Alfred Douai was born in Altenburg, Saxony, Germany in 1819. He studied at the universities in Leipzig and Jena. He earned a doctorate in Koenigsberg, East Prussia. He hoped to be a philosophy professor. In 1843 he married Anes von Beust from a noble family in Saxony. Four years after his marriage he returned to his home town to set up a school. With the outbreak of the revolution in 1848, Douai became a political agitator and journalist. He was sent to prison three times for speaking out and writing pamphlets against the monarchy.  By the time he emigrated to Texas in 1852 he was a self confessed "freethinker". He was in a sense exciled to Texas.

He became the first editor of the San Antonio Zeitung, publishing the first issue in July 1853,
This newspaper is available today on microfilm. He was a revolutionary in Texas, declaring that West Texas should be a slave free state. he received many threats of violence and he slept in his office every night with a gun. In 1856 he finally gave up on a "free soil" movement in texas and moved his family to New York. He lived in Boston and worked there as a teacher, also publishing books. In 1859 he organized the first Kindergarten in a German school in Boston.

In 1859 Douai moved to New York where he remained for the next 28 years working as an educator, a free thinker and a journalist. He died in 1888.

He came to Texas as a Political figure. He was one of the finest minds the German Revolution of 1848, directed to this country. He believed in freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and he went to a German prison for it. When he got out, he headed for Texas where he knew he would be free of those problems. He opened the first kindergarten in the United States at Boston. He was also one of the most fearless newspaper editors of Texas. In 1852 he opened a private school at New Braunfels and established a singing group. He wanted to make as big of a difference in society as he could, and he did. He was very successful at what he did. He described himself as a "radical democrat".

Bibliography:
The Handbook of Texas Online
From: The Papers of Frederick Law Olmstead, Vol. II, edited by Charles C. McLaughlin,
pages 57 ff