William Sollmann: A Teacher

WILLIAM SOLLMANN: A TEACHER By Eugene Kist* Whenever I have spoken to someone who knew William Sollmann , I have felt a respect, indeed awe, which reached far beyond the small grave in Media, Pennsylvania, where this remarkable man was laid to rest. Through the words of his friends and the writings by and about him, we have the good fortune to learn of Sollmann, one of the foremost humanitarians of our time, a man of indomitable spirit who has so much to say to us today. In this essay, therefore, I should like to tell a part of the story of Sollmann, that part that deals most directly with his thought. I have compiled this story, piece by piece, from old letters, documents and newspapers crumbly with age, from books and conversations with his daughter and friends which made me feel as if William Sollmann were still with us. We may question as to why we should concern ourselves with a relatively unknown German politician and journalist whose activities go back to pre-Nazi days and further. Yet it is important simply to know about a rare man who represented much that was and is the finest in our intellectual history—and thus stood in stark contrast to our often narcissistic culture and attitudes. He was a man who honestly believed that the lowliest were the chosen people and devoted his life to them. But he labored hard, wherever he could, to improve the lot of all people and to teach them hope, goodwill, and understanding in order to make this a better world. William Sollmann, born in 1881, came from old peasant stock in the beautiful province of Thuringia in central Germany. The family tree dates back to the middle of the fifteenth century, and the Sollmann family provided the area with numerous school- *Professor of History, Moore College of Art, Philadelphia. This article is adapted from a chapter of a Ph.D. dissertation (University of Pennsylvania) on Sollmann's journalistic and political career. Sollmann was primarily a political figure, but of such a distinctive kind that an account of him seems particularly appropriate for a Quaker journal. 88 WILLIAM SOLLMANN: A TEACHER89 teachers from 1788.1 His father had been a brewer and innkeeper, and this alcoholic background apparently turned William Sollmann into an ardent temperance advocate. Sollmann attended the upper level school in Coburg until he was sixteen years old. Then, in 1897, he joined his family which had, in the previous year, moved to KaIk, a densely populated workers' suburb near Cologne. There he became a clerk for a fuel oil company. He was always a voracious reader and also soon developed his lifelong habit of extensive community activity and involvement. He attended, in the evenings , the Cologne College of Business Administration, where he apparently studied more social science and journalism than business , and was also active in various youth groups. In 1903, at the age of twenty-two, he joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD). As two people who knew him rather well stated, it was his love for the common man that led him to socialism, which he saw predominantly as an "ethic-religious" movement.2 The SPD at that time was reaching its height. The late and rapid industrialization of Germany had vastly increased the number of the laboring masses in the cities. The SPD was much respected by Socialists all over the world and,was led by the grand old man of German Socialism, August Bebel, whom Sollmann greatly admired . The lot of the workers was, in those days, extremely hard. They were hated by almost all other groups, the wages were small, and good leaders were very much needed. Sollmann, who knew poverty well because the family fortunes had steadily declined, became such a leader—first in the worker youth movement and temperance association, then in the SPD. He also became increasingly active as a part-time journalist.3 This activity culminated in 1911 with his being made city editor of the venerable Rheinische Zeitung (Cologne) , a paper which had 1.Typescript by Sollmann concerning his ancestry and family, in the Sollmann Papers, Box 1, which contains uncataloged biographical materials, in...