The Americanization of Franz Lieber and the Encyclopedia Americana

Summary

Franz Lieber or, as he preferred to call himself after his arrival in New York on 20 June 1827, Francis Lieber, is one of the most brilliant and fascinating German-Americans of the nineteenth century. The New York Tribune of 19 October 1860 praised him on its front page as “one of the most eminent citizens that Germany had furnished the United States,” and he was eulogized as “one of the profoundest and clearest writers upon political science of the present century, one of the chief ornaments of the world of letters, the expounder of the principles of civil liberty, and one of the truly great men of his adopted country.” Yet, in spite of yesterday's fame, today Lieber has been largely forgotten, and in histories of German immigration he is only briefly mentioned and sometimes totally ignored. He is certainly not part of the canon of favorite German-Americans cited by local German clubs. Yes, there is still a building called “Lieber College” on the campus of the University of South Carolina, where Francis Lieber taught from 1835 to 1856 and even served as Interim President for one year. It had been Lieber's residence since 1836, but today many of the locals do not know after whom it was named. There is also a “Lieber Correctional Institution” in Ridgeville, South Carolina, honoring Lieber's substantial work on prison reform, but most likely neither inmates nor wardens are aware of Francis's contributions to penology.

Lieber is remembered primarily by specialists in the fields of political science and international law. He has been the focus of a number of symposia, as for example in Jena in 1993, and most recently, at the University of South Carolina (2001). Indeed, Lieber is often referred to as the “father of political science,” and the 1990 edition of the Brockhaus Encyclopädie states that political science as an academic discipline in the United States may be traced back to Lieber.

The literature on Lieber is sparse. There are a number of journal articles, some focusing on specific letter collections, others offering critical analyses of Lieber's life and work. Most of them were written between the 1880s and the 1930s.