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Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection
  ↳ Vorbote (Chicago, Ill.)

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In 1874, the Workingmen's Party of Illinois joined the national effort to increase the visibility and awareness of immigrant laborers and began publishing Vorbote, a German-language weekly based in Chicago. The title, Vorbote, German for "harbinger," did just that by focusing on the political interests of the working class. Carl Klings served as editor for the Vorbote through December of 1875, at which time he was removed due to his "reluctance to support labor unions." After nearly two years of national success publishing "agitational and educational material" under Klings, Vorbote's second editor, Conrad Conzett, launched the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung ("Chicago German Workers Newspaper"), which was published three days a week and which focused on the German community in Chicago, rather than on Germans in the United States as a whole. By 1878, the Vorbote declared itself the "independent organ for the true interests of the proletariat." Meanwhile, in 1879, after expanding to becoming a daily, the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung dedicated its profits to start a third German-language paper: Die Fӓckel ("The Torch"), an eight-page Sunday publication. After 1880, the Vorbote served as the weekly edition of the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung.

In the late 1910s, the three newspapers altered their format and content. After Die Fӓckel ceased publication on October 12, 1919, the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung decreased its publication output to once a week, replacing Die Fӓckel as a Sunday edition. In addition, the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung picked up Die Fӓckel's supplement, titled Bildung ist Wissen —Wissen ist Macht ("Education is Knowledge, Knowledge is Power"). The Vorbote continued as a weekly, printing on Wednesday; however, after Die Fӓckel ended publication, Vorbote began reprinting both the main pages and supplement for the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung. The two latter newspapers remained in business until 1924.

Banned in Germany because of their radical content, the _Vorbote_, the _Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung_, and _Die Fӓckel_ significantly impacted the German-American labor movement, having begun as political organs of workingman parties, then becoming socialist, and finally anarchist papers.

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