Mixed Materials; Microforms

Fritz Anneke and Mathilde Franziska Anneke papers, 1791-1934

Author / Creator
Anneke, Fritz, 1818-1872
Available as
Physical
Summary

Correspondence, and manuscripts of articles, plays, poems, and addresses of Fritz Anneke, an exiled leader of the German Revolution of 1848 and of his wife, Mathilde Franziska Anneke, an author and...

Correspondence, and manuscripts of articles, plays, poems, and addresses of Fritz Anneke, an exiled leader of the German Revolution of 1848 and of his wife, Mathilde Franziska Anneke, an author and woman's rights advocate, who lived primarily in Milwaukee after 1849. The correspondence, practically all of which is in German script, contains much information on the opinions and activities of German-American intellectuals of the nineteenth century. Anneke was connected with reform newspapers in several American cities, went abroad in 1859 to serve as foreign correspondent during the Italian war, held a colonel's commission in the 34th Wisconsin Infantry during the American Civil War, and died in Chicago in 1872 while agent for the German-American Society. Madame Anneke authored poems, dramas, and many short articles; editor of a revolutionary newspaper in Germany and of a women's rights newspaper in America in the 1850s; a lecturer; the head of a school for girls in Milwaukee for eighteen years; and a pioneer in the suffrage movement in Wisconsin.

Much of the collection consists of correspondence between the Annekes, in which they discuss affairs of the family and their compatriots in America; their literary pursuits; the progress of the revolutionary movement; and world events. There is information on the antislavery agitator Sherman Booth; on Peter Engelmann, who conducted a rival English-German academy in Milwaukee; and on other persons prominent in early Milwaukee. Among Colonel Anneke's correspondents during the Civil War years are Adolf J. Cramer and Henry Orff of the 35th Wisconsin Infantry, John Knell, and Governor Edward Salomon. There are about four hundred letters, 1867-1883, from Cecilie Kapp, who was for many years professor of German at Vassar College. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Smith Miller, and other leaders in the national campaign for equal suffrage corresponded with Madame Anneke during the early years of the movement.

Other single or small groups of letters indicate the place held by the Annekes in American and German political and literary circles: one from Baron von Stein to Mrs. Anneke's grandfather in 1791; a few from the revolutionary poets Ferdinand Freielgrath and Gottfried Kinkel and members of their families; several from the Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt after the death of Ferdinand Lassalle in 1864; and a small number from the newspaper publisher and radical Karl Heinzen.

The papers are accompanied by a two-volume typewritten sketch of the Annekes, based on these papers and containing lengthy extracts from them in translation. The sketch was prepared by Henriette M. Heinzen, in collaboration with Mrs. Hertha A. Sanne, a daughter of the Annekes.

The processed portion of this collection is summarized above, dates 1791-1884, and is described in the register. Additional accessions are described below.

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