The New International Encyclopædia/Kapp, Friedrich

KAPP, kȧp, Friedrich (1824-84). A German-American publicist and historian, born at Hamm, Westphalia. He was educated at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, and practiced law in the courts of Hamm and Unna until 1848. Engaging in the revolutionary rising at Frankfort, in September of that year, he was forced to take refuge in Paris. Later he went to Geneva, and in 1850 came to New York, where he practiced his profession until his return to Germany in 1870. He acquired great influence among the German-speaking people of New York, became interested in the slavery question, and was a Republican Presidential elector in 1860. As a result of his efforts to protect immigrants he was appointed one of the Emigration Commissioners of New York in 1867, and wrote a book, Immigration (1870), showing the economic value of foreign immigration. After his return to Germany, he was in 1872 elected a member of the Reichstag. He wrote much both in German and English, and his books are based upon careful research. His works include: Die Sklavenfrage in den Vereinigten Staaten (1854); Leben des amerikanischen Generals F. W. von Steuben (1858, Eng. ed. New York, 1859); Geschichte der Sklaverei in den Vereinigten Staaten (1860); Leben des amerikanischen Generals Johann Kalb (1862, Eng. ed. New York, 1870); Geschichte der deutschen Einwanderung in Amerika (1868); Friedrich der Grosse und die Vereinigten Staaten (1871); and Aus und über Amerika. Erlebnisse und Thatsachen (1870). He also wrote on the soldier traffic by German princes in the American Revolution.