Albert Magdanz was a graduate of the University of Nebraska. His career included teaching at the College of Agriculture, banking specializing in agricultural credit, and was a farmer and livestock feeder. Albert was active in many farm organizations, his church, his lodge and various community affairs. A modest and soft-spoken gentleman with strong convictions, he contributed immensely to Nebraska agricultural development.
It is a good thing for man to pause from his labors to meet with a friend and associate; to recognize his achievements and pay tribute to him as a person.
What is it that causes us to select Albert Frederick Magdanz for recognition above that accorded his fellows. If it be true that humility is the beginning of wisdom, then he is well on the way to wisdom. He tells me that he really hasn’t done anything to merit recognition.
Sometimes perhaps we doff our hats to a man for what he has done - for noteworthy accomplishments; sometimes perhaps for what he is.
Happy indeed the occasion such as this one when we can pay tribute to a man for what he has accomplished in his work; and for what he has been and is in the world in which he lives.
The story of Alfred Frederick Magdanz does honor to him and credit to the American environment within which he has labored, achieved and earned many times over the recognition we accord him today.
In almost 40 years, I have not forgotten a few lines recited by a teacher, one of those who contributed greatly to the development of young men.
Fate deals the cards
And having dealt is done
From that point on,
The player takes command
Fate neither knows
Nor cares who lost or won.
Fate has no say in how
Each player plays his hand
Play out the game
Whatever else befall
For at the end
From heaven down to hell
You’ll find this test
The greatest of them all
There goes a man
Who played a poor hand well.
Actually, I cannot define for you the elements of strength and weakness in the hand dealt Albert Frederick Magdanz. I can only tell you in broad outline something of his background, his life and accomplishments. I suspect that not only did he play his hand well, but that sometimes he may have nudged indifferent Fate just a little.
Alfred Frederick Magdanz was born on a farm in Pierce County, Nebraska March 8, 1880, the son of Alfred and Maria Strelow Magdanz. His parents had come from Pomerania to Wisconsin in 1869 and then to a Pierce County Homestead in 1870. Albert was the youngest of seven children of whom he is now the only survivor.
In the 1880’s his father began buying other land along the North Fork of the Elkhorn river valley in what was then practically all open country. Life in Pierce County in the 80’s lacked most of what we now consider the necessities of civilization to say nothing of its embellishments. For the first two years after the acquisition of the new land some of the family spent the summer months on it breaking sod and putting up hay, living in a temporary shed and cooking in the open on a stove fashioned from clay. In 1888 the homestead was turned over to an older brother and Albert at the age of eight, moved with the rest of the family to the new farm of 560 acres where for three years they lived in a dirt-floored dugout.
During the early years he spent his summers herding cattle and sheep on the unoccupied open range stretching for miles. During this time his companions were his pony and dog. Civilization caught up with him shortly and barbed wire fences released him for farm work.
In 1893, when Albert was 13, his father rented the farm to a son-in-law and moved to Pierce to engage in the farm implement business, but Albert continued to spend his summers on the farm.
He had started to school at the age of six in a country school, the third to be established in Pierce County. We cannot always be sure what shapes our destiny, but the removal of Mr. Magdanz’s father to Pierce made it possible, or at least easier, for him to attend the Pierce High School, an 11 grade school. He graduated in 1899.
Who can tell now why a 19 year old boy, the son of immigrant parents who did not look with favor upon further education for him; a boy 150 miles from the University, decided 60 years ago to come to the University and insisted upon coming.
In some way Albert Magdanz grasped the vision presented by the new University, born of the needs of a developing frontier society and dedicated to the proposition that education should be available to even the son of immigrant parents struggling to establish themselves in far off Nebraska. Perhaps Justin Morrill was the instrument of Fate in this case. A more immediate factor was a young inspiring high school teacher fresh from the University with an AB and an MA degree from it. She is now Mrs. Ben W. Johnson of Buffalo, New York, and their friendship has continued down to the present.
Mr. Magdanz had to complete a year’s preparatory work in the secondary school then maintained by the University. His first year’s expenses amounted to $270.00. In 1900 he enrolled in the Arts and Science College but because of his interest in farming he soon began to take courses in Agriculture, majoring in Animal Husbandry, with emphasis on Genetics.
As far as I can determine 55 to 60 years later, Mr. Magdanz performed according to type during his student days at the University, avoiding notoriety but building solidly for the future. One of his classmates characterizes him as a thinker, serious minded, one interested in worthwhile things, an excellent student, a fine friend. We can believe this not only because of its source but because these same qualities have characterized him throughout the subsequent years.
Mr. Magdanz was a charter member of the Alpha Zeta chapter at Nebraska. After the organization of the Chapter and as students came along a second group was elected to membership. In those days it was considered proper to impress new members by initiation rites which today would be frowned upon by the Dean of Student Affairs or some committee. Apparently the treatment accorded initiates was such that it was considered best to take them one at a time. The remainder were locked up, pending their turn. One of these, now a member of this organization, one W.W. Burr, was incarcerated in solitary confinement. He managed to escape and free his fellows. They then descended upon the initiators in a body. According to my intelligence service, from that point on it was not clear who was administering the rites and who was being initiated. Perhaps it is not inaccurate to say that both groups were thoroughly initiated and intimately acquainted by the time the affair was completed.
Mr. Magdanz attracted the attention of his teachers and was invited to do graduate work in Sociology under A.E. Ross, then a nationally known sociologist. He also had attracted the interest of Dean, later Chancellor, Burnett and Professor H.R. Smith. They persuaded him to join the staff of the Animal Husbandry Department upon his graduation in 1904. The next few years were busy ones.
For a short time he taught classes in the School of Agriculture then maintained on the Campus, but was soon teaching the college courses.
During the summer of 1906 he spent three weeks at each of the so called Junior Normal Schools held at McCook, Holdrege, North Platte and Alliance lecturing on Animal Husbandry, alternating with other faculty members who taught Agronomy, Soils, Horticulture and other courses. He knew W.P. Snyder, the dynamic Superintendent of the North Platte Station and a former member of the Nebraska Hall; and spent time at the Station becoming familiar with the work being done there.
Mr. Magdanz always had trouble quenching his thirst for knowledge so he spent one summer at the University doing additional work in soils and plant breeding.
Then during four years he was at Lincoln he was able to attend many of the Mid-Western State fairs and livestock shows as a reporter for agricultural papers. For four years he was able to do this at the Kansas City Royal and the Chicago International. This gave him a side and useful acquaintance with leading livestock breeders.
Then as now apparently the college staff was busy. Mr. Magdanz gave numerous talks, largely on livestock feeding at the old Farmers Institutes.
That he made steady progress in the University is indicated by at least two things. Montana indicated an interest in having him come to Bozeman and by 1908 he was an Associate Professor here at the University.
However, in 1908 he resigned to return to Pierce County to take over the management of the farm which was not being well-operated or well-maintained by tenants. He began the steady improvement of the farm and in 1917 after the death of his parents took over complete control.
He also engaged in banking from 1908 until 1930 and frequently judged livestock at the County fairs.
In 1923 he was one of a small group of farmers that organized the Pierce Farmers Cooperative Creamery, and served as its treasurer for a time. The creamery has been an outstanding success for a relatively small institution, having distributed patronage dividends in excess of $825,000.
Mr. Magdanz developed a large and well-known herd of purebred Hampshire hogs, producing up to 700 hogs annually and holding two public sales annually until the drouth and the depression of the 30’s caused him to curtail his swine operations. Hogs produced by him were in wide demand in Nebraska and surrounding states and contributed significantly to the development of the swine industry.
While producing hogs, he also developed the feeding of cattle and lambs as major enterprises. It was his general practice to feed lambs during the winter (3,000 to 6,000 head), winter calves and feed them out on pasture during the summer; and feed hogs all of the time.
In this way he utilized his pasture; the feed which he produced and much more, kept labor employed the year round and had something to market about every month of the year. He was a pioneer in his area in developing and using the calf-wintering and summer feeding program of beef production. In this he used sweet clover pasture extensively and learned for himself by experience the value of dry roughage such as straw in minimizing the risk from bloat in cattle fed on legume pasture.
During the drouth and depression his operations were curtailed because of shortage of feed.
In the fall of 1932 he was asked to become the Assistant Manager and Secretary of the Agricultural Credit Corporation at Sioux City, a position for which his education and long experience as a farmer and stockman, supplemented by his experience as a banker at Pierce from 1908-1930 fitted him admirably. He continued with this difficult and important task until 1939 or 1940, and followed this with a year at Norfolk as Secretary-Treasurer of the National Farm Loan Association.
Anyone who witnessed the widespread distress in Nebraska and nearby states during the difficult years from 1930 to 1941 affecting not only farmers and stockmen, but bankers and those engaged in commerce and industry can understand and appreciate the satisfaction which Mr. Magdanz derives from the approximately 10 years of service he gave to easing the financial burdens of that period.
Mr. Magdanz returned to Pierce, where he now lives, in 1941.
Few men, if any, succeeded by themselves.
On January 22, 1980, Mr. Magdanz married Anna May Fowler, a teacher from the Omaha School system. She, too, was from the University where she majored in Latin and Mathematics and acquired enough knowledge of Greek that she even taught that. No doubt her knowledge of Greek philosophy contributed significantly to her husband’s steady progress.
Mr. and Mrs. Magdanz have two sons and one daughter. Donald F. Magdanz is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Agriculture; Sidney, a graduate of Iowa State in Agricultural Engineering; and Elizabeth Ann, now Mrs. William C. Clemmens, is a graduate of the Conservatory of Music, of Oberlin College. Although she isn’t an agricultural college graduate, her husband, a former naval officer and a graduate of Annapolis, later took a degree in Agriculture from Missouri.
He, Sidney and Don have all had experience on the home place which, I believe, is now operated by them and Mr. Magdanz as a family partnership with Sidney as the active manager. Don is the executive-secretary of the Cornbelt Livestock Feeders Association, and Elizabeth Ann lives with her husband in Elgin, Illinois, where her husband is associated with the Elgin Watch Company.
Mr. Magdanz apparently has never sought the limelight, but has always been ready to put his shoulder to the wheel when the occasion required it. He is a long-time member of the Congregational Church, a member of the Masonic Order. He is a member of the Isaac Walton League of America and was President of the Sioux City Chapter in 1938. He helped organize the Nebraska Livestock Feeders Association and was its first president in 1943-44. He served for a short time as a member of the Pierce City Council. More important, without ambition for public office, he has always been active in the cause of good government and the service of his fellows.
Here is a brief and meager account of the life of a man who by his own story has not done anything much.
Born and nurtured in a frontier environment, he refused to be hemmed in by it, as he has always refused to be hemmed in. A thoughtful, serious-minded student, interested even then in public affairs, he won the friendship and approbation of his fellows. He attracted the attention of his instructors. He rendered worthwhile services to the University and the State; services which opened ever-new and ever-wider horizons to him. He then returned to his home to serve his community in many capacities. For many years he was a banker. He pioneered in the improvement of land and of agriculture with emphasis upon sound methods of livestock production. During a period of widespread national, regional and state economic distress, he carried a major responsibility in helping cope with the credit needs of the area.
He and Mrs. Magdanz have believed with Lowell -
“No man is born into the world whose work,
Is not born with him; there is always work withal,
For those who will”.
They have served well their community and State in whatever has come their way to do. Their family well fitted by background and education, interested in the life and problems of the day, stand as further testimony to a lifetime of accomplishment.
Not long ago, I read a discussion of American philosophy contrasting it with that of an old and famous Eastern Culture. According to this author we emphasize what a man does to the exclusion of what he is; the other emphasizes what a man is to the exclusion of what he does.
The Nebraska Hall of Agricultural Achievement has shown keen discrimination in selecting Albert Frederick Magdanz for special recognition today. It salutes him for what he has contributed to the economic development of his community and State; for what he has contributed to the solution of the day to day problems of his fellow men; and also for what he has contributed to the definition and realization of worthwhile social and spiritual goals; in short, for what he has done, and for what he is.
