SpringfieldNewsSun.com

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — The back cover of William Kinnison's "Wittenberg: An American College" ($34.99 Xlibris) reports a telling fact: "Half of all the colleges founded before the Civil War did not survive."

Why did Wittenberg?

In part because of Ezra Keller's choice of Springfield as its home, Kinnison said.

"A lot of colleges that failed started in communities that failed," said the Springfield native who graduated from Wittenberg in 1954 and served 21 years as Wittenberg University president.

"The people who started Wittenberg and who started Springfield were really aware of what they were doing."

Kinnison will focus on community-college connections when he discusses his book on the university's history from 1842 to 1920 at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11, in the Crabill Discovery Hall of the Heritage Center of Clark County.

Because backers wanted to train English speaking pastors to help Americanize both German immigrants and the Lutheran church, the Ohio frontier was the ideal place for their college in the 1840s.

In moving the college from its first home in Wooster, Kinnison said Keller was wise to avoid Columbus, "where it would be dominated by a stronger German (speaking) element" that sought to keep services only in German.

Given their goal, leaders also were wise to give their college a German name.

Transportation played a role in Keller's choice of Springfield, Kinnison said. Although lacking even a Lutheran church, the city in the 1840s stood at the end of the National Road — the main highway for immigrants — and was along a planned railroad route from Sandusky to Cincinnati.

Kinnison said Springfield also turned out to be tolerant, at least to German immigrants who "worked hard and cleaned their doorsteps and the street in front of their house."

Wittenberg's German pedigree caused trouble and "even Springfield was taking a beating as a pro-German town" when the United States entered World War I, Kinnison said. But as his book points out, former President Theodore Roosevelt, himself of German descent, famously came to the campus in 1917 to speak up on behalf of loyal German-Americans.

Early on, Kinnison said, not only was the German connection critical, so was Keller's specific vision of trying to Americanize Germans and the Lutheran church.

"I think the more committed you were to some narrow cause, the more you were likely to succeed," he said.

Wittenberg's history indicates that in Springfield, Keller found a place where his college could do that.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.