Pieper (FP) Memories 3: Early training, language proficiency, esp. Latin

      This continues from Part 1 and Part 2 (Table of Contents in Part 1), a series by Prof. Ludwig Fürbringer of his personal memories of the departed Franz Pieper in the 1931 Der Lutheraner magazine. — This segment continues with more information about Pieper's family.  The report on Pieper's early language training shows the basis for his later mastery of this learning.  O that I had not chosen a learning in languages instead of an education in today's "math and science". For some reason I got into Purdue University with only 1 semester of Spanish -- today they require 4 semesters.

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(page 251, col. 1)

Memories of Dr. Franz Pieper.

by Ludwig Fürbringer – [1.] (Part 3 of 16)

The parents sent the young Franz, apparently as well as his brothers known in the American Lutheran Church, Reinhold Pieper, the late President of our Springfield Seminary, and August Pieper, the professor of the Wisconsin Synod Seminary in Thiensville, Wisconsin, themselves distinguished by special gifts, to the grammar schools nearby his home in Köslin [now Koszalin, Poland] and Kolberg [now Kołobrzeg, Poland after WWII]. And there was already an aptitude that our Dr. Pieper used throughout his life, the talent for languages.

I recall years ago that at a conference we used to play music and sing together to younger pastors (blessed Bente was there also) – nowadays such recuperation has become much rarer.  Now one either sits down in front of the phonograph or in front of the radio and foregoes the joy and enjoyment that one can prepare oneself in a unique way. So he [Pieper] almost complained that, although he loves music, he never came to practice it because in his youth his whole interest was always on languages. And so, not only did he exquisitely master his own native language, German, as everyone knows, but he had also acquired English so that he would have an English ceremonial speech in the dining room at an academic ceremony here in the seminary, when three new professors were introduced.  His subject was a favorite one for him, the vicarious satisfaction of Christ (vicarious sacrifice). But above all, he was interested in the basic biblical languages, Greek and Hebrew, that he had studied all his life (page 251, col. 2) and whereby he brought especially the use of the Greek New Testament to a mastery. His old Greek Bible, which had really turned very brown by age and which I have so often seen in his hands, testifies to how diligently he has dealt with it.

And he also mastered the language he particularly valued, which in his early years also needed part of his teaching, the scholarly language of the whole world, Latin. He was fluent in Latin even without further preparation; and from my student days I am especially aware of a comparison of two Latin speeches which were given at the inauguration of our St Louis seminary in 1883 on the second day of the academic celebration by Stöckhardt and Pieper. Both speeches were masterpieces in their own way and yet completely different. Stoeckhardt, who had visited one of the well-known Saxon grammar schools, which were famous throughout the world for their care for Latin, without any trouble spoke a most elegant, chosen Latin, which was therefore more difficult to understand. Pieper, on the other hand, also speaks quite fluently, but in a more popular way, as always was his way.

In 1870 Franz Pieper came to America with his parents. They settled in Wisconsin, in the Wisconsin Synod territory, and so the son completed his studies at Northwestern College at Watertown, Wisconsin.  Of his teachers at the time he kept a grateful memory, as far as I can remember. There was the Hanoverian Professor A. F. Ernst, the longtime president of the institute, who distinguished himself with philological and philosophical knowledge. Dr. F. W. A. Notz, as well as Ernst, was well-educated in Württemberg in the ancient languages ​​and this dominating Württemberg scholar began his Watertown activity only since 1872. Pieper also met often with both of these yet in later life, especially with Ernst.

And as he after two years of study in Watertown was awarded with the title of Bachelor of Arts, so his alma mater honored him later in 1903 for his twenty-five-year jubilee professorship by awarding him the theological doctorate at the same time as with the man who established himself as the leader in the Wisconsin Synod, as Pieper in our synod, in the area of Dogmatics, Dr. Adolf Hönecke.

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      Although Pieper was wistful about his lack of music skills, yet the Lutheran Church is better for it -- for his skill in languages.  Thank God! for Pieper’s command of languages!  We will hear more about these in future segments.  The next Part 4 begins Pieper's first experience with Walther.