Mid-nineteenth-century Germany and the United States constitute the background for the life story of Adolf Douai as educator, author, editor, and self-declared radical. A member of the 1848 revolutionary Landtag of Saxe-Altenburg, he was imprisoned by reactionaries and later forced to flee the country. His career in the United States illustrates general sociopolitical conditions faced by German Forty-Eighters arriving as refugees. In Texas, Douai edited an abolitionist newspaper for three years, but threats by Know-Nothings forced him to flee to the north, where he was recruited by organizers of the new Republican Party, who hoped to attract German voters for Fremont (1856) and Lincoln (1860). Douai is generally associated with the Froebel kindergarten system. His contacts included Robert Blum, Mikhail Bakunin, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Louis Agassiz.
Author Biography
The Author: Justine Randers-Pehrson is a freelance historian. She received her basic training in European languages and culture at Hood College, the Universite de Nancy, and the Sorbonne. At Radcliffe College, where she received her M.A., the Universitaet Heidelberg, and in Berlin, she concentrated on philosophy. At Howard University, her chief interest was sociology. Her publications include Germans and the Revolution of 1848-1849 (Peter Lang, 1999), Barbarians and Romans, and The Surgeon's Glove.
