UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #100
SEIFERT, LESTER W. J.

SEIFERT, Lester W. J. (1915-1996)
Graduate Student; Professor of German; Extension
At UW: 1937-1938; 1945-1985

Interviewed: 1976	
Series: TA Strike, 1970
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 2 hours

Background; Experiences as UW graduate student; WWII activities; German Department after 1945; Faculty-student relationships; German Department TAs; TA Strike and Dow Protests; Work in Extension; Effects of merger of General Extension with Agricultural Extension and Radio-Television; Work and teaching.

Tape 1/Side 1  

00:00:00	Born in Juneau, Wisconsin, 1915.  Grew up on farm.  One room school, then to high school and then prep school for Northwestern College, in Watertown, Wisconsin.  Lutheran college.  A.B.

00:01:34	To Madison for graduate work in 1937.  Planning to go on to seminary, but liked academic life.  Had to choose between German and Greek.  Had had six years of Greek, starting in prep school.  Liked people in German department.  Finished degree at Brown University.

00:03:35	Studied with Twaddell, and friend of, also.

00:05:29	Also had courses with Alfred Senn, father of Alfred Senn, in history. Roe-Merrill Heffner came fall of 1938.

00:07:03	Hohlfeld gave last course in Faust LS's first year.

00:08:16	Thekla Nimmow a cohesive agent in the department.

00:09:21	Was not a TA here.  Earned money through government aid program; $45 a month.  Good money in depression.  His job was compiling a word index on Parsifal.

00:11:42	Senn as teacher and as human being.  

00:12:46	Second year had a fellowship, $500.  ACLS fellowship to Brown.  Comments on Brown.

00:14:16	German collection at library here one of best in world.

00:15:55	Finished Ph.D. in 1941.  Hired as instructor.  Hard to get jobs, still.

00:16:47	Enlisted in 1942, in army until October 1945.  Offered job at UW while still in army.  Offered more money than Brown; also hard to get tenure at Brown.  Was in cryptoanalysis during war--England, Northern Africa, Italy.

00:22:14	Twaddell still here.  Left here to get away from administrative work.  Rumor that he was to be made dean of L&S; then to be made dean of graduate school.  Hard to turn down such a job when offered.

00:25:08	Heffner as chairman.

00:28:09	Martin Joos.

00:31:15	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:31:27	More on Joos.  His graduate students.

00:31:58	Department wanted John Workman after Heffner retired, but he refused.  So Joos became chairman.

00:32:28	Some further discussion of department under Twaddell. Social equality between grad students and faculty.  Picnics.  To Blue Mounds, Gibraltar.  Twaddell, Rehder, Riegel, Bruns.

00:36:04	Women graduate students.

00:37:29	Picnics, German House helped faculty and graduate students get acquainted.  No such devices now.  Picnics petering off in 1950's.  Reasons--people who organized them left.  Heffner stopped going.  Graduate students after war too busy, had to get ahead, or married.

00:41:26	Faculty used to be invited to dormitories for dinner--into early '60s.  Wife and daughter invited too.  Spring, and between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

00:43:34	Development of the adversary feeling between student and faculty.  Improving again now.

00:43:59	Vietnam War brought it to a head.

00:44:39	Joos' chairmanship very difficult for department.  Wanted to change degree requirements.  Unpleasant departmental meetings. Some things acceptable if he had proposed them in graceful way. Involved telling people how to teach.  Or saying linguistics students needn't take literary courses and vice versa.  Too many affected.

00:48:32	Department program has been modified since but never to extent Joos wanted it.  Joos interested in in-depth scholarship, didn't care about breadth.

00:49:56	Now students encouraged into modern literature.  Some never take courses in older literature.

00:51:40	Joos left here for Toronto.  Thought he was an administrator.  Went to organize Linguistics Institutes.

00:53:18	Seifert chairman for next two years.  Invited to Marburg for a year.

00:54:11	Ian Loram became chairman and remained so until last year.  No regular changing of chairmanship.  Would have a hard time filling it.  Not a popular job.

00:55:41	Department meetings not regular but about three times a semester.  May have executive committee meeting more often.

00:56:36	Changes in attitudes.  Greater freedom of communication. No longer confined to colleagues for friendships.  Enumerates friends--cook, psychiatrist, laborer.  Unthinkable fifty years ago.

00:59:51	Moving from Bascom affected the department.  Also having classrooms interspersed with offices.  Students more likely to come to you if they pass your door.  LS's classes are on first floor and third floor; office on eighth floor of Van Hise. Psychological barrier to coming up to eighth floor.  And while department all on one floor, people on other side of elevators could as well be in Timbuktu.  Never see anyone.  Very poor planning.   People get used to being by themselves.  Most people work with doors closed.

01:02:47	End of side.  End of tape.

Tape 2/Side 1

01:03:17	TAs had begun organizing before 1967.

01:03:53	As chairman Seifert acted as buffer between faculty and TAs.

01:04:37	Good relationships previously but began to deteriorate during student unrest.

01:05:19	Many German TAs struck.  Hard feelings between TAs and other graduate students as well as between TAs and faculty.

01:05:52	Undergraduates suffered most.  Poor teaching that semester.

01:06:13	German TA teaching.  First and second semester German. Supervised by a faculty member.  Some third and fourth semester courses taught by TA.

01:07:25	Pay of TAs regulated by University.  German classes kept to 20 to 25.

01:09:21	Most were on half-time appointments--two courses.

01:10:14	Some disparity in size of appointment--caused bitterness. 

01:10:41	Department has always welcomed comments and suggestions of TAs.  Were on textbook selection committees.

01:11:44	John Workman in charge of elementary instruction, a blow to him when TAs struck.

01:12:23	Thinks this period of strained relationships coming to an end as generation changes.

01:13:31	Doesn't think they are better off now.

01:13:58	Discussion of extent to which TA movement a national development.

01:16:012	LS's involvement in faculty meetings during Dow.  Has always carried on teaching.

01:17:38	Didn't penalize the one graduate student who didn't come to his class during strike.

01:19:04	Was opposed to faculty senate, not wise to get away from faculty control.  Regularly attended faculty meetings.  Faculty senate was way of silencing the eternal talkers, that is, arose out of misuse of faculty meetings.  A tactic used in the sixties.  A well organized group did it.  Chair had a hard time controlling it.

01:21:55	That tactic might have disappeared.

01:22:17	Doesn't join university committees.  Hard on stomach.

01:23:30	His work in extension.  Had to be chairman, which didn't like.  But long distance administration so not so wearing.

01:24:55	Extension offices in Bascom.  Then on North Lake.

01:27:54	Atmosphere in Extension was marvelous.  Adolfson fine administrator.

01:29:15	Good people working with him.

01:29:53	LS managing German classes in center system, correspondence work.  Always work waiting.  Stayed ten years finally.

01:31:40	Visited each center once a semester.  Tried to coordinate work done in each department so students similarly prepared when came to Madison.

01:32:55	Never had to fire anyone.

01:33:35	Period was about 1951 to 1961.

01:34:38	End of side.

Tape 2/Side 2

01:34:43	Some general talk about end of extension.  Extension people still teach, after merger, but not in charge administratively.  A crazy setup, everyone is unhappy with it.  Forced to do the work, but no say about arrangements.

01:37:28	Each campus has mandate from regents to get into area of continuing education.  No longer entrusted to central agency, but to be decentralized.  Madison campus has University Bay Center.  A waste, because had people trained in continuing education sitting a quarter of a mile away with no say in it.  UBC people still groping with what to do.  One program is a series of weekend seminars on various ethnic components of Wisconsin population.  First one at end of April, 1976.   

01:40:17	Lee Swan director of the center out of chancellor's office. LS suggested he talk to the two people from German department in extension, Hank Geitz and Howard Martin.  They actually made the arrangements, but out of kindness of their hearts.  Very short notice.

01:41:51	LS will talk on developments in regard to German language in Wisconsin--use of German among early settlers.

01:42:47	Will be a German dinner, rooms for people to stay in.

01:44:06	LS's own work.  An authority on Pennsylvania German.  Also interested in history and development of German language. Teaches middle-high and old-high German, and culture of time, thus a medievalist.  Could teach old English and old Icelandic. Recently interested in runes.

01:47:51	End of interview.

END