The ‘Climate Best’ sign and a climate of hate

Our story involves Henry Finkler, a respected secretary of the California Supreme Court, a booster of Redwood City and a near fanatic when it came to studying the weather. Records kept by Finkler, who lived with his family on land that today is Edgewood Park, preceded the “climate best” slogan that won a contest in a Chamber of Commerce promotion in the 1920s. Finkler concluded there were three “perfect” climate belts: The Canary Islands, Africa and a 20-mile radius around Redwood City, which would take in a lot more than the county seat.

Finkler was of German heritage and his father served in the German army before coming to the United States. This didn’t sit well with his “friends and colleagues” once America went “over there,” according to a relative who said Finkler felt a “decided coolness directed toward him.”

Finkler wasn’t the only target of such wartime wrath. In England, the royal family changed its name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. America’s flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker switched from Rickenbacher when America entered the war in 1917. There were some reports that his family’s name originally was Riechendbacher and that his ancestors, although of German heritage, came from Switzerland.

The worst manifestation of wartime hysteria occurred in Illinois where a mob hanged Robert Prager in April of 1918. A native of Germany, Prager had applied for U.S. citizenship. He was believed to be on his way to enlist in the American Navy when he was attacked. Mob leaders were tried but found innocent of his murder. Other acts of wartime hatred included 38 states banning the teaching of German in schools. The end of the war on Nov. 11, 1918, didn’t end prejudice. Some 5,000 German aliens were kept interned until 1920.

Although most people know little or nothing about this history, John Steinbeck recalled it in “East of Eden” when a German-American’s tailor shop is destroyed and his home attacked. In a nearby town, a Pole thought to be German is tarred and feathered. “No one says hell anymore,” Steinbeck wrote. “The kids shout ‘hoch der Kaiser,’” roughly translated to “Hail the Kaiser,” a term that mocked German-Americans.

The earlier mentioned relative was Aileen Foster, whose mother’s aunt was married to Finkler. That may be a “shirttail” relationship but Foster said she knew “Uncle Harry” well from her early childhood. In a 1979 interview with Redwood City Tribune history columnist Otto Talent, she tried to clear up the “government” angle. According to Foster, Finkler wrote governments around the world asking for weather statistics covering a 10-year period. He passed his findings on to a biking pal, Franklin Lane, who would go on to serve in President Wilson’s Cabinet. Finkler’s information was used to select an army training site, Camp Fremont in Menlo Park.

The contest winner was Wilbur Doxsee, who said he thought he remembered an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that mentioned a weather survey by the German government. The current issue of the new magazine Climate has a well-done and extensive story about the sign. It doesn’t mention Finkler but it reports that the April 30, 1917, Chronicle had an item supporting Camp Fremont that said weather statistics “were compiled by the German government, which had observations taken all over the world.” My question is this: Did the German government take credit for Finkler’s findings? I can find no evidence that he tried to correct the record, but, given the climate of the times, it would have been smart of him to keep his mouth shut.

The Rear View Mirror by history columnist Jim Clifford appears in the Daily Journal every other Monday. Objects in The Mirror are closer than they appear.