Page 28 - 5 Who Fled, The Story of the Obermann-Beck Family
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I am Frederick Max Stein (or F. Max Stein) and this is a bit about how I
fit into the Obermann clan as well as a bit about my life. My great grandfa- ther, Johannes (John) Obermann, came to America in 1850 after escaping from political prison in Germany. His wife, Anna Elisabeth (Eliza) Köhler, and children came a few weeks later to join him. The family settled in Des Moines
County, Iowa where Johannes and Eliza remained for the rest of their lives.
My grandfather, Wilhelm (William or Missouri Bill) came to America from Heimertshausen, Germany in 1850 at the age of one with his mother, Eliza. He and his wife Hanna (Schaele) started their married life and their family in Clarke County, north of Murray, Iowa. Five of their ten children were born there. Two were born in Des Moines County when they moved there, and the final three were born in Clark Coun- ty, Missouri. It was here, on neighboring farms, that my parents met – both being of German ancestry.
My mother was born in Clarke County, Iowa – the third child of ten to Wilhelm and Hannah (Schaele) Obermann. My father, who married into the Obermann clan, came to America from Germany with his par- ents at the age of two in 1881. The family settled in Clark County in northeast Missouri.
I was born on February 17, 1919 in Wyaconda, Missouri, the third of five children of Fred and Viola (Obermann) Stein. We five Stein children were born and grew up in the concrete block house that my fa- ther built. He was a cement contractor. We children (except Rex) graduated from the Wyaconda High School. After our parents died, Rex lived with me for his final two years of school.
After graduation, I taught and coached basketball for three years in high schools in Iowa. I spent two years during World War II training and working as a Radio and Radar Officer in the USNR. My last year was spent on Oahu, Hawaii. I finished my Master’s degree in mathematics at the State University of Iowa in 1947, taught mathematics at Iowa Wesleyan College for six years, and completed my Ph.D. in mathematics at Iowa in 1955. I then became a professor of mathematics at Colo-
rado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado. After 30 years, I retired from there in 1985.
On June 6, 1943 I married Judith Maxine Peterson in
Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. We were married for nearly 50 years.
She died March 10, 1993 and is buried in Grandview Cemetery in Fort Collins. When I developed the hobby of genealogy, we visited her relatives in Sweden as well as my Stein and Obermann relatives in Germany – including the place of my father’s birth north of Berlin and the area of my Obermann relatives’ origin near Heimertshausen in Central Germany. In 1969 our whole family visited Germany and spent time with Karl Obermann of Heimertshausen, Rev. Hans
Obermann at Volklingen and Heinrich Obermann of Eudorf near Alsfeld. I have
traced nearly all of my ancestral lines back into the 1700s. I traced several even farther – including one line back to 1050.
I was raised in the Methodist church. My wife was church organist at our American Baptist Church in Ft. Collins for 29 years. I sang in the church choir for over 40 years.
While at CSU I wrote two books in mathematics: Introduction to Matrices and Determinants and An
