Lectures to Focus on WWII Legacy

By John Roger McBain, Staff Writer
Courier & Press November 8, 1999

World War II's legacy for Germany, the United States -- and the Tri-State -- will be the focus of two Evansville presentations this week.

Daniel Mayer, a German prisoner of war and painter who created murals of his homeland in a Western Kentucky prison camp, is the subject of a lecture tonight by Donald Wolfe, an associate professor of German at the University of Southern Indiana.

The talk begins at 7 p.m. in the Old Gallery of the Evansville Museum.

And Ulrich Littmann, a scholar and author who served 31 years as executive director of the German Fulbright Commission, will offer intimate insights into the relationship between Germany and the United States in a speech beginning at 7 p.m. Wednesday in USI's Mitchell Auditorium.

Mayer, a self-trained artist, painted dozens of German scenes on the plywood walls of Camp Breckinridge in Morganfield, Ky., between May 1943 and July 1945, while he was held there as a prisoner of war.

He died of pneumonia two months after completing the project, never returning to his homeland. He is buried at Fort Knox, Wolfe said.

Most of Mayer's camp paintings, drawn from post cards received by German prisoners at the camp, were lost in 1948, when the prisoner's barracks were razed.

His final works, in a noncommissioned officer's club, were saved this year when Union County purchased the land and building.

With the help of a $1 million grant from the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the building has been restored to its original condition.

The building is slated to reopen next spring as a museum and performing arts center.

The paintings, says Wolfe, "could release the prisoners from their dull surroundings and carry them back to their homeland."

Littmann was director of the German commission operating cultural exchange programs between the United States and Germany between 1963 and 1994.

As such, he came to know many of the leading scholars, diplomats and policy-makers who have shaped German-American relations in the post-World War II years.

Littmann's latest book, "US German Mobility: 1923-1993," is one of the most knowledgeable and informative studies of the two countries' relationships in that periods, says Susan Smith Wolfe, an associate professor of German at USI.

"Nobody is more qualified to discuss what the future holds for Germany."

Admission is free to both lectures, presented as part of Germany in US, a statewide initiative of the Indiana Humanities Council.

For more information call Donald or Susan Smith Wolfe at 473-9018.

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