Konrad Nies, poet, actor, and educator, was born 17 October 1861 in Alzey in Rheinhessen, Germany, the son of Franz Nies, a prosperous baker, and Katharina Margarethe Breyer. He emigrated to the United States in August 1883, settling first in Ohio, where he lived with his brother. As an actor, he appeared on stages in Cincinnati, Buffalo, Milwaukee, and Omaha. He studied English at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and later taught German language and literature at high schools in Newark, Ohio. Nies accepted a job as a representative of the Freidenker Publication Company, and while traveling in this capacity throughout the Midwest he met Elisabeth Waldvogel, whom he married in 1887. They had two children. Also in 1887 Nies published a novel titled Die Volkersfiedel.
In 1888 Nies began a periodical titled Deutsch-Amerikanische Dichtung [see: https://archive.org/details/deutschamerikani02nies/page/n3], designed to cultivate interest in German and German-American literature. However, the project failed, leaving Nies financially destitute but still devoted to the cause of promoting German-American literature, particularly German poetry. Nies supported himself by teaching high school German in Newark, Ohio, and later directed a private school for girls in St. Louis, Missouri. His first book of poetry, Funken, was published in Leipzig in 1891, and a second edition published in 1901. In addition to teaching and pursuing his own writing, he lectured widely in several American and German cities.
During the early 1890s, despite suffering from asthma and exhaustion, Nies continued to write. Between the years 1900 and 1905 he published four verse-dramas (Deutsche Gaben, Rosen im Schnee, Im Zeichen der Freiheit, and Die herrlichen Drei) and his second volume of poetry, Aus Westlichen Weiten. Nearly bankrupt and facing a costly divorce suit, Nies accepted a position editing the Denver Demokrat; and later became editor in chief of the Colorado Herold in 1916-1917. Continuing his efforts to acquaint Americans with German literature, he spent the year 1913-1914 touring a number of German-populated American cities.
Nies reconciled with his wife in 1909 and retreated to a home overlooking San Francisco Bay, which he called “Waldnest.” American involvement against Germany in World War I distressed him, and he turned to writing war poetry. He composed his first war poem in 1914 and continued to speak out against the war, publishing “Zum Rettungswerk,” a poem sympathetic to his defeated homeland, in 1918.
Nies died in San Francisco’s German Hospital of complications following an appendectomy. The poems in his last volume of poetry, Welt und Wildnis (1921), show increased pessimism, engendered largely by the war between his two countries, and a fear of old age.
Overall, the themes in his work are well-known: love of country, friendship, nature. His style is conservative, and his later poetry demonstrates a command of the sonnet form. Today his work contributes to our understanding of American life from the perspective of a German American at the turn of the century.
From: Ward, Robert E. “Konrad Nies, German-American Literary Knight,” German-American Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 1971, pp. 7-11. PDF