KLAUS WUST
(1925-2003):
FOREMOST GERMAN
-AMERICAN HISTORIAN DIES
AT AGE
77
ashington, D.C.—Klaus G. Wust
of Edinburg, Virginia, the chroni-
cler of German immigration to
the Eastern United States, died on 6 May
2003, in Woodstock, Virginia. In an article
in the Northern Virginia Daily two days
later Carolyn Keister Baker remembered
Wust "as a devoted historian, a fervent edu-
cator and a tireless helper to everyone who
sought to learn about their German ances-
try."
Klaus Wust was born in 1925 in
Bielefeld, Westphalia, near the Teutoburger
Wald. When his class was called up to fight
in World War II, he managed to delay his
enlistment for one year by volunteering for
the German navy. Every time he received
the reply, "The German navy needs no vol-
unteers at this time," he would volunteer
again. When he received an induction
notice, he would answer that he had volun-
teered for the navy. When he finally entered
the navy, he was lucky to be assigned to a
transport ship which ferried German and
other refugees fleeing from the Soviet army
across the Baltic to safety in Denmark. The
Soviets sank several refugee ships like the
one Wust was on with the loss of thousands
of innocent lives. The crew of his ship
established close relationships with the
British, however, who let the ship ply its
mission of mercy unharmed. When Klaus
was taken prisoner by the British, he got
along so well that one soldier gave him a
tam-o'-shanter from a Scottish regiment. He
wore this red headgear proudly when he
arrived at his parents' home in Bielefeld.
In 1949, Wust received a leave of
absence from his position as news editor
with the Social Democratic Freie Presse to
spend a year as a scholarship student at
Bridgewater College in the Shenandoah
Valley of Virginia. When he learned about
the extensive contributions Germans had
made to the Valley of Virginia as well as to
the United States in general, he decided to
stay in this country and devote his life to
telling their story.
No one has reported in such depth and
breadth on the contributions by Germans to
the United States as Klaus Wust. He was the
author or co-author of two dozen books and
more than a hundred articles in German and
English about German contributions to this
country. Moreover, he took on the task
directly after World War II, when anti-
German feelings still ran high. His most
important work was The Virginia Germans,
published by the University Press of Vir-
ginia in 1969 and reprinted in subsequent
years. When the book was being published,
the editor tried to persuade Wust to change
the title to the Virginia "Dutch" to make it
more acceptable to readers, but Wust insist-
ed that it wasn't about Hollanders. Today, as
Elizabeth McClung, executive director of
Belle Grove Plantation, has said, The
Virginia Germans is "the definitive text" on
early German settlers in Virginia.
From 1957 to 1967, Wust was the edi-
tor of the German-language weekly, the
Washington Journal, where he published
many articles about the early Germans of
Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland.
From 1957 to 1992, Wust was also the edi-
tor of the Report: A Journal of German-
American History published by the Society
for the History of the Germans Maryland.
W
KLAUS WUST
(1925-2003)__________
Wust was a founding board member of
the American Frontier Culture Foundation,
which established a Frontier Culture Mu-
seum in Staunton, Virginia, in 1988. This
outdoor museum features various farms
including one brought from Germany.
"Klaus was one of the founding educa-
tors at Belle Grove in the 1960s," said
Elizabeth McClung. "He assisted in shaping
the interpretive and educational program as
a leading authority on German immigration
to the Shenandoah Valley...."
In March 2002, Wust was awarded the
Bundesverdienstkreuz or "Federal Cross of
Merit" by the German government in recog-
nition for his contribution to German-
American relations. The award ceremony
took place at Belle Grove Plantation, Mid-
dletown, Virginia, an historic home built by
German-American pioneers in 1797.
For many years Wust maintained
homes in both New York and Virginia, but
in his later years he moved permanently to
Virginia. There he continued to live in a
farm house in the Shenandoah Valley about
which he wrote with such devotion and
love, and it was there that he died. Accord-
ing to Wust's wishes, his ashes were scat-
tered over the Baltic Sea.
— Gary C. Grassl
Suitland, Maryland
—xii—
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
—PRESERVING THE PAST
n the preface to the First Annual Report
of the Society, the editors—presumably
the Executive Committee of the So-
ciety—expressed their concern about the
scarcity and possible disappearance of
materials on the German presence in Ame-
rica, specifically Maryland. Their hope in
establishing the Society and issuing an
annual report was to preserve as many doc-
uments of relevance to the history of Ger-
man immigrants to Maryland as they could.
Moreover, they were determined to make
those items available in English so as to in-
crease the likelihood that the information
would in fact be available to those individu-
als among the American populace who were
interested in such things but could not read
German. Unfortunately, the plan to issue an
annual report lasted only slightly more than
twenty years, and today early issues of the
Report are almost as rare as the materials it
sought to preserve. Even the Society itself
has only one complete set of all volumes.
Report 45, the first volume of the new
millenium, carried a reprint of some of
those rare materials on the history of the
German element in Maryland and a promise
that each successive volume of the Report
would reproduce at least one article from
the early years. For the current volume I
have chosen an article by noted German-
American scholar Albert B. Faust on the oc-
casion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the
founding of the Society.
The article by Dr. Faust has been reset
in the current two-column format but is oth-
erwise reprinted verbatim as it first
appeared in the Twenty-Third Annual Report
of the Society for the History of the
Germans in Maryland (1929), pages 5-13.
Dr. Faust addressed the Society at a meeting
on February 21, 1911, and, as is still the cus-
tom today, his remarks were subsequently
published in the Report of the Society. It is,
however, worthy of note that although
Faust spoke in 1911 his remarks were not
published until 1929. Although he could not
have known it at the time, the First World
Was was to profoundly alter the status and
prestige of German immigrants to the
United States. It seems likely that the War
itself and the anti-German sentiment which
grew out of it is largely responsible for the
eighteen-year delay. The Twenty-Second
Report of the Society was printed in 1907,
the Twenty-Third in 1929, and the Twenty-
Fourth ten years later in 1939. The events of
those years only further complicated the
task of preserving the record of German
immigration to North American and assess-
ing the accomplishments of, as Faust him-
self dubbed them, the "German Element" in
the United States.
I
Von alten Drucken und Schriften, die uns treue Kunde brächten vom Schaffen und
Wirken des deutschen Elements in der Jugendzeit seines Adoptivlandes, bleiben uns verhält-
nissmässig nur kärgliche Reste. Der Anglo-Amerikanische Geschichtsforscher, nicht immer
der deutschen Sprache mächtig, wusste nicht was sie zu bedeuten hatten, und würdigte sie
zumeist keiner Bekanntmachung. Nachlässigkeit und Apathie mancher Nachkommen der
deutschen Einwanderer thaten das Uebrige, und so sind uns diese, für das Studium der
Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten so wertvollen Dokumente zum grössten Teil wohl auf
immer rettungslos verloren. Was uns noch in Maryland erhalten ist, sammeln wir jetzt für
den Gebrauch seines künftigen Historikers, der vielleicht des Deutschen unkundig, unsere
Verhandlungen und viele Beiträge von Deutsch-Amerikanern, in englischer Sprache geführt
und geschrieben, vorfinden wird. Ohne Zweifel wird er dann etwas mehr Kenntniss nehmen
von einem bedeutenden Teile seiner Mitbürge, der fast auf allen Gebieten so grossartiges
seinem Adoptivlande dargebracht, und folglich auf historische Würdigung gerechten An-
spruch hat.
reproduced verbatim from the inside cover of:
And, in the spirit of the text itself, a loose translation into English
Relative little remains of the old volumes and documents which could relate to us the
true story of the contribution of the German element to the early development of its adoptive
homeland. Anglo-American historians were not always trained in German. As a conse-
quence, they had little appreciation for the value of the old documents and rarely took notice
of them in their research. Apathy and ignorance on the part of the descendents of early
German immigrants did the rest until today the majority of those documents which might
have proven so valuable in the study of the history of the United States are likely lost to us
forever. We are now collecting what is left in Maryland for the use of future historians who,
although they might not know German, will find records of our meetings and the individual
contributions of German-Americans carried out and written up in English. Doubtless those
future historians will then take somewhat more notice of that significant portion of their fel-
low citizens who have made magnificent contributions to their adoptive homeland in almost
every field of endeavor and as a result have a right to expect historical evaluation of their
accomplishments.