Erich Lenz was born on December 27, 1907, into a family of German farmers in Kiev, Russia. During World War I, young Erich and his family spent three years in a concentration camp in Siberia until the German army freed them in January, 1918. In 1921, the family left Europe for the United States, and in October of that year reached the South Dakota farmstead of Erich's great-aunt where they worked as laborers. In 1924, the family moved again, this time to Merrill, Wisconsin, where Erich received his education.
In July, 1931, after doing various jobs in the Merrill area, Erich Lenz was employed by the Merrill Farmers Cooperative Oil Company as a combination bookkeeper/filling station attendant. Exasperated with the cooperative's disorganized financial records, he arranged for an audit with the Midland Cooperative auditing service, reported back to the Merrill cooperative's board of directors, and was promoted to manager in January, 1932. Despite the economic depression, Lenz's skillfulness as a manager resulted in a steadily growing business which stabilized the cooperative as a fixture in the Merrill business community during the 1930's. Elected to a directorship of the Midland Cooperative Wholesale from 1937 to 1941, Lenz up to that time was the youngest director ever to have held a seat on the board.
In 1944, after William E. Sanderson and others established the Wisconsin Association of Cooperatives, Lenz was hired to open the WAC office in Madison in April, 1945. Outside of attending to numerous minor details involved in beginning an organization, an anti-cooperative campaign led by such organizations as the National Tax Equality Association absorbed the bulk of Lenz's time. He also directed a statewide membership drive which, by the time Lenz resigned in 1948, had resulted in all rural electrification cooperatives, many farm supply cooperatives, nearly all livestock shipping associations, and many small dairy marketing cooperatives joining WAC. WAC also differed philosophically and often politically with an older cooperative federation, the Wisconsin Council of Agriculture, which was allied to such business groups as the Wisconsin State Chamber of Commerce and the Wisconsin Manufacturers Association. WAC and its member organizations attempted to work closely with organized labor, especially the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor, in support of one another's legislative programs.
Erich Lenz, who identifies himself as a “conservative Democrat,” remained a firm supporter of the cooperative movement although entering into a private partnership in 1948 at the Hanley Implement Company, Sun Prairie, an Allis-Chalmers dealership. His work with several generations of youth 4-H Clubs is widely-acclaimed by many rural Dane County residents; Lenz also is well-known as keeper of “Jimmy, the Groundhog,” the slumbering rodent that saunters out of hibernation annually on February 2, sees its shadow if it's a sunny day, and burrows in for an additional six weeks of winter.
