Centenary of Carl Paul Graupner (1908 - 2008)

The Centenary of Carl Paul Graupner’s Birth
26 March 1908 – 3 September 1996
by Philip Graupner

Carl Paul Gaupner was the second son and the fifth of seven children born to Anna (Gläser) and C. Hermann Graupner. He was born in a small town near Saarbrücken, Germany. Called Spittel then, it is now known as L’Hopital and lies on the French side of the French-German border. His father, a coal-mine administrator/engineer, worked in mines in Spittel and Freimengen (now Freyming, France) for about five years (1907-1911) before returning to the Ruhr region (specifically Dortmund and Oberhausen) where Carl and his siblings grew up and went to school.

C.Hermann Graupner Family, 1923, Carl, Hanni, Anna (mother), Elsa, Ida, Hermann Jr., C. Hermann (father), Anna and Paul.

World War I (1914-1918) started when Carl was six years old. These were very difficult years for Germans. His father was called up for military duty and was gone for two years. There was very little to eat. His older sister Elsa was sent to work on a farm near the Dutch border. When Carl was nine, he signed up to work on a farm several hundred miles away in Pomerania without telling his parents about it until the night before the train was scheduled to depart. He landed on a large farm being run by the women of the family because the farmer had been drafted into the army. A Russian prisoner-of-war handled the horses and did the heavy field work. Carl’s job was to take the cows to pasture in the morning and watch them until the boys of the family got home from school in the early afternoon. Then he either helped the women or would hang out with the Russian and the horses. He enjoyed these two months so much that he decided then that he wanted to be a farmer.
This dream became a reality a few years after the end of the war with the help of a first cousin to Carl’s father. One of the Grandmother Graupner’s sisters had immigrated to the USA in the 1870s and her children were living near DePere, Wisconsin. One of them, Frank Boser, had a farm and offered to sponsor someone in the family that wanted to come to the United States. C. Hermann couldn’t very well leave his large family and job, so Carl and his older sister Ida decided to come to America. They had to wait a while because of the quotas. It was a time of great political and financial turmoil in Germany. The Rhineland area, where they lived, was occupied by French and Belgian soldiers in an effort to force the Germans to make reparation payments for the war. In retribution, there were work stoppages and sabotage. Money became worthless. Ida was able to get on the German quota but Carl had to get on the French quota, something he was able to do because the town he was born in had became part of France after the Germans lost the war. They left Germany from Cuxhaven on the German liner, Albert Ballin, in September 1923. Carl was fifteen years old. Ida was twentyone.
Carl Graupner, age 14 (passport photo)

Ida and Carl arrived in New York after about 10 days and went through immigration procedures on Ellis Island without any problems. They were put onto an immigrant train to Chicago. From there they took the train to DePere. Ida found work as a maid very quickly and Carl helped Frank Boser with farm chores but was sent to the local school because he couldn’t speak any English. He took a seat in the sixth grade but made no progress until his Irish teacher brought along a children’s book in English that he had been familiar with in Germany. He rapidly made progress then. In the summer he took a job as a hired-man for a farmer with cancer. The man died and Carl helped the farmer’s brother and wife with the work until the widow sold the farm. He worked for a number of other farmers in the area and saved enough money to pay Frank back for the passage.
In 1925, his sister Elsa and his brother Hermann also immigrated to Wisconsin, their passage being paid for by a farmer in Morrison Township, Hugo Lemke, who wanted Hermann to help on his farm. Ida had moved to Milwaukee and lived with one of Frank’s sisters and Elsa followed her there to find work as a maid.
At the beginning of 1926 Carl started working on the Malchine farm near Waterford, Wisconsin. This was a large, prosperous farm and the family treated him like their son. In the ten years that he worked for them, he acquired many friends, some related to the Malchine family and others that were members of the Norway Lutheran Church outside Waterford. He took a lot of photos during this time.


Ida and Elsa both met their future husbands while in Milwaukee. Ida married Willard Liepert in June 1928 and moved to his parent’s farm near Kewaskum, Wisconsin. Elsa and August Dauer traveled back to Germany after Ida and Willard’s wedding and married in Schlangenbad in September 1928.
Carl traveled back to Germany to visit his parents and siblings just before Christmas in 1932. Once again, he did not tell his parents that he was making the trip but fortunately reconsidered and sent them a telegram from the ship....again the Albert Ballin. His parents were living then in Mülheim a.d.Ruhr where his mother had opened a little grocery store. His father was retired. Only his little sister Hanni was still living at home. His younger brother Paul was at engineering school in Idstein. After celebrating Christmas together, Carl and his father traveled to visit aunts, uncles and cousins from the Graupner and Gläser families in Saxony, many of whom he met for the first time. He came back to the USA on the Deutschland and arrived in New York just in time to celebrate the end of Prohibition.





Carl continued to work on the Malchine farm until Christmas 1935. Willard Liepert suffered a ruptured appendix and Ida wasn’t able to do the farm-work alone, so Carl went to help out. He was there through the winter which was noted for its record snowfall. In the summer, a friend from Watertown, Harold Beck, talked him into seeking work at the brass works in Burlington, Wisconsin and sharing a room with him in town. Carl’s job was polishing faucets. It was piece-work and frustrating until he got the hang of it. Harold introduced Carl to St. John’s Lutheran Church, where both sang in the choir. Another member of the choir was Gertrude Boock, St John’s elementary school teacher. They started dating and on 8 August 1939 were married in Spencer, Wisconsin, the home of her parents.


l-r: Margret Boock, Carl and Gertrude, Donald Alaxson, Erna Byer, Russel Johnson, Marian Oelrich Boock, Norbert Boock, Carol Gieseke

Carl started working as a delivery man for the Kellogg’s Dairy, later Pet Milk. He delivered ice-cream and dairy products to stores in the cities along the north shore to Chicago.
Their first two children, Kenneth (1941) and Philip (1942) arrived while they still lived in a little rental apartment in Burlington but in 1943 they bought a little cottage on Brown’s Lake outside of Burlington. James (1944), John (1946) and Cathryn (1948) were all born while they lived in the little two-bedroom cottage. The house was charming but small. When Pet Milk was sold and closed toward the end of 1948, Carl decided to follow his dream of having his own farm. They looked for a farm in the Burlington/Waterford area near their many friends without finding anything. Gertrude’s father owned an eighty-acre farm in Spencer, Wisconsin that was rented out. Carl and Gertrude decided to move there and just after Christmas 1948 moved to Spencer. The farm was very run down. The house didn’t have a bathroom. The money that they got from the sale of the cottage was soon spent on machinery, cattle and fertilizer. On the plus side however, Gertrude’s parents and her brother’s family also lived in town.
Carl and Ida invited their mother and youngest sister, Hanni, to come to America for a visit in 1951. Although ties to their family in Germany had been disrupted during World War II, letters started going across the ocean again in 1945, first sent by American soldiers and airmen that were stationed in Schlangenbad where the Dauers lived and also the parents, after being bombed out in 1943, and brother Paul and his family after being deported from their home in Austria in 1945. The post-war years were once again hunger-years for the Germans. The American families sent many packages of food and clothing to help the German families out. This recreated a closeness that might otherwise have been lost. Oma and Hanni’s nine-month visit in 1951 – 52 was a very significant event for the three American Graupner-families. The two would visit each of the families in turn; the Lieperts in Kewaskum, the Hermann Graupners in Bonduel and the Carl Graupners in Spencer.
Carl’s farm got off to a slow start because the place was so run down. Little by little, with much hard work and a willingness to keep abreast of good farming practices, his herd increased and improved. The farm was increased in size until it was almost 160 acres. His children provided grunt labor, although Kenneth and John contributed much more than the others by taking an active interest in farming and making improvements in the efficiency of running the farm. The most significant change came with the purchase of some purebred calves at an auction which were the foundation of what later was one of the record milk-producing herds in the Spencer area. Carl was a very successful farmer.
In 1970, at age 62, Carl sold his cows. His youngest boy, Charles (b.1951), had graduated from high school and was going to college. It was too much work for one person. Gertrude was teaching school and could supplement their income if necessary. He continued to raise crops and heifers. Toward the end of his life, he rented the farmland out to a young farmer.
Over half of Carl’s life was spent on the farm in Spencer. They were quiet years, filled with the everyday of work, raising a large family, active membership in Trinity Lutheran Church in Spencer, bowling and card games with the neighbors. Some of the highpoints were the 1951- 52 visit of his mother and sister, the 1964 trip to Germany with Gertrude, Cathy and Chuck to celebrate their Silver-Wedding Anniversary, many other trips to Germany with Gertrude to reconnect with the cousins and their families in West and East Germany, as well as to do sight-seeing in other countries. They also made several trips with Norbert and Marion Boock to Canada and places in the USA. In the 70s, they bought land along the Elk River west of Phillips, Wisconsin and built a small cottage but it never became a real home away from home, especially after most of the trees were felled in an unusual windstorm. Although they visited their children’s young families frequently, the farm house in Spencer increasingly became the gathering point for children, grandchildren and other visitors.
In August of 1989, Carl and Gertrude celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary with a large gathering in Spencer.


Golden Wedding, 1989...front: Jenna, Christopher, Anna, Peter, Erik, Erin w. photo of Lisa, Lauren. 2nd row: Scott, Kathy, Eunice, Judy, James with Emily, Kristine, Brittany, Deborah with Jeffrey, Brian. Back row: John, Kenneth, Philip, Carl and Gertrude, Edward, Cathryn, Charles.

Carl and Gertrude were always genuinely interested in their family histories. Even though Germany had been divided after WWII and there was very little contact with the cousins living in the GDR, Carl and Gertrude visited East Germany before the “wall” came down in 1989. They visited there again several times after 1989, the last time with Hanni Graupner and Jamie Langston. They established a bridge which in recent years has resulted in a couple of family reunions, unfortunately too late for Carl to enjoy.
Cancer ended Carl’s life on September 3, 1996. The first round of the disease was brought under control through chemotherapy and he enjoyed a good year, making trips with Gertrude to visit the Lieperts in Texas and in 1995 to Germany to visit his sisters, even making it to Saxony to visit his cousins. When the cancer returned, in spite of months of treatments, it put an end to the life of this wonderful man. He is buried in the Spencer cemetery in a plot that he and Gertrude bought for themselves. Nearby are the graves of Norbert and Marian Boock and many of their former friends and neighbors.

(Note: This history of Carl Graupner's life is based on several taped interviews that James Graupner made with Carl and Gertrude in July 1971, August 1983 and July 1996.)