Illinois Staats-Zeitung (Illinois State Newspaper) was one of the most well-known German-language newspapers of the United States; it was published in Chicago from 1848 until 1922. Along with the Westliche Post and Anzeiger des Westens, both of St. Louis, it was one of the three most successful German-language newspapers in the United States Midwest, and described as "the leading Republican paper of the Northwest", alongside the Chicago Tribune. By 1876, the paper was printing 14,000 copies an hour and was second only to the Tribune in citywide circulation. Publication history Establishment The Illinois Staats-Zeitung was founded in April 1848 as a weekly, and became a daily in 1851. Politically, the newspaper was Republican. Hermann Kriege was the first editor-in-chief. In the 1850s, the paper was taken over by Forty-Eighters and became a major daily newspaper of the Chicago German-born community. In 1851, Georg Schneider joined the staff of the paper and became editor. Among his associates were George Hillgärtner and Daniel Hertel. Schneider played a major role in building the Republican Party in Illinois, a work in which the Illinois Staats-Zeitung played an important function. The Illinois Staats-Zeitung opposed slavery, and Schneider successfully used the newspaper as a platform to campaign against the Kansas–Nebraska Act. On February 22, 1856 Schneider attended, on behalf of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, a meeting in Decatur of anti-Nebraska newspapers in Illinois. In total, 26 newspapers were represented at the meeting, assembled by the Morgan Journal editor Paul Selby. Civil War period During the Civil War years, Lorenz Brentano was proprietor and editor-in-chief, succeeding Schneider. In these years, the paper fully dominated German-language press in the city, as Democratic German-language newspapers were short-lived at the time. At this point, Illinois Staats-Zeitung was the second-largest daily newspaper in the Chicago. During the war, Wilhelm Rapp was on the staff. He came from the Baltimore Wecker after a riot destroyed its office. After the war, he returned to the Wecker. In the years after the war, the Staats-Zeitung was published by Prussian immigrant Anton C. Hesing, a former sheriff of Cook County, who moved from partial ownership to complete ownership in 1867. A public figure and political boss of sorts, Hesing would use the pages of his paper for maximum political impact, helping to launch the pro-alcohol People's Party in 1873 and orchestrating the election of Harvey Doolittle Colvin as the 27th mayor of Chicago. Hesing's independent political