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Rudolf Cronau

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Rudolf Cronau
Rudolf Cronau, 1882/83
Rudolf Cronau, 1882/83
BornRudolf Daniel Ludwig Cronau
(1855-01-21)21 January 1855
Solingen, Prussia (Nordrhein-Westfalen), Germany
Died27 October 1939(1939-10-27) (aged 84)
Philipse Manor, New York, United States
Occupationillustrator, journalist, author
Notable works
  • portrait of Sitting Bull
  • Von Wunderland zu Wunderland (1886)
  • Im Wilden Westen (1890)
SpouseMargarethe Tänzler (1865-1944)
Children3

Rudolf Daniel Ludwig Cronau (21 January 1855 – 27 October 1939) was a German-American painter, illustrator and journalist.

Rudolf Cronau was well known in Germany for his illustrations, articles and books about the American West.[1]

Early life

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Rudolf Daniel Ludwig Cronau was born in Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Prussia (Germany) on 21 January 1855, the only son of Rudolf Cronau, tax official by Helene Wilhelmine, née Waldeck.[2] He attended between 1866 and 1869 the public school (höhere Bürgerschule) at Solingen. In 1870 Cronau was accepted into the Royal Academy of Art in Düsseldorf receiving formal art training, among others from renowned Andreas Achenbach. For a time he maintained an art studio at Düsseldorf. In 1877 he relocated to Leipzig and began working for Die Gartenlaube, an illustrated magazine. Cronau landed the job as their correspondent to the United States and sailed on the vessel "Oder" from Bremen, Germany reaching New York City on 17 January 1881[3][4][5] .

Career

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Die Gartenlaube (1882) b 277
Im wilden Westen - eine Künstlerfahrt durch die Prairien und Felsengebirge der Union (1890) (14785919953)

Cronau contributed a series of articles and illustrations on the subject of life in the United States. In the fall of 1881 he journeyed to Fort Randall in Dakota Territory where he would meet and befriend Sitting Bull, then a prisoner of war at that post. Cronau was sympathetic to the Indian's plight, causing him to remain nearly half a year in the territory documenting and illustrating the Sioux. Most of Rudolf Cronau's artistic work from that period is in pencil, some in pen, and there are a few watercolors. Some of his drawings were transferred into collotypes, a photo printing process using gelatin. After Cronau returned to Germany in 1883, he published 50 collotypes in a book about his American visit entitled "Von Wunderland zu Wunderland".[6][7][8]

Criticism

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In Cronau's earlier writings in the 1880s and those just following the Plains Wars, he described an affinity with Indigenous people – the Sioux in particular. However, during WWII his opinions of Indigenous peoples changed dramatically casting Indigenous peoples as a "hindrance of progress and territorial expansion."[9] The historian H. Glenn Penny describes this type of German settler colonialism in Minnesota, in his book Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800.[10] The historian Christoph Strobel goes on to point out that Cronau was exemplary of "the rise and fall of German America, the transnational world and interactions of Native American performers and artists, post–World War II Native American and German activists, reservation tourism, German hobbyists “playing” Indians."[11]

Cronau was aligned with the beliefs of Social Darwinism; he "argued that the key to progress was the annihilation of the "lower races," who stood in the way of advanced culture and civilization." Some social Darwinists of his time believed that violent racial extermination "would result in moral progress for humanity."[12]

Family and later life

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Rudolf Cronau was married in Leipzig, Germany on 8 February 1888 to Margarethe Tänzler of Chemnitz.[13] Their daughter Margarethe Hildegard was born at Leipzig on 8 February 1892.[14][15] Two years later, in 1894 Cronau returned to the United States bringing his wife and daughter settling in Washington DC, where their second daughter, Elisabeth was born on 20 January 1896. By the turn of the century Cronau relocated to New York where he would reside the remainder of his life. His only son, Rudolph was born in New York on 6 March 1900.[16] Rudolf Cronau became a naturalized U.S. citizen on 21 December 1901. He died in Philipse Manor, New York, on 27 October 1939.[17]

Publications (all in German)

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  • Die Geschichte der Solinger Klingenindustrie (1885)
  • Fahrten im Lande der Sioux (1886)
  • Von Wunderland zu Wunderland (1886/87)
  • Das Buch der Reklame. Geschichte, Wesen und Praxis der Reklame (1887–1889)
  • Im Wilden Westen (1890)
  • Amerika: Die Geschichte seiner Entdeckung (1892)
  • Drei Jahrhunderte deutschen Lebens in Amerika (1909)
  • Die Deutschen als Gründer von Neu-Amsterdam/New York und als Urheber und Träger der amerikanischen Freiheitsbestrebungen (1926)

Publications in English

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Rudolf Cronau Papers [MSS081]: http://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/Collection/Show/collection_id/612
  2. ^ Marriage certificate No. 57, City Hall of Solingen, Germany, 30 October 1851, Stadt Solingen Stadtarchiv, Gasstrasse 22 B, 42657 Solingen, Germany
  3. ^ Glazier, Ira A. and Filby, William P., "Germans to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at US Ports 1850-1897" Scarecrow Press 1994, volume 37; Cronau’s arrival record on the vessel "Oder" on 17 January 1881 at New York
  4. ^ Penny, H. Glenn (July 2011). "The German Love Affair with American Indians - Rudolf Cronau's Epiphany". Common-Place. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
  5. ^ Stadtarchiv Solingen, Record Group Na047 Rudolf Cronau:http://www.archive.nrw.de/LAV_NRW/jsp/findbuch.jsp?archivNr=147&tektid=278&id=033
  6. ^ Museum of Nebraska Art: https://mona.unk.edu/artexplr/cronau.shtml
  7. ^ Social Networks and Archival Contexts: http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/ark:/99166/w68k9t3v
  8. ^ Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Rudolf Cronau Papers [MSS081]: http://www2.hsp.org/collections/Balch%20manuscript_guide/html/cronau.html
  9. ^ Watzke, Petra (May 2015). "Reviewed Work(s): Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800 by H. Glenn Penny". German Studies Review. 38 (2): 418–420. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
  10. ^ Penny, H. Glenn (2015). Kindred by Choice Germans and American Indians since 1800. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-4696-2644-4.
  11. ^ Strobel, Christoph (Summer 2015). "Book Review: Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800". Western Historical Quarterly. 46 (2): 252–253. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
  12. ^ Weikart, Richard (May 2003). "Progress through Racial Extermination: Social Darwinism, Eugenics, and Pacifism in Germany, 1860-1918". German Studies Review. 26 (2). Retrieved 24 September 2023.
  13. ^ United States Passport, 1924, certificate No. 377608, detailing birth dates, date of marriage, date of immigration and naturalization for Rudolf Cronau and his wife, Margarethe Tänzler Cronau
  14. ^ New York City marriage records, 19 July 1913 for Margaret Hildegard Cronau to Hermann Wunderlich, detailing birth dates/places of bride and groom, as well as full names of parents
  15. ^ Obituary of Hermann Wunderlich, Rudolf Cronau’s son-in-law detailing family relationships, New York Times, 29 September 1951
  16. ^ United States Social Security Death Index Rudolph Cronau * 6 March 1900; † April 1978
  17. ^ Obituary of Rudolf Cronau, New York Times, Obituary, 28 October 1939, page 15
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