BERNHARD CARL ZIEGLER was born in Trenton, Wisconsin, on January 25, 1884, the third child of Jacob and Ernestina (Fick) Ziegler. The young Ziegler entered Proeschinger District School, but when his parents moved to West Bend, he attended the local Lutheran school and the West Bend public school. After working as a handyman and newspaperboy, Ziegler became a bookkeeper for his father, who was elected city treasurer in 1900 and county treasurer in 1902.
Bernhard Ziegler's business career began in earnest after his high school graduation in 1902 when he began working at the West Bend Mutual Fire Insurance Company. In the same year he became an insurance agent and in 1906 founded the insurance firm of Opgenorth and Ziegler. Eighteen months later the partnership was dissolved, but by the time he was twenty-two, Ziegler had built one of the most successful insurance agencies in eastern Wisconsin. The next year (1907) he was elected a director of the West Bend Mutual Fire Insurance Company. Partly owing to the investment opportunities presented by the “Roosevelt panic” of 1907, Ziegler expanded his firm's activities to include real estate, mortgage loans, and other investments, growth which marked the real beginnings of B. C. Ziegler and Company. For a time Ziegler was a director of the Bank of West Bend. Because of policy disagreements he resigned this position and formed the First National Bank of West Bend on August 29, 1917. Ziegler was also president of Gehl Brothers Manufacturing Company, president of the West Bend Mutual Insurance Company, and director of the Wisconsin Manufacturers' Association.
Ziegler's primary attention was devoted to the aluminum industry. One of the founders of the West Bend Aluminum industry, a producer of aluminum cookware, and its active head and president after 1921, Ziegler expanded the company into one of the largest of its kind in the nation. In particular, the firm became well-known for its development of the “waterless cooker.” After absorbing the difficulties of the Depression, the West Bend Aluminum Company made major contributions to war production in World War II and was rewarded with six Navy E awards for excellence, one of only six Wisconsin firms to receive the Navy E award. In 1944, the company also purchased the Kissel plant at Hartford, Wisconsin, in preparation for peacetime production of outboard motors.
Ziegler also participated in a variety of community activities. During World War I he was active in the Washington County War Relief Fund and served as chairman of Liberty Loan drives and vice chairman of the Council of Defense. In World War II he was chairman of the Council. In the 1920's he served as president of the West Bend school board and as a member of the building committee for a new high school. He was also chairman of the Washington County zoning committee and chairman of the Washington County Park Commission in 1939. As a trustee of the First Methodist Church, Ziegler led efforts to complete a new church building in 1942. Because of his personal interest in agriculture, he became owner and operator of the Decorah Farm Dairy on the south city limits of West Bend, and the farm's activities became one of his favorite diversions. Ziegler also was a member of the West Bend Rotary Club and its second president in 1926-1927. He was a charter member of the local Commercial Club, later the Chamber of Commerce, president of the West Bend Country Club from 1928 to 1932, and a member of the athletic clubs in both Milwaukee and Chicago.
Bernhard Carl Ziegler died of a coronary thrombosis on May 6, 1946.
EDNA HELEN EICKELBERG ZIEGLER was born in Chicago on September 5, 1896, the daughter of Edward and Helen Eickelberg. She graduated from Fremont College in Fremont, Nebraska, in 1916, and taught seventh and eighth grades at the Homer, Nebraska, public school in 1917. She married Bernhard Carl Ziegler on September 25, 1919.
Edna Ziegler's involvement in various civic and public activities centered primarily in the years following her husband's death. As a member of the Committee on Wisconsin Women for the 1948 Wisconsin Centennial, she helped prepare a chapter on the history of Washington County and various museum exhibits for the county. With Judge F. W. Bucklin, she was instrumental in the revival of the Washington County Old Settlers and Historical Society in 1952, and she served as its president from 1954 to 1955. As a member of the board of curators of the State Historical Society from 1949 to 1957, she served on the Museum Committee in 1949 and the Radio Study Group in 1953-1954, and promoted the use of Badger History magazine in the schools.
Interest in local history and civic affairs and in the history of her family led to Mrs. Ziegler's involvement in other areas. She was actively interested in the Rural Writers Association, the Wisconsin Library Association, and the Wisconsin Idea Theatre as well as county cultural arts programs, and she provided financial assistance for students attending community arts workshops. Active also in the Wisconsin Arts Foundation and Council, she was appointed to its board of directors and served as president of the organization in 1958 and vice president in 1959. Edna Ziegler's major philanthropic contribution was her leadership of the Ziegler Foundation from its inception in 1944. Among its principal activities was the awarding of over fifty four-year college scholarships to local high school students and eleven graduate fellowships for advanced library study. Among her other activities were membership on the West Bend Library Board, serving as past president of the West Bend Women's Club, founding of the Girl Scouts in West Bend, and participation in the Fifth Avenue Methodist Church. She was also instrumental in bringing together members of her college choral group, the “Nightingales,” for periodic reunions. Her genealogical research primarily involved the history of the Eickelberg, Fick, and Ziegler families.
Bernhard C. and Edna (Eickelberg) Ziegler had three children, Bernard C., R. Douglas, and Barbara (Ziegler) Wilson. Edna Ziegler died at the age of seventy-two, on November 12, 1968, in Ojai, California.
