{"id":11638,"date":"2010-09-26T22:05:59","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T03:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=11638"},"modified":"2020-02-15T21:38:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T03:38:21","slug":"the-singing-mayor-from-marquette-law-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/09\/the-singing-mayor-from-marquette-law-school\/","title":{"rendered":"The Singing Mayor from Marquette Law School"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Although his tenure as mayor was quite brief, Carl Frederick Zeidler (1908-1942) was one of the most colorful men ever to hold office as mayor of Milwaukee.\u00a0 He was also the most important Wisconsin public official to be killed in World War II.<\/p>\n

Zeidler was born on January 4, 1908, in Milwaukee.\u00a0 His father, Michael Zeidler, had been\u00a0 born in Wisconsin in 1879, and was the son of a German and Austrian immigrants.\u00a0 His mother, Clare A. Zeidler, was one year younger than her husband and was also Wisconsin born.\u00a0 Her father was a native of Germany while her mother was born in New York state.\u00a0 Carl was the family\u2019s first of four children.\u00a0 His father operated his own barber shop.\u00a0 The family was Lutheran, and, it appears, Republican.<\/p>\n

Frank grew up in the Merrill Park section of Milwaukee and graduated from West Division High School.\u00a0\u00a0 He attended Marquette University, receiving his undergraduate degree with honors in 1929 and his law degree in 1931.\u00a0 While at Marquette he ran the half-mile on the track team, participated in debate, played in the band, and was a member of several public speaking and singing societies.\u00a0 He was also a member of the Marquette Law Review.\u00a0 Upon graduation from law school, he relocated to Chicago where he practiced law until 1936, <\/strong>when he returned to Milwaukee to become an assistant city attorney.\u00a0 In the late 1930\u2019s he was spectacularly successful as prosecutor, winning conviction after conviction of members of the pro-Nazi Bund.\u00a0 He also drafted, and successfully defended in court, the city\u2019s first anti-pinball ordinance.<\/p>\n

By all accounts Carl was an extremely gregarious and outgoing individual.\u00a0 His golden-haired good looks and powerful baritone singing voice gave him a charismatic quality that endeared him to almost everyone he met.\u00a0 He also had a penchant for joining \u00a0social and fraternal organizations. By 1940, he was reportedly a member of 25 different Milwaukee organizations ranging from the YMCA to the Knights of Pythias.\u00a0 According to his younger brother Frank (himself a future Milwaukee mayor), “Carl had a drive and warmth that made him a political natural.” According to Time Magazine<\/em>, Carl \u201cgravitated toward people,\u201d and claimed to know 50,000 Milwaukeeans by their first names.<\/p>\n

In 1940, Carl Zeidler decided to challenge the city\u2019s popular mayor Daniel Hoan who was seeking reelection to his seventh term.\u00a0 Hoan, a socialist, had a distinguished track record of integrity and accomplishment and few initially thought that Zeidler had any chance at all. Though nominally a Republican, the 32-year old Zeidler ran as a non-partisan independent, and his candidacy was nothing like anything previously seen in a Milwaukee election, particularly during the Great Depression. In a campaign managed by a trio of young Milwaukeeans, Jim Doolittle, Harold Gauer, and Robert Bloch (the author of Psycho<\/em>), Zeidler concentrated more on capturing the attention of Milwaukee voters than he did on issues that separated him from Hoan.\u00a0 He regularly appeared with a five-piece band, beautiful women passing out campaign literature, an enormous American flag, and balloons that dropped from the ceiling at the end of indoor rallies.\u00a0 (This practice apparently originated with the Zeidler campaign.)\u00a0 Whenever possible, Zeidler would also break into song.\u00a0 While his favorite song was \u201c<\/strong>God Bless America,” he was just as likely to burst into \u201cI Love You Truly,\u201d \u201cIrish Eyes Are Smiling,\u201d\u00a0 or some other popular song of that era.\u00a0 To appeal to Milwaukee\u2019s broad mix of ethnic groups, he also sang in five different languages. \u00a0Calling his campaign a crusade for \u201cyouth and Americanism,\u201d he adopted the campaign slogan, \u201cA new day for Milwaukee.\u201d\u00a0 Although he challenged Hoan to a series of debates and criticized Hoan\u2019s rigid building code as resulting in construction moving to the suburbs, it was Zeidler\u2019s personality, not his stand on the issues, that drove his candidacy.<\/p>\n

The April 2, 1940 Milwaukee mayoral election resulted in a record turnout of voters.\u00a0 To the surprise of many, Zeidler ousted Hoan from office by 12,000 votes, in spite of\u00a0 Hoan\u2019s nearly flawless record of success as mayor. The key to Zeidler\u2019s success was apparently a combination of his personal charisma and votes of Republicans and conservative Democrats who still considered Hoan a dangerous \u201cRed\u201d even after 24 years in office during which the city had flourished and even though he had dropped the Social label in 1936 in favor of being the candidate of the Wisconsin Farmer-Labor Progressive Federation.<\/p>\n

The race captured national attention, and the Washington Post<\/em> reported Zeidler\u2019s upset victory with the observation: “Time takes its toll even of gratitude. The people of Athens got tired of hearing Aristides called the just and the people of Milwaukee apparently got tired of Daniel Webster Hoan for no better reason. Hoan, the Socialist, had nothing to offer them but a continuation of a satisfactory status quo.”\u00a0 The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times carried the story of Zeidler\u2019s election at the top of its front page under the headline: \u201cPersonality Kid\u2014That\u2019s Milwaukee\u2019s New Blond, Baritone, Bachelor Mayor.\u201d According to Zeidler himself, “I used nothing else than modern merchandising methods. See ’em, tell ’em, sell ’em.”\u00a0 Zeidler\u2019s election at age 32 made him the nation\u2019s youngest mayor and a figure of national interest.<\/p>\n

One voter that Zeidler did not convince was his deeply religious brother Frank who had become a convert to socialism in 1933 and in 1940 served as the Milwaukee County Surveyor.\u00a0 The younger Zeidler supported his fellow Socialist Hoan over his brother, but after the election both Zeidler\u2019s insisted that the election had not affected their relationship as brothers.<\/p>\n

Now dubbed the \u201cSinging Mayor,\u201d Zeidler entered office on April 15 with the same flamboyance with which he had campaigned as he was sworn in before a crowd of 7,000 people in the Milwaukee Auditorium.\u00a0 As mayor, he continued the good government practices of his predecessor, but he did adopt more conservative fiscal policies including a lowering of property taxes and a reduction of the city payroll.\u00a0 With World War II already raging in Europe he also orchestrated the city\u2019s efforts to prepare for what many viewed as the inevitable United States entry into the war.\u00a0 In a major coup for the city, he also succeeded in convincing the American Legion to hold its 1941 convention in Milwaukee.\u00a0 He also began the tradition immediately after his swearing in of flying the American flag over city hall every day.<\/p>\n

By the second year of his term Zeidler was increasingly concerned with military matters.\u00a0 In September of 1941, he had accepted an honorary appointment as a captain in the Milwaukee state guard, but the satisfaction of an honorary appointment was short-lived.\u00a0 After Pearl Harbor, Zeidler became increasingly restless as mayor and grew anxious to be in combat himself.\u00a0 In February of 1942, he travelled to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station north of Chicago and applied for a commission in the Naval Reserve.\u00a0 He was given the rank of Lieutenant, j. g., and from mid-February on, Milwaukeeans knew that it was only a matter of time before he would resign as mayor.<\/p>\n

In April he was called to active duty, and on April 16, just a day more than two years after his inauguration, Ziedler formally resigned.\u00a0 Although most Milwaukeeans considered Zeidler a good mayor, his decision to go into the military was widely applauded as patriotic and as an appropriate example for others.\u00a0 Over 20,000 people showed up to wish him goodbye when he left the city.\u00a0 Common Council President John L. Bohn assumed the duties of mayor for the remainder of Zeidler\u2019s term.<\/p>\n

Lt. Zeidler was assigned to be the gunnery officer on the S. S. LaSalle a merchant marine vessel used to transport war materials from the continental United States to military facilities abroad.\u00a0 His first assignment took him to the Caribbean where the LaSalle encountered a surfaced enemy submarine which was fired upon by Zeidler\u2019s guns.\u00a0 Although the submarine disappeared in the resulting smoke, there was insufficient evidence to award the crew to consider it officially destroyed although enthusiastic press accounts speculated that the enemy vessel had been sunk.\u00a0 When Lt. Zeidler returned to Milwaukee on a 72 hour pass during the last week of August, he was treated as a returning hero.\u00a0 As luck would have it Zeidler arrived during State Fair Week and he was able to fill his short visit with a series of public speeches and singing opportunities.<\/p>\n

Leaving Milwaukee, Zeidler returned for the east coast where the LaSalle embarked for the Canal Zone with a merchant crew of 40 and a gun crew of 18.\u00a0 From the Canal Zone, the ship was to carry military supplies, including airplanes, ammunition, and tanks to Cape Town, South Africa.\u00a0 When the ship departed from Balboa, Canal Zone, on September 26, its captain was under strict orders to maintain radio silence unless it was absolutely necessary to send a distress signal.<\/p>\n

The 26th<\/sup> of September was the last day that the United States has any record of the LaSalle.\u00a0 The ship did not arrive in South Africa on November 1 as scheduled, nor did it appear in subsequent days.\u00a0 No distress call was ever received, and the names of the crew members did not appear on German or Japanese prisoner of war lists.\u00a0 Many in Milwaukee held on to the hope that they had been captured by a Japanese submarine and that they had not yet been returned to Japan.\u00a0 On December 17, 1942, the ship was officially declared missing.<\/p>\n

Even though no evidence of the whereabouts of the ship or its crew surfaced in 1943, the Secretary of the Navy elected to maintain the \u201cmissing\u201d classification until November 4, 1944, when Zeidler\u2019s parents were notified that their son was now presumed to have died on November 2, 1942.\u00a0 An official announcement of the declaration of the fate of the LaSalle was made four days later.\u00a0 That same year Zeidler\u2019s successor Bohn was elected to a four-year term as mayor on his own.<\/p>\n

Once Zeidler was declared dead, Congressman Thad F. Wasielewski of Wisconsin\u2019s 5th<\/sup> District announced that he would try to convince either the Navy or the Merchant Marine to name a ship after the former mayor.\u00a0 Wasielewski, who had been a college and law school classmate of Zeidler at Marquette\u2014both graduated from the law school in 1931\u2014expressed confidence that the Navy would be willing to name a destroyer escort after him.\u00a0 In September of 1945, Mayor Bohn, Zeidler\u2019s successor, appealed to President Truman for a special investigation into the disappearance of Zeidler\u2019s ship.\u00a0 In his appeal, which occurred after the surrender of Japan, Bohn mentioned that some Milwaukeeans, including Zeidler\u2019s parents held out hope that he was still alive, but unreported.\u00a0 Although an investigation was order, no additional information was forthcoming.<\/p>\n

More than three decades after the LaSalle disappeared its fate was finally determined.\u00a0 In 1975, the Milwaukee Journal<\/em> reported that unofficial German submarine warfare records indicate that the LaSalle was sunk by a German submarine in the Indian Ocean, 350 miles southeast of the coast of South Africa at 10:50 p.m. on November 7, 1942.\u00a0 The ship was several days behind schedule at that point, and the German torpedo detonated explosives on board the LaSalle causing it to explode.\u00a0 The ship\u2019s crew apparently had no opportunity to send out a distress call.<\/p>\n

Although it appears that neither the Navy nor the Merchant Marine named a ship after Zeidler, the Singing Mayor was not forgotten.\u00a0 Zeidler Park in downtown Milwaukee was named in his honor, and in 1948, Carl Zeidler\u2019s younger brother Frank was elected Mayor of Milwaukee as a Socialist, at least in part on the basis of his brother\u2019s popularity.\u00a0 Carl was also memoralized with a cenotaph in Milwaukee\u2019s Forest Home Cemetery.\u00a0 Frank Zeidler served as mayor until 1960, and lived in Milwaukee until his death in 2006.<\/p>\n

It is tempting to speculate what might have happened in Wisconsin\u2019s political history if Carl Zeidler had not entered the Navy or if he had returned to Milwaukee unharmed after the war.\u00a0 Had he remained in civilian life, he almost certainly would have been reelected as mayor in 1944.\u00a0 However, his popularity was such that as early as 1941, his name began to be mentioned as a possible candidate for higher office.\u00a0 The Wisconsin Republican Party enthusiastically claimed him as one of its own, and as early as 1942 there was talk of his running on the Republican ticket against incumbent United States Senator Robert LaFollette, Jr., in 1946.\u00a0 LaFollette, the son of the famous Wisconsin progressive \u201cFighting Bob\u201d LaFollette, held office as a member of the Progressive Party.\u00a0 Although the LaFollette name was an extremely potent one in Wisconsin, Zeidler had already demonstrated his ability to knock off entrenched political figures.\u00a0 Moreover, in November 1940, LaFollette had defeated his Republican opponent Fred Clausen by only 4% of popular vote, and Ziegler would clearly have been a more formidable opponent than Clausen.<\/p>\n

Had Carl Zeidler had been around in 1946, he almost certainly would have defeated the winner of the actual 1946 Republican primary, an obscure Fox Valley Appleton judge and Marquette Law School graduate named Joseph McCarthy.\u00a0 Had Zeidler not gone down with the LaSalle, not only might the history of the postwar Wisconsin have been affected, but the United States experience in the Cold War could also have turned out quite differently.<\/p>\n

Photos of the first Mayor Zeidler can be found at http:\/\/content.mpl.org\/cdm4\/results.php?CISOOP1=any&CISOFIELD1=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOROOT=\/MilwMayors&CISOBOX1=law<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although his tenure as mayor was quite brief, Carl Frederick Zeidler (1908-1942) was one of the most colorful men ever to hold office as mayor of Milwaukee.\u00a0 He was also the most important Wisconsin public official to be killed in World War II. Zeidler was born on January 4, 1908, in Milwaukee.\u00a0 His father, Michael […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marquette-law-school-history","category-milwaukee","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28961,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11638\/revisions\/28961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}