Joseph A. Hemann

[1] Shortly after his arrival, young Hemann, who had brought with him prominent credentials, visited with Professor Beleké at Mount St. Mary's College near Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Being the only one in the company who could speak the English language, Mr. Hemann acted as interpreter for the rest, bought the provisions, and was held in high esteem by his companions.

Ferdinand Kühr, whose acquaintance he made at the Athenæum, and accepted a position as teacher at the Catholic parochial school in Canton, Ohio, where he remained about a year and a half.

He then returned to Cincinnati and took charge of the new German Catholic school in the Over-the-Rhine area, which he opened from the large hall of the then Rising Sun tavern, on the corner of Main and Thirteenth streets.

Here he remained for five or six years, during which period he also kept an evening school, in which class several of the most prominent citizens of Cincinnati, such as Uncle Joe Siefert, John H. Koehnken, and others, were then sitting to study English.

In 1840, when German books were very scarce in the city, he was the first mover for the organization of a library society, the Schul- und Leseverein, which was in successful operation for many years, and laid the foundation for many of Cincinnati's best educated citizens.

For the love of freedom we left the land of our birth, friends, relatives, all that was dear to us, to gather here in a strange country, the fruits of liberty so magnanimously offered to the oppressed of all the world.

While on a journey to his native country in the summer of 1850, subject to his instruction by letter, the Wahrheitsfreund, the first German Catholic newspaper in the United States, was purchased for him.

He then hastened home and took the publishing of the paper in his own hand; and on October 12, 1850, he began the publication of the Cincinnati Volksfreund, one of the principal German daily newspapers of the country.

This caused a spirit of opposition among his subscribers, which led Mr. Hemann to dispose of his interest in the Volksfreund, and to retire from a long and eventful literary career, in which he had been prominently successful.

In 1872, Hemann was appointed to the building committee for the new St. George Church in Clifton on Calhoun Street, a parish that both physically and spiritually attracted immigrant Germans to lower Corryville.