AREA TOWNS HAVE BILINGUAL BACKGROUNDS

The Martin Luther's Small Catechism was taught in German into the 1950s at Die Kleine Schule (The Little School) in Frohna. This copy was printed in both German and English in 1912.

Die Kleine Schule (The Little School) was built in 1898 by Concordia Lutheran Church in Frohna. Many of the original furnishings and books can be seen at the school.

In 1922, when Elvira Scholl started attending the Concordia Lutheran Elementary School in Frohna, she didn't speak any English and she didn't need to. Her family spoke German at home, as did most of her neighbors, and school was in German.

When she reached third or fourth grade, she isn't sure which, she started having classes in English. By seventh grade, her teacher used German only for her catechism class.

"I just learned English gradually in school then," Scholl said, "and my parents spoke German mostly at home. It seems like long, long ago."

The school didn't go beyond seventh grade, so she attended eighth grade in public school, which had instruction exclusively in English.

Vernon Meyr's first language was English, but when he attended the Trinity Lutheran School in Altenburg in the late 1920s, he had to learn German to make it through school.

Meyr, a fifth-generation German-American, was born in Detroit to parents from eastern Perry County. His father died when he was 4, and his mother moved back to Perry County where he was reared by his maternal grandparents.

Meyr said instruction in the school was 50-50 German and English.

"I really had to struggle," Meyr said. But today the retired banker is glad he learned German. "We were holding onto our German heritage."

At a time when politicians and educators are debating the merits of bilingual education in public schools in parts of the country, and there is a movement to make English our country's official language, it might be instructive to look at the little-known experiences of the German immigrants to America who educated their children in German for generations in eastern Perry County and elsewhere.

The best-known history of the German settlement of the area, Zion on the Mississippi, a 1953 work by Walter Forster, doesn't touch on the question of how the people of eastern Perry County handled the question of what language to teach in their elementary schools.

The book does mention that Germans in St. Louis established a secular, German-language school in 1836.

The movement for German-language education was so strong in another part of Missouri that, in 1849, the Missouri General Assembly passed a resolution endorsing German-language education in Gasconade County.

The resolution granted a charter to a public school in Hermann stating "that this school shall be and forever remain a German school in which all branches of science and education shall be taught in the German language."

German-language instruction in science and history didn't last past the late 19th century in Hermann, said Dorothy Shrader, who has written extensively about Hermann, her hometown. Shrader, 83, went to the German School but was taught in English, as were her parents. "I don't know about my grandfather," she said.

In Hermann, however, when she was growing up, every student learned German from the first grade on, Shrader said.

Local historians and residents of the area know of no published works that address the question of education in the German language in Perry County.

Forster in his book details how the ancestors of today's residents of Frohna and Altenburg first arrived in 1839. They were refugees from the Kingdom of Saxony, Lutherans who believed that their government was imposing a religion on them that was too "rationalist." In a time when most governments regulated the religious life of their citizens, the Saxons came to Missouri to find a place where they could practice their religion the way they wanted to.

The Saxons held to a literal interpretation of the Bible, and opposed the Saxon government when it tried to force them to allow women to speak in church.

The Saxons in Perry County quickly established schools.

As Abdel Ross Wentz wrote in his Basic History of Lutheranism in America, Lutheran pastors "saw clearly that the daily school is often a more vital factor than the pulpit in molding the character of the people."

Even after the establishment of public schools in the area, the Lutherans of Altenberg and Frohna continued to operate their own schools for their children.

Meyr said those schools went through seventh grade and confirmation. Students wanting to continue their education attended public schools, which were, in his lifetime, held in English.

Meyr's maternal grandfather was a judge in Perryville. He was able to preside over a court in English, but spoke German at home.

Dorothy Weinhold belongs to a later generation. When Weinhold's mother finished eighth grade at the Concordia Lutheran School in Frohna, she didn't speak any English. When Weinhold started at the same school in 1942, she didn't speak any English, but by then, all but her religion classes were in English. She learned the catechism from a book with English and German in facing pages.

About learning English Weinhold said, "I didn't have any choice. I just went to school and did what the teacher said."

Her best friend at school Tille Kranawetter Luckey spoke only English when she started school. "I learned from her, and she learned from me."

The two remain friends and speak to each other in German.

"By then, more and more English was being spoken in Frohna and Altenburg," Weinhold said.

Weinhold is glad she can speak both languages. And she's glad that her world is not confined to a small section of Perry County. But she mourns the passing of old culture.

"From our age on down, there aren't too many who can speak German and it's sad," Weinhold said.

"We are losing our German culture," Meyr said. "There used to be German bands in six different places here. Now there's none. In 1947, the remnants of the Frohna band and the remnants of the Altenburg band joined forces and became the East Perry Band. There are a few people that are trying to get a band together."

The passing of the old character of Frohna and Altenburg saddens Meyr as well.

"It adds to the richness of the whole," he said. "Civilization has to have different cultures involved. I hate to think everything is the same everywhere you go."

Scholl continues to speak German with her sister and in social clubs. "There are a lot of German sayings that mean much more ... when you say them in English, it's not the same."