In the 20th century, it was an immigrant who taught Americans how to truly see Abraham Lincoln. Jewish Hungarian editor Stefan Lorant, who lived from 1901 to 1997, published sensational photo-illustrated books and articles about the 16th president. He proved that newcomers often shine a revealing light on the best of their adopted country.

As the left-leaning editor of a Munich picture magazine, Lorant was locked up by the Nazis for seven months. His memoir “I Was Hitler’s Prisoner,” published in 1934, was an urgent look at the deepening fascist crisis and quickly became a bestseller in England and the U.S. Upon his release, Lorant and his family fled to the West.

While he was incarcerated, Lorant had been transformed by a book of Lincoln’s speeches and letters. “It immediately hit me in the solar plexus,” he recalled. “Of course, I wanted to know more about this man! Lincoln became my hero. … I tried to think, feel, and live as he had.” Countless immigrants before and since have done the same.

In 1941, freshly arrived in America, Lorant published the first of his many popular biography picture books, “Lincoln: His Life in Photographs.” He was so enthusiastic about his subject that the entire research, writing, layout and production of the book took just six weeks. In its pages, lavish, large-format photographs of the “Rail Splitter” told the dramatic story of his life and the Civil War era. Life magazine called it “the most American of books.” Over the years, Lorant would enlarge and revise it three times and in so doing inaugurated the new genre of photo-biography.

By reproducing photos of Lincoln, Lorant moved beyond the varied mass of subjective artworks — paintings, prints and sculpture — that only approximated his appearance. Here was the real Lincoln, what he really looked like. And he reproduced those photos larger and more vividly than ever before. They were (and are) as close as one can get to being in Lincoln’s presence. As Lorant knew, the light rays that fell on Lincoln’s face and body during the exposure are the same ones that actually made the photographs of him. Indeed, leafing through Lorant’s books is very moving even today.

Although he was a passionate historian if ever there was one, Lorant didn’t insert himself in his writing. But when he describes the Lincoln family immigrating north to Illinois from Indiana, perhaps something of his own refugee’s experience comes through: “Onto the ox wagons the thirteen people piled all their earthly belongings and headed for the prairie lands of Illinois. … That was on the Sangamon River. The Indians gave the river its name, it meant ‘the land of plenty to eat.’ Would it prove to be so for them?”

Lorant invited readers to see in Lincoln’s photographs the highest aspirations of his adopted country — fairness, honesty and decency. People did just that during World War II, during the Civil Rights Movement and during the strife-filled 1960s. Altogether, Lorant’s popularization of Lincoln photos took the topic out of the hands of scholars and collectors and moved it into the hands and homes of everyday people. That his biographies were read by immigrants and world citizens is a matter of record. In 1976, his “Life of Abraham Lincoln” was published in a short paperback form and translated into many languages including Spanish and Arabic. It was published in other countries with the support of the U.S. State Department.

A studio portrait of Abraham Lincoln, dated Nov. 8, 1863, was made by photographer Alexander Gardner. (Library of Congress)

Lincoln himself was famous for his genuine magnanimity toward immigrants. An 1858 speech vividly described “the electric cord in that Declaration (of Independence) that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together.” He encouraged Americans to “discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man — this race and that race and the other race being inferior” and how they should be instead “united as one people throughout this land.” These noble sentiments apply, of course, even more urgently today.

As insightful immigrants have often done, Lorant held up a mirror to the values and history dear to this country. Through his Lincoln publications, a new American gave us the man who is often called the First American. In these troubled times, what else can immigrants teach us to see?

Lorant was born on Feb. 22 — 10 days after Lincoln’s own birthday — exactly 125 years ago.

Mark B. Pohlad, Ph.D., teaches about the history of photography at DePaul University in Chicago.

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https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/02/20/opinion-abraham-lincoln-stefan-lorant-immigrant/