# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 02 14_S103
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

103

popular education. Hitherto we have lived chiefly on the spiritual crumbs that fell from Europe's rich table, which we partly brought over with us and partly had to obtain, like foreign goods, by steam power. By comparison we have only very meager products of our own, no richly flowing spiritual springs, whose beneficent, formative and enjoyable overflow might spread over the whole people to its remotest, most scattered branches. The mass of the people is in danger of sinking into a half-rude, spiritually dull condition, bound up in restless striving after possessions and gain, of leading a Chinese-like dull, stagnant life of earning, of having to forgo the noblest enjoyments in spite of all freedom, and, like a beast of burden, taking its daily ample portion of food, of drawing the cart of gain until the worn-out hide sinks into the grave.

The mixture of the population likewise, though in a certain way it is beneficial to general popular education, again stands in its way as a hindrance. Contact, exchange and intercourse of nations with one another promote and increase their intelligence. Yet every people will seize, work up and appropriate the foreign or new materials of culture found, in the manner peculiar to it, or it must give up its peculiar character and adapt and assimilate itself to a foreign one. We Germans stand in danger of the latter. We are very capable of culture, but unfortunately — and this constantly brings contempt of other nations upon us as a nation — only too much inclined to an apish imitation of foreign manners and customs and to the denial of our own, which are nevertheless, if one strips German manners and custom of their distortions, so noble and solid from of old! Here the nationalities do not merely touch, but are shaken and tossed together, so that the population here forms a true national chaos. The prevailing element is the English, and this will, unless help and a halt come, swallow up our noble German language together with other inestimable national jewels. Before, however, English culture fully penetrates among the Germans living here, our present generation, and one more besides, must perish spiritually. All respect to the English character and English culture! Much must come before it endures comparison with them. But German character, so far as it is pronounced character and not caricature, and German culture, German language, German frankness and straightforwardness, German fidelity and honesty, German courage, German diligence, German perseverance and steadfastness, German thoroughness and skill, German genius and depth of mind, German learning, German heartiness, German religiosity and understanding — these are all things that truly are not to be despised, which have never yet been despised by other nations, but have always been highly esteemed and praised. The German character once stood already among the Romans and later at the time of German political unity and prosperity in such honorable repute that, recommended for imitation, it lived proverbially in the mouth of nations; whereas the German popular tongue under the word "Welsch" designated the character of the Romance nations as cowardly, faithless and detestable. Today it is somewhat different, and that is a proof that the German character — we cannot conceal it, since crying facts are at hand — is in decline. We Germans, however, ought not to let it decline, and least of all despise it, we would have to despise ourselves otherwise. — Rather we should rightly recognize what is given to us, should faithfully preserve it, keep house with it honestly, trade with it at interest, should enrich with it our own heart and mind, serve our new common fatherland with this pound and bequeath it to our posterity as an inalienable holy possession. We Germans already form a mighty branch on the North American tree of the people; could and should we not, according to number and spiritual weight, form a noble part of the trunk and, instead of being carried by the whole, help carry the whole? Who hinders us, if we do not hinder ourselves? We do not want to be American Germans, but Americans, German Americans; we do not want something whole and peculiar for ourselves alone, but to be an especially noble part of the whole. Only so shall we fulfill our civil and political calling. Every German living here should possess so much education as one must require of the citizen of a free state and a voting member of a religious corporation. The spiritual world should be as open to him as the material. He should have a free, correct view, an open head, a noble, pious heart. That would be a worthy addition to the advantages which we already enjoy! Whoever has a benevolent heart should do what he can to help our people here to it, and to do good to himself and the whole State.

Herewith we have stated the motives and points of view of the intended youth paper. We should like to begin with the young, in our part. A good foundation must be laid here. "What Johnny does not know, John will not know." Where the elementary schools have left off, or what they have omitted, there we should like to build further, that we should like to supply. A religious, confessional paper we do not intend to furnish; yet it shall be neither unchristian nor anti-Christian. The whole world, what and how it was and is, with its inhabitants and products, men, animals, plants and minerals, with its elements, its colossal and microscopic magnitudes, with its open and hidden forces, its interrelations and reciprocal actions, etc., thus history of the world and of religions, history of culture and inventions, ethnography, geography, physics, mechanics, prose and poetic (German and English) literature, music, painting, architecture, sculpture — these are the subjects and domains which the "Illustrirte Abendschule" will treat and traverse, or at least in part bring to the knowledge of the young. What lies beyond world and time, God and eternity, shall also not be forgotten, but forms the ground and goal of our paper, as indeed world and time are also included in it, begin and end in it.

When the day's business is ended, then young men and young women in cities and in lonely settlements may take up the Illustrirte Abendschule and entertain themselves pleasantly and usefully with it. We therefore give the paper the name "Abendschule," and because some good woodcuts are given with each number for illustration and ornament, we have called it "Illustrirte Abendschule." If, however, people who are above or below the age of youth wish to take the paper in hand, whether in the evening or at any desired time of day, they too may find much that is attractive and instructive. But he who already knows all that we shall furnish, or can otherwise procure it, yet has a benevolent mind, let him seek at least to recommend and spread it as much and as far as is ever possible for him. Thereby he does certainly much good. In particular such a paper should be most welcome to the reverend gentlemen preachers, who ex officio have the care for the people's welfare, and further to the gentlemen teachers, for use in school and home and for dissemination. We know how many preachers and teachers in this country see and strive after the necessity of popular and youth education, yet constantly see their good intention half lost through lack of source-writings and auxiliary books. We live altogether in the hope that many will recognize the blessing and usefulness of such a paper and gladly take it up.

We tell our future readers beforehand that we shall not anxiously snatch after the new, the piquant and the unheard-of, but what is needful and useful for everyone to know who makes some claim to education, or does not make it, that we will give. In so doing we do not trouble ourselves further whether many already know what is related. All who do not know it shall learn it. We would be altogether a householder, who out of his treasure brings forth things new and old, to make such a treasure the common property of many. Simple, honest German mind shall be the paper's character and ornament. Good paper, printing and other appointments too, as this specimen copy shows, shall not be much wanting. The format is so chosen that the reader can have a pretty, entertaining book bound from each year's volume.

A month from now the second number shall appear, and then regularly one every fourteen days. The price of the paper for a year's volume, payable in advance, is four shillings. Whoever orders several copies at once receives five of them for two dollars a year. No order will be filled unless the payment accompanies it. At the close of each year the readers will be reminded of a new subscription, and whoever does not send the payment before the beginning of the following year, his subscription will be regarded as ended.

Note of the Editor of the "Lutheraner"

In communicating the above prospectus of a new youth paper, which has not so much the purpose of working in the field of religion and Church as rather of serving as a storehouse of what is otherwise worth knowing for this life, we cannot omit to call the attention of preachers, teachers, heads of households, masters, young men's societies and the young generally to this fine undertaking. A paper such as the "Illustrirte Abendschule" meets in any case a widely felt need. The elementary school cannot possibly offer the future citizen and businessman all that he needs as such. Higher real and trade schools we still lack. The so-called evening schools, which are to take their place here, however excellent and indispensable an institution they are, do not suffice. These need just such a paper as the projected one, so that he who attends the evening school may partly repeat what he has learned there, partly increase the treasure of his useful knowledge. Precisely the more mightily the enemies of religion now invade all relations of society here to its ruin, the more sacred is the duty for Christians not to remain behind and to secure the share of influence which is permitted them also here in these relations. This, however, can only happen if Christians in general education keep even pace with the enemies of their faith. To this it is to be added that the Gospel, far from teaching men to despise science and art, rather gives these pursuits of the human mind the right consecration. Luther therefore once wrote: "I am not of the opinion that through the Gospel all arts should be struck to the ground and perish, as some overspiritual people pretend, but I would gladly see all arts, especially music, in the service of Him who gave and created them.