Anton C. Hesing

Anton Caspar Hesing (1823–1895), known as "Boss Hesing", was a German-American newspaper publisher and political boss who became a prominent figure in Chicago during the second half of the 19th Century. The long-time publisher of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung and political boss of the pro-liquor wing of the Republican Party, Hesing is remembered as one of the most influential figures of the 1870s in the emerging metropolis of Chicago, responsible, alongside his compatriot Hermann Raster, for the adoption of a national anti-temperance platform for the Republican Party in 1872, the creation of the People's Party in 1873, and the subsequent election of Harvey Doolittle Colvin as Mayor of Chicago. During his final years, the wealthy Hesing engaged in a number of philanthropic ventures, including a large role in financing of Chicago's Schiller Theater.

Biography

Early years

Anton Caspar Hesing was born January 6, 1823, in Vechta in the German Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, today part of Lower Saxony in Germany. His father was a brewer and distiller. His mother died when Anton was 6 and his father made him an orphan at age 15.

Upon arrival in the United States in 1839, Hesing settled in the German enclave that was Cincinnati, Ohio, where he first worked as a grocery clerk. Hesing saved his money frugally and within two years had accumulated enough money to launch a grocery store of his own — a business which he maintained until 1848.

The year following his return, Hesing sold his grocery business and invested the proceeds in a hotel located on Race and Court Streets in Cincinnati. He was later appointed a deputy sheriff in 1858 His new ownership stake did not initially mean a quick path to fame and fortune, however, as during the wartime years of 1863 and 1864 Hesing earned an income of just over $4,900 and slightly less than $2,800, respectively.

Despite his modest income from the paper, by 1867 Hesing was able to muster $80,000 to buy out his remaining partner, Lorenz Brentano, and to thereby attain complete control of the Staats-Zeitung. He would subsequently hire New York resident and Forty-Eighter Hermann Raster as editor-in-chief and build it one of the most successful German newspapers in North America, alongside other papers from St. Louis, Milwaukee, and New York City.

The Staats-Zeitung was particularly hard hit during the October 1871 Great Chicago Fire. Not only was the building housing the publication, including its machinery and type, lost to the flames, but so too were back files of the paper and the publication's records of accounts. Moreover, virtually the entire staff of the paper from editors to press operators found themselves burned out of their homes.

Hesing's role in the emerging Republican Party of Illinois was mostly editorial, advancing the party's ideas and agenda in the pages of the Staats-Zeitung. He lent support to the Lincoln Administration during the war and advocated in favor of Radical Reconstruction in the years immediately following surrender of the Southern rebellion. Hesing's own personal political service was instead limited to a stint as a member of the Lincoln Park Board of Commissioners from 1874 to 1876.

Later years A philanthropist during his twilight years, Anton Hesing was one of the primary donors for the construction of the Schiller Theater.

Hesing's wife died in 1886, coinciding with an end to direct participation in public affairs for him.

On August 22, 1894, while visiting the neighboring state of Wisconsin, Anton Hesing was stricken by a stroke — a first bout with the condition that would ultimately kill him less than one year later.

Footnotes