Centennial Memoir

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STEPHEN C. HINTZ CENTENNIAL MEMOIR

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CENTENNIAL MEMOIR Northwestern College Alumni Society 1879-1979

By Elmer Carl Kiessling

Published by The Northwestern College Alumni Society

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Copyright 1979 by the Northwestern College Alumni Society Printed by the Northwestern Publishing House, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, i

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Contents V

Preface

vii

The Beginnings

1

Three Jubilees

11

III

Projects and Publications ..............

17

IV

A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

27

V

The Northwestern Club

37

VI

The New Gymnasium ......................

45

VII

Sidelights, Songs, and Presidencies .

53

VIII The Semicentennial and World War I

65

IX

An Era Ends — A New Era Begins

73

X

The Roaring Twenties ................

83

XI

Marking Time for Two Decades . .

91

XII

The Era of Building

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101

XIII The Centennial and Other Memorabilities . .

109

XIV “The Finest Farewell to the Days of Our Youth”

119

Pictures

133

Index of Names

149

Preface Two options confront the writer of a history of the Northwestern College Alumni Society: to restrict himself to the business of the Society as it is recorded in the fre­ quently dry minutes of its annual meetings, or to expand the story by including some of the abundant background material about Society members contained in articles and alumni columns of the Black and Red. The historian who chooses the first option will find him­ self in immediate difficulties because there are no minutes of the first five meetings. All that we know of that lost peri­ od is contained in two articles written twenty years after the event by one of the founders and published in the Black and Red. With the concurrence of members of the Alumni Cen­ tennial Committee, I chose the second option. Since the Society founded the Black and Red and has always been closely associated with it, I decided that anything printed in its pages by or about alumni would be considered fish for my narrative net.

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This decision created the new problem of determining where to draw the line in presenting background material.

In general that which was out of the ordinary or rich in hu­ man interest was favored over the routine, no matter how important the latter might be.

Even so, some of the incidents related have little to do with activities of the Society. The only excuse for includ­ ing them is that they are “good yarns” mentioned in the sources and that they have some connection with the ca­ reers of Society members.

1 am grateful to President Toppe for reading the final draft of the manuscript and making valuable suggestions; to the members of the Centennial Committee for encour­ agement and cooperation; and to my wife, Esther, for typ­ ing the manuscript and helping to provide an index.

The whole Society is deeply indebted to the Northwest­ ern Publishing House for offering to publish this history “without cost to the Alumni Association” as a “good will gesture” to both Northwestern College and the Alumni Society. Special thanks are due to: Walter Bunge, who made this generous offer to the Society; Rev. Mentor Kujath, ’43, who edited the manuscript; Rev. John Trapp, ’66, who did the sketches; and Donald Beutin, who did the picture layout.

Elmer C. Kiessling

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J The Beginnings The year 1879 was comparatively uneventful in American history. Our nation, still basking in the afterglow of the great Centennial and the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, had almost forgotten the effects of several catastrophic happenings earlier in the decade. The chief of these were the five-year-long depression that began in 1873; the massacre of General Custer and his men by the Sioux under Sitting Bull in June 1876; and later that year, the bitterly contested election that almost left the country without a President until Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner shottly before the inaugural.

In 1879 few people were interested in the efforts of Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, former resident of Watertown and Milwaukee, to give the Indians a square deal and introduce civil service; fewer still attached much importance to the invention of the incandescent electric light, which Thomas Edison unveiled after trying out some 6,000 filaments; and seemingly no one at all took notice of a group of young men who met at their alma mater, a small

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Wisconsin college bearing the prestigious name of North­ western University, and founded a society that was not only to endure but to flourish during the next century.

Their memorable meeting came about in this way. In the spring of 1879 two Milwaukee alumni, Dr. John Bading, ’72, and Prof. Eugene Notz, ’73, sent out invitations to all Northwestern graduates to gather at Watertown on June 25 for the purpose of forming a Northwestern University Alumni Association. Just why they chose this date is un­ known. The college commencement had taken place al­ most a week earlier, on June 19.

Not a single one of the older alumni, except the two mentioned, appeared on the designated day. But ten re­ cent graduates did come. That made twelve in all — not a bad attendance when one considers that the college had been in existence for only fourteen years, that only seven classes had issued from its portals and that the total num­ ber of graduates at that time was 28, not counting the nine of 1879. If nearly half of all members were to appear at one of the annual Alumni Society meetings today, the roll call would register some 700 present, instead of the usual number, which varies from about 70 to a few over 100.

A thirteenth man, Oscar Griebling, of the class of 1878, nearly made it to the first meeting. “I set out from Milwau­ kee for Watertown with the firm intention of joining the new society,” he wrote. “But (in Watertown) I got stuck in the hay harvest. I can therefore tell you how to go a-haying, but not how to organize an alumni society.”

The first record in the old book of minutes of the So­ ciety contains only two items, both written in beautiful German script: (1) An announcement that Prof. Notz and Dr. Bading and “a number of alumni” assembled on June 25, 1879, for the purpose of forming an alumni association on the basis of the following constitution and (2) the con-

The Beginnings

stitution itself. There is no further mention of names, no explanation of how the constitution came into being. One would like to know who chaired the meeting. Who was the secretary and why did he not add his name to the report?

And who were the officers elected to carry the torch for the new organization during the next five years when there are no records of meetings in the book of minutes. No wonder that a decade later, Oscar Griebling, then secre­ tary, spoke somewhat whimsically about the “mystic ori­ gin” of the Society.

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THE CHARTER MEMBERS Fortunately we do know the names of the charter mem­ bers and some details not only of that first meeting but of the five lost years from two anonymous German articles that were published in successive numbers of the Black and Red for March 15 and June 15, 1898. The first is titled “The Founding of the Alumni Society,” the second, “The Alumni Society since its Founding.” Both were evi­ dently written by John P. Koehler, who was then professor at Northwestern and president of the Society.

Like everything that Prof. Koehler wrote, these articles are marked by originality and tinged with a bit of specula­ tive philosophy even when he talks about such matter-offact topics as dates for the annual meetings. Harking back to the one in 1879, Prof. Koehler stated that, for reasons he could not recall, it had been badly scheduled for a day in early July. As a result, only half of the 26 graduates showed up. There were two minor errors — slips of memory — in Koehler’s statement. The meeting had not been held in July but in June, as Ole Felland, of the class of ’76, reminded his friend by letter before the second ar­ ticle appeared. And there were 28, instead of 26, gradu­ ates at the time.

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Prof. Koehler may have counted only the living alumni, for two of the founders, Dr. John Bading and Rev. K. Koch, were already in their graves when Koehler wrote the ar­ ticles. Bading was a member of the first graduating class of 1872 and the son of the Synod president, Johannes Bad­ ing. Koch had been pastor of a Missouri Synod church in Wheaton, Illinois.

The ten younger alumni who heeded the call of Bading and Notz were all seminarians, Koehler informs us. Five — A. Baebenroth, J. Gensike, 0. Hoyer, L. Lampert and Chr. Sauer — attended the Wisconsin Synod Seminary, which had been reopened the previous year in Milwaukee. The five others — O. Felland, W. Harms, C. Huth, K. Koch and J. Koehler — were students at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri.

In the intervening twenty years two of the twelve found­ ers, as already mentioned, had died, One, L. Lampert, went into business. Five were in the ministry and four were professors. Eugene Notz occupied the chair of biblical theology at the Seminary since 1878; J. P. Koehler would begin his distinguished career there in 1900; Karl Huth taught the classics at Concordia College, Milwaukee, from the day it opened in 1881; and Ole Felland was professor at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. Northwestern had conferred an M.A. on him in 1892. According to a resolution of the College Board in 1873, anyone who had received a B.A. from Northwestern and finished the semi­ nary course at St. Louis would, on request, be granted a Master’s degree. Anticipating many requests, Dr. F. Notz composed a model M. A. diploma and ordered 100 copies lithographed in Milwaukee. But Felland was the only man in this category to avail himself of the opportunity.

On Wednesday, June 25, 1879, these 12 gentlemen gathered in the college “aula” to renew their ties with the

The Beginnings

alma mater and with each other by creating the Alumni Society. The aula (assembly room) occupied the lower floor of the two-story eastern wing of the old dormitory, built in 1875. Roll-up dividers transformed it into two commodious classrooms. When the dividers were rolled up, it was a sizable hall that was used for commencement exercises, chapel, and meetings of all kinds, including those of most of the alumni meetings up to 1895. In that year it was superseded by the more spacious aula on the third floor of the new Recitation Hall. Both of these aulas have disappeared — the larger, more recent one when the Recitation Hall was demolished to make room for the Chapel-Arts Building in 1955; the original one in the early 1970s when the old dorm, after rounding out almost a century, was reduced to rubble and replaced by Witten­ berg Hall.

SOCIETY GOALS Back to the meeting of 1879! Prof. Eugene Notz was asked to discuss the aims and advantages of the kind of as­ sociation he had in mind. This he did in a speech that Prof.

Koehler still remembered vividly enough to synopsize in his article. He was especially impressed with Notz’s idea that the proposed society ought not to be motivated in the first instance by scientific, philanthropic or theological considerations, but by a spirit of social camaraderie and a feeling of reverence for the institution where one had spent one’s formative years and ripened into manhood.

After Notz had finished, Dr. Bading added some practi­ cal suggestions concerning the forming of a constitution and the activities of an alumni society. A committee was then appointed to formulate a constitution according to guidelines presented by the speakers. “This was imme­ diately done,” wrote Koehler. Such speed indicated that

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the central article of the constitution, dealing with the goals of the Society, had been discussed and virtually drafted before the committee began its work. The lesser articles may have been modeled after the constitution of some other society, since speakers frequently referred to practices in other schools, and the document itself states that “the duties of the officers shall be the same as those of other associates of a similar nature.” The highlight of the constitution was this listing of Society aims:

1. To foster the arts and sciences; 2. To support our Alma Mater in every possible way; 3. To further and maintain the bonds of Christian friendship in a truly Lutheran spirit.

The Beginnings

As soon as the constitution was accepted, the new So­ ciety passed resolutions to implement the various articles.

Membership was limited to those who had completed the course at Northwestern and received a degree. Each mem­ ber was to pay an annual fee of one dollar to the treasurer.

The Society was to meet every year at commencement time. At each meeting, besides the regular order of busi­ ness, there were to be lectures, delivered by men appoint­ ed beforehand by the chairman. With these lectures the Society was obviously trying to give practical expression to its high ideal of fostering the arts and sciences. It kept on trying for the next three decades with indifferent suc­ cess.

A “SOLEMN” MEAL After the election of the first slate of officers, none of whom Koehler mentions, the members of the constitution­ al assembly adjourned to the dining room in the old main building, where under the chairmanship of President A. F. Ernst, they partook of “einem solennen Mahle” (“a solemn meal”). Everyone was probably still in an elevated mood after the memorable achievements of the day. Since the new Society met in both college buildings — the only ones on the campus at the time except for the tiny wooden gym — it might not be inappropriate to complement the brief description of the old dorm, given previously, with a few words about Old Main. Erected in 1865, it was the original college building and for many years the most imposing one in the city.

Prof. A. Hoenecke is said to have nicknamed it the “Kaffeemuehle” because of its resemblance to a familiar household article of those days, the square wooden coffee grinder. The affectionate nickname stuck. In his Centen­ nial Story, Prof. Erwin Kowalke notes that before 1875

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The Beginnings

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“almost every activity of the students was confined to the four walls of the Kaffeemuehle. In that building they slept, studied, recited, ate their meals, and spent whatever free time was allowed. In this building their meals were cooked; the housekeeper and her family lived there, as well as some member of the faculty.” There also misbe­ having students were punished by confinement in the “Karzer,” the student prison in the attic. In addition to all these functions, it became the locale of the first social gathering of the Society — and perhaps of several others that are not recorded. But on the night of July 30, 1894, a fire, ignited by a stroke of lightning, destroyed the Kaffee­ muehle, leaving only its charred walls standing.

PROBLEMS OF ATTENDANCE In his second article Koehler at great length discusses the reasons why so few Northwestern alumni attend their annual get-togethers, why other colleges with larger en­ rollments can extend commencement festivities over a whole week and include various programs for alumni, and why the old grads of Northwestern can do a great deal more for their alma mater and their Society than they have been doing. Here and there he adds choice bits of history to his arguments.

We learn that there were indeed meetings in those five years when nothing is chronicled for posterity in the book of minutes. The second meeting in 1880 was, in fact, well attended. Many of those who had not been able to come in the previous year came that year, and several members of the College Board, which happened to be in session that day, joined the Society after their business was concluded.

But attendance in the following year was dismal. In 1882 only Koehler and the secretary put in an appearance.

The Beginnings

There were certain disadvantages to scheduling the meetings on Commencement Day. The morning and after­ noon were given over to public oral examinations, then still in vogue; graduation exercises were held in the eve­ ning. It was difficult to crowd in a meeting with so many other things going on.

For this reason the Society met in Milwaukee in 1884 and resolved henceforth to forgather only at Synod con­ ventions, except every fifth year when it would convene at Northwestern so as not to lose contact with the school.

The 1884 meeting was the first to be protocoled in the book of minutes and also the first to be attended by Oscar Griebling, who had in the interim graduated from the Seminary, served briefly as pastor and then entered the fire insurance business. He was accepted as a member and promptly elected corresponding secretary.

Both of the Society’s resolutions regarding the place of meetings could be carried out in 1885 because the Synod convened in Watertown. An enthusiastic group of alumni and their friends attended the business meeting in the aula.

The Society ratified the model agenda or order of business drawn up by a committee and accepted its first honorary member, Charles Skinner, son of a prominent Watertown family and future lawyer. Skinner graduated from the academic department and gave the English commence­ ment oration in 1884. Prof. Koehler addressed the as­ sembly on the theme, “The Importance of the Study of Secular Poets for the So-called Learned Professions.”

THE FIRST BANQUET In the evening the “comrades” gathered for a banquet in a “festively decorated room” in the Commercial Hotel.

Koehler describes the event in glowing words: “Old teach­ ers and the grads of various years sat at the table together

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The Beginnings

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and thoroughly enjoyed themselves in each other’s com­ pany during the feast and afterwards. This was the first for­ mal banquet since the founding of the Society, and one noticed that those who had graduated in the early years were already looked upon as the old boys by the young men who had been collegians at a later date.”

But the plan to meet at the Synod conventions also proved to have disadvantages. In 1886, when the Synod met in St. Paul, Minnesota, it was impossible to find a suitable time or to round up enough members for a meet­ ing. Many alumni did not belong to the Wisconsin Synod and could hardly be expected to turn up at its conventions.

So the Society held its main meeting only once more dur­ ing “Synod” — at Grace Church school in Milwaukee in 1887. A free evening happened to be available, a good program had been prepared and quite a number of alumni and friends were at hand. The weather was so hot that a breather of fifteen minutes was announced at the halfway point.

Two lectures were given: the presidential address by J. P. Koehler on the subject “A Statesman Can Carry Out His Duties in the Fullest Sense of the Word only if He Is a Christian,” and a “Review of the History of Christian-Oc­ cidental Music up to the Twelfth Century,” by O. Griebling. The audience was intrigued by the clever satire of current politics and the abundance of stimulating material in the first speech. Griebling illustrated his discourse with six placards that showed the development of musical sym­ bols up to the adoption of the so-called “Hufeisen und Nagelschrift” (“horseshoe and nail notation”). The So­ ciety was saddened to hear that one of its most active members, the beloved physician and co-founder of the So­ ciety, John Bading, had recently passed away.

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Three Jubilees

During the last decade of the century, the Alumni Society participated in three Jubilees, each marking a 25th Anniversary - that of the college in 1890, of Professor A. F. Ernst in 1894, and of Dr. F. W. A. Notz in 1897. Both Ernst and Notz were honorary members of the Society.

To us who have celebrated a college centennial, the quarter century of Northwestern history which the founding fathers could look back upon seems like a short time.

In a sense theirs was a younger generation than ours. But what they lacked in time, they made up for in achievement. They had lived through many hardships and established a fine educational tradition. The latter was reflected in ads that appeared in the first issues of the Black and Red: "Northwestern University, Watertown, Wis. Modelled on the plan of the German Gymnasium. More thorough courses than any school of its kind in the United States." The following account will show that Northwesterners of that generation also possessed a distinct flair for staging grand festivals.

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The forthcoming anniversary of the college had been thoroughly discussed by the Society in 1889. All members agreed to take an active part in whatever observances the College Board and Faculty might arrange and, if at all pos­ sible, to form an alumni chorus to sing during the festivi­ ties. All money in the treasury was to be donated to the college for some useful educational purpose.

“DAYS OF JOY” Tuesday, June 17, and Wednesday, June 18, 1890 — the days set apart for the anniversary fete — dawned bright and clear. The reporter for the Gemeindeblatt, very likely the editor, Prof. E. Notz himself, referred to them as “days of joy.” They were also days of oratory and music, the latter rendered by the college band, chorus, and vocal groups. There is no indication that the alumni succeeded in mustering a chorus. The commencement program on the morning of the 17th featured five student orators and an address by President Ernst, besides musical numbers.

Attendance at the Society meeting in the afternoon was almost 100 percent. In contrast to the previous years when it had often been impossible to recruit a single lecturer, four were ready to hold forth this time: Prof. J. P. Koehler, who could always be depended on for a thought-provoking presidential address, and three pastors: Edward Hoyer, August Pieper, and Martin Eickmann. They all glorified the alma mater and tried to inspire a new feeling of loyalty to­ ward her. Pastor Eickmann, the future inspector, spoke in English and chose his theme “zum Vorwurf” (“in reproof” — perhaps because of poor attendance and unpaid dues in former years). Anyway his theme was a quotation from a poem by Ellen Sturgis Hooper (1816-1841): “/ slept and dreamed that life was beauty.

I woke — and found that life was duty.”

Three Jubilees

Members responded by paying up their dues and voting that all monies in the treasury be expended on teaching aids selected by the faculty.

“A BEAUTIFUL AND SIGNIFICANT FESTIVAL” That evening the alumni and their guests gathered in the old gymnasium for a resplendent banquet with more speeches and choral selections. The festivities of June 18 climaxed in an outdoor service on the campus followed by a picnic on Concordia Island (now Tivoli Island), which was then an amusement park with a pavilion and fountain.

Seats had been set up, probably in the area of the present gym, for the service, which was attended by alumni, for­ mer and present students, and members of congregations, many of whom had come on an excursion train from Mil­ waukee. Speakers addressed the audience from a rostrum festooned with branches. Prof. Ernst reviewed the history and purpose of the college; the synodical president, Philip von Rohr, preached in English; Rev. Theo Jaeckel, of Grace Church, Milwaukee, in German.

Both dinner and supper were served in the park, and a program of speeches in a lighter vein, interspersed with band and choral numbers, was given in the afternoon. In the Gemeindeblatt report, Prof. E. Notz referred to the music as “Ohrenschmaus” (‘‘treat for the ears”) and stated that the speeches “refreshed and delighted” the audience.

Pastor Bading recalled some of the amusing experiences of his European tour to collect money for the first college building. Francis Pieper, 72, president of Concordia Seminary, brought the congratulations of that institution and reminisced about the “primeval forest era” of the col­ lege. August Bendler, 78, speaking in English, told how Northwestern had taught a “poor German boy” to speak English. The list of orators included two prominent friends

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Three Jubilees

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of Northwestern, C. Koerner of Milwaukee and Francis Hoffman of Jefferson, a former lieutenant governor of Illi­ nois. Koerner called attention to the evil forces behind the Bennett law of 1889. That measure by threatening the ex­ istence of German parochial schools, had aroused so much apprehension that on the previous morning, when Julius Gamm in his commencement oration, “The Ideal Ameri­ can,” referred to the victorious issue of the battle against the hated law, the audience disregarded all tradition and broke into a storm of applause. In the closing address, Hoffmann, better known to the readers of the Germania supplement, Haus und Bauernfreund, as Hans Buschbauer, held the audience spellbound with his masterly eu­ logy of Northwestern, the Lutheran church, and our great free country.

As night approached, picnickers returned to the college park, where hundreds of Chinese lanterns, hanging from the trees, “shed a many-colored, fairylike sea of light.”

The band played again, and soon after that a display of fireworks brought “one of the most beautiful and signifi­ cant festivals of the Synod” to an end. Prof. Notz, in clos­ ing his report, quoted the last verse of the 90th Psalm: “And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it.”

A more mundane problem — whether to serve beer at the picnic or not — had troubled the planning committee, as minutes of the College Board reveal. Those against it thought it would give the Synod a bad image. Those in fa­ vor argued that for many visitors beer was a kind of dietary “necessity” (“ein Beduerfnis”). Finally it was decided to serve the beverage only at meals. Three ministers were designated overseers, to make sure that the privilege was not abused.

Three Jubilees

TWO PROFESSORS HONORED Prof. Ernst’s jubilee in 1894 was arranged by his clerical and congregational brethren and took place in St. Mark’s Church on the evening of Commencement Day. In the af­ ternoon meeting, Society members, desiring to honor their preceptor with a cash gift, gathered a collection that netted $60. To this was added an undisclosed sum from the trea­ sury.

The celebration to end all celebrations for an individual person was the one in honor of Dr. F. W. A. Notz in 1897.

Most of the ceremonies had been prepared by the Alumni Society. The chapel of the new Recitation Hall, where it met, was decorated with flowers and black and red bunt­ ing. Chairman Koehler announced that he was appointing two members — Rev. O. Hoyer, of the first graduating class of 1872, and Herman Fleischer, who graduated that morning, to escort Dr. and Mrs. Notz from their home on Ninth and Western to the meeting in a buggy he had hired at a local livery stable. The escorts immediately left to car­ ry out their assignment.

As soon as the couple arrived, business was suspended, and the surprised doctor and his wife were ushered to seats on the dais. Congratulatory speeches were then given by presidents Rev. Philip von Rohr (of the Synod); Rev. John Bading (of the College Board); and Prof. A. F. Ernst (of the college). Chairman Koehler then tendered the gift of the Synod, a painting by the outstanding Milwaukee artist Vianden. The gift was doubly appropriate, as both Dr. Notz and Prof. Koehler were amateur painters. Other speakers paid their tributes, and the doctor, quite over­ whelmed, replied briefly.

But that was not the end of the festivities. For the eve­ ning the faculty had arranged a grand reception and social

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Three Jubilees

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with a continuous buffet luncheon, music by Prof. Richard Hardegge and his orchestra, and more speeches. Three hundred people attended. Rev. Christian Sauer, longtime secretary of the Society, read a clever German poem of his own composition to the assembled guests. Beginning with a parody of the Homeric invocation: “Tell me, O Muse, of that man, the versatile teacher,” it followed the doctor’s career from his student days in Swabia through his terms as inspector, athletic director, and teacher of Greek and Hebrew at Northwestern. At ten o’clock, while half the guests were still present, a terrific storm arose, and a thunderbolt shattered the flagstaff of the Recitation Hall, but surprisingly did not ignite the building or damage the flag.

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III

Projects and Publications

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Almost from the beginning the Society had been mind­ ful of its second goal, “to support our Alma Mater in every way.” Two obvious ways were to buy educational materi­ als for the classroom and books for the library. Most of the instruments in the crowded old laboratory on the second floor of the Recitation Hall were gifts of the Society. When Dr. Ott, the college librarian, became treasurer, he per­ suaded his fellow alumni to buy several standard German encyclopedias and to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Society in 1904 by subscribing for the great Oxford English Dictionary, which was then being published. Thou­ sands of readers contributed to that work. Dr. Ott himself for a time was one of the readers, gathering meanings and usages of a certain number of words of the Chaucerian age.

When the first volume arrived, he displayed it at the next annual meeting and upon request proudly read the Latin inscription he had composed and pasted inside the cover on a label: “Societas Alumnorum Collegii Hydropolitani D.D.D. Almae Matri 1904.” The three D’s are ab-

Projects and Publications

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breviations for the Latin words “dono dedit dedicavit.”

Translated, the inscription reads: “The Society of Alumni of the College of Watertown gave and dedicated as a gift (this book) to the Alma Mater.”

During the quadricentennial of Luther’s birth in 1883, the publication of the famous “Kaiser” — later called the “Weimar” — edition of the Reformer’s works was an­ nounced in Germany. In 1904 Oscar Griebling offered to assume the cost of purchasing the set for the college li­ brary as his personal memorial to the Society on its twen­ ty-fifth birthday. Up to 1928, the year of his death, he had paid for 55 of the large volumes. At that time Dr. Ott and the present writer conferred with two other Milwaukee alumni, Julius Dammann, ’92, and Albert Dammann, ’95, Griebling’s brothers-in-law. They promised to continue their late brother-in-law’s project. The words “Dammann fratrum,” in Ott’s handwriting, appear in nine volumes.

But the depression and World War II intervened, and the Dammann brothers passed away. The library has been adding to the set on its own. It now has most of the more than 100 published volumes. Another gift to the library is mentioned here because it involved two alumni and three generations of a single family. In 1914 Rev. Adolph Baebenroth, 78, of Milwaukee, and his son, Adolph Baebenroth, ’04, professor at Syracuse University, offered to contribute $25 annually to the library for an addition to be known as the Baebenroth collection in honor of Pastor Baebenroth’s father, who formerly owned a bookstore and bindery in Watertown.

THE OLD CEMETERY In the 1891 meeting Dr. F. W. A. Notz broached a plan for acquiring the old cemetery that used to lie just east of the campus. A prominent Watertown man, Luther Bough-

Projects and Publications

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I • ton, after whom Boughton Street is named, had confided to him that the city council might soon run a road north­ ward near the cemetery and that we had better get posses­ sion of it to forestall such action. Almost every alumnus had a warm spot in his heart for that little plot of ground.

Overgrown with scrub trees, shrubs, and wild flowers that almost hid the few remaining grave markers, the cemetery was a favorite retreat for students. They went there to memorize poems aloud, to study undisturbed for tests, and to smoke cigarettes or even play cards on the sly. An alum­ nus, Rev. August Bendler, memorialized it in a poem that was printed in the Black and Red of October 1910, and a second time in the “Souvenir Gym” number of October 1912.

The Society therefore accepted Dr. Notz’s suggestion with enthusiasm and not only instructed him to proceed in the matter but elected a committee to help him. For the

Projects and Publications

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next four years Dr. Notz reported at length on'the obstac­ les encountered. Not only the legislature and the city council, but every family that had relatives buried in the cemetery would have to grant permission before the property could be claimed. Finally the project was drop­ ped. Thirty years were to pass before another attempt was made — this time by the College Board, or rather by an enthusiastic member of the Board — to obtain possession of the cemetery through the process of condemnation. The State Supreme Court ruled against us at that time. Finally, around 1950, the property became ours just in time to be used as the site of the new library, for which, by the way, the Society had stirred up interest and support since the early years of the century.

A LECTURE COURSE AND A COLLEGE QUARTERLY During the 1890s the Society was casting about for a larger project, preferably one that would inspire more in­ terest and activity among the members. A request for sug­ gestions elicited several that were valuable and a few that were far-out: Endow a professorship at Northwestern.

Create awards for deserving students.

Conduct all Society business in Latin to further inter­ est in that language.

Trace the etymology of all Greek words of the New Testament.

Encourage more study of the English Bible at North­ western.

Agitate for an additional professor at the Seminary — one who can teach the Bible in English.

Projects and Publications

Institute a course of lectures by alumni for North­ western students.

Publish a cultural magazine (this was Prof. Koehler’s idea).

Only the last two suggestions were acted on, though the one urging more study of the English Bible, handed in by missionary to the Apaches J. Plocher, ’90, was seriously considered. During the years from 1898 to 1901 several highly appreciated lectures were given before the student body by alumni and one Oxford professor. Ole Felland, ’76, spoke on “A Tour of Europe”; Prof. Bigsby, Oxon., on “Linguistics”; J. Jenny, ’81, on “The Decadence of Spain” (we were fighting the Spanish American War then); Gisle Bothne, ’79, on “Norse Mythology”; Prof.

August Pieper, 76, “On the Study of Nature for a Chris­ tian”; and who but versatile Prof. Koehler, not only once but in a series of lectures, on “Egyptian, Greek, and Ro­ man Architecture” — “with the aid of a stereoscope.” The Society had recently purchased a magic lantern with slides and placed it at the disposal of the lecturers.

In 1897 the committee, appointed the previous year to act on Koehler’s suggestion to found a cultural journal, an­ nounced that a college quarterly edited by students and named the Black and Red had already begun publication.

Nearly everyone took for granted that this was Northwest­ ern’s first student paper. But a member of the class of 1896, Henry Sieker, in reminiscences published in three issues of the Black and Red in 1905, claimed that his class had brought out a paper two years earlier, in 1895. Called the College Review, it appeared in three 26-page hand­ written issues. Each copy, for there was only one per issue, was placed in the reading room, where everyone could en­ joy reading it.

21

Projects and Publications

22

In the very next number of the Black and Red, Pastor (later Professor) Huth challenged Sieker’s claim. Way back in 1875, during his student days, twelve issues of a paper called Der Studenten Schnick-Schnack (Student ChitChat) had appeared. The single hand-written copy of each issue was passed from room to room in the dorm, and each reader was expected to contribute a penny to cover the slight cost of production. There had been at least six hand­ written papers before that. They bore fanciful names: Die Concordia, Die Fliegenden Blaetter (Flying Leaves or Pages), Der Student, Ho Angelos, He Angelos, and Der Bote (each of the last three titles means The Messenger).

FOSTERING THE ARTS But the Black and Red was the first to be printed and the first to achieve instant fame. Within two years it was expanded from a quarterly to a monthly. Though it was never subsidized by the Society, rela­ tions between the two remained f ■ \ . close. Minutes of the annual meet­ \ ings have usually been printed in V the Black and Red, and an Alumni column became one of its regular features. The mass of liter­ ary materials that has appeared in its pages these eighty-odd years would certainly come under the heading of fostering the arts and sciences, even though most of it was contributed by students — future rather than present alumni.

It will be remembered that the Society’s efforts to follow the first mandate of the constitution were to present care­ fully researched lectures at each meeting. The president

4#

Projects and Publications

customarily appointed two men to prepare lectures for the next year, but sometimes, as in 1892, neither appointee showed up, and the disappointed members had to forgo the “spiritual enjoyment” of hearing a lecture. That year they determined to act with “Draconian firmness” by designating the next two speakers themselves and refusing to name substitutes, so that the chosen ones would have no easy way out. This new severity did not remedy the situation.

Yet over the years many interesting lectures were given.

Topics ranged from “Mnemonic Systems” (W. Huth, ’81) and “Systematic Lung Gymnastic in its Application to Singing and Speaking” (W. Weimar, ’85) to “The Mor­ mons” (J. Plocher, ’90) and “Five Years of Teaching in Wisconsin Schools” (Ralph Owen, ’05). After the Black and Red appeared, alumni with literary aspirations evi­ dently considered that periodical a better forum for their creative efforts than the poorly attended meetings. At any rate, the lectures were gradually phased out as contribu­ tions to the Black and Red multiplied. There were long, scholarly articles on “Boniface,” “Palestine,” and “Ho­ race” by university men — A. Hoermann, ’09; M. Sprengling, ’94; and W. Herrmann, ’95. From Germany, where he was a student, John Whyte, ’05, wrote a vivid piece on the centennial celebration of the University of Berlin in 1910, with amusing sidelights on the Kaiser. Men with a flair for humorous writing, like Pastors A. Bendler, ’78; W. Huth, ’81; O. Hagedorn, ’91; and H. K. Moussa, ’00, brightened the pages of the magazine with their witty es­ says and poems. Hagedorn was chairman of a literary com­ mittee that actively solicited contributions. For a time the results were so gratifying that he gave his annual report ‘‘with smiles.” He hoped the time would never come when he’d have to report “in tears.” But it did.

23

Projects and Pubtications

NO TIME FOR SKYLARKING

24

Soon after 1912 alumni wit and learning in the Black and Red dwindled to the modest dimensions of “Alumni Notes” and “Aus dem Seminar,” two columns of interest­ ing, newsy items about graduates in the field and at the Seminary, but hardly instances of fostering the arts and sciences. That initially prescribed goal of the constitution received a lighthearted, almost comical, obituary notice in a German article by Prof. William Huth, who had succeed­ ed Prof. Koehler as president in 1910. “The Society,” he wrote in the Black and Red. “has treated the noble arts and sciences in stepmotherly fashion . . . We don’t have time at our annual get-togethers for philosophy and other airship skylarking (‘Luftschifffahrerei’).” But it was not un­ til 1944 that the noble but troublesome mandate was re­ moved from the revised constitution (See the Black and Red of May 1945, Vol. 49,3). Since then the Society is no longer constitutionally bound “to foster the arts and sci­ ences.”

The subject of literary contributions, or intellectual “skylarking,” by alumni has taken this story somewhat be­ yond the year 1899, which was originally intended to be the cut-off date for this chapter. In the early years, the three most fluent and optimistic members of the Society were J. P. Koehler, Christian Sauer and Oscar Griebling* A quotation from one of Griebling’s enthusiastic talks, as re­ corded by him with the minutes of 1888, is offered in clos­ ing to show what bright hopes animated a loyal Northwesterner at that time. Freely translated, this is part of what Griebling, in his stately Victorian prose, told his “Kommilitonen”— “With the passing of the years, there will be an increasing desire to see again — if only for a few hours each year — the dear old friends with whom one has

Projects and Publications

lived the happy age of youth and imbibed the first draught from the fountain of knowledge, and to listen to old grads as they draw on their hoary memories to tell of a Society that began humbly but is destined to become a cultural fel­ lowship which it will be an honor to belong to and an en­ viable privilege to work for.”

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Front page of menu of the Alumni Society banquet of 1890. Diners had a choice of veal roast or ham with tongue. Dessert consisted of a fruit pudding with vanilla sauce, strawberries with cream and cake with wine. The last course was coffee and cigars.

27 IMPROMPTU INSPIRATION}

IV

A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

A series of lively alumni meetings took place at the turn of the century. The subject that engaged the Society un­ folded almost like a minor drama with the introduction of the protagonist in the first act and a rising action attended by enthusiastic debate, a congenial banquet and the sched­ uling of two extra meetings to resolve problems connected with an ambitious plan. The outcome can not be con­ sidered either a victory or a defeat but rather an envi­ sioned reality whose time had not yet come.

The dramatic action began very casually in the 1898 meeting, when Chairman Koehler welcomed a distin­ guished visitor, Judge C. A. Christiansen of Juneau, and invited him to attend all future gatherings of the alumni as an honored guest. Christiansen was a member of St. John’s congregation in Juneau and assistant organist of the church. Except when he played the organ, he sat in the second row from the front on Sundays and always wore a black skullcap. He was a crusty but kindly gentleman who was as ready to slap a peace bond on a local bully as to

A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

28

gladden the heart of a Northwestern student colporteur by ordering the most expensive book on his list. The judge’s dislike of public schools was such that he engaged private tutors for both his daughters until they were ready for Northwestern. Both graduated in 1900, Wilhelmine, the elder, from the regular college course, and Johanna, the younger, from the academy. Wilhelmine was the second woman to receive a Northwestern B. A. Mary Ernst, the president’s daughter, later Mrs. John Lloyd Phillips, had graduated with the class of 1896. Both Mary and Wil­ helmine attended alumni sessions of those years.

Judge Christiansen availed himself of Koehler’s invi­ tation in 1899 and again in 1900. No one had previously enjoyed the prestige of having two children, certainly not two daughters, graduate from Northwestern in one year, and that circumstance may have prompted Chairman Koehler’s action on Alumni Day in 1900. After announc­ ing that he had been unable to secure a lecturer, he turned to the judge and asked him to give an impromptu talk on any subject he chose. Christiansen responded with a speech that probably aroused more interest and led to more immediate action than any other ever given before the Society. He was asked to supply a resume of his stimu­ lating ideas for publication in the Black and Red, and a committee was appointed to formulate the ideas for debate and possible implementation a year hence.

THE JUDGE’S GRANDIOSE VISION What was Christiansen’s topic? The minutes say only that he spoke “on the purpose of our institution and our society.’’ But an article in the December 1900, Black and Red, signed Judex (Judge), shows that Christiansen was speaking about Lutheran education in larger terms. The

A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

German article, larded with Latin quotations, begins with a eulogy of Northwestern. The writer notes that the school has just sent out a splendid class of graduates, the largest in its history. That should inspire all alumni. The Lutheran church is also growing, mainly because of immigration.

Pastors, in addition to their missionary duties, have estab­ lished parochial schools and often do the teaching them­ selves. All this is laudable, but more is needed. Our young people, the hope of the church, are exposed to non-reli­ gious training in state high schools and colleges. To keep them within the fold, we must create a Lutheran educa­ tional system that reaches from the bottom to the top, from the primer (“Fibel”) to the university, and it must be second to none in the country. Everyone ought to become involved in this great undertaking — rich and poor, lay­ men and clergy, educated and uneducated. Let us apply our German thoroughness and eliminate our German mod­ esty, alias “Phlegma.” As for the labor involved, “Lust und Liebe zum Dinge Macht Muehe und Arbeit geringe” “Love and desire for a measure Make toil and sacrifice a pleasure.”

These thoughts were also expressed in the report of the committee of June 18, 1901. After animated debate, a new committee of six men was appointed to study the whole matter and come up with practical suggestions the following year. Christiansen was named chairman. That evening he also acted as toastmaster at the third formal banquet of the Society. All speakers were in top form, and their sallies of wit and wisdom not only provided excellent entertainment but put everybody in a happy and hopeful mood.

29

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A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

COLLEGE OR ACADEMY?

30

Great expectations were somewhat dashed by the small attendance at the meeting of June 10, 1902. Even Prof.

Koehler was absent for the first time in 20 years. But the committee of six had worked hard and now presented an optimistic report. In order to save Lutheran young people from “the cancer that was damaging the church,” the com­ mittee proposed a school for higher learning on the order of the one the Norwegians were operating with great suc­ cess (obviously St. Olaf). It further proposed that the Alumni Society take this matter in hand without seeking financial aid from the Synod and that the Society elect a committee of 12 men who were to look for a suitable site either on the Northwestern campus or elsewhere. In either case the new institution was to be independent both as to curriculum and financing.

The assembly then decided that there should be an ad­ journed session of the Society on the evening of June 16 at St. Marcus Church school in Milwaukee during the Synod convention. More than 50 members were present on June 16. Judge Christiansen was elected an honorary member of the Society with full voting rights. He and a dozen other prominent men then aired their views concerning the school project. Some evidently thought it too ambitious, for a motion was finally made and passed to begin modest­ ly with an academy instead of a college. The essential pre­ liminary work was entrusted to a committee, to be named later by the chairman, who was again absent. Enthusiasm still ran high, and some even suggested that the Society meet again that autumn at the joint pastors’ conference.

AN IDEA AHEAD OF ITS TIME But the school project was approaching its dramatic

A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

denouement. At the next meeting, in June 1903, Judge Christiansen announced that his committee had not been able to meet and that there was nothing to report. For the second time the Society scheduled an adjourned meeting during the next Synod convention — at Appleton — in the hope that the committee might have something con­ structive to say at that time. The Appleton meeting was held, but the committee again failed to report. Thereupon the Society, after some half-hearted discussion, rang down the curtain on the whole school project. Judge Christian­ sen never attended another meeting. But he remained a friend of Northwestern. In March 1921, the college learned that it was to receive a bequest of $20,000 from the estate of a Mrs. Eichelberger of Horicon, Wisconsin. Mrs. Eichelberger, an Episcopalian, consulted Christiansen about her will and asked him if she had omitted any of the neighbor­ ing colleges or institutions. He promptly told her that she had forgotten Northwestern College.

The idea of a system of Lutheran schools from primer to college, advanced by the judge and enthusiastically adopt­ ed by the Society, was postponed but not dead. Others re­ vived it around 1920 when the Synod considered the in­ troduction of a modern classical course at Northwestern to attract students who did not plan to study for the ministry.

The idea motivated the founding of Winnebago and Mobridge academies in the 1920s and of the high schools, from the one founded in Milwaukee in the early years of the century to the others that have recently burgeoned all over the Synod. And the people who established Wiscon­ sin Lutheran College in Milwaukee in 1973 would surely agree that with their institution the idea has come closer to realization than ever. But it was first proposed and dis­ cussed by the Alumni Society.

31

A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

32

A FOUNDING FATHER DIES Another unhappy announcement at the meeting of 1903 was that of the untimely death of Prof. Eugene Notz, the “spiritual father” of the Society, of injuries sustained in a fall from a second story window of his house. He had plunged out of the window in a delirium brought on by a fever. Notz was the son of a pastor in Wuerttemberg, where he received his early education. He followed his brother, Dr. F. W. A. Notz, to Northwestern and spent his senior year here, graduating with the class of 1873. After one year at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, he became the first alumnus to be asked to return to his alma mater as in­ structor. He appears with five colleagues on a photograph of the Faculty of 1875 — incidentally, the only extant group photograph of the Faculty before 1925. He returned to Concordia after one year. Following graduation there, he served another year as pastor before being called as professor to our Seminary in 1878. The Society honored his memory by placing a stone marker on his grave in the Union Cemetery in Milwaukee.

An active member of the Society. Rev. August Pieper, was called to fill Notz’s position. The Seminary now had a trio of able professors — Hoenecke, Koehler, ’77, and Pie­ per, ’76. Within a few years it would also have a distinctive “Wauwatosa theology.” In 1903, at the ceremony com­ memorating the 25th Anniversary of both the institution and its venerable director, A. Hoenecke, the Northwestern faculty conferred D.D. degrees on Prof. Hoenecke and Prof. Franz Pieper, alumnus of the first graduating class of 1872. Franz Pieper then offered the felicitations of his Concordia faculty and in its name conferred a second D.D. degree on Hoenecke.

The most important event of the year 1905 at North­ western was the building of a new dormitory. In his sermon

A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

at the cornerstone laying on Memorial Day, Dr. Hoenecke made effective use of the holiday to show that Northwest­ ern trained its students to be soldiers of the Lord. The cor­ nerstone laying was a gala affair, the band and military company marching to the railway station to meet trains bringing visitors — 770 from Milwaukee alone. But it did not compare with dedication festivities on October 15.

The Society played a conspicuous role on that day.

33

CAPS AND GOWNS ON DEDICATION DAY Actually, individual alumni had from the beginning fig­ ured prominently in efforts to get the building project un­ derway. Rev. Martin Eickmann, ’79, inspector since 1903, prodded synodical authorities by pointing out the inade­ quacies of the old building, which was too small for the growing enrollment and lacked indoor bathing and toilet facilities. And Rev. Richard Siegler, ’81, called by the Syn­ od to collect money for the project among the congrega­ tions, performed his task so well that the entire $50,000 needed for construction was subscribed by Dedication Day. But two other alumni, Dr. J. H. Ott, ’85, and Dr. Arthur Hoermann, ’90, were chiefly responsible for one of the more colorful ceremonies of the day — an academic pro-

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A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

34

cession. Both men had spent years of study in 'Germany and were acquainted with the pageantry attending academic celebrations in the old country. In the meeting of June 1905, Dr. Hoermann proposed that alumni wear caps and gowns for the festival and march in procession with the faculty, the speakers, and other dignitaries. Members agreed that this would be a fine gesture and instructed Dr. Ott to procure caps and gowns with appropriate colors and to make all the necessary arrangements. The Faculty fell in line with the plan, and so it happened that the 4.000 visi­ tors on October 15th witnessed the first academic proces­ sion at Northwestern — a ceremony that would be repeat­ ed only once more at the 50th Anniversary of the college in 1915.

In spite of blustery unpleasant weather, the service was held outside in front of the new building. Seats were placed for 3,000, but an extra 1,000 appeared; 1,500 came by train from Milwaukee, and a special car brought 35 from Chicago. President von Rohr preached the ser­ mon, and Rev. Johannes Bading handed the keys of the new building to the president of the institution, as he had done 40 years before at the dedication of the “Kaffeemuehle.” Only the singing of the choirs — St. Mark’s and a massed choir from Milwaukee under the direction of Kantor Kneyse of Grace Church — “prevailed against the wind.” The voices of the speakers were not so successful.

Some 80 alumni and their friends stayed for a social evening in the chapel of the Recitation Hall. Pastor von Rohr acted as toastmaster, and many of the old grads re­ sponded with humorous reminiscences. Rev. Erdman Pankow, who enrolled at Northwestern the day it opened in 1865, related that when President Martin asked whether he was homesick, he replied in good German idiom: “I have no homesick.” And Prof. Schaller, who was a student

A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

here in the 1870s, told how impressed he was when he watched a few boys playing marbles and calling their shots in Latin: “Sane quidem expulsum est!” (“There! It’s knocked out!”)

RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW Yet just as detractors scoffed at young Saul the day he was proclaimed king, so on this occasion an outspoken alumnus who had refused to don cap and gown is sup­ posed to have remarked: “This academic parade is enough to make a horse laugh.” Others referred disparagingly to the new building as a cracker box, a shoe factory, and a shipping case.

Stylistically the old dorm was indeed plain, but not alto­ gether without character. It was always featured on post­ cards of the college. That fourth story rising in the central section above the three-story level of the building seemed to lend a kind of commanding presence. Structurally the 1905 dormitory also had its limitations. Its floorboards bulged, its central staircase creaked, and its halls were drafty. But, as Prof. Kowalke writes in Centennial Story, “For many it offered modern conveniences superior to what they had been accustomed to at home. It was a com­ fortable place to live in, companionship was unlimited and delightful, rules and regulations were just strict enough to make it possible to do good work if the inclination was present. It was home to many of us, and who would be so ungrateful as to speak ill of his own home?”

When the dorm was about to be wrecked in 1973, the campus planning committee and the maintenance depart­ ment made arrangements to remove the bell and install it on the top of Wittenberg Hall. A conduit for the chain that was to be attached to the bell was included in the plans for the building. But a number of upper classmen, unaware of

35

A Premature Plan and a New Dorm

36

this arrangement and fearing that wreckers would destroy the bell, surreptitiously removed it from the roof of the old dorm and hid it.

Today that bell hangs in an impressive tower in the space between Wartburg Hall and the Chapel-Arts Build­ ing. Designed by a 1959 graduate of the prep school, Thomas G. Bast, a Madison architect, the bell tower is the Centennial gift of the Alumni Society to the alma mater.

The bell, originally presented to the college by the Ladies’ Aid of St. Mark’s in 1895, is now activated by an electric mechanism. Student Larry Olson, writing in the December 1977, issue of Northwestern Today, expressed the senti­ ments of students and alumni: “It will be a joy to hear the bell which rang out for so many years from old West Hall once again calling students to chapel or hailing another Trojan or Hornet victory.’’ West Hall was the recent name for the 1905 dorm. If ghosts of former days still haunt our college campus, they surely will be riding on the golden notes of the old bell whenever it rings.

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V The Northwestern Club Today all buildings on our campus except the Music Au­ ditorium are of recent origin, the oldest being the LibraryScience Building, built in 1950. The Music Auditorium dates from 1912. For nearly 60 years that battlemented structure served as the college gym. In its day it was a landmark — almost a thing of beauty when viewed from the west, where two landscaped terraces relieve the ap­ proach to its front door and the graceful statue of the “Sprinter on his Mark,” confident of victory and waiting for the next command: “Get set!” symbolized the whole idea behind the Gymnasium.

The story of how this building became a reality forms one of the most illustrious chapters in the history of North­ western alumni. Members of the Society living in the Mil­ waukee area started the ball rolling when they organized a Northwestern Club on May 21, 1907. Many of them, in­ cluding Otto Ernst, the original promoter of the Club; J. P. Koehler, its first vice president; and Oscar Griebling and August Bendler, later presidents, were active in both Club and Society. The Club might be considered a kind of en­ larged committee of the parent group.

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The Northwestern Club

38

Its members had no desire to be exclusive. The first call for a “charter meeting” went out to “as many of the old scholars as could be reached.” The professors of North­ western, most of whom were alumni by that time, made it a practice, if at all possible, to attend the “smokers” of the Club in a body. “This lent great good cheer to the old boys,” and they responded by organizing Memorial Day excursions to Watertown to take part in gala “Northwest­ ern Days.” Students had staged the first one, with a band concert, baseball game, and exhibition military drill, in 1906. The band marched to the depot to meet the train and escort the Milwaukee visitors to the campus on that occasion. Three years later the Club persuaded the Mil­ waukee A Capella Chorus to come to Watertown and share in the festivities. In addition to the regular features there was a service in the morning of that Northwestern Day in 1909 and a concert by the A Capella Chorus. The planned sham battle had to be postponed because powder for the shells had exploded in the arsenal, injuring four of­ ficers. More of that later.

CLUB AIMS AND ACTIVITIES The aim of the Club was to make Northwestern better known to Milwaukee Lutherans. Mr. Wm. Upmeyer, the prominent Milwaukee jeweler and member of Grace Church, had said: “When we have that fine college, why do they not tell us about it?” The Northwestern Club was doing its best to tell more about the college. Twice it brought the musical organizations to Milwaukee for con­ certs, once in the Alhambra Theater in 1908 and once in the Davidson in 1910. The first concert netted $140, which the Club turned over to the band. The second was particularly gratifying because most Milwaukee papers

The Northwestern Club

sent reviewers, who reported favorably on numbers of­ fered by band, orchestra, chorus, and glee club.

Activities of the Milwaukee alumni were regularly re­ ported to the Society by the chronicler, Prof. A. Kuhn, ’95.

As director of the orchestra he was pleased by their efforts in behalf of the musical organizations and urged Society members, especially those interested in music, to follow their example. But when he announced rather enthusias­ tically in the meeting in 1907 that the first banquet of the Club had been a grand success both as to attendance and good fellowship, Professor X rose to express his disap­ proval. The Milwaukee Club, he said, was interested only in social affairs. The Society ought to bear in mind that its specific purpose was religious (kirchlich) not social.

This statement did not exactly square with what Prof. E. Notz in his guidelines of 1879 and the constitution itself said about social amenities as legitimate goals of the So­ ciety. Alumni would have agreed wholeheartedly with the advice that had recently been given to a Madison society: “There is a cement as binding as that of ancient Egypt, and infinitely older, though ever new — which every member should bring with him to these meetings — good nature.”

In pursuance of this goal, the Society had recently ar­ ranged “smokers” for the evenings following business meetings. The first one was scheduled by Dr. Ott in 1906.

Everyone was to contribute 25 cents, probably for cigars and refreshments. In German, by the way, the more agree­ able term “gemuetlicher Abend” replaced the unattractive word “smoker.”

It was also not quite fair to say that the Club was inter­ ested only in social enjoyment. The “old boys” did have a good time at their reunions, but it was love for the alma mater that brought them together in the first place. Otto Ernst, the Milwaukee businessman who might be con-

39

The Northwestern Club

40

sidered “the onlie begetter” of the Club, originally cher­ ished the ambitious plan of broadening the scope of studies at Northwestern to conform to its proud name of university. The Board of Control and Otto’s father, Presi­ dent Ernst, thought it was wiser to change the name from university to college to conform to realities. Far from be­ ing discouraged, Otto Ernst now sought to enlist the co­ operation of fellow alumni in a club that would work for the good of the college.

The response was beyond expectations. More than 90 assembled for that first banquet, which Rev. August Bendler later described as “a regular Camp Fire Smoker, the embers of which lasted to kindle anew in lovable glow all succeeding meetings.” Eventually as many as 200 alumni, former students, and guests appeared at the annual re­ unions. In Watertown the Society often complained that it could attract no more than 25 or 30. The Club rotated its officers annually. Some 40 shared administrative duties during the next eight years.

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The Northwestern Club

THE OLD SHACK At this time Northwestern had what the annual catalogs called “a spacious gymnasium.” Students referred to it more realistically as “the old shack.” We know exactly how it came to be built in 1877 from the diary of Oscar Griebling, then a senior. His entries between October 5 and November 17 contain the following information. The plan of building a gym was broached in a student body meeting October 5, but sabotaged by certain upper classmen who were against it. Griebling and his classmate, Au­ gust Bendler, and a number of like-minded students then formed a Society for Gymnastic Exercises and decided to build a gymnasium themselves. (By an interesting coinci­ dence, both Griebling and Bendler would take an active part in the building of a new gym 35 years later.)

A kindly Watertown lumberman, Mr. Needham, sup­ plied secondgrade lumber at a pittance, and the boys with the help of a few carpenters pitched in to erect the build­ ing. By Thursday, November 15, everything except the chimney was finished, and Griebling formally accepted the keys. The chimney was built on Friday. On Saturday, No­ vember 17, dirt was hauled in and tamped down, since there was not enough lumber for the floor. It was hard work, and everyone was “recht kaput” (“completely fatigued”). Some years later a wooden floor was laid and the interior sheathed with pine boards nailed to the scant­ lings. In 1883 the sophomores — Dr. Ott’s class — built an addition to the building, extending its length from 40 to 70 feet. It was 30 feet wide.

The old shack served not only for calisthenics and mili­ tary drill but for commencement and other festive gather­ ings. During the whole of an unusually cold winter follow­ ing the destruction of the “Kaffeemuehle,” it was also a

41

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The Northwestern Club

42

dormitory for 100 students. The present writer turned up at Northwestern in the fall of 1910. The old shack was still standing on the site later occupied by the barracks (who remembers them?) about 50 feet south of the present heating plant. The floors and apparatus were in such a state of decay that only an occasional student entered the building to exercise on the rickety parallel bars or to try jumping over a decrepit wooden horse that had shed most of its leather covering. The next spring the shack was dis­ mantled as a fire hazard. The good lumber was used to construct an isolation hospital, soon nicknamed the “pesthouse.” The scrap furnished materials for the fort that went up in a spectacular plume of smoke during a sham battle on the day the cornerstone of the new gym was laid.

PLANNING FOR A NEW GYM When the 1905 dorm was dedicated, President Philip von Rohr pointed out that the next building on the campus would have to be a new gymnasium. Had this “grand old man of the Wisconsin Synod” lived, he would undoubted­ ly have persuaded his hesitant synodical brethren to accept the challenge of another building venture at Northwestern, for he was a warm friend of the school, and the relation­ ship between the college and the Synod was in some re­ spects closer then them now. Northwestern was considered the very own school of the Wisconsin Synod, as Dr. Martin Luther College was of Minnesota and Michigan Lutheran Seminary was of Michigan. The “Joint Synod,” or union of the three synods, was still ten years in the future.

But President von Rohr died in 1908 after a lingering illness. In the annual meeting of the Northwestern Club in 1909, his son, Hugo von Rohr, proposed that the Club now take the initiative in building the much-needed gym­ nasium. A motion to that effect was made by College

The Northwestern Club

Board member William Kieckhefer and unanimously passed. William’s father, Carl Kieckhefer, had been a member of the first Board of Northwestern University.

Thus the second gym, like the first, was to be built by pri­ vate effort. All the other college buildings have been au­ thorized and financed by the Synod. Mr. E. A. Wurster, a former student and an official of the Falk corporation, was elected chairman of the building committee, with Pastor August Bendler as co-chairman.

The first important step in the project was to approach the “monied men’’ for contributions. Many of these were former students of the academy at Northwestern in the years when its enrollment sometimes exceeded that of the college. Having become well-to-do in business or the pro­ fessions, they were in a position to contribute generously to the project. A situation like this will hardly occur again, since nearly all Northwestern graduates now enter the preaching or teaching ministry — two professions that have not been notable for producing “monied men.”

THE DONORS AND THEIR GIFTS The first donor was George Brumder, publisher of the Germania and of the German Bible and hymnal used in our congregations. He contributed $3,000, and his widow added another $4,000. That sent the canvass off to a flying start. Henry Schroeder, proprietor of a lumber yard and a former student, followed with $2,000 and enough money to pay for the installation of two bowling alleys — a pres­ ent for the Faculty. Ferdinand Kieckhefer also contributed $2,000 and his brother William, $1,000. Thirty-five others gave sums ranging from $100 to $1,000. The rest of the 300 donors gave smaller amounts, but the total add­ ed up to the $30,000 needed for the new building.

43

The Northwestern Club

44

The spirit of giving seemed to be in the air. Alumni in Chicago and New York sent word that they wanted to make contributions. Henry Schroeder and the Kieckhefer brothers made two other donations in the year the gym was built, Schroeder commissioning a portrait of Philip von Rohr and the Kieckhefers a portrait of their pastor, Jo­ hannes Bading of St. John’s Church, Milwaukee. Bading was the Synod’s second president and the long-time chair­ man of the College Board. The painter in each case was the talented Lutheran pastor, L. C. H. Brockmann. Both paintings now hang on the north wall of the library reading room. That of von Rohr was unveiled in March 1912, a few days before the ground breaking ceremony, that of Bading a few days before the dedication, inscribed on a brass plate attached to the gilded frame of the von Rohr painting is Pastor Bendler’s tribute to the late president: “LInter deutschen Staemmen Einer deutschen Eiche, Einem Edelmanne

In dem Himmelreiche.”

“To a German oak Of German stock and breed, In the realm of heaven A nobleman indeed.”

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\/I The New Gymnasium The Club supervised every step of the construction of the gym from choosing architects (Schnetzke and Son of Milwaukee) to handing over the keys of the finished struc­ ture to the president of the Synod. On April 15, 1912, faculty, students, and several alumni assembled on the ten­ nis courts that had occupied the site of the proposed gym and cheered as Henry Schroeder and Pastors Bendler and Ebert “cleaved the glebe” and “turned the first spades,” after which “the dirt was to fly.” Work proceeded so rapid­ ly that by May 30 the beams and rough boards of the floor had been laid on the foundations. Everything was ready for the large congregation of alumni, families and friends of students, and other guests that assembled there on that day for the cornerstone laying service.

Rev. A. Baebenroth of the class of ’78 preached the ser­ mon, and Pastor Bendler of the same class conducted the ceremony of laying the cornerstone, which bears the in­ scription “Donated by the N.W. Club of Milwaukee, 1912.” In his introductory talk Bendler presented inter-

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The Netu Gymnasium

46

esting comments on the college colors. They were derived, he said, from the first colors of the German and U. S. flags (black, white, and red — red, white, and blue), and this was their meaning: “When times are darkest, true blood will tell.”

The afternoon was crowded with events — a band con­ cert, a baseball game, a track meet, and a great sham battle with the climactic blowing up of the fort that contained the last relics of the old shack. Under the direction of energetic Prof. Martin Sprengling, ’94, students had toiled in the sweat of their brows to finish a cinder path in time for the track meet. The cinder track circled the old football field. It disappeared about twenty years ago when the eastern half of the athletic field was raised and leveled and the football gridiron reoriented.

A DAY OF GLORY Beautiful weather had favored the cornerstone laying.

The dedication on October 20 was equally fortunate.

Shortly before the program began at two o’clock on that golden but rather chilly autumn day, a Milwaukee Sentinel photographer took a picture which shows members of the Alumni Society and the Northwestern Club along with other principals in the dedicatory ceremonies. The Mil­ waukeeans were nearly all middle-aged men — represen­ tatives of a generation that attended Northwestern before the turn of the century. This was their day of glory. It was also the last time they came together as a group on the col­ lege campus. The Northwestern Club, having expended its energies on this monumental project, faded away after a few years.

As president of the club for 1912, Rev. August Bendler was master of ceremonies on Dedication Day, and no one had a greater claim to that distinction than he. At the ban-

The New Gymnasium

quet of 1909 Otto Ernst proposed a cheer that character­ ized him: “What’s the matter with August? He’s all right!

You’ll always find him cheerful, ever bright.

We’re glad to have more rhymes from him, Which urge us on to build the gym.

What’s the matter with August? He’s all right!”

A portly man with an engaging smile and an expansive way of speaking, he actually gave three inspirational speeches during the program. In the first he portrayed the Sprinter as a symbol of aspiration for young students. It was his congregation, St. Matthew of Milwaukee, which had commissioned the statue from the Milwaukee sculptor, Philip Lohr.

Bendler now introduced William Herrmann, president of St. Matthew, who in felicitous words addressed to Presi­ dent Ernst presented the statue to the college. Bendler’s daughter, Irene, now the wife of Rev. A. F. Halboth, pastor emeritus of St. Matthew, then unveiled it while the band played The Star Spangled Banner. After President Ernst had responded “in his most happy vein,” the Northwest­ ern male chorus sang the old college song: “Come and join in song together,” augmented on this occasion by three stanzas composed by Bendler, who was also author of the verse inscribed on the plinth of the statue: “But one receiveth the prize.

Bear then in mind: In faithful effort Alone true victory lies.”

DEDICATION CEREMONIES Mr. E. A. Wurster, chairman of the building committee, spoke next. He was proud, he said, to have helped in building the old gym at a cost of $600, but prouder still to

47

The New Gymnasium

48

hand the keys of “this magnificent structure, costing more than $30,000,” to the president of the Northwestern Club.

Before passing the keys to Rev. G. Bergemann, president the Synod, Bendler took the opportunity to make his sec­ ond and third inspirational speeches by paying a well de­ served tribute to the Club and another to his honored old teacher, Prof. Ernst. In accepting the keys, President Bergemann expressed his appreciation that the Synod was receiving a fine new gym without having incurred any ex­ penses in its building.

After the doors were opened and the capacity audience was seated, President Ernst delivered the main address, and Rev. H. Ebert performed the dedicatory rite. Finally Pastor Bendler — who else? — was chosen for “the high honor” of reading the telegram which Prof. Ernst had re­ ceived that morning from the President of the United States. It formed the climax of the day and came as a sur­ prise to everyone. This was the message: Executive Office Beverly, Massuchetts Oct. 20 To the Rev. August Ernst President of Northwestern College Watertown, Wisconsin “J congratulate you and your associates on the oc­ casion of the dedication of the new gymnasium of Northwestern College. From my boyhood I have been on terms of intimacy with men of your church; for in my home town more than one-third of our people are Germans, a great majority of whom are Lutherans. I can not too highly commend their sturdy character and reliance for the great part they have taken in our civilization. Those whom I knew best were the lead-

The New Gymnasium ers of those Germans who went into the Civil War to uphold the union, vindicate freedom and eradicate slavery. I understand that your college strives for reli­ gion, liberal education and good health. I wish you every success and feel sure that your efforts will be for the good of the church, the people of the church and the country.

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT."

Poor President Taft. In two weeks he went down to a stinging defeat because his onetime friend, Theodore Roosevelt, ran against him on the Bull Moose Ticket, after bolting and splitting the Republican party, thereby assur­ ing the election of Woodrow Wilson.

SOUVENIR GYM NUMBER But Pastor Bendler’s services did not end with Dedica­ tion Day. With some assistance from Otto Ernst he edited the Souvenir Gym Number that was printed together with the regular issue of the Black and Red for October 1912.

The Souvenir contained the histories of the Club, the gym project, and the dedication program with all the speeches; the complete list of contributors; and pages on pages of Bendler’s poetry and his quaint humor. The editors of the Black and Red also reprinted the touching memorial of the Northwestern Club, written by President Bendler and sent to the family of Prof. A. Kuhn, who passed away August 19. He had been a popular professor, a loyal member of the Society, and a “dear friend” of the Club.

Then one day just before Christmas vacation 1912, who should appear before the student body but Rev. August Bendler to make a final plea in the interest of the Gymna­ sium. The building itself was paid for, he told us, but there was no money left to buy equipment. Would we not be

49

The New Gymnasium

50

willing to spend part of our vacation asking our friends in our hometown congregations for contributions. The stu­ dent who brought back the largest sum would receive “the finest pair of hockey skates in town” as a prize. We prom­ ised to do our best. Frederick Manteufel, a junior, collect­ ed $36 and won the skates. The total collection amounted to nearly $800.

THE LAST BANQUET AND “THE VALIANT FRIEND” The last banquet of the Northwestern Club reported in the Black and Red took place at the Republican House in Milwaukee on June 14, 1914, with 104 in attendance. It was ladies’ night, and the ladies were gallantly accorded full suffrage by the unanimous vote of the gentlemen. Mil­ waukee Mayor Gerhard Bading, son of the late Pastor Jo­ hannes Bading and a Northwestern dropout, “in his ener­ getic style spoke for a ‘better school’ ” and many others held forth in a lighter vein. But that summer World War I broke out and soon filled men’s minds with sterner thoughts. Activities among alumni, recently at such high pitch, languished. Even the alumni notes were sometimes missing in the Black and Red. One editor placed an ad in the empty space: “Lost. The Alumni Column. Please re­ turn it to the Black and Red.” But August Bendler’s interest did not lag. Two long poems of his — “Belle Alliance,” pleading the German cause, and “Shelomith” — and an article, “On the Value of Semitics,” appeared in Black and Red issues during 1915 and 1916. In the meeting of 1916 he and Rev. H. Knuth persuaded the Society to establish a special fund that “might at any time be used for the benefit of the col­ lege.” Minutes of a later meeting reveal that they had a new library in mind. In 1918 the Ladies’ Aid of Bendler’s

The New Gymnasium

church instituted a Northwestern scholarship fund (it even­ tually amounted to $5,000), and in 1919 he is listed with a donation of $100 among the contributors to a set of new band instruments.

In the Society meeting of 1919 Bendler reported the death of his friend Henry Schroeder at 58. Schroeder turned the first spade on “Spade Day” in 1912, rolled the first ball down the bowling alleys that he donated to the gym for faculty recreation, and commissioned the von Rohr painting. In his will he left five percent of his $500,000 estate — up to $25,000 — to the college.

Nothing more is heard of Bendler in the Black and Red after that until his own death is reported in the meeting of 1929. He died on June 2 in Buffalo, New York, on the return from a trip to Palestine and Europe. For 50 years since his graduation in 1878 he had been “a valiant friend of Northwestern.”

51

OLD NORTHWESTERN 52

Oldest printed college song. A penciled note dates it around 1910.

53

\ Tff Sidelights, Songs, V11 and Presidencies Periodically the Society discussed the question of quali­ fications for membership. The constitution explicitly stated that only those who left the college with a “Zeugnis der Reife” (certificate of maturity or diploma) should be eligible. But what about graduates from the academy and normal department or professors at whose feet each alum­ nus had once sat? The Society was quite willing to grant honorary membership to men like Ernst and Notz and now and then to a prominent academy alumnus like Charles Skinner. But it drew the line at admitting others.

Certainly the character of the Society would have changed radically if graduates of the academy and normal school had been admitted during the 1880s when enroll­ ment in these two departments sometimes exceeded that of the combined college and prep school. Only two men were graduated from the college in 1884 and 1888, and only one in 1887. Besides, the two in 1884, according to information supplied by William Weimar, ’85, in a letter to Prof. Kowalke, were really juniors, who somehow wangled

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Sidelights, Songs and Presidencies

54

a degree before they left to attend seminaries in St. Louis and Milwaukee.

The situation changed in the 1890s when enrollment in the regular course picked up and the normal school was transferred to New Ulm, Minnesota. But the commercial courses — the mainstay of the academy after 1900 — still attracted quite a number of students — mostly Lutherans but also some non-Lutherans. This was one of the reasons why so many alumni were in favor of phasing out the academy altogether. It catered to outsiders, they said; the money expended on it ought to be devoted to missions; and Northwestern ought to restrict itself to its true work of preparing young men for the study of theology.

The faculty and the college administration, on the other hand, were in favor of retaining and even expanding the academy. They advertised it in newspapers in neighboring cities and pleaded for its support in Society and Synod meetings. To counter the argument about finances, they pointed out that the commercial department paid for itself and earned extra money, besides boosting enrollment. In the new professor, Carl Bolle, the college had also ac­ quired an able teacher of business subjects.

An eloquent plea for the academy was made by Prof.

Kuhn in an article addressed to all alumni and printed in the April 1906 issue of the Black and Red. “It is true that one doesn’t hear much about the academy in synodical cir­ cles,” he wrote. “Quietly academic students come and quietly they go. But they become the bulwarks of Luther­ anism in our congregations. A spiritual tie binds us all to­ gether.” The Society could hardly ignore such a noble presentation of the case, and in 1907, after a lively debate, adopted a motion made by Dr. Hoermann to admit all academy graduates as members.

Sidelights, Songs and Presidencies

That did not end the discussions. Not until 1959 was the matter finally settled. There are now three membership categories: (1) regular (graduates of the college); (2) asso­ ciate (prep school graduates and dropouts from either col­ lege or prep school); (3) honorary (those who did not at­ tend Northwestern but are closely associated with it, or any friends of either the college or the Society). But in practice these divisions mean little. Every member has the right to vote, even to hold office, and certainly to donate as much of his time or money as he wishes to any project sponsored by the Society.

55

UNIVERSITY MEN Most Northwestern graduates in the early years of the century went on to the Seminary, as they do today. But a rather large number continued their studies at various uni­ versities and eventually became university professors, doc­ tors, lawyers, or businessmen. They usually kept up their contacts with the alma mater, often recounting their ad­ ventures at the annual meetings of the Society or in letters and articles sent to the college paper. One also reads a great deal about them in the Alumni Notes columns. They were all gifted people and won many honors, thereby en­ hancing the scholastic prestige of Northwestern at other institutions of learning. Their names, with two exceptions, are all but' forgotten today. The two exceptions are George Shield, ’00, and William Luebke, ’03, who became known at Northwestern in recent years through their benefac­ tions. Shield established the Dr. Ott Awards and be­ queathed a large part of his estate to the college; Luebke presented his collection of books on English literature to our library.

Several alumni enrolled in graduate schools after they had completed their theological training at the Seminary

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Sidelights, Songs and Presidencies

56

and in some cases served in the ministry. Among them were Arthur Hoermann, Martin Sprengling, William Herr­ mann, William Notz, and Hans Roller Moussa. Each of these men became a professor at Northwestern, at least for a short time, Sprengling, for instance, staying only a year and a half. While he, Moussa, and Herrmann were studying at the University of Chicago in 1906, they rounded up some 20 other alumni in that area to form a Northwestern Club of Chicago.

EXTRA-SYNODICAL AFFAIRS There were probably more extra-synodical contacts or involvements on the part of certain alumni and Northwest­ ern professors at that time than there are today. Both President Ernst and Dr. Ott were leaders in the movement calling for the repeal of the Bennett law of 1889.

In June 1895 the faculty decided to send special invita­ tions for the dedication of the new Recitation Hall to Presi­ dent Larson of Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, to the presidents of the Minnesota and Michigan Synods, to the dignitaries of the city of Watertown, to all the Protestant ministers, and to those citizens who contributed for the new building. In an “extra” later meeting, they also re­ solved to invite professors and students of the Milwaukee Seminary and all pastors and congregations of the Wiscon­ sin Synod.

Northwestern was represented at the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the University of Wisconsin at Madi­ son by Prof. Ernst, Dr. Ott, Dr. Notz, Sr., and Dr. Notz, Jr. In 1910 Ernst received two invitations to deliver com­ mencement addresses, one from Marquette University and one from Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois. There is no record that he accepted, but in the previous year he and several Milwaukee alumni attended the grand banquet

Sidelights, Songs and Presidencies

given in honor of Count Johannes von Bernstorff, the Ger­ man ambassador, during his visit to Milwaukee.

When preparations were underway for the observance of Northwestern’s 50th Anniversary in 1915, there was some talk of inviting Count von Bernstorff to be the guest of honor at the celebration. But sentiment had changed in the 20 years since 1895, and the idea was given short shrift. Dr. Hoermann, so he told us in class, then suggested that the college send the ambassador an appropriately bound copy of the recently published history of North­ western, Soli Deo Gloria 1865-1915. That suggestion was also turned down.

In 1913 Dr. Notz, Sr., and his friends — mostly alumni — celebrated the 50th Anniversary of his promotion to the doctorate. The University of Tuebingen renewed his diploma and sent congratulations. Soon after that he was appointed a member of the board of regents of the Univer­ sity of Wisconsin. In the same year Dr. Notz, Jr., having worked for the election of Woodrow Wilson in the presi­ dential campaign of 1912, resigned as professor to accept an important post in the new Democratic administration.

Eventually he became the first dean of the school of for­ eign service at Georgetown University.

Prof. Kowalke was twice elected president of the Asso­ ciation of Presidents and Deans of Wisconsin Colleges, the first time in 1922, the second, a decade or so later. Dr. Ott served one term as vice president of the Association. Ex­ tra-synodical involvements of alumni during World War I will be treated in a later chapter.

“FEW MAY EVER SNARE IT IN A SONG” Amid all the enthusiasm engendered by the example of the Milwaukee Club, a number of alumni felt that one thing was still lacking — a good, rousing college anthem.

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There were several amusing attempts to supply one. On the eve of the Lawrence-Northwestern football game in 1907, the manager of the team announced a contest for a “football song” and soon had a “table heaped with offer­ ings.” John Schmieder, ’08, later a pastor in the United Lutheran Church in Canada, was the winner. His verse, to be sung to the melody of “Here’s to Old Northwestern,” appeared in the November number of the Black and Red. “Now you'ye got the ball, Run ’em down, run ’em down!

Now you’ve got the speed, Rip ’em up, rip ’em up!

Now you’ve got the hook, Oh, for honor to your name,

Take a score, take a score, Take a score, score, score!”

Second and third prizes and a German stanza to be sung to the tune of “Die Wacht am Rhein” were also printed in the paper.

In the January issue of 1910 an unnamed alumnus, de­ ploring “the lack of a proper medium to give vent to that patriotic spirit which seeks utterance in every student’s heart” and addressing “the scores of us who are on speak­ ing terms with more than one muse,” announced a second competition for a good college song. He promised that all entries would be printed in a pamphlet that spring and judged by a committee of alumni and students to be ap­ pointed by President Ernst. If the pamphlet was ever print­ ed, it does not seem to be extant today, nor was there any report of a judging of entries.

Two songs were, however, printed in the Black and Red. The first, by “an alumnus of early days” who also

Sidelights, Songs and Presidencies

supplied the melody, began with these lines: “Northwestern ha hah!

Northwestern rah rah!

Northwestern is all to me. See! See!” The second, by “an alumnus of the early 1890s,” seems to have been the one chosen. This is the first stanza: “Hail to thee, O Alma Mater!

O Northwestern, hail to thee!

Thou of science the true daughter And a mother dear to me.

Tender age, but e’er if need be Firm of mind and strong of heart.

Thou of shapeless youth art molding Men and women by thine art.”

The author suggested that it be sung to the strains of the Turkish national anthem.

About that time Herbert Jenny, a Boston organist and a former student, composed “an inspiring accompaniment” for “the college song” and dedicated it to the male chorus.

But it is not clear whether his “accompaniment” was in­ tended for the winning entry or for another song titled “Old Northwestern,” which was published in sheet music form with a different set of words by “Primus” and a catchy melody by an unnamed composer. There is a single extant copy of “Old Northwestern” in the college archives.

To add to the mystification, it was reported that a quartet of the Northwestern Club at the reunion of 1910 sang “the recently published Alma Mater song” to the tune of “Old Northwestern.”

But two alumni, Rev. O. Hagedorn and Prof. Martin Sprengling, evidently were not convinced that Northwest­ ern had found its perfect anthem, for each one came up

59

Sidelights, Songs and Presidencies

with a composition of his own in 1911. Hagedorn’s was really a paean to the Northwestern alumnus:

60

“There goes a man indeed,

Best of the college breed.

Ahoy/ Ahoy/ Northwestern boy/” Sprengling composed both words and music of his football song, and the music was arranged for the band by Richard Hardegge. These are the words: “Northwestern’s coming, U-rah-rah!

With a bow-wow-wow and a ha-ha-hah!

Eat ’em (Tiger) alive boys/ Northwestern’s coming. Watch ’em, boys!

They’re out with the big stick. . . .

They’ll make (Beloit, Lawrence, Carroll, Ripon) all look sick.”

None of these effusions achieved popularity. That cachet was reserved for another song, which was declared the winner in a third competition among students and alumni in 1927. In his autobiography, printed in the Black and Red for April 1955, Prof. Carl Bolle, ’15, told the sto­ ry of how it was composed while the Bolles were on vaca­ tion in the north woods. One day daughter Ruth, acad. ’22, “was playing on the piano just for fun when she hit on a tune that we thought would make a good football song.”

Prof. Bolle immediately wrote words for the melody, and that was how “Cheer for Old Northwestern” came into be­ ing. Later he arranged it for the male chorus, and Helmuth Schaefer, ’17, supplied an arrangement for the band. Prof.

Kowalke makes this comment in his Centennial Story: “The song is used chiefly at football games and is intended to stir up and maintain enthusiasm at those games, al-

Sidelights, Songs and Presidencies

though the concluding line can be interpreted as express­ ing not only present enthusiasm but in general a deter­ mination to see things through: ‘Not until we’ve gained the victory shall we yield. } *j

61

NEW PRESIDENTS For upwards of 30 years J. P. Koehler had been presi­ dent of the Society. He may have been elected at the very first meeting, for there is no mention of any other chair­ man. Up to 1902 he had a perfect record of attendance.

After that year he was frequently absent because of the pressure of his Seminary duties. He was busy writing nu­ merous articles for the Quartalschrift (Theological Quar­ terly) and preparing the lectures on church history that were finally distilled into his famous Kirchengeschichte (published in 1917).

For the Society meeting of 1909 he had prepared a fare­ well speech, which the old constitution enjoined upon an outgoing president. It would be interesting to know what he told his colleagues that day, for the speech was whim­ sically titled “Mind Your Own Business.’’ We have only the secretary’s comment in the minutes to describe its ef­ fect: “After the speaker had ended, the chairman thanked him for providing such enjoyment (‘Genuss’) for the as­ sembly.”

The new president was Rev. William Huth, ’81, soon to be Prof. Huth. He began his 25-year tenure at Northwest­ ern in 1911. Students who learned to know him in the classroom as a teacher would hardly recognize the younger man who wrote witty poems and articles that appeared in early issues of the Black and Red. Huth was a loyal mem­ ber of the Society and a regular attendant at the meetings of its Milwaukee chapter, the Northwestern Club. One year

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Sidelights, Songs and Presidencies

when he could not be with the Milwaukeeans, he sent a poem that began with these lines:

62

“Greetings to you, compeers, commilitants And friends of old Northwestern, dear to me.

Though absent bodily . . . eagerly my spirit hastes Astride winged Pegasus to be with you.”

Huth held the presidency for only three years. In 1912 Hans Koller Moussa was elected in his stead and continued in the office until his death — from cancer — in 1928.

John Moussa, as he was known in student days, graduated from Northwestern at 17 in 1900. Though not yet 21 when he finished the Seminary, he had already served as inspector at Northwestern during the school year of 1902OS. After graduation Moussa was assistant to Rev. Philip von Rohr at Winona, Minnesota, for one year. He then en­ rolled at the University of Chicago and was preparing to write his doctoral dissertation in Semitics when his father, pastor at Burlington, suddenly died. Hans Koller was called to succeed him. Within a year he returned to North­ western as professor and athletic director.

But the pulpit rather than the classroom was his real love, and in 1910 he accepted a call to St. John’s congre­ gation of Jefferson. A dynamic preacher, equally fluent in German and English, he also commanded a trenchant, readable style as a writer. He was an indefatigable worker for Northwestern, a member of the College Board and one of the original editors of the Northwestern Lutheran — with John Jenny, *81, and John Brenner, ’93. The Society was stunned by his untimely death and sent letters of con­ dolence to his young widow, his aged mother, and St. Peter’s congregation at Fond du Lac, where he had been associate pastor since 1924. Rev. E. Benjamin Schlueter, *00, Moussa’s classmate, was elected president in 1928

Sidelights, Songs and Presidencies

and for every year thereafter until he begged to be relieved in 1948. Prof. Walter Schumann succeeded him in that year and began another long tenure of 17 years as presi­ dent until 1965.

A TRAGIC ACCIDENT Before each sham battle in the heyday of the military company, officers reloaded shells with blank charges in the

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arsenal, which in 1909 was a room in the northeast corner of the first floor of the 1875 dorm. Four students — Ru­ dolf Lederer, Edmund Reim, Edwin Hertler and Henry Schroeder — were busy at this task on May 27, 1909, when a spark from a piece of iron on which one of them was hammering set off four pounds of powder on a table.

The resulting explosion forced the walls to bulge outward and severely burned the boys — Schroeder and Hertler critically. They were taken to St. Mary’s Hospital adjacent to the campus and placed under the care of Dr. L. Nowack, Sr. The sham battle, planned largely for the entertainment of Milwaukee alumni on Northwestern Day, May 30, was immediately canceled and an exhibition drill substituted.

63

Sidelights, Songs and Presidencies

64

On June 4 the orchestra, under the direction of Prof.

Kuhn, appeared independently for the first time in its his­ tory and turned over the proceeds of its successful concert at the Turner Hall to the victims.

Three of the students were able to leave the hospital af­ ter a few weeks, “thanks to the self-sacrificing labor of Dr. Nowack.” But Henry Schroeder remained there through­ out most of the summer. During the last weeks of the vaca­ tion his mother nursed him back to health in the sick ward of the college refectory. But his eyesight was badly im­ paired. The new school year was underway before he was able to return to his home in Wabeno. Members of his class escorted him to the depot. Henry lost a year of schooling but was able to return in 1910 and graduate with the class of 1912. But the condition of his eyes forced him to aban­ don plans to study for the ministry. He tried teaching but had to give that up too. He then moved to Whiteville, North Carolina, married, and worked for a lumber com­ pany. On a visit to his alma mater in 1945, he reported that he was then in the restaurant business.

The other victims of the blast recovered completely and became ministers, Edmund Reim even serving as president of the Seminary. They are all deceased now. Only Schroe­ der still lives at an advanced age in Whiteville. In response to a letter recently sent to him by the writer, he wrote that he and his wife “will be satisfied to spend our remaining days with each other in Carolina.” He added: “It is diffi­ cult for me to write. I have lived with poor vision all these years. I have no complaint, and I would rather consider the whole thing a closed book.” We have opened that “book” slightly to tell his story because it is unique among North­ western alumni. Milton’s beautiful line: “Who best bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best,” applies to all of us, but in a very special sense to Henry Schroeder.

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VIII

The Semicentennial and World War I

An editor of the Black and Red ended his report on the celebration of Northwestern’s semicentennial in 1915 with this observation: “We now let our vision roam, as over an endless plain, and imagine we see in the hazy distance our centennial milestone.” Today, having passed beyond that centennial milestone by a decade and a half, we look back­ ward through the haze of past years to imagine what the great event of 1915 was like. A very few survivors can re­ call it from memory, along with the excitement and the preparations that preceded it. Alumni, Faculty, College Board, and Synod were involved in the planning. The Syn­ od even scheduled its annual convention over the jubilee weekend.

Students contributed their share. Invitations were sent to parents, former classmates, sweethearts, and recent graduates. The attitude of students toward alumni is well expressed in a formal invitation that appeared in the June 2 number of the Black and Red. Signed with the initial B., it was probably written by the late Henry Brandt, ’16, then

The Semicentennial and World War I

66

a junior, later a distinguished attorney in St. Paul, Minne­ sota. It is quoted in part here because it illustrates how up­ per classmen have always felt about their elder brethren and how by a kind of prolepsis (anticipation of a future situation as though it had already occurred) they envi­ sioned themselves as belonging to the family of alumni.

This is what B. wrote: “Time has altered your faces and the faces of your classmates since you saw them last and has changed their juvenile tenor into a rich deep baritone, but nevertheless they are still the visages and voices of your classmates, teammates and roommates. Al­ though you have borne the brunt of the battle of life while we are still forging our armor, we are all sons of Northwestern. We are the younger sons of this family and we are eager to become acquainted with those who have gone before us. June 19 and 20 are the days set aside for this purpose. Dear alumnus ... do not wait for an invitation, but come back to your Alma Mater, whose doors stand open to welcome your approach.”

A COLLEGE HISTORY In the previous year the committee in charge of arrange­ ments decided that a history of the college would be a fit­ ting memorial of the anniversary. It commissioned Dr. Ar­ thur Hoermann to do the research and whiting. The choice was a good one, for Dr. Hoermann was a trained historian.

A member of the jubilee class of 1890, he graduated from the Seminary three years later and then went to Germany to continue his studies there. In 1902 he returned with a German bride and a Ph. D. in history from the world fa­ mous University of Berlin. The following year he was

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called to Northwestern as a professor. The doctor’s meth­ od of teaching was somewhat relaxed. It needed only a question of a student to have him open up on his favorite subject and entertain the class with stories about Ger­ many. But he had style and charisma and a gift of colorful language. He was much in demand as a speaker at jubilees and rallies. In a comparatively short time he completed the history of his alma mater in elegant German prose. The task of translating it into English was assigned to Pastor H. K. Moussa. The two versions appeared in a paperback, titled Soli Deo Gloria 1865-1915. It bore this dedication: ‘The committee charged by the Synod with the duty of publishing this history of Northwestern Col­ lege, despite the short time allowed for the task, has no excuses to make. IVe rather feel highly elated that we are enabled to send forth this extraordinarily fine work, compiled by the Faculty’s secretary and profes­ sor of history, together with an equally fine transla­ tion. The blessing of the Lord go with it!”

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DEATH OF THE INSPECTOR The sudden death of Prof. Martin Eickmann, the inspec­ tor, threw a pall over preparations for the celebration. He passed away in his sleep on the night of June 2. Students had the first inkling that something was amiss the next morning when one after the other awoke and looking at his watch noticed that the time was long past six o’clock when the inspector made his rounds to summon sleepers from dreamland with his bright call “Aufstehn!” and the inevit­ able rap of his keys on the iron bedsteads.

Prof. Eickmann had been more like a father than an “in­ spector” to the students, and they were saddened to think that they would never again hear his familiar step coming down the hall on one or the other of his seven or eight dait

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68

ly rounds of the dormitory — from the time he woke them in the morning to the time late at night when he shone the flashlight on their beds to see that every student was tucked safely between the covers. The student body marched to church and from the church to the Lutheran cemetery and back on the day of the funeral. Plans for the celebration proceeded without interruption, but one prominent feature — a festive banquet for alumni, stu­ dents, and friends — scheduled for Saturday night, was dropped and a quiet meeting of alumni substituted.

FESTIVE DAYS A “grand concert” of the musical organizations on the night of Friday, June 18, opened the program festivities.

Commencement exercises were held at ten the next morn­ ing, followed by a dinner for guests at twelve, and a dress parade of the military company at one thirty.

At three o’clock an impressive academic procession — the second and last in the history of the college — formed in the old Recitation Hall and made its way to the Gymna­ sium. Faculty, distinguished visitors, and alumni, wearing gowns with bright colors, marched down the aisle to the strains of a march by the orchestra. After a festival address

by Dr. Hoermann, President Ernst in the name of the Nothwestern faculty conferred the Ph. D. degree on an alumnus, Prof. O. Brandt, ’85, of Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota, and a D.D. degree on Prof. E. A. Krauss of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. Then Dr. Franz Pieper, ’72, president of Concordia Seminary, rose to bestow the degree of Ph.D. on President Ernst. All speeches up to this minute had been given in German. But Dr. Pieper, who still taught a dogmatics course in Latin at the seminary, delivered his presentation speech in fluent

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Latin to the surprise of the audience and seemingly of Prof. Ernst. Alumni and students were not quite sure that Ernst could muster up enough conversational Latin to ac­ cept his doctorate in that language. But the slightly wor­ ried look on their faces soon resolved itself into smiles when their old teacher, after a moment or two of hesita­ tion, came through with what seemed to be an impromptu speech in creditable if not exactly Ciceronian Latin.

At the meeting of the Society in the evening, portraits of Dr. Ernst and Dr. Notz, painted by Rev. L. Brockmann and presented to the college by alumni, were unveiled with ap­ propriate ceremonies. After hanging in the reception room of the 1905 dorm for some 35 years, these paintings were transferred to the faculty room in the Library-Science Building, when that structure was completed in the early 1950s. They may still be seen there today.

The highlights of the celebration on Sunday were a ser­ vice in the morning and a “Volksfest” (folk festival) in the afternoon. Both were held outdoors in front of the dormi­ tory. The sun shone again after several days of drizzle. At the service President G. Bergemann spoke in German and Rev. C. Gausewitz in English. In the afternoon there were various speakers, including two members of the first graduating class, Rev. Erdman Pankow and Dr. Franz Pieper. Music was provided throughout the day by the college band and the massed church choirs, which had scheduled their annual “Saengerfest”- for the college anniversary.

A stand set up in the college park dispensed food and refreshments for over a thousand visitors, most of whom came from nearby towns by train. Many more would have come by automobile, a contemporary chronicler noted, but for the incessant rain, which caused roads in this pre­ macadamized era of transportation to be impassable be­ cause of mud. At the close of the folk festival the “entire

69

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multitude” joined in singing the German and American an­ thems, ‘‘Die Wacht am Rhein” and “America.”

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POIGNANT WAR YEARS The outbreak of World War I in 1914 aroused intense emotions everywhere in our country. Though President Wilson at the outset declared that America would remain neutral, people immediately took sides, and their sym­ pathies were determined largely by their racial origins.

Alumni, professors, and students of Northwestern, being of German origin, favored Germany in those early days of the war. Typical of the general mood was an impassioned speech given by Dr. Hoermann at a rally of German Americans on Tivoli Island, Watertown, on August 16, 1914, two weeks after the war began. Its tenor was that as citizens of a great free nation we had the right to cherish our German heritage and the land of our ancestors. Dr. Hoermann’s speech was reprinted in the Black and Red, as were other speeches, articles, editorials and poems of simi­ lar content sent in by alumni or written by students.

But the efforts to present the German side of the conflict by a small number of people were quite insignificant — and heart-breaking — in the face of Allied propaganda and the overwhelming sentiment in favor of the Allies. That first rally on Tivoli was called for the purpose of raising funds for German war orphans and widows. The last one for the same purpose had been scheduled for February 1, 1917, before anyone had an inkling that President Wilson would break relations with Germany on that day. Only the Northwestern orchestra, two professors, and four or five other people appeared at the old hall of St. Henry’s Church, which had been engaged for the meeting. After a Watertown woman read her paper on the plight of the German orphans, President Ernst dismissed the audience

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with a few melancholy words.

Fortunately most of our alumni had dedicated their lives to the higher purpose of preaching the gospel. That work went on with undiminished energy. The quadricentennial of the Reformation was celebrated in 1917, with series of lectures in various conferences on Martin Luther, and en­ thusiastic Reformation services. Those years also wit­ nessed the birth of WELS, when the synods of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan united to form the so-called Joint Synod.

AMERICA ENTERS THE WAR

I

Once America entered the war, German Americans, who had unfairly been branded “hyphenated Americans” by the President, loyally supported their country’s cause.

The change in attitude is reflected in the Black and Red. Articles on the war still appeared, but they now contained the balanced, unbiased appraisals of this or that event in the mighty struggle. The Alumni Column was filled with notices about alumni who had volunteered or been drafted for the armed forces. A handful of students was drafted be­ fore the rule for the exemption of divinity students was firmly established. Students who were exempted by that rule still wanted to do their part in the war effort. They were jubilant when news came that the Students Army Training Corps was to be introduced at Northwestern and just as regretful when the War Department late in 1918 decided that Northwestern was not equipped for such a function. Henceforth it would be considered a divinity school. Students, having collected enough money to buy four liberty bonds, organized an enthusiastic campaign to subscribe for a fifth, the so-called Victory bond.

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THE SOCIETY DURING AND AFTER THE WAR

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Alumni Society reports of those years were short and muted. In 1917 the Society decided to initiate a special drive for money to add to its fund for an eventual library.

Each member was to be responsible for a donation of at least $25. In 1918 the Society suspended this collection for the duration because of the many demands to aid the war effort.

After the war, donations were again solicited for starv­ ing German children. At a rally for that purpose at St. Mark’s Church, Prof. Ernst announced that Watertown had contributed $10,000 worth of goods for this “sacred cause.” He also served as chairman of an organization that sent a shipload of cows from this area to Germany to pro­ vide milk for German children. Ernst Winter, acad. ’14, a Lebanon banker, was one of three men who supervised the transportation of the cattle to Baltimore, Maryland, where they were put on board ship.

In the postwar years virtually every congregation of the Synod repeatedly collected food, clothing, and even money for the German victims of the war and its aftermath. The offerings were usually organized and supervised by the pastors, and most of the pastors were former stu­ dents or alumni of Northwestern.

73

IY An Era Ends — lA A New Era Begins Two announcements in the afternoon meeting of 1918 were of a somber nature. For the first time in 49 years Prof. Ernst had not been able to attend graduation exer­ cises that morning because he was undergoing surgery in a Milwaukee hospital. Prof. Frank, ’01, attended the com­ mencement but had to leave for the hospital immediately afterward and was therefore unable to be present at the meeting. The Society resolved that a message of sympathy and a box of cigars be delivered in person by a member to each man. Ernst rallied, but Prof. Frank died of cancer the next February. The Black and Red for February 1920, contained this notice: “In Memoriam. In loving remem­ brance of our dear Papa, who passed away one year ago today, February 25, 1919. Leonard, Ardis, Mrs. Frank.”

The whole Synod mourned the passing of this able, de­ voted, beloved teacher of mathematics. Many students who had no special aptitude for math, including the writer, nevertheless considered it one of their favorite subjects be­ cause of him.

An Era Ends — A New Era Begins

GOLDEN OPINIONS

74

An era ended in 1919 when Dr. Ernst resigned from the presidency after holding the office for 48 years. Since 1919 also marked the end of his 50th year as professor, the graduating class of that year decided to honor him by requesting tributes from a number of his former students and publishing them in the Black and Red. Just how many alumni they approached is not known, but 27 responded.

Their testimonials — a veritable laurel wreath of golden opinions — were printed in the commencement issue (June 1919).

Thus Dr. Hoermann, who had left Northwestern in 1916 to accept a call from a church in Honolulu, greeted his “dear kumukula” (Hawaiian for teacher) with an “Aloha from Hawaii.” Dr. A. Marti, ’80, professor at a Swiss uni­ versity, praised him as a teacher of classics who “let us ex­ perience in depth Horace’s ‘spiritum Graiae tenuem Camenae’ (breath of the Greek muses’ song).” Dr. C. Abbetmeyer, ’88, thought that Ernst successfully imparted his ideal of a “cultured gentleman” to all his students, and Rev. H. K. Moussa hailed him as “the preceptor of the Lutheran Northwest.” Most of the writers agreed with Rev. Adolph von Rohr, ’06, that “his childlike faith which permeated all his teaching was an incentive and inspiration” to prepare for the ministry.

In formal testimonials like these the correspondents naturally did not relate anecdotes they probably told in class reunions about their old teacher, who was affection­ ately known as “Olie.” There was a good deal of Mr. Chips in his character. Two of the writers recalled that when a student offered an amusingly foggy answer, the doctor would with a chuckle quote a line from Goethe: “Das Maultier sucht im Nebel seinen Weg.” (“the mule seeks his

An Era Ends — A New Era Begins

way in the fog”). The line sounds much better in German.

Another writer remembered how the doctor in a merry mood countered the argument of a student who wanted to be a missionary among the heathen but didn’t believe in exercise because it wasn’t commanded in the Bible. ‘‘Sup­ pose the heathen are cannibals,” he said, ‘‘and they chase you, and you can’t run because you haven’t exercised!

How long would you last as a missionary?”

The Society had arranged a service in Dr. Ernst’s honor on the afternoon of Commencement Day in 1919. Twelve former students — representing the synodical schools, the Concordia Colleges of St. Paul and Milwaukee, and St. Olaf College, besides the Society, Faculty, Board, Central Conference, and Student Body — gave short speeches.

President Moussa in the name of the Society handed the doctor a purse of $1,280, including a $20 goldpiece coined in 1869, the year he came to Northwestern. The faculty gave him a $50 goldpiece, and the students anoth­ er $50. The Synod had set as its goal the raising of an Ernst.fund of $5,000, the income of which was to go to the doctor during his lifetime and after that to be used for scholarships. This sum was later added to other scholar­ ship funds. Dr. Ernst served as part-time teacher for anoth­ er three years. He died in August 1924, at the age of 83.

A NEW REGIME The new era after 1919 was not greatly different from the one that preceded it, yet there were a few significant changes. With the retirement of Prof. Schlueter, for rea­ sons of health, in the early twenties, all members of the faculty for the first time were alumni. Prof. Erwin Kowalke, ’08, was elected president in 1919. He had been teacher of English and Hebrew and athletic director for six years. As

75

An Era Ends — A New Era Begins

76

president he would also teach the important senior course in religion. Kowalke, familiarly addressed as EEK by all his colleagues and friends, was a man of deep convictions, wide culture, sterling character, and equable temper. More than any other man he shaped the character of those who graduated from Northwestern during the next 40 years.An important change of 1919 was the addition of an ex­ tra year of study to the college curriculum. It was the first step away from the pattern of the German “Gymnasium.”

But there still were no electives, and the courses and the lockstep class system remained the same. From now on any alumnus desiring to enter a graduate school could pre­ sent a transcript of full college credits for admission. But the credits were not always accepted at face value because Northwestern was not an accredited school. Dr. Ott had been the first to propose accreditation in 1904. A number of alumni thought that the time had now come to renew the proposal.

But the majority were opposed because they feared that accreditation might bring in domination from the outside and even limit our freedom to teach the Lutheran “Welt­ anschauung” or philosophy of life. Besides, they argued, why make it easier for our graduates to attend other insti­ tutions. Northwestern’s purpose is to train young men for entrance to the Seminary, and the Seminary accepts our credits without question.

The subject received its classic treatment in an article by Prof, (later Dr.) W. H. Beck, ’19, professor at Immanuel Lutheran College, an accredited school in Greensboro, North Carolina. The article was published in two install­ ments in the Black and Red for April and May 1927. Prof.

Beck tried to show that accreditation, among other things, tended to improve teaching methods and professional growth among teachers. As a matter of fact, the Synod, to

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achieve these goals, had as far back as 1919 instituted pro­ fessors’ conferences, which were held more or less regular­ ly during the 1920s and then dropped for financial reasons during the depression. Only Dr. Ott, as he publicly de­ clared at the Synod meeting in St. Lucas Church, Milwau­ kee, did not think the conferences worth the money spent on them. He was getting more benefit, he said, out of at­ tending the meetings of the national associations of his dis­ cipline. After one such meeting of the Council for Teachers of English over the Thanksgiving weekend in Chicago, he was asked what impressed him most at the convention.

“Very well,” he replied, “I didn’t meet a soul from North­ western at Chicago.”

A NEW SCIENCE PROFESSOR In the meanwhile the enrollment increased, reaching a record high of 312 in the school year 1924-25. That num­ ber would be surpassed only once in the next 30 years. Im­ mediately after the war a record number of students regis­ tered in the academic department, and that fact may have influenced a synodical committee to recommend the intro­ duction of a modern classical and general science course at Northwestern for the benefit of young Lutherans who wanted a Christian college education, but had no inten­ tions of preparing for church work. Had this recommenda­ tion been adopted, Northwestern might have become an earlier, though smaller, Valparaiso.

Though the proposal was turned down, the College Board in 1921 made the wise decision to subsidize the education of a science teacher. The man chosen for the honor was Paul G. Eickmann, ’16, a seminarian who served as tutor at Northwestern between 1919 and 1921.

He spent the next three years at the University of Michi­ gan, graduating with an M.S. He became professor of sci-

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An Era Ends — A New Era Begins

78

ence at Northwestern in 1924 and developed the science courses that are still taught there. His interest in astrono­ my prompted a former student, Mr. Theodore Fathauer of Chicago, to donate the money for a telescope, which from its base on the upper floor of the old dorm, and later on the roof of the Library-Science Building revealed the won­ ders of the starry sky to generations of student stargazers.

In 1975 a more modern instrument, the “Paul Gerhardt Eickmann Memorial Telescope,” a “Questor 7,” was pur­ chased with funds provided by the Alumni Society and memorials to the late Prof. Eickmann. While the Board did not again subsidize university courses for professors until the 1950s, it did allot $100 annually for summer study at a university. Often the money was shared by two men, each getting $50 to meet the expenses of tuition, room, board, and travel.

COURSES IN MUSIC A final innovation was the introduction of courses in music and singing in each of the preparatory department classes. Actually they were not introduced so much for the preps as for those who would one day become pastors and perhaps be called to remote parishes where they might have to lead the singing in their congregations and even play the hymn accompaniment on the organ. As long ago as 1890 there had been attempts to make the study of ele­ mentary music obligatory. Richard Hardegge, local musi­ cian and graduate of the Leipzig Conservatory, was en­ gaged as professor of music for two years. Max Gaebler, one of the three students who enrolled in the school when it opened as a seminary in 1863, also served in that capacity.

In the early years of this century professional musicians were occasionally imported from Milwaukee to teach sing-

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ing and music. The most eccentric was Hans Duetzmann, who conducted the musical organizations between 1914 and 1917. His reprimands, delivered with an amusing Ger­ man accent, enlivened many a rehearsal: “Don’t sit dere like a go-to-me come-from-me.” “Don’t sing die straight lines; sing de little dots.” “Himmel, dis iss Wagner, not Strassenmusik! Now we sing die second vers vot comes right after die first — vun, two, tree!”

One immediate good effect of the courses in singing, as President Kowalke often noted, was the livelier singing in chapel services. Today musical courses carry full credit and are taught both in the college and the preparatory school by professors of music. »

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SOCIETY PROJECTS The Alumni Society as such was not directly involved in all these changes, yet almost all the men who introduced them were Society members. Though many of them failed to pay their annual dues and skipped meetings for years on end, they were not considered delinquent. Even today, for­ mal acceptance at an annual meeting confers a kind of in­ delible character on every graduate and makes his mem­ bership irrevocable. As the saying goes: “Once a member always a member.” Whenever the Society takes on a new project or espouses a worthy cause, it appeals to every liv­ ing alumnus and former student. Some 2,500 names are on its mailing list.

There were many worthy causes in those years of change 50 years ago. Thus the Society paid for most of the new band instruments when the band changed from high pitch to low pitch in horns and woodwinds. It endeavored — successfully — to expand the Alumni Column in the Black and Red and to encourage the writing of articles by alumni. Soon a spate of letters, discussions and reports on

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An Era Ends — A New Era Begins

80

missionary work in Washington, Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere appeared in issue after issue of the college pa­ per. Even the Seminary Notes, written in German, often extended over several pages and sometimes were quite emotional, for instance, when the writer bade farewell to the drafty old Seminary in Wauwatosa, where each hall had its nickname — “Ketzerallee” (“heretics’ alley”), Highland Boulevard, “Zoologengasse” (“zoologists’ street”), —and the dinner conversations occasionally took the form of debates over Kantian concepts (the “categori­ cal imperative” versus “the thing in itself”) or the proprie­ ty of using a class ring for a wedding ring. The Seminary correspondent compared the move to the new but still rather sequestered site in Mequon to the three years that Paul spent alone in the desert of Arabia.

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OBITUARIES In those years the chronicler of the Society not only noted the deaths of all alumni and former students but memorialized them in biographical sketches. The most tragic and unexpected of the deaths in 1920 were those of Seminary professors John Schaller and Herman Meyer.

Schaller, president of the Seminary, was still in the prime of life, and Meyer was actually a younger man. Classes were dismissed for the day at Northwestern out of respect for Schaller. His obituary was written by Meyer, who suc­ cumbed to pneumonia two months later. Both men had at­ tended Northwestern but left before graduation.

Dr. F. W. A. Notz passed away in 1921. His death re­ vived nostalgic memories among former students. They re­ called his aversion to wearing sweaters in class — he called them “sweeters”; his witty manner, when the cor­ rect answer was not forthcoming, of calling on a “second wise man from the East,” or even a third; his clever com-

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An Era Ends — A New Era Begins

parisons — misplacing Greek accents reminded him of the cavorting of “a grasshopper with chilblains.”

Two other notable obituaries recorded in the early 1920s were those of Rev. E. Mayerhoff, designer of our college seal and the last member of the original College Board, and Adam Martin, the first president of Northwest­ ern, who died at 86, after a long and honorable career as professor of German at Gettysburg College. What a differ­ ent school Northwestern would have been, had Martin suc­ ceeded in raising the endowment he sought to make it an American college for young men of German descent!

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The Trinity windows in the chancel of the college chapel.

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X The Roaring Twenties The major project of the Society during the latter half of the 1920s was gathering money and agitating for a new li­ brary — “before the art of reading dies out at Northwest­ ern,” as one alumnus quipped. The Alumni Fund, inau­ gurated for that purpose in 1916, now stood at $2,300. To double it, the Society in 1924 resolved for the second time to have each member come up with $25 during the follow­ ing year. Only two responded. The Society then concocted a plan much like the one adopted to raise money for the bell tower. A “keyman” in each class was to ask his former classmates for contributions.

The proceeds of several concerts given at Northwestern by world famous artists — Kreisler, Harold Bauer, Anna Case, Schumann-Heink — were turned over to the Fund.

The class of 1917 added $150 on its tenth anniversary, and the class of 1919 added another donation. Officers of the Society even approached the College Board and the Synod with a plan for initiating a synodwide collection. In 1928 a St. Paul, Minnesota, architectual firm was asked to

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84

draw up plans for a new library. The Society paid the $800 tab. No one anticipated that the plans would gather dust for 20 years because of a depression and a second world war.

O HAEC TEMPORA! There were no alumni banquets during the 1920s until the year 1929. It was the custom, however, to call upon members of the 25th Anniversary class to say a few words by way of reminiscence at each business meeting. The sec­ retary, Rev. O. Kuhlow, ’99, records what took place in the meeting of 1923: “It being the 25th anniversary of the class of 1898, Prof. H. W. Schmeling, one of its illustrious members, was called upon to expatiate on the outstanding merits and demerits of his class. Modesty naturally forbade him to stress the former, and charity demands that your re­ porter refrain from repeating the latter. Suffice it to say: ‘The older boys’ had their inning and many long-forgotten incidents were called back to memory. 0 haec temporal” A melancholy event of the decade must be mentioned, for it caused a schism not only in the Society but in the Synod. The trouble began in the spring of 1924, when the Northwestern Faculty expelled seven boys for stealing, and the College Board reversed the action as being too severe. The affair immediately blazed into a controversy, producing sharp differences of opinion throughout the Synod and involving especially synodical officials and a group of dissidents, who called themselves Protes'tants.

Harsh words were exchanged among men who had recent­ ly been friends, brothers, and fellow alumni. The rift grew wider as old resentments surfaced and a number of new is­ sues intensified the quarrel, which finally resolved itself into the question of whether to remain loyal to the Synod or to join the Protes'tants. The vast majority of alumni

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chose to remain loyal. But hard feelings persisted for years and still flare up occasionally, though not, fortunately, within the fellowship of the Synod or the Society.

One of the unhappy results of the affair was the termina­ tion of the services of two eminent professors, Elmer Sau­ er, ’ll, of Northwestern, and J. P. Koehler, ’77, of the Seminary. Early in 1924, before the trouble began, Prof.

Koehler, accompanied by his son Kurt, ’15, had gone to Europe to do research for his forthcoming History of the Wisconsin Synod. This work, which proved to be defini­ tive for our early history, appeared in German in 1925.

Prof. Koehler spent part of his enforced retirement updat­ ing it and translating it into English. He died at the age of 92 in 1951. The English version of his history was pub­ lished in 1970 with an introduction by Dr. Leigh Jordahl, ex ’47.

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THE FIRST HOMECOMING The years between 1922 and 1929 were the best of times and the worst of times. The country as a whole was prosperous, but there were trouble spots, especially among debt-blanketed farmers, upon whom our Synod to a large extent still depended for support. Speculation on the stock market had created a fool’s paradise of paper profits, but no one realized that the bubble was near bursting.

Northwestern and its Alumni Society shared the general optimism, and many of the happenings that affected us might be placed under the heading of good news. Take that first Homecoming in 1927. The Black and Red print­ ed a special appeal: “Alumni: Don’t forget that the Lake Forest game on November 12 is your Homecoming!” The football team, clearly outclassed at the time in the “Little Five,” had lost every game by disheartening scores, but on that first Homecoming Day: “Displaying their true form

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for the first time this season in their game on November 12, our Black and Red gridders sent the highly touted Gold Coasters back to Lake Forest smarting under a 12-6 defeat.” The victory set a standard for the future. Our team rarely lost a game at Homecoming, which soon be­ came the most popular alumni reunion day of the year.

HONORS A number of interesting items appeared in the alumni records of that time. The first issue of The Apache Scout, edited by E. Edgar Guenther, ’08, came out in April 1923.

The secretary of the Apache Mission Board, Rev. Paul T. Brockmann, ex ’89, sent a message of good will, which ended with these words: “God speed you, little Scout.

Carry the greetings of the Mission Board to every Apache Indian, old and young, and tell them that we want nothing so much as to have them get the good things which Jesus Christ obtained for us, the forgiveness of sins and life with Him in heaven.”

The following year, 1924, Olaf Brandt, ’80, professor at Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, was decorated with the Commander Order of St. Olav by King Haakon of Norway. Northwestern had conferred the D.D. degree on him in 1915.

In 1927 Walter Wente, ’ll, won the prestigious Daniel L. Shorey Traveling Fellowship in Greek at the University of Chicago. In years to come this fellowship was awarded to two other alumni: Martin Franzmann, ’28, in 1932, and Ralph Gehrke, ’41, in 1956.

The Black and Red for February 1927, published an ar­ ticle on the Northwestern alumni who had made Who’s Who in America. They were Francis Pieper, ’72; O. Felland, ’76; G. Bothne, ’79; M. Sprengling, ’94; W. Notz, ’97; R. Owen, ’05; and J. Whyte, ’05. On the occasion of

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the nation’s sesquicentennial in 1926, Prof. Owen, was quoted as predicting that by 1976 our children would ei­ ther be speaking several languages or the family of nations would have adopted one language for international com­ munication. The names of at least three other alumni ap­ peared in Who’s Who in America in the next decades: Wil­ liam Luebke, ’03, professor of English at Denver Univer­ sity; Ernst Heilmann, ’05, professor of accounting at the University of Minnesota; and E. Benjamin Schlueter, ’00, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Oshkosh, and president since 1944 of the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Confer­ ence of North America.

According to a notice of 1927, the Hoyer family was the first to be represented by three generations at Northwest­ ern. Waldemar Hoyer, who enrolled that year, was the son of Rev. Otto Hoyer, ’00, and the grandson of Prof. 0. Hoy­ er, ’72, inspector around the turn of the century. Since then a fourth generation of Hoyers, Rev. Waldemar’s son, Philip, graduated in 1975.

The Siegler family matched that record. Their ancestor, Rev. A. F. Siegler, was one of three students who entered the institution when it opened in the house on Fourth Street in 1863. Though he did not stay to become an alumnus, his son Charles, ’93, and three grandsons, Hil­ bert, ’31, Reginald, ’34, and Oscar, ’37, graduated from Northwestern, as did Rev. Oscar’s son David, in 1964, and Rev. Reginald’s son Carl, in 1968. But the family had al­ ready scored a fourth generation first in 1958 with the graduation of a Siegler cousin, Paul Albrecht, a great grandson of the founder.

Two other families have acquired fourth generation status among Northwestern alumni. Daniel Schaller, ’73, is the great grandson of Prof. John Schaller, a student here in the 1870s; Mark Jeske, ’74, and Jonathan Stern, ’74, are

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great grandsons of Prof. August Pieper, ’76. The record of the Hoenecke family is unique. Their progenitor, Prof.

Adolph Hoenecke, though not a student at Northwestern, was one of its early professors. Three of his sons, three of his grandsons, and four of his great grandsons have gradu­ ated from the college, and a great great grandson, Mark Hoenecke, the son of Rev. Roy, ’54, is at present a sophomore.

On a cold February night in 1928 the old Watertown Turner Hall burnt to the ground. Older alumni remem­ bered it as the scene of numerous commencements and student concerts before the gym was built in 1912. The old hall was immediately replaced by a larger but less pic­ turesque structure.

AN INTERVAL OF OPTIMISM The success of the Synod’s building program produced an optimistic mood in the Society. Now that the Seminary at Mequon and the new administration building at New Ulm were completed, it was only natural for members to think that their efforts for a new library at Northwestern would soon be crowned with success. In consultations with architects and builders they had already determined the exact cost of the building — $166,000. The Society had $12,000 in securities in its fund to contribute to the pro­ ject.

The spirit of optimism rose to a climax at the gala ban­ quet on the evening of Commencement Day, June 13, 1929, in the Green Bowl restaurant. Alumni and their guests filled the large dining hall and enjoyed a tasty meal priced at $1. A committee of younger members of the faculty, appointed by the Society in 1928, had arranged a sparkling program. President E. Benjamin Schlueter acted as master of ceremonies, and various speakers reminisced

The Roaring Twenties

about the happy days they had spent at their alma mater.

But Attorney Malcolm Whyte, ’10, of Milwaukee startled his hearers by suggesting that it was high time for North­ western to become a fully accredited institution.

Winifred Bolle, wife of Rev. Carl Bolle of St. Paul, Min­ nesota, electrified the audience with her dazzling perform­ ance on a somewhat battered upright piano. Another note­ worthy musical number was the rendition of a song com­ posed by Prof. Alexander Sitz, ’09, to the words of a poem, “All the Riders Pass Me By,” written by Martin Franzmann, ’28, whose poetry had been appearing in the Black and Red since he was a prep school junior.

The banquet left pleasant memories and established a tradition that was followed in future years, though during the depression the festive meal was reduced to the dimen­ sions of a noonday luncheon in the college refectory at 35 cents a plate.

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Dr. J. H. Ott in a characteristic pose, looking up a word in the Unabridged Webster,

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Yf Marking Time During A1 Two Decades The New York stock market crashed in October 1929, but the pinch was not felt hereabouts until a year or two later. It was not until 1931 that President Bergemann asked the Society to postpone indefinitely its plans for a new library and announced that the initial cut in the wages of synodical workers had to be ordered because of the shortage of funds.

The first notice of the depression appeared in the faculty minutes of December 5, 1932. The Board of Trustees had suggested that the Gymnasium be closed during the winter to save fuel. But the faculty resolved instead to extend the Christmas vacation for a month. Total enrollment dropped below 200 for the first time in 15 years in 1933. There were only nine boys and one girl in Sexta that year, and one of the boys was not taking the ministerial course.

Earlier in that year President Kowalke reported that three candidates for the ministry had been placed, two of

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them temporarily, out of a total of 17. “There were many vacancies,” he added, “but there is no money for salaries.”

Up to this time the Synod officials, believing with Presi­ dent Hoover that “prosperity was right around the cor­ ner,” had preferred to borrow money rather than to cut back the work of the church. But when the synodical debt kept rising, not even the brave words of the new President, Franklin Roosevelt, that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” could dispel the gloom. One prominent alum­ nus petitioned the Synod to have the U.S. Government ap­ point a receiver. “We cannot go on in the manner we have,” he wrote, “and . . . stagger on under the present load of debt.”

New Deal measures halted the downward trend of the economy but did not lift the country out of the depression.

As late as 1939 fifty-one theological candidates were awaiting calls. By 1941 only six were still on the waiting list, and in 1943 there were more calls than candidates — but only one more. Several of the graduates of Northwest­ ern turned to other professions during the preceding dec­ ade. A large number of ministerial candidates served tem­ porarily as teachers in the parochial schools, sometimes at no more than subsistence wages.

The case of one Seminary graduate, Ruben Kettenacker, ’30, was unique. Called to serve two mission stations in Montana as soon as money was available, he might have had a long wait, had not his mission-minded father offered to pay his son’s salary as long as necessary. Ruben was then ordained in his home congregation of Rockford, Min­ nesota, by his pastor, Rev. H. Nitz, ’15. He traveled to Wolf Point, Montana, in a car furnished by his father. Pas­ tor Nitz, in reporting the incident, wrote: “Such a spirit will bring our Synod back to normal without an NRA (Na­ tional Recovery Administration).”

Marking Time for Two Decades

REQUIESCANT For the Society the 1930s and the war years were main­ ly a period of marking time. Meetings were held each year on the afternoon of Commencement Day. A noonday luncheon, with speeches by representatives of anniversary classes, became the custom. An interesting variation among class reunions was that of the class of 1912 in 1937. President John Masch asked his classmates to as­ semble under the tree they planted in their sophomore year.

In 1930 the Society honored the memory of Mr. August Breutzmann, “the faithful janitor and familiar figure on the campus for many years.” Every student who attended Northwestern between the years 1900 and 1930 remem­ bered “Breutzie,” who probably sold him a mattress on the first day of school, repaired his chair or desk when it needed fixing, and kept him warm in his bedroom on sub­ zero nights by shoveling coal into the furnaces almost around the clock.

Two years later the Society took special note of the death of its venerable member, Dr. Franz Pieper, at the age of 80. Dr. Pieper had often returned to his alma mater to receive or confer honors and to speak. In 1922, on the 50th anniversary of his graduation, he even delivered the commencement address, which has traditionally been giv­ en by the college president. Of that first graduating class of 1872, there now remained only one member, Rev. Erdman Pankow, who occasionally attended alumni luncheons and walked three miles to church every Sunday until shortly before he passed away at 91 in 1942.

The writer of the Alumni Column informed his readers that with the death of Rev. H. Schultz in 1937, the class of 1878 was the first to have all its members deceased. Two

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years later the class of 1874 passed out of existence when its only member, Rev. Gottlieb Muehlhaeuser, died. He was the son of Rev. John Muehlhaeuser, founder of the Synod. The only other class to have a single member, that of 1887, followed suit when Rev. Fritz Meyer, a former Director of the Lutheran High School in Milwaukee, died in 1942. Meyer had spoken for his “class” at the alumni luncheon in 1937.

In the summer of 1932 seminarian Arnold Gatz, ’30, drowned while trying to save a friend who had fallen into the Milwaukee River. A few years later his father received a bronze medal from the Carnegie Hero Fund for his son’s heroism. An even greater catastrophe occurred at a railway crossing in Oconomowoc in 1936 when a train plowed into an automobile and snuffed out the lives of six people: two alumni — the brothers Waldemar Dobratz, ’33, and Everett Dobratz, ’36, their two sisters, Waldemar’s fiancee, and the son of Pastor Rubel of Concord, a Northwestern prep.

GOLDEN JUBILEE The meeting of 1935 drew one of the largest attend­ ances in the history of the Society, the occasion being the 50th Anniversary not only of Dr. Ott’s career but of his graduation. Both he and a classmate, William Weimar, were called to be professors on Commencement Day 1885. Weimar later told the story of how they both turned up on the same day in 1880 and stood in line waiting to be assigned to the proper class by Dr. Ernst, for they were somewhat older and had had some previous education, but no Latin. Ernst allowed Weimar to enter the junior year and make up work in Latin, but he wanted to place Ott in a lower class. “I think 1 can do as well as that gentleman,” said Ott, pointing to Weimar. The president relented. Both

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men covered three years of Latin in one, and though Ott did not teach Latin, he never lost his proficiency in it. He was fond of adding Latin remarks after students’ names in the record books. Thus instead of recording that he sent a boy out of the room for making spitballs, he wrote: “Erupit ad faciendas pilulas.” At the 1917 commencement he assigned all of us to definite seats on the stage, then added this direction: “Magistri sedeant arbitrio suo” (“the professors may sit where they like”).

Dr. Ott was a modest man. At the unveiling of his por­ trait — the graduation gift of the classes of 1930 and 1931 to the college — he managed to slip away unseen while a speaker was eulogizing him. “Too much incense,” he mut­ tered. Almost the same thing happened at his jubilee. But he appreciated the gift of $400 from the alumni, for it en­ abled him to make a long-delayed trip to Germany, where he had spent two happy years studying for his Ph.D. His daughter Margaret, ’24, accompanied him.

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THE VERSATILE DOCTOR In 1937 Dr. Ott resigned as treasurer of the Society after more than 40 years of service. He was succeeded by Prof.

Binhammer, who held the office for the next three dec­ ades. Two years later Dr. Ott retired from teaching, except for an occasional class in French, and in 1943 he was re­ lieved of his duties as librarian and manager of the book­ store. He had been connected with the college for 58 years, longer than any other person. From the late 1880s to the coming of Prof. Eickmann, he was professor of sci­ ence as well as of English. William Weimar tells another story. Once when Ott asked the College Board for more scientific equipment, a lay member inquired, “What is that?” The chairman replied, “Scientific instruments.”

“Ah, instruments,” he said; “I am for allowing the limit.”

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He had recently heard the college band play and thought he was voting for musical instruments.

Ott’s varied duties are listed in the last six lines of a son­ net that Prof. W. F. Luebke, ’03, composed for his jubilee: “But scholarship was not his only care, A hundred routine tasks fell to his lot: He ordered textbooks, meat and butterine, Saw that the pump was mended and the stair, Was bursar, registrar, librarian, dean.

A wassail to our dear friend, Doctor Ott!”

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Besides this, he was also Mr. Northwestern, the man you called on when you visited the alma mater or consulted when you wanted to buy or borrow a book. You could usually find him somewhere near his cluttered desk in the combination library-bookstore. He had developed and vir­ tually memorized a library catalog system that was based partly on a German method and partly on his own inven­ tion. As H. K. Moussa wrote: “The subject index is never used when he is about — a question, a few steps and he places the book before you, and often enough it is opened for you at the page you want.”

Dr. Ott never saw the new college library, for he died in 1945 at 84. But his spirit still seems to haunt the reading room. He looks down benignly from his gilt-framed por­ trait on the east wall. An enlarged photograph between the windows on the south wall shows him in a characteristic pose, poring over the Unabridged Webster. A bronze pla­ que on the west wall, donated by George W. H. Shield, ’00, is dedicated to “John Henry Ott, Ph.D., to whose wis­ dom and untiring devotion must be credited the establish­ ment and development of this library.’’

Footnote: When our present efficient librarian, Prof. Er­ win Schroeder, decided to recatalog the library according

Marking Time for Two Decades

to the Dewey Decimal System, he calculated that it would take him 10 years. By devoting most of his vacations and other spare time to the herculean task, he finished it in six.

LOST LANDMARKS Most of the following actions had no direct connection with the Society, but each of them made an impression upon students who became alumni. In 1937 the college cows were sold and the barns and sheds removed from the campus. From now on students and others would no long­ er have to watch their steps as they crossed the athletic field, and players would no longer have to petition the col­ lege authorities to keep the cows off the field during the football season. In 1937 the classroom barracks, built in 1923, were removed to another part of the campus and used for storage. Two years later the grand old elm stand­ ing between College Avenue and the old gym began to sag dangerously and had to be taken down. The rings in its trunk indicated that it was about 150 years old. In 1938 the Latin commencement oration was dropped — perma­ nently. It had been omitted once before in 1929, but was restored by Prof. William Herrmann, ’95, the next year in observance of the bimillenary of Virgil’s birth.

An article in the Black and Red for September 1942 listed the 12 most interesting places on campus. The writer facetiously included the unsightly open incinerator, the smoke-filled faculty room in the old Recitation Hall, and the cubbyholes where library books were stored. But among the memorable features he also listed the college pump. Three years later the pump was removed over the protests of students and alumni, to whom the water from its 103-foot well not only tasted better than Watertown tap water, but seemed like “the true, the blushful Hippocrene” of Keats’ poem. In warm weather the prep freshman

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in every study room used to be sent to the pump with an earthenware pitcher, which he brought back filled to the brim. Whenever anyone was thirsty, he would take a long draft of the limpid nectar straight from the pitcher. It is said that one scholarly upper classman lingered at the pump while he savored his drink, saying that he had to masticate the precious vintage. At the gathering of 1978, a few sentimental alumni wanted to know about where the old pump stood. By a series of careful measurements and triangulations, President Toppe and Business Manager Glen Pankow recently determined that the well was lo­ cated under the east-west sidewalk, almost directly in front and just to the north of the main entrance to the ChapelArts Building.

To celebrate its 60th Anniversary in 1939, the Society scheduled an alumni mixer with lunch and refreshments for Thursday evening, August 3, in the week of the Synod convention and invited the ladies. The evening passed pleasantly, and the guests did not leave until midnight.

Two features were the numbers sung by an alumni octette led by Karl Kluender, ’ll, and a skit on the faculty of 1915, all parts being taken by former students, who still

Marking Time for Two Decades

remembered the accents, foibles, and pet phrases of their old teachers.

WAR YEARS During the four years of World War II the college paper regularly published news about the boys in uniform. In all, 65 students and alumni served in the armed forces, and six gave up their lives for their country. They were: Carl Masch, ex ’46; Robert Mitzner, ex ’44; Thomas Nickels, ex ’47; Arthur Nordby, ex ’47; Waldemar Thurow, ’35; and Karl Uplegger, ex ’46. Under pressure from the govern­ ment Northwestern introduced an accelerated program of studies. Summer courses were offered in 1944 and 1945, and two classes as a result graduated out of season in March 1945 and April 1946. Those professors who did not teach summer classes aided the war effort by working in canning factories or in their enlarged gardens east of the athletic field.

Presidents E. Kowalke and C. Schweppe were sent to the South early in 1942 to determine how the Synod could most effectively extend spiritual care to its soldiers in southern army camps. On their recommendation the Synod sent a Spiritual Welfare Commission pastor to minister to the soldiers. The man chosen, Rev. (now Prof.)

Erwin Scharf, ’28, served there during the next two years.

For the Society this was still a period of marking time.

In 1941 it resolved to incorporate itself under the Wiscon­ sin statutes as “an organization under the supervision and control of a religious organization” — in this case the Wis­ consin Synod. It also resolved that henceforth its funds should be invested by a committee “whose ability in the investment field had been established.” A few high-risk securities had shrunk greatly in value after the crash.

A blanket invitation to attend the annual meeting and join the Society was issued to all former students and

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alumni in 1942. In that year the Society met on the day before commencement, a practice that has been followed ever since. No luncheon was held in the following year.

The class of 1933 sent word that it would not gather for a reunion because of the “all-out” effort of the class in the war. A motion was made by Rev. Walter Pankow, ’12, “to congratulate the class of ’33 and enjoin it to continue on its way, ever mindful of its motto: ‘Sei Getreu!’ (‘Remain true’).”

During the years between 1941 and 1945, the constitu­ tion was translated, revised, and published in the Black and Red. The Society did not meet in 1945 because of the war. In the next year there was a meeting, but no banquet, because so few had sent in reservations.

MUSEUM PIECE After two years of careful study and discussion, the So­ ciety in 1948 engaged Rev. Edwin Jaster, ’21, to make a movie of Northwestern and all its activities. Pastor Jaster began work immediately, calling in Rev. Charles Found to help in the filming. A professional actor in Chicago dubbed in the commentary. Several copies of the film were ready late in 1949, and Pastor Found undertook the task of dis­ tributing them to the congregations and congregational so­ cieties for showings during the following years. The rental fees finally covered the cost of the production, both amounting to slightly under $3,000.

Only one of the buildings on that film of 1948 is still on the campus today, and that one is transformed from gym­ nasium into the Music Auditorium. Today the film is a kind of museum piece, providing a last view of the Northwest­ ern of the middle years. The physical appearance of the college campus changed completely as a result of the great building program that began in 1950. The Alumni Society was ready and eager to take an active part in that program.

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XII The Era of Building Two events signaled the new era for the Society in 1950: the centennial of the Synod and the resumption, af­ ter a twenty-year delay, of plans for a Library-Science Building. Some time before the ground breaking, Presi­ dent Kowalke hauled out the old blueprints for which the Society had once paid $800 and consulted with the St. Paul, Minnesota, architectural firm that had drawn them.

With a few modifications they were the ones used for the new building.

Included in the construction program was a new heating plant and the addition of a stage to the east end of the Gymnasium. Students were almost as happy about the stage as they were about the library. For 40 years the planks and trestles of a portable stage had to be lugged from the basement and set up before each major concert, Cast of She Stoops to Conquer, first major dramatic production given at North­ western. 1928.

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play, commencement, or other affair. That was only the beginning. Student stage designers then had to erect a facade and probably string curtains across the front. Some­ times their creations were breathtaking. For the gradua­ tion of 1928, the juniors, under the direction of Albert Eberhardt, ’29, built a proscenium resembling a Greek temple with two Doric pillars at each side of the stage. And in 1931 the stage crew built the difficult setting for the opening scene of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The action begins under a canopy of the Covent Garden Theater of London during a downpour. The “rain” came from a per­ forated pipe connected with the water system and was caught in a metal trough below.

GOALS AND PROJECTS To commemorate the Synod centennial, the Society re­ solved to allot $750 for instructional films for the science department and $350 for a card catalog cabinet. All of its securities, amounting to nearly $9,000, were to be cashed and handed over to the Northwestern Building Committee to be spent for the equipment of the library.

During the 1950s the guiding principle of the Society seemed to be that article in the constitution which called upon alumni “to support the Alma Mater in every possible way.” Three new buildings — a dormitory (East Hall, re­ cently renamed Augsburg Hall), the Cafeteria, and the Chapel-Arts Building — were ready for occupancy in 1956. Project proposals were therefore never in short sup­ ply. From 1951 on committees and individuals presented a number of them at every annual meeting. The Society had only to choose the ones deemed worthy and timely. The following list, though not complete, gives an idea of the wide range of the suggestions:

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A stage curtain A backdrop for the stage New band uniforms (All of these were accepted and paid for in successive years.)

A campus fountain A carillon in a special tower to replace the old college bell An apartment house for aged professors A broadcasting system to broadcast chapel services (Each of the items in this foursome was ruled out at the time it was presented.)

Additional tennis courts An auxiliary football field Bleachers for the football field Pictures for the reception room of the new dorm Altar appointments for the new chapel An organ for the chapel A grand piano A Bible collection A statue of Martin Luther to be placed in an appropriate spot on the campus A filmstrip on Northwestern to be used for promotional purposes A portrait of Prof. E. E. Kowalke The proposal for sanctuary appointments was dropped by the Society when it learned that the class of 1944 had collected $109 for that purpose in memory of their class­ mate, Rev. Allyn Schuppenhauer, who was killed in a rail­ road crossing accident in Arizona in 1950.

A PORTRAIT OF THE PRESIDENT The Kowalke portrait, first mentioned in 1953, was en-

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thusiastically endorsed by the Society. Prof. R. Gehrke re­ ported that members of the faculty, without the knowledge of Prof. Kowalke, had already interviewed a prominent Madison artist, A. N. Colt, who agreed to paint the portrait at a cost of $500. When Kowalke heard about it, he ex­ pressed his firm disapproval, but the Society, hoping to prevail upon him, decided to engage Mr. Colt. For two years members expostulated, and Mr. Colt even came to Watertown to arrange a sitting. Finally, in a meeting of 1955, President Schumann announced he had “aban­ doned all hope of convincing the subject to sit for his por­ trait.”

The refusal, regrettable as it seemed to many, was in keeping with Prof. Kowalke’s attitude toward such honors.

When the Central Conference wanted to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of his ordination in 1961, he acquiesced only because his two colleagues, Professors Wendland and Westerhaus, were to be honored at the same time. And when, on the occasion of the college centennial, Faculty, Board, and Society suggested that the D.D. degree be con­ ferred on him, he refused outright, as did President Schweppe of Dr. Martin Luther College, who was to have received the same title. The $700 collected for the portrait was used to furnish two rooms in the new dormitory.

OF PIANOS AND ORGANS In 1955 Prof. H. Oswald reported the purchase of an al­ most new, artist-used Baldwin concert piano at half price for $3,000. It replaced the sturdy old Kranich and Bach, which had stood up remarkably well under rough handling ever since it was purchased in 1913. A wooden case had been built for it at the rear of the gym and from there it was rolled out, not too gently, and hoisted onto the stage whenever a piano was needed. After its long stint as a con-

The Era of Building

cert piano, it took another 20 years of hard usage as a practice instrument. By that time it was in a state of com­ plete disrepair. It is now the property of Prof. Franklin Zabell, who plans to rebuild it and restore it to at least some of its pristine grandeur. Dr. Arnold Lehmann, ’36, with the assistance of a friend, recently constructed a larger new or­ gan out of two smaller old ones. It is now installed in the Music Auditorium. Hats off to our two versatile, energetic masters of music.

The Society underwrote the cost of the filmstrip on Northwestern and discussed the Luther statue for several years. But the minimum price of $5,000 for an appropriate statue seemed to be beyond the resources of the group, once it had committed itself to the collection of funds for a new chapel organ. That project was not completed until the dedication of the $25,000 Schlicker organ in February 1963. A year later Prof. Bruce Backer, ’52, gave the first concert on it. In a little over a decade the Society contri­ buted or collected at least $50,000 “to support the Alma Mater in every possible way.”

FOOTBALL INTERLUDE During all these beneficent activities, alumni were en­ joying vicarious glory as spectators on the football field.

About 30 years ago the writer listened in on a conversa­ tion among Milwaukee newspapermen, one of whom used to referee college games in the area. “There’s a little col­ lege some miles west of here,” he was saying, “where foot­ ball is played the way it should be played, for the fun of the game.” He was speaking of Northwestern. Playing for fun did not, of course, rule out playing to win. From 1951 to 1956 the team won the championship of its league five years in a row, and during the first four of those years it never lost a game. In 1956 the team was defeated once,

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thereby breaking a string of 28 consecutive victories or ties. Much of the credit for these stellar performances must go to Leonard Umnus, Northwestern’s colorful coach from 1935 to his retirement in 1974. When Prof. Lehmann, ’36, came to Northwestern to head the music department, he arranged to have the band play at every football game and salute each touchdown with the peppy strains of “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”

At Homecoming banquets, speakers for years on end used to refer to one of the most celebrated victories in Northwestern football annals — the trouncing of Mar­ quette by the score of 18 to 0. That happened in 1905, and it was due to “a slippery little quarterback named Zeisler, who weighed only 145 pounds,” as the Milwaukee Sentinel reported. That was Paul Zeisler, ’09, then in his freshman year. The next year the two teams played to a tie, 0 to 0. In 1907 Marquette came out on top, 23 to 0.

That seems to have been the last time the two teams play­ ed each other.

Two alumni, William Weimar, ’85, and Otto Hoenecke, ’90, reminiscing in later years, told how football was play­ ed at Northwestern in the 1880s. It was then an intramural sport resembling soccer. Sides were chosen with no limit to the number of players, usually 25 to 30 on each side.

Anyone who came to watch the game was drafted. The ball was spherical instead of oval, and the object of the game was to kick the ball into the proper goal. It was never picked up and carried. There were no referees, no lines­ men, no timekeepers, and no set time limits for the game.

BASKETBALL AND BASEBALL Around the turn of the century Northwestern also had a basketball team, which occasionally played other college teams. It held the University of Wisconsin to 41 points in

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1904 and scored 31 itself. But the rickety old gym made practice difficult, and the game was dropped for several years. With the completion of the new gym in 1912, bas­ ketball became a very popular intramural sport, and in 1926 games were again scheduled with other schools.

Over the years our ably coached teams have had a galaxy of star players and a number of highly successful seasons, to say nothing of cheering crowds and enthusiastic cheer­ leaders. Speaking of the latter, Prof. Kowalke has this en­ try in his diary for September 3, 1966: “The faculty voted to permit girl cheerleaders for our athletic games. Now we finally belong.”

Baseball was a much more popular sport when the school year extended far into June than it has been in re­ cent years when school closes almost before a baseball season can get underway. A game between an alumni nine and the college team used to be played on the afternoon of every Commencement Day, usually before the alumni meeting. There were probably more heroes in baseball than in any other sport. Pitchers like Paul Horn, ’08, Philip Koehler, ’09, and William Lueckel, ’13, were legends in their time. Horn, a lefthander, had lost his right hand in a planing mill accident during a summer vacation, but he once pitched a no-hit, no-run game and could bat out a home run with “a two-bit boy’s bat” in his left hand. His abbreviated bat was preserved by the manager of the team, E. Edgar Guenther, ’08, and later given to Paul’s son, Rev. Gerhard Horn, ’43, who still has it. Koehler pitched for the alumni team for nearly 20 years after his graduation, and Lueckel once struck out 22 men in a game with the Watertown city team.

In the early 1940s the Black and Red reported that his­ tory was being repeated on the Northwestern diamond by the pitcher-catcher battery of Richard Ziesemer and Philip

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Koehler, both of the class of 1942. They were the sons of a famous pitcher-catcher duo — Philip Koehler, ’09, and Reinhard Ziesemer, ’10 — that made local headlines in an earlier era.

Our already-mentioned alumni, Weimar and Hoenecke, also described baseball as it was played on the campus in their time. The rules differed only in minor points from those of the game today. In the spring of 1884 rules al­ lowed four strikes and seven balls. Curves were uncom­ mon, and pitchers varied their pitches by throwing faster or slower balls. Hits were plentiful. In one game with Sa­ cred Heart, Northwestern scored 30 runs in the first inning and beat the Irish 66 to 44. The catcher wore no mask and stood farther behind the plate than today. His glove was not as well padded as a modern fielder’s glove. Chris Sieker, ’90, the sensational catcher for many years, would place (really against the rules) a piece of beefsteak inside his glove. According to hearsay, it was fried and eaten af­ ter the game. Infielders and outfielders rarely wore gloves at all.

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YITT The Centennial Alll and Other Memorabilities Future events cast their shadows before them, and that was true of Northwestern’s centennial. Seven years before it occurred the Society was already discussing plans for a fitting celebration. Among suggestions offered were the translation from the German or Latin of some Lutheran theological classic and the composition of an oratorio. The more practicable project of commissioning a history of the college was finally chosen. Prof. Kowalke agreed to be the author. During the next years he spent all his spare time plowing through books of minutes of faculty and board meetings, synodical periodicals, Black and Reds, and other old records. He took copious notes and typed them out carefully, thereby making the task of finding historical ma­ terials easier for later researchers. His 320 page history, Centennial Story, turned out to be as interesting as it is au­ thoritative and comprehensive. The Northwestern Publish­ ing House printed it in a very attractive binding, and it ap­ peared in time for distribution on Centennial Day, May 31, 1965. The Society voted a subsidy of $4,000 so that the

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book could be sold at the modest price of $3.50. The edi­ tion of 1050 copies was snapped up in record time.

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CENTENNIAL DAY Members of the class of 1965 were only a little behind the Society in preparing for the event. Even as preps they had figured out that theirs would be the jubilee class. In due time they formed a Tau Delta Theta volunteer society to promote special activities, from tree planting to borrow­ ing guns and drilling for a sham battle. As a parting gift to the alma mater, they established a Tau Delta Theta Award Fund. The income from the fund of over $1,000, now amounting to $50 annually, is used to purchase books for the library. The award goes to an outstanding senior, who has the honor of selecting the books. A bookplate contain­ ing his name and the year of the award is pasted in each book.

For the festivity itself, the class, under the direction of its president, John Lawrenz, constructed a replica of the

The Centennial and Other Memorabilities

bandstand that once graced the college park. On this stand the festival speakers held forth, the seniors received their diplomas in the outdoor commencement service and stu­ dents gave brief dramatizations of important episodes in Northwestern history for the large audience assembled on Centennial Day. Many students and most of the faculty and their wives wore costumes of former years.

The day opened with a drizzle that threatened to ruin the informal character of the festival, but later the sun came out and returned to shine brightly after one or two spurts of rain, so that the whole program from band num­ bers to evening fireworks, could be given according to schedule. Highlights were the reenactment of the dedica­ tion of the Sprinter 53 years previously; the historical skits; and the sham battle that recreated a scene from the Spanish-American War. A camera man sent out by the Milwaukee Journal took pictures which appeared in spec­ tacular color in the Sunday Picture Journal on October 10, 1965.

On Sunday, August 8, the Synod, then meeting in Wa­ tertown, observed the centennial with a service. But this time rain did not spare the outdoor festivity. It came down heavily just as the service was about to begin, and the Gymnasium had to be arranged hastily to accommodate the congregation. $100,000 IN GIFTS The third building program on the campus began in 1966 when ground was broken for Wartburg Hall. The Gymnasium followed in 1971 and Wittenberg Hall, anoth­ er dorm, in 1975. The Society contributed $8,000 for equipment in the new gym, $2,500 for remodeling the Music Auditorium and another $3,000 for four electronic practice pianos. It added $3,000 to the Paul Gerhardt

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Eickmann Memorial Fund for the purchase of a telescope, paid $2,500 for a videotape machine, and $4,000 for off­ set printing equipment. For the $30,000 bell tower proj­ ect, its largest to date, the Society accepted the recom­ mendation of its Alumni Centennial Committee Co-Chair­ men, Pastors Alan Siggelkow and John Lawrenz, both of the class of 1965, that all members of the Society, mean­ ing all living alumni, be contacted through “class contact men” to support the project financially and to promote the day of celebration set for May 22, 1979.

Added to the $50,000 previously listed, the total sums expended by the Society in the last 30 years were well over $100,000. Where did all the money come from?

Hardly from Society dues, which were raised from one dol­ lar to two dollars in 1951 and remained at that level for the next 20 years. Then in quick succession the annual dues were raised to $3 and then to $5. Before 1969 about 350 members regularly paid their dues. In that year the Society decided to make a special effort to add more ad­ dresses of former students to the mailing list. The venture proved to be very successful. In 1978 Northwestern Today (appearing in two annual issues since 1977) was mailed to 2,500 alumni and former students of both the college and preparatory school.

The widening appeal to join the Society and share in its work brought in a growing number of donations that range all the way from a few dollars to the princely bequest of $130,000 from Dr. George Shield, ’00, who died in 1970.

He had previously established the Dr. J. H. Ott Award Fund of $10,000 in 1959. While most of the donations were given directly to the institution, the Society can take some credit for them, since it was chiefly the newsy alumni letter (later enlarged and renamed Northwestern Today) that has since 1951 kept alumni and former students in

The Centennial and Other Memorabilities

touch with their alma mater and brought Northwestern’s affairs, achievements, and needs home to their business and bosoms. Two larger donations given directly to the Society and recorded in the minutes were those of Waldemar Retzlaff, ’17, and Mrs. Erwin Kowalke, each of whom gave $1,000.

The beautiful stained glass windows of the chapel were made possible by donations from a number of Society members and the widows of several alumni. Those in the chancel were the gifts of Mrs. Kosanke, widow of Dr. Fred Kosanke, ’04, and Prof. Ralph Gehrke, ’41, and his par­ ents. For the side windows, the widows of Dr. George Ernst, ’88, and Rev. Gerhard Ernst, ’00, gave $2,000 and $500 respectively; Mrs. Heilmann, widow of Dr. Ernst Heilmann, ’05, gave $500 and Prof, and Mrs. E. E. Kowal­ ke, $2,000.

CURRICULAR PROBLEMS In the 1950s the Black and Red occasionally became a kind of forum for airing topics pertaining to Northwestern.

In the January issue of 1953, Rev. Victor Prange, ’54, then a junior, in an editorial titled “Could We Improve?,” asked the questions: “Doesn’t our curriculum prepare us better for a Greek professorship than for the work of a common ordinary parish pastor? Wouldn’t a very inten­ sive and extensive speech and composition course do us just a bit more good?” Prof. Richard Jungkuntz, ’39, pub­ lished an answer in the next issue arguing chiefly that the classics and history if taught correctly are practical in the deepest sense of the word. Heinz Bluhm, ’28, had made the same point years before in a Black and Red article: “Erhaltet uns Northwestern als Humanistisches Gymna­ sium” (“Preserve Northwestern as a humanistic college”).

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In reply to Prof. Jungkuntz, Prange insisted that the course he suggested might act as a leaven in an otherwise heavy curriculum. His real purpose, he said in effect, was not to downgrade the classics, but to upgrade teaching methods. Two other writers, Robert Scharlemann, ex ’50, and Dr. William Luebke, ’03, emeritus professor of English at the University of Denver, joined the literary debate, each one offering interesting comments. Luebke’s sugges­ tions are virtually identical with those of the consultant re­ cently appointed by the North Central Association of Col­ leges to expedite Northwestern’s accreditation. Too much teaching is done in class, he wrote. There should be fewer teaching hours and more independent research by stu­ dents.

The faculty was not unmindful of the problem. In 1961 it evaluated and revised the whole curriculum. Class hours for juniors and seniors were reduced and electives made available for the first time. Ten years later further changes were made (among them the dropping of Saturday class­ es), and today all courses and teaching methods are being reexamined as the college explores accreditation.

The old system, inherited from the German “Gymnasi­ um,” was not without merit, judging from the outstanding records of those Northwestern students who entered grad­ uate schools. Furthermore, articles appearing in the Black and Red, essays written for the Dr. Ott awards, and even term papers usually bespoke literary skill and ability to do independent research on the part of students, three of whom, incidentally, won prizes in national contests in sightreading Greek in the early 1960s. And how many col­ leges could have taken for granted that all their students and alumni could read and enjoy a Latin variation of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” written by one of their profes­ sors? The poem, reprinted here from the Black and Red,

The Centennial and Other Memorabilities

was composed by Prof. Richard Jungkuntz, who had another Latin poem published simultaneously in Classical Outlook.

“Parva, Corinna, tibi lana nivea fuit agna; Quo tu cumque ibas, haec quoque non aberat.

Contemptu legum, te ad ludum olim comitata est; Causa cachinni erat haec discipulorum animis.

Gaudens ipse egomet sim talis causa cachinni, Dummodo sic ego te, cara Corinna, sequar!”

NOTABLE ITEMS In 1959 Prof. Carleton Toppe, ’34, was elected North­ western’s fifth president. He succeeded Erwin E. Kowalke, ’08, who resigned after occupying the presidency for 40 years.

Two eminent members of the class of 1893 passed away in the early 1960s: Rev. John Brenner at 88 in 1962 and Prof. John Meyer at 91 in 1964. Brenner was president of WELS from 1933 to 1953. Meyer taught dogmatics at the Seminary from 1920 to the year of his death, a total of 44 years. A deluxe copy of Ministers of Christ, his commen­ tary on 2 Corinthians, was presented to him at the dedica­ tion of a Seminary dorm in 1963.

In the late 1940s Venus Winter, ’22, began preaching in Spanish to a handful of people in Tucson, Arizona. He be­ came the founder of La Mission Luterana in the American Southwest and Mexico.

In 1953 the first WELS mission was opened in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, by Rev. A. B. Habben, ’40. Four years earlier Pastors Arthur Wacker, ’18, and Edgar Hoenecke, ’23, (later the genial, efficient chairman and then the executive secretary of the WELS Board for World Mis­ sions) had undertaken an adventurous, exploratory trip

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through the territory in a specially constructed Dodge power wagon.

In 1969 Rev. William Schweppe, ’29, lost his life in an automobile accident in Africa. He had been the first WELS missionary to be sent to that continent — to Nigeria in the 1930s.

In the college centennial year, by resolution of the So­ ciety and with the permission of the current owner, a bronze marker was attached to the “Gardner House” at 816 North Fourth Street. It bears this legend: “Northwestern College opened in this house Septem­ ber 1863, with one professor and three students. In September 1865, the institution moved to its present site at College and Western Avenues.”

In 1966 the German commencement oration was omit­ ted for the first time. Two English orations — one in reli­ gion and one in the humanities — are now given by stu­ dents at each graduation exercise.

The class of 1971, being the hundredth to graduate from Northwestern, received permission to grow beards and wear stand-up collars and Prince Alberts for the com­ mencement in the style of a century ago.

Rev. John Schwartz, ’90, died shortly after celebrating his hundredth birthday in 1969. He was the first alumnus to reach “the morn of his hundredth year.” A second graduate of Northwestern, Rev. Paul Dowidat, ’99, reached the century milestone July 30, 1978.

The inscription on the bell in the new bell tower notes that it was cast by a St. Louis firm in 1895 and given to the college by the “Frauenverein der St. Markus Kirche.”

Faculty minutes record that the “new bell” was formally accepted in a ceremony in which President Ernst thanked the ladies and Dr. Notz gave a short talk of a religious na-

The Centennial and Other Memorabilities

ture. The account book of the Aid shows that the ladies paid $59.39 for the bell.

An earlier bell, donated by Rev. E. Mayerhoff, had hung in the “Kaffeemuehle” and was destroyed in the fire of 1894. The new bell seems to have been intended for the Recitation Hall that was built on the ruins of the “Kaffeemuehle.” But no one today knows exactly where it hung in that building during the 10 years before it was installed on the roof of the 1905 dorm.

In 1977 the Society voted to bear the cost (about $500) of moving the Sprinter statue from the site where it has stood for 63 years to an area near the entrance of the Gymnasium. So far no contractor has been willing to as­ sume the risk of breaking the statue while moving it.

The April 30,1978, issue of the Northwestern Lutheran brought the following information. Twenty-three parish pastors, seven Seminary students, six synodical professors, a missioner from Columbia, a missionary from Africa, six wives, two college students and a layman have been ac­ cepted in the five-week-long program offered by Wiscon­ sin Lutheran Seminary called “Summer Quarter in Israel, ’78.” Eligible participants will earn credits toward a mas­ ter’s degree in sacred theology. The classroom will be Tel Michal, an ancient buried city on the Mediterranean. Most of the participants are alumni of Northwestern.

The “dig” will proceed under the direction of a team of trained archaeologists connected with the Tel Aviv Insti­ tute of Archaeology. A member of the team will be Dr. John C. Lawrenz, ’65. Our Seminary staff will be repre­ sented by Professors Wilbert Gawrisch, ’44, John Jeske, ’45, Carl Lawrenz, ’29, Paul Nitz, ’48, and Armin Panning, ’53.

A last regrettable item concerns a number of alumni who in the late 1950s and early 1960s left WELS because

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of divergent views in the long controversy with the Luther­ an Church-Missouri Synod over the question of so-called “liberal” or “moderate” interpretations of the Bible.

The larger group, including the then president of the Seminary, formed the Church of the Lutheran Confession.

It held that the Synod erred in continuing in fellowship with the LC-MS. When Wisconsin did finally break with Missouri in 1961, a smaller number, including two North­ western professors, for almost opposite reasons, accepted positions in the LC-MS and other Lutheran church bodies.

The actions of these alumni did not in any way affect their standing as members of the Society.

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VT17 4‘The Finest Farewell /Vl V to the Days of Our Youth” Most of the incidents or items in this last chapter reflect past student life rather than present Society activities. One might call them products of that “social camaraderie and feeling of reverence for the institution where one had spent one’s formative years and ripened into manhood,” which our founder, Prof. E. Notz, declared to be one of the purposes of the Society.

Any visit to the alma mater by an alumnus is as much a matter of recalling the “formative years” as of paying one’s dues and supporting a current project. Such a visit was made in the fall of 1918 by two graduates of the teacher’s course, John Eiselmeier, acad. ’83, instructor in the German American Teacher’s Seminary in Milwaukee, and Henry Eggebrecht, ex-acad. ’84, a Milwaukee paro­ chial school teacher. One weekend they decided to make a leisurely “Spaziergang nach Watertown.” Eiselmeier’s ac­ count of the trip appeared in the Milwaukee Sonntagspost of November 17, 1918. It was clipped by Dr. Ott and is preserved in our archives.

“The Finest Farewell to the Days of Our Youth’’

120

The two men covered over 100 miles, about half by interurban and half on foot. At Northwestern they inspected all the “new” buildings and then sat under a linden tree on the campus eating their lunch and recalling student memo­ ries. Eiselmeier recounts an adventure with the ropes that served as fire escapes on the “Kaffeemuehle” and the old dorm. The ropes were installed after the disastrous Newhall Hotel fire in Milwaukee alerted Wisconsin residents to the existence of fire hazards. As soon as they were fastened to the window frames of the dorm, the inspector called for a fire drill, and Eiselmeier was the first to try out a rope.

He caught it all right but on the downward slide bumped against a lower window, knocking out both panes. He had to replace them at his own expense. The ropes lasted only to the end of the year. Students then cut off segments and used them to bind up their trunks for the journey home.

When the two friends left the campus, Eggebrecht re­ marked: “This was the finest farewell to the days of our youth.” Just before he reached home Eiselmeier realized that he had lost a good friend — “a traveling companion who had gone with me on all my trips, defended me in danger, helped me to bear the burdens of life, never told a secret and never talked back. . . . Only someone in a simi­ lar situation can imagine my sorrow — in Oconomowoc or Delafield I had forgotten my walking stick.”

People in this hurried century can hardly imagine what a cane meant to the pedestrian of yore. The class of 1929 tried to resurrect the custom of carrying canes. About two weeks before graduation seniors sported walking sticks wherever they went. Their effort failed.

MEMOIRS OF THE 1880s AND 1890s During the middle years of the century a number of

“The Finest Farewell to the Days of Our Youth”

alumni, at the invitation of editors or Society members, sent in autobiographies to be read at meetings or pub­ lished in the Black and Red. Those of William Weimar, ’85, 0. J. R. Hoenecke, ’90, and Rev. (Dr.) J. B. Bernthal, ex ’91, vividly picture life on campus during the 1880s. At that time all the students lined up for roll call on Sunday mornings and marched in a long procession to St. Mark’s Church with one professor in the van and another bringing up the rear. Only one professor, “Brother” Hantz (so called because he addressed everyone as “Brother”) could read the English chapel prayers without a heavy German accent, which, to quote one instance, transmogrified “God save us” into “God shave us.” Seniors were excused from classes for three or four weeks before graduation to bone up for the public oral examinations on the last day, and ev­ ery graduate received a valediction along with his diploma from the president. The parting remark was not always un­ biased. One man who hadn’t won the favor of the presi­ dent was floored when he heard him say: “You too have managed to pick up a few nice items of knowledge during your stay here.”

The memoirs of Martin Sprengling, Henry Sieker, Ar­ thur Sydow, William Luebke and Ernst Heilmann are no less revealing for the 1890s. Some of these men and a number of speakers at alumni luncheons referred to the af­ fair of the painted horse, the most sensational student prank ever perpetrated at Northwestern. At the alumni meeting of 1978 one of the younger men asked the writer whether he was going to include the story in this account.

Though Prof. Kowalke already told it in Centennial Story, it probably qualifies for inclusion here because it was often alluded to in alumni get-togethers. It was really the culmi­ nating act in a feud between students and an unpopular steward.

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THE PAINTED HORSE The feud had already produced a number of crises, one of which was the ludicrous result of a Watertown dietary custom. In the late 1890s chicken was the popular entree at Sunday dinners throughout the city. It was also served in the college dining hall, where it became the piece de resistance, in the literal sense of that term, because of the ill-advised thrift of the steward. On Monday mornings he bought up all the unsold chickens at local butcher shops and stored them in his cellar — the only means of refrigeration at that time — until the following Sunday.

That worked well enough during the winter months, but less happily when warm weather came. One Sunday noon the aroma issuing from the dining hall was so pungent that students refused to enter and marched in a body down town to eat dinner at various restaurants.

On another Sunday morning the steward refused to open the dining hall or to serve breakfast because of stu­ dent shenanigans the previous night. On Halloween night 1899, students went on a rampage, tearing up the dilapi­ dated board walk on College Avenue and depositing the boards on various porches, including the steward’s. When

“The Finest Farewell to the Days of Our Youth ”

they attempted to raid his chicken coop, he fired two blasts from his double-barreled shotgun. Some of the spent pel­ lets penetrated the trousers of a culprit. A few nights later came the inglorious finale. Three freshmen docked the tail of the steward’s horse and painted zebra-like stripes on its body with green paint.

Up to then, the faculty had been handing out “Karzer” imprisonments to offenders. Now it really cracked down.

After a series of investigations that included taking testi­ mony from a Watertown girl who had seen one of the sus­ pects coming out of a paint store, the identity of the guilty boys was established. Two were suspended to the end of the school year, and the ringleader was expelled. The stu­ dent body was ordered to buy a new horse for the steward.

Luckily they were able to sell the disfigured animal to a lo­ cal veterinarian for $60, more than they needed to buy another horse for the steward, who soon left Northwestern in a huff.

The affair produced one improvement: A cement side­ walk was laid along the college property on College Ave­ nue. It also effected a complete change of heart in the ring­ leader. He transfered to Concordia College in St. Paul, Minnesota, was permitted to return the next year, and graduated with his class. He went on to the Seminary and became a prominent pastor. Whenever in a gathering of alumni he heard anyone allude to the painted green horse, he squirmed in his seat, even though very few people ever associated the dignified clergyman with a prank played, to quote Shakespeare, in “salad days when (he) was green in judgment.”

HE LED THE PARADE The following are out-of-the-ordinary items involving alumni and often reported by alumni. According to one

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correspondent, our first president, Prof. Koehler, while professor at Northwestern, “dressed and acted like a Ger­ man cavalry officer and rode a horse to faculty meetings.

The first man he saw he ordered to hold his nag while he attended the meeting. We ducked when we saw him com­ ing.” Another correspondent adds: “One of the sights of Watertown was the annual ‘Deutscher Kriegerverein’ parade. Prof. Koehler, dressed in a uniform and riding a noble steed, led the parade.”

In January 1928, an alumnus sent a clipping from the Chicago Tribune to the editor of the Black and Red. It contained this bit of alumni history. “Bells of the churches of Venton, Iowa, except one, pealed today, January 16, on the eighth anniversary of the death of booze. The one that didn’t ring was that of the First Lutheran Church, of which Rev. Theodore Schliepsiek was pastor. He announced that prohibition had nothing to do with church affairs, and he did not purpose that his church bell should be rung for a cause in which the church was not interested.” Pastor Schliepsiek was a popular member of the class of 1913, but left after his junior year to enter Concordia Seminary.

A BIZARRE DESTINY A bizarre destiny was that of Otto Plath, ’10. Deciding after a semester at the Seminary that he was not cut out for the ministry, he entered the University of Washington and later Harvard, got his doctoral degree and became professor of biology at Boston University. His dissertation, Bumblebees and Their Ways, was based in part on knowl­ edge acquired as a boy in East Prussia. His skill at ferreting out bumblebee nests and sucking out their wild honey with a long straw won him the title “Bienenkoenig.” Though he left the Lutheran church, Plath kept in touch with North­ western, visiting occasionally and sending his book and

“The Finest Farewell to the Days of Our Youth

other published works to the library. He was one of the few alumni who paid Society dues regularly until his death in 1940, after a long, difficult illness. He donated $50 for a new library in 1929.

What makes his story unusual is that 20 years later his daughter, the brilliant but star-crossed poet, Sylvia Plath, made him a sinister figure in several of her poems. She had worshiped him as a girl, but his death when she was eight somehow created a love-hate ambivalence toward the fa­ ther who had as it were abandoned his family by dying. In the powerful but harrowing poem “Daddy,” she unfairly identified him with the Germans of World War II. Her greatest poetry, published posthumously after her suicide in 1963, has prompted more discussion than that of any other recent poet. Biographers, researching her family his­ tory, have brought Northwestern and the career of Otto Plath into the picture.

TWO INSPIRING CAREERS One of the most heartwarming of alumni biographies is that of E. Edgar Guenther, ’08, which appeared in the Black and Red in installments from February 1956 to June 1957. Volunteering to be a missionary to the Apaches in his last year at the Seminary, he arrived in Arizona with his bride in March 1911. One month before his death at 76, in 1961, two thousand Apaches arranged a surprise barbecue for him in commemoration of 50 years of service among them. His happiest moment came in 1921 “when our church at Whiteriver was dedicated (and) Chief Alchesay, last of the great tribal chiefs, unlocked the door and be­ came the first of one hundred Indians who were baptized on that day.” In his obituary in the Northwestern Luther­ an, Rev. H. C. Nitz, ’15, once his Arizona colleague, wrote: “His biography is largely written in the hearts of

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hundreds, yes thousands of Apaches. ... He has left his in­ fluence on scores of government officials, military person­ nel, traders, Mormon freighters, cowboys, prospectors. He had the enviable gift of becoming all things to all men to gain at least some.” Pastor Guenther and his wife also gathered one of the finest private collections of Apache artifacts in Arizona.

A tragic yet inspiring story is that of Ted Hoyer, ex ’42, whose back was broken and his spinal cord severed in an automobile accident while he was on his way with several friends to a football game in Juneau. Able to move only his arms and head, he trained himself to operate a typewriter with a clothespin attached to his useless hand and to write a column for the local paper at Winneconne. He also sent an occasional contribution to the Black and Red and the Northwestern Lutheran. He and his cousin designed and manufactured a hydraulic lift to help paraplegics get from bed to chair, and a carlift to facilitate getting into an au­ tomobile. Ted eventually married his nurse. The Society made him an honorary member in 1949. He passed away in 1954.

OF BOOKS AND LECTURES In 1957 Rev. Werner Franzmann, ’25, called to the newly established office of Literary Editor of the North­ western Publishing House, designed the format and brought out the first issue of Meditations, the most widely circulated of WELS publications.

In 1967 Prof. Erwin Scharf, ’28, was granted a leave of absence for one semester to serve as the Synod’s first civilian chaplain to its men in the armed forces in Vietnam.

On his return he prepared an illustrated lecture on his ex­ periences in that war-torn country and established a record by giving it 135 times to WELS audiences.

“The Finest Farewell to the Days of Our Youth”

Missionary (now Prof.) Ernst H. Wendland, ’38, is the author of three books, brought out in quick succession be­ tween 1974 and 1978. Of the first, To Africa With Love, Editor Harold E. Wicke, ’34, of the Northwestern Luther­ an, wrote: “A fascinating account of mission work in Afri­ ca, (it) abounds in human interest stories.” The sequel, Of Other Gods and Other Spirits, is equally absorbing. The last, Dear Mister Missionary, according to the review in the Northwestern Lutheran, is ‘‘based on actual letters from the author’s files, his ‘lifeline with the homeland’.. . .

Northwestern College grads will especially enjoy the chap­ > >> ter titled ‘E. E. K. One of the few theological classics produced in our Syn­ od was Prof. August Pieper’s massive commentary, Jesaias II, first published in 1919. The English translation by Prof.

E. E. Kowalke, edited by Prof. Heinrich Vogel, ’28, is scheduled for publication by the Northwestern Publishing House.

An article in the Milwaukee Sentinel of Thursday, May 4, 1978, announced that “in his 80th year, Waldemar Heidtke, (’20), who got his bachelor’s degree 58 years ago, taught German and Latin in Wauwatosa High School from 1931 to 1945, was a translator at the Nuremberg war crime trials ... is being awarded a doctorate from Mar­ quette.” Title of his dissertation is “The Influence of the Early and Medieval Church on the German Evangelical Hymnody from 1524 to 1675.”

ROBIGO NON INTERFICIT In a recent letter, Herbert Eggers, ’18, mentioned two other alumni whom many admired. One is William Henkel, ’89, professor at Northwestern from 1912 to 1920 and at the Seminary from 1920 to the year of his death, 1929.

Henkel was noted for his German mother wit. His droll re-

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marks lose some of their flavor in translation, as when he called on a long-legged student slouched at his desk: “Herr V, wollen sie sich langsam emporarbeiten und uebersetzen?” (“Mr. V, would you gradually rise and translate?’’). To another he said: “Herr X, sie reiten auf Eselsbruecken herum.’’ (“Mr. X, you are riding around on ponies” — meaning translations).

The other man mentioned is Louis Pingel, long-tenured superintendent of the Bethesda Lutheran Home and progenitor of a number of WELS ministers. Pingel was a member of the last class to graduate from Northwestern’s normal department for training teachers in 1893. The class also included G. C. Groth, for many years teacher at St. Mark’s Lutheran School in Watertown, and Julius Rohde, a former steward at Northwestern. Before his death at the age of 91, Pingel recorded the story of his career on a tape for Herbert Eggers. It is now in the archives of Bethesda.

Eggers’ own career was unusual. After graduation he at­ tended Concordia Seminary, but was forced to drop out because of illness. He then became a crack salesman for a Chicago produce firm, “every year selling a ton of pepper to the sausagemakers of Sheboygan, where even the dogs bark in German.” In his Latin commencement oration he stated that whoever does not exercise his mind “robigo interficit” (is destroyed by rust). Such a fate has rarely over­ taken a Northwestern alumnus.

WHO’S WHO Northwestern produced few men whom the world con­ sidered great, largely because its graduates have preferred that “better thing” mentioned in the Letter to the He­ brews to worldly glory. Only ten alumni made the roster of the famous in Who's Who in America in earlier decades.

More recently the following have been listed.

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The Finest Farewell to the Days of Our Youth”

Alfred J. Schweppe, ’15, retired Seattle lawyer, dean of the University of Washington Law School and member of the editorial board of the Journal of the American Bar As­ sociation.

Hilmar Krueger, ’25, retired head of the department of medieval history at the University of Cincinnati, where a building has been named in his honor. Author of books and articles, and generous friend of his alma mater.

Heinz Bluhm, ’28, internationally known authority on Luther and the Goethe family. Head of the German de­ partments of Yale and then of Boston College. Author of books and articles. Decorated with the Grand Cross Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of West Germany. A loyal fan of Northwestern.

Oscar J. Hammen, ’29, retired chairman, department of history at Montana State University. Author: The Red ’48ers: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Arnold Bolle, ’34, retired head of the department of forestry at the University of Montana at Missoula.

Herbert Fleischer, ’35, retired head of the Forest Prod­ ucts Laboratory at Madison. Author, with W. G. Youngquist: Wood in American Life.

Winfred Lehmann, ’36, internationally known linguistic scholar. Head of the German department at the University of Texas. Prolific author of books and articles. First Ameri­ can recipient of the coveted Brothers Grimm Prize given by the Phillips University of Marburg. Generous friend of Northwestern.

Richard Jungkuntz, ’39. Provost, Pacific Lutheran Uni­ versity at Tacoma. Professor of classics at Northwestern, 1949 to 1961. Author.

Gareth Schmeling, ’63, professor of classics and head of the department of classics at the University of Florida. Pro­ lific author. Authority on Petronius, Chariton, and other

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Latin and Greek writers.

Last but not least, Oscar J. Naumann, ’31, the honored and dedicated president of WELS for the last 25 years.

There may have been others whom the writer missed.

Future editions of Who’s Who in America will very likely include a few of the younger alumni. More men would have been included in previous editions if their work had been done outside the church — among them, Carl J. Lawrenz, ’29, professor at the Seminary since 1944 and its president from 1957 to 1978, and a number of other Seminary professors, both of the past and the present; also the late Martin Franzmann, ’28, poet, hymn writer, schol­ ar, professor of Greek at Northwestern and later of the New Testament at Concordia Seminary. Author of Biblical commentaries, a volume of sermons, Ha Ha! Among the Trumpets! and a book of prayers, Pray for Joy. Twenty-four women have received B.A.s from North­ western. At least four of them have achieved a measure of fame: the late Cornelia Notz, ’01, as librarian at the Li­ brary of Congress; Gertrude Schlueter, ’16, as a teacher of languages in the Chicago area; Lenore Geweke, ’28, Ph.D., as a professor of classics; and Elizabeth Faber, ’33, as head librarian of the Watertown Free Public Library for nearly four decades. Miss Schlueter was honored by elec­ tion to the Hall of Fame for Senior Americans in the bicen­ tennial year. Another former student, Alma Pingel Nitz, ex ’15, wife of the late Pastor H. C. Nitz, and mother of five children, three of whom are pastors (a son-in-law is also a pastor), translated Gustav Harders’ novel Wille Wider Wille as Dohaschtida.

ENVOI In 1965 the president of the Society, Prof. Walter Schu­ mann, ’12, and the treasurer, Prof. Theodore Binhammer,

“The Finest Farewell to the Days of Our Youth”

’17, handed in their resignations. Prof. George Baer, ’42, was elected president and Prof. Sylvester Quam, treasurer.

“By a rising vote the Society acknowledged the many years of faithful service rendered by the past treasurer, Prof. Binhammer.” Prof. Baer presided at meetings for the next eight years. He was succeeded in 1973 by Rev. Rob­ ert Voss, ’47, executive secretary of the Commission of Higher Education.

All efforts of the Society in the current year will be con­ centrated on preparations for the centennial celebration.

Dr. Philip von Rohr Sauer, retired head of the English de­ partment at Bemidji State College, Bemidji, Minnesota, and member of the golden jubilee class of 1929, the larg­ est to graduate up to that time, writes: “Many of us of the class of 1929 are looking forward to our Fiftieth Anniver­ sary Reunion at Watertown, next May.” Remember the date: Tuesday, May 22, 1979, the day before commence­ ment. A cursory perusal of this booklet will reveal that an­ niversary celebrations have always been magnificently handled at Northwestern in past years. The coming one will be no exception.

One of the rituals at each Society meeting is the roll call beginning with the classes of the early years and continu­ ing down to the present. Names of those in attendance are announced to the assembly, but they do not appear in the minutes. Unless a member has made a motion, given a re­ port, been appointed to the inevitable auditing committee, or elected to an office, his name, as far as attendance goes, might as well be “writ in water.”

Something similar has occurred in this rambling story.

Figuratively speaking, the only names mentioned are those of persons who happened to make a motion, give a report, serve on a committee or in an office. That leaves out all the other alumni who are presently laboring in the Lord’s

131

“The Finest Farewell to the Days of Our Youth”

132

vineyard. Fortunately, in this noblest of callings the labor is its own reward, and there is no distinction as to greatest or least among the laborers.

We are fellow alumni, sharing precious memories of the alma mater where we “spent our formative years and ripened into manhood.” Surely we all agree with the dic­ tum uttered by Daniel Webster before the Supreme Court in the famous Dartmouth College case: “It is, sir, a small college, and yet there are those who love it.”

SOURCES CONSULTED Minutes of the annual meetings of the Alumni Society Files of the Black and Red, 1897-1978 Letters, autobiographies, and other manuscript materials in the archives of Northwestern College Minutes of the meetings of the Northwestern College Faculty and the Board of Control Synodical Proceedings of past years Files of the Gemeindeblatt and the Northwestern Lu­ theran Soli Deo Gloria 1865-1915. By Arthur Hoermann and Hans Koller Moussa. Northwestern Publishing House.

1915 Centennial Stoiy: Northwestern College 1865-1965. By Erwin Ernst Kowalke. Northwestern Publishing House. 1965 Reminiscences of various alumni

J. P. Koehler 1879(?)·1909

Wm. Huth 1909-1912

Hans K. l'vloussa 1912-1928

The Seven Presidents of the Society

E. Benj. Schlueter 1928-1948

Walter SchlJTlann, Sr. 1948-1965

George Baer 1965-1973

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Picture taken May 30, 1892, shows 14 members of the band and 71 members of the military company. The captain in the center is August Schauer who founded the con1pany in 1892. Building at the right is the "Katteemuehle;" the one in the center is the 1875 dorm; at the left is the gym, later called the "Old Shack." At extreme left are the institution's two chalets. Just above the dorm to the left of the "Katteemuehle" is the top of the windmill that stood over the well until 1907.

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Northwestern U'liveisity, about 1907. From left to right: bandshell; open space now occupied by music auditorium; inspector's residence; 1905 dorm; dining hall (barely visible); recitation hall.

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Presentation of Sprinter Statue and Gymnasium, October 20, 1912. Second row (L to R): 0 . Griebling, A. Wurster, H. \'Oil Rohr, Rev. E. Ebert, Rev. G. Bergemann, Front row (L to R): President A. F. Ernst, E. Kaner, W. Herrmann, Rev. A. Bendler, B. A. Olfe, Germania representative.

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The gym of 1912, viewed through the spreading branches of the ancient elm. The elm was removed in 1939.

Rev. August Bendler with his son, June 29, 1898.

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The gym of 1912, now the Music Auditorium.

The present Gymnasium, built in 1971 .

Aerial view of the college campus, 1949, shortly before the beginning of the building program The old cemetery is the woodeo square below and to the right of the old water tower.

Aerial view of the college campus, 1975. The bell tower now occupies the center of the square between the Chapel-Arts Building, Wartburg Hall, and the library-Science Building.

The enemy fort, built of remnants of the " Old Shack," goes up in a plume of smoke during the sham battle on the day of cornerstone laying of the Gymnasium, May 30, 1912.

Scene from the sham battle staged on Centennial Day, May 31 , 1965.

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(L to R) Back row: Joel Smith, Dr. F. W. A. N:>tz, Eugene N:>tz - IOU1der of the AlllTVli Society; Front row: Theooore Brohm, President A. F. 8nst, kros Easterday.

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Originally designed to be cloakrooms adjoining the classrooms of the recitation hall, one of these c\bbyholes was later used to store library books. One on the third floor served as the " Karzer" or student prison. The last offender was sentenced to an hou' imprisonment in 1915.

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Northwestern College has had only three Presidents In 108 years.

William Zell is the first President of Northwestern Preparatory School.

August F. Ernst

Erwin E. Kowalke

1871-1919

1919-1959

Carleton Toppe

William G. Zell

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1974-

Dr. F. W. A. Notz Professor of Greek and Hebrew, Editet, Schulze/tung. In his day he was also director of gymnastics and inspector.

Dr. Arthur Hoermann Author, So/I Deo Gloria, the history of Northwestern, 1915.

Rev. Philip von Rohr, President of the Wisconsin Synod in the early 1900s.

Enthusiastic friend of Northwestern.

Henry Eggebrecht and John Eiselmeier, the two teachers who visited their alma mater in 1918 and recalled their happy student years at Northwestern during the 1880s.

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If you were a doctor, it would have cost you S3.50 to take part in the academic procession of June 19, 1915. This was the second and last academic procession in the history of Northwestern.

Announcements of the academic procession and the alurmi meeting on the day of the dedication of the 1905 dormitory.

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The Bell Tower

The Aloomi Society agreed to lXld8IWl'ite the cost of moving the Sprinter from his time-honored place in front of the Music Auditoril.m to a more appropriate spot near the entrance to the new Gymnasil.m.

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INDEX OF NAMES A Abbeimeyer, A. 74 Albrecht, P. 87 Alchesay, Chief 125 B

Backer, B. 105 Bading, G. 50 Bading, Rev. J . 4, 13, 15, 34, 44, 50 Bading, Dr. J . 2 , 4, 5 , 10 Baebenroth, A. (Sr.) 4, 18, 45 Baebenroth, A. (Jr.) 18 Baer, G . 131 Bast, T. G . 36 Bauer, H . 83 Beck, W. H. 76 Bendler, A. 13, 19, 23 , 37, 40, 41 ,

43, 44 , 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 Bendler, Irene (Mrs. A. F, Halboth)

47 Bennett Oaw) 14, 56 Bergemann, G. 48, 69, 91 Bernstorff, Count J. von 57 Bernthal, J . B. 121 Beutin, D. viii Bigsby, Prof 21 Binhammer, T . 95, 130, 131 Bluhm, H. 113, 129 Solle, A. 129 Solle, C. (Sr.) 54, 60 Solle, C. (Jr.l 89 Solle, Ruth (Mrs . Shekner) 60 Bolle, Winifred 89 Boniface 23 Bothne, G. 21, 86 Boughton, L. 18 Brandt, H. 65 Brandt, 0 . 68, 86 Brenner, J. 62, 115 Breutzmann, A. 93 Brockmann, L. C. H. 44, 69 Brockmann, P. 86 Brumder, G. 43 Brumder, Mrs. G . 43

Buschbauer, Hans 14 Bunge, W. viii C Case, Anna 83 Christiansen, C. A. 27, 28, 29, 30,

31 Christiansen, Johanna 28 Christiansen, Wilhelmine 28 Colt, A. N. 104 Custer, General 1

D Dammann, A. 18 Dammann, J . 18 Dobratz, E. 94 Dobratz, W. 94 Dowidat, P. 116 Duetzmann, H. 79

E Eberhardt, A. 102 Ebert, H . 45, 48 Edison, T. 1 Eggebrecht, H. 119, 120 Eggers, H. 127, 128 Eichelberger, Mrs. 31 Elckmann, M. 12, 33, 67 Eickmann. P. G. 77, 78, 95, 112 Elselmeier, C. 119, 120 Engels, F. 129 Ernst, A. F. 7, 11 , 12, 13, 15, 40,

47, 48, 53, 56, 58, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75. 94, 116 Ernst, George 113 Ernst, Gerhard 113 Ernst, Mary (Mrs. J . L. Phillips) 28 Ernst, 0. 37, 39, 40, 47, 49 F Faber, Elizabeth 130 Fathauer, T . 78 Felland, 0 . 3, 4, 21, 86 Fleischer, Herbert 129 Fleischer, Herman 15

149

150

Found, C . 100 Frank, H. 73 Frank, Mrs. H. 73 Frank, A. 73 Frank, L. 73 Franzmann, M. 86, 89, 130 Franzmann, W. 126 G Gaebler, M. 78 Gamm, J . 14 Gatz, A. 94 Gausewttz, C. 69 Gawrisch, W. 117 Gehrke, R. 86, 104, 113 Genslke, J . 4 Geweke, Lenore 130 Goethe 74 Griebling, 0 . 2, 3, 9, 10, 18, 24, 37,

41 Grimm Brothers 129 Groth, G. C. 128 Guenther, E. E. 86, 107, 125, 126

H Haakon, King 86 Habben, A. 115 Hagedorn, 0 . 23, 59, 60 Halboth, A. F. 47 Hammen, 0 . 129 Hantz, Brother 121 Hardegge, R. 16, 60, 78 Harde rs, G. 130 Harms, W. 4 Hayes, R. B. 1 Heidtke, W. 127 Hellmann, E. 87 , 113, 121 Hellmann, Mrs. E. 113 Henkel, W. 127 Herrmann, W. 47 Herrmann, Prof. W. 23, 56, 97 Hertler, E. 63 Hoenecke, A. 7, 32, 33, 88 Hoenecke, E. 115 Hoenecke, M. 88 Hoenecke, 0. J . R. 106, 108, 121 Hoenecke, R. 88 Hoermann, A. 23, 33, 34, 54, 56,

57, 66, 68, 70, 74, 132

Hoffmann, F. 14 Hooper, E. S. 12 Hoover, H. 92 Horace 23, 74 Horn, G. 107 Horn, P. 107 Hoyer, E. 12 Hoyer, 0 . 4, 15, 87 Hoyer. Otto 87 Hoyer, Ph. 87 Hoyer, T. 126 Hoyer, W. 87 Huth, C. 4 Huth, W. 21 , 23, 24, 61. 62 J Jaeckel, T . 13 Jaster, E. 100 Jenny, H. 59 Jenny, J. 21 , 62 Jeske, J. 117 Jeske, M. 87 Jordahl, L. 85 Jungkuntz, R. 113, 114, 115, 129

K Keats, J . 97 Kettenacker, R. 92 Kleckhefer, C. 43 Kl eckhefer, F. 43, 44 Kieckhefer, W. 43, 44 Kluender, K. 98 Kneyse, Kantor 34 Knuth, H. 50 Koch, K. 4 Koehler, J.P. 3, 4 , 5, 7 , 8, 9 , 10, 12,

15, 21, 24, 27, 28, 30, 32, 37, 61, 85, 124 Koehler, K. 85 Koehler, Ph. (Sr.) 107, 108 Koehler, Ph. (Jr.) 108 Koerner, C. 14 Kosanke, F. 113 Kosanke, Mrs. F. 113 Kowalke, E. E. 7, 35, 53, 57, 60, 75, 76, 79, 91, 99, 101 , 103, 104, 107, 109, 113, 115, 121 , 127, 132

II

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Kowalke, Mrs. E. E. 113 Krauss, E. A. 68 Kreisler, F. 83 Krueger, H. 129 Kuhlow, 0 . 84 Kuhn, A. 39, 49, 54, 63 Kujath, M. viii L Lampert. L. 4 Larson, President 56 Lawrenz, C. 117, 130 Lawrenz, J. 110, 112, 117 Lederer, R. 63 Lehmann, A. 105, 106 Lehmann, W. 129 Lohr, P. 47 Luebke, W. 55, 87, 96, 114, 121 Luecke!, W. 107 Luther, Martin 18, 71 , 103, 105 M

Manteufel, F. 50 Marti , A. 74 Martin, A. 34, 81 Marx, K. 129 Masch, C. 99 Masch, J. 93 Mayerhoff, E. 81, 117 Meyer, F. 94 Meyer, H. 80 Meyer, J . P. 115 Milton, J . 64 Mitzner, R. 99 Moussa, H. K. 23, 56, 62, 67, 74, 75, 96, 132 Muehlhaeuser, G. 94 Muehlhaeuser, J . 94

N Naumann, 0 . J. 130 Needham, Mr. 41 Nickels, T. 99 Nitz, Alma Pingel (Mrs. H. C. Nitz) 130 Nitz, H. C. 92, 125, 130 Nitz, P. 117 Nordby, A. 99

Notz, Cornella 130 Notz, E. 2, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, 32, 39, 119 Notz, F. W. A. 4, 11, 15, 18, 19, 20, 32, 53, 56, 57, 69, 80,116 Notz, Mrs. F. W. A. 15 Notz, W. 56, 57, 86 Nowack, Dr. L. (Sr.l 63 0 Olson, L. 36 Oswald, H. 104 Ott, J. H. 17, 18, 33, 34, 39, 41, 55, 56,57, 76. 77, 94, 95, 96,112, 114 Ott, Margaret 95 Owen, R. 23, 86, 87

p Pankow, E. 34, 69, 93 Pankow, G. 98 Pankow, W. 100 Panning, A. 117 Paul, Apostle 80 Pieper, A. 12, 21 , 32, 88, 127 Pieper, F. 13, 32, 68, 69, 86, 93 Pingel, L. 128 Plath, 0 . 124, 125 Plath, Sylvia 125 Plocher, J. 21, 23 Prange, V. 113, 114 Professor X 39

Q Quam, S. 130 R Reim, E. 63, 64 Retzlaff, W. 113 Rohde, J. 128 Rohr, A. von 74 Rohr, H. von 42 Rohr, Ph. von 13, 15, 34, 42, 44, 62 Roosevelt, F. D. 92 Roosevelt, T. 49 Rubel, Pastor 94

151

s

152

Sauer, Chr. 4, 16, 24 Sauer, E. 85 Sauer, Ph. von Rohr 131 Schaefer, H. 60 Schaller, D. 87 Schaller, J . 34, 80, 87 Scharf, E. 99, 126 Scharlemann, R. 114 Schllepslek, T. 124 Schlueter, E. BenJ. 63, 87, 88 Schlueter, Gertrude 130 Schlueter, T. 75 Schmeling, G. 129 Schmeling, H. 84 Schmieder, J. 58 Schnetzke & Son 45 Schroeder, E. 96 Schroeder, H. 43, 44, 45, 51 Schroeder, H. !'12) 63, 64 Schultz, H. 93 Schumann, W. 63, 104, 130 Schumann-Helnk 83 Schuppenhauer, A. 103 Schurz, C. 1 Schwartz, J. 116 Schweppe, A. J. 129 Schweppe, C. 99, 104 Schweppe, W. 116 Shaw, G. B. 102 Shield, G. 55, 96, 112 Siegler, A. F. 87 Siegler, Carl 87 Siegler, Charles 87 Siegler, D. 87 Siegler, H. 87 Siegler, 0 . 87 Siegler, Reginald 87 Siegler, Richard, 33 Sieker, Chr. 108 Sieker, H. 21, 121 Slgge\kow, A. 112 Sitting Bull 1 Sitz, A. 89 Skinner, C. 9, 53 Sprengllng, M. 23, 46, 56, 59, 60,

86, 121

Stern, J . 87 Sydow, A. 121 T

Taft, W. H. 49 Thurow, W. 99 Toppe, C . viii, 98, 115 Trapp, J. viii

u Umnus, L. 106 Uplegger, K. 99 Upmeyer, W. 38

V Vlanden 15 Virgil 97 Vogel, H. 127 Voss, R. 131

w Wacker, A. 115 Webster, D. 132 Weimar, W. 23, 53, 94, 95, 106,

108, 121 Wendland, E. (Sr.l 104 Wendland, E. (Jr.l 127 Wente, W. 86 Westerhaus, G. 104 Whyte, J . 23, 86 Whyte, M. 89 Wicke, H. 127 Wilson, W. 49, 57, 70 Winter, E. 72 Winter, V. 115 Wurster, E. A. 43, 47 y

Youngquist, W. 129

z Zabell, F. 105 Zeisler, P. 106 Ziesemer, Reinhard 108 Ziesemer, Richard 107

Nor_thwestem College Alumni Society 1879 - 1979