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In Memoriam
ALBERT P. BACKHAUS. Born in Baltimore in 1915 into a family for whom
active participation in the social, religious and cultural life of the German-
American community was a matter of course, Albert Backhaus attended the
city public schools and went on to the University of Maryland where he earned
his civil engineering degree. His untimely death from cancer on February 18,
1980 left many a void in the city and the state where he served on numerous
commissions, boards and voluntary groups. The Society for the History of the
Germans in Maryland lost one of its most active members whose counsel was
often resorted to. A member since 1951, Backhaus was particularly interested
in bolstering and expanding the REPORT. During his service on the Executive
Committee from 1962 until 1975 he made valuable contributions, notably in
the preparation of the festive observance of the 75th anniversary of the found-
ing of our Society. Zion Lutheran Church also lost a dedicated member with
his death.
The professional career of Albert P. Backhaus began with successful practice
as registered professional engineer in local engineering firms before World War
II. During the war, he served with the Corps of Engineers and the Inspector
General's Department. Attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel, he was chief
of the construction section of the operations branch, Middle Atlantic Division,
in the Corps of Engineers; executive officer of the 275th Engineer Combat Bat-
talion, and a division engineer with the 75th Infantry Division. As an inspector
general, he served with the 22d Corps and the armored forces. After World
War II, Backhaus worked for the Veterans Administration here as assistant to
the manager and for the VA's construction, supply and real estate division.
In 1955 Backhaus was appointed city deputy director of public works, a posi-
tion he held until 1959 when Governor J. Millard Tawes made him head of the
Maryland Department of Public Improvements, one of the two highest engi-
neering positions in the state. He came to this job with a national reputation
in professional circles. Many of his local friends were unaware of the import-
ance of the work he had done quietly in the early 1950's. For several years he
served as technical director of the New York State Building Code Commission
and virtually created the new state building code in New York which is in effect
to this day. Naturally the Governor entrusted him with the same task in his
home state. During the eight years as department head, Albert Backhaus was
also responsible for overseeing practically all public construction projects in
Maryland.
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With the advent of the Spiro T. Agnew administration, Backhaus turned to
consultant work. In 1968, he became president of Engco Enterprises, Inc., a
consulting engineering practice. Away from public service only three years, he
became program coordinator for the State Highway Administration in 1970,
primarily responsible for coordinating design and construction of toll facilities
in the state, including the Outer Harbor crossing project, the Key Bridge. At
the time of his death, he was working as principal staff engineer for the state
Division of Labor and Industry, helping to administer the Maryland Occupa-
tional Safety and Health Law.
STANLEY E. BLUMBERG. After a long illness Stanley E. Blumberg, re-
tired director of alumni relations at the Johns Hopkins University, died on
October 8, 1984 at his home in Towson, Maryland. He was born in Baltimore
on December 1, 1915 and attended public schools in the city. In 1932 Blum-
berg graduated from City College, winning an award for scholastic achievement
and a scholarship to Hopkins. Before his graduation from the university to
which he remained loyal all his life, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. From
the beginning he was interested in writing and in public relations. He began his
career with the Joseph Katz Company as an apprentice copywriter in 1935.
From 1939 until 1941 he worked for the Newhoff Advertising Agency. Return-
ing to the Katz firm, he rose to president of the company. In 1970 Stanley
Blumberg accepted the position as director of alumni relations of his alma
mater. He retired in June 1983, after holding the post for 13 years, a period
in which dues payments and other support for the Alumni Association rose from
$50,000 to $400,000 yearly. Known for his poetical fund-raising pleas, he also
started the university's travel program, which organized tours. At the time of
his death he was still serving as a consultant to Johns Hopkins' Development
Office. He was fond of sports, classical music and the history of his home town.
The latter interest prompted him to join the Society for the History of the
Germans in Maryland in 1976. During World War II, he had served as an
officer in the Navy in the Southwest Pacific. While in Australia he met and
married Norma Bennett. His widow and other family members established the
Stanley E. Blumberg Scholarship Fund in his memory at Johns Hopkins
University.
VICTOR J. FURST, SR. It was late in 1941 that Professor A. E. Zucker,
editor of the Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland,
contacted the printing firm, J. H. Furst Company, about printing the 25th
Report. There he met Victor J. Furst who showed him similar publications
which his firm had printed for decades. This was the beginning of a coopera-
tion that is still continuing. Like many of the prominent Baltimore printers,
the Furst brothers who founded the firm in 1904 were of German descent.
Victor J. Furst was born in Baltimore. He attended Calvert Hall Col-
lege before entering the printing business of his father and uncles. There
was never any question that he was dedicated to the Gutenberg craft but
within the family there was also a strong pull toward music. Young Victor
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played the clarinet before hurting one of his hands at the printing plant. He
then became active as a singer, more exactly as a baritone, and later on di-
rected church choirs. Under his management the Furst company developed into
a specialty print shop for scholarly, technical and foreign-language works. He
remained actively involved until a few months before his death which occurred
on September 29, 1982, one day before his 90th birthday. One of the last manu-
scripts he received for printing was that of our Report 38. A little over a year
before his death he experienced the unspeakable pain of the death of his son,
Victor Jr., who was murdered by shots from a passing car in Woodlawn. His
other son, Charles F. Furst, has assumed the management of the printshop in
the Candler Building.
OTTO ORTMANN. When the long-time director of the Peabody Conservatory
of Music, Otto Ortmann, died at the age of 90 on October 22, 1979, it was dif-
ficult to assess in what field he had been most prominent—as a teacher, as
administrator, as a composer or as a scholar. Ortmann was all of that and
more. A native of Baltimore, Otto Ortmann inherited his musical and intellec-
tual interests from his parents. His father, Richard, was a singer and organist,
an instructor of history and mathematics at Zion School, then known as
"Scheib's School". In addition, he was an editor and music critic of the Balti-
more Correspondent, the leading German-language newspaper. Richard Ort-
mann was a native of Gusterhain near Herborn in Nassau. He had left Ger-
many after the Prussians took over Nassau in 1866 because he did not agree
with their educational policies. In 1883 he married Elizabeth Krüger, who was,
at the time and for many years later, one of the leading church and concert
sopranos of Baltimore. Their son, Otto Rudolph, was born on January 25,
1889.
After graduation from City College, Otto Ortmann studied at the Johns Hop-
kins University and the Peabody Conservatory, where he received a teacher's
certificate and an artist's degree in composition. He was to become a prolific
composer. Among his works are two string quartets, a tone poem, an orchestral
suite, a sonata for cello and piano, a number of smaller compositions for various
instruments and a series of pedagogical studies for the keyboard. Appointed
to the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory in 1917. Ortmann taught piano and
harmony for the next 10 years. In 1928, he was named director of the institu-
tion. Under Ortmann's administration, the Peabody Conservatory became the
city's most forceful forum for the presentation of music; its Friday Afternoon
Series was nationally known and the envy of large cities. Under his leadership
the conservatory also became the first institution of its kind in the world to
develop a department of studies devoted specifically to the experimental and
scientific investigation of musical talent, perception and teaching.
After his retirement from the Peabody in 1941, Dr. Ortmann went on to
serve as chairman of the music department at Goucher College from 1942 to
1957. He continued to teach private voice and piano lessons at his St. Paul
street home in Baltimore, which housed four pianos. One was more than a
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hundred years old and was a gift to his father from the manufacturer, Wilhelm
Knabe.
Like his father before him, Otto Ortmann, was active in a number of cultural
organizations of the German-American community. For more than forty-five
years he belonged to the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland.
In his long, rich life, he taught two generations of young men and women who
have since made their mark on American musical life. With his death, a good
part of what was German Baltimore at its best became history.
FRIEDEMANN H. PENNER. On November 19, 1984 the beloved Zions-
pastor, Friedemann H. B. Penner, collapsed in his church after a heart attack.
The preceding day he had held the German and English services as usual with
his well-prepared sermons in both languages, had attended the traditional Zion
church assembly and looked after other congregational matters. The only thing
Pastor Penner never observed was rest for himself. The large membership of
the 229 year-old Lutheran church on City Hall Plaza and his associates and
friends everywhere were stunned by the news that this pastor was called by
the Lord whom he served at the age of only 55. In 1928, one of his predecessors,
Pastor Julius Hofmann, also collapsed at the altar of Zion Church while in-
structing his confirmation class. Pastor Penner was the worthy successor to a
long line of ministers at Zion. On November 23 the church and the city gathered
in his memory. It was one of those moments in the venerable building where
past and present, heaven and earth seemed to merge into one stream. Lutheran
Bishop Morris Zumbrun and Penner's colleague, Pastor Wolf Knappe, con-
ducted the memorial service. Among the many mourners was one particularly
close friend of the pastor, Mayor William D. Schaefer, from whose office window
Zion Church is the most visible city landmark.
Pastor Penner came to Baltimore in 1963 to continue the tradition of a
bilingual church in the heart of the city. The call to Zion Church in itself has
always been a special distinction. Not only did he preserve the church and
congregation in a radically changed environment, he also intensified its involve-
ment in the community at large. He continued the distinct German-American
character of Zion which has never abandoned the German services every Sun-
day and on special holidays. His cooperation with other churches was stressed
in a tribute by the Jesuit priest, Father Leo A. Murray, who praised Penner's
true interest in ecumenical concerns. Pastor Penner served as president of the
German Interest Conference of the Lutheran Church in America and as chair-
man of the vocations committee and the examination panel of the Maryland
Synod. For many years he was on the editorial board of the Kirchliches
Monatsblatt, the organ of Lutheran congregations in North America with
regular German services. He served as chairman of Central Churches of Balti-
more, was a member of the Executive Board of the Seafarers Center and
chaplain to a number of organizations, among them the General German Aging
People's Home.
He was born in 1929 in Tilsit, East Prussia, where his father was a public
official. During the evacuation of East Prussia in 1945, the family was scattered
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but soon all came together in Hamburg where young Penner finished his sec-
ondary schooling. In Hamburg he also met Hannelies Schuldt who was to be-
come his "highschool sweetheart" for life. But first he embarked on theologi-
cal studies, at the University of Hamburg and later in Munich and Goettingen.
In 1952 he was sent to Canada at the request of the Lutheran World Council.
The increased German emigration to Canada required German-speaking minis-
ters. There at the University of Saskatchewan he finished his graduate studies.
He also found Hannelies Schuldt in Canada and the two were married in Oc-
tober 1953. In July 1956 he was ordained at the Lutheran College and Seminary
at Saskatoon. In the following years Pastor Penner served at the German
Trinity Lutheran Church in Edmonton while studying clinical and pastoral
counseling at the University Hospital of Alberta. From the beginning he was
willing to prepare himself in every respect for a ministry in the inner city. He
extended his studies and participated in special courses at the Psychological
Training Institute in New York and at the Urban Institute in Chicago. He
was 33 years old when he was called to Baltimore. Two of the children of
Hannelies and Friedemann Penner, Bernard and Joanne, were born in Canada,
the third one, Thomas, in Baltimore in November 1964.
Pastor Penner loved Baltimore and Maryland. He knew how to make good
use of his precious leisure time. The family maintained a shore home on Corn-
field Creek in Anne Arundel county where he sailed and swam. He was also fasci-
nated by scale models of boats and trains. He was a familiar figure at all
major German-American events in the city. Soon after his arrival he joined the
Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland. Asked at one point if he
would accept election to our executive committee, he puffed on his pipe and then
looked up: "Yes, if you can wait until my retirement." He had just been ap-
pointed to the Community Relations Commission. For Pastor Penner there
were clear priorities and he served them better than many a contemporary. It
was his privilege to add a chapter to the long history of Zion Church. It is a
worthy chapter.
FRANCIS W. PRAMSCHUFER, SR. was born in Locust Point, Baltimore, Md.
on January 17, 1892. His father was Albert Martin Pramschufer, an immigrant
from Germany; his mother was Wilhelmina Henrietta Knoch, whose father was
also an immigrant from Germany. Francis Pramschufer attended public schools
and took a very active part in Christ Church on Beason St. in Locust Point
where he met and later married Anna J. Ford. They had three children: Doris,
Francis and Audrey. He joined the masonic order in 1919 and was a member
of Concordia Lodge. He was also a member of the Tall Cedars. All through
his life he made an effort to promote his German cultural heritage. His areas of
concentrated work were: The German Society of Maryland, of which he was
president for several years and served on the Board of Directors; The Greisen-
heim, of which he was also past president and on the Board; Club Fidelitas,
Inc., of which he was charter member and founding member and also past presi-
dent and on the Board of Directors; he also held membership in various other
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German clubs and societies where his organizational skills were well utilized and
appreciated. For thirty-two years Francis Pramschufer was a member of the
Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland. His active involvement
often assured the liaison and cooperation with other German-American organi-
zations in the city.
A prominent businessman, he owned and operated an insurance agency and
brokerage through the Home Insurance Company of New York. He retired at
the age of 83. He died on January 14, 1979, three days before his 87th birthday,
while visiting his daughter, Mrs. Audrey E. Myers, in Birmingham, Alabama.
FRIEDA C. THIES. All members of the Society for the History of the Germans
in Maryland who encountered problems or had questions while researching at
the Johns Hopkins libraries in the 50's or early 60's, knew to whom to turn for
advice and reference. There was always Frieda C. Thies. She served as a
librarian at the Johns Hopkins University for sixty-six years. She was born in
1880, the youngest of eight children of German immigrants. Her father, Henry,
painted murals for many Baltimore buildings and her mother, Elisabeth, was a
regular contributor of German poetry to the Sonntags-Journal. After her gradu-
ation from Eastern High School is 1900 she began working as a librarian for
the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland before she came to Johns
Hopkins. When she retired in 1968 she was curator of manuscripts at the Milton
S. Eisenhower Library on Hopkins' Homewood campus. She had also worked
as chief reference librarian. She always delighted in recalling her starting salary
at $35 a month at age 22 in 1902. One of the more spectacular events in her
life was the suddenly interrupted German service at Zion Lutheran Church and
her running home through a shower of cinders the morning of the Great Balti-
more Fire of February 7, 1904. Her interest in history, particularly of the Ger-
man element, enabled her to assist many a young scholar. She belonged to the
Maryland Historical Society and the Society for the Preservation of Antiqui-
ties. When she died in Lutherville, Maryland, on November 16, 1983, she was
103 years old.
ERNST OTTOMAR VON SCHWERDTNER. Born at the family home,
Severn Hill, on the Severn River, Ernst von Schwerdtner grew up in a multi-
lingual family. He cultivated this aspect after it became evident that he was
gifted for languages. He mastered three languages perfectly and became fluent
in four others. He was graduated as a valedictorian of his class at St. John's
College when he was 18. His career as a language professor included positions
at Johns Hopkins University and Gettysburg College where he taught until
1937. It was in Gettysburg that he met Susan Mary Kubitz. They were mar-
ried in 1923. In 1946 Ernst von Schwerdtner was appointed to organize the
foreign language department at Towson State. His career at Towson was not
limited to linguistics. Soon after assuming his professorship, he volunteered to
help in the athletic department, where he established a wrestling program, re-
vived the baseball curriculum and became adviser for the school's first lacrosse
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team. He coached baseball for four years and wrestling for 17 years. In 1980
he was inducted into the Towson State University Athletic Hall of Fame, an
honor which pleased him particularly because he had always stressed the need
for a balance between mental and physical effort in the course of studies.
After his retirement from Towson State in 1963, he continued to teach lan-
guages and served as academic dean at the Trinitarian College of Holy Trinity
Monastery. He published a basic text on the study of languages, Fundamental
Language Facts. For many years he took an active interest in the Baltimore
chapter of the American Goethe Society. After joining the Society for the His-
tory of the Germans in Maryland in 1952, he served on the executive committee
and was First Vice President from 1958 until 1962. His lively participation in
the discussions after lectures was for many years a feature of the Society's an-
nual meetings. His many other activities included the Johns Hopkins Com-
mittee of the Use of Human Subjects, which dealt with ethical standards.
Ernst von Schwerdtner died on April 3, 1984 at the age of 85 years after a brief
illness. A memorial service was held at Towson State University's Fine Arts
Auditorium.
SUSAN VON SCHWERDTNER. On May 20, 1979 Susan Mary Kubitz von
Schwerdtner died 74 years old, in Baltimore after a long illness. She was the
wife of Ernst von Schwerdtner. After the couple's four children were growing
into teenagers, she went back to school, graduated cum laude from Gettysburg
College and earned a master's degree in social work in a combined program at
Catholic University and the University of Pennsylvania. She was a district
supervisor for many years in foster child care and social work training programs
in
Baltimore city, and was a district supervisor for several years in Baltimore
county.
Susan von Schwerdtner was very much interested in her family history which
included both German stock in Maryland and some of the oldest families in
Tidewater Virginia. She was a member of the Society for the History of the
Germans in Maryland and the Society of the Lees of Virginia. She held offices
at various times and was active in the Daughters of the American Revolution
and the Daughters of the American Colonists.
JOHN JOSEPH WITTSTADT. Exactly on his 76th birthday, on December
29, 1983, John Joseph Wittstadt died in Franklin Square Hospital. He was a
direct descendant of the Kalb family of Franconia from which the commanding
general of the Maryland Line, Baron John de Kalb came. Wittstadt was proud
of this family relationship to one of Maryland's most prominent revolutionary
heroes. Born in Baltimore, he worked for many years as a supervisor for the
Bethlehem Steel Company. He is survived by his widow, the former Margaret
Zeiler Hohenstein, a daughter, Kathleen W. Mustachio, and three sons, John
W., Gerrard William and Charles Terrence. Judge Gerrard William Wittstadt
is an active member of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland.
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