Illinois Staats-Zeitung

City: Chicago

County: Cook

State: Illinois

The Illinois Staats-Zeitung was a German-language newspaper in Chicago, Illinois. Robert Bernhard Hoeffgen started the paper in April 1848. Initially a weekly, Herman Kriege, editor from 1849 to 1850, made it first a semi-weekly and later a tri-weekly. George Schneider became editor in 1850, and in 1851, Schneider made the paper a daily. Schneider remained editor and a guiding force of the paper until he sold his interest in 1862. Under Schneider’s direction, the Illinois Staats-Zeitung became a leading German-American voice opposing slavery in the 1850s. Schneider and the other editors opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the expansion of the peculiar institution, and the paper played a major role in the formation of the Republican Party in Illinois.

Geo. P. Rowell & Co., American Newspaper Directory (New York: Geo. P. Rowell, 1872), 4:311; John Moses and Joseph Kirkland, eds., The History of Chicago Illinois (Chicago: Munsell, 1895), 1:673; Franklin William Scott, Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879, vol. 6 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1910), 61-62.