Henry Boernstein

Henry Boernstein
Engraving from a photograph by Brown found in Edwards's Great West of 1860
Born	November 4, 1805 Hamburg
Died	September 10, 1892(1892-09-10) (aged 86) Vienna

Henry Boernstein [in Europe, Heinrich Börnstein] (November 4, 1805 - September 10, 1892) was the publisher of the Anzeiger des Westens in St. Louis, Missouri, the oldest German newspaper west of the Mississippi River. He was also a political activist, author, soldier, actor and stage manager. He played a major role in keeping Missouri in the Union at the start of the Civil War.

His family fled from his native city to Lemberg (then in Austrian Galizia, now L’viv in Ukraine), in 1813, due to fighting over Hamburg between allied and French forces. He studied half-heartedly at the University of Lemberg and would later read medical literature in Vienna. He acquired a special hostility to the Roman Catholic Church due to being required to attend Catholic catechism despite being a Protestant.

After leaving the university, Boerrnstein joined an Austrian army regiment stationed in Olmütz, Moravia, for five years, before resigning his commission as a cadet and going to Vienna. There he became involved in journalism and theater.

He married the Hungarian actress Marie Steltzer (age 15 years) on November 13, 1829. After a period in Vienna, Boernstein went on tour as an actor to cities in the Austrian Empire such as Budapest, Lubjana, Agram [Zagreb], Trieste and Venice, and he served as supervisor of the municipal theaters in St. Pölten and Linz. He became both a successful theatrical entrepreneur and a popular actor. In 1841, he and his wife toured the principal cities of Germany with great success.

His radical political views enticed him to Paris, and in 1842 he took a German opera company there, which failed to flourish. He was a friend of Franz Liszt, Alexandre Dumas Sr. and Giacomo Meyerbeer. He managed an Italian opera company in Paris before starting a “translation factory” modifying French drama for performance in German.

In 1844 and 1845 he published the radical journal Vorwärts! Pariser Signale aus Kunst, Wissenschaft, Musik und geselligem Leben [“Advance! Paris Signals from Art, Science, Music and Social Life”], later Vorwärts! Pariser Deutsche Zeitschrift [“Advance! Paris German Journal”]. It became the chief mouthpiece of Karl Marx and other Paris radicals of the time, including Friedrich Engels, Karl Ludwig Bernays, Arnold Ruge, and Henrich Heine. French authorities shut Vorwärts! down early in 1845, expelling or imprisoning most of those associated with the journal.