Gumpertz, Werner Herbert (42033526): Difference between revisions
Fold NPS joint oral history into Class 25 / Seventh Army biography |
Add wartime portrait + bio card; cite Boston Globe/Legacy obituary; fold family/SGH detail |
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|class_number=25 | |class_number=25 | ||
|class_display=25 | |class_display=25 | ||
|photo= | |photo=Gumpertz_Werner_Herbert_42033526_army_portrait.jpg | ||
|death_date=1 December 2017 | |death_date=1 December 2017 | ||
|birth_place=Berlin, Germany | |birth_place=Berlin, Germany | ||
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== Biography == | == Biography == | ||
Werner Herbert Gumpertz was born on 26 December 1917 in Berlin, Germany, the son of Richard and Olga Gumpertz. The family ran a boys’ clothing firm; as a child he sometimes modeled for the catalog. He wanted to be an engineer from childhood. In 1936 he went to Zurich to study at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). In the summer of 1939 he was in Amsterdam on volunteer engineering work when the war blocked his return to finish the course. After Kristallnacht his father was sent to Dachau; his mother secured Richard’s release and Richard joined Werner in Holland. The two arrived in New York City on 12 March 1940 on the Red Star Line ship ''Westernland''. Olga and Werner’s younger brother followed in 1941. | Werner Herbert Gumpertz was born on 26 December 1917 in Berlin, Germany, the son of Richard and Olga Gumpertz and older brother of Gerard (“Gerry”) Gumpertz. The family ran a boys’ clothing firm; as a child he sometimes modeled for the catalog. He wanted to be an engineer from childhood. In 1936 he went to Zurich to study at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). In the summer of 1939 he was in Amsterdam on volunteer engineering work when the war blocked his return to finish the course. After Kristallnacht his father was sent to Dachau; his mother secured Richard’s release and Richard joined Werner in Holland. The two arrived in New York City on 12 March 1940 on the Red Star Line ship ''Westernland''. Olga and Werner’s younger brother followed in 1941. | ||
In the United States he worked as a junior engineer and surveyor in New York and on defense housing in Newport News, Virginia. Drafted on 27 August 1943, he trained at the Engineering Replacement Training Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, served in Pennsylvania, and returned to Belvoir as a supervisory noncommissioned officer. On a free day he went to the Pentagon, told an intelligence officer he wanted the work, and within a week was sent to [[Camp Ritchie]]. | In the United States he worked as a junior engineer and surveyor in New York and on defense housing in Newport News, Virginia. Drafted on 27 August 1943, he trained at the Engineering Replacement Training Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, served in Pennsylvania, and returned to Belvoir as a supervisory noncommissioned officer. On a free day he went to the Pentagon, told an intelligence officer he wanted the work, and within a week was sent to [[Camp Ritchie]]. | ||
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Gumpertz trained as an interrogator with [[:Category:Class 25|Class 25]] (30 November 1944 – 29 January 1945)—interrogation, intelligence analysis, and document exploitation. He later recalled piecing together German order of battle from unrelated scraps (laundry tickets, speeding citations, and the like), a night drop near Gettysburg with a map printed only in Japanese, and other field exercises. He went overseas on a British liner (sleeping under a table rather than in a hammock), to England, then across the Channel and into Germany with Seventh Army. He interrogated German prisoners in a former Nazi girls’ camp and was assigned to MFIU-5 at Jugenheim, attached to Seventh Army; the unit ended the war in Augsburg. Once, traveling without the daily password, he was nearly shot. He later said he once had a short conversation with Hermann Göring, and that when the small intelligence section needed a doctor it brought in a captured German air-force medical officer whose father-in-law, a Protestant bishop in Heidelberg, had refused to yield to the Nazis; Gumpertz later corresponded with that bishop from Frankfurt. | Gumpertz trained as an interrogator with [[:Category:Class 25|Class 25]] (30 November 1944 – 29 January 1945)—interrogation, intelligence analysis, and document exploitation. He later recalled piecing together German order of battle from unrelated scraps (laundry tickets, speeding citations, and the like), a night drop near Gettysburg with a map printed only in Japanese, and other field exercises. He went overseas on a British liner (sleeping under a table rather than in a hammock), to England, then across the Channel and into Germany with Seventh Army. He interrogated German prisoners in a former Nazi girls’ camp and was assigned to MFIU-5 at Jugenheim, attached to Seventh Army; the unit ended the war in Augsburg. Once, traveling without the daily password, he was nearly shot. He later said he once had a short conversation with Hermann Göring, and that when the small intelligence section needed a doctor it brought in a captured German air-force medical officer whose father-in-law, a Protestant bishop in Heidelberg, had refused to yield to the Nazis; Gumpertz later corresponded with that bishop from Frankfurt. | ||
After the fighting he joined United States military government in Karlsruhe as agent in charge of publications, covering periodicals and books. Discharged in early 1946, he spent a year as an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers in Frankfurt doing design work, then used the GI Bill at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning bachelor’s and | After the fighting he joined United States military government in Karlsruhe as agent in charge of publications, covering periodicals and books. Discharged in early 1946, he spent a year as an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers in Frankfurt doing design work, then used the GI Bill at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning bachelor’s, master’s, and advanced engineering degrees and teaching in the Department of Building Engineering and Construction. With Howard Simpson and Frank Heger—colleagues from MIT—he formed Simpson Gumpertz and Heger (SGH). He married Elizabeth (“Betty”) Lewit in 1949; they bought a two-family house in West Newton in 1951 that remained his home for the rest of his life, and they had two children, Richard and Ruth. Betty died in 1999. In 2000 he married Susan Connors. He supported local history work in Newton, including Historic Newton’s Durant-Kenrick House project. He died in West Newton on 1 December 2017, at 99, and was buried at Newton Cemetery. | ||
== Research notes == | == Research notes == | ||
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<gallery mode="packed" heights="220px"> | <gallery mode="packed" heights="220px"> | ||
Gumpertz_Werner_Herbert_42033526_obituary.jpg|Werner Herbert Gumpertz, from his 2017 Brezniak Funeral Directors obituary | Gumpertz_Werner_Herbert_42033526_obituary.jpg|Werner Herbert Gumpertz, from his 2017 Brezniak Funeral Directors obituary | ||
Gumpertz_Werner_Herbert_42033526_bio_card.png|Biographical card with wartime portrait and service summary (source of graphic unknown) | |||
</gallery> | </gallery> | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
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== Sources == | == Sources == | ||
* [https://www.brezniakrodman.com/obituary-archive/werner-gumpertz/ Brezniak Funeral Directors — Werner Gumpertz full obituary archive] | |||
* [https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/bostonglobe/name/werner-gumpertz-obituary?id=31532087 Boston Globe / Legacy — Werner H. Gumpertz obituary (published 3–4 December 2017)] | |||
* [[:File:FOHU_POBox1142_Gans_Gumpertz_Schwab.pdf|NPS Fort Hunt Oral History — joint interview with Werner Gans, Werner Gumpertz, and Henry Schwab]] (formerly published on the NPS Fort Hunt oral-history exhibit) | * [[:File:FOHU_POBox1142_Gans_Gumpertz_Schwab.pdf|NPS Fort Hunt Oral History — joint interview with Werner Gans, Werner Gumpertz, and Henry Schwab]] (formerly published on the NPS Fort Hunt oral-history exhibit) | ||
* [[:File:Gumpertz_Werner_Herbert_42033526_obituary.jpg|Obituary portrait used as profile photo]] | * [[:File:Gumpertz_Werner_Herbert_42033526_obituary.jpg|Obituary portrait used as profile photo]] | ||