Studies of the Max Kade Institute

Duane Wilson a second German paper, the Volksreund, to campaign
against the constitution among the primarily Democratic Germans.
After the first constitution was defeated, the Volksfreund was sold
to its Democratic editor, Frederick Fratney, and it became a clearly
Democratic paper.5
Schoeffler, editor of the Wiskonsin Banner, was elected to the
second convention in which he also championed a liberal immigrant
franchise provision. That constitution was adopted.6 Schoeffler and
Fratney continued to represent the two factions of the Democratic
party in rancorous debates between their papers until Fratney died in
1855. He willed the Volksfreund to Schoeffler, who merged it with
the Banner to form the Banner und Volksfreund.7
The same Rufus King who sponsored the Volksfreund was
among the founders of the Republican party in Wisconsin. It was he
who provided the press and materials to establish the Korsar shortly
after the formation of the Republican party in 1854. The Korsar (or
Corsair ) was the first of several Republican German papers operated
by Bernard Domschke. After the first two had failed, he embarked
on publication of the more successful Atlas in 1856.8
These brief descriptions of the births of a few Milwaukee
German papers are emblematic of the history of German newspapers
in pre-Civil War Wisconsin because they highlight the importance
of politics to successful newspaper publishing. Political partisans
frequently provided the money and other resources needed to start a
newspaper in whatever language.9 Much of the operating income for
newspapers came in the form of political patronage distributed by the
territorial, state, and local governments through political parties using
procedures that effectively knit English and German newspapers
together into a single system of competing partisan newspapers.
Based primarily on a study of all Wisconsin territorial and state
government payments to newspapers before the Civil War, this article
explores the economic dimensions of publishing the early Wisconsin
German newspapers, concentrating on this political patronage.10 It
considers the role of the German papers in an integrated system of
newspapers. The focus is on the economic structure and functions of
the newspaper system rather than on the content of the newspapers.
The objective is to demonstrate that because of the environment into
which German newspapers were born in Wisconsin, they became

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