Friedrich Muench

Friedrich Muench (June 25, 1799; Niedergemünden, Germany – 1881 Dutzow, Missouri) was a German-American rationalist, winemaker, Missouri State Senator, and prolific author for German emigrants, beginning in the 1830s.

He studied theology at the University of Gießen, Germany, from 1816 to 1819. There he met the brothers Follen (August, Karl and Paul, who founded a democratic and republican students movement, soon to be outlawed. He befriended the youngest brother, Paul Follen, who in 1825 married his sister Maria.

Author Gottfried Duden, a German attorney, settled on the north side of the Missouri River along Lake Creek in 1824. He was investigating the possibilities of settlement in the area by his countrymen. In 1827 he returned to Germany, which he believed was overpopulated. There he first published a glowing Bericht über eine Reise nach den westlichen Staaten Nordamerikas ("A Journey to the Western States of North America") in 1829.

The romantic description of the free life in the United States motivated the Lutheran minister Friedrich Muench and the attorney Paul Follen to found in 1833 the Gießener Auswanderungsgesellschaft ("Gießen Emigration Society"). Both had participated in student movements in Germany. As they felt there was no immediate hope for success, they intended to establish a "new and free German State in the great North American Republic" to serve as a model for a future German republic.

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