UDK 929 Fister A.
ANTON FUSTER - A SLOVENE FORTY-EIGHTER Janez Stanonik
Anton Fiister, originally by profession a Catholic priest and a leading figure in the Vienna Revolution of 1848/49, lived the early part of his life - from 1808 till 1847 - in his native Slovenia. A few months before the outbreak of the revolution he was nominated Professor at Vienna University. After the suppression of the revolution in spring 1849 he emigrated by way of Germany and London to the United States. After the first three years in Boston he lived in New York until his return to Austria in 1876. He died in Vienna in 1881.
I.
In recent - mosty Slovene - researches on Anton Fiister, his family name can be found written in two variants: Fiister or Fister. The form Fiister was used by Anton Fiister himself, and this is the form which we use in our present study. This family name is at present still common in northwestern Slovenia, in the region of Upper Carniola (Gorenjska) where Anton Fiister was born. Yet the present bearers of this name sign themselves as Fister. Therefore in some recent Slovene researches also Anton Fiister's name has been changed to Fister. The family name Fister or Fuster is most likely a germanized form of the Slovene family name Bister, known from southern Carinthia. In Slovene the adjective "bister" signifies "clever", "bright". In the German-Slovene linguistic contact zone the initial Slovene consonant "b" is frequently replaced by the consonant "f" in the German equivalents.1
The basic sources for Fiister's biography are — besides newspaper reports which covered his activy during the Vienna Revolution, and the memoirs of his contemporaries - Fiister's own published works, especially his autobiographic account of the Vienna Revolution, 2/ and a collection of his manuscripts now deposited in the Vienna Town Hall on the Ring (Vienna Town Archives). Two of these manuscripts speak of his life in America and of his return to Austria: Memoiren, 28 Jahre in der Verbannung (247 pages, plus appendix 108 pages)
1	Thus especially in the toponymy of Carinthia and Slovenia, cf.: Slovene Bistrica, German Feistritz; Slovene Breze, German Friesach; Slovene Borovlje, German Ferlach; Slovene Bled, German Veldes.
2	Memoiren vom Marz 1848 bis Juli 1849. Beitrag zur Geschichte der Wiener Revolution. Von Dr. Anton Füster, österr. Professor, Feldkaplan der Wiener Legionäre, Mitglied des aufgelösten österr. Reichstags. Band I-II, Frankfurt am Main. Literarische Anstalt, J. Rütten, 1850.
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Füster wrote in America and concluded in Graz during his first year in Austria. The second manuscript Drei Jahre in der Heimath Österreich nach 28 Jahren Abwesenheit in England und in Amerika verlebt (414 pages) Füster wrote during the last years of his life in Vienna. Both texts are written in German handwriting (Fraktur) and are not easy to decipher. 3 Preserved as a manuscript are also lectures he had prepared for the German community in Boston and New York and a larger work on education (Erziehung im Geiste der Freiheit). Some of these manuscript materials have now begun to appear in print in Slovene translations. 4
In German scholarly researches Füster has an important place in extensive literature on the Vienna Revolution of 1848/49. German studies dedicated exclusively to him are, however, few and deal only with his revolutionary activity in Vienna.5
In Slovenia the early researches were interested primarily in Füster's attitude to the Slovene national question and his links with the leading Slovene cultural figures of the first half of the XIX. century (Matija Cop, France Preseren). Representative of this early stage of Füster research in Slovenia is the article by France Kidric in the Slovene Biographical Lexicon. 6 Important Slovene renewal of interest in Anton Füster began inl970 with the monograph by Marjan Britovsek on Anton Füster and the Revolution of 1848 in Austria 1 which examines above all Füster's activity during the Vienna Revolution of 1848/49, yet at the same time it covers also Füster's early life in Slovenia, and the time of his emigration in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Various aspects of Füster's life and work were discussed also at the symposium on Anton Füster in March 1979 in Füster's birthplace Radovljica. The papers read there were published as a separate volume.8 At that meeting I read a paper on Füster's life in America. 9 Most recently a large program was started by the Fraculty of Philosophy of Ljubljana Universitiy to (re)- publish in Slovene translation all major works of Füster. So far three volumes have appeared in press, all equipped with long introductions. Volume I (Ljubljana 1987) brings Füster's memoirs of the revolution of 1848 and 1849; volume II (Ljubljana 1989) the text of the manuscript Füster wrote in America on the Education in the Spirit of Freedom (Erziehung im Geiste der Freiheit) and volume III, again from the manuscript, the text of his lectures he had read to his
3	In the present study I refer in quotations to these two manuscripts using the abbreviation M for Memoriert, 28 Jahre in der Verbannung, Ma for Memoiren - Anhang, und Oe dor Drei Jahre in der Heimath Osterreich.
4	See below note 10.
5	E. Leisching: Denkschrift aus Anlass der Enthüllung des Grab-Monuments für weil. Prof. Dr. Anton Füster, gewesener Feldcaplan der akademischen Legion im Jahre 1848. Im Auftrage des Denkmal-ComitS. Wien 1892.
P. Molisch: Anton Füster als Politiker und politischer Schriftsteller, Mitteilungen des Vereines für Geschichte der Stadt Wien. Band V, Wien 1925.
6	Slovenski biografski leksikon, vol. I, Ljubljana 1925-1932, published by Gospodarska banka. See p. 192-193 (Füster Anton).
7	Marjan Britovek: Anton Füster in revolucija J848 v Avstriji (Anton Füster und die Revolution 1848 in Oesterreich), Maribor, Založba Obzorja 1970, 425 pp.
8	Dr. Anton Fister v revoluciji 1848 (Dr. Anton Fister in der Revolution 1848), edited by Marjan Britovšek, Maribor, Založba Obzorja 1980, 145 pp.
9	Janez Stanonik: Anton Fister v Ameriki (Anton Fister in America), ib. pp. 106-119.
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German audiences in Boston and New York. 10 Volume IV, which is planned for publication in 1998, will bring from the manuscript the text of his memoirs of his life in America and of his return to Austria.
II.
Anton Ftister was born at Radovljica, a small town north of Ljubljana and close to the Austrian border, on 5. January 1808. On his father's side the family can be traced back in Radovljica till the beginning of the XVII. century. According to Fuster's own statement his parents were of "Slavic Carniolan origin" (I.s. Ill, 130). At home they spoke Slovene, and Slovene was the first language he knew (M 222).
From his early youth he kept in his memory the beauty of the Alpine scenery of the countyside below the Triglav, "the most beautiful mountain he had ever seen" (I.s. II, 45), and its peasants, the only ones he knew who could with their intelligence be compared with the Americann Yankees (MA 11). Deep impression have made on his memory also the political events he had witnessed during his earliest youth. This was the time of Napoleonic wars which profoundly changed the course of Slovene political history when the state of Illyrian Provinces was created under the French protectorate (1809-1813), with Ljubljana as its Capital. As FUster himself states "over his cradle the flag of Tricolor, the symbol of the liberation of peoples, was waving in his home-country Illyria" (I.s. I, 117). From his age of four he remembered "the French cavalry, horses pulling French artillery, and the remote echoes of the thunder of heavy guns" (I.s. Ill, 111).
Fuster began to attend school after the restoration of Austrian goverment in Slovenia. With this restoration began the oppressive period of Metternich's police regime, the time of a suffocating press censorship and of spiritual stagnation. During the twenties also the time of a deep economic crisis. Fuster attended the common (primary) school first at Kranj, and then at Ljubljana. From 1820 to 1826 he continued his schooling at the Ljubljana secondary school which he completed with the last semester at Karlovac in Croatia. In 1827 he entered the Ljubljana Lyceum for the two year course called philosophy which he continued from 1829 till 1832 with the study of theology. He was consecrated Catholic priest on 26. July
1832	in spite of the fact that he was - according to the statement of one of his contemporaries - already at that time a religious sceptic. During the years 1832 and
1833	he worked as assistant religious instructor (catechist) at the Ljubljana secondary school and 1833 till 1835 at the cathedral as chaplain and preacher for the German community in the town of Ljubljana.
io Anton Fister: Izbrani spisi (Selected Writings), published by Arhiv SR Slovenije and Znanstveni Institut Filozofske fakultete. Editing House Državna založba Slovenije. Vol. I: Spomini od marca 1848 do poletja ¡849 (Memoirs from March 1848 till Summer 1849), translated by Dušan Ludvik, Ljubljana 1987. - Vol. II: Vzgoja v duhu svobode (The Education in the Spirit of Freedom), translated by Frane Jerman, Ljubljana 1989. - Vol. Ill Govori o religiji (The Speeches on Religion), translated by Frane Jerman, Ljubljana 1992.
In the present study I quote from this edition, using the abbreviation I.s. = Izbrani spisi = Selected Writings, referring to its volume and page.
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Füster's life in Ljubljana was of fundamental importance for his spiritual growth and for the formation of his political views. Füster later stated that during the Revolution of 1848 he was led by the ideas which he had all acquired during his stay in Ljubljana (I.s., I, 101). Still little is known about his personal contacts during his Ljubljana years. Füster was a person with pleasant manners and attractive appearance; although sociable he is nevertheless not known to have established deeper links with any Ljubljana circle, apparently not even with individual priests, his professional colleagues. Ideologically he seems to have stood from his early youth under the influence of the European Enlightenment and of the ideas of the French Revolution. He was acquainted with Matija Čop, a leading Slovene literary critic of his time, and France Prešeren, the poet. Both Čop and Prešeren came from the surroundings of Radovljica, Füster's birthplace. Both were impressed by the poetry of Byron, yet while Čop possessed in his library the poetry of Shelley, Prešeren owned the work of Thomas Paine, the American revolutionary. Füster as priest for the Ljubljana German comunity had certainly had through this community also the possibility to become acquainted with such of its members who were in their political views more or less liberal.
Typical of Füster's early political orientation is his conviction that it was a misfortune for Austria that the enlightened reforms of Joseph II (emperor 1780-1790) were not able to strike deeper roots (Oe 16, 206). He considered the French Revolution "the most glorious of all revolutions because it had for ever swept away the Middle Ages from France" (Oe 199, 230, 309, 328, 384). Certainly in Ljubljana he already began to detest the oppressive political system of the Metternich regime. As regards the national question, however, he increasingly equated his national indetity with the German orientation of his intellectual upbringing and outlook.
In Ljubljana Füster devoted much of his time to the study and reading. He paid scholarly attention to the study of rhetoric and pedagogics. Most likely he had read already at Ljubljana the authors which he later quotes in his works. The selection of these authors shows his interest in history and political philosophy, as well as in pure literature. Among the French authors he refers to Montesquieu (M 181), Voltaire (Oe 294, 358, 382, M 58), French Encyclopedists (Oe382, M 196), Rousseau (Oe 11, MA 11), and Proudhon (MA 11). Among German authors he speaks of Goethe, whom he calls divine (Oe 294, 358, M 91), Schiller (Oe 294), Jean Paul Richter (Oe 293, 365, M 107), and Heine (Oe 72). According to his own statement he had studied the philosophy of Hegel for thirty years (M 216). Nevertheless he was not uncritical of Hegel as an apologist of the Prussian state (Oe 332). Füster had also paid attention to Kant's religious and moral philosophy (M 61), to Schelling, and Feuerbach.
In Ljubljana Füster began to follow the politically oriented and therefore by police prosecuted Pre-March Literature which criticized the political conditions in Europe, especially in Austria and Germany, under the Metternich regime before the revolution of March 1848. Impressed by the poetry of the volume Spaziergänge eines Winer Poeten, one of the most important texts of this literary movement which Anton Alexander Count Auersperg, better known under the pen name Anastasius Grün, had published in 1831 anonymously in Hamburg, Füster quoted in one of his
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Ljubljana sermons verses from the poem Unsere Zeit which had appeared in that collection. Fiister was because denounced to the bishop of Ljubljana Anton Alois Wolf and reprimanded by him "under four eyes". It is not known whether Fiister was personally acquainted with Anton Alexander Count Auersperg / Anastasius Griin who as a member of the highest Austrian aristocracy lived on his feudal estate at Turn (in German: Thurn am Hart) near the town of Krško in southeastern Slovenia and occasionally came to Ljubljana where he owned a house and was since the early thirties even a member of the Carniolan County Diet. After the revolution of 1848 Anton Alexander Count Auerspreg / Anastasius Griin turned a liberal conservative.
In November 1835 Fiister was transferred to Trieste where he worked till the end of March 1839 as a priest, again for the German community. Trieste disappointed him: he found the town lagging behind Ljubljana in general culture and in politics (I.s. I, 126). He disliked Trieste Germans because of their servility to Vienna. In Trieste, however, Fiister found contacts with the underground movement Giovine Italia which fought for the liberation and unification of their country.
Even worse spiritual stagnation Fiister met at Gorica (in Italian: Gorizia) where he worked from April 1839 till September 1847 as Professor of dogmatics and general pedagogics at the Theological School of the bishopric of Gorica. In Gorica he continued with his philosophical studies. On 31. October 1843 he was awarded at the University of Vienna the doctorate in philosophy. Details about this doctorate are not known. In Gorica Fuster's most interesting personal contact was with Valentin Stanič (1774-1847) who worked here since 1819 as school inspector. Stanič was an exceptional personality: a Catholic priest, a Slovene poet, a pioneer of European alpinism, and a humanitarian. In 1840 he founded in Gorica a school for the deaf anf dumb children to which he devoted much of his time; and in 1845 the society for the prevention of cruelty to domestic animals, the first society of this kind in the Austrian Monarchy. Under the influence of Stanič Fiister wrote the booklet Der Verein wider Thierqualerei with which he propagated the creation of such societies for the protection of animals.11
With 26. June 1847 Fiister was apppointed Professor of Vienna Univeraity, nine months before the outbreak of March Revolution. As professor he gave lectures on religious instruction and on pedagogics. As university professor he wrote the book Mentor des studirenden Jiinglings which, however, came out of press only after the outbreak of revolution. 12 The book was written as a guide for university students, instructing them how to develop through self-education into harmonious personalities, healthy in body and mind, morally firm, independent in critical judgements, and well informed. The work reflects the state of pedagogics in the middle of the XIX. century, and shows that Fiister was well read in the
11	Der Verein wider Thierquälerei. Von Anton Füster, Weltpriester, Doctor der Philosophie, k.k.o.ö, Professor der Religionswissenschaft und der allg. Erziehungskunde, Mitglied der k.k. Ackerbaugesellschaft zu Görz, Hgg. durch den Görzer Verein wider Thierquälerei. Wien 1846.
12	Mentor des studirenden Junglings. Anleitung zur Selbstbildung. Von Dr. Anton Füster, k.k. Professor der Religionswissenschaft und der allg. Erziehungskunde an der Hochschule zu Wien, Feldkaplan der Akademischen Legion. Wien 1848. Wilhelm Braumüller, k.k. Hofbuchhändler.
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traditional and contemporary literature on education. It discusses the increasing importance of natural sciences in modern education and, as a consequence of this, the replacement of Latin with living languages in school instruction.
III.
In the Vienna Revolution of 1848 the people demanded the end of the absolutist rule of the emperor and of the Metternich police regime and their replacement with the constitutional monarchy and with the democratically elected parliament. Fiister played in this revolution a very important role. Just before the outbreak of the revolution he was preacher to the university students. On 12. March 1848 he demanded in his sermon from the congregated students courage in their struggle for truth which must be victorious. This sermon marks the beginning of the revolution. The following day the street fighting began. The students organized themselves in the Academic Legion which, together with the National Guard formed by the citizens of Vienna, occupied the central part of the town. At the same time the workers took control of its industrial suburbs. On the same day, March 13, Metternich abdicated and fled into exile. On March 15. the emperor gave freedom to the press and promised the constitution. The constitution was finally promulgated on April 25. It foresaw the creation of a parliament consisting of two houses: the Upper House would be formed of the members of the dynasty and of the representatives of large landowners while the Lower House would consist of the members of parliament chosen by electors divided into property classes. The workers were not given the right to participate in elections even as voters. The emperor reserved for himself control over the legislative, executive, and jurisdictional authorities. Naturally enough the people found the proposed text of the constitution unacceptable and rejected it. On May 15. street riots started again. The emperor Ferdinand I. fled in the night from 17. to 18. May from Vienna to Innsbruck.
At the outbreak of the revolution Fiister at once joined the Academic Legion as its chaplain. He remained in contact with the leaders of the Academic Legion throughout the revolution, in the moments of crisis he even took occasionally its command into his own hands. During the early part of the revolution Fiister held important public speeches before the masses assembled in the streets. With these speeches Fiister greatly influenced the course of the revolution. The texts of these speeches were published in contemporary Vienna newspapers. So far, unfortunately, they have not yet been made available in a modern reprint. Fiister was also repeatedly acting as member of delegations which represented the demands of the people before the state authorities. During the first months of the revolution he had in Vienna contacts also with individual Slovenes. When he saw, however, that the revolution in Slovenia was led by conservatives who acted as tools of the Habsburg dynasty, he discontinued these contacts.
In July 1848 elections took place for the Constitutional Assembly. Fiister was elected member of parliament in the Mariahilf District, a part of Vienna just west of the central sector of the town. As a member of parliament he was active in several of its organs. In the parliament he made three important speeches: On 29. July he spoke against the proposal that the parliament should ask the emperor to return
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from Innsbruck to Vienna. On 13. September he protested against the thanks expressed by the parliament to the Austrian army and to the field marshal Radetzky for their victory over the Italians in the battle of Custozza (25. July 1848). And on 5. October he spoke for the equality of rights of the Jewish community in Austria and for the abolition of special taxes to which members of this community had been subjected.
On 12. August the emperor and his court, at the invitation of the parliament, returned from Innsbruck to Vienna. Immediately after their return they intensified their subversive activity to destroy the revolution. At the same time the Vienna government, representing the interests of the court, exerted pressure on Hungary and declared invalid the promises of important political freedoms which the court had given to the Hungarians at the outbreak of the revolution, at the time of the deepest crisis of the imperial government, maintaining now, in the autumn, that these promises had been made under pressure. This violation of promises of the Austrian government led to disturbances in Hungary. Because of them the Austrian government finally declared war against the Hungarians and placed the general Joseph Jelacid, Banus of Croatia, into the command of government troops in Hungary. The war in Hungary led also to the renewal of street fighting in Vienna. In these fights the government troops in the capital were defeated, and the emperor and his court were again forced to flee, on 7. October, from Vienna, this time to Olomouc in Moravia. There the old emperor Ferdinand I abdicated on 2. December. The crown was handed over to Francis Joseph, the nephew of Ferdinand. The beginning of the rule of Francis Joseph was marked by extreme conservatism. After the flight of the emperor Ferdinand to Olomouc, the parliament formed its own organ, called "Permanence" to master the situation in this critical moment. Fiister was elected one of its members. End of October the army, under the command of field marshal Alfred Prince Windisch-Gratz, started from Hungary an offensive against Vienna. They conquered the burning town after heavy street fighting.
After the fall of Vienna Fiister endeavoured to escape to Slovenia, but on the railway he was arrested and put into prison. From the prison he was freed as member of parliament on the demand of the president of the parliament. From Vienna Fiister went to Kromeriz in Moravia where the parliament had reconvened after the defeat of the revolution in Vienna. In Kromeriz the parliament continued
with its work in spite of the fact that it had lost control over the events in the country. While in Kromeriz, Foster's electors in Vienna, under the pressure of the Court, declared his parlamentary seat void. At the same time the bishopric of Vienna prohibited him to continue to work as a Catholic priest. He lost also his employment as a university professor.
On 7. March 1849 the parliament in Kromeriz was dissolved by the emperor and the army entered the town. Fiister, who sensed in advance the danger^ escaped the arrest by fleeing early in the morning in a peasant cariage by way of Sternberk to Prussia. He crossed the border illegally with the aid of an acquaintance. The Austrian government sent a police agent after him to arrest him. The agent reached Fiister at Ratibor in Prussia and demanded from the Prussian authorities Fuster's extradition. The arrest of Fiister was observed by the local people who during the night helped Fiister to escape from the prison and to flee in a carriage by way of
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Breslau (Wroclaw) and along the snow covered mountain roads to Bautzen in Saxony. In the middle of March he came to Leipzig where he hoped to stay for a while. Nevertheless, in the beginning of May the political troubles in Saxony forced him to leave Saxony. He went to Hamburg which was in that time an independent republic. In Hamburg he was advised by local authorities to leave the town as soon as possible. In the middle of July he came to London where he was in touch with the German Workingmen's Educational Association. He had also contacts with Karl Marx with whom he signed an appeal for the help for German political emigrants.
In Leipzig Füster wrote the pamphlet Hirtenbrief an die Wiener akademische Legion. The pamphlet was published in Mannheim in 1849.13 In it Füster stated that he was proud to have had the possibility to partcipate actively in the Vienna Revolution and that he was - because of this participation - condemned by the Vienna court as guilty of high treason. In Leipzig he also began to write his memoirs of the Vienna Revolution, Memoiren von März 1848 bis Juli 1849. He completed the work in Hamburg and published it in Frankfurt in 1850. 14 The work is now available also in Slovene translation (see above, note 10). He wrote his memoirs when no published texts connected with the history of the Vienna Revolution were available to him for consultation, and so he had to depend merely on his own memory. In the introductory part the book describes the political situation in Austria during the last years of the Metternich regime. The central part covers the events from the outbreak of the revolution till its final collapse with the occupation of Kromeriz by the Austrian army. The book speaks above all of Fiister's own activity during the revolution, of the actions of the Academic Legion and of the National Guard, and of the life at the university during the revolutionary months. The last pages speak of Fiister's dramatic escape from Kromeriz to Saxony after the final suppression of the revolution by the Austrian army. In the book Füster tries to find the reasons for the failure of the Vienna Revolution. The book represents a major contribution to the historiography of the Vienna Revolution.
IV.
After a three month residence in London Füster left England for the United States. On 19. November 1849 he arrived in Boston with the ship Pulasky. He was then 41 years old. In America he remained 27 years, until his return to Europe. The first three years he lived in Boston where he was supported by its German ccommunity.
Füster's residence in Boston is the more interesting part of his life in America. He calls Boston the American Athens (Oe 25, M 61, M 70) because of its exceptional role in the cultural life of America. Füster's main contact in Boston was with the German Turnverein and its members. Füster took an active part in the life
13	Hirtenbrief an die Wiener akademische Legion und ihre Freunde. Von ihrem Feldpater. Mannheim 1849.
14	Memoiren vom März 1848 bis Juli 1849. Beitrag zur Geschichte der Wiener Revolution. Von Dr. Anton Füster, österr. Professor, Feldkaplan der Wiener Legionäre, Mitglied des aufgelösten österr. Reichstags. Band I - II. Frankfurt am Main. Literarische Anstalt, J. Rütten, 1850.
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of Turnverein whose activity was not limited to sports only: it had also its own social gatherings and educational programs. Besides Germans we find among Füster's Boston acquaintances several prominent Americans. The most important was Theodore Parker whom Füster calls his best American friend (M54). At his house Füster felt like at home (M 54). Füster saw in Theodore Parker a great speaker and humanitarian and an acute philosophical mind (M 54, M 185, M 89, M 169). As propagator of the abolition of slavery Parker influenced Füster's political views.
Füster was also frequent guest at the home of Samuel Gridley Howe who, -after his studies at Harvard - joined the Greeks in their struggle for liberty. In Füster's time Howe directed in Boston a school for blind children. Füster instructed Howe's two daughters German, reading with them Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell. According to Füster, Howe's wife too, spoke good Italian and German. - Füster calls his good friend also the psysician Henry Austin Martin, American pioneer in the usage of vaccination for medical purposes. At Harvard Füster knew the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the classical scholar Charles Folsom. It is possible that Füster became acquainted with Longfellow and Howe in his search -unsuccessful - for a permanent employment: with his knowledge of German language and literature he could be interesting to Longfellow as head of the Harvard University Department of Modern Languages. From Gorica in Slovenia Füster had also brought some experience with Valentin Stanic's school for the deaf and dumb children which could have been useful in Howe's school for the blind youth.
In Boston Füster began to write lectures which he first read to the Boston Turnverein educational gatherings. He continued to write such lectures also later in New York, some even after his return to Europe. These lectures are preserved in Füster's own handwriting under the title Reden über Religion. They have been made available in print only recently in Slovene translation (see above note 10). The manuscript contains altogether 42 lectures: the first seventeen lectures were written in Boston, the lectures 18 to 30 in New York, and the rest in Graz.15 In them Füster discussed problems connected with religion, education, and society. He believed that the contemporary world has reached in its development a turning point, similar to the time of the collapse of antiquity. The old religions based on revelation would be replaced by a new religion based on reason, philosophy ('Vernunftreligion). In the lectures on education he stressed the necessity to help the youth in their aspiration to perfection. In the field of social problems he expressed the view that the present outdated social institutions must be replaced by those better adapted to the needs of modern man.
After two years in Boston Füster ran into economic crisis. Invited by New York Germans he therefore moved in May 1853 to New York. Here he joined first the circle of emigrants from the Vienna Revolution (M 69). For years he worked as public speaker at the anniversaries of the Vienna Revolution. The first year he lived at the inn Zum Wiener Legionär whose owner was Franz Wutschel. The following
15 Marjan Britovek: Anton Füster in revolucija 1848 v Avstriji, Mariboe, Zaloba Obzorja, 1970. Cf. p. 391-392.
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year he moved to the family Rufner with whom he remained the rest of his life in New York. Initially he earned his living as private instructor and as teacher at the Sunday School for German children which he himself had helped to create. From about 1856 to 1860 he taught at the Free German School where he was in contact with Gustav Struve and with the Hungarian architect Wehle. The school was located in Hamann's Theatre in Bowery. During the subsequent sixteen years he taught German and French at three public schools in the tenth district of New York.He calls these sixten years the happiest years in his life.
In New York Fiister does not seem to have had any personal contacts with important representatives of American culture, as he had had in Boston. His acquaintances were limited above all to the circles of political emigrants from Germany, Austria, Poland, and Italy. During his whole stay in America he had met only two Slovenes: one was a merchant in New York, and the other was Andreas Bernardus Smolnikar, in American cultural history known as an unusual social and religions reformer. 16 The lack of Slovene acquaintances in America was due to the political situation in Slovenia during the first half of the XIX. century when the possibility to go to America as an economic emigrant was completely suppressed by the Metternich regime. The only Slovenes who could come to America during this period were the Catholic priests (Frederick Baraga, Francis Pierz) whom Austrian authorities had sent to America to work there as missionaries among American Indians.
During his stay in Boston and New York Fiister paid much attention to the reading of American literature (MA 92 ff). In his evaluations of American authors Fiister was surprisingly independent and close to our own modern views. Among narrators he mentions Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving - whose gracious style he admired -, and James Fenimore Cooper. According to Fiister, Cooper's works reflected best the American reality. Among poets he admired above all William Cullen Bryant. He was critical of the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe whom he considered a torn mind (ein zerrissenes Gemiith). Neither did he share the contemporary enthusiasm for the poetry of Longfellow. Among historiographers he knew the work of George Bancroft, William Hickling Prescott, and Francis Parkman, among educators Edward Everett. As a student of rhetorics Fiister paid attention also to the contemporary American public speeches. In Fiister's view the speeches of Samuel Webster did not rise above the standard Yankee notions. The best American speeches Fiister knew were the speech of Theodore Parker on the death of Daniel Webster, and the speech of Henry Beecher after the fall of Fort Sumter. The latter Fiister considered one of the best speeches in the whole history of humanity.
Fiister was critical of the American system of foreign language teaching at schools because it neglected too much the study of grammar. He found insufficient also the American study of history, philosophy, and the esthetic education. The youth reads only illustrated reviews and criminal novels. In America Fiister was rarely able to meet a person with whom he could discuss the philosophy of Kant or Hegel (M 61, 70, 85).
is Janez Stanonik: Longfellow and Smolnikar, Acta Neophilologica I (1968), 3-40.
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Fiister considered the Puritans the main bearers of republican thought in America (Oe 258). He admired the Yankees because of their intelligence, modesty, sobriety, will to work, indepedence in judgement, and at the same time because of their readiness to support financially public institutions. He stressed the ability of Americans to change in a short time a wilderness into civilized surroundings.
Fiister was an ardent supporter of the movement for the abolition of slavery and admirer of Lincoln. When Lincoln was killed Fiister hanged Lincoln's portrait on the wall of his room. Under it he wrote: Monumentum exigisti sibi aere perennium servos liberando (You have erected a more lasting monument than of a metal freeing the slaves, Oe 14). Fiister could not understand that several European revolutionaries, now immigrants in America, were willing to abet the slaveholders.
In New York Fiister continued with his writing. The aims of education Fiister discussed in the work Erziehung im Geiste der Freiheit. Preserved as a manuscript, the text was first published in 1989 in Slovene translation (see above note 10). This is a new treatment of the problem which Fiister had touched upon already as Vienna University professor (Mentor des studirenden Junglings). With it he gives advices to young people how to develop into harmonious personalities, healthy in body and mind. It instructs how to develop the powers of understanding and reason, person's emotional responses, and his will. He speaks also of their treatment when ill. Examples for the elucidation of problems discussed are taken also from the life in America. The work reveals the great importance of Rousseau and Kant for the formation of Flister's views.
Into the final years of Fiister's life in America belongs his manuscript Memoiren, 28 Jahre in der Verbannung. Fiister concluded it after his return to Austria. The work has been planned for its first publication in Slovene translation in 1998. The work - Fiister's American autobiography - is important as the only major source which helps us reconstruct Fiister's American biography. The information, however, which it gives is humble and poorly arranged. It disappoints also as a portrayal of the contemporary cultural life in America, especially in Boston. From an intellectual author like FUster one could expect a more rewarding reading. Nowhere in this work a new important revealing information can be found. Its typical feature are frequent, emotionally coloured complaints over his own denstiny that he must live the life of a political emigrant in America under difficult and uncertain economic conditions.
V.
Fiister lived the last year of his stay in America the wretched life of a solitary old man, unemployed, without financial means, whose existence depended on the charity of his acquaintances. During this crisis Fiister was helped financilly by Hans Kudlich and Joseph Goldmark, two important figures in the Vienna Revolution who after their emigration to the United States both worked successfully as physicians in New York. The Austrian government had in the meantime given amnesty to all participants of the 1848 Revolution, and so Fiister decided to return home. In October 1876 he came back to Austria. The first ten months he lived with his brother in Graz. In that time the newspaper Grazer
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Tagespost published his American reminiscences Skizzen iiber Amerika. In July 1877 he moved to Vienna. Here he was supported by his acquaintances from the 1848 Revolution and by the German student organisations. He tried to find employment, also as teacher of English, but all doors were closed to him. From that time dates his last publication, a pamphlet with the text of his lecture on education in America which he gave at Penzing, a sector of Vienna. 17
In Vienna he wrote memoirs of his life after his return to Austria Drei Jahre in der Heimath Oesterreich nach 28 Jahren Abwesenheit in England und in Amerika verlebt. The text of this manuscript, too, is planned for publication in Slovene translation together with his American memoirs, in 1998. Even more than his American memoirs, his Austrian memoirs are written loosely: they are full of complaints over his reception in Austria. He wished to return to America to die there and lie buried close to his American friends.
The return to America, however, was no longer possible. He died at Vienna on 12. March 1881. The bust which stands over his grave in Vienna represents Fuster as a public speaker during the Vienna Revolution.
VI.
Anton Fuster was a complex personality. In spite of his intellectual background his reactions to current events and situations were above all emotional. His view of the world was influenced by his reading in philosophy and history.
His view of his own ethnic background reflects the evolution of ethnic consciousness in his time. During the first half of the XIX. century in Slovenia this ethnic consciousness developed from a country (Carniolan, kranjski) patriotism to an awareness of a larger community, determined by Slovene culture and language, and extending over several counties of the Austrian monarchy. Fuster always admitted that by birth he was of Slovene background. During his last year in New York when he lived as a desolate old man in a poor New York attic he read the Russian translation of the Bible which he had acquired somewhere in America. It reminded him of his childhood "because Slovene dialect comes very close to the ecclesiastical Russian, and the Slovene language was the first which I spoke" (M 222).
Already in Ljubljana, however, Fuster began to consider that his German education and reading had marked his national consciousness. He began to indetify himself with the German culture and learning. Still, for Fiister the ideas of liberty and of social justice were more important than that of national affiliation. These ideas also led him in his evaluation of contemporary national movements: in 1848 his views of the revolutionary movements in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bohemia were negative because in his opinion these movements were led by conservatives who were used as tools by the Habsburg dynasty to keep itself in power (Bleiweis, Jelacid, Palacky). On the other hand he valued highly the revolution in Poland and
17 Vortrag des Herrn Prof. Dr. Anton Füster über die Bildung in den Vereinigten Staaten Amerikas, besonders in politischer Beziehung. Gehalten in der General Versammlung des deutsch=liberalen Vereins in Penzing am 3. März 1878. Wien 1878. Vlg. des Deutsch=liberalen Vereins in Penzing.
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in Italy. Fiister's German cultural and political orientation, however, was considerably mitigated after his experiences with the German (Prussian) police during his flight from Austria to Hamburg.
In his American lectures Fiister devoted special chapters to the problems of family, state and humanity, but none to the problem of ethnicity (nationality). His ideal was cosmopolitism. He saw as the best solution of inter-national relations the peaceful, brotherly coexistence of free and equal nations (I.s., I, 80 ff.) In this way he raised the ideas of French Revolution, liberté, égalité, fraternité to the level of inter-national coexistence. With his speech in Austrian parliament, on 5. October 1848, with which he demanded the equality for the Jewish community in Austria and the abolition of discriminatory laws which burdened members of this community with unjust taxation, Fiister extended his ideas of inter-national relations also to the Jewish ethnic group.
Here is an important point of contact with the ideas of Fiister's contemporary France Prešeren, the leading Slovene poet. Prešeren expressed them in the poem Zdravljica ("A Toast", written in 1844, published in 1848) 18 now the Slovene national anthem. Prešeren, too, demanded - although on the personal level - the end of discrimination for the members of the Jewish community and their equality in his poem Judovsko dekle (Jewish Girl, 1845).
Fiister believed in the progress of humanity in matters political, social, cultural, in science and civilization. In his attitude towards religion he was not an atheist, yet he rejected the old religions based on the divine revelation. Fiister thought that they should be replaced by a new creed based on human reason and philosophy.
With his life story and intellectual development Fiister has an interesting place in the Slovene cultural history of the XIX. century.
18 The poem Zdravljica by France Preeren was translated under the title A Toast by Janko Lavrin, Professor of Slavic Literatures at Nottingham University, originally from Slovenia. Cf. W. K. Matthews and A. Slodnjak: Selection of Poems by France Preseren Translated Into English, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1954, p. 32-34.
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