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No part of Fort Wayne's press was more distinctive than the part its largest community read in its own language. The German-language press ran in the city for eighty-four years, from 1843 to 1927, and at its height German Fort Wayne supported multiple dailies at once. Indiana's first German-language newspaper was published in Fort Wayne: Der Deutsche Beobachter von Indiana, issued in 1843 out of the Sentinel's own office — it was owned by Sentinel founder Thomas Tigar and edited by Dr. Charles "Carl" Schmitz. It folded quickly, but the succession that followed was continuous. A German paper of 1856, called in the surviving catalog Die Zeitung, merged within two years into an unknown partner; the Indiana Staats-Zeitung was founded in 1857, listed in the city directory of 1858–59, and issued as a Democratic tri-weekly. That directory carried the Staats-Zeitung's boast that its circulation was larger than any other German paper in the state — a publisher's claim, printed here as the directory printed it.
The field widened with the community. The Indiana Volksfreund, a weekly Republican paper, was established in 1871. February 1876 brought a daily Republican paper, Das Fort Wayne Tageblatt, and the same year the Demokrat, founded by editor Dr. Herrmann and publisher Fred Schad and run as a daily out of offices at 86 Calhoun Street for a few years. Catholic Germans were served by the weekly Weltbürger from 1883 to 1887. The Fort Wayne Freie Presse, a daily founded in 1888, ran nearly four decades. In the 1890s, Fort Wayne readers could choose among three German dailies, and the Abendpost added an evening paper from 1908 to 1913. The German community these papers served — its churches, singing societies, and wartime ordeal — is treated in the Communities chapter; the papers themselves were its daily nervous system, carrying Chemnitz hosiery workers and Calhoun Street merchants the news in the language of home.
The end came in two stages. In 1908 the Freie Presse and the Indiana Staats-Zeitung merged as the Freie Presse-Staats-Zeitung, and the combined paper became one of the only German-language papers in Indiana to survive the anti-German pressure of the First World War. The Allen County catalog records the Freie Presse title as ceasing in 1926 and the merged Freie Presse-Staats-Zeitung as publishing to 1927 — the two dates stand in the sources side by side and are printed here as they stand, the difference between a title's end and a paper's end being one the surviving catalog does not resolve. With 1927, German Fort Wayne's eighty-four years of German print closed.
Sources: Allen County Genealogical Society, "Newspapers of Allen County, Indiana" and German-language newspapers compilation, incorporating Justin Clark, "Allen County Newspapers: A Short History," Hoosier State Chronicles (April 18, 2017); Library of Congress, Chronicling America title records (Freie Presse-Staats-Zeitung, 1908–1927; Abendpost, 1908–1913); the Communities chapter for the 1858–59 directory boast and the German community record.