Reinhold Ernst Friedrich Karl Solger (5 July 1817 in Stettin – 11 January 1866 in Washington, D. C.) was an American historian, novelist, poet, political activist and lecturer.
He was educated in Europe and emigrated to the United States where he was a noted lecturer in history and other scholarly topics.
His father was a privy councilor in Stettin, and his family belonged to the upper echelons of the Prussian educated and civil service class in that city.
The minister of culture for Prussia at that time was Eichhorn, who was a friend of his father's, took an interest in the career of the talented young man and found him a place in the civil service at Potsdam where Solger worked as an intern.
Its protagonist, Hans, showed how a young man could break through the superficial culture which surrounded him to successfully pursue his ideals.
He spent a few months in Paris, where he associated with personalities such as Mikhail Bakunin, Alexander Herzen, Georg Herwegh and Bernays, and then returned to Germany, settling in Heidelberg, where he shared his adventures in English and French culture with Friedrich Kapp.
The February–March Revolution in Paris surprised him a few days after his February 19 marriage to a young Parisian, Adèle Marie Bémere, in 1848.
After two months, he fled with this army to Switzerland He first went to Bern where he gave a series of lectures on English literature in the winter of 1849-50.
He also produced a one-act burlesque called Der Reichstagsprofessor (The Professor in the Parliament) which drew on his experiences in the revolution.
In London, acquaintances such as Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and Henry Bulwer, who had gotten to know him during his first visit to England, provided recommendations.
The pressure of the unusual number of refugees in London at that time presented significant difficulties, and Solger decided to emigrate to the United States in the spring of 1853.
A prominent New England poet noted "He uses the English language with an idiomatic correctness, power and elegance, unusual even among those born and bred to it."
Educated Americans found him an effective speaker who could present German philosophy and historical research and criticism in a compelling way.
Solger thought it could be useful in the presidential campaigns, but theater directors rejected it because it presented blacks and whites together on the stage.
Also notable were a speech he gave for Boston's Schiller celebration on 10 November 1859, and his 1862 novel Anton in Amerika which the owner of the Belletristisches Journal termed the best novel taken from German-American life.
In the spring of 1861, he moved to New York City, and Friedrich Kapp recalls many interesting discussions on evening walks through Central Park the two friends carried on during this time.
He spent a year in New York before moving to Washington, D. C., where he had obtained an appointment as assistant registrar in the Treasury Department.
In a letter to H. G. O. Blake of November 16, 1857, Henry Thoreau reports that "Dr. Solger has been lecturing in the vestry in this town [Concord] on Geography, to Sanborn's scholars, for several months past, at 5 p.m. Emerson and Alcott have been to hear him."