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Ernst Nicholas Denner: A German Immigrant Newspaperman in Oklahoma
From a Catholic seminary in Hesse-Kassel to the front page of a German-language newspaper on the Oklahoma frontier, and through the hardest years an immigrant family could face on American soil.
- BornAugust 8, 1862 · Haselstein, Hesse-Kassel, Germany
- DiedApril 1930 · Enid, Oklahoma, age 67
- Known forEditor and publisher, German-language newspapers
- Emigrated1882, age 19, arrived in New York
- SpouseDrury Ellen Wickham, married 1891
Born in the Shadow of Napoleon: Hesse-Kassel, 1862
Ernst Nicholas Denner's story begins as Napoleon Bonaparte's story ends. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in June 1815, the former Holy Roman Empire's principalities were reorganized into 39 German-speaking states loosely tied together as the German Confederation. One of them was Hesse-Kassel, also known as Kurhessen.
Ernst's father, Gotthard Denner, was born in the hamlet of Sieberts, Hesse-Kassel, on September 21, 1815, just weeks after Napoleon's final defeat. Ernst's mother, Maria Amalia Steiglitz, was born March 13, 1828, in the nearby market town of Eiterfeld. Gotthard and Maria married on August 4, 1853, at the Frauenberg Catholic Church monastery in Fulda. Ernst, the fifth and last of their children, was born August 8, 1862, in the small Catholic community of Haselstein.
A Childhood Shaped by Three German Wars
Between 1864 and 1871, three wars remade Germany around the Denner family, and touched their household directly.
The Second Schleswig War: Prussia and Austria defeat Denmark over border disputes, gaining new territory.
The Austro-Prussian War, the "German War of Brothers." Hesse-Kassel sides with Austria; the Battle of Hünfeld is fought 1.5 miles from Haselstein, within earshot of the Denner home. Prussia wins, and Hesse-Kassel is annexed. Gotthard's position in forest administration, as a native Hessian rather than a Prussian, is placed in jeopardy.
The Franco-Prussian War. Germany's states unite under Prussian King Wilhelm I, forming the German Empire. France is forced into harsh reparations at the Treaty of Versailles.
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck launches the Kulturkampf, curbing Catholic Church influence over public life and education, a policy that struck directly at Catholic communities like Haselstein.
Educated for the Priesthood in Kassel
According to an essay written by Ernst's daughter, Ona Denner Hockmeyer, Ernst attended the same secondary school, a Gymnasium, as the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, who studied at the prestigious Friedrichsgymnasium in Kassel between 1874 and 1877. The curriculum was classical and demanding: Latin, Greek, German literature, mathematics, history, and philosophy, delivered with strict discipline and heavy memorization.
Ona's essay indicates Ernst was studying for the Catholic priesthood at the time, adding Hebrew to his studies alongside Latin and Greek. Because Kassel was roughly 80 kilometers from Haselstein, Ernst would have boarded there during the school year, speaking High German at school and the local Hessian dialect at home.
By the time of his immigration, he had decided against the priesthood, and opted instead for a "life of adventure."
Several factors likely pushed Ernst toward that decision: his older brothers had already emigrated, Bismarck's Kulturkampf placed state control over priest training and closed seminaries, compulsory military service began at age 20, and steamship travel had grown considerably cheaper by 1881. Millions of Germans emigrated to America between 1870 and 1890, driven by population growth, land scarcity, and economic hardship. Ernst would have known, when he left, that the separation from his parents and homeland might well be permanent.
Emigrating to America at Nineteen
In 1882, Ernst boarded a ship for New York, carrying with him the entirety of his savings.
Ernst spent his savings sightseeing and visiting his brothers, who had already settled in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the state of Washington. He then settled in Marysville, in northeast Kansas, home to a substantial Catholic and German-American community, where he found work at a weekly German-language newspaper, Die Marysville Post.
Building a Newspaperman's Life
Ernst was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in Marysville on May 6, 1888. He rose to foreman of the Post, briefly left for a printing job in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1890, and then came back within weeks, the paper reporting that it "didn't take much to secure him for the 'Post' again."
That same September, the paper published something remarkable: an open, joking appeal to "marriage-minded German ladies" on the bachelor Ernst's behalf, noting he was "a young, respectable man" in a position "to support a family decently," and promising to "gladly handle the matchmaking."
Naturally, only one can win the prize, for our Ernst is no Mormon.
In 1891, Ernst became owner and editor of Die Marysville Post outright. That December 25, he married Drury Ellen Wickham, an American woman, at the Hotel Wheeler in Hiawatha, Kansas. Some in the German community reportedly told him he would have done better to marry "closer to his breadbasket," a match closer to home. Twenty-five years later, on their silver anniversary, Ernst wrote that he had never regretted the step.
Ernst stayed in touch with his brothers in the United States. In December 1895, the Marshall County Democrat reported that "Mrs. Clara Denner and daughter, of Fort Harrison Mont., arrived in this city... for a few months visit with her brother in-law's family, Ernst Denner." Life in Marysville had its lighter moments too: in April 1896, the paper noted Ernst had become "the proud possessor of a horse and buggy," though two months later his wife and her mother "came near meeting with a serious accident" when the horse "got ugly and kicked over the dash board." The following year, a second accident "broke up considerably" the buggy, though neither woman was seriously hurt.
A Growing Family in Kansas
Between 1892 and 1898, Ernst and Drury welcomed three sons, and Ernst kept a busy public life alongside his growing newsroom.
Their first son, Otto, was born in 1892, named for Ernst's brother. Their second, Ferd, arrived in October 1894, a "bouncing boy baby" weighing nine pounds, per the local paper. Ernst's family also stayed connected to Germany: in 1893, a report noted he had "fallen heir to about $1,500.00" from overseas, roughly $55,000 in today's money, possibly an inheritance following his father Gotthard's death.
Local papers found room for lighter news too. A horse-and-buggy accident in 1896 nearly injured Drury and her mother; a second accident the following year "broke up considerably" the buggy but left the "ladies" unhurt. A third son, Laverne, was born in 1898.
Prohibition Closes a Newspaper
By 1902, Die Marysville Post was failing. In his final issue, Ernst wrote candidly to his readers: over the previous years his business had registered "a steady crablike backward movement," as elderly German subscribers died off and younger Germans stopped reading German.
Local Prohibition laws had brought German immigration into Marshall County to a virtual standstill. In eleven years, we could count the new arrivals on our ten fingers.
Alcohol culture was deeply woven into German-American daily life, and organizations like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, whose local branch was founded by Carrie Nation herself, had grown powerful enough by 1900 to reshape entire communities. Ernst closed his letter with a farewell to his subscribers and moved his family to Enid, in Oklahoma Territory.
The Creamery Tragedy of 1907
In Enid, Ernst founded a new German-language paper, Die Enid Post. A fourth son, Joseph, was born in October 1902, and after a brief, unsuccessful attempt at farming, Ernst returned to his real profession, journalism.
Thursday, September 5, 1907, began like any other day. Otto was 14, Ferd was 12, Laverne was 9, and Joseph was 4. In the early afternoon, Otto and Laverne took the family cart to a local creamery. While Otto was inside, a fire alarm sounded; in the confusion, the two boys lost track of each other, and Otto returned home believing Laverne had done the same.
By evening, a frantic search began. Laverne's body was found tangled beneath iron beams at the bottom of an old well, thirty feet deep.
The tragedy was reported by at least two dozen Oklahoma newspapers, and reached as far as Marysville, Kansas.
A New Chapter on the Oklahoma Frontier
Life continued forward. In February 1909, Ernst and Drury welcomed a daughter, Ona, meaning "grace," who grew up to sing and play piano for her grandmother Wickham. In 1906, Die Enid Post was renamed the Enid Staats-Zeitung, and by the 1910s it had grown into the largest German-language newspaper in Oklahoma, with correspondents across nine counties and roughly 1,200 subscribers.
Ernst grew more civically active in these years too, helping organize the Garfield County branch of the German-American National Society and serving on a committee for Enid's first "Aeroplane Show" in 1910. In 1914, his son Ferd graduated high school and began engineering studies at the University of Oklahoma. The following year, tragedy struck again: the Denners' infant son Eugene died of pneumonia at six months old.
The Ordeal of World War I
No chapter of Ernst's life is better documented, or was more dangerous, than the years his newspaper spent under suspicion during America's war with Germany.
The Enid Staats-Zeitung becomes the Oklahoma Staats-Zeitung. A reader writes to Ernst asking, "can you tell me what is considered right and wrong in this country?"
Ernst editorializes against President Wilson's re-election over his rhetoric branding immigrants as disloyal "hyphenates," backing Republican challenger Charles Evan Hughes.
The United States declares war on Germany. Both of Ernst's oldest sons, Otto and Ferd, register for the draft.
Councils of Defense coerce loyalty pledges and suppress "seditious" speech. Mob violence against German-Americans is reported across Oklahoma. Ernst's own sign board is smeared with black paint twice.
The State Council of Defense orders the paper to stop publishing in German by January 1919. Ernst refuses: "I shall not obey this willful, unjust and undeserved command." The Armistice, on November 11, ends the war and the pressure.
Over 2,000 German-Americans gather in Enid at a mass assembly organized by Ernst and others, professing "undivided, cordial and unconditional loyalty" to America.
In our house it is as if someone had died. Since our sons and brothers have registered, we expect every day that their numbers will be drawn; we almost cannot bear the apprehension.
— Ernst Denner, editorial, July 1917
Both Otto and Ferd survived the war and came home safely, though Ernst never heard from his relatives in Germany again after it ended. Ferd served in France as a Master Gunner, attached to artillery headquarters near Verdun, and was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for his service in the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives. He crossed the Atlantic aboard the troop ship Tuscania, torpedoed by a German U-boat off the Irish coast on February 5, 1918, killing or injuring 576 of the 2,493 men aboard. Ferd survived by lifeboat, and later recounted the sinking in a 1933 radio address on the war's anniversary.
After the War: Family and Legacy
Both sons married, started families, and built new lives in the community their father had helped raise from the frontier.
Otto married Edna Gosselin in 1918; Ferd married Mable Foster in 1922. Ferd became Garfield County Engineer, finished his engineering degree at the University of Oklahoma, and later helped his brother Joe start a bakery business in Alva, Oklahoma. Joe married Mary Heizer in 1929; Ona married Paul Hockmeyer in 1933. The extended family continued to gather in the years that followed.
Neither Ernst nor Drury ever learned to drive, but when Ferd came home from the war, he bought his parents a car so Joe and Ona could drive them wherever they needed to go. Ferd also found Ona one of her first jobs: in a handwritten 1920 letter, he told her "the ghost has walked," family slang for money becoming available, and that she had "the job of teaching gym for all the girls at Longfellow."
The Death of Ernst Nicholas Denner
Ernst died in April 1930, at age 67, struck by a car while crossing a street in downtown Enid. His funeral drew hundreds of mourners, and his death was covered by newspapers across the state, including his own, the Oklahoma Staats-Zeitung, which noted that certain wartime "100-percenters" had made his life difficult.
One English-language paper wrote that he had "continued courageously and industriously on to the end, doing all the work, editorial, mechanical, and as advertising solicitor, two men's work," adding: "he was a skilled craftsman, a writer of ability, a man of high educational attainments and a gentleman always."
When Ernst began his Oklahoma newspaper in 1902, at least fifteen German-language papers existed in the state. By the time he died, his was one of only two left.
Frequently Asked Questions About Ernst Nicholas Denner
Short, direct answers drawn from the documented record.
Who was Ernst Nicholas Denner?
A German-born immigrant who became a newspaper editor and publisher in Kansas and Oklahoma, running German-language newspapers including Die Marysville Post and the Oklahoma Staats-Zeitung from 1888 until his death in 1930.
Why did he emigrate to the United States?
He emigrated in 1882 at age 19, following his older brothers. Bismarck's Kulturkampf policies against the Catholic Church, compulsory military service, and the broader wave of German emigration in this era were all likely factors.
What newspapers did he publish?
Die Marysville Post in Kansas, then Die Enid Post in Oklahoma, later renamed the Enid Staats-Zeitung and finally the Oklahoma Staats-Zeitung, which became the largest German-language newspaper in the state.
What happened to his newspaper during World War I?
Oklahoma's Council of Defense ordered it to stop publishing in German. Ernst initially refused, calling the order unjust, and the paper survived once the Armistice eased tensions in November 1918.
How did he die?
He died in April 1930, at age 67, after being struck by a car while crossing a street in downtown Enid, Oklahoma. Hundreds attended his funeral.
Other Notable Denners in the Archive
Ernst's branch of the family is not known to be related to these other Denners; they are gathered here for sharing the same surname.
Sources and Further Reading
- Family oral history, tradition, and photographs, courtesy of the Denner and Murrow families.
- Correspondence dated April 6, 1998, from Andreas Knüttel, local Haselstein historian.
- Essay by Ona Denner Hockmeyer, undated, believed written in the 1970s.
- Bilger, Edeltraut Luise. The German-Americans in Oklahoma During World War I, as Seen Through Three German-Language Newspapers. Master's thesis, May 1976.
- Bailey, Thomas A. A Diplomatic History of the American People. New York: Meredith Corp., 1969.
- Transcript of a 1933 radio address by Ferd Denner on the 15th anniversary of the Tuscania sinking.
- National Personnel Records Center, National Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
- "HMS Tuscania." WorldWar1.com.
Have a Family Story to Share?
This history reached the archive because a descendant took the time to research and write it down. If your family carries the Denner name and a story worth preserving, or if you can add a source, a correction, or a photograph to this account, I would like to hear from you.