ERNST FEISE. With a memorial lecture by Bernhard Blume of the
University of California at San Diego, the Department of German of The
Johns Hopkins University, the Goethe Society of Maryland and the
Department of Modern Languages of Goucher College together with
numerous friends honored the lifework of one of the leading German
scholars of the United States, Ernst Feise. Born in Braunschweig on June
8, 1884, he died here on June 16, 1966. For many years, particularly during
the dark days of the 1930's and 1940's, Professor Feise was a member of
the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland. The invitation to
the memorial lecture held on March 4, 1967 at Goucher College contained
the following sketch of Dr. Feise's life and achievement:
Following his gymnasium days in his native Braunschweig, Ernst Feise
studied at the universities of Berlin, Munich and Leipzig. While Ger-
manistik was his main field, his interest in the theater, in French literature,
and in prosody were furthered by the rich literary productivity of the
period and by the scholars with whom he was privileged to study.
After receiving his doctor's degree from Leipzig in 1908, Dr. Feise came
to the United States to join the German Department at the University of
Winconsin. The scholarly distinction that he attained at Wisconsin and
that was enhanced during the fifty-five years of his career was rooted as
much in his teaching as in his publications; both show the depth of his
literary sensitivity and his profound humanity. His articles on Goethe are
lasting contributions to German studies as are those that deal with the
Novelle after Goethe. His genuine poetic gifts are revealed in his transla-
tions of Heine's poetry as well as in his own verse. His paramount interest
in Goethe and in the cultural life of Baltimore led him to found the Goethe
Society of Maryland in 1932.
Ernst Feise's teaching career in this country was spent successively at
the universities of Wisconsin, Ohio State and The Johns Hopkins, to which
he was called in 1927. He spent his summers from 1931 to 1948 directing
the German School at Middlebury College, from which he received an
honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in 1950. From Germany came addi-
tional honors: the Gold Medal of the Goethe Institute and the Grand Cross
of Merit, one of the highest awards of the Federal Republic. After his
retirement from The Hopkins in 1952, Goucher College was fortunate in
persuading him to teach advanced courses on Schiller and Goethe.
While all who knew him were grieved by his death, they continue with
the members of his family to be strengthened by those profoundly human
qualities that characterized him as a man, a teacher and a scholar.
" Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour."
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AUGUST MENCKEN. For half a century the famous row house at
1524 Hollins Street held an unusually close and self-contained family. The
last Mencken to live in it was August; he died after a heart attack on
May 9th, 1967. Though he was the brother of a truly remarkable man,
to whom he was devoted, he was also his own person. He was born in
Baltimore on February 18, 1889. In his early schooling he followed Henry
but then diverged to educate himself as a civil engineer. He worked for
railroad construction firms for two years in the South and then returned
to Baltimore. By the time the United States entered World War I, he
was incharge of construction at the booming military base of Fort Meade.
After the war he became vice-president of an engineering firm, directing
various projects. For six years in the 1930s, he put his mind to designing
distilleries for the American Cider and Vinegar Company. He found the
work amusing as well as instructive. When World War II arrived he
supervised construction at the Edgewood Arsenal.
His profession reflected itself in some of his hobbies. He enjoyed building
miniature engines and machines. They were done with exquisite care as
were the ship models he shaped from time to time. One is now at the
Naval Academy Museum at Annapolis; several others are in the collections
of the Maryland Historical Society. That he was a meticulous craftsman
was shown further by his woodworking: under his hand a wooden box
became a work of art. Here August was the opposite of Henry, who more
than once admitted amiably that he could not even tie a bow with ease.
August said that he loved ships all his life, and out of that love came
his initial book, First Class Passenger. It told the story of ocean voyaging
from its beginnings to the present. Close to his brother as he was, August
inevitably gravitated into writing. He was no specialized scholar, however,
who mined merely a single vein. His next book was the macabre By the
Neck, a short history of hanging. It was an anthology of executions, culled
by August chiefly from 19th and 20th century sources, with full editorial
apparatus added. Thereafter came The Railroad Passenger Car, a lavishly
illustrated history filled out with accounts by an assortment of passengers.
The last of August's four books took years to write. It was entitled
Designing and Building the Great Pyramid. To it he brought his lifelong
skills as an engineer along with an enterprising imagination. It allowed him
to visualize the construction of the Great Pyramid with an authority which
no one else, apparently, had shown. It attracted little notice even from
those specialists who should have been interested; but here and there, in
Oxford and Cambridge, Berkeley and Chicago, requests reached him for
the volume.
At the same time that he was computing his way carefully through the
construction of the Pyramid, he was enjoying himself with a new genre,
the comic short story on death. These stories he printed privately in
pamphlet form, the most memorable being " The Fair Chanteuse," " The
Reluctant Bride," and "The Glamorous Mrs, Kite." Through their pages
stalked Sheriff J. P. Keefer, the lawyer Dangerfield Shovel, and the enter-
prising undertaker Mortimer Vontz, all with their eyes on the potential
or actual corpse. The corpse, it should be added, was often female; for
August throughout his long life regarded the female sex with some reserve.
He was a bachelor, as was Henry till he reached fifty. After Henry's
wife died in 1935, the two brothers kept bachelor hall in Hollins Street.
Regardless of the turbulent world outside, it was pleasant within until
1948.
In November of that year Henry suffered a stroke which crippled him
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severely but did not end his life. If anything made it supportable for him
during the remaining eight years, it was August's devoted care. All reports
show that Henry made a difficult patient. He could hardly be blamed.
He could no longer write; he could no longer read; and when he wanted to
speak the proper words failed him. He felt half-dead. But August helped
him with a kind of unceremonious dedication which would be hard to equal,
He was not only Henry's brother, he was Henry's best friend.
August must have found a great void in his life after his brother's death
in 1956. However, he continued with his writing and correspondence, and
he kept up his friendships. Many of his old friends had died but the few
who remained continued to be good companions. He did not move much
from Hollins Street. A few years ago he became seriously ill. He had a
heart attack, which was followed by a grim variety of other ailments. He
ordered a stair elevator installed in the house so that he could reach the
second floor without walking; but otherwise he made a minimum of con-
cessions to his worsening health. His voice remained vigorous if gravelly;
his sardonic sense of humor did not leave him. Like his brother he viewed
the outside world as a circus, if a maniacal one. In his final year he was in
and out of the hospital. He died at the Union Memorial Hospital in his
sleep. Like his brother, again, he left an epitaph: it was that his only
regret was that he had not sinned more.
CARL BODE
GEORGE ALTOFF BINGLEY, a long time member of our Society,
was born in Watertown, New York on November 12, 1888, and died at
Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore on February 27, 1966. On his
mother's side (Eva Jane Altoff) he was solidly of German descent. His
father, John Wesley Bingley, was a native of Yorkshire, England, and a
distinguished engineer. George Bingley attended high school in Watertown.
From 1907 until 1910 he was an undergraduate at Princeton University
where he obtained his A. B. degree. His diploma was signed by Woodrow
Wilson. He was a member of Dial Lodge. While he studied at Princeton,
his father retired and took up residence in Hanover, Pennsylvania. Soon
after his graduation, George Bingley went to Japan where he was an
instructor in government schools at Osaka from 1911-1913. After a two
years' residence in Japan he decided to pursue courses in mathematics in
Germany, a subject in which he excelled. On his way to Germany he
travelled over the Trans-Siberian Railway. Two years as a student in
mathematics at Göttingen followed where he learned both to write and
speak German. After his return to this country he went back to Princeton
and received a M. A. degree. Due to his poor eyesight Bingley was dis-
qualified for military field service but he served as a sergeant in the 472nd
Engineers. Later he was an instructor at Brenau College, Georgia, a
technological school. At the conclusion of World War I he was appointed
an instructor of mathematics at the U. S. Naval Academy which marked
the beginning of a distinguished career at Annapolis. Interrupted only
by extensive travels in Europe, Professor Bingley taught at the Academy
until 1923 and afterward for more than 30 years at St. John's College. He
served both as professor of mathematics and German. For many years,
he was secretary of the faculty committee which supervised the college's
program of instruction. Professor Bingley also was the author of transla-
tions from texts by German and classical Greek mathematicians, many of
which students at St. John's still use. He was a member of the Board of
the Philadelphia Symphony and, in Baltimore, of the English-Speaking
[ 52 ]
Union. Following his retirement in 1954, Professor Bingley and his wife, the
former Elizabeth Gordon, moved to Baltimore, where he had been living
at the time of his death. George Bingley was buried beside his parents in
Mount Olivet Cemetery in Hanover, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of his
mother.
WILLIAM
B. MARYE AND A. RUSSELL SLAGLE
WILLIAM H. LLOYD, a well known Maryland politician and a pas-
sionate lay historian, died on September 21, 1969, apparently of a heart
attack, while on a cruise of the Delaware River near Philadelphia that
was sponsored by the Swedish Colonial Society. Born in Philadelphia, he
was the son of John S. Lloyd, a banker. He attended Friends Select School
and Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia and studied agriculture at Penn-
sylvania State University. A Republican, Mr. Lloyd served in the House
of Delegates from Dorchester county from 1938 to 1942. He was an unsuc-
cessful candidate for the First District congressional seat in 1942, 1946 and
1960. During his years in the General Assembly he was the only Repub-
lican from the Eastern Shore. At the time of his death Mr. Lloyd was head
of the Maryland-Virginia Farm Agency.
He was president of the Society of the War of 1812, Commander of the
Military Order of the Loyal Legion, president of the Huguenot Society, a
member of the Society of the Cincinnati and a member of nearly 30 other
historical societies, among them our Society.
For several years prior to his death the Hon. William H. Lloyd was a
very active member of the German Society of Maryland to which he
brought a large number of new members.
ANTON HAGEL, a native of Marburg in Hesse, died at the age of
79 on January 20, 1967. He came to Baltimore in 1912, taking a job in a
bakery. Two years later he established his own bakery at Pratt and Ann
streets, operating it until his retirement in 1957. He was a past president
and treasurer of the Retail Bakers Association of Baltimore, and treasurer
for 30 years of the Potomac States Association of the Baking Industry. A
member of the Knights of Columbus and the Baltimore Kiwanis Club, he
was also a former board member of Spring Grove Hospital. Anton Hagel's
services to the German American community of Baltimore were manifold.
During the years of World War II he was president of the Deutsches Haus,
Inc. and was instrumental in saving this central institution of German
group life from succumbing to extreme financial difficulties. At the time
of his death he was honorary president of the Deutsches Haus, Inc. The
German Society of Maryland lost in Anton Hagel a generous and active
member and supporter. For many years he was a vice president of the
German Society. He also belonged to the boards of directors of the German
Home for the Aged and the German Correspondent, Inc., the company
which saved the German-language newspaper in Baltimore from an early
demise. He was laid to rest on the Holy Redeemer Cemetery in his adopted
home town.
EDWARD F. ENGELBERT, JR. died on October 27, 1968 at the age
of 54. Like his father and two brothers, he joined our Society several years
ago and is well remembered for his interest in German Americans in the
public and church life of Baltimore. At the time of his death he was chief
of the retail sales tax division in the State's comptroller's office. Born in
[53]
Birnamwood, Wisconsin, Mr. Engelbert was brought to Baltimore by his
parents as a boy. He graduated from Southern High School and then in
1941 with highest honors from the University of Baltimore School of Law.
During World War II Mr. Engelbert worked in Baltimore in the durable
goods division of the Federal Office of Price Administration. He became
associated with the State Comptroller's office in 1947 and served as legal
adviser and assistant to the division's Chief Administrator from 1947 until
1960. He was regarded as one of the outstanding authorities on sales and
tax administration in the nation and was frequently consulted by foreign
administrators and those in other states when new programs were adopted.
Mr. Engelbert was throughout his life in Baltimore a member of Martini
Lutheran Church, where his father, the Rev. Edward F. Engelbert, served
as pastor for more than 50 years. Mr. Engelbert was a member of the
church council, had served on the board of directors of the Augsburg
Lutheran Home and had been a delegate to the national convention of
the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church.
Mr. Engelbert spent most of his leisure time at a summer home on the
Choptank River near Cambridge on the Eastern Shore. Survivors include
his wife, Mrs. Grace Engelbert; a son, Edward F. Engelbert, III; a daughter,
Miss Sandra Lee Engelbert; his father, the Rev. Edward F. Engelbert; two
brothers, George A. and Erwin H. Engelbert; and a sister, Mrs. James
Dunn, Jr.
ERNEST G. MARR. On January 12, 1970, our Society lost one of its
most respected members when Dr. Ernest G. Marr died suddenly at his
Baltimore home at the age of 82 years. He was born in Saxe-Weimar,
Thuringia, in 1887. Dr. Marr came to the U. S. as a young man. He took
his B. S. at Johns Hopkins University, his M. D. at the University of Mary-
land. During 1920, he returned to Berlin for postgraduate study and
research under Professor Klemperer, with whom he perfected a technique
for rejuvenation which became world-renowned. On the staffs of Franklin
Square Hospital, Maryland General Hospital, and Church Home and
Hospital, Dr. Marr was a physician in general practice in Baltimore for
57 years. Many a German immigrant will gratefully remember the services
he rendered to anyone who was in need. This spirit of concern for others
who like himself came to this country in search of a new home, prompted
his active membership in the German Society of Maryland. Dr. Marr is
survived by his widow, a son, Dr. William G. Marr, a daughter, Miss
Patricia Marr, and four grandchildren.
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