Free Professors' Garages -- Memorial to Synod 1944

Old Garage from
Rambling Jack's Laboratory Blog

Lately to help me go to sleep at night, I have been reading the Reports and Memorials for the Twenty-Fourth Delegate Synod (Thirty-Ninth Regular Convention) Assembled at Saginaw, Michigan June 21-30, 1944. A number of fascinating and potentially relevant reports and memorials can be found there. Look for more to come in the near future. Imagine if overtures about Professors' Garages appeared in 1944, what other overtures might appear, such as "Supreme Authority of General Conventions," "Enlarging Electoral Circuits," "Reduction of Number of Delegates to Convention." As the Preacher (Qoheleth) said, "There is nothing new under the sun."

One report and memorial that particularly caught my eye was titled, "Free Professors' Garages."The PDF of it can be viewed/downloaded Here. I sure am glad I don't need a Synod in Convention to have a garage.

Images and text of the overture are below.

 Free Professors' Garages

The Synodical Handbook, edition 1937, pp. 69 ff., regarding the salaries of the professors at our seminaries and at our seminaries and colleges, adds the statement: "Salaries herein mentioned are understood to include a place of abode."

In the proposed Handbook revision now before Synod for approval we find the same regulation expressed in section 436 D as "In addition to the above (salaries), Synod shall provide a suitable residence for each professor."

Twenty to fifty years ago the "place of abode," the "suitable residence," under the then prevailing conditions included also the of outbuildings, such as coal or woodshed, buggy shed, etc., by Synod. But times and conditions have changed. Residences in our time have not such outbuildings as in former times. Only one attachment is generally connected with the "suitable residence" of the present time, perhaps built under the same with residence or erected as a special building as the only outbuilding. It is the shelter for the automobile, the garage. Synod als0 recognized this change in the regulation recorded in Synod's Handbook, p. 65, reading: "Boards of Control and Synod's Board of Directors shall build garages for professors at our institutions whenever it seems necessary or expedient."

The Boards do that at present, as the Boards in by-gone days built outbuildings as needed under the prevailing conditions of former times. But in one respect there is a difference, namely, in respect to the use of the outbuilding. Synod’s regulation says, p.69, 5: "However, the professors are held to pay a reasonable amount of rent for the use of such garages." The former outbuildings could be used by the professors without paying rent for them.

When this ruling demanding rent for the use of the garages made, there may have been a plausible reason for it, because automobile was something new' and not in use as a common which is no longer the case.

Therefore, as the. change of time and conditions has the common use of the formerly needed· outbuildings, the which was given to the professors without rent, this conditions has made the automobile a thing of general use the communities of our country and makes the demand from our professors for the use of the garage to appear outdated, causing difficult situations for the Board of bringing about just and fair settlements.

It is for this reason that the undersigned petition eliminate the demand for rent for the use of the garage professors and to furnish the use of the garage free with use of the suitable residence to all the professors of our and colleges.

THE BOARD OF CONTROL OF CONCORDIA TEACHERS SEWARD, NEBR.

L C. HEINECKE, Chairman F. WORTHMANN, Secretary

[128]

Free Professors' Garages

In the annual meeting on January 7, 1944, the congregation adopted the following resolution:

WHEREAS, We should expect the professors at our to be situated so that they may enjoy the ordinary conveniences of the average American family; and

WHEREAS, The average American family enjoys the convenience of an automobile; and WHEREAS, Most ministers own automobiles; and

WHEREAS, It is the custom that congregations furnish a for the pastor's automobile; therefore

Emanuel Ev. Lutheran Church at Hamburg, Minn., petitions the Delegate Synod of 1944 to adopt a resolution to garages for those of our professors who desire to own and

automobiles.

EMANUEL Ev. LUTHERAN

L. F. WOHLFEIL, Pastor

ERNST ZUMHOFE, Elder

 HENRY A. BOHLMANN, Elder

MARTIN JAUS, Elder