Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Dulon, Rudolf

DULON, Rudolf, educator, b. in Stendal, Prussia, 30 April, 1807; d. in Rochester, N. Y., 12 April, 1869. He studied theology and philosophy in the University of Halle, and became rector of a school at Werben in 1831. He accepted pastorates at Flossau, near Osterberg, in 1836, and Magdeburg in 1843, and soon gained a reputation as a pulpit orator and a fearless expounder of liberal Christianity. In 1848 he received a call to the Liebfraukirche in Bremen, and while there entered enthusiastically into the political agitation of that time, strenuously opposing the illiberal measures of the Eichhorn ministry. In 1850 he established the Bremen “Daily Chronicle,” a social-democratic sheet, which was suppressed in 1851, and “The Alarmist,” a religious weekly. In 1852 the Bremen senate removed him from his charge; but sixteen years later this judgment was reversed by the appellate court of the free city of Lübec. As Prussia had demanded his extradition, Dr. Dulon fled, in 1853, first to Helgoland, and, in November following, to the United States. He became the pastor of an independent congregation in New York city, and at the same time issued a series of “Sabbath Leaves” in the interests of free religion. He subsequently devoted himself to the cause of education, and opened in the city of New York the first German-American school established in the United States, which the civil war finally compelled him to abandon. In July, 1866, he was chosen director of the new German-American “Realschule” in Rochester, N. Y., where he remained until his death. Gen. Franz Sigel, also a Prussian, taught in Dr. Dulon's New York school, and subsequently married one of his daughters. Dr. Dulon's works include “Die Geltung der Bekenntnissschriften in der reformirten Kirche” (Magdeburg, 1847); “Vom Kampf um Völkerfreiheit” (1849); “Der Tag ist angebrochen,” the sale of which was forbidden by the authorities (1852); and “Aus Amerika,” a review of educational work in this country (1865).