Wartburg College was founded in 1852 in
Saginaw, Michigan, by
Georg M. Grossmann, a native of
Neuendettelsau, Bavaria. Pastor
Wilhelm Löhe sent Grossmann to establish a pastor training school for German immigrants. The college moved many times between
Illinois and Iowa before settling in Waverly in 1935. Also in 1935,
St. Paul Luther College in
Saint Paul, Minnesota, merged with Wartburg College. The college is named after
Wartburg Castle in
Eisenach, Germany, where
Martin Luther was protected during the stormy days of the
Reformation. While in the Castle, he translated the New Testament from its original Greek into German, the language of the people. Student and alumni groups often travel to the castle, and the
Wartburg Choir has performed there several times.
Waverly and
Eisenach are sister towns and often swap foreign exchange students. The college is proud of its German heritage and celebrates an annual student-declared one-day holiday, Outfly, a deliberately mistaken translation of the
German noun . Outfly is the most enduring Wartburg tradition. The first mention of comes from
Mendota, Illinois, in 1883, when students went on a Friday-Saturday excursion to nearby
Starved Rock, now a state park. Faculty minutes for October 5, 1892, note that was scheduled for the next day.
Old Main, the oldest building on campus, was built in 1880 for the Wartburg Teachers Seminary. It was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 1978 under the name Wartburg Teachers' Seminary. The longstanding rivalry between Wartburg and
Luther College in
Decorah, Iowa, has produced some colorful moments. The rivalry's origins are unclear. Stories of pranks date to the 1940s. For the most part, the rivalry has been characterized by fun and good sportsmanship. It rose to new heights in October 1996, when two Wartburg cross-country runners rented a light plane, flew to Decorah, and dropped leaflets on the Luther campus. The incident was reported in every major Iowa newspaper, got national mention on
Fox, and made
Rolling Stone magazine's list of the most memorable college pranks of 1996–97. The creativity in the rivalry continued when student staff members of the college radio station,
KWAR, secretly entered a float in the Luther College Homecoming Parade. The staff members decorated the float as an environmental club, the "Organization of Nature Enthusiasts", from Luther College. In front of the judges' stand the float quickly changed color from blue and white to orange and black. It continued all the way through town and onto Luther's campus, with numerous Wartburg students joining the procession from the crowd. In 2022,
Rebecca Ehretsman became Wartburg's first female president.
List of presidents •
Georg M. Grossmann, 1852–1868 • John Klindworth, 1868–1875 • Georg Grossmann, 1878–1894 • Friedrich Lutz, 1894–1905 • Gerhard Bergstraesser, 1905–1909 • Friedrich Richter, 1894–1899 (Clinton IA) • Otto Kraushaar, 1899–1907 (Clinton IA) • John Fritschel, 1907–1919 (Clinton IA) • Otto Proehl, 1919–1935 (Clinton IA) • August Engelbrecht, 1909–1933 • Edward J. Braulick, 1935–1945 • Conrad Becker, 1945–1964 • John Bachman, 1964–1974 • William Jellema, 1974–1980 • Robert L. Vogel, 1980–1998 •
Jack R. Ohle, 1998–2008 • William Hamm, 2008–2009 (interim) • Darrel Colson, 2009–2022 •
Rebecca Ehretsman, 2022–Present ==Location==