The Dakota Freie Presse or the Dakota Free Press, abbreviated as DFP, was a weekly German languagenewspaper printed in Yankton, Dakota Territory (now South Dakota). It circulated in the Dakotas and other states, Canada, and Europe, from 1874 to 1954.[1] The newspaper was non-denominational and neutral in politics. The focus of the paper was on Germans from Russia; German settlers in Russian colonies around the Black Sea and, to a lesser degree, along the Volga River; and subsequent settlers in the Dakotas in the United States. The Dakota Freie Presse was published first only in German, but it later began publishing in English.
In 1920, the Der Auslanddeutsche 8 reported that "The Dakota Freie Presse was the recognized organ of the Russian-Germans in America and perhaps in the whole world. As such, it offered largely the private correspondence of its readers. Although these write-ups were superficial and rather insignificant as far as content is concerned, below the surface they had great importance because the identity and cohesion of the ethnic Germans who emigrated from Russia was thereby maintained for nearly fifty years."[note 1]
History
The Dakota Freie Presse was founded in April 1874 by Bernhard Quinke.[2]
Johann Christian Wenzlaff took the paper over in 1885 or 1886 and acquired a building lot on Broadway, erecting a brick building to house the printing establishment and editorial room.
From its new base of operations in New Ulm, the DFP, following the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, operated its own relief program for the hungry children of Germany. Editor F. W. Sallet personally sought funds and materials which he shipped to Osterode, East Prussia, where the entire program was administered by the editor's older brother, Daniel Gottfried Sallet, the father of Dr. Richard Sallet who would one day succeed F. W. Sallet in the editor's chair.
Schmidt was listed in the editorial block of the DFP only until September 16, 1942. From March 11 to September 16, 1942, the names of L. Luedtke, A. Hochscheid, and Frau Grete (obviously a pen name) resided in Milwaukee and was responsible for the section, Für Hausfrau, Gattin, und Mutter (for the housekeeper, wife, and mother). After September 16, 1942, only John Brendel was consistently associated with the editorship in Bismarck until Joseph Gaeckle came into the picture for the first time on August 4, 1948.
The Dakota Freie Presse went out of print on February 24, 1954.[2]
Circulation
Initially, it had a very low and only local circulation (295 copies in 1875, 1,200 in 1880, 2,170 in 1890, and 3,400 in 1900), and not until after F. W. Sallet arrived did the paper take on its transregional nature and obtained a skyrocketing circulation (7,500 in 1905, 9,500 in 1910, and nearly 14,000 by 1920).
In 1924, the DFP became the first paper published in the United States to be allowed re-entry into the Soviet Union.
The DFP merged with the Dakota Rundschau in late 1932 or early 1933. However, the Rundschau itself derived from three previous mergers. These mergers were the Eureka Rundschau, a Black Sea German paper owned and published by Gustav Mauser and Otto H. Froh, which was located in Eureka, South Dakota and which began publishing on June 3, 1915; the Bismarck Nordlicht, which began publishing on February 1, 1885; and the Mandan Volkszeitung.
When the DFP disappeared as a visible organ in 1954, it did not entirely cease publication because it was consolidated with the America Herold Zeitung.
Editors/Owners
1874 to 1875: Bernhard Quinke
1875 to 1876: Judge Charles F. Rossteuscher
1876 to 1885: Gustav A. Wetter
1885 or 1886: Johann Christian Wenzlaff
1886 or 1887 to 1892: Salomon Wenzlaff
1892 to 1901: Saloman Wenzlaff and Mr. Krause
1901 to 1903: Krause, Ellerman, Kositzky, and Lusk
1903 to 1932: Friedrich Wilhelm Sallet
1906 to 1908: Gustav Kositzky Ellerman
1931 to 1933: Richard Sallet and F.W. Sallet's three sons
1930s to 1940s: John Brendel, Dr. H.E. Fritsch, and Felix Schmidt
↑ Der Auslanddeutsche 8, a bimonthly publication of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (founded in 1917 and known until 1945 as the Deutsches Ausland-Institut) in Stuttgart, Germany, stated in 1920:
Related Research Articles
The Düsseldorf School of painting is a term referring to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Düsseldorf Academy roughly between 1819 and 1918, first directed by the painter Wilhelm von Schadow.
German West Africa (Deutsch-Westafrika) was an informal designation for the areas in West Africa that were part of the German Colonial Empire between 1884 and 1919. The term was normally used for the territories of Cameroon and Togo. German West Africa was not an administrative unit. However, in trade and in the vernacular the term was sometimes in use.
Oscar Blumenthal was a German playwright and drama critic.
This is a list of members of the 4th Reichstag – the parliament of the Weimar Republic, whose members were elected in the 1928 federal election and served in office from 1928 until its dissolution in 1930.
Valentin J. Peter (1875–1960) was a German-American publisher of a German language newspaper called the Omaha Tribüne in Omaha, Nebraska. He had immigrated to the United States from Bavaria in 1889. Active in the ethnic German community in the city, he became founding president of the Nebraska chapter of the National German-American Alliance.
General of the Infantry is a former rank of the German army. It is currently an appointment or position given to an OF-8 rank officer, who is responsible for particular affairs of training and equipment of the Bundeswehr infantry.
General der Flieger was a General of the branch rank of the Luftwaffe in Nazi Germany. Until the end of World War II in 1945, this particular general officer rank was on three-star level (OF-8), equivalent to a US Lieutenant general.
Otto Grafzu Stolberg-Wernigerode was an Imperial German officer, diplomat and politician who served as the first vice-chancellor of the German Empire under Otto Von Bismarck between 1878 and 1881.
Members of the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art, awarded to acknowledge and reward excellent and outstanding achievements in the fields of science and art. It is based in Bavaria, Germany.
Freie Presse is the name of several newspapers, including:
Peter Hamm was a German poet, author, journalist, editor, and literary critic. He wrote several documentaries, including ones about Ingeborg Bachmann and Peter Handke. He wrote for the German weekly newspapers Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, among others. From 1964 to 2002, Hamm worked as contributing editor for culture for the broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk. He was also a jury member of literary prizes, and critic for a regular literary club of the Swiss television company Schweizer Fernsehen.
1 2 Rippley, La Vern J. (1992). "F. W. Sallet and the Dakota Freie Presse". North Dakota History. pp.2–20.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
