie [email protected]; web site address: www.rchs.com Chair, Editorial Board 2 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Minnesota’s German Forty-eighter Albert Wolff: Brilliant Career, Tragic Death LaVern J. Rippley lbert Wolff, an immigrant Forty-eighter and the founder and editor of viduals he studied. The highest count were various German-language newspapers in and around St. Paul, had a sur- journalists 74; followed by soldier 67; prising career. Born in Braunschweig, Germany on September 26, 1825, physician 37; teacher 25; turner 25; law- A yer 22; businessman 21; author 16; farmer Wolff died in St. Paul on Saturday November 25, 1893 of his own volition. 12; diplomat 11; and musician 11. Among What’s a Forty-eighter? Italy, among the Czechs, and athwart them there was only one woman, Mathilda the southern Slavs where the spirit of Giesler-Anneke in Milwaukee, who con- There are a few salient features that make sidered herself a suffragist. One third of up the definition of a Forty-eighter.1 nationalism worked centrifugally rather than formatively.4 Having tried but mis- the 300 took part in the Civil War, at least Refugees from revolution, the 1848ers 50 percent would eventually publish verse, include liberals, radicals, and congenital carried in making Germany democratic, the Forty-eighters emigrated—often to and nine identified themselves as pastors, strategists for democracy. From our long a figure that would jump substantially if historical perspective, they proved to be avoid the consequences of what was le- gally treasonous under their autocratic speakers for the freie Gemeinden had been the cultural leaven—the yeast that liter- included. A number eventually achieved forms of government—just as often be- ally raised the entire German element in positions as university professors among cause their sentences were commuted the United States from a peasant-type them Karl Bayrhoffer at Marburg who from prison to emigration. More fre- citizenry to a group of distinguished, later was a farmer in Wisconsin, Karl quently they found the atmosphere in vitalizing champions for equality in a Follen at Harvard, and others. A large the German states too oppressive and racially troubled nation. Coincidentally, number did prison time, many boasting they arrived during America’s zenith of the economic conditions too uncertain, of their escape, which could mean they Nativism, the name given to the anti- resolving instead to dedicate their lives were resourceful and daring or perhaps immigrant temperament that dominated to a republic across the sea. that the general populace was sympathetic our pre-Civil War nation.2 Few Forty-eighters arrived in the 5 to the revolution, as well might have been Tempered by the March 1848 revo- United States in 1848. Rather, they tar- the prison guards. lutions that began in France as the so- ried in France, Switzerland, England, Docking in America after 1852 with called pre-March uprisings, the revolu- Belgium, and neighboring nations, some the strength annually of over 150,000 tions of 1848 swept not only Germany in the belief that democracy would yet co-immigrants from Germany, the Forty- but also much of Europe. Mostly, these win out in Germany, others that they eighters entered a turbulent American were university-trained men of high so- could go home and further the liberal society beefed up by some four million cial standing—physicians, inventors, cause. A. E. Zucker in his book offers new immigrants, roughly 30% of the total jurists, and especially journalists who biographies of some 272 prominent non-slave population in 1840. It was an were romantic and popular, if at times, Forty-eighters, among them Albert Wolff. influx of immigrants that on a percent- impractical reformers. They numbered no Most were very young. Over 60 percent age basis would never again be reached doubt less than 10,000 in all, and neces- were born in or after 1820, 1827 being in the nation’s history. Of this influx, sarily included plain folk, workers, farm- the birth-year of the largest number with fully three-quarters of all arrivals were ers, clerks, and small businessmen whose only nine born before 1820. Nothing in from either Ireland or Germany, giving names were never recorded anywhere.3 America at the time presaged their com- rise to the xenophobia that “darkened” In German-speaking Europe, the ing. No seedbed in the United States the 1850s. This general dislike of for- 1848 revolution engrossed three main awaited their “fertilization.” However, eigners was fortified by a turgid holdover regions: Prussia with Berlin, Austria America did offer hope in 1848 inasmuch from the past, the institution of slavery with Vienna, and southwest Germany as she was the only nation to send greet- in the South. Because the Germans typi- notably the Grand Duchy of Baden, ings and constitutional textual models for cally settled in the industrial heartland of which lay close to France where lib- the delegates pondering a constitution in the United States, cities like Chicago, St. eralism and radical ideas drifted eas- the Frankfurt Paulskirche. Louis, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Cincinnati, ily across the German-French border.