Series: Dr. Robert Irrmann
Scope and Content Note: Family background in New York State and Chicago; RI's decision to teach; experience with polio; life as student at Beloit College in 1930s; black students at the college in the 1930s; RI at Harvard and at Indiana for graduate school; teaching at Beloit; liberal humanist philosophy of Beloit College; Neese family support of BC; financial difficulty of college; relationship between BC and Fairbanks-Morse and BC and Beloit Iron Works.

Session I, 1976 November 4
Alternate Format: Audio recording of interview with Dr. Robert Irrman, November 4, 1976 available online.

Introduction

Family background--influence of German Revolution of 1848--to Buffalo, New York--grandfather in Civil War in spite of mother's opposition, cigar maker after War--move to Chicago

Maternal grandparents in Chicago pre-Civil War--maternal grandfather as a teacher--the cigar business on the Irrmann side

Family religious background--Irrmanns not particulorty religious--mother Missouri Synod Lutheran

R.I.'s decision to become a teacher--Spalding School for Handicapped Children--no taste for education courses at Beloit College, advised by Professor McGranahan to skip them and concentrate on college teaching

R.I.'s experience with polio, epidemic of 1930--unfulfilled desire to dance--began to read more, gifts from aunt--importance of Spalding School

Choice of college influenced by disability--family tour of Beloit in 1934, met President Mowrer

Extent of disability not as serious then

Further comments on ancestors fleeing Germany to avoid conscription

Funny political background--grandfather Irrmann as Democratic Cook County commissioner

Comments on Beloit College student during the 1930s, Chicago influence--President Brannan's vocational bent

Irving Mowrer's presidency, conservative influence--Brannan as founder of local Chamber of Commerce

Further comments on student body

Influential professors for R.I.--Robert K. Richardson--Floyd McGranahan--Frederick Sweet

The college and the community during the 1930s--influence or the First Congregationnl Church--intellectual aristocracy--importance of the basketball team

Beloit College expelled from the basketball conference

Recollection of black students on campus during the 1930s--Judge Edith Sampson in Chicago--George Hilliard--Eddie May--only discrimination from tuition costs--non-discriminatory tradition

R.I. as a graduate student at Harvard for an M.A., one year for $1300, influential professors

Introduction

Further comments on Harvard years--lecture series, John Mason Brown

Going to Indiana University from Harvard, financial reasons--good years at Indiana

Influential professors at Indiana--Warmoth in political theory--F. Lee Benz in modern European history--lecture techniques

Getting a teaching job--first at Denison University--then, back to Beloit as a professor

The Beloit history department in the mid-1940s--interdepartmental relationships--Great Books course--Wisconsin Conference on Christianity and Scholarship, interdisciplinary course--interdisciplinary activities as after World War II

Central ideas behind Beloit College--liberal humanism--liberal Christian faith, religious emphasis declined after World War II--influence of the art department

Mrs. Neese as an artist, sales of watercolors donated to the College--story about the finding of “Tomb of the Poet”

Building up the geology and onthropology departments under President Kroneis--decline of the anthropology fund--flush times for Beloit College

Financial difficulties for Beloit College--first in the early 1950s--flush years of the sixties--problems again by the end of the 1960s--Beloit not first choice for many students

The relationship between Beloit College and Fairbanks-Morse--Morse-Ingersoll Hall

Beloit Iron Works and Beloit College--anonymous gifts from Beloit Corporation--money-raising ability of President Martha Peterson