Otto Wirth (cultural scientist)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Otto Wirth in the 1940s (Source: Roosevelt University Archives)

Otto Wirth (born June 26, 1905 in Gemünden (Hunsrück) , † June 6, 1991 in Tucson ) was an American cultural scientist of German-Jewish descent. He first emigrated to Costa Rica in 1931 and moved from there to the USA in 1932 to study. From September 1946 he taught cultural studies with a focus on German literature and history at Roosevelt College , later Roosevelt University . The sociologist Louis Wirth is his older brother.

origin

Otto Wirth's place of birth was known as “Little Nazareth” or “Little Jerusalem” due to its high Jewish population in the area. “The Jewish families earned their living mainly as cattle traders and as small traders. Since the second half of the 19th century, several of them had opened shops and stores on site. ”Otto Wirth also came from this Jewish milieu. His parents were the dealer Joseph Wirth (* December 18, 1866 in Gemünden - † in Chicago ) and Rosalie Lorig (* January 4, 1867 in Butzweiler - † 1948 in Chicago). Just as the Wirth family had been based in Gemünden for generations, the ancestors of Rosalie Lorig, daughter of the Butzweiler cattle dealer Abraham Lorig, had lived in Butzweiler and the surrounding area since the 18th century. Rosalie Lorig had a sister (Henrietta, + October 1, 1855) and four brothers, three of whom emigrated to the USA: Max (* August 6, 1864) went to New York, Rosalie's twin brother Isaak (* January 4, 1867) lived with his wife in Omaha ( Nebraska ), as did Emanuel (born February 7, 1869).

The Wirth-Lorig couple had seven children, all of whom were born in Gemünden. Besides Otto these were:

  • Flora (married Joseph, born August 21, 1896 - September 27, 1952 in Des Moines ( Iowa ))
  • Ludwig, who later called himself Louis (1897–1952)
  • Fred (Fritz, † February 6, 1976, presumably in Chicago). He was married to Esther Wirth, née Rimsky.
  • Else (born April 3, 1899 - † May 19, 1982, married Bendix)
  • Julius (* around 1902 in Gemünden), last place of residence before entering the USA: Brussels. He arrived on May 10, 1938 at the age of 36 with the SS Nieuw Amsterdam from Rotterdam in Ellis Island .
  • Richard (* around 1901 in Gemünden)

Rosalie's brother Emanuel was very important to at least two of the couple's children. “In 1911, it was his uncle Emanuel Lorig, who emigrated to the USA, who during a stay at home convinced his sister's family that their first-born son Louis could expect a better future in the USA. Together with his sister Flora, Louis then emigrated to Nebraska, where Uncle Emanuel lived as a merchant. ”Otto Wirth, who went to Costa Rica in 1931, did so at the invitation of an uncle; Whether it was also about Emanuel or one of his mother's two other brothers is uncertain.

In 1936, Joseph Wirth and Rosalie Lorig finally managed to emigrate to the USA. The two-year-old granddaughter Margit Wirth traveled with them with her parents, Richard and Hedwig Wirth (born June 14, 1903 in Gemünden - † August 26, 2001 in Tucson). They came together on the SS Washington from Hamburg and reached Ellis Island on March 25, 1936 . The job title for Joseph and Richard Wirth was cattle dealer , the two adult women were registered as housewives. Margit Wirth grew up in Chicago and graduated from Roosevelt University , where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in laboratory science with a focus on phlebotomy . Her first marriage was to David Lieberman and her second marriage to Norman O. Johnson Jr. After his death, Margit married Jerry Lacker in 2001.

Otto Wirth's career before emigrating

Otto Wirth's diploma at the Realgymnasium Simmern 1922 (Source: Archive of the Herzog-Johann-Gymnasium in Simmern)

Otto Wirth was accepted into the lower secondary school of the Realgymnasium in Simmern on September 20, 1919 . Nothing is known about his previous school days. Two and a half years later, the leaving certificate of April 5, 1922 says: “After passing the final exam on March 28, 1922, he was awarded the qualification for the upper secondary school of a secondary school. He leaves the institution to go into banking. ”Whether that was actually his professional goal has to remain open, because immediately after graduating from school he switched to the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences (HH-Mannheim), which is now the University of Mannheim, which was founded in 1907 . Here he studied modern languages, history, social sciences and law until 1924. However, there is no reference to a student named Otto Wirth in the registration book of the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences and in other sources there. This indicates that Wirth did not complete a proper course of studies at the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences , where at the time in question there were only the degree courses in business administration and business teaching , but only general studies in the subjects he mentioned was. As a non-regular student, his name was not recorded at the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences.

Due to the economic and social upheavals after the inflation of 1923 , Wirth had to drop out of his studies in 1924. He worked for a German export company and traveled extensively to France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland on their behalf - in addition to Germany.

The years 1931 to 1946

In November 1931 Otto Wirth traveled to Costa Rica at the invitation of an uncle . He gave no information about the purpose of this trip, nor about who this uncle was (see above). As a businessman Otto Wirth, 27 years old, able to read and write in English, he traveled to the USA in June 1931 on the SS California with a quota visa issued in San José on June 1, 1932 . On June 28, 1932, his entry to Ellis Island is registered. The Biographical Sketch states that he went to Costa Rica with regard to the trip to Costa Rica ; but he emigrated to the USA . Whether this was a deliberate choice of words and whether Wirth wanted to express that he was seeking refuge in another country was not discussed by him. His widow, Magda Wirth (born Magdalena Gmirek; born June 26, 1907 in Berlin) said in an interview in 1992 that he had gone west in 1931 because he was looking for better opportunities for himself and to escape the escalating anti-Semitism . She also indicated that he had suffered discrimination in Gemünden.

In 1938 Otto Wirth received US citizenship.

Training in the USA

Otto Wirth seems to have gone straight to Chicago to continue his academic training with a focus on modern languages at the Central YMCA College there. In 1935 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts there and then studied at the Department of German Language and Literature at the University of Chicago . In 1936 he received his MA certificate , and in 1937 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on the history of German literature since 1800 ( German Literary Histories Sinde 1800 ).

The man who saved Himmler's books

Otto Wirth and Magdalena Gmirek married on August 31, 1934. Only a few days earlier, on August 24, 1934 , coming from Bremen on the Europa , she entered the USA via Ellis Island . She was listed as an employee in the passenger list. The marriage of the two remained childless, and how they met is not documented. As Magda Gmirek's place of birth and last whereabouts, Berlin is entered in the passenger list.

During his studies at the University of Chicago , where his brother Louis had been a professor since 1931, Otto Wirth was a lecturer (instructor) for German at George Williams College in Chicago from 1935 to 1936 . In addition to the Central YMCA College , where Wirth first studied, there was another YMCA college in Chicago. Wirth then worked from 1937 to 1942 as an "Extension Lecturer" for German in the Extension Division Building , the Calumet Center of Indiana University in East Chicago.

In the spring of 1942, already 37 years old, Otto Wirth volunteered for service in the US Army and was drafted on September 23, 1942. His widow Magda pointed out in an interview in 1992 that this could not be taken for granted. Her husband was overweight and had high blood pressure and was actually too old for military service. But Wirth's hatred of the Nazis was so strong that he did everything to fight them. He had convinced the military with a diet for eleven days.

Wirth served as a special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps in the States until January 1944 , before being transferred to the European Theater of Operations (ETOUSA), a United States unit that directed US Army operations in parts of Europe from 1942 to 1945 has been. In the rank of sergeant , he took part after Operation Overlord, which began on June 6, 1944, as a non-commissioned officer ("Special Agent Interrogator") at the headquarters of the Third United States Army in their campaigns in Normandy, northern France, the Rhineland and the Ardennes. For fear of doing something that he might have regretted later, he turned down the opportunity to visit his place of birth.

Otto Wirth did not come to Gemünden, but to the small town of Gmund am Tegernsee . Heinrich Himmler's family had lived in the Lindenfycht house in the Sankt Quirin district since 1934, and soldiers of the 3rd US Army came across this at the end of the first week of May 1945.

“US soldiers searched the big house; As devotional items, all kinds of dedicated pictures, objects with swastikas or SS runes and private papers were very popular with the Allied soldiers. Presumably the Americans opened the private safe and took the contents. [..]
When two soldiers left the house with their booty, they came across an American intelligence officer who had heard of the discovery of the Himmler property. According to general instructions from the Allied Commander-in-Chief Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the tasks of his office was to secure evidence of the planned trials against the leadership of the Nazi regime. So he tried to persuade the two soldiers to hand over the finds or at least sell them to him.
He only had success with one of the GIs. He gave him six notebooks: Heinrich Himmler's diaries from 1914 to 1924. The officer found that these documents contained nothing that could be useful for the upcoming trials. He only reported about this in 1957 to the German-American historian Werner Tom Angress , who transcribed the diaries and evaluated them in a scientific article. "

One of those who was there was Otto Wirth. It is not clear whether he was the intelligence officer mentioned in the quote. Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith speak in the first footnote of their article Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years only of an "American intelligence officer stationed in Bavaria" who came into possession of the diaries and took them home along with other souvenirs sent. They do not mention his name, but do mention that the diaries were handed over to the Hoover Institution after the transcription . Otto Wirth was at least a witness to the looting of his comrades and saw how they were busy burning books from Himmler's library because they did not attach any importance to them. The scientist Wirth rushed to the fire and saved as many books as possible from the flames.

In February 1992 Magda Wirth gave the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson, where she and her husband had lived since October 1990, 856 books - including five that had previously belonged to Heinrich Himmler. The rest of the collection consisted of academic works on German history, linguistics, and the prehistory of the Holocaust. The rest of the 50 or so books that Wirth had taken out of the fire he had given away to various family members. At the UA, the rarest and most sensitive books have been placed in the special collections department.

Otto Wirth was awarded the Bronze Star Medal on August 13, 1945 for his services in the army and demobilized on August 13, 1945.

Roosevelt University

After his discharge from military service, he first resumed his work at the Calumet Center before becoming Professor of Modern Languages ​​at Roosevelt College in September 1946 .

Rolf A. Weil (left) and Otto Wirth at Roosevelt University in the 1950s (source: Roosevelt University archive)

It can be assumed that Otto Wirth still had contacts to his own training facility, the Central YMCA College , from which the Roosevelt College emerged, and thus became a suitable candidate for the college that was only founded in 1945. It was he who, at the turn of 1945/1946 , first drew attention to Roosevelt College , where Weil's career began soon after, Rolf A. Weil , who like Wirth also taught at the Calumet Center . Weil's memoirs also show that they both also lived in Chicago's Hyde Park district , a district where many Jewish and non-Jewish refugees lived together at the time, especially those from German-speaking countries. It is also noteworthy that during this chance encounter on the train, nine months before starting work at Roosevelt College , Wirth sketched the concept, the realization of which at college remained closely linked to his name. “Wirth told me that a new school would start work, a spin-off of the YMCA college, that he had committed to teaching there, and that he wanted to introduce a new concept, culture studies, because you shouldn't just have one language teaching, but also a culture. ”In a later press release of the RU it said:“ He [Wirth] founded and headed the department for cultural studies, in which the students get to know different cultures of the world. [..] The aim of the program, as Wirth built it, was to help reduce the intercultural fear and distrust that prevent people from intelligently judging their international and inter-racial relationships. "

Otto Wirth's further professional life took place at Roosevelt College and the resulting Roosevelt University (RU). In addition to his professorship for modern languages, he has been chairman of the department for modern languages ​​and cultural studies since 1950. From 1953 to 1959 he was a member of the board of trustees of the university and between 1955 and 1959 was also its secretary. In 1960 he was appointed dean of the College of Art and Science of the RU, an office he held until 1968. Then he was dean of the faculties ("Dean of Faculties") and graduate dean ("Graduate Dean"). Wirth gave up his university positions in June 1970, but remained associated with the university as a professor. In the summer of 1971, Wirth wanted his book Modernes Deutschland. Complete a cultural portrait that was to become a study of German culture from the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and the rise of Prussia through The Years of Shame - The Third Reich to Two Germanys - An Epilogue . It remained with an unpublished book manuscript (on which he had been working since 1957 at the latest), as well as an intended work on The Roots of the Holocaust .

Unlike his colleague and President of the RU, Rolf A. Weil, who was very critical of the student and black movement of the 1960s, Otto Wirth seems to have been much more open here. “He is [...] unusually aware of the changes in the student body over the past quarter century, the changed attitudes of women and the increased interest in adult education. He also has a particularly good understanding of the current student unrest and disagreements, and more than 500 copies of his February 1969 speech, "Youth in Revolt" [..], have been made available to school, college and university libraries on request country distributed. "Consistent with this openness also that Otto Wirth in 1963 for the first time by the Alumni Association award award for outstanding achievements had received. “The reason for this said: For his humanity, his learning, his concern for science and intellectual abilities; for his unique gifts as a teacher, his inspiration and charm, his feeling for the great works of literature and his sense of the beauty of language. "

Otto and Magda Wirth moved from Chicago to Laguna Hills , California in 1981 . Otto Wirth had previously bequeathed 8,000 books to Roosevelt University . However, none of the Himmler books mentioned above were among them. In October 1990 the couple finally moved to Tucson, where they were at least in close contact with Otto Wirth's niece Margit Wirth Johnson-Lacker.

Works

  • German Literary Histories Sinde 1800 (dissertation). Part of the work was published in 1937 under the title Wilhelm Scherer, Josef Nadler, and Wilhelm Dilthey As Literary Historians .
  • Monthly booklets for German lessons. A Journal devoted to the interests of the teachers of German Language in the schools and colleges of America , Published at the University of Wisconsin , Madison, Wisconsin . In this:
    • Ernst Toller, the human being in his work , issue 31, 1939
    • Christian Morgenstern , issue 34, 1942
  • Foreign Language Teacher Training - A Graduate Program , Illinois Education Press, 1959

swell

  • In contrast to his brother, there is hardly any publicly available material about Otto Wirth. We would therefore like to thank Laura Mills, the archivist at Roosevelt University , who made a variety of materials available from the university archives that enabled a reconstruction of Otto Wirth's life and work. These include, among other things, two undated papers that presumably emerged as press releases and meticulously document his career:
    • Olga Corey: For Immediate Release (RU press release of June 20, 1960).
    • Otto Wirth: A Biographical Sketch . It is likely that this crossed out document was the draft for the paper:
    • Biographical Information Otto Wirth . According to the data given in the paper, it must have been from the mid-1960s, but certainly after 1963.
    • Biographical Information Form For Use Of Department Of News And Broadcasting, July 27, 1962.
    • Otto Wirth resigns as dean (“will relinquish the respondibilities of the office of dean”), press release from Roosevelt University of May 27, 1970.
    • Daniel H. Perlman: Roosevelt University. Board of Trustees Manual , probably 1970.
  • Janet Kornblum: Himmler's books saved for study , The Arizona Daily Star, September 20, 1992. The article is based on an interview with Magda Wirth.
  • Realgymnasium Simmern: Certificate of passed final examination (examination of the maturity for the Oebersekunda) of March 28, 1922 & leaving certificate of April 5, 1922, made available by the archive of the Herzog-Johann-Gymnasium in Simmern.
  • Memoirs of Rolf Weil (as of 1981) , President of Roosevelt University, 1964-1987. As part of the History Project in Labor History (see: Elizabeth Balanoff Labor Oral History Collection ), Rolf A. Weil was interviewed three times by Elizabeth Balanoff from August to September 1981. The four-hour recording was completely transcribed and can be accessed via the Memoirs of Rolf Weil website (as of 1981) or requested by email. The first 30 pages are mainly used to reconstruct Weil's life story up to the beginning of his work at Roosevelt College in 1946. The rest then focus on his work at the college, the later Roosevelt University also repeatedly addresses the work of Otto Wirth in this context.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gemünden / Hunsrück (Rhein-Hunsrück district): Jewish history / synagogue
  2. ↑ According to other sources: Alexander Lorig (born March 8, 1829 in Butzweiler)
  3. ^ A b Gregor Brand: Louis Wirth - American sociologist (web link)
  4. ↑ Fred (Fritz) Wirth's obituary, Chicago Sun-Times , February 7, 1976, cited from documents in the Roosevelt University archives
  5. ↑ According to the Ellis Island passenger list.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g Otto Wirth: A Biographical Sketch
  7. ↑ Volker Boch: Jews in Gemünden. History and destruction of a Jewish community in the Hunsrück , Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz, 2003, ISBN 978-3-89649-824-3 , p. 36
  8. ↑ Obituary: Margit Wirth Johnson-Lacker . Margit Johnson-Lacker died in Tucson on May 28, 2015.
  9. ^ Written communication from the archives of the University of Mannheim dated April 8, 2019.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f Janet Kornblum: Himmler's books saved for study
  11. ^ Indiana University: A storied history nearly two centuries in the making . East Chicago is not part of Chicago, but an independent city in Lake County (Indiana) . See also in the English WIKIPEDIA: East Chicago, Indiana
  12. ↑ More on this unit in the English WIKIPEDIA: European Theater of Operations, United States Army
  13. ^ Sven-Felix Kellerhoff, Simone Meyer, Jacques Schuster: Himmler
  14. ↑ Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith: Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years , in: The Journal of Modern History , Vol. XXXI, No. 3, 1959, pp. 206-224
  15. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil (see literature ), p. 15 and p. 27
  16. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 27. “All of us lived in Hyde Park. Wirth told me that there was a new school that was starting and was an outgrowth of the YMCA College, that he had signed up to teach there and that he was going to introduce an new concept, Culture Studies, because one shouldn't just teach a language one should teach a culture. "
  17. ^ Olga Corey: For Immediate Release (RU press release of June 20, 1960). "He established, and headed, the department of culture studies, in which students learn about various cultural areas of the world. [..] Purpose of the program, as Wirth set it up, was to help reduce the intercultural fear and suspicion which prevents men from assessing intelligently their international and inter-racial relations. "
  18. ^ Daniel H. Perlman: Roosevelt University. Board of Trustees Manual , p. 105
  19. ↑ a b Otto Wirth resigns as dean (see sources )
  20. ↑ According to an undated and handwritten completed university questionnaire.
  21. ↑ John M. Spalek, Sandra H Hawrylchak: Guide to the archival materials of the German speaking emigration to the United States after 1933 , Vol. 2, Part 2, Saur, Bern / Munich, 2006, ISBN 978-3-907820-94 -0 , p. 744. There is also an unpublished autobiographical statement about 10 pages long.
  22. ↑ Otto Wirth resigns as dean . Original quote: "He is, therefore, unusually cognizant of the changes in the student body over the past quartercentury, of the changes in the attitudes of women and of the increased interest in adult education. He also has an especially keen understanding of the current student unrest and dissent, and more than 500 copies of his commencement address of February 1969, "Youth in Revolt", (copy enclosed) have been distributed upon request to school, college and university libraries throughout the country. "
  23. ↑ Otto Wirth resigns as dean . Original quote: "For his humanility, his learning, his concern for scholarship and the functions of the mind; For his singular gifts as a teacher, his inspiration and charm, his feeling for the great works of literature and his sense of the beauty language. "
personal data
SURNAME Wirth, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American cultural scientist of German-Jewish descent
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Gemünden (Hunsrück)
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1991
Place of death Tucson