Canisius, Theodore

Born: 1826-XX-XX Prussia

Died: 1885-12-04 Chicago, Illinois

Theodore Canisius was a physician, newspaper editor and publisher, and diplomat. Canisius studied medicine in Berlin, Germany, and immigrated to the United States in 1848. By 1850, he was practicing medicine and living in St. Louis, Missouri. In the early 1850s, he moved to Edwardsville, Illinois. Canisius married Emma Schneider, with whom he had two children. In 1858, Canisius established the Freie Press, a German-language weekly newspaper in Alton, Illinois, sympathetic to the Republican Party. In 1859, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, where he published the llinois Staats Anzeiger, another German-language newspaper that supported the Republican Party. In 1860, Canisius was living in Springfield and owned real estate valued at $1,000 and had a personal estate valued at $50. President Abraham Lincoln appointed Canisius consul to Vienna in 1861. Canisius became embroiled in a diplomatic controversy over plans to offer Giuseppe Garibaldi a command in the Union Army, prompting Secretary of State William H. Seward to remove Canisius in October 1862, but President Lincoln restored Canisius to his post a few months later. He remained as consul of Vienna until 1866.

A. E. Zucker, "Dr. Theodore Canisius, Friend of Lincoln," The American-German Review 16 (February 1950): 13-15, 38; Germany, Select Births and Baptisms, 1558-1898 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2014); 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), 8, 324; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 1, St. Louis, St. Louis County, MO, 100; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Springfield, Sangamon County, IL, 189; Illinois Statewide Death Index, Pre-1916, Cook County, 4 December 1885, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL.