Natalie Wipplinger
Week of June 19, 2000

The German Department senior prize honors an exemplary teacher who helped shape the department, Natalie Wipplinger.

The eldest of five children, Natalie Wipplinger was born August 2, 1871 in Cassel, Hessen-Nassau, Germany. Her father was the concert-meister of the Cassel orchestra.

After taking the state teacher examination, she spent three years in England and France as a tutor to children, perfecting her skill in modern languages. In 1896 she received a B.A. degree in Berne, Switzerland. Since there was nowhere in Germany that a woman could take the required university entrance examination, Natalie went to Switzerland for the three day examinations which would lead to the certificate she needed. Then she had to convince family and friends that she should be permitted to take this unconventional step-study at a university. She studied at the Universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg and Freiburg. Although German universities had opened their doors to a few American women, when Wipplinger received a Ph.D. from Freiburg University in 1900 she was only the second German woman to have done so.

Degree in hand, Wipplinger traveled to America seeking a teaching job. While teaching at Ashville College in North Carolina and at Mount Holyoke Wipplinger learned that German methods of instruction-a formal lecture with no opportunity for discussion-were not well received in America. She quickly adopted her style to one that involved cooperation between teacher and student.

Wipplinger taught at Wellesley College from 1904 until 1940. Although the foundations of a strong department had been laid by Carla Wenckebach, credit for the sequence of courses that made Wellesley College notable belonged to Wipplinger and Margarethe Müller. Wipplinger was especially known for her courses on the Romantic School and her Goethe seminar. One of her students said, "to an extraordinary degree she vitalized her material by presenting it from her heart as well as from her brilliant and scholarly mind. To us she always seemed to have lived with and loved her subject until it was part of her self. There was in her teaching the exactitude, objectivity and knowledge of a scholar with the emotional understanding of a creative artist."

Although she loved America, Wipplinger remained a German citizen. She was devoted to Wellesley College, and deeply appreciative of it allowing her to continue to teach German during World War I. The memorial tribute in the alumnae magazine noted "'Such a thing could happen in no other country,' as she herself said, and she was most scrupulous in keeping every hint of propaganda from the classroom. She felt deeply the strain involved in being bound to a fatherland by ties of blood and devotion and to an adopted home by ties of affection; but she never confused the two loyalties."

Natalie Wipplinger died February 20, 1950.

Information on Natalie Wipplinger can be found in the Wellesley Alumnae Magazine, June 1940 and July 1950 issues.

Written by Wilma Slaight