Americans knew almost nothing of the obscure Munich politician who – through a backdoor parliamentary maneuver – became chancellor of Germany in January, 1933.
But a few months later, a 20-year-old Lincoln High School graduate and University of Oregon student would become the first American journalist to write a critical account of new Chancellor Adolf Hitler and the dark storm threatening Germany and eventually the United States and the world.
The writer, Richard Neuberger, already a regular contributor to The Oregonian, had just finished his sophomore year at the UO when he traveled to visit his German Jewish cousins in Germany.
Oregon Journal photo.
At this point, the major American media was naively unconcerned with Hitler, including The New York Times’ Berlin bureau chief who wrote that the new chancellor might provide “a new moderation.” The Christian Science Monitor spoke of Hitler’s first months in office as one of “order and civility…and not the slightest sign of anything unusual afoot.”
But Neuberger avoided the tightly media-controlled large German cities and sought out small towns to engage innkeepers, physicians and rabbis in late-night conversations. He learned of rampant violence perpetrated by the new regime, including a 32-year-old Jewish doctor abruptly abducted one night from his home.
A few hours later, at 5 am, his wife received a phone call saying she could find her husband at a nearby vacant lot. Accompanied by her six-year-old daughter, they found his body, naked and mutilated, with the stone with which the Nazis crushed his skull still wedged in his brain.
Neuberger wrote of such atrocities two months later for the nationally influential magazine, The Nation. Among those who read that story was Felix Frankfurter, a key advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Such examples of Neuberger’s impact are the subject of the compelling new biography by Stephen A. Forrester, “Richard Neuberger, Oregon Politics and the Makings of a US Senator.” It is probably the most significant Oregon political biography in decades.
The UO student soon caught the eye of UO Law School Dean Wayne Morse, who become a mentor and eventually a fellow U.S. Senator, amid a friendship that would end tragically for both.
The New York Times would soon hire Neuberger as their Pacific Northwest correspondent for the next 20 years. He would eventually author six books and write more than 750 articles for national publications. Neuberger had a knack for seeing emerging issues over the next hill and became the first national journalist to write about the need for balancing the new Columbia River hydroelectric dams with salmon, and conservation of Oregon’s ocean beaches and forests. He even saw the future value of mass transit and voting by mail.
Neuberger ran for a Multnomah County seat in the Oregon Legislature in 1936. It’s hard to imagine today, but the county then tilted Republican, and while the 23-year-old Democrat lost that election, he won something larger that year, meeting his future wife and soulmate Maurine Brown, a quiet intellectual who grew up on a Tillamook County dairy farm, and taught English at Lincoln High School.
Neuberger would win election to the Oregon Legislature in 1940 before resigning two years later to enlist in the Army during World War II. He won a state Senate seat in 1948 and continued to pen books and national stories.
Four years later, his now wife, Maurine Neuberger, won a seat in the Oregon House of Representatives. They became the first husband-and-wife legislative team in the nation’s history. Life and Readers Digest magazines would publish profiles on their achievements.
Dick Neuberger would win election to the U.S. Senate in 1954, the first Oregon Democrat to do so in 40 years. He closely worked with other senators, including Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts on Civil Rights and conservation issues.
He also reconnected with his former UO mentor, Sen. Wayne Morse, who had recently switched from being a liberal Republican to a Democrat.
Morse was initially elated at Neuberger’s election, but while the senior senator had a noteworthy intellect, he also possessed a prickly personality that made him unpopular with many fellow Democrats. Morse became envious of how quickly Neuberger shined as a senator and his ease in making relationships with fellow senators.
By the late 1950s, Morse would publicly assail his colleague and even refused to endorse Neuberger’s re-election campaign. Tragically, it never quite came to that. Late in his first term, Neuberger was diagnosed with cancer and died on March 9, 1960, at age 47. His death ignited a commotion over who Oregon Gov. Mark Hatfield would appoint to replace him.
Morse called Hatfield, a Republican, urging him to appoint Democratic U.S. Rep. Edith Green to the seat. Morse believed Maurine Neuberger would then challenge Green in the May 1960 Democratic primary.
He believed the two women would beat each other up, and the eventual winner would lose to a Republican in the general election. “That way we would get rid of both the bitches,” Morse said.
Hatfield declined, instead appointing local judge, Hall Lusk of Portland, to the interim seat. Maurine Neuberger would file and easily win Senate election in her own right that November.
She became a congressional leader on consumer and conservation issues with marquee accomplishments, including federal laws requiring warning labels on cigarette packages and advertising. At the same time, she was also grieving the death of her husband, loathed the Senate’s overwhelmingly male culture and could barely stand being in the same room with Morse. She decided to not run for re-election in 1966.