The German-American Press

Brnstein and Franz Schmidt declared in a joint announcement that
the Verein had never lived up to its commitment to provide support
for the paper, and that both of them had lost over $1000 on the
journal. This public divorce from the Verein went hand in hand with
the organization's progressive disintegration. In October, Schmidt
wrote a virtual post mortem which underlined what he felt to have
been its mortal failing: that members wished to use it to agitate
for political goals, both the program of "Nationalreform" and the
"Nationalanleihe" launched by Gottfried Kinkel: "The Association
resists both efforts in order to preserve the purity of its original
purpose, which is education and intellectual enlightenment."
Schmidt and Bdrnstein thus rejected efforts to turn the Verein
into a politically partisan group, despite the fact that Brnstein was
deeply involved at the time in getting sympathetic English-speaking
office-holders elected. In July of 1852, for example, a request that
the Verein participate in the commemorative procession for Henry
Clay was grudgingly accepted lest it offend the (English-speaking)
public, but it was agreed that such activities were not a good idea.32
In the aftermath of the crisis of late 1852, a handful of troublesome
members was expelled, but the group appeared to lose much of its
tone. The two schools established in 1851-52 were still operating
at the end of 1852, but soon the buildings would be redeveloped as
public schools as the Verein itself dissolved. The final examination-
notice for the freethinker schools on 19 December 1852 mentioned
prizes to both boys and girls, including awards to two children of
the wealthy Mallinckrodt family (James F. and Caicilie).33 By the
mid-1850s the dramatic society established by Bdrnstein had found
a new home at the Freie Gemeinde of North St. Louis.
The pages of the Free Blitter were filled with polemics against
established religion because the paper undertook to publish those
items which were too hot even for the scandal-monger Brnstein
to set in type. Although editorially distinct, the Freie Bldtter
was produced from the same building as the Anzeiger, and the
close ties between the two journals were never a secret. The
Anzeiger concentrated on garden-variety anticlericalism, but the
Freie Bldtter engaged in anti-Christian polemics and the lampooning
of Christian scriptures. The paper even denounced the Thanksgiving
Day proclamation of the Governor of Missouri, on one occasion.34
The reports of meetings of the Verein Freier Minner emphasize

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