No Bratwurst but Bach’s Bible

(From the April 2006 issue of The Atlantic Times)

German footprints in St. Louis: music, art and the zoo

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

A century ago, St. Louis was America’s fourth-largest city. At least one-third of its population spoke German, which was also the language of some of its leading newspapers. Today, this once bustling metropolis on the banks of the Mississippi seems almost deserted, beset by urban blight. Since the 1960s, most of its inhabitants, including the large German-American contingent, have moved to neighboring communities and the population of St. Louis proper has shrunk to less than 300,000 and lost of much its German soul – except for its rich musical heritage.

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At 9:30 every weekday morning a bell tolls at Concordia Seminary in Clayton a few hundred yards west of St. Louis’ city limits. It calls students and faculty to the chapel. So rich is its sound that one may be forgiven for believing themselves back in Germany. Only there, it seems, do church bells have this rich quality, in contrast to the playfulness of their Anglo-Saxon counterparts.

Following the worshipers into the imposing sanctuary that dominates this venerable divinity school of the theologically conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, one feels again propelled back to Germany, but to a Germany of quite another era. Accompanied by a 63-rank organ, whose thunder sometimes almost seems to lift the entire large structure off the ground, hundreds of voices, chiefly male, belt out Lutheran hymns from the 16th and 17th centuries. They do this with an ardor most have not experienced in Germany for many years.

After the service, professors congregate in the wood-paneled Koburg Hall named after the fortress that was Martin Luther’s temporary home at a pivotal moment in Reformation history. It was from Coburg castle that he directed the drafting of Lutheranism’s principal statement of faith – the Augsburg Confession written by his associate Philipp Melanchthon.

At the time of this writing, the main topic of the scholars’ coffee-hour discourse is a request by several Nebraska pastors for what they quaintly call a “Gutachten,” meaning an expert opinion, on a fine theological point. This is unbelievable: A “Gutachten”! In the present context, this word has a nostalgic ring to it, at least to 21st-century German ears. So if one wonders whether St. Louis, once home to scores of Bavarian-type beer gardens, of singing societies and “Turnvereine,” still has something of a German soul, the answer is: It does, right here in this seminary, which was founded in nearby Altenburg in 1839 and moved to St. Louis 10 years later. And a pleasant soul it is, too.

For it is chiefly a musical soul. Don’t expect to find a bona fide bratwurst in St. Louis where after a long absence of German restaurants and taverns one solitary German “Gast-Haus” has recently made its appearance and is now struggling valiantly for culinary authenticity. Don’t expect to hear much German in the streets, either. Once the premier language of worship in St. Louis, it is now used in one church service only once a month.
On the other hand, why should I worry about sausage when as a lover of German music I discover in St. Louis gem after gem relating to my favorite art form? In Concordia Seminary’s 200,000-volume library diagonally across from my apartment my white-gloved hand was recently allowed to touch an invaluable treasure – Johann Sebastian Bach’s personal Bible, which includes an elaborate commentary by 17th-century theologian Abraham Calov. This leather-bound work in three volumes – Old Testament, Apocrypha and New Testament – bears Bach’s signature, dated 1733, on its cover page. Inside, the margins show many annotations in his handwriting. Before composing his Sunday cantatas, Bach diligently exegeted Scripture just like any competent preacher.

How did it get here, why is it not in Leipzig, where Bach had written most of his works and died in 1750? According to David Berger, Concordia’s chief librarian, a German immigrant must have brought this Bible to the United States and sold it to an antiquarian bookstore in Philadelphia in the 19th century; it bears that dealer’s stamp.

Then the volumes somehow ended up in the attic of farmer Leonard Reichle in Frankenmuth, a settlement founded by 19th-century Franconian immigrants in Michigan. Reichle showed them to a visiting pastor who immediately identified it as Bach’s Bible. The two men agreed that this valuable object should not rot in a working farm but be given a proper home – but where? Germany would have been the logical place. “But as Hitler had just come to power in Germany, Reichle did not want to Bible returned there, and so it was decided to give it to Concordia Seminary,” Berger said.

And there it is in good company. Good music is everywhere on this beautiful campus, which has several first-rate organists among its second-career students, in addition to its outstanding musical director and choir master Henry Gericke. It is home, too, to the extraordinary American Kantorei – here we have another German word – led by Concordia’s artists in residence, the Rev. Robert Bergt, an internationally acclaimed Bach specialist who had previously taught in Japan for 11 years. His “Bach at the Sem” performances of oratorios, cantatas and orchestral works are unmatched by any divinity school anywhere in the United States and perhaps in the world.

Then there is, also on campus, KFUO, the world’s oldest Christian radio station. It was founded in 1927. KFUO’s FM unit broadcasts classical music 24 hours per day, which makes it the leading disseminator of German and other European cultural traditions on local airwaves. But there is more. Open the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which was founded by Joseph Pulitzer, once editor in chief of Westliche Post, a superb German-language daily that has vanished long ago, and you discover a wealth of musical delights unmatched by any city of comparable size.

Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches vie with each other in offering splendid concerts. There is also an incredible variety of amateur and semi-professional ensembles. And then there is, of course, the fabled St. Louis Symphonic Orchestra, the second oldest in the United States after the New York Philharmonic. Founded in 1880, it also has distinct German roots.

Music critic Roger Dettmer attributes St. Louis’ appetite for Old World musical culture to the influx of German immigrants after 1848, a revolutionary year in their homeland. But even before they arrived with their pianos, spinets and other instruments and proceeded to found their “Sängerbünde,” or singing associations, and a conservatory, a German by the name of Charles Balmer had already organized an orchestra in 1839 and an Oratorio Society in 1845.
In a sense, his orchestra was the precursor of the symphony, which today seems more closely tied to the local community than any other philharmonic I am aware of elsewhere in the world. This shows particularly in its partnership with 25 African-American congregations, called “In Unison.” Jointly, they organize concerts promoting their cultural traditions.

True, one might bemoan the near-total disappearance of the German language from a part of the United States where it once predominated; in 1860 there were 18 German-language newspapers in Missouri. German was also the language of five St. Louis regiments during the Civil War. By the near-unanimous verdict of Civil War historians, these military units were responsible for keeping Missouri in the Union; anti-slavery sentiment was particularly strong within the German immigrant community, in contrast to the English-speaking majority in the state.

The death of the German language in St. Louis – as in much of the rest of America – set in with the “hate the Hun” hysteria during and after World War I. It became dangerous for German-Americans to speak their language in public. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod switched from German to English in its schools and worship services and changed its hymnals accordingly.

There still exists in St. Louis a monument to this sad period. In St. Matthew’s Cemetery, the inscription on a gravestone reads: “Robert P. Prager, born Feb. 28, 1888, in Dresden, Saxony – died Apr. 5, 1918, in Collinsville, Ill., the victim of a mob.” He was lynched for the “crime” of being German-born.

But while the German language has disappeared, along with sauerbraten and schnitzels, German culture is still massively present, and not just in the shape of music. Take the St. Louis Zoo, which ranks second only to San Diego’s in the U.S. It is a copy of “Hagenbeck’s Tiergarten” in Hamburg, Germany, which the president of the Zoological Society of St. Louis, George Diekman, visited almost immediately after World War I.

Or take the St. Louis Art Museum, one of the world’s finest. It is only a 10-minute walk from my apartment, so I visit it frequently, primarily because of its magnificent collection of German expressionists. My favorite among them is Max Beckmann, a fellow native of Leipzig, who taught in St. Louis after World War II.

This is why I can handle easily the absence of a decent bratwurst in St. Louis and manage quite well without speaking my mother tongue. With Bach in the Seminary’s chapel and Beckmann in the Museum nearby, I, a native Leipziger, feel right at home in this town.

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Uwe Siemon-Netto, a veteran journalist and Lutheran lay theologian, is scholar in residence at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo.

Comments

[Dr Albert E. Jabs]

The memory of Mr. Robert P. Prager, and his lynching, simply because of the "crime of being German" is a dark stain on Collinsville, Illinois, and the United States. Yes, this lynching should be remembered; we are supposedly a nation ruled by law; in this case, obviously, the liars of truth won out.

As a second generation German American, I have been privileged and blessed to have studied racism and lynching in a doctoral disseration at the University of South Carolina. It leads me to ask further questions such as where was our beloved Lutheran church? Do not we have both a prophetic and pastoral responsibility in such matters as in this egregious injustice? Further, in my judgment with a lifetime of study on such matters that anti German racism still lingered on right through the arrest of approximately 60,000 German Americans in WW II, and like the Japanese Americans, about l5,000 were incarcerated in camps. A Bill is still pending in Congress to recognize this fact; the Japanese Americans were given financial remuneration, in addition to having their story told; 2500 Italian Americans, also imnprisoned had their story officially recognized as well in l988; the German American story is being stone walled in the present Congress...unfortunately.

The Prager tragedy reminds me of how many of the camps in Poland, ater WW II, were used to house German Polish Americans, and their atrocities are still largely suppressed. Suffering is suffering...is suffering...it cannot be compared in terms of numbers. We have a calling to tell the story...to tell the story...to tell the story...so that Jesus Christ is made necessary.

Finally, this is how to deal with what Hemut Thielicke call "Schuldverhangnis" and Was Christum Treibet is your and my calling...and that is why the story of Mr. Robert Prager sticks to me. If I come to St. Louis, I want to visit that grave...and contemplate the exile he must have felt.... Dr. Albert E. Jabs