Oertel, John James Maximilian
OERTEL, JOHN JAMES MAXIMILIAN
Editor; b. Ansbach, Bavaria, Germany, April 27, 1811; d. Jamaica, N.Y., Aug. 21, 1882. He was educated at the University of Erlangen, Germany, before his ordination as a Lutheran minister. Immigrating to New York City in 1837, he led 95 Prussian immigrants to join the Saxon congregations (now Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod) in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1839. Denominational quarrels led to his conversion to Catholicism the following year. He served as an instructor in German at St. John's College, Fordham, New York, before going to Cincinnati, Ohio, as editor of the Wahrheitsfreund. The German–language newspaper Kirchenzeitung, which he founded in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1846, was moved to New York City in 1851 and became the most influential German paper in the U.S. In 1875 Oertel was made a Knight of St. Gregory by Pius IX.
[j. l. morrison]