The November 2, 1873 edition of the Daily Arkansas Gazette contained the following letter describing
what a visitor from Little Rock saw while visiting Vienna a few weeks earlier:
Vienna: The German
Capital as Seen by a Citizen of Little Rock
We are permitted to make public the following extracts from
a private letter to Capt. H. H. Rottaken from his half-brother Mr. E Thuemmler,
who left a few weeks since for a European tour:
Vienna October 8, 1873
For some days past I have been doing this peculiarly “mixed”
city. I say “mixed” because you have here a little from all parts of the world,
human and brute –animate and inanimate. I imagine Babel could not have been a
much more confounding place than Vienna is to an American. This is supposed to
be a German city, but enter a given crowd of people on any of the main streets
and ask a question in German, it as likely to be answered in Portuguese,
Spanish, or English as is German. It is utterly impossible by appearance to
judge with the least certainty a man’s nationality – faces, dress and manners
are as varied as languages, and I very much doubt that the real Viennese is at
all times quite certain he is in his own “Kaiserstadt.”
It is impossible to impart, in any degree, an idea of the
universal splendor found in the richer parts of Vienna. It is true [that]
magnificence is cheap where labor costs next to nothing, and where the
commonest laborer who is at all permitted to engage in the production of
articles of elegance, must be himself a “master” in his art – but the true
secret of the wonderful impression that both the exterior and interior beauties
of Vienna produce, is to be found in the correct taste and the constant longing
for the beautiful, characteristic, in an eminent degree, of the inhabitants of
this place.
The prevalent building is a four-story, broad, white house,
in a style of architecture curiously compounded of the modern and antique.
Every building, of any consequence, has it porticos (also supported by splendid
caryatides) and elaborate ornamentation at every available point – the whole
white as snow. The interior of the better houses is all gilt and glitter, and
even the lower middle classes are seldom content without a few real oil
paintings, and an attempt at sculptural display in the “best room.”
There are more soldiers in the street every day than in St.
Louis during the liveliest times of the war. Music, street cars, policemen,
fruit and flower-vendors and brilliant cafes are “thick.” At night the
brilliancy of the streets is marvelous. Everything possible is done for the
comfort of the population. Parks, shaded walks with frequent benches, are found
in all parts of Vienna, and really, from the number of people constantly in the
streets, one would suppose that the outdoor beauties were adequately
appreciated.
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| Buildings of the 1873 World's Fair are in the foreground; St. Stephens Church and the walled city are in the middle; the Vienna woods are in the distance Picture from Wikicommons |
The world’s fair is certainly grand.[1] I have been there five times, and am
only beginning to obtain a clear impression of its extent, its wonders, and its
excellencies. I have, of course, a great many notes, and will, in time, make
use of them.
 |
| This was the entrance to the 1873 World's Fiar From Wikicommons |
Leaving New York on the 6th of September, I
arrived at Bremen on the 20th – then on to Leipzig and after two
days there, to Selka.[2] Remaining but a few days, I proceeded
to “Miesitz.” I then came to Vienna.
**********************
Background of the
Letter’s Author and Recipient
The young man who wrote this letter, Eugene Thuemmler (1848
– 1891), had moved from St. Louis to Little Rock in about 1869. Thuemmler was
not a German immigrant, but both of his parents were. His father Traugott
Edward Thuemmler (1815 – 1867) was born
in Saxony, and his mother Sophia (1812 – 1890) was from Prussia. Edward was born
in St. Louis on March 13, 1848 and grew up there.
An 1863 graduate of St. Louis High School, Thuemmler –
according to his passport application – was 5’ 10” tall, with gray eyes, brown hair, oval face, and a “Teutonic”
nose.
The letter was written to Thuemmler’s half-brother, Herbert
Herman Rottaken, who had been born in either Elderfeld (a city now part of
Wuppertal) or Aachen, Germany, on July 25, 1839.[3] In about 1844, while he was still a
young child, he had been brought to the United States by his parents. His
mother was Sophia Rottaken, later Thuemmler. The first name of his father is
lost to history. According to family lore, the Rottaken family, which included
father, mother, Herbert, and his younger sister Augusta (born in 1843), lived
briefly in Little Rock in 1846.[4]
If they were in Little Rock in 1846, it was a brief stay. Sophia
and the two children were in St. Louis in 1847 when she re-married on March 27th.
(It is not known if her first husband died or if the couple had divorced.) A
year later, she and Traugott, her new husband, were the parents of Edward,
their first child together. The 1850 census showed Traugott and Sophia living in
St. Louis with Herbert, Augusta, Edward, and a newly born daughter named Emily.
Traugott managed the boarding house in which they were living. Later he got a
job as the executive secretary of an insurance company
H. H. Rottaken (who opted to keep his father’s last name) moved
to St. Charles, Missouri, late in the 1850s, and soon after the Civil War
started, he joined the Seventh Regiment of the Missouri Cavalry
Volunteers. He initially held the rank
of Sergeant, but in 1862 was commissioned as an officer, rising to the rank of
Captain. He had a distinguished war service record.[5]
After the war, Rottaken returned to St. Louis, but in 1868 he
and Susan, his wife, moved to Little Rock to open a wholesale liquor store. He quickly established a reputation as a sportsman
and hunter, but his business struggled in a highly competitive market filled
with well-established merchants.[6] He was joined in his retail store in 1870
by his step-brother Edward Thuemller, who became a partner. However, the
step-brothers ended their partnership in early 1871.
After the split, Thuemller ran the business with a partner (“Thuemmler
& Eliot”) for about nine months, then on his own (“Thuemmler & Co,”). He
closed the store in December 1872.
After leaving the retail liquor business, Rottaken took a
job as a deputy sheriff, appointed by W. S. Oliver, the elected Sheriff, a
Republican. In August 1872, he received a political appointment from the Republican
governor: he was named head the Pulaski County board of registrars. However,
after he figured out that the job entailed registering voters likely to vote
for the Republican Party and finding ways to refuse to register other voters,
he resigned this post.[7] Soon after that, he affiliated himself with
the Democratic-Conservative Party.
In October 1873, the Citizen’s Party – a stand-in for the
Democratic-Conservative Party – nominated him as its candidate for mayor. His
Republican-nominated opponent was Frederick Kramer, a German immigrant,
prosperous merchant, and well-known citizen of the city.[8] The election was
scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 5, just four days after the publication of the
letter.
The letter was, of course, not political, but its
publication so near the election might have been. The newspaper that published
it, the Daily Arkansas Gazette, was the
Democratic-Conservative Party organ and it strongly supported and promoted
Rottaken’s candidacy for mayor. Perhaps the letter was intended, at least in
part, to give a boost to this reputation.
Whether the letter’s publication had anything to do with
politics, it was likely read with pleasure by immigrants from Europe who knew
Vienna as one of the great capitals of the world and by others with an interest
in foreign cities they knew they would never visit.
And after the letter
was published
After this European trip, Thuemller returned to Little Rock and
resumed his life in the city. Like his step-brother Rottaken, Thuemuller was a
sportsman and he was president of the local sharp shooter’s club. He also had a
strong cultural bent and was a fine singer with the Little Rock Maennerchor. Periodically
he wrote a column for the Arkansas
Gazette on the Little Rock economy. In 1880, he received patent 226,570 for
a thermo-dynamic engine he had designed.
In 1881 Thuemmler, with his wife Harriet (he married her in
Washington D.C. on June 21, 1874) and two small daughters, moved back to St
Louis and he worked there as a grocer. In about 1886, he and his family moved
to Chicago, and he operated a wholesale “notions” business until his death on
March 11, 1891.
Rottaken decisively lost the 1873 elected. However, his
fortunes changed a few months later when in April, 1884, he joined the Baxter
forces in the Brooks-Baxter War. Rottaken was made a captain in the Baxter
forces and was first appointed the chief ordinance officer and later the inspector
general.
When the war ended with Baxter’s victory, Rottaken was rewarded
for his service with an appointment as the Pulaski County Sheriff. After the appointive term ended, he was elected for a two-year term in 1876.
During his terms in office, he hired his step-brother Thuemmler as a deputy
sheriff.
Rottaken’s wife died in 1876. Two years later, in 1878, he
married Fredericka Reichardt Miller, the widow of Charles Miller who had been
the business partner of Frederick Kramer when in 1863 the two had started a
grocery store that grew into one of the most successful in the city. His new
wife was the sister of Adelina, Kramer’s wife.
 |
| Fredericka Miller Rottaken on the day of her wedding to H. H. Rottaken, 1878 (Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 10, 1938, p. 63) |
Rottaken continued to be active in local public service. In
1881, he was the chief of Little Rock’s volunteer fire department and nearly
lost his life in an accident that knocked him off the top of a tall ladder while
fighting a fire. From 1892 to 1894, he held the office of Pulaski County Assessor,
enraging the city’s largest businesses with a dramatic upward reassessment of
their property values. He was elected city alderman in 1901 and served two
two-year terms.
Aside from his public sector work, Herbert and Fredericka
were active investors in real estate and various mining ventures. Over time, their investments made them quite
wealthy. Rottaken died on September 17, 1908 following a hunting accident in which
he accidently shot himself, nearly severing his left arm.[9]
*********************
[1] The 1873 World’s Fair was held in Vienna. In
preparation, the city’s infrastructure was improved through extensive public
investments. The fair opened on May 1st and closed on October 31th.
It featured impressive pavilions constructed in the city’s Prater area. In all,
it offered 26,000 exhibitions that were visited by over 7 million visitors.
Unfortunately for Austria, this number was far less than expected. The
attendance was held down by news of a cholera outbreak in the city and a stock
market panic that marked the beginning of a world-wide recession. Because of
the relatively small attendance, the fair’s revenues paid only about a third of
the cost of staging the event. See http://www.wienmuseum.at/en/exhibitions/detail/the-metropolis-experimentvienna-and-the-1873-world-exhibition.html and http://jdpecon.com/expo/wfvienna1873.html
[2] Selka is a village about 50 miles due South of Leipzig.
It is now part of the Thuringia Province. At the time, it was in the
Saxony-Altenberg Province of the newly unified German state. Miesitz in a small
town about 40 miles southeast of Selka, also now in the Thuringia Province.
(Both Selka and Miesitz were in East Germany after the end of World War
II.) It is likely Thuemller’s father
lived in Selka before he emigrated and that Thuemller had relatives in Miesitz.
Neither were or are tourist destinations.
[3] The Elderfeld birthplace was mentioned in an undated and
unattributed obituary published in a German language newspaper, likely the Arkansas Staatszeitung. This clipping of the obituary is in a scrapbook that is part of the Miller-Rottaken Family Papers in the archives of the Butler
Center for Arkansas Studies. The Aachen
birthplace is stated in a short biography written in the 1970s by a granddaughter
of Rottaken. This typewritten biography is also in the Miller-Rottaken Family Papers.
In the 1870 census, Rottaken told the census takers that he was from
Prussia. See the Miller-Rottaken Family Collection, BC.MSS.10.28, Butler Center
for Arkansas Studies, Arkansas Studies Institute.
[4] The German-language obituary mentioned in footnote 3 says he
and his family were in LR in 1848. The typewritten bio says he and family were
in LR in the 1850s. See the Miller-Rottaken Family Collection, BC.MSS.10.28
Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Arkansas Studies Institute.
[5] His army service is documented in the biographical
sketch mentioned above. See the Miller-Rottaken Family Collection, BC.MSS.10.28
Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Arkansas Studies Institute.
[6] The October 7, 1868 issue of the Daily Arkansas Gazette (p. 3} noted “H. H. Rottaken & Co. have
opened a wholesale wine, liquor, and cigar store one door from the Gazette
office.” Soon after he arrived, Rottaken
convinced the managers of the State Fair to hold a pigeon shooting contest as
part of the fair activities. He won the competitions in 1868, 1869, and 1870,
and ran a small business supplying pigeons for such competitions. The publisher
of the Gazette was impressed by
Rottaken and wrote two stories about him, touting his sportsman skills and his
pack of dogs. See Our Neighbor Rottaken. Daily
Arkansas Gazette, August 11, 1869, p. 4. And Rottaken, Daily Arkansas Gazette, July 8, 1870, p. 4.
[7] Rottaken testified on his experiences as a registrar at
a one of the hearings that followed the Brooks-Baxter War. The Investigation
Committee, Daily Arkansas Gazette,
July 29, 1874, p. 4.
[8] For more
information on Kramer, see this entry in the Arkansas Encyclopedia of History
and Culture: http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=12300