Odd Wisconsin Archive
On the evening of March 31, 1918, Prof. E.A. Schimler, a language instructor at Northland College, was kidnapped by a mob of masked men. They took him to a lonely spot outside Ashland, stripped him naked, roughed him up, covered his body with tar and feathers, and left him to fend for himself. Schimler limped back to his boarding house in Ashland, where friends helped him get to the YMCA to clean up.
Anti-German sentiment ran high during the war, fueled in part by a propaganda effort organized by the state and federal governments. Despite our state's large German American population, America's entry into the war with Germany unleashed a torrent of hysterical conformity. Anything and anyone with ties to Germany became vulnerable to charges of disloyalty.
At the urging of federal officials, the State Council of Defense and the Wisconsin Loyalty Legion joined forces to suppress anti-war opinion through persuasion, propaganda, intimidation, and harassment. Public sentiment in Wisconsin was largely anti-war in early 1917 but overwhelmingly pro-war 18 months later. This was due to what the episode's historian described as a triumph of public relations. Even libraries, which are usually champions of intellectual freedom, kow-towed to the pressure from governments and public opinion.
After the war, new mass media such as radio, cheap magazines, and, ultimately, in the 1950s, television, proliferated. This gave the people who controlled the channels of communication greater power than ever before in human history. Governments and media magnates possessed unparalleled ability to control society by shaping voters' beliefs, desires, and standards of value.
As Aldous Huxley pointed out in 1932, the greatest threat to freedom may not come from dictatorial governments that suppress dissent by force, but rather from governments which effectively manipulate the media. With the proper encouragment, citizens in supposed democracies will love and honor their oppressors, willingly give up their freedoms, and join together to persecute dissenters. Wisconsin came very close to this in 1918-1919. Opponents of the war paid a heavy price in their public and private lives, and innocent by-standers such as Prof. Schimler were harassed and persecuted.
Schimler was a U.S. citizen who had come to this country when he was 14 years old. He attended Dartmouth College and taught school before spending six years in Germany. After returning to the U.S., he joined the language arts faculty at Northland College in September 1917. College officials reported there was no evidence of him being disloyal to America in either words or actions. His torture was simply an anti-German hate crime like many that occured around the nation during World War One.
In his case, local authorities were unable or unwilling to discover the perpetrators. They displayed more wit than courage when they sarcastically reported "that the mob were very liberal in the use of tar and also had on hand a lot of feathers." A $100 award was posted for information leading to the capture of the kidnappers, but no record of their arrest has been found in the newspapers.
For more on this sad aspect of our heritage, see the World War One section of Turning Points in Wisconsin History, where you'll find the newspaper account of Schimler's kidnapping. You can also view posters and pictures from World War One at Wisconsin Historical Images.
:: Posted in Curiosities on March 26, 2009
Did You Know?
The Wisconsin Historical Museum is currently featuring Odd Wisconsin objects in the latest exhibit: Odd Wisconsin. And don't miss the Odd Wisconsin book by author Erika Janik published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
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