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Wagner College: Four Histories THIRD REVISED EDITION — MAY 2011 Richard Darrow Harald K. Kuehne William Ludwig Lee Manchester Walter T. Schoen Jr. Frederic Sutter with Brian Morris EDITED BY LEE MANCHESTER

Transcript of Wagner College: Four Histories

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Wagner College: Four Histories THIRD REVISED EDITION — MAY 2011

Richard Darrow

Harald K. Kuehne William Ludwig Lee Manchester

Walter T. Schoen Jr. Frederic Sutter with Brian Morris

EDITED BY LEE MANCHESTER

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Wagner College: Four Histories

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Introduction The publication of this small volume, coinciding with the 125th anniversary of the founding of Wagner College, is the first attempt at publishing a history of the school — actually, four histories. The main contributions to this collection were written by four authors: Harald Kuehne, Walter Schoen, Brian Morris (ghost writing for the Rev. Frederic Sutter) and Lee Manchester. Manchester also served as the volume’s editor. These main essays were the basis of a special forum on Wagner College history held September 12, 2008. The collection also includes five appendices. The first, profiling the early “direktors” (German for headmaster or president) of Wagner College, was compiled by Lee Manchester, based upon a set of profiles written by early Wagner professor William Ludwig. The second appendix, describing student life at Wagner’s Rochester campus, was written by Richard Darrow, the college’s assistant director of communications, for the January 1968 issue of Wagner Magazine. The remaining three appendices are tables reprinted from materials found in the college archives. HARALD K. KUEHNE wrote his contribution, “A Report on the Religious History of Wagner College,” for a Yale Divinity School class in May 1950, a year after he graduated from Wagner. His essay was the earliest scholarly attempt at writing a history of the college that we had on file in the school’s archives. It starts off with a general history of the college, then focuses on an aspect of the institution that has changed dramatically since the 1950s: its religious life, orientation and affiliation. After graduating from Yale Divinity and the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, the Rev. Harald Kuehne was called to become pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Rockville Centre, Long Island, a position in which he served until his retirement in 1989. He continues to serve as pastor emeritus at Holy Trinity. He is married to Britta (Woodbury) Kuehne, Wagner College Class of 1950. “Wagner College literally saved me,” Rev. Kuehne wrote in a recent note for his annual class letter at Yale Divinity. “The war [World War II] took 4 years out of my life. My discharge was traumatic — from the discipline of Army life to, ‘You’re on your own, pal.’ I was a lost vet until my pastor told me to apply to a small Lutheran college on Grymes Hill, Staten Island. Half the student body was made up of ex-GIs. I was at home again.”

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WALTER T. SCHOEN JR. wrote “The Founding of Wagner College and the Early Years of Its Development” in May 1957 as his English thesis “under the supervision of one of Wagner’s outstanding professors, Dr. Ida Everson,” he recently recalled. While he was composing his meticulously documented essay, Schoen had access to early records and minutes of the college that can no longer be found or no longer exist; as such, it is the only reliable reference we still have to many key facts concerning the creation of Wagner College. Schoen graduated from Wagner College in 1958. He earned his master’s degree at Columbia University and completed doctoral and post-doctoral work at Southern Illinois, Syracuse and New York universities. Schoen served as president at Monticello College, and dean at Ramapo State College and Somerset County College. Now retired, he lives in Pinehurst, North Carolina. His wife, Barbara R. (Brown) Schoen (Class of 1956), died in 2006. BRIAN MORRIS, a 1965 graduate of Wagner College, worked in the Wagner College Communications Office from 1967 to 1972. In 1968, he taped a series of extensive interviews with the Rev. Frederic Sutter, founder of the modern Wagner College on Staten Island. Morris compiled those reminiscences into a memoir that was first published around 1970 as “The Evolution of an Idea: Fifty Years on Staten Island.” Morris, retired from his position as spokesman for Staten Island University Hospital, teaches part-time at St. John’s University, whose Staten Island campus is just a stone’s throw away from Wagner College. He is currently a member of Wagner’s National Alumni Association Communications Committee. He lives on Staten Island. LEE MANCHESTER is Wagner’s media relations director. He came to the college in 2007, bringing with him 20 years of experience in public relations, journalism and publishing. Manchester is the author or editor of a dozen books, eight of them on regional history. His story on how he found the last surviving descendants of the original Wagner family, “Finding George Wagner: A Historical Detective Story,” appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Wagner Magazine. Manchester is also the author of an ongoing feature in Wagner Magazine on the architectural history of the college’s Staten Island campus. He and his wife, Jody Leavens, live on Staten Island and in Jay, New York, outside Lake Placid.

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Notes on the revised edition of November 2008

After the initial publication of this book in August 2008, I learned that a key point in my essay, “Founding Faces and Places,” was inaccurate: The name of the elder Wagner who brought his family to Rochester from Prussia in 1838 was not John George Wagner Sr., but George Heinrich Wagner. My initial assumption had been based on the inscription on George Heinrich Wagner’s tombstone, “George Sr.” The fact is that George Heinrich was called “George Sr.” because his son, John George Wagner, was also referred to within the family as George. Wagner College’s early benefactor, John George Wagner, was not “John George Wagner Jr.” That name properly belongs to our benefactor’s son, J. George Wagner Jr., who died at the age of 19 and in whose honor the college was eventually renamed. I also learned that the wife of John George Wagner, our benefactor, was also his first cousin. John George’s marriage had been arranged, long distance, by his father. Both this fact and the correct name of the eldest Wagner immigrant were disclosed in a batch of papers containing the genealogical research of John Gordon Maier, a distant cousin of Margaret-Anne Milne, the great-granddaughter of John George Wagner. Upon visiting the grave of Christian Seel, in whose private home Wagner College was hosted for its inaugural academic year, I saw that his tombstone claimed that he had died in 1893, though all other records agree that he died in 1895. I have found no explanation for this contradiction. While visiting the Seel family grave site, I also learned that Christian’s youngest son, Eduard, was of an age in 1883 that he would undoubtedly have still been living at home when the second floor of his house was turned into the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester. Finally, though I have discovered a Rochester newspaper obituary, for young George Wagner, I have still not determined whether or not he was enrolled at Newark Academy, a predecessor of Wagner College, at the time of his death. I had hoped that his obituary might tell us what was his occupation at the time of his death, but the accounts I found mentioned nothing about either his work or studies.

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Earlier, I had tried to find an obituary for George Wagner in one of the two Newark, N.Y. daily newspapers that were in publication at the time of George’s death. The Newark Union newspaper contained no mention during the month of October 1873 of the death of anyone with a name like John George Wagner Jr. Microfilms for the 1873 issues of the Newark Courier — which appears to have been the newspaper of record for Newark, N.Y. during that period — were missing from the microfilm series held by the Newark Public Library when I visited over the summer of 2008. Librarians told me that the original hard copies of the Courier, from which the microfilms had been made, no longer existed.

Lee Manchester November 11, 2008

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A report on the religious history of Wagner College

by Harald K. Kuehne, May 1950

Foreword The title to this paper bears witness to its limitations: It is a report and not an exhaustive historical treatment. The study and research, which ought to have entailed at least a month's time, were completed in feverish haste during a period of three days. The approach, therefore, is not a fully penetrating one; the analysis is neither clear-cut nor complete. As a result, the unique position which Wagner College has attained and holds today in the realm of higher education cannot be made adequately evident to the mind of the reader solely through the means of this work. The writer has attempted to avoid misleading and mistaken conclusions and generalizations by keeping as close as possible to basic concrete facts. The historical material was obtained largely from facts and data as found in newspaper clippings, historical contributions and outlines, and catalogues. The contemporary picture is presented, as the result of numerous interviews with members of the faculty and administration, examination of the Student Christian Association's minutes and files, and the writer's own living experiences as an undergraduate student at Wagner College.

A history of the college “The school had the name Wagner Memorial College, but it was not a college in the American sense. It did not have the standard [curriculum] and was not recognized by the Regents of the State as such. It was still a preparatory school for students of theology whose final examination entitled the students to the entrance in a theological seminary. The students who entered the college were supposed to be graduates of a Public School. They were probably 14 years old, but exceptions were made. Some were younger, some older. The School had a six years course, stretched out over six classes. In these classes were about 23 students, who all came from German Lutheran congregations or Orphan Homes. Their mother tongue was German. So there were no difficulties as far as language was concerned.”1 Such was the inauspicious position and unique make-up which this

1 From “A Contribution to the History of Wagner Memorial College,” Augustus C. Redderoth, professor of Greek and General History at Wagner from 1892 to 1896 (written in January 1947).

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tiny institution held in the year 1892 in the city of Rochester, New York. Why it was established, and how it has achieved its present position in the realm of higher learning, is an account rightfully within the scope of this report on the religious history of Wagner College. During the year of 1883 one of the major concerns of Lutheran ministers and laymen in the state of New York was the discouraging shortage of Lutheran pastors able to preach as well as converse competently in German. Because of recent large waves of German immigrants, almost every church in the New York Ministerium conducted services regularly in the German language, and thus arose a need for German-speaking ministers. In August of this year, the Rev. Alexander Richter, pastor of the Zion Lutheran Church in Rochester, wrote a paper which he entitled, “From What Sources Shall We Draw our German Preachers?” Believing in action rather than mere words, Richter with the help of a colleague, the Rev. George H. Gomph, then pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Pittsford, set about in gaining further support from other ministers as well as laymen who were also interested in the establishment of a satisfactory preparatory school; such an institution, patterned after the German “gymnasium,” would serve as a proseminary for the education of young men entering the Lutheran ministry. Imbued with the realization of necessity and speedy action, Pastor Richter initiated the calling of a meeting of the Rochester Pastoral Conference on October 15, 1883 for the purpose of establishing the required school. Present at this meeting were Richter; Charles S. Kohler, Church of the Reformation; C.N. Conrad of the Concordia Church; George H. Gomph, and Candidate George Seel. The first decision reached at this organizational gathering was that “the members of the Conference shall constitute the Board of Trustees.” Mr. J.S. Margraender, a member of Zion Church, was also elected to the board and asked to serve as Treasurer, his initial task being to carefully husband the total capital of the new institution — $10!2 The first president, Alexander Richter, was also elected by the members of the board. Dr. Gomph was chosen as secretary, and Mr. Christian Seel, an elder of the Zion congregation, assented to give lodging to the student body of six and also provide the classrooms for the new school in his large home. After deciding to name the institution “The Rochester Lutheran Proseminary,” the first meeting was called to adjournment with a fervent plea to God for continued

2 A typographical error copied from earlier accounts. The actual initial capital of the school was $100, a gift from supporter Justus Koch of Philadelphia.

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guidance and strength. And so — with a sincere and deep conviction in the aid and purpose of the Almighty — a new venture in Christian education was firmly initiated. The third school year of the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester began on September 1, 1885. The new board of trustees, elected on January 12 of the following year, was a most important one for it was this same board which was to guide the institution through its first period of transition, from proseminary to college. Pastor Alexander Richter was once again re-elected president. Mr. John G. Wagner was elected vice president, Frederick Schlegel was made secretary, and David Bantleon became treasurer. In March 1884, the school had moved from Mr. Seel’s home to a large building on Oregon Street, formerly occupied by the Satterlee Collegiate Institute.3 This building was for sale at $12,000, and it was hoped that the proseminary might be able to secure the funds with which to purchase the property. To this end, a drive was instituted which, once it had attained $6,000, would be used as the initial payment. By January 1886, $5,700 had been subscribed by dint of slow and painstaking labor. On June 8, 1886, the vice president, Mr. John G. Wagner, declared to the other members of the board that he and his wife had decided to pay the entire purchase price for the new location. This gift was to be considered a memorial to his son George, whose determination to enter the Lutheran ministry had been thwarted by death. The generous donation on the part of the father was accepted with unrestrained joy and heartfelt thanks by the members of the board. It was further agreed to change the name of the institution to Wagner Memorial Lutheran College. In spite of this great blessing, the school did not escape from misfortune and tribulation. “It is indeed the sad experience of all institutions, especially the new ones, that teachers and staff are more or less troublesome. … But God was gracious; He saved us from despair and helped us through.”4 In spite of the distress of its “growing pains,” the young institution successfully continued the important task of thorough preparatory training of acceptable German students for the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. In 1885, the first student, Francis Hoffman, was sent from the Rochester proseminary to Philadelphia. In 1886, four other graduates from Rochester joined him. The hopes and prayers of Richter, Gomph, and all the others were now bearing fruit; the task 3 An intermediate facility has been missed here. The school moved from the Seel house in March 1884 to a three-story brick townhouse on South Avenue. It was not until 1885 that the school moved into the Oregon Street building. 4 From “Geschichte des New York Ministeriums,” ed. John Nicum, 1888, p. 334.

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they had set upon themselves was indeed proving successful “and prospered with the aid of God.” The financial position of the college soon entered precarious straits again. Merely a small percentage of the pecuniary support came from outside sources, and it soon became apparent that accepting the demands of the growing institution was too great an undertaking for the primary benefactor, Zion Church in Rochester. It was felt necessary to either limit the field of labor to one phase of learning and cut down the teaching staff, or to take a more lucrative step in offering the school to the Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of New York. The question was settled in June 1888 when, at the Synod meeting at Rondout, N.Y., the proposal that Wagner College be made the property of the New York Ministerium was accepted. The following June, formal and legal transfer of the school to the Synod was made at a meeting in Brooklyn. By order of the court, the number of trustees was increased from seven to twelve. In the fall of 1888, the Rev. Jacob Steinhaeuser of Rondout, N.Y. was called as director and charged with the internal management and immediate supervision of the students. While the six-year preparatory course [of the gymnasium curriculum] had been retained, the institution was assuming more and more the characteristics of a regular American college. The greatest stress was laid upon the study of languages. The students not only were well-grounded in Latin and Greek, in which languages dissertations were written weekly, they also spoke German and English with equal ease and fluency. Hebrew was taught as well as French. Much attention was given to the study of history, both secular and church history; to mental and moral philosophy, Christian ethics, and the usual branches of mathematics; and to literature, science, etc. “It is just the kind of education that men must have in order to deal successfully with our German-American citizens, be it in church, at the bar, at the sick bed, or in business.”5 In November 1893, the state of New York, on the basis of a law passed the previous year, attempted to force the school to omit the word “college” from its name because it did not have a $500,000 endowment. Mr. Adolph J. Rodenbeck of Rochester, treasurer of Wagner’s board, was instructed to answer and appear before the regents. In his plea, Rodenbeck pointed out that by a change of name certain valuable property which the institution had acquired — under condition that its name should not be changed — would be placed in

5 From an article on the college in the Rochester Union and Advertiser, May 19, 1894.

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jeopardy; that the college would be deprived of a certain residuary legacy; that the school was legally incorporated by act of legislature, and that by a decree of the Supreme Court its name had been changed from proseminary to college; that the law as passed by the state of New York in 1892 was in its nature retroactive, thus unconstitutional; and that, even granted that under the amended act the state legislature reserved for itself the right to change the name, it had no power to delegate that right to a second party, namely, the regents.6 Rodenbeck apparently fought a good fight; further action was deferred by the regents until December, when it was determined that the name of Wagner Memorial Lutheran College was to remain as such. By 1894 the enrollment of students had increased to its highest figure, 45. Tuition remained low — although raised during this year from $32 to $40 — while sons of Lutheran pastors and parochial school teachers received instruction free. Board was furnished at the rate of $2.50 per week. “The expenses were small. The director received $2,000 and residence. Prof. Betz $800 and residence in the School building.7 Prof. Genzmer who lived privately, $800. Prof. Redderoth $480 with room and board in the building. Prof. Schaeffer also $480 and room and board. So the total of salaries of the teaching staff amounted to $4,560. Let us add an equal amount for fuel, light, food, repairs, and help, etc. we have a total of expenses of about $9,000. As little as that seems to be, it was not easy to get it. The Director sighed once: ‘If … yes … if we could get a quarter from every member of the Ministerium (which numbered about 40,000), we would have $10,000. But we never got that quarter!’ ”8 A new turn in the development of the college set in when the Rev. Dr. John Nicum became the acting director. At a meeting of the board in November 1894, Director Steinhaeuser was forced to resign. Prof. Redderoth describes the incident as follows: “The day after, he told the writer, ‘They have thrown me out like a dog!’ The Faculty was never notified of the change that was made. It was only from students that we learned that Dr. Nicum had taken charge of the classes of Pastor Steinhaeuser. He never came into the room reserved for the faculty. His orders appeared in writing outside of the door of the faculty room, signed ‘John Nicum, Director of Wagner College,

6 A summary of the issue was included in the Rochester Union and Advertiser article of May 1894. 7 Dr. Palleske says that Betz lived in school only at the beginning. 8 Redderoth, “A Contribution … ”

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President of the Executive Committee and President of the Board of Trustees.’ ”9 Why Steinhaeuser was dismissed and why Nicum took over the position as head of the college is unknown. The fact remains that the school was from then on steered in a different direction. The college now operated under the regents and was forced to prepare the students for numerous examinations — in which they excelled, compared with students of other institutions. Nicum remained director for seven years. And although the number of students enrolled declined from one semester to the next, the board supported him, until enrollment fell to its lowest level of 17 students.10 It was then that the board decided it was time for new leadership, and elected a new director. Nicum’s venture had ended in failure. The college, however, has honored his devotion and services with the erection of the Nicum Memorial Tower at the entrance of the present Administration Building — a memorial that was built, in part, with money left in John Nicum’s will for that purpose, and which amounted nearly to the total salary he had received as director of the college. Following Nicum’s departure, the Rev. Joseph Rechtsteiner accepted the vacated post of leadership. He was not only director, but also professor of Latin, Hebrew, Greek, New Testament, Ethics, Theology, Logic, and History. Under his direction as well as that of the Rev. Herman D. Kraeling and the Rev. John A.W. Kirsch, who followed him, the college continued to educate its young men along the original lines. At the turn of the [20th] century, in 1904, “owing to financial difficulties, the institution found itself in a very precarious condition.” But its cry for assistance did not go unheeded. A number of extremely generous donations were made, and on May 14, 1908 — just 25 years since its humble beginning — an anniversary service was held in the mother church [Zion] in Rochester, and a campaign was launched that resulted successfully in the raising of $19,000 as a Silver Jubilee Fund. Another significant development was in the offing. As early as 1901, pastors and laymen connected with Wagner College had felt that a change of location for the school was highly desirable. Along with a move to a more commendable site, it was urged that there be a

9 From Augustus C. Redderoth, op. cit. 10 An enrollment table compiled in 1954 from college catalogues and registrar’s records show the enrollment statistics as being somewhat less disastrous than this. During Nicum’s tenure as director, enrollment fluctuated between 45 and 31 students; the lowest enrollment since 1886, 25 students, was not posted until 2 years after Nicum’s departure.

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broadening in the field of the institution and a change in some of its policies. Coincidental with this was the strong recommendation made by a group of Staten Island residents — including the Rev. Frederic Sutter,11 pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, Edmond Schaefer, and E.C. Meurer — that the borough of Richmond of New York City be the college’s new home. The Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, through Cornelius G. Kolff, also voiced approval, promised its support, and acknowledged the fact that the college would be a step of progress for the island community. At length, on October 25, 1916, at a special meeting in Utica, N.Y., the Synod decided that the college be moved, and accordingly passed a resolution authorizing a campaign for $100,000 which sum was to be used to purchase a feasible site in the southern part of the state of New York. Meanwhile, negotiations had been afoot for the acquisition of the Cunard estate atop Grymes Hill on Staten Island. And in September 1917, this property — totaling 38 acres and four buildings12 — was purchased at the cost of $63,000. Most of the remaining funds were invested in the additional acquisition of the adjoining Jacob Vanderbilt estate of 15 acres.13 In 1918, therefore, Wagner College with an enrollment of 16 students14 bade farewell to its Rochester home and took up its new quarters on Staten Island. On the second highest point along the coast between Maine and Florida, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, the great New York harbor and the Brooklyn and lower Manhattan skyline, the new site was an ideal one. At the crossroads of the world, yet situated in a setting of natural beauty and suburban tranquility,

11 Sutter first served on the board from 1906 to 1909. From 1897 to 1907, he was pastor of Emanual Lutheran Church in Hudson, N.Y. He became pastor at Trinity Staten Island in 1907. It was not until 1916 that Sutter was elected once again to the college board of directors. 12 The estate contained six usable buildings, actually, including the gatehouse cottage and the car barn. 13 Not completely accurate. In addition to the $63,000 purchase price for the acreage and the existing buildings, another $43,000 was spent remodeling two summer cottages on the property and building a new home for the college president. The Synod raised $70,000, and the remaining $40,000 was secured by a mortgage. Wagner College did not buy the adjacent 19-acre Vanderbilt property for another 4 or 5 years, on March 7, 1922; the alumni agreed to pay for the property, and ownership was later transferred to the college itself. 14 This oft-quoted figure conflicts with that shown in a compilation of enrollment totals from catalogues and registrar’s records: In October 1918, the first semester after the move to Staten Island, there were 42 students enrolled in the 6-year gymnasium program. Perhaps 16 students came along with the school from Rochester, and 26 more registered for the first year on Staten Island.

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Wagner’s present campus of 72 hilltop acres15 has been called the most unique of any in the United States. Wagner has become the center of learning for its community of over 250,000 people. Wagner is Staten Island’s first college. The move from Rochester was a wise step. Not only did it result in material expansion and the acquisition of a remarkable site, but it awakened a new enthusiasm for the college. Spurred on by the realization of new responsibilities in the face of almost limitless potentialities, students, members of the administration and faculty, trustees and alumni responded in toto to the task now set before them. Nor was the church incognizant of the new significance of Wagner, and its first response was one of sharply awakened interest. But with a growing student body largely from Staten Island and the metropolitan area of New York, sweeping changes were of necessity in order. One of the initial steps taken, after academic activities opened in the Cunard estate buildings on the hill, was to abandon the 6-year gymnasium type of curriculum and institute the regular 4-year American college plan; a 4-year high school course initiated the Wagner High School, which was discontinued in 1932. The need to function in a broader way educationally led to a further overhauling and reconstruction of the curriculum. Without lessening Christian emphases, subjects and courses of instruction were enriched and extended into the major fields of interest of not only prospective students of theology, but also for those planning other professions. Courses leading to degrees of both bachelor of arts and bachelor of science were introduced; major fields of study were broadened so that today they prepare students interested in business, dentistry, engineering, journalism, law, medicine, ministry, music, parish work, physical education, social work, teaching, and veterinary medicine. In 1931, scholastic standards were raised, and the college became a fully accredited member of the Middle Atlantic States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.16 In 1933, women were enrolled for the first time, and they now constitute nearly a third of the student body. At the present, Wagner College also confers the degrees of associate in arts and associate in applied science and, for the first

15 In December 1941, 10 acres of land adjoining the campus were given to the college by Philip Berolzheimer. In 1949, Wagner added again to its campus in purchasing Oneata, the 18-acre estate of General William Green Ward, an area that was to become known as “West Campus” and today houses the football stadium. Those two additions brought the total acreage of the college to more than 75 acres. 16 A year later, however, Wagner’s accreditation was suspended. It was not until 1936 that accreditation was restored.

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time in its history, will offer courses leading to the degree of master of arts when the summer session opens July 2, 1951. Although Wagner’s past history has been one of unceasing struggle in the face of adverse circumstances, its future necessitates continued surveillance, for it seems destined to be a bright and fruitful one. At the present time, the institution is seeking to procure funds for a new gymnasium and women’s dormitory,17 which will be ready for use by September 1951. Through the United Lutheran Church’s Christian Higher Education Year appeal, the college will receive $350,000, all to be raised among New York Synod congregations. Although the commendable results of the CHEY drive place no special obligations on the school, Wagner must needs gain thereby a renewed sense of moral obligation and responsibility to the church under whose auspices the money is being raised. The college’s indebtedness to the church is not a financial one, rather one which realizes that — even today — the church is willing to serve the college. The college, in turn, bears the responsibility of serving the church in every way possible and academically feasible!

The alumni of the college Wagner College’s alumni — about 1,200 living — have contributed in many immeasurable ways to the religious welfare of their respective communities. Throughout the years, 338 graduates of Wagner have entered the Lutheran ministry. Of this number, 158 are now serving the United Lutheran Synod of New York, and 107 are in the service of the church elsewhere. There are 18 graduates on such faculties as Muhlenberg and Roanoke colleges, the universities of Columbia, Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia, Mary Baldwin, Westminster and Denver. The Rev. George Aus, Class of 1925, is professor of practical theology at Luther Seminary, and the Rev. Theodore Tappert, Class of 1926, is professor of church history at the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia. As a further criterion of its leadership, five of the seven conference presidencies of the Synod are now occupied by Wagner alumni. In and outside the United Lutheran Church, Wagnerians are participating in a wide variety of religious activities: Mr. Henry Endress, Class of 1938, is secretary of stewardship for the ULC. The Rev. Carl Koppenhaver, Class of 1943, one of the leading men in the field of religious journalism, is editor of the United Lutheran Publishing House bulletin service and director of the ULC’s News Service. The Rev. William Villaume, Class of 1935, has been elected executive secretary of the

17 Sutter Gymnasium and Guild Hall.

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Department of the Urban Church of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Dr. Frederick Reissig, executive secretary of the Washington (D.C.) Council of Churches, was graduated from Wagner in 1914. The Rev. John Futchs, Class of 1927, has served as president of the Rocky Mountain Synod. The Rev. Carl Futch, Class of 1924, is director of the Lutheran Welfare Association of New Jersey. The Rev. Herman F. Reissig, Class of 1920, is on the Council for Social Action of the Congregational Christian Churches. Everett Jensen, Class of 1940, is a missionary in Hawaii. Oscar Werner, Class of 1906, and Mildred Ernst, Class of 1944, are serving in India. Wagner graduates are serving as chaplains in hospitals and other institutions, as well as in the armed forces. At the present time, there are 56 students enrolled at the college who are preparing for the ministry: 48 are Lutheran, 6 are Episcopalian, and 2 are Moravian. It might be noted that during the 1920s, virtually the entire student body was preparing for the Christian ministry; today, only about 5 percent of the students are preparing for the pastorate,18 yet this percentage includes a greater number of students than the 100 percent of 30 years ago.19

The emergence and activities of the college’s Student Christian Association

It was not until the late 1920s that Wagner’s student enrollment came to include a fair number of individuals not planning to enter the Christian ministry. Thus it is not until 1930 that a “religious association” serving and fulfilling the spiritual needs of all students was brought into being. This association, called “The Lampadia Council,” was founded through the initiative of Prof. Willis Stuart Hinman. It functioned in a comparatively loose manner. Although every student automatically became a member by the very fact of his enrollment in the college, the group often took on the appearance of a Lutheran student organization headed and run by Lutherans. Although Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist students were also members, there was great difficulty in electing non-Lutheran students to office. (On one occasion, three Lutherans were purposely placed on the same ballot along with one non-Lutheran nominee, but with ill success, for one of the Lutherans still won the office.) Religious activities during the 16 years of the Lampadia Council’s existence were many and varied: chapel services were held five times a week, special services on such occasions as Christmas, or Thanksgiving 18 Actually, the percentage was more like 2.9. 19 Almost, but not quite. Registration from 1918 through 1929 ran from 42 students to 134.

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Day; during the Lenten season, discussion groups were invited to meet at Dr. Hinman’s home; Bible study groups were active in the dormitories; a social service committee made occasional visits to the Staten Island Old Peoples’ Home; arrangements were made for the orchestra and singing group to visit the Staten Island, Marine, Richmond Memorial, and St. Vincent’s hospitals. (The reception at St. Vincent’s was always the most cordial and welcome of all, for the Catholic sisters cheerfully worked with the singers from the very top to the bottom floor, and invariably treated them to coffee and cake.) The proportionately large number of pre-seminarians were under the direct guidance of Prof. Hinman; he often took them to his church, where they assisted in the liturgy and worked with the young people; a number were also placed in Luther League and Sunday School positions; the pre-seminarians met as a group at least once a month, usually to hear prominent and worthy speakers address them on a variety of subjects. A high spot in one series of talks was when Mr. Henry Beisler, and Mr. S.F. Tilleen, then vice president of the Chase National Bank, spoke on the spiritual needs of the layman. Non-preministerial students were readily admitted and welcomed to this group of young men — and often came to enter a Lutheran seminary along with their fellows. With an enrollment of 100 to 250 students during these 16 years,20 it was certainly a comparatively less arduous task to exert a religious influence over the student body than today. By 1945, as the student population had increased and grown less intact, as the representatives of the various faiths became more numerous, the inadequacy of the Lampadia Council in its organization and its carrying out of its responsibility to the religious life of the campus became clearer and more marked. The following excerpts from the minutes of the Lampadia Council give sufficient evidence of the determined steps taken to alleviate the causes of an unwholesome and unhealthy situation:

Oct. 10, 1945 — It has been brought to the attention of the Council that not enough is being done for the religious life of the campus. The following suggestions were made in relation to this: a good discussion to be held once a month led by a prominent, well-versed man; put books on library shelves related to the topic of the month; create an interest in these discussions.

Feb. 4, 1946 — A report was given by Mr. Ahrend and Miss Dickert concerning a meeting they had had with Dr. Langsam

20 Low enrollment during this period was 117 students (1932); high, 510 students (1942).

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[president of the college] and Pastor Heiges [then Lutheran Student Association pastor at Columbia University]. Dr. Langsam felt some reorganizing should be done in Lampadia, so that its work would be more far-reaching and successful. The matter was discussed, and it was decided that the whole council should meet with Dr. Langsam to see what could be done.

Feb. 11, 1946 — A special meeting of the whole Council with Dr. Langsam was held, and after much discussion it was decided that the Lampadia Council act as an Executive committee for a campus Student Christian Association. Contact is to be made with the Rev. Heiges concerning affiliation with this Movement.

March 4, 1946 — Mr. Ahrend gave a full report of the Student Christian Movement as a result of a meeting with Pastor Heiges. The Constitution Committee will meet in connection with this, drawing up a constitution after the form of the SCA.

April 8, 1946 — The SCA constitution of Gettysburg [College] was read, and it was voted that we accept it as our own, with certain minor changes to suit our situation at Wagner.

May 6, 1945 — The new SCA constitution has been adopted by the present council. The next step is to get the approval of the Student Body and then call together all who are interested in the new religious organization. The Lampadia Council will function as the executive committee of the group, but on a different basis from previously.

The establishment of a Student Christian Association at Wagner College marked a turning point in the voluntary religious activity program of the student body. It was a step toward a more democratic representation, not only of the various faiths of the campus community, but also of the student population as a whole. National affiliation impressed upon members of the new organization a fuller, deeper sense of responsibility in terms of achievement, effectiveness and universality. They were now part of a worldwide movement. A feeling of security and unity, coupled with a sense of working together with other campus SCAs throughout the nation and the world, made for an invigorated and re-strengthened organization which soon was to carry out its aims forcefully and energetically. Its purpose was clear and unhesitating:

To lead students to faith in God through Christ; to promote them into active relationship with the church; to promote their growth in Christian faith and character, especially through prayer and the study of the Bible; to influence them to devote themselves in united effort with all Christians to make the will

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of Christ effective in human society and to extend the Kingdom of God throughout the world.21

There is little doubt that the Student Christian Association at Wagner College wields a remarkably great influence on the campus. It is, in and by itself, the strongest single student organization in terms of publicity, activity and range of effectiveness. A glance at the varied and many functions of Wagner’s SCA during the 1949-50 school year will quickly dispel any misgivings concerning the important and strategic place which this religious organization holds in the student life of the college. Twice during the month the SCA has regularly scheduled meetings at which members listen to, and participate in, meaningful and worthy discussions and talks, led or given by faculty members and outside speakers; attendance at these evening gatherings on the hill average 80. The SCA has taken direct action in providing entertainment for students remaining on campus on weekends when no other school event is taking place; dancing on Friday and Saturday evenings, at no charge, was sponsored by the Association; a series of Friday night movies featuring such highly rated films as “Stanley and Livingston,” “Song of Bernadette” and “Bell for Adano” was presented. Another activity of the SCA is the establishment and maintenance of a campus Sunday School designed for children of faculty members and students; two Wagner students are in charge of two classes. In 1949, the Association voted to bring a Displaced Person22 pre-seminarian to Wagner College; members of the SCA asked church congregations and organizations for the necessary funds; the success of this venture has enabled Karl Lantee of Estonia to come to the United States; he began studies at Wagner in September 1949. On March 1, 1950, a Christian Career Conference was held at the college. The day’s program began with a special chapel service at which the speaker was the Rev. David H. Bremer, secretary of the Board of Education of the United Lutheran Church in America. Later in the day, Pastor Bremer and his associate, Miss Mildred Winston, spoke in several classes on the topics of “Church Vocations for Men” and “Church Vocations for Women,” respectively. Also participating in the program were Dr. Michael Rapp, chief gynecologist and obstetrician at the Staten Island Hospital, Mr. Frank L. Egner, president of Funk & Wagnalls, and Prof. Margaret Gram, head of the Department of Home Economics at Queens College.

21 From Article II of the constitution of the Student Christian Association of Wagner College. 22 As European refugees displaced by World War II were called.

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The 1950 Lenten season was Wagner College’s period of “religious emphasis.” A special and strenuous effort was made to induce all members of the Wagner community to attend every chapel service, particularly the Friday services, which featured clergymen known for their concern for the problems facing the young people of today. Included were the Rev. Dr. Frederick R. Knubel, president of the United Lutheran Synod of New York, the Rev. Conrad Reisch of Bridgeport, Conn., and the Rev. Dr. Russell F. Auman of Manhattan. Also on the religious emphasis program was the distribution of devotional guides, and the setting aside of Wednesday evenings to Bible study. As part of its regular plan of activity, the SCA conducts vesper services every Tuesday and Thursday evening. These services are led by students. The Association has been well represented at a number of conferences, such as the spring SCM Conference at Troy, N.Y., the Leadership Training Conference at Camp Dudley and the Silver Bay Conference Center, and the Leadership Training Conference at Holiday Hills. Active SCA members who have attended any number of these conferences and who have had courses in religion act as leaders in the six Bible study groups that function on campus. Since 1947, the SCA has been the driving force behind Wagner’s Campus Community Chest drive, which is held each year. The offer by the Association of its services was approved by the Student Council in 1947, and since then the SCA has done most of the organization work and carried the major burden of responsibility for the success of the drive. Highlighting the campaigns of the past two years has been a full-sized carnival in which all student groups, clubs, and fraternities and sororities, as well as faculty members, fully participate. The SCA also sponsors boat rides up the Hudson River to Bear Mountain, and it initiated the making of therapeutic aids for the Lutheran Inner Mission of Brooklyn, N.Y. A final activity is clearly revealed in the following note received from the Augustinian Academy, secludedly located immediately adjacent to the Wagner campus:

Dear Students of Wagner College, We want to thank those young men and women who sang carols for the students of the Augustinian Academy. They certainly showed the true and blessed spirit of Christmas. We wish you a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

We, the Students

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The Student Christian Association exists as the only student religious organization at Wagner College. As such, it has the sincere and hearty support of the administration, and is cognizant — although not always fully appreciative — of that support. The Association has virtually full priority on the matter of dates of functions; its calendar of events is made up before that of any fraternity, sorority or club. Under the guidance of the college chaplain, it is in many respects a growing force whose youth is disguised by the central and strategic role that it truly plays. SCA leaflets, bulletins and posters are found everywhere, carrying announcements of chapel programs, names of visiting speakers and previews of social and religious gatherings. Officers of the Association are a hustling, determined and earnest group of undergraduates, who occasionally have little patience with the problems the administration must needs face in its efforts to meet SCA demands. One urgent need, for example, is that of a permanent chapel serving only religious purposes; the present chapel must of necessity serve also as examination room, theater, basketball court and dance floor. This situation cannot be altered until the building program is completed. A perplexing and challenging problem which Wagner’s SCA faces today — and will continue to face — is one involving the non-Protestant representation within the student body. Of about 960 students:

• 27 percent are Catholic; • 5 percent are of the Jewish faith; • 37 percent are Lutheran — and this latter percentage will

undoubtedly increase when the college acquires more dormitory space for out-of-town students;

• 31 percent come from all other Protestant denominations. Requests for a Newman Club have been denied, as have those for a Lutheran Student Association and similar denominational organizations. A Staten Island Newman Club for Collegiate Students has been formed, but must exist as an off-campus group with resulting mediocre success. A Lutheran Student Association exists in name only — that is, it is not officially recognized, and its membership participates only in off-campus activities sponsored by the Lutheran Student Federation of Metropolitan New York. The foregoing circumstances are largely the result of the fact that “it has been the traditional policy of Wagner College that all students work together religiously, and to discourage

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the splitting up of the student body into different religious loyalties,” said the Rev. Paul John Kirsch, Wagner College chaplain. It cannot be denied that such a policy has been determined by the sincere and thoughtful efforts of the administration to provide the most effective and integrated program of voluntary religious activity. There are, however, two distinct circumstances that bear out the difficulties which this policy entails: First, the Student Christian Association often finds itself existing as a Lutheran club in disguise, primarily because such a large percentage of Lutheran students live on the campus and thus are more readily available for participation in any and all activities. Second, and more of a cause rather than a result of the preceding problem, is the fact that so few Catholic students participate in and support SCA activities. Positive steps have been taken to alleviate both of these rather disturbing and unwholesome situations. Indeed, there have been many non-Lutheran students who have been more active in the SCA than Lutheran students, but the former have constituted exceptions to the general picture. Efforts to bring Catholics into active participation in SCA activities have been thwarted by the consistent refusal of the great majority of these students to cooperate; needless to say, a very small percentage of them attend chapel services.

The chaplain, the guidance director, and the Department of Religion and Philosophy

Wagner College has a full-time chaplain for students. He is the Rev. Paul John Kirsch, who directs an extensive program of counseling, the Student Christian Association, and chapel services. Until February 1949, Pastor Kirsch was both chaplain and associate professor of religious studies, and was then relieved of his teaching duties, giving him the opportunity of devoting all his time and efforts to the position of chaplaincy. He also serves on a number of committees: Admissions, Chapel, Dormitory and Student Relations, Library, and Synod Relations; he is an elected faculty member on the Wagner College Council, serves on the Board of Traditions as well as the Board of Religious Activities, and is an advisor to the pre-ministerial students. Any student, upon making application for admission to Wagner College, becomes immediately acquainted with the emphasis placed on the development of Christian character. A personal interview with the director of admissions is immediately followed by a talk with Pastor Kirsch, who makes clear and concrete the college’s hope and desire that the applicant will add to the religious life of the campus. The prospective student is informed of a prescribed course in

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religion; he is made aware of the fact that Wagner stands for Christian ideals, that Christianity is lived in and outside of the college classrooms. Chapel attendance is not compulsory, but “all students are expected (and urged) to attend chapel regularly.” The applicant is given every opportunity by the chaplain to raise questions, to consider and to evaluate the step he is taking in choosing Wagner as his college. Pastor Kirsch, a graduate of Wagner College, Class of 1933, and of the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia, preaches at least once a week at the morning chapel exercises, and also at most of the “Church on the Hill” services held on one Sunday during the month. He has his own private office, conveniently located in a quiet part of the main building. His home, which is located immediately on the campus, is open to all students at all times, and is known for the “only good cup of coffee on Grymes Hill.” Another aspect of the college’s concern for the individual student is the guidance program under the direction of Dr. John E. Crawford. As director of guidance and vocational counseling, Dr. Crawford reorganized and now coordinates all student guidance facilities. He is consultant to the faculty on classroom problems, to the student body as a whole, and to individuals. He has nothing directly to do with discipline, but is regularly consulted by the Dean’s Office. All students are encouraged to become as self-directing and self-reliant as possible. Dr. Crawford never sends for a student; rather, he waits for students to come to his office on their own initiative; then he simply discusses the facts of the problem the young person may have, and attempts to leave the final decision to the individual concerned. The whole guidance program is correlated closely with the chaplain’s office, the health department, and other administrative offices. The Religion and Philosophy Department of Wagner College is headed by Prof. Viljo K. Nikander, who, with associate professors, has integrated a new course, “Religion and Life,” into the curriculum. In February 1949, the Department of Religion was combined with the Department of Philosophy for the purpose of “not so much bringing philosophy under the wing of religion, but precisely to integrate two departments which more specifically could foster the Christian purpose of the college,” Prof. Nikander said. This reorganization also included a strengthening factor in that the combined staff of the new department came to include four professors holding Ph.D. degrees teaching full-time, and one Ph.D. and one Th.D. teaching part-time. The religion and philosophy section is considered the basic department of the college, for it serves

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to integrate in various ways the contributions to the field of learning made by the other departments. In the near future, regular informal get-togethers with members of all other departments will be initiated in order to stimulate and facilitate a profitable and wholesome exchange of ideas. Prof. Nikander said, “In the teaching of philosophy and religion, we seek to give the student some principle with which to unify his entire college studying and career. We seek to enable a student to see a true unity in the education he receives.” In a step to implement this desire, a new 6-hour course in religion has been instituted, supplanting the previous course of instruction consisting of a semester of Old Testament and a semester of “The Life of Christ.” Insight into the new course is presented in the following outline loosely connected with liberal use of quotations:

RELIGION AND LIFE

Foreword: This course, entitled Religion 1-2, is the outcome of what the authors believe to be a unique endeavor. We know of no other book which does the kind of thing we hope to do, and that is to find a way by which Christianity can become, not just another course in religion, but significant for the student’s own life. Factual, historical, and systematic study of religion and of Christianity is not neglected. Every effort will be made, however, to indicate the vital connection religion has or should have with man’s everyday experiences in both personal and collective living.

George W. Hackman Charles W. Kegley Viljo K. Nikander

The nature of religion: The aim of this course: The purpose of Religion 1 is to give the student some understanding of the meaning of religion. In view of the fact that objections are sometimes raised to a required course in religion, this introduction tries to clarify the importance and place of religion in life and in the college curriculum. The main body of the course is concerned with presenting the essentials of the Christian heritage which has been the common foundation of the history, civilization and culture of the western world.

I. Why religion, why study religion, why study the Christian faith

II. The nature of religion III. Ways of knowing religion IV. How the Bible came to be: origin of literature contained

in the Bible

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V. The meaning of the Old Testament: its important teachings; Moses; prophetic Judaism; transition to the New Testament. (Required Bible readings)

VI. The life of Jesus: background of the world out of which Christianity arose; the Greco-Roman cultural setting; major events in the life of Jesus. (Required Bible readings)

VII. God: from animism to theism; the Christian view of God VIII. Man: what is he; his plight and possibilities as God’s

creature IX. God’s work of salvation: the incarnation of divine love;

the cross as the supreme expression of divine love

Religion in life: The aim: Religion 2 is devoted to the application of religion and of religious ideals to everyday living. The relevance of religion to all the important areas of personal and collective life is considered. Following an analysis of the major aspects and trends of contemporary life and civilization and a presentation of the more significant rival faiths, we endeavor to show that the Christian faith and ideals will provide the more adequate answer to the individual and social problems of our generation.

The question facing us now is: How can religion be applied to contemporary life? It is generally agreed that our individual and collective life today is far from healthy. Ours is, in short, a sick civilization. We propose, therefore, first of all, to diagnose the patient — our civilization — to discover the state of its health or illness. Secondly, we shall examine some of the representative remedies that are being offered. Finally, we shall endeavor to indicate that Christianity is the only adequate way to the restoration of the health of man.

I. Important trends and characteristics of contemporary civilization — in following spheres of life: economic, political, social, cultural. (Required readings: from works of Harry Emerson Fosdick, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Amos N. Wilder, D. Elton Trueblood, John C. Bennett, et al.)

II. Some proposed answers to modern man’s needs given “in an ascending scale, ranging from the less important and less commendable to the more effective and satisfying.” — Escapism, irrationalism, authoritarianism, scientism, non-Christian religion (viz. Hinduism), characteristics and defects discussed as with Buddhism, Muhammedanism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism. (Required readings: Robert M. Hutchins, Adolf Hitler, Frederick West, Nels F.S. Ferre, et al.)

III. The Christian solution: Religion applied to individual life; relationship of religion to the individual; the role of religion in the creation of wholesome personality in the four major interests of every man, viz. thinking, working,

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play, love. (Required readings from : Martin Luther, Elton Trueblood, William Temple, John E. Crawford, et al.)

Conclusion: The effort has been made to show the positive contributions of religion to four major aspects of human life. Recognizing that so much of life fails to become what it can and should be, we may summarize something of what we have learned by saying that (1) thinking should not be merely observing and adjusting to environment but creative intelligence seeking adequate means for proper ends; (2) working should not be mere labor but the sense of joy in a vocation; (3) play should not be mere relaxation but re-creation; (4) love should not be mere physical activity but physical, mental, and spiritual mutuality. Thinking, working, playing, and loving, thus properly understood, and inspired by religion, can give to any individual’s life something of the symphonic beauty and power which God intended that it possess.

IV. Religion applied to collective life: in the economic life, in the political life, social life

Beside the above year course, “Religion and Life,” which every candidate for the A.B. or B.S. degree must take, four other courses in religion are offered: “The History of Religions” (a comparative study of the religions of the world), “Major Christian Beliefs,” “Archaeology and the Bible,” and “Sacred Literature” (a study of Old Testament lyrics and psalms, the Sermon on the Mount, passages from the Gospel of John, etc.). Specifically, and point by point — how does Wagner fulfill its distinctive function and responsibility as a Christian college? First, under “Aims and Policies,” Wagner’s catalogue gives a brief, clear-cut statement and understanding of ideals and goals:

Wagner College is a Christian college, affiliated with the United Lutheran Church in America through the United Lutheran Synod of New York. As such, it encourages the growth of Christian convictions and their application to everyday living. The college believes that the purpose of education is to help each student develop his intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic, physical, and social abilities. It seeks to familiarize the student with the major branches of knowledge, to help him attain proficiency in one or more fields, and to stimulate critical and creative thought. It stresses the opportunities and obligations of the student as a member of society within a worldwide community. In order to facilitate the pursuit of these aims, Wagner College has always emphasized the selection of faculty

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members who are qualified not only by training and experience but by virtue of their character and their ability as teachers. Good teaching is a primary concern of the entire administration and faculty.

Not only are these aims made clear by means of the college bulletin, but also by verbal and public declaration to each entering student, and alumni members. The aims and policies as stated above are implemented in numerous ways, particularly by a Department of Religion and Philosophy that makes clear to its students that religion and education belong together, and seeks to make religion integral in the curriculum. Second, Wagner provides curricularly for courses in religion that reach every student, without exception. Through the efforts of a most capable and competent group of staff members, religion is “dispassionately appraised and passionately expressed.” A specific knowledge of religion is basically and fundamentally taught; challenging and controversial issues of the various faiths are occasionally hit upon, but the student is given ample freedom to accept or reject as his own conscience and belief see fit. High academic standards and discipline are maintained, and the professors of religion and philosophy hold the expressed desire that their department occupy an integral place in the undergraduate curriculum. Third, the college does provide concern for the kind of faculty it employs. It insists upon teachers and administrators who are professionally competent and possess Christian convictions. The constitution of the college contains the requirement that every member of the faculty declare membership “in some one church.” The college’s attempt to provide high-quality education is reflected in the fact that almost half of the faculty holds title to the Ph.D. degree. Finally, there is a positive desire and attempt on the part of faculty and administrative personnel not only to do a first-rate intellectual job, but to live a life and set an example that upholds and preaches Christ. Fourth, the institution does provide opportunity for corporate worship in a number of ways. During the chapel services — and these are always earnest services of worship — on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, all provisions are made to impress upon the student the fact that he is expected to attend. No official function or formal gathering is permitted at this time; with the tolling of the chapel bell, the sandwich shop is closed along with all administrative offices. Although attendance at chapel is not compulsory, clear evidence is given that the religious training and the opportunity for meditation that the chapel service offers are

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considered to be of primary importance. On Wednesday evenings, for the benefit of night school students, all classes are excused at 7:30 p.m. — 25 minutes ahead of schedule — to permit attendance at night chapel services. Vesper services are held both Tuesday and Thursday evenings. “Church on the Hill” services take place on one Sunday morning of each month; and, on other Sundays, a special school bus transports students to and from Trinity Lutheran Church. Fifth, Wagner actively sponsors a voluntary program of religious activities under the direction of an officially appointed and competently trained officer. The Student Christian Association, under the guidance of Chaplain Kirsch, is the sole and central channel of religious activity on the Wagner campus, and receives strong and evident support from the administration. Despite the desire and the attempt of the SCA for an ecumenical representation, the Association has been unable to cope with the problem created by the refusal of the great majority of Catholic students to support its efforts and activities. Sixth, the college provides for a fostering of religious and moral values in all administrative functions. The student body, through the Student Association, is provided with a democratic means of regulating student activities and of advancing student interests. Every attempt is made to impress upon each student the responsibility he bears as an individual as regards his conduct on and off the campus. Although the use of alcoholic beverages is forbidden at any and all on-campus activities, its use and the responsibility for its use at any off-campus affair is borne by the fraternity, sorority or club sponsoring the activity. Unsatisfactory conduct is dealt with strictly, yet with a Christian understanding of the needs and problems of the individual. A counseling plan is provided by the offices of the president, the dean, the chaplain and the director of guidance, all attempting to individualize to an extremely remarkable extent the individual student, to give unlimited guidance to the student in the light of his own disturbing problems, be they economic, moral or spiritual. Seventh, the administration and faculty put their influence and support on religious ideas in an intelligent way. Religion is felt to have its proper basic place in the academic, social and spiritual life of the campus community, but it is not lugged into places where it does not belong. Academic freedom is limited only by the concern the college has for the kind of faculty it employs; in other words, in almost every case, a faculty member by the very fact of his acceptance to the college faculty will express views that are not merely neutral but indeed pro-Christian. The religious view of

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Wagner is definitely not a narrow one, but rather “a liberating and liberalizing one,” one that is, at its heart, intellectually defensible. The college is church-related, but not church-controlled. All property is owned by the Board of Trustees. The United Lutheran Synod of New York does nominate 12 of the 21 trustees of the college, but these nominees must then be elected by the board. The other 9 trustees are chosen by the board itself and by the alumni; these 9 are submitted to the Synod for its approval, but they are again elected by the board itself. The Lutheran Synod does give the college an annual financial grant, but the institution does remain “entirely free of outside control except insofar as public opinion is a healthy check on any institution,” wrote Wagner College President Walter C. Langsam in a recent letter. “We are responsible only to the State Education Department, as is every other college — public, independent or church-controlled — in the state of New York.”

Conclusion The writer cannot deny that the picture he has drawn of Wagner is indeed a bright one. Negative aspects and criticisms may well seem lacking — not, however, because such has been the writer’s purpose. On the contrary, he has sought to be fully critical, yet has found it unreasonable and grossly misleading to make a negative generalization simply because, for example, one member of the faculty happens, on occasion, to act “un-Christian” due to a headache or the effects of an ulcer. As a graduate of the college [Class of 1949], the writer may needs admit to an overall biased view. He has known its intimacy and warmth. He will always be indebted to the many members of the faculty whose guidance and words of inspiration have brought him to seek the fullness and wonders that human life offers. By virtue of attendance at other institutions of higher learning, the writer has been in a position to compare and appreciate Wagner’s Christian atmosphere. He met his wife at this college. Furthermore — and finally — were anyone ever to inquire what gave him the initial and most forceful impetus to enter the Christian ministry, his immediate and only reply would be: My three years as a student at Wagner College.

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The founding of Wagner College and the early years of its development

by Walter Thomas Schoen Jr., May 1957 In the latter half of the 19th century, a sweeping wave of immigrants descended on the shores of the United States. This deluge included peoples from all over the world. Not unimportant among them were people of Germanic origin who flocked to all sections of the country. In the upper half of New York state, many thousands of German immigrants settled down to the problem of making their way in a strange new world. Their way of living was different from that of the people already established. If there was, however, any one thing the immigrants had in common with the Americans, it was religion. Perhaps they worshiped in a different way, but the God to Whom they prayed was nevertheless the same God. And it was to this God that the Germans looked in their efforts to succeed, to prosper, and to find contentment. For if there is one universal to Whom all men turn in their need, it is the God they worship. In addition to the difference in their customs, language, and ideas, the Germans were also faced with the need of finding an understanding minister to whom they might go for advice and solace. There were, of course, Lutheran ministers in New York state who were not unaware of the immigrants’ needs, as evidenced by the following statement:

From every direction comes an urgent demand for German-speaking ministers. Not only on the broad expanse of the German home mission, not only in the far West among those who have recently immigrated, and who are like sheep without a shepherd (I Kings 22:17; Matthew 9:36; Mark 6:34), but also in the East, which has been settled for so long a time. … In truth, everywhere in America there is a lack of capable Lutheran preachers who are not only able to make themselves understood in German in time of necessity, but who, also, because of having an indispensable acquaintance with the language, customs, and habits of the country, are the complete masters of the German language, and are able to comply with the obviously reasonable demand of German congregations that the Word of God and Luther’s interpretation of it be preached to them in Luther’s tongue, with acceptable comprehension and edification.

– “Article II: Aim” from the Constitutional By-laws of the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester, 1885

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As indicated by this excerpt, New York was not the only section of the United States that required able ministers. Pennsylvania was also aware of the existing conditions in the church. In 1882, the Rev. J.H. Baden, a Lutheran minister from Brooklyn, New York, appeared before the New York Ministerium of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and discussed a paper that he had prepared for the board of trustees of the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia. Rev. Baden said that more emphasis should be placed on the teaching of German, and blamed the preparatory schools for not adequately training their students. Out of 13 students at the seminary, 12 were able to converse in both English and German, but Baden pointed out that the German was not as good as it should be, and suggested that one of the qualifications for admittance to the school should be the ability to speak fluent German as well as English.23 The following year, in another report concerning the Philadelphia seminary, Dr. A. Späth asked, “Weher genugend vorbereitete deutsche Studenten fur unsere Anstalt zu gewinnen sind?” [Roughly translated, “Where are we to find enough students prepared to study in German?” –Ed.]24 Prior to this time, this problem had been a matter of concern for at least two members of the Ministerium, the Rev. Alexander Richter and the Rev. George H. Gomph. Richter, a native-born German who had been a minister for five years,25 often traveled from Rochester, New York, to Pittsford, one of its suburbs, to talk over his problems with the elder, more experienced man, Gomph, pastor of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. Gomph had been in the ministry 14 years. In Gomph’s front yard in Pittsford stood an apple tree, under which the pastors would sit for hours, discussing mutual interests and enjoying each other’s company. Perhaps the need for ministers was the problem most frequently discussed. With three exceptions, every

23 J.H. Baden, from “Bericht der Directoren des Theol. Seminars in Philadelphia,” a report read at the Third Meeting of the New York Ministerium, Friday, June 16, 1882, and published in “Verhandlungen der Achtundachtzigsten Synode des Ev. Luth. Ministeriums des Staates New-York un Augrenzender Staaten und Lander” (New York: Druck on Herborn und Ahlbrecht, 1882). 24 Späth, read at meeting of Ministerium, June 5, 1883. “Verhandlungen,” 1883. 25 Editor: Richter was pastor of the First German Evangelical Zion’s Lutheran Church in Rochester from 1881-1891. Richter was ordained in 1878. Zion’s was the oldest German Lutheran church in the Rochester area.

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church in the New York Ministerium conducted services in German.26 In the fall of 1883,27 Richter appeared before the Rochester Lutheran Pastoral Conference with a paper he had written, “Woher Nehmen Wir Unsere Deutschen Prediger?”28 [“From whence shall we obtain our German ministers?”] Richter was only reiterating what had been for most of the members of the conference a salient question. Among his listeners were: Pastor Gomph; the Rev. Charles S. Kohler, Church of the Reformation; the Rev. C.N. Conrad, Concordia Lutheran Church; and ministerial candidate George Seel, of Rochester.29 Apparently as a result of this conference, the General Council of the New York Ministerium of the Evangelical Lutheran Church requested Pastor Richter to establish a proseminary for the purpose of educating young men for the ministry. Under the leadership of Richter and Gomph, a Supreme Court charter dated October 1, 1883 authorized the establishment of the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester.30 On October 15, 1883, a meeting of the Rochester Lutheran Pastoral Conference was “called for the purpose of organizing a Board of Directors for the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester, N.Y. Members of the Conference present [were] Rev.s A. Richter, C.S. Kohler, C.N. Conrad, G. Seel of Rochester and G.H. Gomph of Pittsford, N.Y.” It was “resolved that the members of the conference shall constitute the Board of Directors. On motion the Board proceeded to election of officers, who were elected to serve until the last meeting of the board preceding the next meeting of the N.Y. Ministerium in June 1884. The following officers were elected: Pres. 26 Alfred Beck, “An Historical Account of the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester, New York.” The three churches were: Church of the Reformation, Rochester; Holy Trinity, Buffalo; Church of the Redeemer, Utica. 27 Editor: In his earlier essay in this volume, Harald Kuehne dates the publication of this paper in August 1883. 28 “Geschichte des Evangelical Lutheran Ministeriums Von Staate New York, 1883,” as quoted in Beck, page 1. 29 Alfred Beck. 30 Although the original charter is evidently not extant, all formal papers and legal documents of Wagner College, and all papers of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York pertaining to Wagner College, mention the original charter as being granted on this date. Numerous evidences of this may be found in the official documents in the office of the president of Wagner College. For specific mention of this date, see petition submitted from the Wagner College Board of Trustees to the Regents, April 24, 1952, which states, “On October 1, 1883, the Supreme Court of the State of New York granted to your petitioner its first charter.”

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Rev. A. Richter of Rochester, N.Y.; Secretary G.H. Gomph of Pittsford, N.Y.; Treasurer Mr. J.S. Margrander of Rochester, N.Y.”31 A few years earlier, St. Matthaus Akademy, a school for training ministers, had been founded in New York City, but shortly after its establishment the relationship between it and the Ministerium had been severed.32 There is evidence, however, that neither the Akademie in New York nor the Proseminary in Rochester had been the earliest attempt at establishing a school of this kind. The history of the Ministerium mentions that “the need of an institution in which future ministers might receive the necessary preparatory training for Seminary was felt most urgently during the two decades preceding the founding of the Lutheran Proseminary in 1883. The Newark Akademy at Lyons, N.Y. had failed, and the Matthaus Akademy in New York had been estranged from the New York Ministerium.”33 The failure of the Lyons academy was further emphasized in a letter from Augustus C. Redderoth to Lois Dickert, dated June 15, 1950. 34 “Dr. Giese had been called to the institution in Newark and he resigned from his Congregation and moved in the fall to Newark with his wife and three children. But the treasury of the school was in bad shape and when Christmas came, he had not received any salary. So he resigned and had to take a small church in Cumberland, Pennsylvania. I presume that was the end of the school in Newark. Then comes a new beginning in Rochester.” Now that the school in Rochester had received its charter, a building was needed in which to hold classes. Mr. Christian Seel, an elder of Zion Church, was the owner of a brick building [his home] located at the intersection of Jay and Magne streets. An agreement was reached between Mr. Seel and the board of directors for the use of Seel’s home. Thus, with unswerving courage, a touch of audacity, the grace of God, and ten dollars,35 arrangements were made to start classes in the new institution. The secretary was authorized to order

31 Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Lutheran Proseminary, October 15, 1883. 32 Editor: For more about St. Matthew’s Academy and Newark College, elements of Wagner College’s “prehistory,” see the fourth essay in this volume, “Founding Faces & Places: The Genesis of Wagner College.” 33 “Geschichte des New York Ministeriums” (John Nicum, 1888), p. 324. 34 ALS [Autographed Letter Signed] from Augustus C. Redderoth to Lois Dickert, June 15, 1950. (MS in Wagneriana, Markham Room, Wagner College) [Redderoth was a professor at Wagner College from 1892 to 1896.] 35 Editor: As noted in the previous paper, this is an error repeated over and over from an early mistranscription. The school started with a treasury containing not $10 but $100, the gift of Justus Koch, a supporter from Philadelphia.

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six double-seat desks on the most reasonable terms available.36 Christian Seel’s son, the Rev. George Seel, was appointed temporary housefather,37 and the first class of six students entered the initial phase of their training. The original agreement entered into with Mr. Seel is obscure, but there is evidence that the situation was not without difficulties. On November 5, 1883, at a meeting of the board, “the subject for consideration was the difficulty between the housefather and Mr. Seel his father, and the question whether it would be necessary and desirable to move the institution to another locality. On motion Rev.s Richter and Kohler were appointed a committee to confer with Mr. Seel, with power to act in the matter of renting a part of the Seel homestead for school purposes.”38 At the next meeting of the board, “the committee appointed to confer with Mr. Seel Sr. relative to renting the seven rooms in the upper part of his house, reported that they had met Mr. Seel and upon making their statement found him very much surprised that any change was wanted by the authorities. He declared that he would not rent the said rooms to the institution. The committee further ascertained that Mr. Seel was willing to keep the boys upon the condition originally agreed upon, and also that he could make provision for as many more as would be likely to seek admission into the institution. On motion of Mr. Conrad it was resolved that the secretary be requested to convey the thanks of the Board to Mr. Seel for his willingness to do so much for the institution; and also to assure him that it was not from any dissatisfaction with, or want of appreciation of existing arrangements that the committee made the inquiries in reference to a change.”39 Despite a stormy beginning, a mere portent of future difficulties, the school struggled through its first year. The program of study was patterned after the German gymnasium, with six forms or classes. The gymnasium had originated in ancient Greece where it was used by the Greek youth as a place for exercise and discussion. The gymnasium after which Richter organized the Proseminary had been founded in 1536 by a German educator, Johann Sturm. Sturm’s aim was “to train pious,

36 Minutes, October 29, 1883. 37 Editor: This is the only extant account that refers to George Seel’s appointment as “temporary,” although it was indeed quite short — he resigned the next February when, according to an 1887 account by Richter, Seel was called to a congregation in Newark, New York. 38 Minutes, November 5, 1883. 39 Minutes, November 12, 1883.

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learned, and eloquent men for service in church and state using religion and the new learning as means.”40 When we consider Richter’s intentions when founding the school, he was not far from Sturm’s original aim. The curriculum of the Sexta, or lowest form, consisted of religion, German, Latin, English, world history, geography, natural history, arithmetic, penmanship, drawing and singing. The Quinta, Quarta and Tertia forms taught the same subjects as the Sexta in an advanced degree, augmenting them with Greek and American history, while the Secunda and Prima forms included the teaching of Hebrew, natural philosophy and chemistry. As time passed, the number of students increased as the “Proseminary admitted special students which were tutored as Praktische Abteilung [a practical division]. This course was dropped in due time to give the right of way to the regular 6-year instruction.”41 At the end of the first year of study, the board of trustees decided to celebrate the Christmas festivities with the students. On December 26, at seven o’clock in the evening, the members of the board met in Seel’s home and presented each student with candies, oranges, nuts, a copy of Luther’s “Geistliche Lieder” [“Spiritual Songs”], and the welcome news that a two-week vacation from classes would commence the next morning.42 During the next few months, enthusiasm for the new project was widespread in Rochester. Pastor Conrad of Concordia promised the board that his church would make an important contribution to the school’s treasury,43 following an example set by the members of St. Paul’s Church in Pittsford, who had already sent in contributions. The board voted to extend its thanks to a Mr. John G. Wagner for his gift of 150 savings banks, to be used in gathering contributions to the school.44 Apparently, however, the treasury was not in dire need, since at least five students received free tuition for their first year,45 and several applicants were refused admission because the board felt

40 Merritt Thompson, “The History of Education” (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1933). 41 ALS from William Arndt [a student in 1885] to Clarence C. Stoughton, March 15, 1937. (MS in Wagneriana, Markham Room, Wagner College) [Editor: The “special students” were those who were admitted in mid-course to the gymnasium curriculum.] 42 Minutes, December 10, 1883. [Editor: Other accounts indicate that this “vacation” was intended to give the board time to pull the school’s finances together so that it could continue through the remainder of the academic year.] 43 Minutes, January 7, 1884. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid.

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that the school could not “provide such instruction for the young men as they would need.”46 With the acceptance of additional students and the growth of the school, it was deemed necessary to increase the number of board members from seven to thirteen. The stipulation was made that no two members of the same family could become board members. Perhaps in appreciation of the services and contributions of the churches in the area, the board voted to seat one layman from St. John’s, one from Concordia, and four from Zion Lutheran Church.47 On February 7, 1884, Mr. John G. Wagner was elected as a member of the board of directors. It has not been determined under what conditions the school had been using Mr. Seel’s home, but at this time, a committee that had formed to seek a fitting location reported that it was considering Mr. Seel’s home, which was available for rent for two years at $400 a year, or for sale at $10,500. Perhaps in search of lower rates, the committee investigated a three-story house on South Avenue that was owned by a Mr. Reilly. Reilly’s 11-room house could be rented for $360 a year.48 Perhaps because of the contemplated move, the agreement with housefather Seel was ended, and a search for a new housefather was undertaken. Should the reader confuse the term “housefather” with the “housemother” we associate with the college dormitory, I should like to enumerate the duties a person filling this position in 1884 had to perform. The housefather had to be a Lutheran minister who not only would have responsibility for the financial matters of the school, but in addition would have to teach classes regularly. He had to be a father to the students, watching over their mental, physical and spiritual health and well being; he was also responsible to the board for the school’s property.49 A Pastor Ehrhardt of New York City, perhaps awed by the board’s requirements, refused a call to fill the position, as did Pastor J. Muehlhauser of Rochester. The Reverend Mr. Snyder of Canada accepted the call, but a few months later asked to be released from his obligation, as he did not want to leave Canada. Possibly in desperation, the board called Mr. Koennemann of New York City, who accepted the temporary position at a salary of $3 weekly, in addition to fuel, laundry, room and board, which were to be 46 Ibid. 47 Minutes, January 21, 1884. 48 Minutes, February 28, 1884. 49 Minutes, November 27, 1884.

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provided.50 Mr. Koennemann, who had recently emigrated from Germany himself, proved to be a poor choice. Several weeks had passed since the housing committee had inquired as to the possibility of renting other rooms. When a suitable building was located, the possessions of the school were moved to the new house at 33 South Avenue, on wagons furnished by Messr.s Bantleon and Karweick.51 The committee was instructed to purchase furniture and household necessities for the new building and also to investigate what provisions were located within the congregations and to “purchase the necessary supplies from those whose rates were most advantageous to the institution.”52 At the meeting of March 27, it was moved that “the various pastors be asked to make known among their congregations that all those who wish to donate vegetables and other foods to the institution deliver the same to 33 South Avenue, where they will be gratefully received.”53 The congregations responded with fruits, vegetables, clothing and firewood. Most of the classrooms were located on the first floor of Reilly’s building, with one on the second floor. The students lived on the second and third floors, two students to a room.54 On the whole, the Proseminary was getting along very well. Richter was enthusiastic about the progress being made, but he knew that financial aid was needed. On June 19, 1884, $784 was collected at a meeting of the New York Ministerium, which alleviated the financial problem for the time being.55 One other problem, however, was not so easily taken care of. Koennemann, the housefather recently arrived from Germany, was too much the disciplinarian, and several times Richter had spoken to Koennemann about his treatment of the students. Richter’s wishes were, however, not respected, and a letter drafted by the board requesting “a humane discipline, befitting this school,”56 was given to Koennemann. In August, the permission given to him to live in the school was revoked, and in November, Koennemann was

50 Minutes, March 20, 1884. 51 Ibid. The school was relocated on Monday, March 20, 1884. [Editor: March 20, 1884 was a Thursday, the regular meeting day of the board at the time. Another source says that the move took place on March 24, 1884, which was the following Monday.] 52 Minutes, March 27, 1884. 53 Ibid. 54 Personal interview by the author with Professor Theodore Palleske, Class of 1898, April 1957. 55 “Verhandlungen,” 1884. 56 Minutes, April 17, 1884.

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dismissed. At his dismissal, Pastor F.A. Kammerer of New York City was called as housefather for one year. According to the director’s minutes of February 28, 1884, it was voted that the salary of the housefather for the year April 1, 1884 to April 1, 1885 be $600. Since Kammerer was called during that period, I assume that he was paid at that rate. In December 1884, a constitution — largely the work of Richter — was drawn up, and plans were made to incorporate the school. In the same month, David Bantleon reported that the treasury balance was $1,076.03, the bulk of this money having been contributed by the Ministerium members. One short year after its beginning, the Proseminary boasted a 10,000 percent increase in its funds!57 In March 1885, the lease on the [Reilly] building had almost expired, and two board members — Messr.s Christ and Schlegel — were instructed to meet with the owner of the building to discuss renting it for another year. The committee was also authorized “to look around for another suitable location.”58 In April, the housefather’s report stated that the institution was in good order and that the relationship between teachers and pupils was a happy one. Kammerer also announced his intention of accepting a call to the Bethlehem Lutheran Church in New York, and the board directed that his resignation be accepted. There were to be strange consequences to Mr. Kammerer’s resignation.59 After due consideration, the housing committee once again decided that a change of location would be beneficial, and on May 1, 1885, the Proseminary moved to its third building in two years, a large, three-storied building located at 4 Oregon Street. Pastor Kammerer had left before the school moved, and Mr. C.G. Schneider, a Sunday school teacher, was temporarily hired as housefather. That it was difficult to obtain an able man for that position is evidenced by the statement the trustees made in extending their thanks to him “for his unusual willingness in taking upon himself the responsibilities of the office.”60 The tuition at this time was broken down into three segments, different rates being charged for the fall, winter and spring terms. The students paid $13 for the fall term, $10.50 for the winter term, and $8.50 for the spring, a total of $32. In addition, each student paid

57 Editor: Based on the mistaken assumption that the school was founded with a treasury containing $10. 58 Minutes, March 4, 1885. 59 Minutes, April 9, 1885. 60 Minutes, May 14, 1885.

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$2 per week for room and board for 40 weeks, and $10 per year for heat.61 Richter’s constitution, which had been drawn up some time before, had been amended, and on May 28, four weeks after the school had moved, the constitution was unanimously accepted and a new board elected. Mr. John Wagner, the Rochester businessman who had been very helpful in the past, was elected to the vice presidency.62 With the election of new officers, which involved a transfer of books and records, it was discovered that former housefather Kammerer had not been entirely honest in his dealings with the school. When Kammerer left, he signed an IOU for $18.06, maintaining that he had no funds. This sum, however, was not even an honest figure, as shown by the following statement: “It remains to be told, that after careful scrutiny, it was found that Pastor K. charged us twice for the following items … ” A list that follows in the minutes tells of the overcharged items. During a board meeting several weeks later, the minutes stated, “The results of an inquiry directed to the former housefather, P.K., was a very compromising one and revealed him to be a deceiver, all of which is plainly brought out in the president’s report herewith attached.”63 The history of the New York Ministerium adequately summarizes Kammerer’s accomplishments: “He [Koennemann] was succeeded by Rev. F.A. Kammerer who held that position for one year. It is God’s miraculous grace that in spite of this [God] did not permit the destruction of the enterprise.”64 Lest the modern college student think that school was easier in “the good old days,” an examination of the schedule for the years immediately following the adoption of the constitution will show that the Proseminary graduates had far more to complain about. The students were awakened by a bell that sounded at 6:30 a.m., 7 a.m. in winter. Breakfast was served 30 minutes later, after which the students attended chapel services for 15 minutes. Although there were no classes on Saturday, students were required to attend chapel, while the Sabbath was observed in accordance with strict regulations. All students had to attend church

61 Excerpts from the 91 Synod Meeting, June 12, 1885, Minutes of Board, May 28, 1885 [sic]. 62 Minutes, May 28, 1885. 63 Minutes, June 8, 1885. 64 From an 1887 report on the history of Wagner College by Alexander Richter, included in “Geschichte des New York Ministeriums” (ed. John Nicum, 1888), pp. 332-337. (MS in Wagneriana, Markham Room)

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services and Sunday school; there was no deviation from this rule. Two students were almost expelled for going to a baseball game instead of attending church. Because there was no equipment or place in which to play, athletics were very limited. Students were required to be in by 10 in the evening. They boarded in the school under the supervision of an unmarried professor who lived in the dormitory with the boys. In addition to their studies, the students were required to take care of the furnace, and to work in the basement dining room. School regulations stated that the students were required to bathe once weekly! The Proseminary provided books, but the students had to pay for all other supplies. There was a library on the first floor, but the only books available were those that had been donated. Students, however, had the use of the Baptist Seminary [i.e., Rochester Theological Seminary] library. All instruction was given in German, with the exception of English and mathematics.65 Despite inadequacies, rapid progress was being made. The curriculum was similar to that followed in the South Avenue school. Courses included biblical history, English grammar, geography, Latin, church history, German, religion, and Greek. The school year of 1885 ended on Thursday, May 28, with German and English declamations and essays and a farewell address given by the first graduate of the school, Mr. Hoffmann, who was graduated with honors.66 The next day, Friday, a picnic was attended by students, teachers and trustees, which was followed by a musical program in Zion Church.67 As Mr. Schneider, the temporary housefather, was not a pastor and since he had other duties, Pastor Richter corresponded with Mr. Paul Emil Kellner. After an exchange of letters, in which Kellner agreed to accept the housefather position that had been offered to him, the board voted on June 3 to send Mr. Kellner $200 for traveling expenses from Europe [spec., Russia] to Rochester. Mr. Kellner proved to be as controversial a figure as Pastor Kammerer.

65 John C. Krahmer (Class of 1893 and professor, 1897-1901), recollections of Wagner College, 1952. (MS in Wagneriana, Markham Room) 66 Editor: Francis Rudolph Hoffmann graduated from the Lutheran Proseminary at the age of 19. “Of course, he had been with us for a short time only, for he had received the greater part of his preliminary training in Germany,” Richter acknowledged. In 1888, Hoffmann was the first Wagner College alumnus to graduate from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. 67 Minutes, April 30, 1885. [Editor: Zion Lutheran, the school’s “mother church,” was less than half a mile from the Oregon Street campus.]

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When Mr. Kellner and his family arrived, they were temporarily taken in by the Wagners. Mrs. Kellner was engaged as matron to assist her husband in his duties. Some time later, a manager was engaged “who, together with his family, resided at the college. His duty was to keep the house and grounds in order, to serve meals, to attend the furnace, and to do the laundry.”68 There are conflicting statements as to the competence of the Kellners. William Arndt states, “It could hardly be expected that a man translated to entirely new surroundings could prove a success.”69 According to Alfred Beck, Kellner was loved and respected by both students and teachers, and was a wise administrator and capable leader.70 The history of the Ministerium, however, states, “A Saxon, Paul Emil Kellner by name, a recommended philologist, who had satisfactory educational references and who even had passed an examination by the state while yet in Germany, was called. His wife was to take care of the household. We were utterly disappointed in both of them.”71 Page 45 of the minutes of the 82nd Synod meeting, held in 1886, states, on the other hand, that “kitchen, bedroom, and classroom, which are under the supervision of Mrs. Kellner, a competent matron, are kept clean and in good order.” Perhaps a quotation from the “Geschichte des New York Ministerium” would be appropriate here: “It is indeed the sad experience of all institutions, especially the new ones, that teachers and staff are more or less troublesome.”72 The young institution was now making rapid strides. The lease on the [Oregon Street] building had almost expired, and Mr. Wagner, who was now a member of the finance committee, conferred with the owner with reference to the renewal of the lease. On September 29, 1885, a special meeting of the board took place in the home of President Richter, with all members present. Mr. Wagner reported that the property was for sale at $12,000. He said that a mortgage of $3,000 had been taken on the property, but did not into further detail. Perhaps the owner had mortgaged his property for $3,000, and now that it was for sale, that money was to be included in the purchase price. During a three-month grace period, which was to be obtained

68 From A. Richter’s 1887 report in Nicum’s “Geschichte des New York Ministeriums.” 69 William Arndt ALS. 70 Alfred Beck, p. 20. 71 From A. Richter’s 1887 report. 72 Ibid.

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by Wagner, the board was to compile a subscription list in order to solicit contributions. The next month, on October 1, 1885, under Chapter 319 of the laws of 1848, the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester was legally incorporated in the State of New York.73 By January 1886, $5,700 had been raised through subscriptions. Mr. Wagner, on behalf of the board, took a $7,000 mortgage for 10 years, with a semi-annual interest rate of 5 percent.74 The reader might question Mr. Wagner’s willingness to sign his name to and be responsible for a $7,000 mortgage for an institution that, although steadily improving, was not at all secure. He had, almost from the school’s beginning, contributed both time and money toward its improvement. Wagner had been born on August 10, 1824, at Bischmisheim, Prussia. When he was 14 years old, he and his family had immigrated to America. John settled down and studied to be a carpenter. He was soon recognized as one of the leading contractors of Rochester. His services as a builder were constantly in demand, as he was called upon to construct many of the most admired edifices in the city, among them the First Baptist Church and the Union Trust Building. Although he devoted more attention to his business than to politics, he was active in local circles, sitting as a member of the [Monroe County] Board of Supervisors from the Sixth Ward. Mr. Wagner was also a director of the Rochester German Insurance Company and director of the Genesee Brewing Company, besides being vice president of the board of trustees of the Proseminary. With his wife, a daughter, and one son, the Wagners lived a comfortable life.75 They were one of the leading families of Rochester. John’s devotion to religion was a marked feature of his whole career.76 He had frequently demonstrated this, and the taking of a mortgage was probably not at all surprising to the board members. The mortgage, however, was not to be the culmination of Wagner’s interest or devotion. A few years earlier, Wagner’s son

73 Certified copy of petition in president’s office, Wagner College. 74 Beck, p. 21. 75 Editor: John George Jr. and Catherine Susanna Wagner had a total of five children: three boys and two girls. By the time of the Wagner family’s involvement with the Proseminary, four of the children had died; only Caroline Philipina survived into adulthood. 76 The details here of John George Wagner’s biography come from a profile published in “Rochester and the Post Express: A History of the City of Rochester from the Earliest Times” (Rochester, N.Y.: Post Express Printing Co., 1895), pp. 154-55.

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George, who had been studying to enter the ministry, had died.77 Now, Mr. and Mrs. Wagner, with a generosity unprecedented in the school’s history, announced to the board of directors that the mortgage would not be necessary. For they, the Wagners, had decided to donate $12,000 to the Proseminary for the purpose of purchasing from Jackson and Company the property on the east side of Oregon Street, on which the school now stood. It has been assumed and erroneously stated that Wagner stipulated that the name of the school be changed as a memorial to his late son George. The Wagner College Protokolle [Minutes] states, however, that “the only stipulation that he [JGW] made was that this [the $12,000 gift] should be considered a memorial to his late son George, who was to have entered the Lutheran ministry. The generous gift of Mr. Wagner and his wife was accepted with the hearty thanks of every member of the board. It was further agreed, after some discussion, to change the name of the institution to Wagner Memorial Lutheran College.” 78, 79 Several months later, Richter was succeeded by the Rev. Joseph Rechtsteiner.80 Perhaps it is a disappointment to know that the man who “built” Wagner College was to leave it just when the future seemed bright. Richter, however, was apparently not “eased out,” but probably left voluntarily to take a congregation in Hoboken, New Jersey. Gomph was a member of the board at this time, and since he

77 Editor: J. George Wagner III died at the age of 19 on Oct. 15, 1873 — 10 years to the day before the founding of the school that would eventually be named for him. 78 Protokolle [Minutes], Wagner College, 1885-1905, entry on June 8, 1886. This is also mentioned in Beck, p. 21. 79 Editor: The writer asserts, “It has been assumed and erroneously stated that Wagner stipulated that the name of the school be changed as a memorial to his late son George.” While the minutes of the college’s board of directors support the writer’s assertion, the institution’s court petition to change its name from the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester to Wagner Memorial Lutheran College, dated July 27, 1886, claims that one of the reasons the court should allow the change is because “John G. Wagner of Rochester, N.Y. has offered and is willing to give the said institution the sum of twelve thousand dollars if it would change its name.” The petition was signed by Alexander Richter, who swore to the accuracy of its claims. 80 Editor: Schoen writes as if Richter had become director of the college after the departure of Paul Emil Kellner, but no date or description for Kellner’s departure is given, and neither of the brief accounts of the school’s early history written by Richter in 1887 mention anything about Richter himself serving as director or housefather between Kellner and Rechtsteiner, who was appointed director in September 1887.

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and Richter were good friends, it seems improbable that Richter was forced to leave.81 The school was now growing larger, with expenses steadily increasing. It soon became apparent that steps would have to be taken to ensure that the services being rendered to church and community would continue. The decision to transfer the school’s jurisdiction to other authorities was made when the board “offered the College under appropriate conditions to the New York Ministerium. Whether the Synod [would] accept this noteworthy offer of a valuable property, suitable for the purpose and furnished with necessary equipment, etc., [was to] be decided upon at the next annual conference.”82 Rechtsteiner lasted until 1889,83 when Pastor Jacob Steinhaeuser was called as director. Rechtsteiner remained with the school as a professor.84 Pastors Holstein and Kramer and Professor Buttermann taught with Steinhaeuser until 1892, when the three left. A new faculty was formed, consisting of Professor Carl Betz (who had remained with Steinhaeuser), Pastor Augustus Redderoth, and Professor John Schaeffer. It was this faculty “who actually transformed the Proseminary into a classical school whose diplomas were accepted by American and German Colleges and Universities,” according to Redderoth. Philip Kirchner and Theodore Palleske were the first students with credentials from Wagner College and the Philadelphia Seminary to be admitted to German universities.85 The formal transfer of Wagner College — which now had 42 students and a faculty of four — to the jurisdiction of the New York

81 Editor: Richter was not, in any sense, “eased out” of his involvement with Wagner College in the 1880s. He continued as pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Rochester until 1891, when he accepted a call to become pastor at St. Matthews German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hoboken, N.J. Richter continued serving on the board through the mid-1890s. Two documentary sources — Wagner College’s listing in the Rochester City Directory, and an article in a Rochester newspaper — name Richter as vice president of the board during this period, although the college’s own catalogue does not. 82 From A. Richter’s 1887 report in Nicum’s “Geschichte des New York Ministeriums.” 83 Editor: Other records show Rechtsteiner’s first term as director lasting until either June or the fall of 1888, when Steinhaeuser succeeded him. Schoen may be confused because Steinhaeuser was not formally invested as director, for reasons unknown, until October 1889. 84 Editor: Rechtsteiner also served later as acting director of the college, filling in from 1903 to 1904. 85 ALS from Augustus Redderoth to Walter Langsam, Nov. 18, 1946, and personal interview with Theodore Palleske, Class of 1898, in April 1957.

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Ministerium took place in June 1889.86 The following year, the first society in Wagner’s history, the Kalokagathia, later known as the Literary Society, was organized. This, of course, was the oldest of Wagner’s student organizations. The society, whose formation had been “encouraged by the authorities,” was formed to develop “forensic speaking, debate and knowledge of parliamentary rules.”87 With the Wagners’ donation, the school had continued to expand, but now encountered difficulties both within its own organization and from without, the latter in the form of legal troubles with New York state. The difficulty with the state arose as a result of a law that had been passed in 1892. In November 1893, the following letter was received by college officials:

To the Trustees of Wagner Memorial Lutheran College, I am directed to notify each trustee of Wagner Memorial Lutheran College that in accordance with the laws of 1892, chapter 378, section 331, the Regents will at their meeting on December 13, 1893, consider such changes in its charter as shall no longer entitle it to use the name college. …

Signed, Melvil L. Dewey,

Secretary88

The 1892 law stated that no institution which did not have a $500,000 endowment fund could use the name “college,” as this title misled the public. Although the school later fought against the ruling, we cannot assume that Dewey’s letter was received with utter dismay. John Nicum, a member of the board who later was to create difficulties as director, had apparently been in favor of changing the name of the school before the directive had been received. Although the Regents wanted the name “college” dropped from the title, Nicum wanted to eliminate the name “Wagner Memorial,” as he stated in a circular letter distributed to members of the board, where he wrote, “As much, therefore, as it is desirable for various reasons to drop the title ‘Wagner Memorial,’ it would not do to change it now, before the College is deeded (fee simple) to the Synod and the houses are disposed of.”89 The houses to which Nicum referred had

86 “Chronology of Events at Wagner College.” (MS in Markham Room) 87 Ibid. 88 ALS from Melvil Dewey to Board of Trustees, November 1893. (MS in Markham Room) 89 ALS from John Nicum to members of the board, Nov. 21, 1893. (MS in Markham Room)

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been bequeathed, along with additional property adjoining the college, by Mr. Wagner at his death in 1891. The property, however, was to revert to the Zion Lutheran Church unless the name “Wagner Memorial Lutheran” remained in the name of the college forever.90 Since the chronology of events of Wagner College states that the college was transferred to the Synod in 1889, Nicum’s statement, made in 1893, clouds the issue. Perhaps he is referring only to that additional property bequeathed at John Wagner’s death in 1891. Mr. Adolph J. Rodenbeck, the treasurer of the board, who practiced law,91 fought the case before the New York courts. Rodenbeck pleaded “that the law as passed by the state of New York in 1892 was in its nature retroactive, thus unconstitutional; and that, even granted that under the amended act the state legislature reserved for itself the right to change the name, it had no power to delegate that right to a second party, namely the regents.”92 As a result of Rodenbeck’s plea, the Regents, in their subsequent meeting, “Voted, that the permission to continue the use of the name college be granted to Wagner Memorial College of Rochester.”93 The victory was recognized as an important one by the Rochester newspapers, who were well aware of Wagner’s contribution to the community. An excerpt from one, speaking of Wagner College, states, “It is just the kind of education that men must have in order to deal successfully with our German-American citizens, be it in church, at the bar, at the sick bed, or in business.”94 Dr. John Nicum, who had been active as a board member, was called to the directorship on November 11, 1894.95 According to Harold K. Kuehne, author of the May 1950 “Report on the Religious History of Wagner College,” Pastor Steinhaeuser, at a meeting of the 90 Extract from copy of John Wagner’s Will and Testament. (MS in office of Wagner College president) 91 Editor: Rodenbeck was 46th mayor of Rochester, from 1902 until 1903. He served in the New York State Assembly, and was later elected justice of the Supreme Court from 1916 until 1931. He died in 1960. In 1977, the Monroe County Bar Association created the Adolph J. Rodenbeck Award, its highest recognition for public service among its members. 92 From a news story on Wagner College in the Rochester Times and Union, May 19, 1894. 93 Extracts from minutes of Regents, Dec. 31, 1894. [Editor: The extract goes on to state this permission was extended for only one year from the date of the meeting, which was Dec. 12, 1894. No further records are on hand showing final disposition of the matter — but, since the college continued to use the name, it seems safe to assume that either the court denied the Regents’ claim or the Regents withdrew their suit.] 94 Rochester Times and Union, May 19, 1894. 95 Editor: Other sources give the date of this meeting as Nov. 1.

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board in that month, was forced to resign. Dr. Redderoth, referring to the incident, said, “The day after he [Steinhaeuser] told the writer, ‘They have thrown me out like a dog.’ The faculty was not notified of the board’s decision until students told them that Nicum had replaced Steinhaeuser.”96 As director, Nicum made several efforts to secure state financial assistance. The following letter to him explains Nicum’s requests and the results he obtained:

24 March, 1899 Dear Sir, I am sorry to say that we have no discretionary power regarding the specific requirement to be met by the schools in order that they may be entitled to receive an allowance from the Academic fund for credentials. These things are fixed by ordinance of the regents. You will be pleased to learn that the inspectors speak highly of the work done in your classes.

Very truly yours, James R. Parson97

To learn of Nicum as a detrimental factor,98 it would be well to quote a letter from a colleague of Nicum, Dr. Redderoth, who said, “The change came when Dr. Nicum replaced Pastor Steinhaeuser as President of the college Nov. 1895. [The chronology of the college states 1894.] It is he who introduced the Regent’s examinations. I saw in that step a lowering of our standards and resigned in June 1896, when two of my colleagues were dismissed, the Professors Genzmer and Schaeffer.99 Dr. Nicum remained in control the next six years. The number of students decreased from year to year, until it reached the bottom, with 17 students. Then the Board asked Dr. Nicum to resign.100 Under the following presidents, not much progress was made … ”

96 ALS Augustus C. Redderoth, “A Contribution to the History of Wagner Memorial College,” January 1947. 97 Editor: James Parson Jr. was secretary to the Board of Regents. 98 Despite the fact that Nicum was not on the friendliest of terms with several of his colleagues, it would be unfair for the reader to infer that he was disliked by everyone or that his term in office was harmful to the school. A contemporary of Dr. Nicum indicates that he did his best for the school, and was not as detrimental as other sources suggest. Considering the contributions of Dr. Nicum and his efforts to improve the institution, we may infer only that he had differences of opinion, and not that he was a detrimental influence. 99 Dr. Palleske says Schaeffer left in 1894. 100 According to Palleske, the number of students did not fall below 30. [Editor: According to the enrollment table compiled in 1954, the “bottom” of registration during Nicum’s tenure was 31 students in 1902.] When Nicum resigned, Professor Rechtsteiner once again was asked to take charge temporarily.

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The first Regents examinations were taken by Wagner students in 1896, and perhaps Nicum’s record will be brightened by the fact that his students excelled in the tests.101 Immediately prior to Nicum’s resignation, school officials decided that another move was desirable. In June 1901, the Synod adopted a resolution stating that a change “is desirable and necessary,” and that “for many reasons the vicinity of New York City is recommended as the best location.”102 The resolution was forgotten for several years, as the Rev. Herman D. Kraeling began a very successful 10-year period as director of the college [1904-14]. In 1908, at the 25th Anniversary Service in Zion Church, a campaign was launched in which the school hoped to raise a Jubilee Fund of $25,000. The campaign was highly successful, as contributions totaling $19,000 were made.103 Under Kraeling, the students attended 25 periods weekly, classes being held from 8 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. The students and faculty attended morning chapel at 7:20 a.m. and again in the evening at 6:20 p.m. A supervised study period was held every evening between the hours of 7 and 10 p.m., and on Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon. Directly behind the college building, a small playground was used for physical education, and the Rev. Andrew Blum, the pastor of St. John’s Church [and successor in that position to John Nicum], allowed the Wagner students the use of the church’s gymnasium. On Friday afternoons, students and faculty gathered for singing and recitation, refreshments being served by members of a “pound” club, whose members each donated a pound of food to the gathering.104 In 1914, Kraeling resigned the directorship, and was succeeded by John A.W. Kirsch, the grandfather of the present Wagner College chaplain, the Rev. Paul Kirsch. Two years after Kirsch became president [director], a man who was to do much to shape the destiny of Wagner College was elected to the board of trustees.105 He was Pastor Frederic Sutter, of Stapleton, Staten Island, a graduate of the Class of 1894.106 Four months later, a special synod meeting was called in Utica, New York, at which several important topics were 101 “Catalogue of Wagner College, 1897-98,” pp. 21, 22. 102 “Chronology of Events, Wagner College,” author unknown. (MS in Markham Room) 103 Editor: Other accounts put this figure at $18,000. 104 Dr. William Ludwig, “Reminiscences of Wagner College,” 1926 Kallista. 105 Editor: Sutter had previously served on the board from 1906 to 1909, being first elected when he was pastor of Emanuel Lutheran Church in Hudson, N.Y. He returned to the board in 1916, when he was pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Staten Island. 106 Pastor Sutter’s family home was in Long Island, N.Y.

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discussed. The city of Rochester had grown from a small city to a sprawling metropolis by 1917. Wagner College, as a result of the city’s growth, suddenly found itself surrounded by buildings and railroad yards. The noise and bustle of a growing city were not conducive to the proper education of future ministers, and the Synod was once again faced with the problem of moving to a new location. The Ministerium had, since 1901, been aware that a move was desirable, and now intensive discussion followed concerning the relocation of the institution. There were two opposing factions at the meeting. The Rochesterians favored the relocation of the school in another part of the city or its suburbs. The other group advocated a complete move to New York City, which had become a great Lutheran center. “The New York faction won out, to the keen disappointment of the Rochester men.”107 The members then voted to raise $100,000 to purchase new property for the school. It was Pastor Sutter who pointed out the desirable Cunard Estate on Grymes Hill, Staten Island. The estate, which comprised 38 acres and included four houses,108 overlooked New York harbor. Although the setting was rustic, rapid transportation was available to the world’s largest city. Samuel Cunard, founder of the Cunard Lines, no longer occupied the site, which was now an attractive resort.109 The entire estate was offered for sale at $63,000. Although the Ministerium was making some progress in its $100,000 drive, several obstacles were encountered that might have discouraged lesser men. A letter from Dr. Justus F. Holstein, treasurer of the Ministerium, to Pastor Sutter, dated July 10, 1917, partially explains the difficulties.

Dear Brother Sutter, I hope that you have already called a meeting of the executive committee for Friday at 11 a.m. It is absolutely necessary. It is very urgent that we arrive at a decision in regard to the $18,000, else we are simply stuck. In accordance with your suggestion, I have obtained the particular Synod resolution from Brother Posselt. (Resolved to authorize the Executive Committee of Synod to use the money

107 Rochester Times-Union, Friday, May 31, 1918. (Copy of newspaper in Markham Room) 108 Editor: The estate actually contained five habitable buildings: two summer cottages, a gatehouse, a dormitory, and a large main house. 109 In 1885, the Cunard Estate was sold to Alonzo Barber, president of the Barber Asphalt Company, for $30,000. After Barber’s death, a Mr. Haines, a former office employee of Barber’s, operated the hotel “Bellevue,” a summer resort. The property was purchased at some point by Oberlin College of Ohio, from whom Wagner College bought it in 1917.

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in the Jubilee Fund of Wagner College for the purpose of securing the property on S.I. in view.) Was then at P. Bosch’s (he himself not at home) and pressed the seal of the Ministerium on Posselt’s document. I then went to Title Guaranty & Trust Company, Brooklyn, and presented this document. The answer was exactly as I had anticipated. “This means nothing and is absolutely of no use.” Here are a number of questions I was asked: “To whom does the money of the Jubilee Fund belong?” (To us, the Ministerium, whose treasurer I am, absolutely.) “Very well, if you then have the money, why don’t you use it?” (We have the money, but it is solidly invested in mortgages, of which some still have 2 or 3 years to go before being due.) “Why don’t you simply sell the mortgages and that’s the finish of it?” We prefer to keep the mortgages as may be necessary. “With what do you intend to pay back the borrowed, or as the case may be the $18,000 to be borrowed?” That should really be our own affair. We give a guarantee for this with our security, are busily raising funds just now for this purpose and even expect to raise $80,000 in the course of the year from our congregations. “Why then do you want to borrow the sum for precisely (6) six months? Would (4) four months suffice? That would make the whole matter simpler for us.” I do not know if I shall have the money after 4 months; I would prefer a period of six (6) months. And thus it went on. Finally it was suggested to me, that at the meeting of the executive committee, someone should pass approximately the following resolution: Resolved (by ___, and quorum being present) to authorize the treasurer (___) to borrow for (4 or 6) months from ___ the sum of $18,000, pledging as collateral security $35,000 First Guaranteed Mortgage, held by ___. This is a correct copy of the minutes of the Executive Committee, (SEAL) ___ Secretary.

I assume that the decision was favorable, for in September 1917 the Cunard estate was purchased for $63,000. With the final papers signed, the president, Dr. Kirsch, resigned, as did the entire board of trustees. Rev. Adolph Holthusen of Jersey City was called to replace Kirsch, and Pastor Sutter was elected president of the board of trustees. Dr. William Ludwig was the only faculty member who traveled to Staten Island with the college. Although the Cunard property was bought for $63,000, the total cost, including the remodeling of the [two summer] cottages and the building of the president’s house, came to $110,000. The Synod

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raised $40,000 of this figure, and a mortgage was obtained for the remaining amount.110 The chronology states that 16 students made the change from Rochester with the school.111 Receiving news of the change, the secretary of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, Cornelius G. Kolff, sent a telegram to the Rev. Henry A. Meyer welcoming Wagner to Staten Island and promising to donate $100 toward the erection of a statue of Martin Luther on the school grounds. The statue was apparently never erected. Whether the Chamber of Commerce failed to live up to its pledge (which is unlikely), or the money was used for more practical purposes has not been ascertained. Today, Wagner College is no longer the struggling school that it was years ago. While it has not yet attained the status of a “large school,” it is recognized as one of the “good” small colleges on the Eastern seaboard, with a total enrollment of almost 2,000 students. In the last 10 years, a new girl’s dormitory has been constructed, along with one of the best gymnasiums on the Atlantic coast, and a $1 million men’s dormitory and dining hall building is scheduled for completion in the fall of 1957. Already, plans have been made for a library building that would also house the college chapel. As Dr. Redderoth so aptly said, “The most essential and beneficial change came when the College was transferred from Rochester to Staten Island, and under the leadership of Sutter, Wasmund and Posselt developed into the wonderful school which it is now.”112 So, from the dream of one man, an institution that was founded on $10113 is now a rapidly growing college, situated on 72 acres of ground, and with further expansion visible everywhere. It has been truly said that “Wagner College is the only college in New York that has a future; the rest all have a past.”114

110 Chronology, Wagner College. (MS in Markham Room) [Editor: A different chronology has it the other way around: The Synod raised $70,000, and took out a mortgage for $40,000.] 111 Editor: According to an enrollment table compiled in 1954, total enrollment in October 1918 was 42; at least 26 new students enrolled that year. 112 Redderoth to Langsam, 1946. 113 Editor: Actually, $100. 114 Dr. John Tildsley, former associate superintendent of New York Public Schools. (MS in Markham Room)

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The evolution of an idea The Rev. Frederic Sutter remembers the

history of Wagner College on Staten Island Compiled by Brian Morris, 1968

115 Brian Morris ’65: Humbly, beneath an old apple tree on the grounds of a parsonage at Pittsford, N.Y., two pastors nurtured an idea that they hoped could satisfy the raw yearnings of an immigrant people. Wagner College sprang from that idea. The pastors, the Rev. Alexander Richter, then pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Rochester, and the Rev. Dr. George H. Gomph, pastor of the Pittsford Lutheran Church, met to discuss some means whereby the needs of the German and bilingual churches of New York and adjacent states might be met. The planning resulted in the founding of the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester, when six students met for classes in the home of a parishioner of Zion Lutheran Church. After several moves during its first couple of years, and several bouts with harsh housefathers, the institution settled on the grounds of the Satterlee Collegiate Institute through the generosity of John G. Wagner. Mr. Wagner and his wife donated the $12,000 purchase price as a memorial to their son, George Wagner, who died with dreams of becoming a minister. The title of the institution was changed naturally to Wagner Memorial Lutheran College. As the college grew beyond the capacities of the building in Rochester, the New York Ministerium, which was given control of the college in 1888, decided that it should be moved. It named a young pastor in 1916 to chair the committee that would find a new home for the college. The young pastor, who himself was in the midst of building his own congregation in Stapleton, Staten Island, found a home for Wagner College. In 1918, the college moved to Grymes Hill. The Rev. Dr. Frederic Sutter was the predominant figure in the life of Wagner College without ever being a domineering one. His method was friendship. “I have not worked with a fairer colleague and friend, and I have seldom met a man with greater faith than he,” wrote Dr. Clarence C. Stoughton, a former president of the college. Why did he do so much for Wagner College? It was gratitude for what Wagner did for him in those six years from 1888 to 1894,

115 Brian Morris, Class of 1965, who interviewed Pastor Sutter in 1968, served at the time as director of the Wagner College News Bureau.

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when he was one of her chosen few in Rochester. Wagner gave him her best, and out of thanksgiving he determined he would give his best to Wagner. In 1907, Pastor Sutter found a home for himself on Staten Island. Fifty years ago a baby — Wagner College — was left on his doorstep, and he decided that it, too, could plant its roots in the community. Staten Islanders agreed. Born in Stambach, Germany, Pastor Sutter immigrated to this country when he was six years old. He entered Wagner College in 1888, continued his studies at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1894, and was ordained in 1897. He served as pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church from 1907 until his retirement in 1964, and was chairman of the Wagner College Board of Trustees for 40 years. Of his own life he said, “I have a great faith. And I believe in a God-guided life.” Of his life others say, “He had a kindness, personal warmth, broad human sympathy, an ability to live with men on their own terms … one who is God’s ambassador.”

Note: Frederic Sutter, founder of Wagner College on Staten Island, died in 1971.

In 1968, Pastor Sutter recalled: I want to tell you what really changed the course of my life. I refused the first call of this parish [Trinity Lutheran Church, Stapleton, Staten Island], you know. I was very happy where I was located (in a parish in Hudson, N.Y., as a teacher in a high school). The new parish was entirely German, and I was asked to introduce English to the ceremony. Anyway, I came to preach a few sermons. There were less than 60 people in the audience. I said to myself, “If that’s how much interest there is here, God help me.” So I refused. But they gave me a second call. I began to think about it again about the time I was on a summer vacation. I met an old patriarch of the church, an old pastor I knew very well. I told him of the second call and asked him what he would do in my place. “Young man,” he said, “if the Lord wants you to go to Staten Island, you’re going. … No matter what you say now, you’re going.” Well, that hung on my conscience. He said it was the Lord’s way of handling the proposition, and I thought I might just be the one to build up that church. So I wrote my acceptance in 1907 and moved to the German Evangelical Lutheran Church [later renamed Trinity] in an old frame building in Stapleton with 350 parishioners. It wasn’t long after I had finally persuaded the parishioners to consent to English services that I ran into the greatest challenge of

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my life. A baby was left on my doorstep, crying, “I want to go home.” It was about 1916 when I was named to the board of trustees of the college.116 Almost immediately, the board named me chairman of a committee to find a new home for Wagner College. I had no idea where to put a college, and neither did most of the clergy and laymen who drove all over Staten Island to find a suitable location. We had pretty much decided on the plot of land next to what is now the football field (West Campus) until the day when I attended the golden wedding anniversary of a friend. Someone there suggested that I look at the Cunard property. And I said, “Where is the Cunard property?” Early the next morning I inspected it. It was about 38 acres, with the most prominent building the former home of Sir Edward Cunard, the founder of the shipping line that still carries his name. They called it Bellevue, I think. It was rumored that it was built in 1850 on true English soil that was used as ballast on the Cunard ships. The Cunard parcel belonged to Oberlin College at the time. They wanted some $70,000 for the land. I opposed the figure but offered $60,000 instead. The board of Wagner College tried to obtain a mortgage from a bank, but we didn’t have the necessary collateral. Besides, the board wasn’t really authorized to go into debt. It was suggested that the church board of my parish take the mortgage, but I couldn’t take the chance of getting the church board in trouble. Rather, I favored the Synod, then the New York Ministerium, taking the mortgage, and ultimately transferring the deed to the college’s board of trustees. Now, we all realized that the Ministerium couldn’t get that kind of money in such a short spell. But, there was a Rev. Dr. Justus Holzstein (once a professor at the Lutheran Proseminary), who was treasurer of the Ministerium; he had money. He and his wife were fairly wealthy. We took our plan to him — he would personally apply for a mortgage, transfer the title to the Ministerium, which, in turn, would put the deed in the hands of the board of trustees. You can imagine that Holzstein didn’t like the plan at all. He was wondering who was going to pay him back. But he was a blessed man and finally gave in. He was going to buy it. The property was finally in our hands, or rather, in the hands of the Ministerium, which in a short while with a devoted effort raised $40,000 of the $63,000 purchase price. It was a first. No Synod until this time had ever owned a college.

116 This was his second term. He had previously served from 1906 to 1909.

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Almost as hard as the actual purchase of the parcel was trying to get the deed back in the hands of the board. That the Synod guide the kind of institution we wanted it to be would have been a dangerous proposition to my way of thinking. Our first president, the Rev. Dr. A.H. Holthusen, however, favored Synod control. We finally came up with a resolution that the board would hold the deed, but board members could not be elected who were not members of the Synod. From time to time, in fact, more often than not, we were able to get around this resolution. Wagner College was organized as a German gymnasium — a six-year secondary school based on language study including six years of Latin, five years of Greek and a year of Hebrew. There were classes in Biblical history, English grammar, German and church history, too. The primary purpose was to prepare young men for the ministry who could speak both German and English. When Wagner settled on Staten Island, we knew we had to remodel the gymnasium study program to make Wagner a truly American college. Before the move, I asked some of the professors if they wanted to continue on Staten Island. Most asked if the college would have the same purpose — that is, to prepare boys to be German-English speaking ministers. When I told them it would not have this purpose, all but Dean Ludwig declined to make the move. Everything was changed: The need for a bilingual clergy was becoming less, because increasing numbers of young people in the congregations were turning to English services. The rigidity of the gymnasium curriculum was outmoded, and to truly become a part of Staten Island, as the borough’s first college, Wagner would have to assume an important role in the Island’s needs. We didn’t really have to modify our purpose, and the Island accepted it: To educate young people to have a Christian outlook, to mold persons who will constantly demonstrate what it means to be Christian. Not many had hopes that Wagner on Staten Island would survive more than a few years. Our only real collateral was our faith in God. Our problems were at first simple ones: We needed money; we had nothing. There are probably not many who really know how hard it was to keep the institution going. We were not only a college at the time, but sponsored a high school on the property as well. For a time, students and faculty members were forced to form work gangs to keep the furnaces going. My own parish, Trinity Lutheran Church, staged various fund-raising events. The blessed women of the [Wagner College] Guild (formed in 1918 to aid

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Wagner College) made countless contributions of both money and other necessities like food and draperies. And, Island residents flocked to our aid. (The Rev. Dr. A.H. Holthusen, president from 1918 to 1926, made this plea: “We must find more room. … We are taking care of 72 persons without a pantry and with an ice box built for a family of five.”)

Campus map, 1920

We managed to take the initiative in 1922. We had nothing to lose. We started construction on South Hall (now Parker Hall) for use as a dormitory, and soon after added the estate of Capt. Jacob Vanderbilt, now the frontage of the college. Then we started a massive fund campaign that yielded about $540,000. Meanwhile, we undertook to remodel North Hall [now called Reynolds House] by replastering all the walls and adding a new heating system. I had my eye on the Vanderbilt parcel for quite a while, but we almost lost our opportunity to buy it when we were forced to buy a plot in the back of the grounds because of a surveyor’s mistake. The college grounds were served only by cesspools, and we needed a sewer. I got a figure of $10,000 to run a sewer from our property down the hill into Concord. We hired a surveyor. “Be sure to give me the direct line,” I told him. “We don’t want our sewer to run through property that doesn’t belong to us.”

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He made his survey and the sewer was built — right through someone else’s land. Well, we had to buy that property or lose the sewer. It came to about four acres, where Harborview Hall now stands. But I still wanted that Vanderbilt stretch for the college — it was choice frontage — and we bought it anyway on my own intuition. I had a tremendous faith in the Lord. I always said if the Lord wants this thing to be here and to grow here, by his benediction, it will happen. The bankers always told me I was crazy: “You can’t do business that way, by just having faith.” But I always answered, “It’s my biggest asset,” and it always seemed to payoff. Things were getting a little tight then, even though the college’s alumni agreed to pay the interest on the mortgage for the Vanderbilt land. I had to get some surety for the college in some way, so we decided to sell part of that land — some plots running into where our baseball field is now. [At this writing, the college has just broken ground on the former baseball field for a new senior residence hall, to be completed before the end of 2008.] The property was purchased by Cornelius G. Kolff, who was president then of the [Staten Island] Chamber of Commerce. He bought the land to get access to a development on Longview Avenue from Howard Avenue. Wagner had the right-of-way along Campus Road at that time. I admit I hiked the price a bit when I learned how much he needed the right-of-way. But I told him, “If the shoe were on the other foot … ” He knew all the while that the value of his land would be increased tremendously with the right-of-way. When we set out in 1925 and 1926 to win accreditation by the New York State Board of Regents, we were told to devote our full time and energy to the making of a college. The Regents estimated that we would need about $500,000 as an endowment to build up the curriculum and physical plant. And that’s what spurred the first major fund drive. The board showed only anxiety when I told them of the figure. They all said I couldn’t possibly succeed. The college was weak, the Ministerium was small, and alumni were too few. But we tried nevertheless. Prof. (Clarence C.) Stoughton (who was later to become president of Wagner) and I went on the road. I got wind of a well-to-do man who owned a smelting plant in Tottenville, so I went to see what I could get out of him. When he looked up from his sandwich and asked what I wanted of him, I replied, “I want your money.” “How much do you have in mind?” he asked again. “A good slice of it,” I said.

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He offered me $25. I told him I didn’t want it. We argued up and down the lane until he finally gave in with $500. I was pleased and walked back to Stapleton. It was incidents like this one that brought us much of the money we raised. When we had pledges totaling more than $540,000, I went back to the Board of Regents to ask if we had fulfilled the first requirements for accreditation. There was a man there whom we had dealt with. He said, “Nothing doing. I want to see the money in the bank, not just on pledge cards.” We had it, there was no doubt about that. I think about $125,000 of that money was raised on Staten Island alone. I thought of it as a vote of confidence. The pace seemed to quicken. We won accreditation in 1928 and began construction of Main Hall a year later. In 1932 we had our largest freshmen class (52 boys) and created summer and night extensions; in 1933 we started to admit women students. We shut down the prep school for good in 1932 — I thanked the Lord for that — and became a true liberal arts college. All through these years when we needed everything, the Synod was very kind to us. I made the debt, and they paid for it. But I always made the stipulation to the Synod: Don’t touch the college if you want it to grow; you don’t know enough about it. We only had one real hassle: when I tried to expand scientific studies. While I argued, [Prof.] Lee Davidheiser worked on the organization of extending the science program. The board argued, “No, no, these boys won’t believe in anything after a while.” They were afraid the students would become contaminated by irreligion. Davidheiser was the only science department for both chemistry and physics for quite a while. You might call him the “Father of Science” at Wagner. He interested some prominent persons in the prospects of scientific studies and used their donations to build his labs. Mrs. Louis A. Dreyfus, the widow of a Staten Island chemist, was particularly generous for Davidheiser. Davidheiser started the summer sessions at Wagner and had a hand in the beginnings of the night extension. Whatever the students paid to go to summer school was given to the teacher as his salary. Then Dr. [Ralph] Deal came in 1933 and used his hands and his talents to build a biology department. We gave him some room, and he and two students built laboratory cabinets for the department. I think it should be noted that even though our science departments were young, Wagner was turning out graduates who could compete with some of the best schools in the city.

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While we seemed to be drawing some very fine professors, our greatest problem throughout the early years was to find a president who was a professional. We had no money to hire a business administrator, so the board merely took a successful pastor and reclothed him to look like a college president. Actually, none of Wagner’s early presidents was truly prepared to handle the administrative tasks of running a college. I served as acting president for three terms, but I couldn’t handle the job. I may have had common sense, but my background was Wagner College and that’s all. The best man to come along in those early years was Prof. Stoughton in 1935. He was our first layman president. We worked together for 10 years. He was first connected with our high school as a mathematics teacher in 1919. He was hired originally to teach English — his subject in college — but was told to teach math when he arrived here. He later became principal of our high school. Before he became president, and as a member of our board of trustees, Prof. Stoughton had become quite popular and successful as a businessman on Staten Island. He was a wonderful, hard-working man — no one offered himself so entirely to Wagner College as he did. Stoughton helped bring prestige to Wagner and started a row of college presidents who were really substantial. Stoughton, I believe, laid the foundation for what is now called Wagner College … I’m so sure of that. By the time we celebrated our Golden Jubilee in 1936, Wagner could boast of a physical plant worth $1.5 million. By 1943 we had begun to throw new dimensions on our idea of a college. We were building our faculty and adding to the curriculum. Davidheiser brought [Dr. Adolph J.] Stern here — I think he promised him a science building to get him to come — who was a recognized authority in his field. We added a School of Nursing to our offerings and later started a choir, which under [Dr. Sigvart J.] Steen was to become the best ambassador Wagner ever had. But the turmoil that shook the world during World War II dampened the plans we had for our little college as student enrollment dipped. Like many colleges we sought to help in any way possible by offering special quick-study courses for boys who were destined to be inducted into the armed services. The course of the war cut deeply into Wagner, but the end of the war more than made up for what was lost. When Prof. Stoughton left Wagner [in 1945 to become president of Wittenberg University],

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we had a total of about 400 students. By 1951, there were more than 1,300 students in our classrooms. And, of course, we again needed more room. Meanwhile, in 1949 we added the 18-acre Ward Estate.117 Shortly after that, we added a graduate school and started offering master’s degrees. Wagner was still growing and needed more dormitory facilities, a library, the science hall we promised Stern when he came a few decades ago. Guild Hall, named for those wonderful women who gave so much to Wagner, and the gymnasium that bears my name, were built in 1951. (I don’t know why Wagner ever named the gymnasium after me. Of all things, they try to make a gymnast out of me.) Even with the recent emphasis put on out-of-town students, I still feel that Wagner College is Staten Island’s college. In increasing numbers through the years, the college was turning out young people who were to become vital parts of the community. They became doctors, lawyers, scientists and educators. I feel that Wagner is my fourth son, but Staten Island is its mother. For forty years I was president of the board of trustees. I didn’t want to be, but I felt so close to the college. We had an idea for a college in 1918, and that idea is still evolving. Wagner College is still growing in all areas, and that’s good. Nothing can ever reach a state of perfection, but that doesn’t mean you can’t strive for it. Wagner College was born in faith and sustained only by great faith. It is the greatest of faith that still moves it onward. The purpose of Wagner originally was to prepare a young man to preach in both English and German. We still try to educate young people in a religious atmosphere. We don’t encourage students to change from other religions, but we do hope they maintain an interest in religion and the Bible. It seems that the great tendency in colleges today is to get away from the church-God relationship and depend more on government. If colleges depend too much on government, I feel, government will dictate ultimately what courses are to be taught. The greatness of Wagner College today is my own greatest satisfaction. It really is. So often I would say to my good wife:

117 Once the estate of Civil War Brigadier General William Green Ward, built in 1865. This is the property on the west side of Howard Avenue, including the football stadium, Stage One studio theater, and the big parking lot.

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“Mother, if I should die tonight, they’ll be so confused they won’t be able to find a way out.” There is only one thing I hope Wagner College will do always — to teach thoroughly whatever it chooses to teach and to educate in an atmosphere of faith. The Lord, I know, will watch over Wagner College.

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Founding faces & places The genesis of Wagner College

By Lee Manchester, July 2008 In this essay, we will examine three areas of historical ground not closely studied in previous histories of Wagner College’s earliest years. First, we will look in some detail at the “prehistory” of the college, examining the stories of two previous attempts to establish institutions in New York state to serve the purpose Wagner College ultimately fulfilled. Second, we will identify the exact locations in Rochester where Wagner College’s first three campuses stood, comparing early references and 19th century tax maps with 21st century satellite photos and on-the-ground surveys. Third, we will look in some detail at the biographies of the five Rochester men without whom Wagner College would probably not have been founded or survived beyond its infancy.

Wagner College prehistory One of the earliest historical accounts of Wagner College was compiled in 1888 as part of the Rev. John Nicum’s “Geschichte des New York Ministeriums [History of the New York Ministerium].” In his introduction to the early Ministerium reports on Wagner College’s inception, Nicum wrote:

The need of an institution in which future ministers might receive the necessary preparatory training for the Seminary was felt most urgently during the two decades preceding the founding of the Lutheran Proseminary [later called Wagner College] in 1883. The Newark Akademy at Lyons, N.Y.118 had failed, and the St. Matthaus Akademy in New York had been estranged from the New York Ministerium. The need of a preparatory school for the future ministers serving under the New York Ministerium, therefore, was pressing. In 1883, through the efforts of Rev. A. Richter, a new school was founded in Rochester.

The following is the story of St. Matthew’s Academy (“St. Matthaus Akademy”) and Newark College (“the Newark Akademy”), and how the transformation of St. Matthew’s and the failure of Newark led to the founding of Wagner College. 118 The Newark Academy was located in Newark, N.Y., not Lyons. The two villages are about six miles apart.

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St. Matthew’s Academy The German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Matthew is reputedly the oldest surviving Lutheran congregation in America. After occupying several different locations in New York City, St. Matthew’s moved to Broome and Elizabeth streets on May 3, 1868. A year later, in May 1869, an already existing school at St. Matthew’s was expanded into an academy, with the Rev. E.F. Giese as director. A future director of Wagner College, Jacob Steinhaeuser, attended St. Matthew’s Academy during Giese’s final year as the school’s director (1872-73) before enrolling at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, at Elizabeth & Broome streets, New York City (engraving from New York Times, Feb. 25, 1894)

From 1874-1894, the Rev. Edmund Bohm served as director of St. Matthew’s Academy. There were 300 students. Under Bohm’s leadership, a new St. Matthew’s Academy building was erected in 1879. In 1881, Bohm extended the mission of St. Matthew’s Academy, founding the Concordia Collegiate Institute, which was housed at the Broome Street school building. St. Matthew’s Church covered most of the expenses of Concordia’s operation. From 1881 to 1895, Bohm was director of both St. Matthew’s Academy and the Concordia Collegiate Institute. From its founding, Concordia was considered an institution of the Lutheran Church’s Missouri Synod, the more conservative of the two major Lutheran conferences in America. The other conference, a more moderate group called the General Council, was the body that,

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through its New York Ministerium, ultimately created Wagner College. Each of these conferences viewed the other as just short of heretical. Given that the motivation for opening a new Ministerium-affiliated school arose from St. Matthew’s shift away from the Ministerium — the shift to which John Nicum referred when he wrote that “the St. Matthaus Akademy in New York had been estranged from the New York Ministerium” — it seems likely that this change in doctrinal orientation started somewhat before Edmund Bohm took over as the new director of St. Matthew’s in the fall of 1873. As we’ll see shortly, the Ministerium was actively exploring the possibility of establishing a new school in western New York as early as February 1872, months before E.F. Giese submitted his resignation as director of St. Matthew’s Academy. It may be that the school’s drift away from the Ministerium and toward the Missouri Synod was what actually precipitated Giese’s resignation — but that is strictly speculation; we have no documentation for such an assumption. In 1885, St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church itself left the New York Ministerium and affiliated with the Missouri Synod — not a great surprise, perhaps, since it had always been considered one of the most conservative congregations in the east. In 1894, St. Matthew’s/Concordia was forced by redevelopment to leave its home in downtown Manhattan. The school moved to Hawthorne, in northern Westchester County, N.Y. In 1908, Concordia moved again — for the last time — to the campus it currently occupies, in Bronxville, on the southern edge of Westchester County. Started as a proseminary with a German gymnasium-style curriculum, St. Matthew’s/Concordia followed a pattern of development remarkably similar to Wagner College’s. Today, it is a 4-year liberal arts college, like Wagner — but, where Wagner disaffiliated with its founding denomination in the 1950s, Concordia–New York has continued to be explicitly affiliated with the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church.

Newark College Newark College, in Newark, N.Y. — also known as the Lutheran Academy, the Newark Lutheran Academy, and the German Lutheran Academy — was an institution of the Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of New York, which was affiliated with the moderate General Council. The college operated for two full academic years,

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opening in September 1873. Its first — and only — director was the former director of St. Matthew’s Academy, the Rev. Dr. E.F. Giese. The best account of the Newark College story comes from a study compiled by Elaine Marie Housecamp in 1974. Housecamp, a senior at Newark High School, produced her study for the Augustus L. and Jennie D. Hoffman Foundation Scholarship Essay Program, established in 1954 to encourage the study of local history and provide scholarships for students in Wayne County, N.Y. schools. Housecamp’s study, “The Evolution of an Ideal: The History of the Origin and Purpose of the Newark State School,” was found in the office of the Wayne County historian. Housecamp wrote that the growing German Lutheran community in Syracuse, Lyons and Rochester, N.Y. “nurtured an idea, the hope to satisfy the yearnings of an immigrant people and establish a seminary of higher learning for its young men who aspired to the ministry.”

An early 20th century postcard shows the Newark State School Administration Building (center), which had been

the home of Newark College from 1873 to 1875.

In February 1872, a committee representing the New York Ministerium came to Newark to examine a 4.46-acre hilltop tract containing a partially finished brick-and-sandstone building with an eye toward the possibility of developing the site into a college of its own. An article published without byline in the July 1, 1976 issue of the Newark Courier-Gazette described the history of the site prior to that visit:

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The history of this structure dates back to the 1840s, when the Lockville Baptist Society119 was active in the area. The Baptist Society and the Wayne [County] Baptist Association promoted the idea of the development of a seminary of higher learning for young men. A gentleman farmer and landowner named Roderick Price donated the land on the hill when, in 1840, the plan emerged to establish the Baptist Collegiate Institute. Mr. Price also loaned the Baptists a large sum of money to enable them to commence the construction of a building on the site. From 1840 to 1855, subscriptions for the Institute were collected, but progress was slow. Finally, support for the college deteriorated to the point where work on the building was discontinued after only two stories had been constructed. The prime investor in the project, Roderick Price, died in 1870. His wife and heirs foreclosed on the mortgage, and the half-completed Collegiate Institute was offered for sale in the Newark Weekly Courier.

Two members of the inspection committee were John F. Voshall, of Syracuse, and John G. Wagner, of Rochester.120 Housecamp described them as “two prominent German Lutheran land speculators.” Voshall’s thumbnail biography appeared in “History of the Germans in Syracuse and Onondaga County,” published in 1897:

Johann Friedrich Voshall was born on the 25th of December 1821 in Eschen, Hannover. After attending the public school there he learned the wood business and it was only a short time later when he left his home and came to Syracuse in 1842. Because of his indefatigable hard work and strict business sense which he brought with him, he has achieved a significant prosperity and is counted among our most esteemed citizens. He is married to the former Miss Maria Agnes Lübker, and from this marriage 11 children have sprung, of which only two are now living.

A similar biography was published about Wagner in “Rochester and the Post Express: A History of the City of Rochester,” compiled by John Devoy in 1895:

John George Wagner left monuments in Rochester that will bear testimony for ages to his ability as a builder, liberality as

119 Lockville was an early name for Newark, N.Y. 120 The John G. Wagner who inspected the site of the defunct Baptist Collegiate Institute in 1872 was the same person who became so instrumental in the establishment of Wagner College a decade later. In 1874, Wagner’s partner John F. Voshall sent his 20-year-old son Charles to live with Wagner and prepare to carry on Wagner’s business after his retirement. The following year, Charles Watson Voshall married Wagner’s 24-year-old daughter Caroline.

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a citizen and sincerity as a churchman. He was born on August 10, 1824, at Bischmisheim, Prussia, and came to America when fourteen years old. In this city he learned the carpenters' trade and soon became recognized as one of the leading contractors of the city. His services as a builder were in constant demand, and he was called on to construct many of the most admired edifices in the city, among them the First Baptist church, one of the finest structures in Rochester. Mr. Wagner gave more attention to his regular business than to politics, but he was a member of the Board of Supervisors from the Sixth ward. He was one of the incorporators of the Rochester German Insurance company, and a director; for twelve years a director of the Genesee Brewing company; senior deacon of Zion German Lutheran church and president of the board of trustees. Mr. Wagner's devotion to religion was a marked feature of his whole career and his consistency was demonstrated by his gift of $30,000121 to found the Wagner Memorial Lutheran college in this city. Mr. Wagner expired at his home in this city August 13, 1891. His wife and one child, Mrs. Charles W. Voshall, survive him.

“Finding the location and partially completed structure suitable for their intent,” Housecamp wrote, “plans were expedited for its purchase by Wagner and Voshall.” The purchase was filed in the Wayne County Deeds Office on July 1, 1872. The price: just $5,000. In June 1872, the Lyons Lutherans elected a board of trustees for the new institution, with First Lutheran Church pastor Charles C. Manz as its president. After just a little more than a year, the new school was ready to open, with 36 students enrolled and the Rev. E.F. Giese as its principal. The building was formally dedicated on Sept. 3, 1873, in ceremonies attended by about 600 people. “The curriculum offered a complete knowledge of the English language, literature of the classical languages (German and Latin), mathematics, natural sciences, history and geography, and the arts which were considered necessary,” wrote Housecamp, referencing one of the college’s advertisements in the Newark Weekly Courier. Tuition ran from $10 to $50 per 10-week quarter, and board was $3 a week. Things went well during the new school’s first year. According to the Newark Weekly Courier, enrollment increased during the winter semester. Rev. Giese evidently felt sure of the school’s success; on April 17, 1874, he purchased the home of the late Roderick Price, who had bankrolled the failed Baptist Collegiate

121 Probably a composite figure representing an approximation of his cumulative lifetime gifts to the college.

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Institute. That summer, while Giese vacationed in Europe, the New York Ministerium officially sanctioned Newark College as “the Lutheran academy of the entire state,” according to Housecamp. It must have come as a disappointment when, in November 1874, Giese resigned as principal of the college. Despite the setback, the school finished out the 1874-75 academic year with the confidence of the Ministerium intact — so much so that the Ministerium decided to discontinue its lease arrangement with Wagner & Voshall, instead deciding to purchase the land and building from them for $10,929.55. The deed was recorded on June 10, 1875, with Wagner & Voshall holding the mortgage. That fall, enrollment fell precipitously. By the end of the first month of the new semester, the board of trustees asked the Ministerium to close the school and sell the building. A year later, on June 27, 1876, having found no buyer, the Ministerium turned the property — along with an $813.06 premium — back over to Messrs. Wagner & Voshall. Two years later, the state purchased the building and acreage for use as an extension campus of the New York State Idiot Asylum in Syracuse. The central administration building, which had served as the home of Newark College for two years (1873-75), continued standing on the hill above the village of Newark until 1974, when it was demolished.

Wagner College’s three Rochester campuses Campus #1 — In 1883, eight years after the failure of Newark College, Lutherans associated with the New York Ministerium made one more attempt to establish a preparatory school for prospective German-speaking Lutheran clergy. The effort was based in Rochester, N.Y., about 35 miles west of Newark. First called the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester, it was renamed Wagner Memorial Lutheran College three years later. Classes probably began early in September 1883, though the school’s official charter was not issued by the state court until Oct. 1, and the board of directors was not officially organized until Oct. 15. For its first academic year (1883-84), the Lutheran Proseminary was hosted in the private home of Christian Seel, an elder of Rochester’s oldest German Lutheran congregation, Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church. One of Christian’s sons, George Seel, then a ministerial candidate, served as headmaster (or “housefather”) for the six boys who comprised the inaugural student body. According to church records, the school occupied “the seven rooms in the upper part of the [Seel] house.”

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The Seel house was located at 23 Magne Street, on the southern corner of the intersection of Magne Street (now West Broad Street) and Jay Street. (Magne/Broad Street runs from the southeast to the northwest, while Jay Street runs from the northeast to the intersection of Jay & Broad, then runs due west from the intersection.) Based on comparisons between the lone photo we have of the Seel house, the shape of the house’s outline on the 1888 Rochester tax map (which is incredibly detailed), and a current satellite photomap of the neighborhood, it appears that the site of the Seel house is now occupied by the Stiner Auto garage at 649-53 W. Broad St., Rochester. A late December 2007 visit to Roger Stiner confirmed that he had not incorporated the Seel house into the structure of the new garage when he built it; the house had been demolished.

Campus #1:

The Seel house Campus #2:

“Reilly’s building” Campus #2 — At the end of the first academic year, in the spring of 1884, the proseminary moved to a site about 1.5 miles away from the Seel house, across the Genesee River. The new “campus” was a three-story, 10-room brick townhouse known as “Reilly’s building.” The move took place on either March 20 or March 24, 1884, depending upon which source you consult. The reasons for the move were twofold: The school had grown somewhat and could no longer be squeezed into the Seel house, and Mrs. Seel had become ill and was unable to continue accommodating the students. The school operated for the 1884-85 academic year out of the South Avenue house. The 1918 Wagnerian yearbook (p. 14) identifies the location of our second campus as “South Avenue near Byron Street.” Early college records gave the street address as 33 South Ave. The numbering of South Avenue was altered, however, just one month after the proseminary’s move; the new address was 48 South Ave., a building owned by George S. Riley, who operated a real estate

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company. The building stood on the east side of South Avenue in the middle of the block between Comfort and Pinnacle (later renamed Byron); the address was the rightmost townhouse in a series of connected brick townhouses. The street has been renumbered again since the 1880s; the site of “Reilly’s building,” approximately 448 South Avenue, is now occupied by a parking lot.

Campus #3 — For the 1885-86 school year, the proseminary made its final move in Rochester, leasing the southern wing of the building it would occupy through the end of the 1917-18 school year. The address was 4 Oregon Street, just 1.4 miles from Reilly’s building, on the east side of Oregon Street

just north of Central Avenue. Alexander Richter, one of the school’s co-founders, described the facility as a “valuable and well-situated property … 120 feet square, upon which a three-story building stands … which has a four-story dormer tower. … The building is 90 feet long and 36 feet wide.” The building was ready-made for a school such as the proseminary. For 20 years, from 1855 to 1875, it had served as the home of the Rochester Collegiate Institute, “a boarding and day school for gentlemen” operated by LeRoy Satterlee. The purpose of RCI, according to its advertisements, was to provide its students with “a thorough preparation for either College or Business.” Satterlee and his family continued living in the building until 1879, four years after the school had closed its doors — and six years before the building was reoccupied by the Lutheran Proseminary. Within a year or so of the move to Oregon Street, well-to-do contractor John George Wagner (of the earlier Newark College venture) bought the RCI property for the new school as its first permanent home. In return for Wagner’s gift, the board of directors renamed the school in honor of his late son, who was said to have had ministerial aspirations of his own. Thus was Wagner Memorial Lutheran College born. Before giving the RCI building to the proseminary, however, Wagner subdivided the lot. The southern portion, facing Central Avenue, was split into three separate lots, upon which new houses were built. Wagner held on to the deeds for two of those lots, leaving them to the proseminary in his will; the third lot, on the northeast

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corner of Central Avenue and Oregon Street, he sold to an outside party. Wagner College took possession of the houses at 326 and 330 Central Ave. after John George Wagner died in 1891. Sometimes they were leased to outside parties; at other times the houses were used to house faculty members. The house at 330 Central Ave. served as the home of Wagner College Director Jacob Steinhaeuser until his ouster in 1894, but it was the extended occupation of the Betz family — some of them teachers at the college, some of them students, one a minister, but all male — that gave No. 330 its nickname of “Bachelor’s Hall.” No. 326 was home to Wagner College’s last Rochester director, John A.W. Kirsch, and came to be known simply as the “Director’s Residence.” After Wagner College left Rochester in 1918, moving to Staten Island, the site at 4 Oregon St. appears to have remained vacant for some years. In 1934, 16 years after Wagner College left the Oregon Street building to move to Staten Island, an African-American Episcopal congregation, St. Simon's Episcopal Church (also named St. Simon of Cyrene) built a new sanctuary on the site. A community leader in social outreach and civil rights, St. Simon of Cyrene Church was a vibrant part of the city and its minority community. In 1987, St. Simon merged with another church, St. Luke’s Episcopal, and left the site. Peace Missionary Baptist Church currently meets on the former site of Wagner Memorial Lutheran College. Based on the style and construction materials used, it does not appear likely that the Peace Baptist building is the same one built in 1934 for St. Simon, but further research is needed to be sure of this.

Co-founder Alexander Richter Alexander Richter, co-founder and first board president of Wagner College, was born on Sept. 25, 1851, to Alexander and Augusta (Simmer) Richter in Ohlau, Silesia, Prussia, 16 miles southeast of Breslau.122 As a young man, Richter served as a volunteer in the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian War of

122 The former German territory of Silesia is now southwestern Poland. After the Russians swept through the region at the end of World War II, Poland’s new Communist regime embarked on an ethnic cleansing campaign. All ethnic Germans were deported from Silesia; Ohlau became known as Olawa, and Breslau as Wroclaw.

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1870-71. Before emigrating from Prussia, Richter attended the University of Breslau. Alexander Richter immigrated to the United States in 1876, at the age of 24 or 25. He enrolled in the Lutheran Theological Seminary, in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia, from which he graduated in 1878. While studying at Mt. Airy, Richter perceived a problem: Not enough of his fellow ministerial candidates spoke sufficiently fluent German to adequately serve the immigrant German congregations proliferating throughout the United States in the later 19th century. There were 14 students in Richter’s graduating class, including him; five were German-born, one was Swedish-born, and one of the native-born Americans had been educated in Germany.

“Of the rest, two do not understand any German,” Richter recalled in an 1886 article. “The others remain with a knowledge of the German language which would enable them … to preach a German sermon quarterly or so, where an occasional error in grammar or style is not particularly taken notice of. “The question for us is not, who is able to preach in both languages? But, who is able to preach in German, fluently and correctly, not

only acceptable to an English congregation that has some knowledge of the German and thinks that, ‘The young man does real well, considering he is not a German and had very little practice’ — but acceptable to an intelligent European-German congregation.” This subject was to remain a theme of Richter’s ministry for many years. In 1878, Alexander Richter married Bertha Vogelbach (born 1852). Following his 1878 graduation from Mt. Airy, Richter was ordained by the Pennsylvania Ministerium and called to St. Jacobus German Evangelical Lutheran Church, Philadelphia,123 first as assistant pastor (1878-79), then as pastor (1879-81).124

123 In 1900, St. Jacobus was the largest German Evangelical Lutheran congregation in Philadelphia. 124 St. Jacobus was located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Third Street and Columbia Avenue. (Columbia Avenue was later renamed Cecil B. Moore Avenue.) At this writing, the church building appears to be in good shape, although the neighborhood around it has become somewhat run down. The building is currently home to the Bethel Evangelistic Church, mailing address 1647 N 3rd St. Philadelphia, PA 19130.

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Richter left Philadelphia in 1881, at the age of 30, to become pastor of the First German Evangelical Zion’s Lutheran Church in Rochester, New York, the oldest of Rochester’s German Lutheran congregations.125 “Since we cannot continue to go into details here,” Richter wrote in an 1887 history of Zion’s, “we wish to introduce but one more thing, the final paragraph of the Congregation’s Constitution, dated January 2, 1846, which shows that our Fathers knew what they were, and what they wish to remain … which many nominal Germans have lost today: ‘That our church shall remain a German church, so long as there is yet one man in our congregation who is in favor of it.’ ” “With the calling of the Rev. Alexander Richter … began what may be called ‘The Golden Era’ of Zion Church,” said the Zion centennial booklet, published in 1936. “Under his wise and far-sighted leadership the congregation made marvelous progress.” Two years after arriving in Rochester, and eight years after immigrating to the U.S., Richter was still concerned about the shortage of German-speaking ministers for the plethora of German-speaking Lutheran congregations. He was part of the ministerial group that issued a proclamation that year (some say that he was the author) entitled, “From whence shall we obtain our German ministers?” Meeting over the course of the summer of 1883 with the Rev. George H. Gomph of neighboring Pittsford, New York, the two men hammered out a plan for a new “preseminary,” a combination high school and junior college that would prepare young men for the seminary. All of its instruction would be given in German. Richter and Gomph called a conference of German Lutheran ministers on Oct. 15, 1883, to organize a board of directors for the new school, which they called the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester. Richter served as president of the board for its first four years. Like the other pastors, Richter taught several courses each year, without compensation, in addition to his service on the board of

125 Zion Lutheran, 17 Grove St., originally stood at the corner of Stillson and Grove streets, before downtown redevelopment rerouted Stillson. Zion merged with Concordia Lutheran in 1960, leaving the Grove Street building in 1962. The building was re-used for several purposes, serving for a time as the home of Emanuel Baptist Church, before being purchased by a private developer and refitted in 2006 as loft apartments (the Halo Lofts) for students at the nearby Eastman School of Music. The exterior of the building, minus the steeple, has been preserved in pretty much the same form it was in when Zion Church occupied it.

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directors. Richter continued to serve on the board through the 1895-96 school year, even though he left Rochester in 1891; an 1894 newspaper article and a college advertisement of the same year show him as vice president of the board, although the college catalogue does not. Richter was highly regarded by his peers within the New York Ministerium. He was twice elected president of the Ministerium (1890-93, and 1896-99). In 1891, Richter became pastor of St. Matthew’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hoboken, New Jersey.126 (Hoboken church records show that St. Matthew’s trustees voted in November 1890 to call Richter to the parish; Rochester records show Richter was pastor at Zion’s until 1891.) While in Hoboken, Richter also worked with several helping organizations that served the German immigrant community, including: Emigrant House, Hoboken; Kinderfreund Orphanage, Jersey City; and the Seamen’s Mission (aka Deutches Seemanhaus), Hoboken (1907-15). In 1894, a daughter was born in Hoboken to Alexander and Bertha Richter; her name, Magdeline, is nearly all we know about her. The 1930 census shows an unmarried department-store saleslady named Magdalene Richter boarding at 56 Morningside Ave. in Harlem; though she was the right age to have been the daughter of Alexander and Bertha, more research is needed to be sure. “When World War I broke out [late July/early August 1914], Pastor Richter was on vacation in Germany,” said the writer of a St. Matthew’s history.127 “He returned a broken man, ‘unable to take over his duties,’ and Pastor Brueckner, who was sent here in 1908 to conduct the Seaman’s Mission, was called” to take over as pastor of St. Matthew’s. On March 6, 1918, Pastor Alexander Richter died in Southold, a remote hamlet on the North Fork of eastern Long Island. According to the yearbook of the final Rochester graduating class of Wagner Memorial Lutheran College (1918), “the venerable patriarchs” Alexander Richter and George Gomph “passed out of this life within a few hours of each other.” Richter was 66 years old; Gomph was 75. Richter was buried in the Hoboken Cemetery, North Bergen, New Jersey.

126 The church building to which Richter was called to serve had been built in 1877 on the corner of Hudson and 8th streets in Hoboken. It still stands there today, and was completely refurbished in 2007. 127 The Jersey Observer, Saturday, May 15, 1948, in a history of St. Matthew’s on its 90th anniversary.

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Co-founder George H. Gomph George H. Gomph, co-founder with Alexander Richter of Wagner College, was born Nov. 4, 1842, in Albany, New York to George and Mina (Strempel) Gomph. Father George was German-born and a skilled artisan; he manufactured Gomph Pianos in Albany starting in 1858. Gomph graduated from Hartwick Seminary (now called Hartwick College) in 1865. He graduated from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1869. On Aug. 31, 1869, shortly after graduating from seminary, George H. Gomph married Maria Clark, called “preceptress of Hartwick Seminary” in one Gomph biography.128 The Gomphs had three children: Mina (1871), Katharine L. (1875), and George Francis (1878). Gomph was called by St. Paul’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Pittsford, New York, to become pastor in May 1869, just prior to his graduation and ordination in June 1869. He took over a

church that had been built in 1867 by his predecessor, the Rev. Valentine Mueller. Gomph was the Lutheran pastor in Pittsford, just 30 miles from Newark, N.Y., during the Newark College episode of 1872-75. Alexander Richter, however, was still attending the University of Breslau in Silesia, halfway around the world, when the Newark episode occurred. When the two men met in 1883 to plan for the new Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester,

Gomph would probably have been able to apply first-hand knowledge of the New York Ministerium’s previous attempt to establish a seminary prep school. In early 1882, a new railroad line was built directly behind the church on Stoutenberg Road (now Golf Avenue). In November 1882, Gomph sold the old church and parsonage and purchased four lots in Pittsford’s new Morningside Park development, a former apple orchard where a new parsonage and church were built.129 Local legend had it that “the Reverend drew the architectural plans for his new home; and these plans were loaned or sold to parishioners for $2.”130 But a May 20, 1976 article from the 128 “Landmarks of Monroe County,” by William F. Peck, 1895. 129 From the Gomph profile in “Pittsford Scrapbook: Stories of Early Pittsford,” by Paul Spiegel, ca. 2004. Spiegel compiled his account from archival newspaper stories. 130 Spiegel.

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Brighton-Pittsford Post (“There’s a Mystery in Pittsford: Are Gomph Houses Really Gomph?”) suggests that Gomph used a common architectural pattern book, which he then loaned to parishioners and others in Pittsford. The Gomph family moved into their new house (27 Lincoln Ave.) in August 1883. The new St. Paul’s church went up the following year. Church records show that the decision to build the new church was made on Jan. 12, 1884. Ground was broken on Feb. 27, 1884. The foundations were laid in March 1884. The cornerstone was dedicated on May 22, 1884 (Ascension Day) by Alexander Richter. The completed church was consecrated on Sept. 22, 1884 (or Sept. 25, according to a transcript of a history of Zion Church in Rochester written by Richter). Though Gomph probably did not design the church himself, he was known to have been a “hands-on” pastor. In June 1890, St. Paul’s bought a used organ from Richter’s Zion Church. With the help of Gomph’s father, the piano maker, Rev. Gomph installed the organ himself. The “new” organ was dedicated on Aug. 18, 1890. Although St. Paul’s was established as a German-language congregation, the church began transitioning to the use of English in the early 1890s. Occasional English services began at St. Paul’s as early as 1891, “for the benefit of those who were not able to enjoy the German services as fully as their parents.” Beginning in 1898, Sunday School was conducted in English. By 1917, German worship services were held only on the first and third Sunday mornings of each month. Gomph is credited as being one of the co-founders (with Alexander Richter of Zion’s Church, Rochester) of Wagner College in 1883. According to the college’s “creation myth,” the idea for the new school was generated during conversations held between Gomph and Richter beneath the apple tree in the Pittsford pastor’s front yard:

Rev. Alexander Richter of Zion’s Church, Rochester, frequently went to visit the Lutheran pastor of Pittsford, Dr. George H. Gomph, and sometimes in the warm summer weather they would sit under the apple tree. … If it [the apple tree] could speak, it would tell of the conversations held in its shade by these men. … Their conversation frequently issued in a discussion of the advisability of founding a school. The school of which they thought and dreamed was one that should meet the needs of the Lutheran churches in the eastern part of our country, and perhaps also in other parts, for men able to preach the Gospel in English as well as in German. Most of the pastors, until that time, had come from Germany to take care of our churches. But many of them had

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not been able to gain enough knowledge of English to make fluent use of it in the pulpit. Meanwhile, a change was going on in the churches, creating an increasing need of services in both languages. In 1883 the undertaking was launched in the month of October. It was called the Rochester Proseminary.131

Initially called the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester, New York, on its official charter, it was renamed Wagner Memorial Lutheran College in 1886 after the late son of founding benefactor John George Wagner, who bought for the school its first permanent facility. Both Richter and Gomph served on the new school’s board of directors. Richter was president of the board through the 1889-90 academic year, and a member of the board through the 1895-96 year. Gomph served as chairman of the board’s executive committee for 18 years, from 1896 to 1914. Gomph also gave of his time and energy to the education of Pittsford youngsters. He served for a number of years as the chairman of the board of education for Pittsford’s public school district. Gomph retired at the age of 66 from St. Paul’s Church, on June 27, 1909 — 40 years after being called as the Pittsford church’s pastor. The pastor’s wife, Maria Clark Gomph, died in August 1913. Five years later, George Gomph followed her into eternity, dying in Pittsford on March 6, 1918 — within hours of Alexander Richter, who died that same day in a remote hamlet on the east end of Long Island. At this writing, the Gomph house at 27 Lincoln Ave., Pittsford, is still standing and in much the same shape it was in 125 years ago, thanks in large part to the village’s robust historic preservation code. The two-story Folk Victorian-style house stands on about half an acre of land across the street from St. Paul’s Church, which is also in substantially the same condition in which Rev. Gomph left it in 1918. Though the apple tree beneath whose boughs the idea of Wagner College was born is long gone, plans are afoot to plant a new tree there in memory of the 1883 conversations that resulted in the college’s founding that fall.

Christian and George Seel Co-founders Alexander Richter and George Gomph conceived the idea of the Lutheran Proseminary and organized its board of

131 Wagner College Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 1, January 1923, p. 1.

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directors — but without the generous hospitality of Christian Seel, it is possible that Wagner College would never have held its first class. Seel allowed the six-student startup school to be conducted on the second floor of his large home during its first academic year (1883-84), boarding the students and providing them with classroom space at no cost. He also provided the school with its first hausvater (“housefather” or headmaster), son George Seel, a recent seminary graduate awaiting ordination. According to an obituary profile, Christian was born on August 2, 1825 in Ephenfenbach, Baden, Germany. United States census records indicate that his wife, Margaretha Elizabeth Hornberger, also from Baden, was born in 1830.

“His father died when Christian was but a few years of age,” said the obituary published in the Rochester Union and Advertiser on April 10, 1895, “and being the eldest in the family he was compelled to support the others.” “He came to this country forty-five years ago [1850] and settled in Rochester,” said the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle obituary of April 11, 1895. He was about 25 years old when he immigrated. Christian Seel first appeared in the Rochester City Directory in 1851, which listed

his occupation as “baker.” By 1857 he had started his own grocery business, an enterprise that would occupy him through his late 50s. Both newspaper obituaries related the same account of how Christian took advantage of the opportunities afforded him in his new homeland:

Many times he used to refer to his condition then [when he first immigrated]. ‘I had neither a hat nor a pair of shoes,’ he once said. By dint of hard work and conscientious adherence to certain rules which he marked out as guides through life he was soon enabled to alter his situation in life. He was essentially a self-made man. He successfully engaged in the bakery and grocery business at the corner of Jay and Magne streets and remained there until about fourteen years ago [around 1881], when he went into retirement.

From the Rochester City Directory, it appears that Christian Seel and his family lived in the same building as the family grocery, on the northwest corner of Jay and Magne streets, until 1872. In that year, they moved into a big, 2½-story, Second Empire-style house, complete with servants quarters, on the southwest corner of Magne and Jay, across the street from the grocery.

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About 10 years later, around 1882, Christian Seel retired from active involvement in the grocery store. He was 58 years old. Sons Christian Jr. and Charles P. Seel had been working in the grocery for some time by then, and Christian Jr. took over its management. In 1883 Alexander Richter, Seel’s pastor, began developing plans with George Gomph for a new seminary prep school in Rochester. Though Seel, 59, had been retired for a year by then, his nest was by no means empty. Only one of his children — John Adam Seel, 32, named for Christian’s brother — was living on his own at the time, running an independent grocery. Five of the Seels’ children were still living at home: Christian Jr., 30, who operated his father’s grocery; Elizabeth M., 29, who served as housekeeper; Charles P., 26, who clerked for brother John Adam; George, 25, a recent seminary graduate; and Eduard, 10, the “baby” of the family. Full as the Seel house was, when Richter began looking for a place his new school could call home, Christian and Margaretha invited the students to come live and study under their roof, occupying the second story of the house at Magne and Jay streets. The connection between Christian Seel and Richter’s church went back almost to Seel’s first appearance upon the scene in Rochester. “Mr. Seel always took an active interest in the affairs of Zion Lutheran Church,” said both Seel obituaries. “He had been a member of the church for over forty years, and was an elder in the church for twenty-five successive years.” In an 1888 account of Wagner College’s formative years, Pastor Richter referred to Christian Seel as “an old ‘citizen of Zion’ and for many years an Elder of our congregation.” When Christian Seel offered his house as the first home of Wagner College, his son George Seel volunteered to serve as the first housefather of the new school. According to George’s obituary, published by the New York and New England Synod in 1924:

George Seel … was born in Rochester, N.Y. on September 8, 1858. He received his preparatory training in the Parochial School of Zion’s Church of Rochester, N.Y. and at Newark Academy, Newark, N.Y. [1873-75]. He graduated from Concordia College at Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1880, and from Concordia Theological Seminary at St. Louis, Mo. in 1883.

George Seel’s ordination by the New York Ministerium did not follow immediately upon his graduation from Concordia Seminary, possibly because the Ministerium was affiliated with the moderate

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General Council of Lutheran congregations, while Concordia was operated by the conservative Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. In the 1884 minutes of the Ministerium annual meeting, George Seel’s name is listed on the roster of pastors; penciled into the margin next to his name is the notation, “Ordained 21st Sund. after Trinity on Oct. 14, 1883.” The board of directors for the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester held its organizing meeting on Oct. 15, 1883, which today we consider Founders Day. However, in two accounts, Richter says that Seel began serving as housefather prior to his ordination, indicating that the school was operating before the Oct. 15 board meeting, which occurred the day after Seel’s ordination. If the new school followed the pattern established earlier by Newark College, and carried on later at the Oregon Street campus of Wagner College, classes for the infant Lutheran Proseminary were probably first held early in September 1883, five or six weeks before George Seel’s ordination by the New York Ministerium. By Nov. 5, according to the minutes of the board of directors, “the subject for consideration was the difficulty between the housefather and Mr. Seel his father, and the question whether it would be necessary and desirable to move the institution to another locality.” The short-term conflict, however, was apparently resolved. George Seel did, in fact, resign as housefather after just six months on the job, but not because of any familial conflicts. According to Richter, George Seel “performed the first duties as Housefather, until he accepted a call to a congregation in Newark, New York.” A detailed chronology that appears as Appendix 5 of this collection shows the date of Seel’s resignation as Feb. 28, 1884. The synod obituary for Seel indicates that “he was pastor of Zion’s Church at Newark, N.Y.132 and at the same time of St. John’s Church at Macedon, N.Y.” Zion’s-Newark was organized with 27 members on March 27, 1872,133 in the midst of the excitement attending the creation of Newark College. Zion’s was founded by the Rev. Charles Manz, a missionary pastor from the First Lutheran Church of nearby Lyons, N.Y., who also served as the first board president of Newark College. Church meetings were held every two weeks in the building owned by the Arcadia Baptist Church, located on the south side of Church Street between Vienna and Stansell streets. When Arcadia Baptist merged with the Newark Baptist Church in 1874, the Lutheran 132 The 1884 Ministerium roster of pastors refers to this congregation as “the 1st German Ev. Lutheran Church, Newark.” 133 Per George W. Cowles in “Landmarks of Wayne County, N.Y.” (1895).

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congregation rented the Church Street building from the Baptists and began meeting there full-time. The Rev. E.F. Giese began serving as the Newark Lutherans’ pastor in the summer of 1873, when he came to Newark as principal of Newark College. By the time John L. Hedden, the state census enumerator, took count on June 1, 1875, Zion’s had 150 regular members and 200 people usually attending worship services. Giese left Newark, however, after he resigned from the college in November 1874, leaving Zion once again pastorless until early in 1884.134 George Seel was called as pastor of Zion’s-Newark in February 1884.135 One year later, in February 1885, Zion’s finally purchased the building in which it had been meeting for more than a decade. As pastor of both Zion’s-Newark and St. John’s-Macedon, Seel would have been the pastor responsible for organizing the nearby Macedon congregation, which was founded in 1886. Like Seel, the two pastors who succeeded him at Zion’s-Newark — Justus F. Holstein (1887-88) and Friedrich L.G. Doering (1889-92) — also had pastoral responsibility for St. John’s-Macedon. The last full-time pastor of Zion’s-Newark was Christian Strassburger, who served from 1900 until 1904. After Strassburger’s departure, the congregation continued meeting for several more years, served by visiting pastors. It finally disbanded in 1912, and the building was sold to Oliver Schuman, who converted it into a duplex.136 The building continues to stand, and it still serves as a duplex residence, located at 809-811 Church St., Newark. The Lutheran congregation currently meeting in Newark, Redeemer Lutheran Church, is a Missouri Synod congregation that was organized in 1925. Seel left Newark in 1887 to become pastor of St. Peter’s German Lutheran Church, 316 Eagle St., Dunkirk, N.Y., about 50 miles south of Buffalo. The Observer-Journal newspaper of Dunkirk reported on Wednesday, Oct. 31, 1888, that “the Rev. G.H. Gomph of Pittsford … visited the Rev. George Seel on Monday.”

134 Arcadia town historian Cecilia Jackson, writing in a 1958 article, said that Giese served at Zion’s until 1875. 135 Jackson wrote that “in 1883 the Rev. G. Seel became resident pastor” of Zion’s-Newark. The reliability of her account is thrown into doubt, however, by her later statement that Seel “remained [in Newark] until 1887, when he left to be a pastor of a congregation in Canada.” Seel’s next congregation was in Dunkirk, N.Y., about 50 miles south of Buffalo — not in Canada. 136 Per Cecilia B. Jackson’s book, “100 Years in Newark, 1853–1953.”

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St. Peter’s-Dunkirk was founded in 1887, meaning that Seel was probably the first pastor called to that congregation. According to Pastor Katie Yahns of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church, Dunkirk, the St. Peter’s congregation moved its worship home to the adjoining community of Fredonia some time ago, where it is now part of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, a Missouri Synod congregation. Yahns’ parish, which is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was formed in 1903. The former St. Peter’s-Dunkirk sanctuary is now home to a Hispanic mission church. Seel’s tenure in Dunkirk ended in December 1889. The Monday, Dec. 30 issue of the Dunkirk Evening Observer reported that “the Rev. George Seel, the late [that is, former] pastor of the Eagle street Lutheran church, preached his farewell sermon on Sunday. He has gone to Rochester, there to rest for a few weeks before going on to New Haven [Conn.], where he has become pastor of the Trinity Lutheran church.” Seel’s stay in New Haven was brief, but constructive. According to Trinity’s centennial book, “The pastorate of George Seel, which lasted from January of 1890 to August of 1893, was one of peaceful growth. It is chiefly noted, according to church records, for a campaign which raised $3,000 for the complete redecoration of the church.” “In 1893,” says Seel’s synod obituary, “failing health caused Pastor Seel to resign from the active ministry.” In August of that year, Seel returned to Rochester with his wife, the former Emma J. Nagle of Rochester, and their two sons, Elmer Andrew George and Paul Clarence. Though he was never again to serve as a full-time pastor, says his obituary,

He continued for a time to act as a supply [i.e., temporary fill-in pastor] at various points. Eventually he felt constrained to devote his entire time to his business affairs, which demanded all the energy his none too robust health could afford. He never, however, lost his interest in his beloved Church.

For a while, Seel was an active member of the church council at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, Rochester. Later, he became involved with St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, then the new Church of the Redeemer, where he joined the building committee. For the first couple of years after his return home in August 1893, George ran a grocery next to the one run by his brother, Christian Jr., and his family lived in a house owned by the same brother. The special closeness of George and Christian Jr. could be explained, at least in part, by the fact that their wives were sisters.

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On April 10, 1895, patriarch Christian Seel died at the family’s Magne Street house at the age of 71.137 “He had been in good health up to a week and a half ago,” said the Union and Advertiser obituary, “when he began to fail and passed away quietly and peacefully.” In 1896, the year after Christian Seel’s death, George Seel and his family moved in to the house where George had served as Wagner College’s first pater familia. In 1897, George opened the real estate business that he operated until the end of his life. George Seel’s first wife, Emma (born 1864), died on May 5, 1900. The following year, George married Regina E. (born 1868). George Seel died on July 19, 1923, following a lengthy illness. “The funeral services,” said his obituary, “held in the Church of the Redeemer, filled the edifice and bore testimony to the high regard in which he was held as a man and a Christian.” He was buried in Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery.138 Elmer and Paul, the two sons of George and Emma Seel, did very well for themselves. Elmer G. Seel, born in 1888 while his father pastored the Eagle Street congregation in Dunkirk, was a general physician in private practice in Rochester by the time he was 26. His wife, Anna V. Seel, was born in 1887 in Orient, S.D. They had one son, Elmer G. Jr., whose wife, Marjorie J. Seel, was known to be living in the mid-2000s in Canandaigua, N.Y., on the Finger Lakes south of Rochester. Paul C. Seel, born in New Haven in 1892, a chemist by training, started working for the Eastman Kodak Co. in 1914; he rose steadily in the company, from assistant superintendent in 1916 to general superintendent in 1928. His wife was Elsie A. Seel. A Cornell University publication reported that a George Seel of Rochester pledged a Cornell fraternity in 1937. Though a college man in 1937 would have been the right age to conceivably have been the son of either Elmer Jr. and Marjorie, or Paul and Elsie, nothing is known of the parentage of Cornell’s George Seel.

137 Christian Seel is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, Section H, Lot 69. His headstone says that he died April 10, 1893. Three unambiguous sources state that he died on April 10, 1895: the Rochester City Directory and two obituaries published in the Rochester Union and Advertiser and the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. The 1895 date appears to be correct; no explanation of the 1893 date is available. 138 Pastor Seel is buried in Range 4 (115-234), Block 138 at Mount Hope in a plot with the family of his first wife.

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John George Wagner In 1872, John George Wagner and his Syracuse partner, John F. Voshall, purchased the land and building that became the New York Ministerium’s second seminary prep school, Newark College. In 1886, Wagner also purchased the first permanent facility for the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester, New York, a new pre-ministerial training school. In recognition of his generosity, the school’s board of directors renamed the institution, calling it Wagner Memorial Lutheran College in memory of Wagner’s late son, J. George Wagner Jr. John George Wagner was born on Aug. 10, 1824 in Bischmisheim, a small city outside Saarbrücken in Prussian Trier, now in the southwest of modern Germany. His parents were George Heinrich Wagner (b. 1800) and Carolena (Schutz) Wagner (b. 1797). When the Wagners immigrated to the United States in 1838, the family included three sons: young John George, who was 14 years

old; his older brother David, born in 1822; and little brother Michael Jacob, born in 1830. They settled in Rochester, New York, where there was a small German immigrant community. The elder Wagner worked as a mason; when his sons came of age, they too joined the trades. David worked briefly as a mason before opening a contracting business, while John George and Michael became carpenters.

John George’s father arranged by mail for the young man to marry a first cousin, Catharina Susanna Wagner. Catherine, six years the senior of John George, was brought to Rochester from the Old Country, and the couple married sometime before 1847. John George was 23 years old and living in his parents’ home when the first of the young couple’s five children was born on Aug. 26, 1847. When father George died in 1849, John George and Catherine moved into a house of their own on the corner of Atwater Street (later renamed Central Avenue) and Lundy’s Lane, where they lived for the rest of their lives. By 1873, John George Wagner was well-off and well-respected throughout the community. He had established one of Rochester’s most successful contracting businesses of the day. A member of the Monroe County Board of Supervisors and a director of the Rochester German Insurance Company as well as the Genesee Brewing Company, Wagner was also president of the board of trustees at the First German Evangelical Zion’s Lutheran Church.

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Despite all he had gained, John George Wagner had also suffered much. Of the five children born to John George and Catherine, four had died — two in their first year of life, two as teenagers. The last child to be lost was John George’s namesake, J. George Wagner Jr. Stricken by typhoid fever, young George had died at the age of 19½ on Oct. 15, 1873. The year after young George’s death, in the spring of 1874, John George Wagner took another young man into his home and business: 20-year-old bookkeeper Charles W. Voshall, a native of Syracuse, N.Y. Voshall was the son of Wagner’s partner in the Newark Academy enterprise, John F. Voshall. In the face of failing health, John Voshall had sold his business two years earlier, leaving son Charles at loose ends. Romance blossomed between the young Voshall and the Wagners’ only surviving child, Caroline Philipina, who was 23 at the time Voshall first appeared on the scene. The young couple married on May 25, 1875, and continued living in the Wagner home on Atwater. On July 13, 1876, the couple’s first child was born, daughter Harriet “Hattie” Margaret. A second child, George F., was born to the Voshalls on April 5, 1878, but he died six months later on Oct. 14. By 1878, Voshall and John George had become partners in J.G. Wagner & Co., and Voshall had become the secretary/treasurer of the Genesee Brewing Co., where Wagner was a director. In the summer of 1883, the pastor of John George’s church, the Rev. Alexander Richter, began making plans to open a new school that would prepare young German-speaking Lutherans for the seminary, as Newark College had hoped to do a decade before. When the school’s new governing board held its organizing meeting on Oct. 15, 1883 — the 10th anniversary of young George Wagner’s death — John George took notice. That fall, the 59-year-old contractor bought a number of personal-sized savings banks, which he distributed to members of Rochester’s German Lutheran churches to raise money for the new institution. Wagner joined the Lutheran Proseminary’s board of trustees in February 1884, just five months after the school opened. A year later, he became its vice president. In 1885, when the lease was up on the brick townhouse the school had rented during its second year, the board decided to move the school to a third facility: the former quarters of the Rochester Collegiate Institute, on the corner of Oregon Street and the recently renamed Central Avenue, just three blocks from the Wagner house.

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Initially, the new building was leased for just a few months — but, by the end of the summer, the proseminary had to decide whether or not it would buy the facility. Wagner, with his contractor’s expertise in business and real estate transactions, worked out a deal at the end of September 1885: The school would get three months to raise a down payment and arrange a mortgage to cover the remainder of the $12,000 asking price. Come January 1886, Wagner told the board that he had raised $5,700 toward a down payment (almost $5,400 of which came from his own pocket) and that he would take out a $7,000 mortgage in his own name to make up the difference. Later, when it became clear that the school would need thousands of dollars more to equip and refurbish the new building after its purchase, John George spoke with his wife. Rather than burden the young institution with an unmanageable debt load — which may have been the cause of Newark College’s precipitous collapse — the Wagners decided to go a different course in dealing with the new proseminary. On June 8, Wagner announced to the board that he and Catherine had agreed to pay the entire cost of the new building themselves, letting the school use the down-payment money to get onto its operational feet.

Questions about the founding gift Three points in the story of John George Wagner’s founding gift to the college that now bears his family’s name deserve closer inquiry: 1. Did Wagner demand that the school be renamed, from the

Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester to Wagner Memorial Lutheran College, as a condition of his gift?

2. Was the school renamed for John George Wagner himself, or for his late son George?

3. Had J. George Wagner Jr., memorialized in the pre-seminary school’s name, wanted to become a minister himself?

First, was there a quid pro quo in the school’s renaming? Answer: We don’t know for sure, because the documentary sources contradict one another. The minutes of the school’s board of directors, as quoted by Walter Thomas Schoen Jr. in 1957, said that “the only stipulation that [JGW] made was that [the $12,000 gift] should be considered a memorial to his late son George.” A report made by the Rev. Richter in the fall of 1887 to the New York Ministerium, published in John Nicum’s 1888 Ministerium history, said with even greater clarity that “in a meeting

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of the Board of Directors Mr. Wagner announced that Mrs. Wagner and he would give to the institution the purchase-money of $12,000 as a memorial to their deceased son. … Without Mr. Wagner’s request, the old name of the institution was now changed to Wagner Memorial Lutheran College.” A third source, however, contradicts both the Protokolle and Richter’s Ministerium report. On July 27, 1886, as president of the board of directors, Richter filed a petition in state court to change the school’s legal name. As one of his two rationales for the change, Richter said “that John G. Wagner of Rochester, N.Y. has offered and is willing to give the said institution the sum of twelve thousand dollars if it would change its name from ‘The Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester, N.Y.’ to ‘The Wagner Memorial Lutheran College of Rochester, N.Y.’ “Your petitioner further shows that it is in great need of money in order to continue its existence and the said sum of twelve thousand dollars offered to the said institution as aforesaid would be of great benefit to the same and would put the said institution on a sound financial basis.” No further evidence has been found to indicate which version of this part of our story is more likely to be true, or to explain the contradiction between them. Second, was Wagner Memorial Lutheran College named for the father, or the son? Answer: the son. A formal resolution of the college’s board of directors, thanking the Wagners for their generosity, dated Aug. 5, 1886, concludes by saying, “Further resolved, that the institution should from now on be named Wagner Memorial Lutheran College, in the memory of Johann Georg Wagner’s son, who has fallen asleep in the Lord.” Third, at the time of his death in 1873, had 19-year-old George Wagner intended to enter the ministry himself? If so, it would make his parents’ founding gift to the seminary prep school all the more poignant. The documentary evidence is not overwhelming on this question, but it does provide an indicator of young George’s ministerial aspirations. Only one documentary source cites George Wagner’s clerical ambitions, and that but briefly and in the most general of terms: the minutes of the college’s board of directors. Concerning the Wagners’ $12,000 gift, the Wagner College Protokolle said that “the only

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stipulation made was that this should be considered a memorial to [the Wagners’] late son George, who was to have entered the Lutheran ministry.” Rochester City Directory listings show “John G. Wagner Jr.” living in his parents’ home and working as a carpenter in his father’s shop, just around the corner, from the time he was 17 years old, in 1871, until he was 19, in 1873. This does not mean, however, that George was necessarily working year-round for his father during those years. Rochester City Directory listings for George Seel, for instance, show him as a student boarding in his father’s home in 1880, 1881 and 1882 — while his obituary says that he was studying at Concordia College in Fort Wayne, Ind., and Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Mo. during that period. The Rochester City

Directory listings only showed where George Seel was living and what he was doing at the time the directory listings were made: in the middle of each summer. Even if young George Wagner had been living at home and working in his father’s carpentry shop all the way through the summer of 1873, that does not preclude him from having enrolled that

fall in a seminary or a seminary prep school program like the one at Newark College (which, you will recall, his father had bankrolled). Unfortunately, no enrollment records from Newark have survived, so we cannot determine with certainty whether or not J. George Wagner Jr. was a student at Newark. Newly discovered items published in mid-October 1873 in the Rochester Union and Advertiser newspaper indicate that George died at his father’s home on Central Avenue. On Oct. 14, 1873, a personal ad in the U&A said that George was “lying dangerously ill, at his father’s residence, of typhoid fever.” This does not necessarily mean that he contracted typhoid fever while living in Rochester, rather than while studying in Newark. Had George been enrolled at Newark College at the time when he contracted typhus, he might well have been brought home to Rochester for personal care and bed rest. The Oct. 15, 1873 paper said that George “died this morning at his father’s residence, after a short illness of typhoid fever.” The notice went on to say that George “was industrious, intelligent, and had a bright future before him if death had not thus suddenly and, as

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we might say prematurely, taken him away.” Nothing was mentioned, however, of George’s ministerial ambitions or his enrollment at Newark College. Likewise, an Oct. 15 obituary resolution of the Rochester German Insurance Company’s board of directors, of which John George Wagner was a member, mentioned that “by his many noble qualities [young George] was justly the pride and hope of his parents,” but it did not mention his studies in Newark or his desire to become a minister. The obituary resolution was published in the Oct. 17, 1873 issue of the Union and Advertiser.

The rest of the Wagner story John George Wagner was 61 years old at the time he made his founding gift to the Lutheran Proseminary, in the summer of 1886. He retired that year from active involvement in J.G. Wagner & Co., which his son-in-law, Charles Voshall, was then managing. By 1888, Voshall was advertising contracting services in his own name. John George continued serving as vice president of the board of Wagner Memorial Lutheran College until his death on Aug. 13, 1891. He was 67. The following year, Catherine Wagner joined her husband in the family plot of Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery, dying just one day after her 74th birthday. Charles Voshall and Caroline Wagner Voshall continued living together at the Central Avenue house for some time after her parents’ death. Their only daughter Hattie married Mark G. Clark, who had entered the Wagner household as the family’s private coachman in 1888 and 1889. Mark and Hattie Clark had only one child, a daughter: Elsie Harriet, born April 16, 1898. By 1895, Charles Voshall was considered one of the leading business figures in Rochester, as evidenced by his profile in William F. Peck’s “Landmarks of Monroe County,” published that year:

Charles Watson Voshall, son of John Frederick Voshall, of Syracuse, N. Y., was born in that city and educated in the public schools there. At the early age of fourteen he entered the employ of his father in the lumber business, and continued until 1872, when his father's health failed. The latter then sold his extensive business, but Charles W. remained as manager for his father's successor one year. In the spring of 1874 he moved to Rochester and became a partner in the large contracting firm of J. G. Wagner & Co., remaining as such until the retirement of Mr. Wagner in 1886, when Mr. Voshall became sole proprietor. Since that time he has constructed

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under his own name many public and private buildings, among which are the Genesee Brewery, the Lyceum Theatre, the Whitcomb House, the Standard Brewery, the German Insurance building, and many others. He is president of the Rochester Asphalt Paving Company, vice president of the Standard Brewing Company, treasurer of the Standard Sewer Pipe Company, and prominently connected with various other enterprises. He is proprietor of Big Elm Stock Farm in the town of Greece, which he established in the fall of 1891, and upon which he has constructed large and convenient stables, a good race track, and a new creamery. For some time he was engaged chiefly in developing trotting horses, but more recently he has converted the premises into a dairy farm stocked with high grade Jersey and Durham cattle. Mr. Voshall is a member of the Rochester Whist Club and takes an active interest in the prosperity of the city. May 25, 1875, he married Caroline P., daughter of J. G. Wagner, at that time his partner.

In 1901, three years after the birth of their granddaughter Elsie, Charles Voshall and Caroline Wagner separated. Caroline continued living in the Central Avenue house, while Charles moved first to the nearby town of Greece, N.Y., then back to Rochester, where he lived in hotels for the rest of his life. Caroline died on Oct. 10, 1910, at the age of 59. On her Mount Hope tombstone is inscribed a line in German from the Gospel of John, verse 19:17, “Und er krug sein kreuz [And he bore his cross].” After Caroline’s death, Charles Voshall remarried. He died on Nov. 3, 1913, three years after Caroline. Like Caroline, he was 59 years old at the time of his death. Mark and Hattie Clark continued living in Rochester for several years after the deaths of Hattie’s parents, moving to Geneva, N.Y. in 1932. Their daughter Elsie married Lawrence W. Gracey in 1922 — and, like the Voshalls and the Clarks, the Graceys had only one daughter who survived infancy: Margaret-Anne, born in 1932.139 For many years, Lawrence Gracey served as editor for the Geneva [N.Y.] Daily Times (now the Finger Lakes Times), as had his father before him. In 1947, the three surviving heirs of the Wagner family — Hattie Clark, Elsie Gracey, and young Margaret-Anne — renewed their connection with the college that John George Wagner’s gift had helped establish. The three women visited Wagner College’s Staten Island campus and presented the school with a portrait of John George.

139 The Graceys did have a second daughter, Carol Adele, but she lived only three days after her birth.

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During their visit, a snapshot was taken and a brief story was written for the Wagner College Bulletin. Sixty-one years later, that snapshot and its accompanying story helped a Wagner College administrator track down the sole surviving member of the 1947 Wagner family delegation: Margaret-Anne (Gracey) Milne, an accomplished organist and honored community activist who was living in Rochester. Mrs. Milne had broken the family tradition, bearing both a daughter (Susan [Milne] Carney of Victor, N.Y.) and a son (David Milne of St. Paul, Minn.) — and the Milne children had each borne two more descendants of John George Wagner. In May 2008, during the 125th anniversary year of the college that bore her great-granduncle’s name, Margaret-Anne Milne was invited to attend Wagner College’s commencement exercise as an honored guest. On behalf of her family, Mrs. Milne accepted a declaration of the college’s continuing gratitude for her great-great-grandfather’s founding gift, without which the institution might not have survived to see the 20th century, much less the 21st. On Oct. 15, 2008, at Wagner College’s 125th Anniversary Founders Day convocation, the school conferred upon the late J. George Wagner Jr. a posthumous doctor of divinity degree, honoris causa, honoring both his own clerical aspirations, which were frustrated by death, and his father’s gift, which helped hundreds of other young men fulfill their dreams of becoming ministers. The following month, Wagner College President Richard Guarasci concluded our 125th Anniversary commemoration by laying a wreath upon the grave of J. George Wagner Jr. in Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery.140 President Guarasci was accompanied by the descendants of young George’s father.

140 The Wagner family is buried in Section S, Lot 35 at Mount Hope Cemetery.

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APPENDIX 1

The ‘direktors’ of Wagner College By Lee Manchester

and Prof. William Ludwig 141

During the first 40 years of its existence, the leaders of Wagner College had a progression of titles. For a couple of years, they were known as “housefathers.” After the move into permanent quarters in 1885, they became known as "direktors." It was only after the college moved from Rochester to Staten Island in 1918 that we began calling the top person on campus “president.” Here are profiles of the six men who served as directors of Wagner College in its Oregon Street home in Rochester, from 1885 through 1918.

PAUL EMIL KELLNER (June 1885 through mid-1887). On June 3, 1885, the board of directors voted to offer the position of director to Paul Emil Kellner who, at that time, was in Russia. His wife was engaged as housekeeper. There are conflicting statements as to the

competence of the Kellners. William Arndt, a student at Wagner College in 1885, reflected, “It could hardly be expected that a man translated to entirely new surroundings could prove a success.” On the other hand, Alfred Beck, author of “An Historical Account of the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester, New York” (undated), said that Kellner was loved and respected by both students and teachers, and was a wise administrator and capable leader. An 1886 report from an examining committee of the Ministerium to the 82nd Synod meeting said that “kitchen, bedroom, and classroom, which are under the supervision of Mrs. Kellner, a competent matron, are kept clean and in good order.” These positive reports, however, were counterbalanced by an 1887 report to the New York Ministerium from the Rev. Alexander Richter, co-founder of the college and president of the board. Richter said, “A Saxon, Paul Emil Kellner by name, a recommended

141 Much of the information for these profiles comes from an article written by Prof. William Ludwig for the March and April 1923 issues of the Wagner College Bulletin. Other sources were the alumni biographies from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (1923) and profiles from several parish histories.

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philologist, who had satisfactory educational references and who even had passed an examination by the state while yet in Germany, was called [as director]. His wife was to take care of the household. We were utterly disappointed in both of them.” Perhaps a quotation from John Nicum’s “Geschichte des New York Ministeriums” (1888) would be appropriate here: “It is indeed the sad experience of all institutions, especially the new ones, that teachers and staff are more or less troublesome.” JOSEPH RECHTSTEINER (Sept. 1887 to June 1888, and 1902 to July 1904). The exact date of Director Kellner’s departure from the college is not known; what is certain, however, is that his successor was the Rev. Joseph Rechtsteiner, pastor of St. John's Lutheran Church in Rochester and a graduate of the University of Tuebingen. Rechtsteiner held the post of director twice, both times as a temporary responsibility. According to Ludwig, Rechtsteiner left Rochester after his first term as Wagner director (Sept. 1887 to June 1888) to accept a call from St. Peter's Lutheran congregation in Port Jervis, N.Y. Other sources, however, recall that Rechtsteiner stayed on at Wagner as a professor for some time following his first director’s term. He was not shown, however, on the faculty roster in the college’s catalogue for the 1889-90 academic year. Rechtsteiner rejoined the faculty in the fall of 1901. In 1902, Director John Nicum resigned. Prof. Rechtsteiner agreed to fill in again, serving from 1902 to 1904. When the board succeeded in recruiting a permanent director, former board member Hermann Kraeling, Rechtsteiner stayed on as a teacher through the 1906-07 school year, when he accepted a call to a congregation in Buffalo, according to Ludwig. Rechtsteiner served there until his death in the summer of 1922.

JACOB STEINHAEUSER (June 1888 to Oct. 22, 1894). Following Rev. Rechtsteiner's first term as director, his successor was the Rev. Jacob Steinhaeuser, who served from June 1888 to November 1894. Born July 5, 1850, in Rochester, N.Y., he was the son of Conrad and Ursula (Yauch) Steinhaeuser, natives of Germany who immigrated to the United States in 1846 and

1847, respectively. One of 15 children, Jacob Steinhaueser graduated from Hartwick Seminary (now Hartwick College) in 1872. He briefly

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attended St. Matthew’s Academy in Manhattan before matriculating at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, from which he graduated in 1875. He later earned his doctorate in divinities from Muhlenberg College in 1902. On August 19, 1875, after Steinhaeuser graduated from the Philadelphia Seminary and was ordained to the ministry, he married Marie Christine Becker of Buffalo, N.Y. The couple had seven children, one of whom (Albert) graduated from Wagner in 1894 and followed Steinhaeuser into the ministry. Steinhaeuser served as pastor at Lutheran churches in Boonville, Cohocton and Kingston, N.Y., and as president of the New York Ministerium (1877-88) before taking the helm at Wagner College in 1888. At an Oct. 22, 1894 meeting of the college board of directors, the Rev. Dr. John Nicum, chairman of the board, forced Steinhaeuser to resign under circumstances that have never been very clear. Nicum then took over as director. In a January 1947 memoir, former professor Augustus Redderoth wrote, “The day after, he [Steinhaeuser] told the writer [Redderoth], ‘They have thrown me out like a dog!’ The Faculty was never notified of the change that was made. It was only from students that we learned that Dr. Nicum had taken charge of the classes of Pastor Steinhaeuser. He never came into the room reserved for the faculty. His orders appeared in writing outside of the door of the faculty room, signed ‘John Nicum, Director of Wagner College, President of the Executive Committee and President of the Board of Trustees.’ ” Following his ouster from Wagner’s directorate, Steinhaeuser accepted a call to serve as pastor at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Allentown, Pa., a post he held until his death. He taught Hebrew at Muhlenberg College, and also served as the German secretary of the Pennsylvania Ministerium and on the ministerium’s board of education. Steinhaeuser died on Sunday, Sept. 25, 1904. In the midst of preaching a sermon, he suffered a severe stroke, the fourth in eight years, and died a couple of hours later in his home. He was buried in Fairview Cemetery, near Allentown. JOHN NICUM (Nov. 1, 1894 to 1902). Elected president of Wagner College’s board of directors in 1891, the Rev. John Nicum also served as director of the college from 1894 to 1902. John Nicum was born on Jan. 6, 1851, in Winnenden, Wuerttemberg, Germany, the son of John and Anna Margaret (Schaefer) Nicum. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Muhlenberg

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College in 1873, graduating from the Philadelphia Seminary in 1876. After serving for two years as pastor at Zion Church in Frackville, Pa., Nicum married Josephine Johanette Sanner in 1878. He served as pastor at churches in Philadelphia and Syracuse before coming to Rochester at the call of St. John’s Lutheran Church in 1887, where he served as pastor until his death in 1909.

Ludwig called him “a man of great talent for organization and an almost unlimited capacity for work, as may be seen from the fact that besides his pastorate and his office as president of the College he also gave instruction in Metaphysics, Advanced English, German, Civics and Hebrew. Under him the Regents examinations were introduced and the institution assumed more and more the character of an American College. He emphasized this in all of

his catalogues, and his progressive views are further shown in the introduction of such subjects as Commercial Law, Commercial Geography, History of Commerce, Economics and Book-keeping.” Nicum was highly regarded within the Evangelical Lutheran church. He served as president of the fourth conference of the New York Ministerium (1884-89), secretary of the general council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America (1886-97), and president of the general council’s board of German home missions (1888-97). Nicum was the author of a number of books: “Laws of the State of New York Relating to Churches” (1884), “Gleichniss Reden Jesu [Allegorical Speeches of Jesus]” (1884), “Doctrinal Development of the New York Ministerium” (1887), “Geschichte des New York Ministeriums [History of the New York Ministerium]” (1888), and “Confessional History of the Lutheran Church in the United States” (1891). He also translated into German, with additions, E.J. Wolf's “Lutherans in America” (1891). Nicum “overtaxed his strength,” according to Ludwig. He died in Rochester on Nov. 1, 1909. “His last will and testament left a sum of money to the College,” Ludwig said, “which is being used for prizes for highest standing in general scholarship. “ Nicum also left a significant endowment that was applied to the construction of the Nicum Memorial Towers, the central architectural feature of Main Hall (1930). According to writer Harald Kuehne, that endowment amounted nearly to the total salary Nicum had received as director of the college.

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HERMANN DIETRICH KRAELING (1904-14). Hermann Kraeling was the pastor of “the Lutheran church” [perhaps the German Lutheran Church on Grand Street] in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., when he was called to become the director of Wagner College in 1904. He had previously served on the college’s board of directors for 12 years, from 1889 to 1902.

When Kraeling entered upon his new office as Wagner’s director, the number of students had dwindled to 25 and, owing to financial difficulties, “the institution found itself in a very precarious condition,” Ludwig wrote. “But, thanks to the untiring efforts of the director and his wife, both of whom gave themselves wholly to the work, the number of students soon began to increase and the college was put on a sound financial basis: the treasury no longer showing deficits, but a considerable surplus.” On May 14, 1908, the college celebrated its 25th anniversary with a service at Zion’s Lutheran Church in Rochester, the “Mother Congregation” of the college. A jubilee fund of about $18,000 was raised after this service, which helped to fund the college’s move from Rochester to Staten Island 10 years later. Rev. Kraeling, although emphasizing the aim of the college to consist in the education of young men for the ministry, did not wish to restrict it to that one purpose only, but said in his first catalogue in his frank and outspoken manner, “Also for sons of our congregations to whom pious fathers and mothers wish to give a good Christian education to further them in their business and professional life, Wagner College is an excellent institution. So many Lutherans are sending their sons at great expense to military schools where heart and soul are deadened in mere drill, and here, at their very door, they have the best help and do not know or use it.” When Rev. Kraeling resigned from his office, the student body numbered 36 students, and the 10-member graduating class was one of the largest in the history of the institution. His successor was the Rev. J.A.W. Kirsch, pastor of St. John's Church, Buffalo, N.Y.

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JOHN A.W. KIRSCH (1914-18). The Rev. Johannes Albert Wilhelm Kirsch — or, as he was more commonly known among his American colleagues, parishioners and students, John A.W. Kirsch — served as director of the college during the years of the Great War in Europe, from 1914 to 1918. He was the last director of Wagner College in Rochester. Kirsch was born on August 5, 1865, in Kappeln, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. He

was the son of master tailor Andreas Kirsch and his wife Charlotte Agnes Johanna, née Wittgrese. After graduation from the local school, the gifted youth studied theology at various private institutions. He concluded his studies at the Theological Seminary at Kropp, Schleswig-Holstein, in order to prepare for church service in America. On June 3, 1877, he immigrated to the United States, and on June 18 he was ordained by the New York Ministerium. His first assignment was in Brooklyn, New York, as vicar to Pastor Dr. J.W. Loch of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church on Schermerhorn Street. Then he was at the First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Saugerties, N.Y. as vicar to Pastor F.J.A. Leddin. Later he was appointed pastor in Webster, N.Y., Flatbush (in Brooklyn), and Canajoharie, N.Y. On July 3, 1896, he was called by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. John in Amherst, outside Buffalo, where he served until 1914, when he became director of Wagner College in Rochester. “Several factors contributed in making his administration a most difficult task, so difficult that only a man of his equanimity, faith and vision could have stood up under it,” Prof. Ludwig wrote. “The general unrest produced by the world war, the increased cost of living, and the decision of the Ministerium to remove the college from Rochester made themselves felt in the life of the institution as well as in the financial condition. The German textbooks, no longer obtainable, had to be replaced by English books, and accordingly also the medium of instruction, which heretofore had been in most subjects the German, had to be changed. In 1918, Rev. Kirsch resigned, the college was removed to Staten Island, and a new era began.”

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APPENDIX 2

Student life on the Rochester campus

Gymnasium curriculum, austerity characterize Wagner’s earliest era

By Richard Darrow Wagner magazine, January 1968

The beginnings of Wagner College are well-documented history and the legends of the Apple Tree and the founding fathers are known by almost everyone. This article will not be a collection of names, dates and financial statements. It, instead, will attempt to recreate the life and times at Rochester as they were lived by the students themselves. This is how it was told by men who know, because they were there. In 1963, Mrs. Miriam Zeller Gross, then college editor for Wagner, distributed a questionnaire to all known alumni from the Rochester days. This article is based on information received from these men as well as source material from the Wagneriana archives in Horrmann Library. The Wagner magazine is indebted to the following alumni who graciously provided information on their days at Rochester: Rev. Ernest Neudoerfer ’97, Rev. William Trebert ’97, Rev. Otto L. Schreiber ’03, Rev. Hugo Perdelwitz ’05 (deceased), Dr. Albert B. Helmkamp ’07, Rev. Henry B. Dickert ’09, Richard A. Hope ’09, Rev. Arnold F. Keller ’10, Rev. George J.V. Schorling ’11, Rev. Hermann A. Meyer ’11, Dr. Robert H. Ischinger ’13, Rev. W. Paul Reumann ’13, Rev. Herbert L. Siegner ’14, Rev. Emanuel W. Hammer ’14, Rev. Frank P. Welkner ’15, Rev. Frederick E. Reissig ’17 and Rev. Herman F. Reissig ’20. Wagner was founded in 1883 as the Rochester Lutheran Proseminary on a working capital of 10 dollars. It was a six-year school — high school through the first two years of college — which would prepare students for entrance into a regular Lutheran seminary, usually Mt. Airy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Because of the tremendous influx of German immigrants in the latter part of the 19th century, there was a great need for German-speaking pastors. This need was not being filled adequately by the seminaries, since most of their graduates were found to be weak in the German language. By means of a gift from John G. Wagner, a Rochester building contractor and vice president of the school, the Proseminary moved

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to its then permanent Rochester home in 1886 and took the name Wagner Lutheran Memorial College. This school was far different from the Wagner of Grymes Hill. Discipline was strict and likened by one alumnus to the discipline of a military school today. The school consisted of one building, which contained three upper floors and a basement. Kitchen and dining room facilities were located in the basement along with furnace, laundry and storage rooms. According to one former student, the single bath tub also was located in the underground nether regions of the building. This undoubtedly presented some traffic problems, since the rest of the bathroom facilities were on the second floor. Baths were “required” once a week, and a posted roster indicated who was to bathe when. Hot water was provided for two hours or so each day specifically for those on the bath roster. Offices, teachers’ quarters and classrooms were located on the main floor of the building, while the library and student rooms occupied the floor above. The majority of the students lived in a large dormitory on the third floor. Each day began with the clang of a bell at 7 a.m. on the dot. Breakfast was followed by morning chapel, which lasted 15 minutes. Indicative of the emphasis placed on the German language at Wagner in those days were the requirements that not only all classes be conducted in German (with the exception of English and mathematics), but that German be spoken in chapel and at all meals. A sign hung prominently in the dining room proclaiming, “Hier wird Deutsch gesprochen” (Only German is to be spoken here). The assumption obviously was that if you’re hungry enough for a second helping, you’ll learn to ask for it in German. This was not always easy for those students who had little or no German background. After one meal where herring was served and they prayed “Danket dem Herren” (Thanks to the Lord), a student asked surreptitiously if they were giving thanks for the herring. In general, the food was found to be “plain,” “not too varied” but “wholesome.” As one member of the class of 1905 wisely said, “Regarding board, who is there in an institution who does not gripe? As I am reaching 78 in a few months, the food could not have been too bad.” Things had not changed drastically five years later, as a member of the class of 1910 remembered, “We ate our share of mush and cornmeal, frequently reappearing on the table almost diabolically disguised. Protest meetings were often held. But we all survived.” Classes were held from 8 a.m. until noon, and from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. or 3:30 p.m. each afternoon. There were no Saturday classes, but there were the inevitable morning and evening chapel services.

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Wagner’s program of study was patterned after the German Gymnasium, with six forms or classes. The gymnasium had its origins in ancient Greece, where youths met for exercise and discussions with master teachers. The word stems in part from the Greek “gymnos” or naked, and the young Greeks exercised and learned “au naturel.” Things had changed somewhat by 1536, when educator Johann Sturm founded the German Gymnasium. Probably the intemperate German climate did not lend itself to a total acceptance of the practices of the Greeks. Sturm’s aim, according to Merritt Thompson in “The History of Education,” was “to train pious, learned and eloquent men for service in church and state, using religion and the new learning as means.” It is this system upon which the Wagner course of study was based, and its intentions were not far from Sturm’s original aim. Walter Thomas Schoen [Jr.], in a 1957 thesis on the early days of Wagner, gives us an idea of the curriculum at that time: “The curriculum of the Sexta, or lowest form, consisted of religion, German, Latin, English, world history, geography, natural history, arithmetic, penmanship, drawing and singing. The Quinta, Quarta and Tertia forms taught the same subjects in an advanced degree, augmenting them with Greek and American history, while the Secunda and Prima forms included the teaching of Hebrew, natural philosophy and chemistry.” From the students themselves, we find that “it was but natural that religion should form an important part of the curriculum. We were indoctrinated with a conservative, fundamentalist theology in which the teachings of Luther were equated on a par with those of the Bible. It was expressed in the oft-quoted couplet: ‘Gottes Wort und Luther’s Lehr, Vergehen nun und nimmermehr’ (The word of God and Luther’s teaching never will die). Independent thinking was not encouraged. We were in school to be taught. Instruction was didactic and dogmatic. The marking was strict, and there were no electives.” When an early housefather heard there were to be new rules, he said, “New rules? Why? I think if the boys keep the Ten Commandments, we need no more rules.” On being reprimanded for attending an out-of-bounds church and told “that’s the rule,” one student replied, “It’s a foolish rule.” “That’s none of your business”, he was told. Zion Lutheran Church in Rochester was the official school church. There is some disagreement as to whether students were allowed to attend other services. Even the Reformed Lutheran Church in Rochester was looked upon as being somewhat heretical.

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After all, services there were held in English! On Monday mornings after chapel, the boys had to give a full account of their actions over the weekend, faithfully reporting the sermon they had heard. The first question always was, “Where did you go to church yesterday?” Without a doubt, the favorite teacher of those days was C.F.W. “Papa” Betz. A member of the class of 1907 recalls that “Papa” Betz was loved by all. “He was devoted to his work. He meticulously corrected every composition and grammatical exercise with a slashing red pencil and made a general evaluation of each paper. He then required us to re-write every paper correctly. We learned sound, classical German from him and were introduced to and came to appreciate the works of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and other German masters. Calm in demeanor, easy-going in many ways, infinitely patient with the short-comings and antics of teen-agers, he still could, on occasion, explode in righteous indignation. Of course his innate gentleness never would permit him to carry out any of his threats.” “Papa” Betz also taught Greek, but his goal was more than the syntax and flow of language. He is quoted as saying, “In twenty years from now you undoubtedly will have forgotten all your Greek, but if I can teach you how to think, I will feel that I have accomplished something worthwhile.” The discipline and supervision of the students was strict, and no one went anywhere without permission. “Permission” was the magic word, and it was not granted with largesse. Permission to go to concerts and the theater was granted only occasionally. As one housefather put it, “One does not need to hear and see everything.” But one alumnus remembers, “While the student life may seem to have been monastic, we had not taken the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. There was the world of Juliets and Marias, which deserved attention. As I recall it, absences on such missions when detected after 10 p.m. were not dealt with too seriously, for even the Direktor knew that over mountain and river, love will find a way.” At one point, the college sweetheart was a Jewish girl named Fanny who lived in the neighborhood. We have it on good authority that “there was great rivalry on sneaking across the street to sit on the porch with Fanny, who, having virtually no competition, seemed a most glorious and beautiful girl.” Curfew usually was 10 p.m., with upperclassmen allowed out until 11 p.m. on weekends. At those witching hours, the doors were locked, although there are two recorded methods of “breaking and entering” after the prescribed time. One method involved lowering a rope from your room prior to leaving, or having a rope lowered at

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night by a trustworthy friend. The second method involved unlocking the catch on the wide window next to the front door. This was not foolproof, as the housefather “would often be waiting in the darkness. So no matter how carefully you raised the window on your return and stepped over the sill, a voice was apt to holler out, ‘Who’s that?’ Then followed house arrests.” Recreational activities were somewhat limited, due to the very small area available for practice. However, the boys were able to play curtailed forms of field hockey (referred to as “shinny”), tennis, baseball and basketball. In 1910, the basketball team, playing under the name of “Warriors,” lost only one game. Their regular schedule was a short one, but they “bootlegged” games by sneaking out and playing under assumed names. The game they lost falls into that category and is recounted as follows: “One Saturday evening our basketball team decided to go to the YMCA142 to play a game against the Rochester Athletic Club. This was strictly against the rules, but seven of us slipped out after dark. The men on the RAC team outweighed us 45 pounds to a man, and they were at least six inches taller. At half time, we were still slightly ahead, but height and weight were bound to tell, and we lost the game. We sneaked back into our quarters, a trifle discouraged, unnoticed but expecting anything to happen. “The next morning, we bought the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and found the notice of our loss in the sports section headlined, ‘RAC Defeats Collegians.’ We felt fairly safe because our dean, Reverend Kraeling, might read everything else in the paper, but he could not possibly be interested in sports. After breakfast, we were called to the office. We knew that the bad news was out. We expected a strong reprimand, and we received it, but not the way we expected. Apparently, he did not care much that we had slipped out and played the previous night — but why did we bring disgrace on Wagner College by losing that game?” The literary and athletic societies were the only recognized organizations at the school — but, little known to the administration, there was a secret society ominously known as “The Invisibles.” They are recalled as meeting “every week in the dark in somebody’s room. Each tried to think of a trick to play on his classmates, but it was usually a boy called ‘Perfect’ Melville who decided what to do. One time, however, Eddie Crowe took shoe polish and blackened all the door knobs. Knowing of the trick, I’d been able to keep my hands

142 The Rochester Railroad YMCA, on Central Avenue, was located less than a third of a mile to the west of the Wagner College campus.

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clean, but Eddie had blackened his so he wouldn’t be suspected. The next morning in class we had to hold up our hands, and being the only one with clean hands, I became the culprit.” For those who made it through the stiff curriculum and survived the disciplinary measures and the cornmeal mush, graduation had the special sweetness of “freedom at last” attached to it. There was but one more obstacle: graduation itself. Smartly attired in Prince Albert coats, each graduate was required to deliver an address in German. For the small classes, this was not a matter of great concern, but as the classes grew larger, the ceremonies became longer and longer, “as words of wisdom continued to pour from those young mouths.” One graduate “spoke dramatically on Alexander Irvine, and [I] now cannot find a soul who knows who he was — and do not ask me.” Those years around the turn of the [20th] century and prior to the First World War were not easy ones; the students at Wagner Memorial Lutheran College worked under conditions that would be considered exceptionally primitive by today’s standards. But as one man recalls, “The economic status was very low. All equipment was elemental. Desks and blackboards were old and worn. Floors were creaky. Yet if the essential element of a college is one student on the end of a log and a good teacher on the other, Wagner had it. And the students were proud of their scholarship, a learning which reminds one of Anatole France’s observation, ‘Fear the man of one book.’ ”

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APPENDIX 3

Wagner College enrollment, 1883 to 1954

Figures in the tables below represent October totals for all sessions, plus Summer Session when offered. The figures were compiled from Registrar’s Office records and Wagner College catalogues.

At Rochester, N.Y. Six-year “gymnasium” curriculum

YEAR ENROLLMENT YEAR ENROLLMENT 1883 6 1901 38 1884 13 1902 31 1885 19 1903 28 1886 24 1904 25 1887 29 1905 30 1888 33 1906 30 1889 42 1907 31 1890 49 1908 35 1891 49 1909 42 1892 23 1910 43 1893 34 1911 40 1894 45 1912 36 1895 39 1913 43 1896 33 1914 36 1897 34 1915 40 1898 41 1916 41 1899 42 1917 30 1900 39

At Staten Island, N.Y.C.

YEAR ENROLLMENT CURRICULUM 1918 42 6-year program 1919 62 7-year program 1920 71 1921 72 8-year program 1922 75

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1923 70 4-year high school & 4-year college 1924 66 1925 84 1926 100 1927 105 1928 128 1929 134 1930 139 1931 141 1932 117 4-year college 1933 203 1934 271 1935 313 1936 335 1937 346 1938 403 1939 420 1940 404 1941 422 1942 510 1943 390 1944 442 1945 440 1946 1,164 1947 1,763 1948 1,962 1949 2,061 1950 1,995 1951 1,942 4-year college & graduate school 1952 1,829 1953 1,814 1954 1,959

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APPENDIX 4

Housefathers, directors and presidents

Initially, the top staff member at the Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester was called “housefather,” a position akin to headmaster. With the move to a permanent facility in 1885 came a change in that title, to “director.” When the college moved to Staten Island in 1918, the title changed again, to “president.” Note: Some late college documents show Alexander Richter, founding board president of the school, to have been “director” from 1883 to 1888. Early histories and records do not bear this out.

HOUSEFATHERS September 1883

Feb. 28, 1884 George Seel

Feb. 28, 1884 November 1884 Pastor Koennemann (temporary). (Removed from residence in school facility Aug. 31, 1884; dismissed as housefather Nov. 1884.)

November 1884

April 9, 1885 F.A. Kammerer

April 9, 1885 June 1885 C.G. Schneider (temporary)

DIRECTORS June 1885 September 1887 Paul Emil Kellner September 1887

June 1888 Joseph Rechtsteiner (acting)

June 1888 Oct. 22, 1894 Jacob Steinhaeuser Nov. 1 (or 11), 1894

1902 John Nicum

1902 July 1904 Joseph Rechtsteiner (acting) July 1904 1914 Hermann Dietrich Kraeling June 1914 1918 John A.W. [Johannes Albert

Wilhelm] Kirsch

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APPENDIX 5

Historical outline, Wagner College: 1883–1943

This is one of several Wagner College chronologies found in the school archives. The editor chose it for inclusion in this collection of college histories because it was the most precise and detailed of all. 1883 October 15 First meeting of the Board of Trustees of

Lutheran Proseminary, with Dr. Alexander Richter, Zion’s Church, Rochester; Dr. George H. Gomph, Pittsford; Pastor George Seel, Dr. C.N. Conrad, et al.

Institution began in home of Christian Seel, Jay and Magne Streets, Rochester. Mr. Seel provided board and lodging for the six students. His son, Pastor George Seel, first housefather. The housefather was a combination parent and institutional caretaker.

Tuition $32 per year. Board $2.00 per week. No fees charged during the first year.

1884 February 28 Pastor Seel resigns as housefather.143 Pastor Koennemann called as temporary housefather.

March 24 Moved to 33 South Avenue,144 Rochester. Rent $30 per month.

August 31 Rev. F.W. Kammerer called as housefather for one year. “It is an evidence of God’s miraculous grace that, in spite of this, he did not permit the destruction of the institution.”145

143 According to Alexander Richter, George Seel was called to serve as pastor to a congregation in Newark, N.Y. 144 The house, known in college records as “Reilly’s,” was located between Byron and Comfort streets on South Avenue. 145 Alexander Richter in an 1887 report to the New York Ministerium, as recorded in John Nicum’s “Geschichte des New York Ministeriums.”

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1885 April 9 Pastor Kammerer resigns. May 1 Moved to 4 Oregon Street in quarters

vacated by the Rochester Collegiate Institute.146 Place offered for sale at $12,000. “We could hardly meet current expenses, yet … putting their trust in God’s help the Board of Directors decided to attempt to buy the property … as soon as half the sum had been subscribed.”147

October 1 Incorporated as “Lutheran Proseminary of Rochester, New York” by order of the Supreme Court of New York State under act of 1848.

Rev. Paul E. Kellner, from Russia, director and housefather.

1886 January $5,700 raised by subscription. Decided to buy the Oregon Street property. Mortgage for $_____

June 8 Mr. John G. Wagner, vice president of the board, announced his intention of giving $12,000 as a memorial to his son, George Wagner.

“We did not escape tribulation … teachers and staff are more or less troublesome.”148

July 27 Charter changed by Supreme Court order — name to be “Wagner Memorial Lutheran College of Rochester, New York.”

1887 September The Rev. Joseph Rechtsteiner called as director.

146 The Rochester Collegiate Institute, operated by LeRoy Satterlee, occupied the building at 4 Oregon St. from 1855 to 1875. 147 Richter in Nicum’s “Geschichte,” 1887`. 148 John Nicum, “Geschichte des New York Ministeriums,” 1888

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1888 June Synod accepts proposal that Wagner College be made the property of the New York Ministerium at meeting at Rondout, New York.

Dr. Rechtsteiner resigns. Dr. J. Steinhaeuser of Rondout elected director. Professor C.F.W. Betz appointed to faculty.

1889 June Formal and legal transfer to New York Ministerium made at meeting of Synod in Brooklyn.

October Dr. Steinhaeuser inducted into office of director — 42 students enrolled. Faculty of four.

1893 State, on basis of law passed in 1892, tries to force college to abandon the word “college” in its name because it did not possess $500,000 endowment. Judge Rodenbeck fights case in Albany. Wins case.

1894 October 22 Dr. Steinhaeuser resigns as of November 1. Dr. John Nicum called as director.

Tuition raised to $40 per year; board to $2.50 per week.

Library about 700 volumes. 1897 Steam heat installed. “A great

improvement.” 1898 Sept. 1 Total students 41. 1899 “The institution is assuming more and more

the character of an American College.” 1900 Sept. 1 Students total 39. 1901 June Synod adopts resolution that removal of

Wagner College [from Rochester] “is deemed desirable and necessary” and that “for many reasons the vicinity of New York City is recommended as the best location.” Committee appointed.

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1902 Dr. Nicum resigns.

1903 Dr. Rechtsteiner accepts directorship for one year only.

1904 Dr. George C.F. Haas called as director. Declined call in following year.

July Dr. Kraeling called.

September Dr. Hermann D. Kraeling begins long term as director.

25 students — “Owing to financial difficulties, the institution found itself in a very precarious condition.”

1905 Dr. A. Spaeth gives $2,300 to college.

1906 September 32 students. 1907 September The Rev. William Ludwig appointed to

faculty as professor of Latin and Hebrew. Succeeds Pastor Rechtsteiner.

30 students. 1908 May 14 25th anniversary service in Zion’s Church,

Rochester. $25,000 Jubilee Fund planned. About $19,000 raised.

1909 Nov. 1 Dr. Nicum dies. 1914 44 students.

Dr. Kraeling resigns. June Dr. John A.W. Kirsch called as director.

1916 October 25 Special Synod meeting in Utica decides to move institution from Rochester, New York, to Staten Island.

1917 June Pastor Sutter elected to Board of Trustees. September Cunard property, Grymes Hill, purchased

by New York Ministerium for Wagner — 38 acres for $63,000.

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1918 March 6 Dr. Richter and Dr. Gomph die. later Dr. Kirsch resigns.

Total cost of property, remodeling [winterizing] two cottages, building of president’s home — $110,000. Synod raised $70,000 and mortgage for $40,000.

Pastor Posselt elected to board.

Gift of $4,000 from Jacob Vogt of Watertown.

Wagner College moves to Grymes Hill, Staten Island.

Dr. A.H. Holthusen called as president.

Board $120, tuition $40.

16 students move with the college.

Wagner College Guild formed. Mrs. Martin Wulff, president.

Pastor Sutter elected president of the board. 1919 Treckmann bequest $3,000.

Mr. Frank Wisch, Mr. Stoughton called to faculty.

Seventh year added to course. 1920 Dr. George C.F. Haas, Dr. Carl Knoll added

to faculty.

62 students.

Dr. Benzinger and Dr. Metzenthin resign.

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1921 September Synod authorizes campaign for $185,000 — 70% raised.

73 students enrolled in college and high school departments. “Largest number in our history.”

Dr. Weiskotten, George Rugar and Walter Peterson appointed to faculty.

“Annex” purchased.

Class added to make four years of high school and four years of college.

New faculty residences begun.

Mr. and Mrs. Hettling give $1,500 to library as a memorial to son.

1922 March 7 Wagner buys Vanderbilt property — alumni agree to pay cost — about 19 acres.

April $1,000 from Mrs. Marie Geyer.

June 13 Baccalaureate — Dr. F.H. Susch, preacher.

Dr. Knoll resigns. August 14 Ground for new dormitory broken.

September Room, board and tuition $300. Ministerial students, $180.

75 students. October 28 Cornerstone of dormitory laid by Dr. Sutter.

Address by Dr. Heischmann.

“Calisthenics every morning at 6:45.” 1923 $6,000 raised toward endowment fund.

Mrs. E. Bader, Jersey City; Mrs. T. Pregge; Mrs. E.C. Muncke; Dr. Holthusen; Mr. and Mrs. John Haaren, Allenhurst; Redeemer Church, Brooklyn — each $1,000

September High School department a separate unit. C.C. Stoughton appointed principal.

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Professor Krahmer added to faculty.

Rates raised from $300 to $400; for ministerial students, $200.

October New dormitory dedicated.

Dr. Henry Elson joins faculty. 1924 March Meinikheim bequest $1,646.75. September Dr. Edgar Dehn, Dr. DeWalsh, Mr.

Genzmer, Mr. Montgomery appointed to faculty.

October Gravenhorst bequest $500.

December Meyerhoff bequest $2,000.

1925 March Geyer bequest amounting to $10,000 & residuary. Becher will, $1,000.

June Synod decides to raise $500,000 for college endowment in 1926.

Dr. Holthusen resigns as of January 1, 1926.

Baccalaureate by Dr. H.T. Weiskotten.

High school building renovated. September Registered 35 in college department, 41 in

high school. October Dr. Sutter appointed acting president.

Elected to office permanently, but refused to leave congregation, “which seems to need me more,” he said.

October 31 Dr. Holthusen terminates presidency. Agrees to carry on until succession is appointed.

1926 Feb. 1-10 $500,000 endowment fund campaign: $540,000 pledged by 20,000 subscribers. Began a period of unusual enthusiasm for the college. Dr. Frederic Sutter, chairman and inspired leader of effort.

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March 9 Board calls Dr. Brezing as president.

June Dr. Brezing declines call. Dr. Dehn, Mr. Montgomery resign.

September 92 students.

Dr. Holthusen ends term as Wagner president.

October 31 Dr. Ludwig appointed dean of the college; Dr. Sutter, acting president.

December Bequest of $5,000 from Henry J. Utz announced.

1927 January Henry Michaelis bequest $1,000. Schenck bequest $250.

Dr. Goller appointed college physician. April 12 Mr. Stoughton resigns as principal of high

school and member of the faculty. March $5,000 bequest from Mrs. Trina Priggs.

May Dr. Charles Dapp called to presidency.

July Bronze plaque to Dr. Sutter unveiled.

August Dr. Haas resigns work.

September College enrollment 59 — high school 39.

October Bequest of Marie Geyer: $10,000 directly; $40,110 a residium.

Dr. Dapp accepts call.

Dr. Haas dies. November E. Fey bequest announced: $3,200;

Catherine Steitz $5,000; Emma Serbert $3,000.

1928 January Survey Commission for Lutheran Colleges.

Mrs. F.H. Hettling, president of Guild, succeeds Mrs. M. Wulff.

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February Dr. Hinman and Dr. Davidheiser begin work.

New building [Main] authorized by trustees.

March 29 Charter amended by Regents of the University of the State of New York, approving courses and granting right to award [baccalaureate] degrees.

June Athletic field constructed.

First baccalaureate and honorary degrees awarded — D.D. to Dr. Sutter.

Ministerium votes to transfer all property to the board of trustees of the college.

September Fees raised — tuition $200; room and board $300.

October Reppenbagen estate $3,695.91.

Professor Richard Haymaker joins faculty. Nov. 23 Wagner College Concert — Lawrence

Tibbett, soloist — Mecca Temple.

1929 March 5 Property deeded to Wagner College by New York Ministerium. Liber of Deeds 679, page 545, Richmond County.

May 30 Administration Building cornerstone laid.

Gifts of $15,000 from Mr. John Nicum, $5,000 from Mr. Dreyfus, $1,000 [each from] Mrs. Hettling, Miss Weber, E. Clarence Miller announced.

June Dr. Theodore H. Becker, D.D. — Dr. George W. Sandt, commencement speaker.

1930 February Lutheran Students Association on campus. February 27 Campaign for $130,000 — dinner at

college.

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March Meta Wendler estate — bequest $3,607.49.

May 30 Dedication of new Administration Building.

June Bequest Addie G. Schmidt $1,000.

Carnegie Corporation gives $5,000 for library.

June 10 Commencement speaker, Wittenberg College President R.E. Tulloss. Honorary degrees to Pastor E. Heyd, Pastor J.A.W. Kirsch, Pastor E.C.J. Kraeling, Pastor William Ludwig, Pastor Charles Trexler, and Pastor H.C. Wasmund.

September College opens — 90 students — Dr. Grier appointed to faculty.

Sept. 25 Dr. Dapp resigns. Dr. Sutter appointed acting president.

December Wittekind Scholarship established.

1931 January Mrs. Hoffman elected president of Guild. Declines election. Mrs. R. Kleber, vice president, takes office.

February Dr. Brezing elected president. Accepts call.

June Dr. E.B. Burgess commencement speaker.

September Dr. M. Nordgaard added to faculty.

October Wendling estate $1,000.

November Marie Scheminger estate $2,000.

Nov. 17 Installation service [President Herman Brezing] — Trinity Lutheran Church.

Nov. 27 Wagner added to approved list of colleges of the Middle States Association. Enrollment 117.

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1932 February First mid-year entering class.

Dr. Suhr resigns.

W. Hoops bequest of $2,000. May R. Freymann estate $2,591.

June 12 Baccalaureate — Dr. Brezing.

June 14 Commencement — Dr. Charles Jacobs, speaker. [Professor of church history at Philadelphia Theological Seminary. Also spoke at 1923 dedication of South Hall dormitory.]

High school department closed.

117 students — 49 new enrollers.

Professors Krahmer, Brown, and Kleintop added to college faculty. Dr. Van Ormer new faculty member.

September First extension courses.

Nov. 25 Suspended from approved list of Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

1933 January Trustees decide to admit women to classes.

Mr. Stoughton called as financial officer. March College-Bound Club organized.

May First sub-freshmen day.

June Dr. Deal, Dr. Anderson appointed to faculty.

October 1 Enrollment 150.

November Lutheran Student Association convention on campus.

Dec. 13 Dr. Brezing resigns as of July 1, 1934.

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1934 May Professor Ludwig resigns as dean; to continue teaching.

Mr. Stoughton appointed acting dean.

Dr. Sutter appointed acting president. July First Summer School.

September Enrollment 179. Training of nurses for Staten Island Hospital begun. Dr. Haag joins faculty.

1935 March Muller bequest $2,000. May C.C. Stoughton elected to presidency.

Dr. H.D. Kraeling dies, leaving $3,000 to college.

June Miss Mabel Spitzer is first co-ed graduate.

September Enrollment 185. Mr. Childs called to faculty.

Nov. 1 Installation of President Stoughton at Trinity Lutheran Church.

1936 February 2,000 books given to library by family of Dr. George Collins, former member of Brooklyn Polytechnic School faculty.

March Jubilee Scholarship established by board.

April Dr. Ludwig resigns because of ill health.

May Wagner restored to approved list of Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

October 5 Fiftieth Anniversary celebration [dated from renaming as Wagner College, not from 1883 founding]. Dr. Hans Meiser, bishop of Bavaria, and President Lars Boe of St. Olaf College, speakers.

October 21 Fiftieth anniversary celebration by Wagner College Guild.

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October Remodeled Women’s Dormitory [North Hall/Reynolds House] dedicated by Dr. Sutter.

November Ten-year development program announced. Campaign for $100,000 from Staten Island begun.

1937 April 16 Charter amended by Board of Regents, permitting college to grant D.D., LL.D., L.H.D. as honorary degrees.

June Milton T. Kleintop appointed dean of the college.

Dr. John L. Tildsley, commencement speaker; Dr. Frederick Knuebel, baccalaureate preacher.

Dr. Samuel G. Hefelbower appointed professor of philosophy.

September Dr. Anderson resigns. Professor Theodore Gibson appointed professor of mathematics.

Herbert Sutter made director of athletics.

Board raised to $325.

Dr. Bartlett and Dr. Brabec added to faculty.

November First Community Forum under sponsorship of college and Jewish Community Center.

1938 February First annual alumni dinner at Beekman Towers. Dean Luther Weigle, Yale, speaker.

Kiwanis Club donates $550 for student loan fund.

March Lutheran Student Association, Atlantic District, holds convention at Wagner.

April Threat of city college for Staten Island.

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June Dr. Guy Snavely, commencement speaker; Dean Kleintop, baccalaureate preacher.

July Dean Kleintop ordained.

Second biology laboratory equipped. September Tuition raised to $250.

Dr. Paulssen added to faculty.

Professor Dunham appointed to take place of Dr. Rodick, who resigned.

Largest new enrollment — 97 students — total 250.

October First convocation. D.D. degree conferred upon the Rev. Theodore G. Tappart, Schieren Professor of Church History, Philadelphia Seminary.

Graduate fellowship established. Bruce Carney, first recipient.

1939 May Mrs. L.A. Dreyfus gives 300 shares Standard Oil of Indiana stock for scholarship fund.

New constitution drawn up. June Dr. Alan Valentine, commencement

speaker. Rev. P. Kirsch, baccalaureate preacher.

July-August New chemistry laboratory equipped in basement of Administration Building.

September Largest enrollment — total 287.

Professor Haymaker resigns. October Second annual convocation — D.D. degree

to Rev. Paul Andrew Kirsch, assistant executive secretary of the Board of American Missions.

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November Second annual forum.

Indebtedness of $11,000 to Conable estate liquidated by special drive on the part of the Board.149

Professor Arlan Coolidge, visiting professor and artist.

1940 Rev. Russell Auman, visiting guest preacher for three days.

February Mrs. Dreyfus promises $5,000 for new laboratories in Administration Building.

March N.Y.U. and Wagner sign agreement on five-year teaching training.

March 8 Edwin Markham dies. Wills entire library of 15,000 volumes to Wagner.

June Dr. Kenneth I. Brown, commencement speaker.

Rev. Frederick Grunst, baccalaureate.

Synod gives consent for joint campaign for Wagner College and Hartwick College.

July Library stacks moved to third floor [Administration Building], increased to 32,000 capacity. Four new laboratories (Dreyfus) begun.

September Wagner approved for CAA training.

Enrollment 275 — down about 4%.

First “Freshman Week” program successful.

Tuition raised to $310, including fees. Nov. 3 Third Annual Forum begins.

149 George W. Conable was the architect who designed South Hall/Parker Hall and the Administration Building/Main Hall. He died Jan. 2, 1933.

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Nov. 11 Annual convocation. D.D. awarded to Rev. Henry C. Freimuth; LL.D. to Irwin Conroe, director, NYS Division of Higher Education.

First distinguished citizenship award to Mrs. L.A. Dreyfus.

Markham Memorial Room, Dreyfus Laboratories and memorial plaques dedicated.

Staten Island District Guild organized. 1941 January 3 Campaign for $300,000 for Hartwick and

Wagner begins. February Mid-year enrollment: 14.

Mar. 13-15 Carlos Buhler, visiting artist.

Mar. 24-26 Rev. Russell F. Auman, visiting pastor.

April 25 Campaign formally opens in Albany — about 400 at dinner.

June Rev. F. Eppling Reinartz, commencement speaker.

Dr. Luther D. Reed, baccalaureate preacher.

Honorary degree of LL.D. awarded to William Betz, Class of 1894.

July Dr. Julius Seebach gives 1,000 volumes to the library.

$1,000 bequest from Miss Marie Wintjen paid.

Virgil Markham gives 1,000 records to library.

September Enrollment 294 — largest in history — increase of about 8%.

Dr. Foote added to biology staff. Nov. 3-5 Ernest and Analee Bacon, Converse

College, visiting artists.

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Nov. 11 Annual convocation. Honorary degree of D.D. awarded to Rev. Harold S. Miller; LL.D. to Ellsworth B. Buck, vice president of the Board of Education of New York City. Distinguished citizenship award to Mrs. E.C. Meurer. Ludwig Cottage dedicated.

December Ten acres of land, adjoining campus, given to the college by Mr. Philip Berolzheimer.

Dec. 26 Fire in Girls’ Dormitory [North Hall/Reynolds House]; none injured. Insurance settlement more than $18,000.

1942 January Otto Meinhardt bequest paid $3,150.76.

College plans accelerated program permitting graduation in three years.

February Mid-year enrollment — 32.

March Who’s Who in America Award from most outstanding non-monetary gift to libraries of the country to Wagner for the Edwin Markham collection.

Mar. 16-18 Rev. Hugo Dressler, Buffalo, visiting pastor.

Staten Island campaign yields about $40,000.

James W. Robb Jr., Class of 1935, won Navy Cross for heroism in Hawaii.

May 18 Commencement speaker: Professor Edward C. Lindeman.

Baccalaureate: Rev. Russell F. Auman, Scarsdale.

Honorary degree: LL.D. to Professor Lindeman.

June Dr. Paulssen resigns.

July Theft of $12,500 in securities by treasurer Philip Licht discovered.

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August Mortgage extension granted by Supreme Court — 5 years at 3-1/3%.

September Enrollment 280, considered most satisfactory in light of war conditions. Mr. Kirby inducted. Dr. Paulssen and Dr. Brabec leave. New faculty members: Dr. Adolf Stern, Dr. E. Hellersberg, Mr. Virgil Markham.

October Prof. Gibson resigns to enter C.P.T.

Dr. Foote commissioned as ensign in Navy. Nov. 9 Mortgage reduced to $190,000.

Nov. 11 Convocation D.D. to Russell F. Auman.

Six get baccalaureate degrees.

Distinguished citizenship award to Staten Island Borough President Joseph A. Palma.

18- to 19-year-old draft bill passed. December 1 164 men in service (students and alumni).

Over 50 commissioned.

Dieisen estate settled. College receives $5,000 interest on a first mortgage and nearly $1,000 cash.

December 2 Faculty/Board dinner to celebrate 25th anniversary of Dr. Posselt and Dr. Sutter as officers of the board.

Dec. 28 Dr. Holthusen dies in New Brunswick, N.J.

1943 January 25 New semester opens.

“Intensive study” plan inaugurated. [Students can take one class at a time, each class taking several weeks to complete.]

254 enrollment. January 31 First mid-year commencement.

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