Wanda Gág Day!

Sculpture by Jason Jasperson, New Ulm City Library

Last fall I made a pilgrimage to New Ulm, Minnesota, the hometown of Wanda Gág. When she was a teenager there had been some friction between Wanda and some of the people in New Ulm: she was looked down upon for a time when she choose to continue her education (after her father died) rather than becoming a shop girl. All of that ill-will has long been forgotten, of course, and her childhood home has been restored and preserved as a museum.

Her father, Anton, was a fine-art painter, generally portraying idealized scenes in a 19th century “bohemian romantic” style:

He had also painted many churches in the area, as well as large scale panoramas of the Indian Uprising of 1862.

There was a small show of art work by Gag family members at the Brown Country Historical Society, including a delightful little bookmark made by Wanda, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the uprising.

My trip there in November reminded me of a trip Wanda had made there, exactly 90 years ago. When Wanda had become a successful  artist and writer she made a bittersweet return visit to New Ulm in 1929. After spending a week with her cherished “Grandma Folk” (the Biebls, on her mother’s side), she eloquently wrote of her leave-taking:

  Well, so finally I got in the train. I could see Aunt Lena and Hertha from the window but they hadn’t spied me. The train gave a little start, and I saw Aunt Lena looking frantically to get a last glimpse of me. It was touching, all her unconscious gestures showed how deeply she too, without knowing it, felt the Gág-Biebl bond, but in a different way than Uncle Frank and Uncle Josie. And when she finally saw me in the window, and the train pulled away, the tears sprang into my eyes.
   I don’t know, maybe my feelings run away with me, in regard to the Grandma Folks—but I can’t help it—I had forgotten, I had not thought it possible that such utter, unaware genuineness still existed anyplace.
  Well—the train went on. Suddenly a queer feeling seized me—we must be about passing Grandma’s place. Sure enough! There was the little red house “banged up” (to use Aunt Lena’s expression) all around with manure to keep it warm—the snowy fields, the three tall cottonwoods. But there was a bleak look about it—for it had turned windy and cold. Just to see it all—after the three goodbyes especially—to see it slip by me was enough to pull my heartstrings sharply together, but with this setting, in this mood—to see, as the view swung around so that the south side of the home was visible, to see Uncle Frank come out and stand there, the taciturn, inarticulate creator—in the dreary late afternoon—watching, waiting silently as the train went by—the train in which he knew I was—this was too much for me. To think that he would come out to look at that train, knowing that he could not really see me—this dramatic final scene to my New Ulm visit, pierced my Slavic Biebl-Gág heart, like a sharp sweet blade, and the tears ran fiercely, hotly, ecstatically, hurtingly down my face.
  Oh what a pungent purging that was. Purging of what? I don’t know—maybe the purging of the last vestiges of fear of sentiment, of tenderness, of melodrama.
  Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye,—dearest, dearest, dearest, Aunt Lena, Uncle Frank, Uncle Josie. You are much, much nicer than you will ever know.

Much more on Wanda…