80 Fontane Blätter 110 Unveröffentlichtes und wenig Bekanntes miles north of Newton, Kansas. Two years after arrival, at age sixteen, C H Wedel was teacher of a private German-language school held in one room of a farmhouse. During the four years he taught there he also taught himself English. After taking a couple years to complete high school in towns nearby, in 1881 he departed for the Mennonite mission field at Darlington in Indian Territory which had only been established the year before. There he took up teaching Native American children. The work and setting were too much for Wedel, who suffered his whole life from weak eyes. He had to leave the mission and sought medical treatment in St. Louis. When he read Fontane’s depiction of Indian children and missionary work, he was thus able to make direct comparisons to the reality, an option not open to any other reviewer. 3 Although he left the mission field, Wedel’s interest in missions remained. With the financial support of his home congregation he next went to study at a Methodist school, McKendree College, now University, in Lebanon, Illi­nois. The mission board soon pressed him to return to Indian Territory, but he instead in 1883 arranged a temporary leave to protect his health and con­tinue his education. That leave turned out to be permanent, but he became a mission board member in 1902 and served until his death in 1910. From 1884 to 1887 he next studied at German Theological School, now Bloomfield Col­lege, in Bloomfield, New Jersey, a Presbyterian school with German Re­formed connections. After completing his education, he stayed on three more years as an instructor. In 1890 he accepted an offer to teach at the Mennonite school in Halstead where he taught until finally moving to Bethel in 1893 to become president and professor of Bible. Wedel thus taught at the same school that the Fontane characters Ruth Hornbostel and Shortarm at­tended, a school that was in fact open to Native Americans from the very beginning, although most attended an Industrial School designed for voca­tional training run by Christian Krehbiel, also in Halstead. 4 In 1893 the Halstead school closed, and all the buildings were moved to Bethel, which had taken six years to raise the money needed to build its first permanent building. C. H. Wedel became Bethel’s founding president and moved into an apartment in the new main building. In addition to teaching Bible, serving as pastor of a new Bethel College church, and running, pub­licizing, and fundraising for the institution, Wedel also created portions of the curriculum by writing four volumes on Mennonite history and addi­tional volumes on the Bible and Mennonite theology. His theological train­ing and writing explain why his objections to Quitt focused on Mennonite theology and culture. 5 Wedel’s work to publicize the school had to fit in around his other re­sponsibilities. As he noted in his diary on February 7, 1903,»off and on I am getting articles ready for the fourth issue of our school papers.« 6 His Quitt series started in the fifth issue, so were written shortly thereafter. Wedel’s