Forty-eighters


The Forty-eighters were Europeans who participated in or supported the Revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe, particularly those who were expelled from or emigrated from their native land after those revolutions.
In the German Confederation, the Forty-eighters favoured unification of Germany, a more democratic government, and guarantees of human rights. Although many Americans were sympathetic to their cause and saddened by their defeat, many Forty-Eighters were Freethinkers who were more influenced by post-1789 republicanism in France and the anti-religious ideas of The Enlightenment than by the U.S. Constitution. In particular, their traditional hostility towards tolerating religious practice or Classical Christian education often put them at odds with American republicanism's belief in freedom of religion and the independence of religious institutions from control by the State. Disappointed at their failure to permanently change the system of government in the German states or the Austrian Empire, and sometimes ordered by local governments to emigrate because of their involvement in the revolution, they gave up their old lives to live abroad. They emigrated to Australia, Brazil, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They included Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, and Italians, among many others. Many were respected, politically active, wealthy, and well-educated, and found success in their new countries.

In the Americas

Brazil

Disappointed by the failure of the Revolution in 1848, many realised there might be adverse effects on their lives and careers. As a result, some emigrated to South Brazil, from 1852 onwards, including Fritz Müller, Ottokar Dörffel, and Theodor Schiefler. Müller emigrated with his brother August and their wives, to join Hermann Blumenau's new colony in the State of Santa Catarina. There, he studied the natural history of the Atlantic forest in that region, and wrote the book Facts and Arguments for Darwin.

Chile

After being advised by Bernhard Eunom Philippi among others, Karl Anwandter emigrated to Chile following the failed revolution. In 1850 he settled in Valdivia. He was joined there by numerous other German immigrants of the period.

United States

Germans migrated to developing midwestern and southern cities, developing the beer and wine industries in several locations, and advancing journalism; others developed thriving agricultural communities.
Galveston, Texas, was a port of entry to many Forty-eighters. Some settled there and in Houston, but many went to the Texas Hill Country in the vicinity of Fredericksburg. Due to their liberal ideals, they strongly opposed Texas's secession in 1861. In the Bellville area of Austin County, another destination for Forty-eighters, the German precincts voted decisively against secession.
More than 30,000 Forty-eighters settled in what became called the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. There they helped define the neighborhood's distinctive German culture and in some cases also brought a rebellious nature with them from Germany. Cincinnati was the southern terminus of the Miami and Erie Canal, and large numbers of emigrants from modern Germany, beginning with the Forty-eighters, followed the canal north to settle available land in western Ohio.
In the Cincinnati riot of 1853, in which one demonstrator was killed, Forty-eighters violently protested the visit of the papal emissary Cardinal Gaetano Bedini, who had repressed revolutionaries in the Papal States in 1849. Protests took place also in 1854; Forty-eighters were held responsible for the killing of two law enforcement officers in the two events.
Many German Forty-eighters settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, helping solidify that city's progressive political bent and cultural Deutschtum. The Acht-und-vierzigers and their descendants contributed to the development of Milwaukee's socialist political tradition. Others settled throughout the state.
In the United States, most Forty-eighters opposed nativism and slavery, in keeping with the liberal ideals that had led them to flee Europe. In the Camp Jackson Affair in St. Louis, Missouri, a large force of German volunteers helped prevent Confederate forces from seizing the government arsenal just before the U.S. Civil War began. About 200,000 German-born soldiers enlisted in the Union Army, ultimately forming about 10% of the North's entire armed forces; 13,000 Germans served in Union Volunteer Regiments from New York alone.
After the Civil War, Forty-eighters supported improved labor laws and working conditions. They also advanced the country's cultural and intellectual development in such fields as education, the arts, medicine, journalism, and business.
Many were members of the Turner movement.
In 1848, the first non-British ship carrying immigrants to arrive in Victoria was from Germany; the Goddefroy, on 13 February. Many of those on board were political refugees. Some Germans also travelled to Australia via London. In April 1849, the Beulah was the first ship to bring assisted German vinedresser families to New South Wales. The second ship, the Parland, left London on 13 March 1849, and arrived in Sydney on 5 July 1849.
The Princess Louise left Hamburg 26 March 1849, in the spring, bound for South Australia via Rio de Janeiro. The voyage took 135 days, which was considered slow, but nevertheless the Princess Louise berthed at Port Adelaide on 7 August 1849, with 161 emigres, including Johann Friedrich Mosel. Johann, born in 1827 in Berlin in the duchy of Brandenburg, had taken three weeks to travel from his home to the departure point of the 350-tonne vessel at Hamburg. This voyage had been well planned by two of the founding passengers, brothers Richard and Otto Schomburgk, who had been implicated in the revolution. Otto had been jailed in 1847 for his activities as a student revolutionary. The brothers, along with others including Frau Jeanne von Kreussler and Dr Carl Muecke, formed a migration group, the South Australian Colonisation Society, one of many similar groups forming throughout Germany at the time. Sponsored by geologist Leopold von Buch, the society chartered the Princess Louise to sail to South Australia. The passengers were mainly middle-class professionals, academics, musicians, artists, architects, engineers, artisans, and apprentices, and were among the core of liberal radicals, disillusioned with events in Germany.
Many Germans became vintners or worked in the wine industry; others founded Lutheran churches. By 1860, for example, about 70 German families lived in Germantown, Victoria. In Adelaide, a German Club was founded in 1854, which played a major role in society.
  • Carl Linger, the conductor and composer who wrote the tune for Caroline Carleton's "The Song of Australia"
  • Moritz Richard Schomburgk, later director of the Adelaide Botanical Gardens
  • Hermann Büring, in the wine industry
  • Friedrich Krichauff, chairman of the Agricultural Bureau

    In Europe

Belgium