(continued from part 2)

Reporters at the Cincinnati Enquirer eventually did the most to put the pieces together. For the last week of his life, Schade had lodged at the hotel and had entertained a stream of visitors, mostly Germans investing in his Panama colonization project.  

Schade had associates in this plan too, but it is not always clear who, if anyone, was benefiting from the scheme and who was injured by it. One of his associates was Henry Rohr, an American correspondent in Panama. Rohr had met the Reverend during his visit to Panama, when both fell ill and were laid up in adjacent beds. Rohr returned to Ohio to help source machinery for the colony, but he never received any money from Schade to make the purchases. Rohr had been warned in letters to stay clear of Schade because the Reverend was reportedly too interested in “wine and women.” Shortly before Schade’s death, Rohr discovered that the bank account for the colonization company was nearly empty and that Schade was busy “consorting with actresses in wine-rooms, drinking and carousing at all hours of the night.”  

Schade had also employed an H.D. Lingenfelter as a secretary of his “Era Nueva Development Company.” Lingenfelter believed Schade to be 72 years of age. He said that Schade had been in the tropics for 12 years and had received 500 acres of land in Panama. In total, the company had given Schade $6,000 to finance the project. “Dr. Schade was not crazy,” Lingenfelter protested, “He had an exceedingly brilliant mind.” 

From Ironton, Ohio, came the message that there was a Charlotte Schade, former wife of the Rev. Augustus. The two had been divorced six years prior. Charlotte complained of her ex-husband’s “erratic disposition” and “penchant for wandering in pursuit of schemes.”  She claimed that Augustus once took his entire library into the “extreme far north” and lived for months with Indian guides. He then left his books there. Charlotte was supposedly too ill travel to the funeral.[1]

The Enquirer also found an intimate friend of Schade, a publishing house colleague named August Becker. Becker claimed that Schade had been selling rights to farms in Panama that he did not own. It was all a hallucination, he said, of a man who had become feebleminded. Other evidence of Schade’s mental decline came in recollections of a story he told about being chased by Indians and crocodiles when in Panama. The Cincinnati Post explained “As there are no crocodiles in Panama, this statement, together with others equally incoherent, seems to indicate a confused condition of the mind.”[2] It is not clear if Schade had been descending into delusions or simply was losing his ability to craft and keep track of plausible sounding fraudulent claims.

A photo of Rev. Augustus Schade in the Cincinnati Enquirer, 7 January 1913

The one who was injured the most by Schade’s last scheme was the object of his affections, a Miss Nellie Mew, an actress more commonly known by her stage name Allene Wilson. Allene had come to Chicago from Australia some three years prior and lived there with her brother, Wilson. Schade met Allene in New York in September 1911, and the elderly man tried to win her heart. Some newspapers reported that Allene was but 18 years old, while others said she was 27.[3] Records of her entering the country, however, indicate that she was 24.  

The love-struck Schade told Allene various stories of his wealth and his plans for Panama. Allene was hesitant, but felt something for Schade too, despite the age difference. It appears that she did not want to disappoint him and had only asked not to be rushed into marriage. In a letter a month before Schade’s death, she asked for his patience. The relationship had certainly not ended when Schade died.

This is why Allene struggled to believe Schade had committed suicide. She suspected foul play. She also believed that Schade was worth $500,000.[4]  

Allene and her brother had intended to join Schade in Panama and had been surprised by the news of his death. In fact, they were waiting for Rev. Schade to send them money he had promised so that they could join him in New York. From there, the plan was, they would sail for Panama. Naturally, the money never arrived. In a letter to Allene, Schade wrote that a New York man would fund the trip. “Most likely we will go on his own yacht.” he told them.[5]

            Dozens of newspapers around the country carried the story of Schade’s suicide, and they mostly treated it as a tale of failed romance. Some identified Schade’s Panama colony as an attempt to bring Germans together or as a eugenics experiment to create the perfect man. Others called it a “love colony” with Allene his intended “queen.”[6] Some of these newspapers might have mirrored Schade’s own tendencies, concocting lurid stories to sell papers. Or the stories may have reflected Schade’s own tales or the rumors swirling about him.

  Copies of Schade’s Philosophy of History were also found in the room where he died. One copy was open, as if Schade had been reading from it. Because the book’s language was so dense, and the subject so obscure, not even experts in the field bothered reading it or refuting it. Common readers might not have suspected that it was bogus or might have dismissed it as typical of highfalutin’ scholarly nonsense. With a book to his name, even a self-published one, Schade could more easily claim status in the academic and ecclesiastical realms.

The writing in Schade’s book is long and convoluted, with plenty of ambiguity and passive voice. Paragraphs seem to have a topic but never a purpose. For Schade, no verbal transition is off limits: he jumps from biology to metaphysics, or from the history of “early man” to an inquiry about life in the cosmos. He drops obscure reference after obscure reference, rarely citing the precise location of his source. And he was interested in absolutely everything.

Schade includes references to the “Accado-Sumerians,” the law of “polar tension”  and “Zeit-raum” all on one page. The Turano-Mongolo-Malayan nations make an appearance. We fly from Cape Comorin to the steppes of the Kirgheeze, from the Isle of Efat near Erromanga in the group of the New Hebrides, and make acquaintance with the Tauregs, Basutos and Betshuanes, the Hermundurians and Herulians, Cheruskians and Sigambrians, the Albanese, Etruscans, and the Ægyptians (his spelling).

It is unfortunate that some real academic writing is dense enough that it is difficult to discern whether Schade’s writing makes sense or not. Line after line reads like this: “Despite such a negative result, the reason within us would insist upon its claim for an answer to its postulate. The postulate of reason can not point us all into an empty void which is unthinkable, since matters and facts press upon us with incitements to think, and since reason itself continues to challenge reasons.” But what does this mean? Nothing, mostly likely. Or perhaps an English variation of German philosophical prose.

            Schade does seem to have believed in progress and to have imagined a divine being shaping history. He felt that a philosophy of history needed to be comprehensive and that it needed to explain everything. He did not call it “a” philosophy of history, though. In typically confident style, he called it The Philosophy of History. But like the story of Schade’s life, his book made little sense and was largely fraudulent. His “Era Nueva” Mission also reflected his belief in grand changes in history, shaped by a divine power. In the end, Schade died with his book beside him and 45-cents in his pocket.

            There is one final twist in the story. Schade’s first name was not Augustus, but rather Ernest. At some point in the early 1870s, he began to invert his first and middle names. Ernest Frederick Augustus was the name he had used on his naturalization papers in 1879. It is also the name he entered in 1910, in the U.S. Census, when he checked in as a resident of an “Altenheim” (The German Evangelical Home for the Aged) in Brooklyn.[7] As with so much of his life and “career” it is not clear what he was thinking or what his purposes were in changing his name.

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[1] The Cincinnati Enquirer, 9 January 1913. 

[2] The Cincinnati Post, 7 January 1913.

[3] Minnesotke noviny, 16 January, 1913; Omaha World-Herald, 10 January 1913

[4] The Cincinnati Post, 10 January 1913.

[5] The Cincinnati Enquirer, 8 January 1913.

[6] Portsmouth Daily Times, 7 January 1913; The Lima News, 7 January 1913; Telegraph-Forum, 10 January 1913.

[7] The observant reader will note that Schade appeared in the U.S. 1910 Census twice, one time in Cleveland, and another in New York. Demographers point out that such double counting, or “overcounting” on the census is not rare, especially for persons who moved frequently.