Henry Albach, editor and agitator, 1914-1918
John Henry Albach, usually called Henry, was a newspaper owner and editor who represented two minorities in turn-of-the-century Lawrence, Kansas: the German-Americans and the Democrats. The son of a German immigrant who had fled Germany after the failure of the democratic revolution of 1848, Albach felt close ties to both the German people and to the Democratic party. Although trained in law, Albach was a businessman, and he first became a journalist when he bought the German language Lawrence Germania after the failure of his dry goods business in 1902. Six years later, he founded the Lawrence Democrat and subsequently edited both weekly newspapers until the Germania was forced to suspend in 1918 because of pressure related to World War I. He continued to edit the Democrat until 1943. This study looks at various issues of Albach's newspapers during the World War I period, 1914 to 1918, to see how Albach reacted to the political events of the time. A rising hysteria in the United States against all things German made it increasingly difficult for Albach, and all German-American editors, to represent their compatriots. And most German-Americans detested the president of the war era, Woodrow Wilson. Albach did not have an easy time trying to defend one against the other in the pages of his newspapers.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations