Kenkel, Frederick P. b. October 16, 1863; Chicago, Illinois d. February 16, 1952; St. Louis, Missouri
Journalist and social critic, Frederick P. Kenkel was the guiding spirit of the German Catholic Central-Verein for more than four decades. Under his leadership, the Central-Blatt and Social Justice (later Social Justice Review.)) became the first American Catholic publication to make social reform its primary focus.
Besides editing this monthly from 1909 until his death, Kenkel directed the Central-Verein’s headquarters in St. Louis; coordinated its national activities; initiated the establishment of a day nursery; provided a news service for the Catholic press; and built up a valuable collection of books, manuscripts, and other materials dealing with German American Catholics. His social criticism, though attuned to reform currents in the Progressive era, was deeply conservative in inspiration and became less compelling after World War I.Kenkel’s social consciousness sprang not from economic hardship, but from a profound sense of spiritual estrangement from the modern world. Although he grew up with well-to-do parents and enjoyed a privileged upbringing, which included five years of travel and leisured humanistic studies in Germany, he was not a stranger to tragedy: the German bride he brought back to Chicago in 1886 died three years later. Grief stricken, Kenkel returned with fervency to the Catholic faith into which he had been baptized, but had not previously practiced, spending several months of prayer and study at a Franciscan college in Quincy, Illinois. But instead of entering the community, which he apparently considered, he remarried in 1892.
In the mid-1890s, Kenkel went through a period of severe depression. Whatever its ultimate cause, it was aggravated by his inability to find satisfying work. He was engaged in a real estate and insurance business, but felt intense distaste for commercial culture. As a foil to the modern world that was so radically out of joint, he contrasted the world of the Germanic Middle Ages, where the Catholic religion provided spiritual unity and gave even the humblest members of society a sense of personal worth and communal belonging.
This deeply romantic vision, reinforced by contemporary German Catholic theorists of a corporative society (Stande- ordnung), underlay Kenkel’s social criticism and prescriptions for reform.Kenkel recovered his psychological balance when he found his life’s work in German Catholic journalism, first with the Katholisches Wochenblatt (Catholic Weekly) of Chicago in 1901 and after 1905 as editor of Die Amerika (America) of St. Louis, the leading German Catholic daily. His learned editorial commentary so impressed the leaders of the Central-Verein that, although he had no previous connection with the organization, he was invited in 1908 to take part in reformulating its corporate mission. Under his leadership, the Central-Verein made the reconstruction of society on Christian principles its official reason for being. He devoted himself to the cause selflessly, taking no compensation for his services until he resigned from Die Amerika after World War I.
Though always convinced that basic structural reforms were needed, Kenkel concentrated at first on combating socialism, urging passage of progressive labor legislation, and quickening the social consciousness of his readers. This meliorist approach, which resembled that of the Volksverein fur das katholische Deutschland (Popular Union for Catholic Germany), headquartered at Munchen Gladbach, placed Kenkel in the front rank of American Catholic reformers in the Progressive period. But the shattering experience of World War I convinced him that modern society was so fundamentally deformed that “palliatives” were useless. In reaction, he turned against the meliorism of the Volksverein group, preferring stricter versions of corporatism that envisaged a drastic restructuring of society. However, revolution was ruled out and the corporatist dream was so remote from American realities that it was almost impossible to act upon. In the 1920s, Kenkel endorsed credit unions, cooperatives, and the Catholic rural life movement, but spent at least as much energy pointing out that re-
A journalist and social critic, Frederick Kenkel (here, in 1930) was the guiding spirit of the German Catholic Central-Verein for more than four decades.
(University of Notre Dame Archives)forms proposed by others were insufficiently “fundamental.”
Kenkel had long warned against “state socialism,” the danger of which he saw confirmed in the New Deal and the subsequent development of the welfare state. The rise of totalitarianism and the tragedy of World War II reinforced his cultural pessimism; by the end of his life, his social commentary had more in common with ideological conservatism than with any contemporary version of reform.
Philip Gleason
See also German Catholic Central-Verein; Gonner, Nicholas E., Jr.
References and Further Reading
Gleason, Philip. The Conservative Reformers: German-American Catholics and the Social Order. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1968.
Social Justice Review 81 (February 1990). Frederick P. Kenkel commemorative issue.