Ernst Anton Zündt, Freiherr von Kenzingen, 1819-1897
Ernst Anton Zündt, Freiherr von Kenzingen, was born in 1819 at Georgenberg near Mindelheim in Bavaria. In 1849 he wed Johanna Ammann, creating tensions with his family, who saw this as a marriage “not befitting his status.” He found employment in the postal service in Nördlingen, but in 1852 he was found guilty of stealing money from the mail to pay his creditors, losing both his job and his title.
He immigrated to America with his wife and two sons in 1857. The family came to Wisconsin, where Zündt first edited the Green Bay Post and later various German-language newspapers and journals in Milwaukee. He was also the stage manager of Milwaukee’s Stadttheater for one season. The family moved to St. Louis, where Zündt worked for the Westliche Post from 1864 to 1867. He was teaching in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1868, and back in St. Louis by 1876 (where Robert E. Ward indicates he “served as a translator for the city tax department”). From 1886 to 1888 he was in Milwaukee, and in Minnesota, where he edited the Minneapolis Freie Presse. In 1889 was a journalist in Helena, Missouri, but returned to Jefferson City in 1890 where he lived until his death in 1897.
He is noted for his poems dealing with German Americans in the Civil War. In 1863, his “Lied eines Deutsch Amerikaners” was awarded first prize among 200 entrants by the New York Sängerbund; it has been translated into English (Lyrische und dramatische Dichtungen, St. Louis: Meissner, 1871, pp. 7-9.) His “Lincoln-Hymne” was been set to music by Oscar Schmoll and sung by a choir of Turners from St. Louis and Illinois in 1885 at the 20th anniversary of Lincoln’s death in Springfield, Illinois.
Zündt founded the Schiller Club in St. Louis, which later became the West St. Louis Turnverein.
Friedrich Michel (1865-1922) wrote a poem in Zündt’s honor (Beisswanger, Conrad, ed. Stimmen der Freiheit: Blütenlese der besten Schöpfungen Arbeiter- und Volksdichter, 4th ed., Nürnberg, 1914.)