Arnold W. Zander, Sr., Wisconsin Socialist and advocate of money reform, was born of German parents, William and Augusta Zander, at Gibson, Wisconsin, on March 6, 1868. One of six children, he spent the greater part of his life in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. On September 28, 1893, he married Anna Katherine Scheuer. Six children were born of this marriage: Arnold S., Gerald S., Eugene, Mercedes, Edith, and Berenice.
Zander held various civic and public offices while living in Two Rivers. In 1896, he was elected an alderman of that city and he served on the city council at various times during the 1920s and 1930s. A member of the Two Rivers Transportation Commission, he was chairman of the regulation committee. In 1938, he served on the board of directors of the Two Rivers Hospital. In 1919 he ran unsuccessfully for mayor.
Zander was a member of the Wisconsin Socialist Party throughout most of his life. He ran for several posts at the state level on the Socialist ticket: Insurance Commissioner (1902); State Senator (1914); and Secretary of State (1932). None of his state-wide campaigns were successful.
His principal political interest was with regard to national monetary reform and he began his attack on this system in 1896 in a letter to the editor of the Chronicle stating his opposition to the national bond and currency system. He was a member of the Greenback Party of Indianapolis, Indiana, for sixty years, occupying a position on the National Advisory Board of that party in 1953-1954 as a representative from Wisconsin.
Other political, civic, and social movements attracted him as well. A strong advocate of the city manager form of local government, he worked for its implementation in Two Rivers in 1925. In the late 1940s, Zander donated a fifteen-acre tract of land to the City of Two Rivers for recreation purposes and it was turned into a park. In 1945 he was chairman of the 8th Congressional District for the Townsend Council. His son, Arnold S. Zander, served as the president of the State, County, and Municipal Employees Union of the American Federation of Labor (200,000 members). The son attacked Senator Joseph McCarthy's record in a widely publicized speech during the senatorial race of 1952.
Arnold W. Zander wrote and spoke frequently to bring his beliefs to the attention of others. He also composed a few songs, and invented a device for turning music. He died in October, 1959, at the age of ninety-one.
The collection also includes some papers of William Zander, father of Arnold W. Zander. William was born in 1844, the son of Johann Zander, a shepherd and farmer of Klein-Tessin (Germany). When William, who was the youngest of nine children, was eleven, the family immigrated to the United States. Disembarking at Buffalo, New York, they entrained to Milwaukee and traveled from there to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, by boat. William's wife, whom he married in 1867, was also born in what is now Germany. William started a sawmill at Two Rivers, Wisconsin, in 1885, that was still in operation eleven years later, and possibly longer. It is known that William and Augusta Zander celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1917, but beyond these sketchy facts no information concerning them is readily available.
