newspaperman, b. Czernowitz, Poland. He migrated to the U.S. in 1833, as a refugee from the Polish uprising in 1830. A printer by trade, he moved to Milwaukee in 1847 to become editor of the VoIksfreund, a weekly newspaper founded by Rufus King (q.v.) of the Whig Sentinel, in an attempt to influence the German element against the state constitution of 1846. The constitution was strongly supported by the city's only other German-language paper, Moritz Schoeffler's (q.v.) Democratic Wisconsin Banner. When the constitution was defeated, King sold the paper to Fratney, who quickly made it a Democratic organ espousing workingclass, Free-thinking, and anti-clerical sentiments, and in this capacity the paper clashed frequently with Schoeffler's Banner. As early as 1848 Fratney seemed friendly toward the Free-Soilers, but he remained a Democrat and anti-abolitionist through the early 1850's, only to break with the party over the Glover-Booth affair. Opposed to blue laws, and favoring socialism and labor organization, Fratney helped found the German-English Academy, and was prominent in Milwaukee labor circles. At his death he bequeathed the Volksfreund, a daily after 1852, and the city's official German-language paper after 1854, to Schoeffler. H. L. Canard, Hist. of Milwaukee (3 vols., Chicago [1896]); WPA MS.Learn More
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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]
