Joseph Eiboeck

Joseph Eiboeck (February 23, 1838 – January 8, 1913) was an American newspaper editor, publisher, and author, who emigrated from the Austrian Empire to the United States. Known as "Colonel Eiboeck", he was one of the most prominent newspaper editors in late 19th- and early 20th-century Iowa, writing in both German and English, and an influential opponent of Prohibition. English translations of chapters from his book are now available through the University of Iowa His stepfather, Paul Kiene, participated in the German revolutions of 1848–1849. two and a half years after Iowa had become a state. Eiboeck completed his typesetting apprenticeship at the Miners' Express, then a daily newspaper in Dubuque, under Colonel William H. Merritt and William Ashley Jones, and continued working with Merritt when the Miners' Express merged with the Dubuque Herald. He then traveled extensively to gather information and improve his health, throughout the United States, its territories, the Pacific Coast, and northern Mexico. where he gave a speech that was "cabled to Paris and London".

In July 1879, Eiboeck was a co-founder of the "State Protective Association" in Des Moines, which brought together saloon keepers, brewers, and liquor dealers, to lobby for a "judicious license law" and educate voters about the economic losses incurred by farmers and businesses as a result of existing laws prohibiting liquor. Written in German, Die Deutschen von Iowa und deren Errungenschaften was the only book of its kind, dedicated to the history of German, Austrian, and Swiss immigrants to Iowa. Along with other volunteers from Clayton County, he enlisted in Company E of the 9th Iowa Infantry Regiment, but was discharged at Pacific, Missouri, due to disability. They had six children, including a son who died at the age of five.

For many years, Eiboeck served as president, then honorary president, of the German-American Press Association of the West. They were both buried at Woodland Cemetery, and survived by Minnie McFarland and one granddaughter.

In 1916, The Germans of Iowa and Their Achievements was listed in Rudolf Cronau's German Achievements in America, as one of several comprehensive histories of German immigrants at the state level. Writing during World War I, Cronau suggested that collectively, these and other works would help to provide "a solid wall against present-day efforts to minimize the German as a factor in America." Five years after Eiboeck's death, the Babel Proclamation was signed into law by Iowa Governor William Harding, prohibiting the use of foreign languages in public. The executive order marked the end of the foreign-language press in Iowa.

Since 2014, the University of Iowa and the University of Münster have collaborated in transcribing and translating chapters of The Germans of Iowa and Their Achievements, which was originally printed in a German blackletter typeface (Fraktur). In 2019, an annotated English translation of Joseph Eiboeck's "Iowa's Prohibition Plague" (Chapter 11) was published in its entirety in The Annals of Iowa.