Robert Prager

Robert Prager was a German coal miner living in Collinsville, Illinois, who was lynched by a mob on 5 April 1918. Twelve men were tried for his murder but were subsequently acquitted. It has been suggested that Prager may have been singled out for his socialism rather than his nationality.cite journal |last=Hickey |first=Donald R. |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=The Prager Affair: A Study in Wartime Hysteria |journal=Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society |volume= |issue= |pages= pp. 126-127 |publisher= |location= |date=Summer 1969 |url= |doi= |id= |accessdate=]

Early life

Prager was born in Dresden, Germany, and had emigrated to the United States in 1905 at the age of 19. A drifter, who had spent a year in an Indiana reformatory for theft, he was living in St. Louis when the US declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917.cite book | last = Luebke | first = Frederick C. | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = Bonds of Loyalty; German-Americans and World War I | publisher = Northern Illinois University Press | date = | location = | pages = | url = | doi = | id = | isbn = 0875805140]

Prager showed patriotic feelings for his adopted country; he took out his first citizenship papers after the declaration of war and tried to enlist in the US Navy. He also had a St. Louis baker arrested after he objected to Prager displaying the American flag.

Prager was rejected from the Navy due to medical reasons and sometime later became a baker in the Collinsville area, but was dismissed due to his "stubborn, uncompromising personality". He applied for membership in the United Mine Workers union and went to work as a miner in a mine at nearby Maryville, but was denied UMW membership because not only was he German, but he was also "unmarried, stubbornly argumentative, given to Socialist doctrines, blind in one eye" and "looked like a spy to the miners". However, other historians have pointed out that the UMW had many local German-American members.

Lynching

On 3 April 1918 Prager was confronted by a group of miners and warned away from Maryville. UMW leaders Moses Johnson and James Fornero, who feared for Prager's safety, tried to get the Collinsville police to put him into protective custody, but they declined. The two men instead took Prager back to his home in Collinsville. The next day, Prager returned to Maryville where he prepared a document attacking Fornero. He posted copies of this document around the town and returned to Collinsville that evening.

Some of the miners who had confronted him in Maryville were drinking in Collinsville that night and decided to go after Prager at his home. They dragged him into the street, stripped him of his shoes and outer clothing and draped him with an American flag.

Prager was rescued by a policeman, Fred Frost, who put him in the jail. The mayor, John H. Siegel, calmed the crowd for a time and it was decided to close the town's saloons early. However, the officer who was sent to close the saloons brought the news that "a German spy" was being held in the jail.

A mob gained entrance to the jail and found Prager hiding in the basement. The police stood aside as the mob marched him beyond the city limits. After allowing Prager to write a brief letter to his parents in Germany and pray, he was hanged in front of a crowd of two hundred people at 12:30 am on 5 April.

Aftermath

The hanging was widely condoned. A local newspaper, the "Edwardsville Intelligencer" did call it "unlawful and unjustifiable" but argued that a traitor would be dealt with just as harshly in Germany. The mayor dispatched a telegram to a senator in which he argued that Prager's death was due to the failure of Congress to pass effective laws against disloyalty. This was apparently a commonly held point of view, repeated endlessly in the newspapers.

Trial

On 25 April the county's grand jury indicted twelve men for murder and the trial got underway on 13 May. The judge refused to let the defense try to demonstrate Prager's disloyalty and the case for the defendants amounted to three claims: no one could say who did what, half the defendants claimed they had not even been there, and the rest claimed they had been bystanders, even Joe Riegel, who had confessed his part to newspaper reporters and a coroner's jury. In its concluding statement the defense argued that Prager's lynching was justified by "unwritten law." When the defense was finished, the judge declared a recess and after deliberating for 45 minutes (some accounts say 25), the jury found the defendants innocent. One juryman reportedly shouted, "Well, I guess nobody can say we aren't loyal now". [cite book | last = Schaffer | first = Ronald | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = America in the Great War | publisher = Oxford University Press US | date = 1991 | location = | pages = p. 26 | url = | doi = | id = | isbn = 0195049047]

Reaction

A week after the trial, an editorial in the newspaper the "Collinsville Herald" by editor and publisher J.O. Monroe said that "Outside a few persons who may still harbor Germanic inclinations, the whole city is glad that the eleven men indicted for the hanging of Robert P. Prager were acquitted." Monroe noted, "the community is well convinced that he was disloyal. ... The city does not miss him. The lesson of his death has had a wholesome effect on the Germanists of Collinsville and the rest of the nation."cite book | last = Peterson | first = H.C. | authorlink = | coauthors = Gilbert C. Fite | title = Opponents of War, 1917-1918 | publisher = Greenwood Press Reprint | date = 1986 | location = | pages = | url = | doi = | id = | isbn = 0313251320]

A "New York Times" editorial said "a fouler wrong could hardly be done America," which would be "denounced as a nation of odious hypocrites" as a result. However, the "Washington Post" declared that "In spite of excesses such as lynching, it is a healthful and wholesome awakening in the interior of the country".

Notes

References

*cite journal |last=Schwartz |first=E.A. |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=The lynching of Robert Prager, the United Mine Workers, and the problems of patriotism in 1918 |journal=Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society |volume= |issue= |pages= |publisher= |location= |date=Winter 2003 |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3945/is_200301/ai_n9170046 |doi= |id= |accessdate=2008-07-09
* [http://web.mala.bc.ca/davies/H324War/Prager.lynching.1918.htm Contemporary newspaper accounts]

ee Also

* Anti-German sentiment