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Hermann Raster (1827–1891) was a German Forty-Eighter, best known for his job as chief editor for the Illinois Staats-Zeitung between 1867 and 1891.
Raster was born in Zerbst, Anhalt-Dessau in 1827 to a family of aristocrats. His father, statesman Christian Raster was the Administrative Officer and close friend of the Duke of Anhalt, Leopold IV, and had seven children. Hermann graduated from University of Leipzig in 1846 and the University of Berlin in 1848. In 1849 he took a job as the stenographer of the Anhalt Legislature. Raster took part in the revolutions of 1848, writing passionately against church and monarchy. He was forced to flee to America with fellow revolutionaries to escape prison.
Hermann arrived in New York in July, 1851 and first found employment as a farmhand near Tioga, Pennsylvania. He left for Buffalo in the spring of 1852, accepting the position of editor for the Buffalo Demokrat. His journalistic reputation grew quickly and in February 1853, Raster was made editor of the New York Abendzeitung, the most influential German-language paper of the time. He had a wife, Emilia Berta Hahn Raster, born in 1836, and a daughter, Mathilde, with her in 1857. While living in New York, he became an active member of the Republican Party. In 1856, he became an elector in the 1856 presidential election.
He was one of eight children, his siblings in order being Luise, Alexander, Wilhelm, Gustav, (then Hermann) Askan, Wolfgang, and Sophie.
In 1867, Raster accepted the position as editor for the Illinois Staats-Zeitung in Chicago, where he remained until his death. During his time in Chicago, Hermann was given the position as Collector of Internal Revenue for the First Illinois District by President Ulysses Grant. In 1872, Raster resigned from the position as Collector of Internal Revenue to save more time for the paper and help campaign for Grant in the upcoming election. During the Haymarket Affair, Raster was trying to delegate the rioters before he left the scene. Raster died in July 1891 in Dresden where he had traveled for his poor health. His daughter Mathilde (1857-unknown) and his third wife Margarethe (1848-1908) and their three children, Anna Sophie Hercz (1874-1936), Edwin Otto Raster 1871-1926) and Walther Berthold Raster (1875-1944) survived him.
Raster was influential in leading the German-American switch to the Republican Party in 1856, swaying German public opinion via his pro-union, anti-slavery articles in the German press, and promoting the personal liberty cause.
In 1891, Raster's family and friends published a novel filled with his travel papers and biography, called Reisebriefe von Hermann Raster.
References
- "Inventory of the Hermann Raster Papers". The Newberry Library.
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