Defunct German-language daily newspaper in the United States
New Yorker Volkszeitung was the longest-running
German language daily labor newspaper in the
United States of America, established in 1878 and suspending publication in October 1932. At the time of its demise during the
Great Depression the Volkszeitung was the only German-language daily in the
United States and one of the oldest
radical left newspapers in the nation.
History
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adding to it. (October 2017)
Background
During the 19th century
Germans were the second-largest immigrant group to the United States, behind only the ethnic
Irish.[1] The wave of German immigration began slowly, averaging about 20,000 people per year during the decades of the 1830s and early 1840s, before exploding after the
economic crisis of 1847 and the failure of the
Revolution of 1848 in the
German states.[1] When the first wave of mass emigration peaked in 1854, some 220,000 Germans left their fatherland for a new home in America.[1]
A second mass wave of emigration from Germany to America began in 1866, following the conclusion of the
American Civil War and running until the economic collapse associated with the
Panic of 1873.[1] During this second flurry of departures more than a million more Germans were added to the population of the United States.[1]
Its publisher was the Socialist Cooperative Publishing Association which had offices at 47 Walker Street in
New York City.
The financial crisis of the 1930s prevented members of the Socialist Cooperative Publishing Association from meeting regularly, which made it necessary to shut down printing. Its thirty employees were not released.[3] Two months after the closure of New Yorker Volkszeitung, a new publication, Neue Volkszeitung, was launched as its successor.[4]
Johanna Greie, wrote a women's section in the newspaper
Footnotes
^
abcdeAnne Spier, "German-Speaking Peoples," in Dirk Hoerder with Christiane Harzig, The Immigrant Labor Press in North America, 1840s-1970s: Volume 3: Migrants from Southern and Western Europe. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987; pg. 315.
^See the graphic "Places of Publication of German-American Labor Periodicals" in Spier, "German-Speaking Peoples," pg. 319.
^"Volkszeitung Suspends". New York Times. October 12, 1932. p. 5.
Karl J.R. Arndt and May E Olson, German-American Newspapers and Periodicals, 1732-1955 / Deutsch-amerikanische Zeitungen und Zeitschriften, 1732-1955. Revised Second Edition. Heidelberg, Germany: Quelle and Meyer, 1961.
Karl J.R. Arndt and May E Olson, The German Language Press of the Americas, 1732-1968: History and Bibliography. Munich, Germany: Verlag Dokumentation, 1973.
Paul Buhle, "Ludwig Lore and the New Yorker Volkszeitung," in Elliott Shoe, Ken Fones-Wolf, and James P. Danky, The German-American Radical Press: The Shaping of a Left Political Culture, 1850-1940. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Robert E. Cazden, "Bibliography of German-American Communist Newspapers in the U.S., 1933-1945," Internationale wissenschaftliche Korresondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, vol. 5 (Dec. 1967), pp. 39-41.
Robert E. Cazden, German Exile Literature in America. Chicago: American Library Association, 1970.
Dirk Hoerder with Christiane Harzig, The Immigrant Labor Press in North America, 1840s-1970s: Volume 3: Migrants from Southern and Western Europe. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987.
Dirk Hoerder and Thomas Weber (eds.), Glimpses of the German-American Radical Press. Bremen, Germany: Labor Newspaper Preservation Project, 1985.
Carl Wittke, The German Language Press in America. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1957.