HEILPRIN

HEILPRIN, U.S. family in 19th and early 20th centuries. MICHAEL HEILPRIN (1823–1888), who was born in Piotrkow, Poland, was a linguist, scholar, encyclopedist, and author. In 1842 Heilprin and his family went to Hungary, where he joined the Hungarian liberal movement soon after his arrival, and became well known as a writer and revolutionary poet during the Revolution of 1848. After the suppression of the uprising, Heilprin went into hiding and then fled to Paris for some months. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1856 and taught in Hebrew Education Society schools in Philadelphia until 1858, when he moved to Brooklyn to become an editor and contributor to Appleton's New American Cyclopaedia (1858–63). He later worked as an associate editor on the revised work (1872–76). He also wrote for the New York Tribune and contributed articles to E.L. Godkin's Nation from 1865 until his death, and was considered one of the foremost writers in the U.S. on European literature and politics. In the 1880s Heilprin was active in the work of the Emigrant Aid Society and advocated the establishment of colonies for Russo-Jewish refugees in Oregon, the Dakotas, and New Jersey (see am olam ). He wrote the two-volume Historical Poetry of the Ancient Hebrews (1879–80), of which a third volume was begun, but not completed. Heilprin's elder son, ANGELO HEILPRIN (1853–1907), was a geologist, explorer, and author. He made several trips of exploration including one to the erupting volcano Mt. Pelée. He also went to the Arctic on a mission to bring relief to Peary (1892). His younger son, LOUIS HEILPRIN (1856–1912), who was born in Miskolc, Hungary, was an encyclopedist, too. He assisted his father in the revision of the American Cyclopaedia (1872–76), wrote the Historical Reference Book (1884), was an editor of Nelson's Encyclopaedia, an associate editor of the New International Encyclopaedia, and co-edited Lippincott's New Gazetteer (1905) with Angelo Heilprin. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: G. Pollak, Michael Heilprin and his Sons (1912).