The Statesman and the Socialite

Carl Schurz was a larger-than-life public figure whose exploits real and concocted appeared in newspapers nationwide during the nineteenth century. His letters to Fanny Chapman his secret love leave a picture of an age of turmoil corruption social graces and artistic explosion. It took a renaissance man like Carl Schurz to travel among the greats in the literary artistic and political arenas with grace and judgement. The tragedy of his life if there was one is that he is nearly forgotten in the modern world in the face of revisionist history. He was a fighter for human rights including all races and creeds and a pioneer muckraker in a corrupt city of a “Gilded Age”. Lost are his educational contributions his unpopular and prophetic political stance for Civil Service reform and his fight against a trend toward national imperialism.