Involving 40 Bluffton High School students during the noon hour

By Fred Steiner

Can you imagine a book burning frenzy in Bluffton? That happened exactly 105 years ago on the banks of the Big Riley, according to an account in the Bluffton News. 

The story from April 1918 Bluffton News:

The German text books used by the German classes in the high school were burned by a party of about 40 students Thursday afternoon.

During the noon hour the students collected all of the available books, notebooks and papers used by the classes studying the subject and burned them on the bank of Big Riley Creek near the College Avenue bridge.

Classes in German will probably be discontinued next year.

32 years later
There may have been follow-up stories and if so, we will post those. We do know that The Bluffton News published a brief notice of the book burning 32 years later.

Bluffton High School in 1918

That news item, published in February, 1950, referenced the death of Bess C. Walther, the BHS German teacher in 1918. Miss Walther lived in Tacoma, Washington, at the time of her death. Although the News did not publish her obituary, it recalled the school days in Bluffton when she was instructor in German at Bluffton High School.

The News item stated at the time of the outbreak of the first World War “hysterical sentiment ran high against anything German–all of which set the stage for a group of students to burn a number of valuable German text and references books, which were part of her (Bess Walther’s) private library.” 

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