Title: Frederick B. Artz Papers, 1854-1983, n.d.

ID: RG 30/175

Extent: 2.8 Linear Feet

Predominant Dates: 1894-1970

Frederick Binkerd Artz was born on October 19, 1894 in Dayton, Ohio to Joseph Elam (1867-1952) and May (Binkerd) Artz (1866-1953). He graduated from the public high school in Dayton in 1912 and in the fall of that year entered Oberlin College. At Oberlin College, one of Artz’s favorite lecturers was Professor of English, Charles H.A. Wager (1869-1939). After graduating in 1916 Phi Beta Kappa and with an A.B. degree in history, he spent the year 1916-17 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. There he taught courses in American, medieval, and modern European history. In the spring of 1917, Artz enlisted with the American Red Cross as an ambulance driver and joined the U.S. Army Ambulance Camp in Allentown, Pennsylvania in September of that year. The unit was called overseas in December to Contrexeville in the Vosges Mountains of Eastern France. During his military service, Artz kept a journal, which is included in his papers, Series IV.

At the end of World War I, Artz enrolled at the University of Toulouse (France) where he studied through the spring of 1919. Returning to the United States, he continued his graduate work in history at Harvard University, studying medieval French history under Charles Homer Haskins (1870-1937). Artz received the M.A. degree in 1920 and the Ph.D. degree in 1924, following a year of study at the University of Paris (1922-23). Oberlin College awarded Artz the honorary Litt.D. and the Oberlin College Alumni Medal in 1966; he also received the honorary Litt.D. from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1970.

Frederick Artz was one of the most distinguished scholars ever to teach history at Oberlin College. He taught courses in European intellectual history for thirty-seven years, from 1924 to 1961. In retirement, until 1966, he continued to offer the popular “Intellectual History of Modern Europe.” He came to Oberlin as Acting Assistant Professor of History (1924-25), reaching the rank of Assistant Professor in 1925, Associate Professor in 1927, and full Professor in 1936. He served as Chairman of the Department of History from 1949 to 1957. In 1952, he was named to the Brooks Professorship, established by an endowed gift from Garry Brooks in 1881. From 1938 to 1949, he served on the General Faculty Library and Commencement Committees and on the College Faculty Committee on Graduate Study.

During his years at Oberlin, Artz is believed to have taught over 7,500 Oberlin students, of whom at least eighty-five went on to become historians themselves. One of Artz’s most gifted students was Edwin O. Reischauer (1910-90; A.B. 1931), Professor of Far Eastern Languages at Harvard (1938-42; 1950-81) and U.S. Ambassador to Japan (1961-66). In 1964, Artz’s former students honored him with A Festschrift for Frederick B. Artz (Durham: Duke University Press). As a teacher, Artz was celebrated for his encyclopedic mind and ability to synthesize the learning of several disciplines—music, art, literature, and theology—to convey the broad themes of western civilization. His special field of interest was France, and he returned there and to other European countries thirty-two times in his life, either as a tour guide with the Massachusetts-based Bureau of University Travel or as an independent scholar. During these travels abroad, he collected an impressive collection of 10,000 rare books, maps, and manuscripts, donated to the Allen Art Museum and Oberlin College libraries on his death. In 1940, along with his longtime friend Oberlin professor Raymond Stetson, Artz designed a spacious home at 157 North Professor Street in which to display his library, antiques, and objects d’art.

Artz published several important works of scholarship, most of them still in print. They include France Under the Bourbon Restoration, 1814-1830 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931), awarded the silver medal by the French Institut Historique, and Reaction and Revolution 1814-1832 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1934), the first of the “Rise of Modern Europe” series edited by William L. Langer (1896-1977). Several seminal articles on French technical education appeared in the Revue Historique Moderne and the Revue d’Histoire Moderne. Best known of all of his writings is the classic The Mind of the Middle Ages, 200-1500 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), which entered its third edition in 1958 and was later released in paperback. Artz’s numerous articles and book reviews appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature, the South Atlantic Quarterly, the Journal of Modern History, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Modern History (1932-35) and the Journal of Central European Affairs (1940-65). In 1964, Artz was the Charles Beebe Martin lecturer in Classics at Oberlin. In 1966 Kent State University Press published his lectures, titled “Renaissance Humanism, 1300-1500.”

Throughout his career, Artz was active in the historical profession. He was a member of the Royal Historical Society, the College Art Association, the American Historical Association, the Medieval Academy of America, the Renaissance Society of America, the French Society of Modern History, the American Association of University Professors, and Phi Beta Kappa.

Frederick B. Artz died in Oberlin on July 20, 1983.

A photograph and biographical information about Frederick B. Artz are included in the digital collection “Oberlin College and Military Service in World War I,” presented by the Oberlin College Archives.

Sources Consulted

Ex Libris Frederick Binkerd Artz: Catalog of an exhibition of books and manuscripts from the collection of Frederick B. Artz, Oberlin College Library, November 1986.

Student File of Frederick B. Artz (RG 28/2)

Author: William E. Bigglestone and Valerie S. Komor

Subjects (links to similar collections)

Forms of Material (links to similar genres)

Languages of Materials

Administrative Information

Acquired: 02/18/1985. Accession Nos: 1985/8, 1992/49, 1997/121, 2001/94, 2002/139, 2003/027, 2005/044.

Restrictions: Unrestricted.

Acquisition Note: Papers of Frederick B. Artz were transferred to the Oberlin College Archives from the Oberlin College Library in 1985. Additional material was transferred from the Oberlin College Library, Special Collections, in 1992 and in 2001. The book A Festschrift for Frederick B. Artz was purchased for the Archives in 1997. Maureen Connelly donated the two medals in 2002. Sid Comings donated photographs and a military patch in 2003. Dr. Robert E. Hennings donated the University Prints (series VI) in 2005.

Related Materials:

The Clarence Ward Art Library of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College holds 118 volumes on architectural history (1500-1800) that were collected by Frederick Artz. The remainder of Artz’s book and manuscript collection, documenting the history of the book and printing, together with a series of early wood engraved maps, is held by the Special Collections Department of the Oberlin College Library.

Consult the student and faculty files of Frederick Artz (RG 28). The papers of Oberlin College Presidents Henry Churchill King (RG 2/6), Ernest Hatch Wilkins (RG 2/7), and William Edwards Stevenson (RG 2/8) contain correspondence with Frederick Artz. The papers of longtime friend, Donald Melbourne Love (RG 30/91), include materials pertaining to the Bureau of University Travel. RG 39, Subgroup II, Oberlin College Student Placement Files contains a file for Artz.

Miscellaneous manuscripts (RG 45) contains a letter written by Artz’s Aunt Elizabeth Binkerd Gump to her sister-in-law Emma Binkerd (Mrs. O.W. Binkerd). The letter, dated November 26, 1874, discusses the naming of Frederick B. Artz, family affairs, and Mrs. Gump’s feelings on women’s suffrage.

There is also a letter in the papers of Ruth Alexander Nichols (RG 30), written by Artz to Herman Nichols in July, 1916, in which Artz discusses his plans for the future – a future in which the imminent war has no place yet.

For more information about men from Oberlin who served in World War I, see the papers of Walter L. Hopkins (RG 30/220) and Logan O. Osborn (RG 30/191). Records of the Oberlin Ambulance Unit are housed in Office of the Secretary (RG 5).

See also the Steer-Wilson Papers (RG 30/392) for letters and a small number of publications by Frederick B. Artz.

Finding Aid Revisions: Initial arrangement by William E. Bigglestone. Rearranged and described by Valerie S. Komor, June 1992 and December 1995. Revised November 2001 by Melissa Gottwald; January 2002, 2003, and 2004 by Archives staff; January 2005 by Mark Genszler; and, February 2007 by Diana Gurfein.

Collection Material Type: Personal Papers

Scope and Contents:

The papers of Frederick B. Artz document his youth in Dayton, Ohio, his World War I service and travels in France, his Oberlin courses in European intellectual history, and critical response to many of his articles and books. With the exception of a small group of condolence letters on the death of Raymond H. Stetson (1872-1950), Artz’s friend for 28 years, and of several other letters in the correspondence files, the papers contain virtually no information on his personal life after he came to Oberlin.

The collection is arranged into nine records series: I. Autobiographical Files; II. Biographical Files; III. Correspondence; IV. Journals; V. Miscellaneous Materials; VI. Teaching Materials; VII. Writings and Talks; VIII. Photographs; IX. Artifacts. Within each series, files are typically arranged alphabetically (by topic or type of material) or chronologically. In the present arrangement, the file headings established by the archivist in 1985 are largely maintained, with additions and revisions made in 2005.

Correspondence and miscellaneous personal papers document Frederick B. Artz’s family history, childhood, and young adulthood. Files include manuscript notes made by Elam J. Artz relating to his business activities in Dayton (n.d.), obituaries of the senior Mr. Artz, and genealogical notes (n.d.). Photographs of the Artz and Binkerd families are housed in Series VIII. A useful source of information about Frederick Artz’s early life is his pamphlet, “Memories of Childhood and Youth 1894-1924,” (Series I) which traces his family’s origins and relates his autobiography from birth to his last year as a student at Harvard University. An earlier source would be entries made by Artz’s mother in The Baby’s Journal, dated 1894-96 (Series II).

During World War I, Artz served with the American Expeditionary Forces in the Ambulance Unit at Hospital 31 in Contrexeville, Vosges, France (1917-19). The correspondence of Series III includes letters (1917-18) written by Frederick to his family from Contrexeville (many of which were censored) describing his duties on the wards, his reading, and his travels in the region. Complementing this body of letters are three journals, housed with other journals in Series IV, which contain detailed accounts of his stay at the U.S. Army Ambulance Training camp in Allentown, Pennsylvania (1917), his experiences in Contrexeville, and later as a student in Toulouse, France (November 1917-June 1919) and the beginning of his graduate career at Harvard University (1919-20). Excerpts from the earlier journal entries were published by The Oberlin Literary Magazine (Vol. X, No. 2, November 1917) as an offering entitled “Specimen Days,” which is included in Series IV.

Also included with the journals (Series IV) are several travel journals: two of European study trips (1914; n.d. [c. 1923]) and one of a trip taken by the adolescent Artz with his father from Ohio to Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver and back to Dayton, Ohio (n.d.[c. 1906-12]).

Artz’s service during the First World War shaped his views of American policy in the Second World War. A small body of material (included in Series V. Miscellaneous Materials) donated to the Oberlin College Library in 1946 by Professor Artz and transferred in 1992 to the Archives from Special Collections documents Artz’s support for the Free French Movement and his criticism of the U.S. government’s stance vis a vis certain foreign leaders. Included in the lot is a petition (1942) signed by members of the Oberlin community deploring the American government’s recognition of France’s Vichy regime. The petition was sent to U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull (1871-1955). Additional items include two posters announcing benefit recitals (1943) for Russian War Relief, the texts of two chapel talks given by Artz in 1943 and 1944, and newspaper clippings.

Artz’s teaching and writing career at Oberlin College is documented by correspondence (1927-81) housed in Series III; lecture notes for his courses on European intellectual history and medieval Latin and vernacular literature (1927-61), course evaluations (1949), and syllabi (1960-62) all housed in Series VI; reprints of several publications and book reviews, housed with Series VII. Incoming correspondence (1927-81), housed in Series III and in Series VII, is largely from friends and colleagues offering their reactions to Artz’s publications. In Series VII, the correspondence is filed by the title of the work to which it relates. The letters reveal a mature scholar in frequent and friendly contact with his colleagues. The names of Artz’s correspondents comprise a directory of the medievalists and cultural historians who shaped the discipline of medieval studies in the first half of the twentieth century. Correspondents include Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, Charles Homer Haskins (1870-1937) of Harvard University, R.W. Southern (b. 1912) of Balliol College, Oxford University, and Geoffrey Barraclough (b. 1908) of the University of Liverpool. Other correspondents are Cass Canfield (b. 1897), President of Harper & Brothers publishers, and booksellers Julian Blackwell of B.H. Blackwell Ltd. and H.D. Lyon.

SERIES DESCRIPTION

Series I. Autobiographical Files, 1964, n.d.

This series contains the published version of Artz’s memoir Memories of Childhood and Youth, 1894-1924 (Oberlin, 1964) as well as both typescript and manuscript versions. The memoir describes Artz’s family history and his own life through his early years as a graduate student at Harvard University.

Series II. Biographical Files, 1894-96, 1927-83, n.d.

The Baby’s Journal contains several entries (1894-96) written by Artz’s mother about young Frederick. Other files include: honorary degrees (Oberlin and Carthage) and various certificates (1966, 1970, 1976-79); various press clippings and photocopies, both Oberlin in-house publications and otherwise, and obituaries (1927-83); passports and vaccination records (1937-79); two copies of a will and an inventory of personal belongings and their intended disposition (in Artz’s hand) (1976, 1977, n.d.).

Series III. Correspondence of Frederick B. Artz, 1917-18, 1927-81, n.d.

Four folders: correspondence sent by Artz (1917-18, 1949); correspondence received by Artz, two folders (1917-18, 1927-81); correspondence received by Artz regarding the death of his longtime friend R.H. Stetson (1950-51). Within each folder, letters generally are chronologically arranged.

Note: correspondence relating to Artz’s scholarly writing is filed in Series VII and correspondence received on the occasion of the establishment of the Frederick B. Artz Book Fund is filed with Series V.

Series IV. Journals, c. 1906–23, 1941

This series consists of six journals and one brief outline of travel taken to Virginia by Artz with his parents. The six journals are arranged chronologically, reflecting a natural division between adolescent/student travel journals (c. 1906-12, 1914, c. 1923) and war year journals (1917-20).

Series V. Miscellaneous Materials, 1854-1982, n.d.

This series is divided into two sections: materials relating to Frederick B. Artz and materials relating to other Artz family members.

The first section consists of catalogs and exhibition programs of various shows and concerts arranged by Artz or organized from his personal collections, financial records, correspondence, materials relating to the wedding of Priscilla Stevenson, daughter of Oberlin College President Stevenson, and Richard Meyner, and materials relating to World War II.

The second section contains papers relating to Artz’s father Elam J. Artz and his family and death notices for Mary Elizabeth Artz and Florence Minerva Artz, both of whom died as children in the mid-19^th century.

Series VI. Teaching Materials, 1927-62, n.d.

This series, housed in two boxes, contains some of Artz’s lecture notes, organized alphabetically by class title (1927-61), and several course syllabi (1960-62). Also of interest is a collection of course evaluations completed by Artz’s students (1949), and two sets of University Prints for the course “Intellectual History of Europe from St. Augustine to Marx,” n.d.

Series VII. Writings and Talks, 1927–81, n.d.

This series is divided into two sub-series.

1) Writings by Frederick B. Artz consists of files for individual books authored by Artz, arranged alphabetically by book title, with correspondence regarding publication and critical/collegial reaction. Other scholarly writings follow, including book reviews, a play, and eleven chapel talks given at Oberlin College (1938-68). Miscellaneous writings span the years 1945-60. A complete listing is given in the Frederick B. Artz Papers Inventory.

2) Writings About Frederick B. Artz consists of A Festschrift for Frederick B. Artz, David H. Pinkney and Theodore Ropp, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1964; a copy of the book is included). Associated correspondence is also included.

Note: For “Specimen Days,” excerpts from Artz’s war journals, see Series IV. Journals.

Series VIII. Photographs, 1876, 1894-1981 [broken], n.d.

This series is housed in two boxes and consists of tintypes, cyanotypes, albumen prints, black and white and colored photographs, one photograph album, and negatives. They are arranged alphabetically by subject, with negatives placed first. An additional lot of family and miscellaneous photographs was received in 2003 and is housed together in the second box (box 10).

Series IX. Artifacts, 1920, 1924, n.d. (0.02 l.f.)

Consists of two medals awarded to Frederick B. Artz during his graduate studies at Harvard University [2002/139]. A military patch (rank unknown) was added to the collection in 2003. In 2004, a sketch of Artz (1973) and three silhouette portraits (n.d.) of Artz and his father were added to this series.

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