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Historical November–December 2017 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Like any city, St. Louis loved to brag. Alice Clemens gave them reasons to brag around the start of the 20th Century.
A cousin of Samuel Clemens, she married the German military officer Maximilian Von Versen in 1871 and moved to Europe.
Her position as a German baroness was a source of pride locally before World War I.
Her husband had nothing to do with World War I.
She died two years before the war started. St. Louisans were so proud of her that they named a street extending from Grand Avenue to the city line Von Versen Avenue. Yet in 1918, the Board of Aldermen renamed it Enright Avenue, after Jack Enright, one of the first Americans killed during World War I.
It was one of numerous attacks on patriotic German-American communities throughout the country and in St. Louis. So was the renaming of five other St. Louis streets with German “enemy” names, the forced end of German religious services and the lynching of a German alien.
As someone who comes from a proud German heritage, I take it personally. Both of my German American grandfathers served willingly in World War I.
I sometimes wonder what their patriotic German-American parents – my great grandparents – had to endure.
I thought about it more after I finished my book, Beer, Brats, and Baseball: German-Americans in St. Louis several years back. That’s why I’ve spent the last four years working with the German American Heritage Society of Saint Louis to make things right in a small way.
We seek to honor the original names of the six streets whose German titles were changed. Our goal is honorary street designations for the six streets in accordance with City Ordinance 68937.
The ordinance states that the Board of Aldermen may approve a designation when “60 percent of the registered voters residing and/or owning a business on the block being renamed, indicate by petition that they desire the street to receive the designation of an honorary name.” Once that’s done, an alderman could introduce a bill setting a designation.
A marker might work, but an honorary street sign seems more fitting. By voting to put up a street sign with the original name, even an unofficial one, the Board of Aldermen would acknowledge that its predecessors 100 years ago were wrong.
The current names would stay as they are, but another sign would give the honorary designation.
The city has approved designations for three former German streets on the South Side.
Now we’re focusing on the part of the former Von Versen Avenue in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood. It’s between the Washington University North Campus and the Pageant/Moonrise Hotel parking lot.
The sign would be at the corner of Skinker and Enright. Joe Edwards is not a registered voter in the city, and Washington University obviously isn’t a registered voter. Technically, Alderwoman Heather Navarro don’t have to get anybody’s approval to introduce a bill. But, obviously, she would want to get buy-in from the surrounding community. We’ve discussed this with Joe Edwards and Cheryl Adelstein, the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Community Relations and Local Government Affairs at Washington University. Community groups also should have their say. At the same time, there is in the Skinker-Debaliviere neighborhood a second street whose name was changed in World War I. Pershing Avenue was named Berlin Avenue before 1918.
We briefly sought an honorary designation of Berlin Avenue back in 2013 and 2014. Then-Alderman Lyda Krewson was very helpful in this effort.
But she deferred to the wishes of the neighborhood, as she should.
We ended it after our request became a matter of controversy, so much that it wound up on the front page of the Post-Dispatch. That was the last thing we wanted. So we withdrew. We’d still like to have some kind of marker on Pershing, if everyone can come together on this.
But that’s down the road.
First, though, we’d like to spread the story of the injustices done to a certain group of Americans a century ago. That way, people will want to have a public marker acknowledging this.
The designations would note the former names of the streets and would draw attention to the anti-German hysteria of World War I. More recently, Japanese Americans in World War II and Muslim Americans after 9/11 were victims of similar kinds of hysteria. Our hope is that the signs may encourage people to avoid such instances in the future.
We hope everyone in the area will offer thoughts on this. Together, we can come up with a memorial that the neighborhood accepts and is a fitting remembrance of a century-old injustice.
Editor’s Note: Local history author Jim Merkel wrote for the Southside Journal for many years.
The TIMES is including this explanation of Von Versen to give an opportunity for neighborhood residents to weigh in on this proposal. Let us know what you think at our website, http://www. sdtimes.org.
It was pure serendipity that our columnist Cecelia Nadal, who has written several columns on diversity topics, said she was interested in writing about the important Missouri and St. Louis German/African-American connections in the pre-Civil War era. So we have stories of two eras in our city’s history and a lot to think about!
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November–December 2017.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2017_11.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.
