Forty Eighters

Chile

After being advised by Bernhard Eunom Philippi among others, Karl Anwandter emigrated to Chile following the failed revolution. In 1850 he settled in Valdivia. He was joined there by numerous other German immigrants of the period.

United States

Germans migrated to developing midwestern and southern cities, developing the beer and wine industries in several locations, and advancing journalism; others developed thriving agricultural communities.

Galveston, Texas was a port of entry to many Forty-Eighters. Some settled there and in Houston, but many settled in the Texas Hill Country in the vicinity of Fredericksburg. Due to their liberal ideals, they strongly opposed Texas's secession in 1861. In the Bellville area of Austin County, another destination for Forty-Eighters, the German precincts voted decisively against the secession ordinance.

More than 30,000 Forty-Eighters settled in what became called the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. There they helped define the distinct German culture of the neighborhood, but in some cases also brought a rebellious nature with them from Germany. Cincinnati was the southern terminus of the Miami and Erie Canal, and large numbers of emigrants from modern Germany, beginning with the Forty-Eighters, followed the canal north to settle available land in western Ohio.

In the Cincinnati Riot of 1853, in which one demonstrator was killed, Forty-Eighters violently protested the visit of the papal emissary Cardinal Gaetano Bedini, who had repressed revolutionaries in the Papal States in 1849. Protests took place also in 1854; Forty-Eighters were held responsible for the killing of two law enforcement officers in the two events.

Many German Forty-Eighters settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, helping solidify that city's progressive political bent and cultural Deutschtum. The Acht-und-vierzigers and their descendants contributed to the development of that city's long Socialist political tradition. Others settled throughout the state.

In the United States, most Forty-Eighters opposed nativism and slavery, in keeping with the liberal ideals that had led them to flee Europe. In the Camp Jackson Affair in St. Louis, Missouri, a large force of German volunteers helped prevent Confederate forces from seizing the government arsenal just prior to the beginning of the American Civil War. About two hundred thousand German-born soldiers enlisted in the Union Army, that was about 10% of Lincoln's entire armed forces. 13,000 Germans served in Union Volunteer Regiments from New York alone.

After the Civil War, Forty-Eighters supported improved labor laws and working conditions. They also advanced the country's cultural and intellectual development in such fields as education, the arts, medicine, journalism, and business.

Many were members of the Turner movement.

In Australia

In 1848, the first non-British ship carrying immigrants to arrive in Victoria was from Germany; the Goddefroy, on February 13. Many of those on board were political refugees. Some Germans also travelled to Australia via London. In April 1849 the Beulah was the first ship to bring assisted German vinedresser families to NSW. The second ship, the Parland left London on 13 March 1849, and arrived in Sydney on 5 July 1849

The Princess Louise left Hamburg March 26 of 1849, in the spring, bound for South Australia via Rio de Janeiro. The voyage took 135 days which was considered slow but nevertheless the Princess Louise berthed at Port Adelaide on August 7, 1849 with 161 emigres, including Johann Friedrich Mosel. Johann, born in 1827 in Berlin in the duchy of Brandenburg had taken three weeks to travel from his home to the departure point of the 350 tonne vessel at Hamburg. This voyage had been well planned by two of the founding passengers, brothers Richard and Otto Schomburgk who had been implicated in the revolution. Otto had been jailed in 1847 for his activities as a student revolutionary. The brothers along with others including Frau von Kreussler and D. Meucke formed a migration group, the South Australian Colonisation Society, one of many similar groups forming throughout Germany at the time. Sponsored by the scientist geologist Leopold von Buch, the society chartered the Princess Louise to sail to South Australia. The passengers were mainly middle-class professionals, academics, musicians, artists, architects, engineers, artisans and apprentices, and were among the core of liberal radicals, disillusioned with events in Germany.

Many Germans became vintners or worked in the wine industry; others founded Lutheran churches. By 1860, for example, about 70 German families lived in Germantown, Victoria. (When World War I broke out, the town was renamed Grovedale.) In Adelaide, a German Club was founded in 1854 which played a major role in society.

Belgium

France

Ludwig Bamberger settled in Paris and worked in a bank from 1852 until the amnesty of 1866 allowed him to return to Germany. Carl Schurz was in France for a time before moving on to England. He stayed there with Adolf Strodtmann. Anton Heinrich Springer visited France.

Netherlands

Ludwig Bamberger was in the Netherlands for a time, as were Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim and Anton Heinrich Springer.

Switzerland

The following were all refugees from Germany:

United Kingdom

Giuseppe Mazzini used London as a place of refuge before and after the revolutions of 1848. In the early years after the failure of the revolutions of 1848, a group of German Forty-Eighters and others met in a salon organized by Baroness Méry von Bruiningk and her husband Ludolf August von Bruiningk in St. John's Wood, England. The baroness was a Russian of German descent who was sympathetic with the goals of the revolutionaries. Guests included Carl Schurz, Gottfried and Johanna Kinkel, Ferdinand Freiligrath, Alexander Herzen, Louis Blanc, Malwida von Meysenbug, Adolf Strodtmann, Johannes and Bertha Ronge, Alexander Schimmelfennig, Wilhelm Loewe-Kalbe and Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim.

Carl Schurz wrote in his memoir about this time:

“A large number of refugees from almost all parts of the European continent had gathered in London since the year 1848, but the intercourse between the different national groups – Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Russians – was confined more or less to the prominent personages. All, however, in common nourished the confident hope of a revolutionary upturning on the continent soon to come. Among the Germans there were only a few who shared this hope in a less degree. Perhaps the ablest and most important person among these was Lothar Bucher, a quiet, retiring man of great capacity and acquirements, who occupied himself with serious political studies.”

Other Germans who fled to England for a time were Ludwig Bamberger, Arnold Ruge, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Franz Sigel. Along with several of the above, Sabine Freitag also lists Gustav Adolf Techow, Eduard Meyen, Graf Oskar von Reichenbach, Josef Fickler and Amand Goegg. Karl Blind became a writer in England. Bohemian Anton Heinrich Springer was in England for a time during his years of exile.

Hungarian refugee Gustav Zerffi became an English citizen and worked as a historian in London. Lajos Kossuth, a Hungarian revolutionary, toured England and then the United States. He returned to England, where he formed a government in exile for Hungary.

French refugees Pierre Leroux and Louis Blanc found relief in England for a time.

In addition, the British possession of Heligoland was a destination for refugees, for example Rudolf Dulon.

Wandering Forty-Eighters