At the height of World War I, American culture, particularly the press, exhibited an anti-German animus. Propaganda routinely emerged that referred to Germans as “Huns” and displayed German soldiers as “brutes.” In Indiana, this resulted in the widespread closure of German newspapers like the Täglicher Telegraph und Tribüne, the renaming of the Indianapolis-mainstay Das Deutsche Haus into the Athenaeum, and banning the teaching of German in public schools. This hostility eventually targeted one particular Hoosier of German-American ancestry: the LaPorte-native Edward A. Rumely. His own connections to Germany and its culture ignited a profound controversy that stayed with him for the rest of his life.
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Credits:
Written and produced by Justin Clark.
Music: “Ambient, Adventure, Score Song” by Patrik Almkvisth, “The Descent ” by Kevin MacLeod, “Lurking” by Silent Partner, “Mean Streetz” by MK2, “Voyeur” by Jingle Punks, and “Far The Days Come” by Letter Box
Full Text of Video
What does it mean to be an American? Is it the language you speak; the culture you embrace; the customs you adhere to? Or is it something else, something less tangible. Is it a commitment to certain values and ideas? Perhaps the questions are wrong altogether. Is simply living here the only thing that makes you an American? These are difficult and probing questions, and a complicated and controversial story from Indiana’s past helps us unpack them and their relationship to our own concerns in the changing dynamics of American identity.
At the height of World War I, American culture, particularly the press, exhibited an anti-German animus. Propaganda routinely emerged that referred to Germans as “Huns” and displayed German soldiers as “brutes.” In Indiana, this resulted in the widespread closure of German newspapers like the Täglicher Telegraph und Tribüne, the renaming of the Indianapolis-mainstay Das Deutsche Haus into the Athenaeum, and banning the teaching of German in public schools. This hostility eventually targeted one particular Hoosier of German-American ancestry: the LaPorte-native Edward A. Rumely. His own connections to Germany and its culture ignited a profound controversy that stayed with him for the rest of his life.
The grandson of German immigrant Meinrad Rumely, Edward was born in 1882 and “from the earliest infancy . . . was regarded by his admiring family as a prodigy.” His family made their vast fortune selling agricultural implements and machines, notably their grain separators, and the M. Rumely Company became one of the largest employers in the city of LaPorte. Young Edward was a product of both American and German upbringing. He learned German as well as English growing up and read everything in his sight. Originally interested in the priesthood, Rumely eventually made his way to the universities of Oxford and Heidelberg. Unsatisfied with both academic settings, likely a result of his embrace of German socialistic political philosophy, he became a schoolteacher, instilling his German values in young students. He finally found his calling in medicine, graduating from the University of Freiberg with an M.D. It was at Freiburg that Rumely embraced German state socialism and became an active member of the local socialist party. This form of socialism advocated for government welfare programs and parliamentary monarchy, not the national socialism of the future Nazis. These experiences, according to journalist and close associate Frank Stockbridge, pushed Rumely away from his American identity and towards his German one.
He returned to Indiana in 1906 and started a school for boys, called the Interlaken (German for “between lakes”), where he focused on education of both mind and body. He believed that German physical fitness strengthened future “rulers of the perfect state,” taking long hikes with his students and extolling the virtues of Germany and its culture. As Stockbridge noted, “the Interlaken school had nearly one hundred and fifty students.” His Interlaken days proved important, for it was here that he met S. S. McClure, the muckraker journalist later embroiled in Rumely’s biggest scandal.
Rumely left the Interlaken to lead the family business around 1909-10, which was growing by leaps and bounds. Alongside their implements and separators, Rumely and Company also built tractors and threshers that greatly improved crop yields for farmers. Edward himself oversaw the development of a new kerosene engine-driven tractor, affectionately named “Kerosene Annie,” as well as acquiring rival companies Gaar-Scott of Richmond and Advance Thresher Company of Battle Creek, Michigan. While sales were originally quite good, Rumely’s management of the company proved wildly unsuccessful. Rumely’s failed dealings with national firms such as Standard Oil led to continued financial pressures. The firm was charged by federal authorities with avoiding nearly $20,000 in taxes between 1909 and 1913, or over $514,000 in 2018 dollars. They also racked up around $10 million in debt during the aggressive expansion of Edward’s tenure. In 1915, a court receiver took over the company and renamed it the Advance-Rumely Company. Why the sudden fall? Stockbridge, who wrote a weeks’ long expose of Rumely, attributed it to Dr. Rumely “trying to force too many new ideas down its throat at one time.” The “ideas” that Stockbridge referred to were management techniques and expert advisors that Rumely adopted from Germany. It’s more likely that the company grew too quickly and couldn’t handle the debt that fueled its growth.
However, the problems with the Rumely Company were the least of his worries. In 1915, Dr. Rumely changed careers again, moving to New York and fancying himself as a newspaper publisher. With that in mind, he began the arduous process of purchasing the New York Evening Mail, which Stockbridge advised him on. According to Stockbridge’s account, Rumely assured him that, despite his love for all things Germany, his purchase did not involve German investors. It is also around this time that the Lusitania sank and the United States became more involved in World War I against the Germans. Thus, Rumely also guaranteed to Stockbridge as well as partner S. S. McClure that the paper would have a neutral position on the war in Europe. Any indication that the Evening Mail received funding from German sources would have brought with it serious opprobrium from the public at large. It was here, at least according to Stockbridge and other contemporary newspapers, that Rumely and his compatriots got crafty.
As an Associated Press article in the Richmond Palladium outlined, authorities alleged that Rumely received over $1,300,000 from German sources for the purchase of the Mail Express Company, which were coordinated by “Count [Johann] Von Bernstorff, German ambassador to the United States and Dr. Heinrich F. Albert, commercial attaché of the German embassy.” In what appeared to be an elaborate form of money laundering, Von Bernstorff and Albert transferred these finances through Walter Lyon, of the New York brokerage firm Renskorf, Lyon, and Company. Rumely denied this, saying that he facilitated the funds through a gentleman named Henry Sielsken and his accounting firm. Sielsken’s business partners emphatically denied this. Rumely had run out of excuses, and the circumstantial evidence against him didn’t improve it. The editorial page of the Evening Mail during his ownership became increasingly pro-German during the war, ruffling the feathers of his main newspaper colleagues, McClure and Stockbridge.
Authorities had had enough. Rumely was arrested in July of 1918 under charges of perjury relating to German involvement in the purchase of the Evening Mail. Rumely believed that the government acted in gross malfeasance and declared that his paper was not the enemy of America. “The Mail has backed up every war activity of the government to the limit of its power and has performed a work second to no other paper in developing policies for the efficient organization of our country’s forces necessary to the war,” Rumely said to the Associated Press. His pleas went largely unheard. Rumely was forced out of the paper and Henry Stoddard, its president, “announced that the bondholders would take charge of the paper . . . .”
The trial against him and his accomplices lasted for two years. On December 19, 1920, two years after World War I ended, Rumely and co-defendants S. Walter Kaufman and Norvin Lindhelm were found guilty on two charges related to the Evening Mail‘s German money scheme. He received a sentence of one year and one month, which was later commuted to one month by President Calvin Coolidge, who finally pardoned him in 1925. While it appears that Rumely was guilty of the charges against him in the Evening Mail debacle, researcher Richard Gwyn Davies argued that he was innocent, citing Rumely’s friendly professional relationship with former President Theodore Roosevelt. Rumely had worked for Roosevelt on a variety of projects, including speeches, so it would be unwise for a former president, vehemently opposed to Germany during the war, to have a pro-German working on his behalf. Davies also cites the continued press campaign against Rumely, who he says “linked him to a massive German plot to subvert public opinion in the United States.” Davies’s evidence to back up his claim is largely circumstantial. Rumely easily could’ve held one viewpoint in front of Roosevelt and then another when writing editorials or speaking in private.
Rumely’s past never left him alone. For the rest of his life, the mark of treason followed him everywhere he went, even though he may have been innocent. Like many former socialists, Rumely flipped and became an arch conservative and vocal critic of presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, founding the Committee for Constitutional Government in 1937. Like in 1918, he was arrested in 1951 for failing to disclose financial payments to the Committee for the publishing of books critical of FDR and Truman. Sentenced to six months and a $1,000 fine, he appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court and they reversed his case in a unanimous decision. This case ended more favorably for him, but it reinforced the years-old accusations from his Evening Mail days. He died in 1964, never fully removing the stain of scandal around him.
This story presents two fascinating outcomes. Either Rumely accepted money from the Germans, ultimately colluding with an adversary of the United States during World War I, or he was innocent, a victim of the period’s anti-German sentiment. Either way, both conclusions provide a very prescient lesson. American identity is often hard to define, precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, with cultural backgrounds that play a key role in who we are. The lines between our old world and our new one are extremely blurry. When this happens, people’s animosities boil over against those who they suspect of not being “American enough.” This is what happened to Rumely. At the height of World War I, Rumely was accused of the worst possible crime: working with the Germans for his own gain. If he did it, the criticism against him was reasonable, but if he didn’t, he became a causality of American prejudice. This dichotomy stayed with him his whole life. In the end, Edward Rumely was not the “Superman”— Nietzsche’s ideal man who lived “beyond good and evil” – but rather a complicated man whose German past permanently altered his life during the emerging American century.
Thanks for watching. Please click “like” in you enjoyed this video and make sure to subscribe to keep updated on all new videos. Finally, do think that Rumely was guilty or innocent? Did the government go too far in its prosecution of him or not far enough? What do you think makes up our American identity? Leave your answers in the comments below. We want to hear from YOU.