Family sleuth uncovers, renews pioneer’s legacy
Grace Fleming van Sweringen Baur chaired the University of Colorado Department of Germanic Languages from 1909 to 1930, when her sudden death ended her tireless service. Hoping to immortalize his wife and her legacy, her grieving husband endowed a scholarship in her name.
But other events overshadowed the van Sweringen Baur legacy and scholarship. During World War II, enrollment in German courses plummeted, and regents even considered eliminating the department. For many years, the scholarship was not awarded. And “Glory Colorado,” the de factohistory of the university, devotes only one paragraph to her.
Fate can, however, change course. While researching her family genealogy, a niece of van Sweringen Baur discovered that her family’s ancestor was part of an interesting generation who blazed new trails in her own life.
Tom and Jeanne Baur share a moment with Ralphie
As observers note, their generosity supports students of today and honors a pioneer of yesterday.
Van Sweringen Baur succeeded Mary Rippon as chair of the Department of Germanic Languages. Rippon is comparatively well-known, remembered as ’s second faculty member, its first woman faculty member and a civilizing influence on a young, remote university.
“Her letters of recommendation were among the best I have ever seen,” Rippon said after learning of van Sweringen Baur’s death. “She has made a great success of the work that I loved so well, and I am greatly grieved to hear of her death.”
“This is a woman who grew up in West Virginia and moved to Council Bluffs Iowa,” Baur notes. Her rural roots didn’t dampen her appetite for travel, learning and teaching.
After graduating high school in 1889 in Iowa, she went to Cornell University, where she earned her first degree. She spent four years teaching English in Washington state, after which she became a student at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
In 1898, she began a two-year stint as a professor of English at the American College for Girls in what was then Constantinople, Turkey.
She did graduate studies at the University of Berlin, becoming the first woman at that institution to teach English. In 1904, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Berlin. Her diploma was signed by Max Planck, the eminent German physicist.
Before joining the faculty in 1909, van Sweringen Baur was a professor at two other colleges. Here, she became the second woman to lead a department at .
Here, she met her husband-to-be, William Baur, also a professor of German. They married at the home of George Norlin, the beloved president after whom the main university library is named.
And here, she met Antoinette Bigelow, dean of women. Together they led a movement to prod to add more women to the predominantly male faculty. Efforts to correct that imbalance continue to this day.
Van Sweringen Baur caused “some concern among male faculty” because she came with a Ph.D. from the University of Berlin, notes “Women Too at ,” a book by Therese Stengel Westermeier, which discusses pivotal female figures here.
In a lecture to female students, Westermeier reports, van Sweringen Baur offered this advice: “A woman may be intelligent and sparkling with interest, but in these days, she must also know how to keep her gown spotless.”
Van Sweringen Baur later became “infuriated” when she learned that her husband, who did not have a Ph.D., received a higher salary than she did, Westermeier notes. (Jeanne Baur says this episode became immortalized in family lore.)
In March 1930, she died at the age of 64. According to the Colorado Alumnus, she was at home on University Hill, sitting on a lounge in the early evening, talking to her husband “when the end came.” The cause was cerebral hemorrhage. Though a doctor was summoned, nothing could be done.
She was cremated and her ashes spread over the Boulder foothills. In life, she never took a leave of absence from the university and was described of being “capable of great mental work, and she worked almost incessantly.”
C.C. Eckhardt, professor of history, said she was a gracious personality, a kindly, friendly adviser who frequently helped students attain “renewed courage and clarified judgment.”
An expert in the hero sagas of Germanic peoples, van Sweringen published many articles in scholarly journals.
“But she was more than teacher, scholar, counselor, administrator,” Eckhardt wrote. “She was a broad humanitarian, interested in and aiding all constructive, forward-looking movements. She believed thoroughly in the unity of mankind and labored courageously and constantly for the dawn of the era when strife will be replaced by cooperation, when hatred and suspicion will give way to friendship.”
Van Sweringen Baur and her husband sponsored and funded the Boulder Music Society, which brought “great musicians to the city” for more than a decade, the Daily Camera reported.
After her death, William Baur established the Grace van Sweringen Baur Scholarship for graduate students in German. After William Baur’s death in 1939, the Camera reported that because the scholarship was endowed, “it will continue as before.”
For whatever reason, it did not continue as before.
Jeanne Baur was struck by the life van Sweringen led. She and her husband, Tom, who earned his master’s in physics at , decided to contribute funds each year to renew the scholarship.
“We feel all education is important, and if someone chooses German over physics, that’s as important as any other subject,” Baur says.
Jeanne and Tom Baur chose to continue awarding the scholarship to graduate students. “These are hard-working people who don’t have a lot of resources, and they do an amazing job with what they have.”
Ann Schmiesing, associate professor and chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, notes that the scholarship honors one of the department’s most gifted professors.
“A few years ago, our program received a letter from one of the scholarship’s early recipients—a professor emeritus of German literature who cited his receipt of the Grace van Sweringen Baur Scholarship, in 1935, as the reason he was able to pursue graduate studies in German,” Schmiesing recalls. “The scholarship changed his career, and he in turn gave back to the university by creating a scholarship bequest of his own for .”
That is one reason Schmiesing appreciates the generosity of Tom and Jeanne Baur. “The Baurs’ restarting of the scholarship bridges the achievements of Grace van Sweringen Baur with the academic promise of today’s graduate students.”
As William E. Davis notes in “Glory Colorado,” a great number of Ph.D.s who came to in the first decade of the 20th century held degrees from foreign universities, mostly German: “Many of these scholar-teachers had traveled widely in Europe. What brought them to Boulder? What kept those who stayed?”
Perhaps, Davis surmises, it was the opportunity to help build a great university.
Jeanne Baur suggests that her great aunt, who also studied and traveled in Europe, hoped to help the university flourish, figuratively and literally. During her research, for instance, Jeanne Baur found that women in ’s early years planted trees on University Hill. Today, when she walks through campus, “I say, ‘Just think, Aunt Grace might have planted those trees.’”
Today, Baur sees support of education as necessary sowing for a new and critically important harvest.
For more information on the Grace van Sweringen Baur Scholarship or other scholarships, contact T.J. Rapoport, associate director of development at the Foundation, at 3O3-541-1455 ortj.rapoport@cufund.org.