"German Teacher"! How Dare You?!

In February 1919, in reporting on Albert Wolkenhauer's recovery from the Spanish influenza, the Gazette referred to him as the "German teacher."

Prof. Wolkenhauer shot back with a long letter of protest. By that offhanded remark, he said, had been "gravely offended, held up to ridicule by the public," and implicitly called "an alien enemy."

In its March 14 edition, the Gazette's editor apologized and assured his readers that he had intended to cast no aspersions on the Professor's character or patriotism. He had simply used a long-accepted description. For many years people in Hobart had referred to the Trinity Lutheran school as the "German school" and any teacher there as a "German teacher." Such descriptions had only recently become offensive, and old habits were hard to break. But he would try, in the future, to remember to refer to the school as the "Lutheran school."

The Gazette did not print Prof. Wolkenhauer's letter because it "would not be of interest to the general public" — by that, I'm guessing the letter was pretty strongly worded. But by the next week, the Professor had cooled off a little, and taken the time to write a reasoned defense of the "Lutheran school," which the Gazette did print. In that article we get a better idea of why the Professor had reacted so strongly. He mentions that lately Lutheran institutions had suffered "vicious attacks in many quarters," both local and general — and while I expect many unpleasant things were said about German Lutherans when the "anti-German bill" was being considered, I do not think that the "vicious attacks" were anything but verbal. Not lately, anyway. During the previous autumn's patriotic hysteria, it was a different story. As we already know, several cars outside the Hobart's German Lutheran church had been vandalized, but now we learn that the Trinity school building itself (the old church building on Center Street) had also been defaced.


(Click on image to enlarge)


Sources:
♦ "Communicated." Hobart Gazette 21 Mar. 1919.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 14 Mar. 1919.