8 page newsletter. Text begins with summary and quotations from Robert Wunsch's address to the college community. Also includes plans for the fall term and change to a quarter-system schedule. There is an announcement of biology professor J RIchard Carpenter's death followed by faculty updates.
Black Mountain College Newsletter
Number 17 November 1942
The college in a world at war
Monday evening, September 28, Black Mountain College began its tenth year with a general meeting of the College community. Speaking particularly to new students and faculty members, Robert Wunsch, Rector, opened the year with a short summary of Black Mountain’s history, of the things the College stands for, of the ways in which it hoped its community members would live. “Think for yourself”, he told them. “Education should not put your mind in a vise of worn-out formulas and set forms, but should provide it with the nourishment on which it may unceasingly expand and grow.
Beware of labels. In art, in literature, in all matters where judgements of values are concerned, we tend to follow the fashion of the moment, the verdict of the many, or the cherished opinion of this and that esoteric group. It does not matter what the source; if you accept labels at their face value, you have deserted your function as a thinking individual. One thing that education must do for you is to provide background from which you can develop your own standards and ideas.”
In time of war, Mr Wunsch said, independent thinking becomes especially important. “Out of the complexities of the past and present, confronted with a war to fight and a peace to make, each person must shape his own philosophy. If you are willing to borrow someone else’s, you are not of the stuff that makes a free and vigorous people. One of the tasks of your generation is to swim continually against a stream of ready-made opinions, against masses of propaganda.
“Even during your college career you will find groups of doctrinaires, ready to use you for their own purposes; you will find them to the right and to the left. In the face of them, have the course of convictions you know are convictions- think, examine, discuss; make for yourself a foundation for action that is more than words. You will find much call for action. You must, with great wisdom, come to some decision about your relationships to and your obligations in regard to the nomadic sharecroppers of the South, the much discriminated Negro, the lame, the halt, and the blind of the modern world. You will have to decide how to help to create out of the fragments made by modern war a new civilization.
“Black Mountain is a place to learn of such things. More than that, it is a place to lean about independent thinking, to learn the difference between a statesman and a demagogue, between a leader and a tyrant, to find out what liberty means- how it differs from license; to consider the lessons of the past; to examine the alternatives for the future; to decide how much to value intellectual freedom, how much to prize those aspects of civilization which have arisen from robust and individual thinking.
“If civilization is to continue in this country it must continue largely through the wisdom and the devotion of you and your contemporaries in other colleges. Independent, hard-headed, clear thinking people can make this spot in the world vibrant and alive with learning and understanding.”
Heinrich Jalowetz of the Department of Music spoke about the educational philosophy of the College. “I am a musician”, he said. “Therefore you will understand that I express myself in comparing educational problems with problems of music.”
“Music has always tried to express ideas. Through centuries there was only one way to do this. Rigid, invariable, unchanging, the Cantus Firmus, the characteristic form of religious music in the middle ages, was a kind of meditation around a dogmatic idea. Inelastic, always the same, it had little to do with the flowering life around it.
“This dogmatic type of music reminds me of a type of school where rigid, unchangeable, dogmatic principles of education are propagated by a certain group who support the school and want their ideas represented in it and carried on by its work.
“Music developed. Composers became more interested in expressing the full richness of life, the full scale of constantly changing emotions. New forms emerged- and prominent among them, the Theme and Variations. A short, simple melody appears in a series of different disguises which change its character but not its basic structure. The Theme and Variations was a step forward, but it was a disguise for dogmatism, rather than a breaking from it.
“And this reminds me of a type of school where a nice program, full of strikingly worded formations, may seem at first original and vital. But it is a program always somewhat outside of the reality of work and life. Such education means little more than at attractive poster outside a concert hall which has nothing to do with that is going on inside.
“I have mentioned two musical types: the dogmatic Cantus Firmus and the Theme and Variations. But there is a third type. A modern composer I know calls it ‘Variations without a theme’. He does not mean music without a basic idea, but music in which the idea is implied; in which it exists always inside of the variations, not as something independent, outside.
“Is this not our College? Its idea is not dogmatic, nor is it something apart from our life and work, slogan-like, propagandistic, read in words but forgotten in living. This form of variations without a theme is, so to speak, the musical form of the world. Our world and the life we live in it represent an unceasing abundance of variations on a theme we can never express in a dogma or a neatly worded phrase, a theme we know only by implication. Somehow we understand it; we recognize it, knowing that if it did not exist, we could not live in this world.
“So we at Black Mountain live the idea of the College. We can’t express it in catching and attractive formulations, yet more and more as we live here, we find it more ever-present and alive than words ever can be. It takes time to come to grow into this idea, yet it is something indispensable, a force that forms us as sun and soil form a plant.
“Our relation of student to teacher is, generally speaking, something like that of man to nature. It is rather a romantic delusion to believe that we can or should live in an untamed wilderness. Instead we give nature form, according to our needs. These needs vary from time to time, from person to person; just so do our forms of cultivating or transforming nature. At times this transformation has become deformation; trees have been used an architectural material as today we use concrete, as a lifeless amorphous mass that was moulded without any relation to its natural growth. So originated those gardens where architectural spaces were formed out of rigid, exactly measured and trimmed walls of living green trees. This automatic way of dealing with nature built the famous parks and gardens of the absolutist noblemen of the Seventeenth Century.
“We treat nature, I should say, in a more democratic way. That does not mean that we let it grow as if man were not in it, that we leave it entirely alone. We don’t want to preserve a wilderness- growth and decay without purpose or sense from a human viewpoint. But we must not destroy it entirely, denaturalize it- as did the garden architects of the time of Louis the Fourteenth. We select what we want to cultivate; we clear out the undergrowth that prevents the free development of what we consider important.
“Our mode of education at Black Mountain, then, follows a tactful but ruthless art of forming nature. We don’t think young people should be formed according to rigid, dogmatic, preconceived patterns, so unchangeable that they end by deforming their natures into patterns as abstract and unnatural as the parks of Versailles. But we also think that all of the qualitied of man should not be allowed to grow like plants in the wilderness. Like the modern landscape architect, we must eradicate ruthlessly all that deters the free growth of the valuable. Only in that way can we form beautiful and useful landscapes of free-growing individual plants, subordinated to a reasonable order. Only in this way can a free society of men grow.
“And never before was it so important to build a free society, to understand what freedom really means. Today fate and convictions split the whole globe into two parts. Masses of men and machines fight each other. Those who survive must rebuild a world out of ruins. And this world can neither continue those patterns which have led to this catastrophe, nor destroy completely the cultural and human values our ancestors have created. Our hopes for the future can be realized only by men who know real freedom: freedom from prejudice, freedom from selfishness.
“It must be our educational aim to free the younger generation from old and knew prejudices, to train their judgement so well that they cannot be seduced to follow blindly misleading demagogues. They must develop imagination and vision, because only by anticipating the future, will it be possible to reestablish our world; and they must overcome the inclination and danger of seeing the world from one narrow, selfish angle- of losing the integrating view of the whole.
“We live our ideas. The newcomer will only gradually understand them; he will need the help and advice of teachers and older students. And he will only gradually feel the ability to judge what we do and to contribute to the development of our organization. We have no dogmatic ideas, no preconceived rules. We change as the world changes. But based in our life and in our work we have come to take for granted certain forms of living and working together, developed out of ten years of community experience.
“To keep these things alive is necessary in order to make possible a steady growth of the garden which is our community.
“I invited you all to join me in this pleasant talk.”
The community
The community for the first term this year includes fifteen faculty members and forty-five students. 1941-42 faculty and staff members continuing their work at the College this fall are: Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Theodore Dreier, Franziska de Graaff, Mary Gregory, Heinrich Jalowetz, A Lawrence Kocher, Kenneth Kurtz, Helen Lounsbury, Elizabeth Parker, Morton Steinau, Erwain Straus, and Robert Wunsch. New faculty and staff members are: Frederic Cohen, Fritz Hansgirg, Elsa Kahl, Edward Lowinsky, Mr and Mrs Gorman Mattison, Elsie Shomer, Dorothy Trayer, Lou Bernard Voigt, and H McGuire Wood. The return of Paul Radin to the College has been delayed because of his illness.
Frederic Cohen is co-founder and co-director of te Ballets Jooss. From 1934 to 1941 he taught at Dartington Hall in England. He is well known both in American and abroad for his work in ballet and opera, as composer, pianist, conductor, arranger, and stage-director. During a visit to the College this summer, he played, with Dr Jalowetz, the music he composed for Drum Sounds in Hackensack, a dance-comedy by Agnes de Mille, which he produced last winter at the Maxine Elliott Theatre in New York. At Black Mountain he is teaching piano and musical theory.
Elsa Kahhl (Mrs Cohen) was formerly solo dancer with the Ballets Jooss. At Dartington all she first taught the courses in Eukinetics she is now teaching at Black Mountain: work in body control intended for actors and dancers, and more generally as an aid in building stronger bodies. She is assisting Robert Wunsch in play-production work, and leading weekly classes in social dancing.
Dr Hansgirg brings to Black Mountain one of the most brilliant scientific minds in America. An Austrian by birth, he is known throughout the world for such inventions as the process now in use in California for the extraction of magnesium. At Black Mountain he is teaching chemistry and physics.
Dr Lowinsky is widely known as a pianist, a harpsichordist, a musicologist, and a teacher. He was educated in Holland and was, until the war, a popular lecturer before Dutch musical societies. At Black Mountain he is working with advanced piano students, teaching music history, and directing the madrigal group. Mrs Lowinsky is teaching violin and viola.
Gorman E Mattison, formerly Assistant to the President of Antoich College, comes to Black Mountain to take a similar position as Assistant to the Rector. He studied at Antioch, and for twenty years was director of public relations of the Sawyer Lumber Company in Worcester. In his new position he is in charge of Black Mountain publicity. Mrs Mattison, formerly women’s editor of the Worcester Telegram, and Evening Gazette, and at one time editor of the Yellow Springs (Ohio) News, is in charge of news reports from Black Mountain, and is directing laboratory work in practical journalism.
Elsie Shomer, formerly a student at Chicago Theological Seminary, replaces Janet Rees as secretary in the financial office. Dorothy Trayer, for the past two years a member of the Pendle Hill Community, is faculty secretary.
Lou Bernard Voigt comes to Black Mountain as an instructor in botany and landscape architecture. A graduate of the University of Illinois and of the Harvard School of Design, Mr Voigt was worked since his graduation with architects Christopher Tunnard, Daniel Urban Kiley, and the firm of Stonorov and Kahn. He is at present working with Mr Albers and Mr Kocher on a permanent landscaping plan for the College grounds.
H McGuire Wood is assistant to the treasurer, and director of the community work program. A graduate of Antoich, Mr Wood has been for many years a builder of small homes in Rochester, NY, and Florida. Under his direction, the scope of community work is being broadened in order to utilize more of the potential talent in the community.
New students this year, including those who began their work with the summer quarter, are: Henry Adams, jr, Barbara Anderson, Anne Arthur, William Berry, Mary Brett, Richard Brown, John Collett, Dyckman Corbet, Gwendolyn Currier, Thomas Emmons, Cornelia Goldsmith, Zoe Gould, Barbara Heller, Otis Levy, Patsy Lynch, Ruth Miller, Herbert Oppenheimer, Barbara Payne, Marita Pevsner, Bruno Piscitello, Barbara Pollet, June Smith, Paul Snyder, Ralph Tyler jr, Jeanne Wacker, and Thomas Wentworth.
Elections
At the annual meeting of the Corporation of Black Mountain College held on Tuesday afternoon, October 14, Heinrich Jalowetz and Frances de Graaff were elected as new members of the Board of Fellows. Theodore Dreier, Robert Wunsch, and A Lawrence Kocher were re-elected to the Board. Mr Wunsch and Mr Dreier were re-elected as Rector and Treasurer, and Mr Kocher was elected Secretary to replace Frederick Mangold.
To fill the unfinished term of Leslie Paul as Student Moderator, the students elected William McLaughlin. To replace McLaughlin and Elizabeth Brett as student officers, they elected Dora Harrison and Gisela Kronenberg.
Fall term plans
During the summer, the College was approved for participation in Enlisted Reserve Corps programs, and has received quotas under the plan. Three of the quota of nine possible students were enlisted before the opening of school, and it is expected that he other places will be filled as soon as formalities can be arranged.
Under the Reserve plans, these students will be deferred until graduation, or until it may become necessary to call them into service. The Enlisted Reserve programs are intended to provide officer material for the military services; besides passing strict physical and mental examinations, Reserve Corps candidates must prove to the Enlisted Reserve Examining Board that they have potentially the qualities of leadership needed in an officer. No special curriculum is prescribed for students in the Enlisted Reserve, but they are advised to take as much scientific work as possible, and to keep themselves in top physical condition.
Summer quarter
The past summer marked the shifting of the College program to a Quarter plan, under which the year is divided into four terms of eleven weeks each, so that students may accelerate their college education with a view to graduation in three years rather than four. During the first summer quarter, courses were given in political philosophy, history, literature, design, weaving, French, music, dramatics, and architecture. On the summer faculty were Mr and Mrs Albers, Eric Russell Bentley, Miss de Graaff, John Evarts, Dr Jalowetz, Mr Kocher, Mr Kurtz, Dr Mangold, Dr Straus, and Mr Wunsch.
Dr Bentley, a graduate of Oxford University, received his PhD from Yale in 1941. His doctrinal dissertation won the John Addison Porter prize. This summer he gave a course in the history of western civilization, led a seminar on Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx, and directed two dramatic productions; Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life, and an evening of scenes from Shakespeare.
In connection with the summer quarter, the College operated a work camp similar to that of last summer. Chief projects of the work campers and of the summer quarter work program, were the erection of a milk house and a silo at the farm, the remodeling of Meadows Inn Lodge and of the Dining Hall kitchen, and the expansion of the farm. Work was under the direction of Theodore Dreier, Mary Gregory, A Lawrence Kocher, and Morton Steinau. Charles Godfrey, local builder employed by the College during the past two years, supervised construction work, and Roscoe Penley, College farmer, was in charge of farm work.
Among the work campers were four students of the Harvard School of Design, two of them from Thailand, and two from China, helping in construction work in order to fulfil a requirement of the Harvard School.
The first Southern Training Institute of the Textile Works Union of America, CIO was held on the College grounds from September 13 to September 19. Lawrence Rogin, educational director of the TWUA, was in charge of the meeting, and other faculty members included John Edelman of the Office of Price Administration, Phillips Russell of the University of North Carolina, and Pat Knight of the regional TWUA office. Fifty delegates from locals all over the South went to classes in labour history, techniques of organization, union operation, collective bargaining, and the relation of labor to the war effort.
J Richard Carpenter
The College announces with deep regret the death on July 16 of J Richard Carpenter, who had been professor of biology at BMC for the past two years. Funeral and burial services were at his home, Grand Rapids, Mich.
Dr Carpenter was thirty-one years old. He received the degree of BS from the University of Illinois in 1932 and his MA and PhD from the University of Oklahoma in 1934 and 1939. From 1935 to 1938 he attended Oxford University as Rhodes Scholar from Oklahoma. For a short time he studied and lectured in Soviet Russia.
While at Black Mountain, Dr Carpenter did notable work in building up the biology laboratory and library. He contributed many of his own books and much delicate and otherwise unavailable equipment.
At a memorial service held at the College on the evening of July 26, Kenneth Kurtz said of Dr Carpenter: “Out of his own enthusiasm for truth he inspired students in his two years here with a real desire to know about life and its processes. We had in him the kind of teacher we seek here: one who was competent in his field, who was the more eager to help others in that knowledge, and who had a real loyalty to the College… though very ill most of this year, he kept his students enthusiastically at work, and went to the hospital only after the term ended… It is this kind of courage and integrity and loyalty in the teacher and scholar that can make him, next to the priest, the great inspirer of mankind.”
Faculty notes
During the summer Theodore Dreier, Josef Albers, and Frederick Mangold spent overlapping periods in the east, in connection with publicity and money-raising. The financial office reports favorably on their campaign.
Robert Wunsch spent six weeks from June 15 to July 25 at the Negro Education workshop of the Association of Secondary Schools and College for Negroes, held this summer at the North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham. August 2, he spoke to the summer students and work campers at Lake Eden on the problem of the Negro in America, emphasizing its socio-economic aspects.
Tree former faculty members now on leave of absence from the College in order to engage in war work. Robert Schillingford Babcock, for two years teacher of government and political science, is with the Office of Foreign Funds Control in Washington; he and Alice Ann are the parents of Robert Shillingford Babcock jr, born August 16. Charles Lindsley continues his special scientific research at the University of Virginia, begun last year. Before that he was teacher of chemistry at Black Mountain. Frederick Rogers Mangold, teacher of romance languages, is with the Requirements Division of the Bord of Economic Warfare, and will be stationed in Mexico City. Anne Mangold, formerly registrar, will be there with him. To succeed Mrs Mangold, Elizabeth Parker of Black Mountain, faculty secretary for the past year, has been appointed registrar.
Peter and Margot Bergmann, last year teachers of chemistry and physics, are at Lehigh University. Roland Boyden, teacher of history last year, is a lieutenant, junior grade, in the Intelligence Service of the Navy. John RP French jr, graduate of the College and of Harvard Graduate School, and for the past two years teacher of psychology at BMC, is at the University of Iowa where, he says, he will do a “research job on projects related to the war effort, particularly the problem of training democratic leaders.” Jessie Ann Nelson, for two years teacher of piano, is an apprentice engineer with the Columbia Broadcasting System in New York.
