The Beginnings The Evans Administration

When in the fall of 1873, after three years of planning and preparation, the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, from which was to emerge the Ohio State University in 1878, opened its gates to the first freshman class of 25 students, the academic offerings of the new institution were grouped into ten departments. The ninth of these was the Department of Modern and Ancient Languages. Its establishment had not been quite effortless and smooth. The more professionally oriented men among the founding fathers had objected to the decision of the Board of Trustees (January 6, 1871) to provide for two chairs in languages and literatures, one in English and modern languages and literatures and a second in ancient languages and literatures. The main spokesman among the critics, Norton S. Townsend, later professor of Agriculture, had objected to two professorships in languages and literatures as "unneeded in technical education." His motion lost, though by the slimmest of margins (8 to 7).

It was not exactly the principle of a liberal and humanistic education which had prevailed in this vote, but rather a practical consideration, which the secretary of the trustees had expressed in these words:
It may be asserted with perfect truth that he who wishes to keep thoroughly posted in agriculture as a science or with the constant progress in the mechanical arts, chemistry and other sciences will need to read as many books and memoirs in French and German as he will in English.

The man who was to teach the first freshman class to read these books and memoirs was Joseph Millikin, M.A., who was named professor of English and Modern Languages and Literatures on September 20, 1873. Since in the first term of the university's operation French was not yet offered in the College program, German was actually the first modern foreign language taught at the new institution.

Joseph Millikin was born in 1840 near Hamilton, Ohio the son of a retired lawyer who was twice elected treasurer of the State of Ohio. He received a classical education at Hanover College, Indiana, after transferring from Miami University of Ohio, which thanks to his precocity he had entered at the age of fourteen. His original professional goal was the ministry, and in 1862 he was ordained as a minister of the Presbyterian Church. Yet frail health, which had plagued him since his student days, seemed to make an academic career more advisable, and in 1870 he accepted an invitation as professor of Greek language and literature at his old Alma Mater, Miami University. Three years later he moved from Miami to the new Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College as a professor of English and Modern Languages and Literatures. His tenure at the Ohio State University was relatively short. In 1881 ill health forced him to resign his position; and after a vain attempt to regain his strength in Florida, he died in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1882.

Professor Millikin's teaching burden would have been backbreaking even for a much more robust man. After French had been added to the academic program, Millikin taught one class in English, one in French and two in German. This made him responsible "for seven daily recitations of one hour each." At this time (1875) his yearly salary was $2,250, and although he confessed in the annual departmental report that "my classes and myself are cheerfully doing our best," he complained that the professional demands were "more than I can do with the perfect justice to myself or the branches I teach." Even President Orton had to concur, admitting that such work "is clearly beyond the power of one person to perform." It was therefore decided that Professor Millikin needed an assistant, especially for the teaching of French.

So in 1875 the Board appointed Ms. Alice K. Williams, a native of Bowling Green Ohio. After preparing in her hometown school and at the New Church Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts, she had been among the first of 25 students to enroll at the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1873; and she now became the first woman teacher at the new institution with the official title "Tutor in the Department of English and Modern and Ancient Languages." Her position carried a yearly remuneration of $450 to be paid in 10 monthly installments. Miss Williams taught one required course in English, one in German and one two in French. She remained with the department for 14 years, after 1887 as an Assistant Professor and eventually as an Associate Professor, which latter rank had been declared proper by the Board of Trustees for a departmental chairman. This Miss Williams had become after Millikin's resignation and demise. Shortly thereafter Miss Williams' name disappeared from the roster of the teaching staff of the Ohio State University. She received an unpaid year's leave for studies in Europe in 1889/90, and there is no record that she returned to the department after this leave of absence.

The method employed by the first foreign language teachers at the Ohio State University was based primarily on grammatical drill and translation practice. To justify this procedure Millikin proffered a whole series of arguments. He stated that in principle this method was in accord with "the best college usage and authority" and particularly applicable at an agricultural and mechanical school with large enrollments in language classes where the proficiency in speaking a foreign language was considered "an incident rather than an aim of the course." Already at the end of the first year of college's operation (Summer 1874) the Circular and Catalogue had laid down the ground rule:

The French and German languages, with which everyone who expects to attain a good degree of proficiency in the natural sciences must acquaint himself, and which are in themselves desirable studies, can be pursued here in courses as extensive as the needs of the students may demand.

With all the emphasis on the practical use of modern languages and natural sciences, Millikin was aware of their desirability in themselves; and the curriculum which he had designed offers proof of this awareness. The first term of the first year was devoted to the study of grammar, using Whitney's Grammar and Reader. In the second term a selection of German poetry was added, which offered further opportunities for grammatical drill, while in the third term the reading of a prose text (Andersen's Eisjungfrau) formed the basis for composition and conversation. This shift in emphasis was due mainly to Miss Williams' efforts, but Millikin had gladly accepted it, pointing out that "from writing to speaking the way is easy."

In the second year the student was ready to read and discuss representative samples of German Classical literature, among them Goethe's Egmont, Schiller's Don Carlos and Braut von Messina and Lessing's Emilia Galotti. Lectures and reading materials on the history of German literature and language offered a survey which placed the individual texts in their proper context. In 1878, five years after the opening of the Ohio State University, this program was firmly established and 32 students were enrolled in the first two years if the study of German.

Yet with the establishment of a regular curriculum Professor Millikin's problems were by no means all solved. In the first years the building up of a suitable library was a permanent worry, all the more so since, in addition to his teaching obligations, Millikin had assumed the position of librarian in 1874. In the following years his complaints about the lack of badly needed texts became routine. Thus in 1876..."it is of the utmost importance that the ability to use foreign textbooks and works of reference be acquired as soon as possible;" and shortly thereafter: "To teach English, French and German philology with not a text of earlier period (save the one read in the classroom) accessible to the student is like teaching geology without a fossil, or surveying without a compass."

His constant proddings did in fact achieve modest results. In 1877 Millikin gratefully acknowledged the receipt of $100 for book purchases: in the following year the amount even rose to $200. By that time some of the most vital texts had become available, e.g., Vilmar's Deutsche Literatur Geschichte, Simrock's New High German translation of the Nibelungenlied and Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie.

At the same time the reading program in the offered courses became richer. In addition to Lessing's Emilia Galotti his Nathan der Weise was now taken up in the fifth quarter, and some reading of the post-Classical period was assigned to the students of the sixth quarter, Jean Paul's Quintus Fixlein was, for example, made the basis of class discussions and literary surveys. With all that original grammar-translation method was still preserved, and Millikin stated in the departmental report of 1877 that this method is "the only sure and usually the shortest road to accurate and fluent speech."

Such was the state of German Studies at Ohio State University when the first departmental chairperson, Professor Millikin, resigned in 1881. The burden that fell upon his successor, Miss Williams, was considerably lighter, since in the meantime it had been decided to separate the foreign languages and literatures from English. This was only the beginning of a reorganization of the program in modern languages, for in 1885, French and German became independent disciplines. It is thus, from 1886 on that we can properly speak of a German Department, and Miss Williams was now solely responsible for the French instruction at the university.

The first chairman of the new German Department, Ernst Eggers, was born in the province of Hanover in 1855. After having passed through the Gymnasium of his hometown, he went to France and continued his studies at the Sorbonne and the Colge de France. He then emigrated to the United States where he continued his education at the Michigan State Normal School. For ten years he taught German in high school on Wisconsin and Michigan, until he joined the German Department of the Ohio State University as an assistant. In 1888 he was promoted to an assistant professorship, and two years later to a full professorship. He held the chairmanship of the department until 1903 when tortuously painful migraines, from which he had suffered for many years, drove him to suicide.

Under Professor Eggers' stewardship the German offerings were extended to a four-year course, culminating in the reading and discussion of Goethe's Faust. Yet proficiency in the spoken language also received a boost under Eggers' administration. A course in German conversation was introduced in 1891, and four years later a Germania Club was founded, whose weekly meetings were open to anyone who had taken one year of college German and was eager to acquire a certain amount of fluency in the foreign tongue. These additional offerings proved quite an attraction to the students; in 1891 there were 411 students taking German during the course of the year; within the next ten years this figure was to climb to 1465.

This increase in enrollment necessitated additional teaching personnel, and in the last decade of the 19th century, Mr. Mesloh and Mr. Eisenlohr were added to the staff. Before joining the German Department, Mr. Eisenlohr has been the leader of the University Band since 1883. Thus by the time of his retirement in 1933 he had served the Ohio State University for fully 50 years.

Professor Eggers also saw to it that the library holdings grew with the growth of the department. He founded a German Library Association and succeeded in inducing two wealthy citizens, Mssrs. John and Louis Siebert, to make yearly contributions of $100 each toward the purchase of new German books. By 1903, the time of Professor Eggers' death, the offering of the German Department had been greatly extended to include Old Norse, Sanskrit, Gothic, Old High German, the history of the German language, German cultural history, not to mention numerous literature courses in modern prose and drama.

It was for this reason that Professor Eggers' successor rebaptized the German Department the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. This successor was Professor Lewis Addison Rhoades, born in Skaneateles, N.Y., in 1860. After having received his Ph.D. at the University of Goettingen in 1892, he had taught at the Universities of Michigan, Cornell, and Illinois before joining the faculty of the Ohio State University in 1903. His interest in the methods of teaching was so keen that shortly after his arrival on the Columbus campus he introduced a course on the "Teaching of German," which was repeated yearly until 1910, the year of Rhoades' untimely death. At that time when the department became orphaned again it consisted of one associate professor, three assistant professors and one assistant.

Forward to History of Our Department, The Evans Administration.

Content Owner: Professor Bernd Fischer.