German Newspapers in Iowa

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This newspaper map is based on the microfilm holdings of the State Historical Society of Iowa. Scattered single issues survive in collections outside the state; in most cases, these are not currently represented on the map. Also absent are the several Iowa towns whose German newspapers no longer survive, such as the Boone Herold or the Cedar Rapids Staats-Zeitung. We hope to update the map soon to include the Crawford County Demokrat, the Denison Herold, and the Denison Zeitung, recently recovered and now digitized as part of the Digital Archives of the Norelius Community Library in Denison.

 

By clicking on the links for the five featured papers in the upper right corner of the map, you can access original articles and translations on the following select topics: Civil War and Slavery (Des Moines Wöchentliche Post, Dubuque National-Demokrat); Iowa's Prohibition Act of 1884 (Carroll Demokrat); the state's 1916 Referendum on Woman Suffrage (Waverly Phoenix); World War I and Anti-German Sentiment (Waverly Phoenix; Sioux City Volksfreund); and the Early Rise of the Nazi Party (Sioux City Volksfreund).

 

Users can search for additional German newspapers in Iowa and elsewhere in the U.S. via the Chronicling America website of the Library of Congress. The site features issues of the Davenport Demokrat from 1862-65 and 1915-18.

 

A bibliography of German-Iowan newspapers with information on publication dates and circulation numbers can be found in Karl J.R. Arndt and May E. Olson, German-American Newspapers and Periodicals, 1732-1955. History and Bibliography (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1961), 130-151.

 

An interactive map of the growth of American newspapers across the U.S., in all languages, is available at Journalism's Voyage West (Stanford University).

 

Translations of the original German newspaper articles completed by Glenn Ehrstine and Lucas Gibbs.