"Clemens Vonnegut, Sr., was born in Münster in Westphalia in 1824; came to the United States in 1848 and finally settled in Indianapolis in 1850. His father had been an official tax-collector for the Duke of Westphalia.
"Clemens had a far better formal education than ninety-eight percent or more of the German or other immigrants. He had completed his 'Abitur' at the Hochschule in Hannover; which meant that he had the equivalent at that time of an American college education and was qualified to attend one of the Universities as a candidate for a Ph.D. degree. He had an acquaintance with Latin and Greek, and spoke French fluently in addition to his native German. He had read widely in History and Philosophy; had acquired a fine vocabulary; and was able to write with clarity. Although raised and instructed in the Roman Catholic Church, he rejected formalized religion and disliked clergymen. He greatly admired Voltaire, and shared many of the latter's philosophical views. Instead of attending a University, Clemens became a salesman for a textile firm located in Amsterdam, Holland. At the age of twenty-four, in 1848, he decided to emigrate to the United States, where he first traveled about as agent for the textile mill. When he came to Indianapolis in 1850, he encountered a fellow countryman named Vollmer, who had been settled here a few years and was already established in business for himself in a small way as a retail merchant in hardware and sundry merchandise. The two became friends, and Vollmer invited Vonnegut to join him in this enterprise. The firm then became known as Vollmer & Vonnegut. After a short association Vollmer decided to make a journey out West to explore the new country and visit the gold fields recently discovered in California. He was never heard from again, and presumably lost his life in the 'Wild West.'
"Vonnegut thus became the sole proprietor of the small business which he in 1852, and later his sons and grandsons, made into a considerable enterprise as the Vonnegut Hardware Company.
"Across the street from his first modest shop on East Washington Street in the 1850s was a small German restaurant. One of the waitresses in this establishment was an attractive girl named Katarina Blank. She was one of seven children of a German immigrant family of peasants who came from Urloffen in Baden and settled on a farm in Wayne Township, Marion County, just west of Indianapolis. They were struggling to get their farm to be productive after felling the forest trees and draining the land. With so many children to feed and clothe, all had to work for their living after a few years of primary instruction in the common school. Katarina Blank went to work as a waitress in this little cafe, and soon met Clemens Vonnegut, who fell in love with her. They were married in 1852. He was twenty-eight and she, twenty-four. They bought a modest home on West Market Street and raised their family in steadily improving material circumstances. Katarina was, like Clemens, small in stature and dark complected. Both spoke German in their home, but had considerable fluency in French as well. The training of their children was in the tradition and culture of nineteenth-century Germany. It is highly significant of Clemens's ascetic and puritanical ethics that his literary idol was Schiller and not Goethe, who was much the greater genius. He disapproved of Goethe's morals, and would not read him. Katarina, although of humble origin and little formal education, became a highly respected and extremely dignified matriarch, much beloved by her children and grandchildren. "Clemens attained local distinction as an advocate of progressive public education. He served for twenty-seven years on the Board of School Commissioners of the City of Indianapolis; most of the time as Chairman and Chief Administrative Officer. He was an incorruptible and highly efficient officer. He was particularly interested in the High School, and saw to it that first-rate instruction was provided in the classics, history, and the social sciences. He was instrumental in the establishment of the second High School in 1894, known as Manual Training High School, where, under Professor Emmerich as Principal, instruction was provided with emphasis on Science, Mathematics, and Practical Engineering. Graduates of these two high schools were readily accepted at Harvard and Yale and other great Universities until about 1940; since then the prestige of these high schools has sadly declined as a result of lowered standards.
"Many tales were told of Clemens Vonnegut. When he was elected to the Board of School Commissioners, he found that the local banks did not pay interest on the somewhat large deposits which the Board carried to finance its operations. He demanded that the banks pay interest on the Board's deposits. This was then considered to be an offensive innovation in the customary and comfortable practice which until then had prevailed. The banker John P. Frenzel then called upon Clemens at his office and loudly upbraided him. Clemens pretended to be hard of hearing, and capped his ears. Frenzel shouted louder. Still Clemens pretended not to hear. Frenzel raised his voice and interjected profanity, but to no avail. Clemens would not 'hear' him. Finally Frenzel stormed out—still not heard. But thenceforth the banks paid interest and have continued to do so to this day.
"Upon another occasion a disgruntled contractor called upon him and protested the award of a contract for school construction to a bidder who did not have the 'right' political connections. Here again Clemens pretended to be hard of hearing; but, in addition, took out a pen-knife and pared his fingernails. The frustrated contractor then indulged in invectives. Clemens remained calm and silent. After he finished paring his fingernails, he took off his shoes and socks and proceeded to pare his toenails with intense but silent concentration. His visitor soon left in disgust, cursing this crazy German. Clemens remained imperturbable and undisturbed. Many similar tales were told of him, but at his death at age eighty-two in 1906 he was a greatly respected figure in the business and civic life of the community; next only to Henry Schnull as the first in prestige of the German immigrants to Indianapolis.
"Old Clemens, as he advanced into his seventies, turned over management of his business to the competent hands of his three sons: Clemens, Jr., Franklin, and George. His son Bernard had a brief connection with the Company but disliked what he called 'the trade in nails' and confined his attention to his profession of architecture and to his avocations in the arts. He had never been as robust as his brothers, two of whom lived into their nineties. The old man set them all an example not only of the highest standards of moral integrity but of physical fitness through exercise of the body. To the end of his days old Clemens was a devotee of the teachings of Father Jahn: a sound mind in a sound body. He exercised daily in all weathers and ate and drank very sparingly. He never weighed much over one hundred and ten pounds. He could be seen striding vigorously about the streets swinging a large boulder in each hand. If he passed a tree with a stout branch within reach he would stop, lay down the boulders, and chin himself a number of times on the branch. On a cold December day in the year 1904, in his eighty-third year, he left his home for his usual walk. He apparently became confused and lost his way. When he did not return at his accustomed time, his family instituted a search with the assistance of the police. He was found several miles from his home lying by the side of a road—quite dead. It was the sort of death he would have welcomed—active to the very end."
ALMOST all of my ancestors delivered themselves directly from Europe to Indianapolis, except for Peter Lieber and Sophia de St. Andre, who had the general store in New Ulm, Minnesota. When Peter returned from the Civil War with a crippled leg, he was full of stories about how Indianapolis was booming. New Ulm was dead by comparison.
So Peter, according to Uncle John, wangled an appointment as one of the secretaries to Oliver P. Morton, the Governor of Indiana. The governor needed a German liaison secretary in his political activities. The pay was good and steady, and Peter remained in his office until the close of the war.
"In 1865 came an opportunity for Peter. The leading brewery of the city was known as Gack & Riser's. Owing to death of the proprietors, the business was offered for sale. Peter bought it and renamed it P. Lieber & Co. Peter knew absolutely nothing of the brewery business, but he engaged a skilled brewmaster named Geiger who did, and proceeded to brew and
sell Lieber's Beer. It was a successful venture from the very start. Peter gave his principal attention to sales, at which he became adept. This involved political activity and manipulation of saloon outlets.
"Peter was always involved in politics. He had to be in order to get saloon licenses for his favored customers. Until 1880 he was a staunch Republican, as all the Civil War veterans were. But in that year the Republicans, at the insistence of the Methodist Church, adopted a plank in their platform recommending a restraint upon the beer and liquor trade. It was the first stirring of Prohibition. This outraged Peter and was a threat to his interests. He promptly changed his politics and was thereafter a Democrat—and an aggressive, active one.
"He contributed generously to Grover Cleveland's Campaign Funds, particularly in 1892, when Cleveland was elected President for the second time. He was rewarded by being appointed Consul General of the United States to Düs-seldorf in 1893."
Peter Lieber sold his brewery to a British syndicate, which was eager to have Peter's oldest son, my grandfather Albert, run it for them.
Peter returned to Germany in 1893, where he bought a castle on the Rhine near Düsseldorf. He took with him President Cleveland's commission as Consul General of the United States to Düsseldorf. Uncle John says, "He hoisted the Stars and Stripes over his castle, delegated his negligible duties to subordinates, and finished his days in opulence and official grandeur."
His son Albert, who never went to college, stayed in Indianapolis and ran the brewery, and went to London once a year to report to its new owners.
So there—Uncle John has now accounted for four of my great-grandparents, those who brought my mother's maiden name, Lieber, and my father's name, Vonnegut, into this country when there was still much wilderness. Four more great-grandparents and four grandparents and two parents must still be described.
Let me say now that the ancestor who most beguiles me is Clemens Vonnegut, who died by the side of the road.
"Clemens Vonnegut was a cultivated eccentric," says Uncle John. That is what I aspire to be.
"He was small in stature, but stout in his independence and convictions," says Uncle John. "While his forebears had been Roman Catholics, he professed to be an atheist or Free Thinker." So do I profess. "He would more properly be called a skeptic, one who rejects faith in the unknowable."
"Skeptic" is also the proper thing to call me.
"But he was a very model of Victorian asceticism, lived frugally, and eschewed excesses of any kind," says Uncle John. I try. I don't drink anymore, but I smoke like a house afire. I am monogamous, but I have married twice.
"He greatly admired Benjamin Franklin, whom he called an American saint, and named his third son after him instead of naming him for one of the saints on the Christian calendar." I myself have named my only son after Mark Twain, another American Saint.
"As a recognition of his service to public education," Uncle John goes on, "one of the City's schools was named after him. He was highly literate, well read, and the author of various pamphlets expounding his views on education, philosophy, and religion. He wrote his own funeral oration."
That oration, by the way, appears in Chapter XI. of this book, the chapter on religion. I read it out loud recently to my agnostic son, Mark, who is a physician now, but who set out during his undergraduate years to become a Unitarian minister.
Mark said this of the oration, grinding his teeth before and afterward: "The guts move." When you read the oration, and especially if you are a chess player like Mark, you are bound to admire the guts of Clemens Vonnegut.
Note: I do not have the guts to request that Clemens Vonnegut's oration be read at my funeral, too.
To return to Uncle John:
"Another one of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s great-grandfathers who attained distinction locally was Henry Schnull, who, with his brother, August, came to Indianapolis from the town of Hausberge in Westphalia about ten years before the Civil War. They had both been apprenticed as Kaufmann, or merchant, in Germany and knew the methods of trade and accounts. They first engaged in the business of buying and selling farm produce in central Indiana. They traveled about in a wagon to the farms in the area; bought grain, butter, eggs, chickens, and salted and smoked pork, and resold these farm products in the city at a profit.
"As they prospered by the hardest kind of work, they enlarged their operation by trucking surpluses to Madison or Jeffersonville, Indiana, on the Ohio River, where the merchandise was loaded on huge barges which were floated down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. One or the other of the brothers would accompany the shipment and attend to the trading in New Orleans. Here they would sell the produce in a good market and buy coffee, rum and sorghum, which was called 'New Orleans molasses.' These products they then shipped north by barge and sold at a profit in Cincinnati or Indianapolis. They are said to have brought to Indianapolis one of the last shipments from the South before the river was closed by the Confederates at Memphis. The price of sorghum and coffee skyrocketed, and the Schnull Brothers then had sufficient capital to establish a wholesale grocery business and construct a warehouse which still stands on the southeast corner of Washington and Delaware Streets in Indianapolis. The firm was originally a partnership known as A. & H. Schnull, later as Schnull & Company. At the close of the Civil War, August announced that he had enough money and wanted to return to Germany. So he sold his interests to Henry and took two hundred thousand dollars back to Hausberge, where he bought a small Schloss and lived like a gentleman until his death in 1918.
"Henry Schnull elected to remain in the United States. He became one of the leading merchants of Indiana, and was a most highly regarded citizen. In addition to his wholesale grocery business he founded the Eagle Machine Works, which later became the great Atlas Engine Company, which manufactured stationary steam engines and farm implements. He also organized the American Woolen Company, the first textile mill in the State.
"Shortly after passage in 1865 of the law authorizing national banks, he established and was first President of the Merchants National Bank of Indianapolis, which has survived all of the intervening panics and is still operating.
"Henry Schnull was a man of immense industry, courage, and independence; intelligent, self-reliant, and resourceful; incorruptibly honest and reliable in his dealings; and completely dedicated to business and accumulation. He became very rich for his times, endowed his children with generous gifts, and left a fortune in 1905 which has assisted three generations of his progeny to live comfortably. He was so much engaged with his many activities that he was not much of a family man, and his children saw but little of him. His wife, Matilda Schramm, whom he met on one of his early buying visits to her father's farm in 1854, was as stern and tough as Henry, but she had a warm, lovable disposition and was the real matriarch of the family."
ALL right now: Uncle John has now told us about my two sets of great-grandparents on my father's side, Clemens Von-negut, whose wife was Katarina Blank, and Henry Schnull, whose wife was Matilda Schramm, and one set from my mother's side, the limping Civil War veteran Peter Lieber, whose wife was Sophia de St. André.
This brings me to my fourth set of great-grandparents the only ones who had anything participatory to do with the arts. They were "Professor" Karl Barus, "the first real professional teacher of voice, violin, and piano in the city," according to Uncle John, and his wife, Alice Mollman.
"Professor Barus was highly respected, and in addition to his function as a private teacher he conducted orchestras, organized choral singing and other musical events. He was well educated and a definite intellectual. He never engaged in trade or business but made a good income by his teaching and lived well. Professor Barus originally settled in Cincinnati in the early fifties, where he was appointed Musical Director of the Cincinnati Sangverein.
"In 1858 Dr. Barus was invited to come to Indianapolis to conduct the mixed chorus of German singing societies from Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Columbus, Ohio, at
a great Musical Festival. In 1882 he was invited by Das Deutsche Haus to come to Indianapolis to be musical director of the Maennerchor, in which position he remained until 1896.
"At his last concert in that year at Tomlinson Hall he was given a standing ovation and was presented with a silver laurel wreath as an expression of appreciation of his great contribution to the musical life of the whole community. For the remaining twelve years of his life he gave instruction in piano and voice to selected pupils and was always held in highest esteem. His influence on the musical taste and sophistication of the whole city was incalculable. No one ever seems subsequently to have quite taken his place."
AND Professor Karl Barus the musician, and his wife Alice begat another Alice Barus, who, according to Uncle John, "is said to have been the most beautiful and accomplished young lady in Indianapolis. She played the piano and sang; also composed music, some of which was published."
She was my mother's mother.
Yes, and Peter Lieber, the limping war veteran, and his wife Sophia begat Albert Lieber, who became an Indianapolis brewer and bon vivant.
He was my mother's father.
Henry Schnull, the merchant and banker, and his wife Matilda begat Nanette Schnull, who, according to Uncle John, "was a very beautiful woman in her prime, and had a lovely speaking and singing voice. She often sang in public. She laughed readily, enjoyed people, and was greatly admired by a host of friends."
She was my father's mother.
And Clemens Vonnegut, the Free Thinker and founder of the Vonnegut Hardware Company, and his wife Katarina begat Bernard Vonnegut, who, Uncle John says, "was from earliest youth artistic. He could draw and paint with skill. Bernard was extremely modest and retiring. He had no intimates, and took but little part in social activities. He was never a happy, extroverted personality, but was inclined to be reticent, shy, and somewhat contemptuous of his environment."
Palm Sunday, Welcome to the Monkey House Page 34