Newspapers found in wall offer glimpse of past

SCOTTSBLUFF, Neb. (AP) - If only walls could talk. That’s what one Scottsbluff couple is wondering after finding literature stuffed inside their walls telling of long forgotten stories during World War II.

The only problem is those stories are written in an unfamiliar language - German.

Walls have acted as structural time capsules for centuries. People place odd items inside only for them to be long forgotten by their owners over time.

In recent headlines, these items have included Depression-era money found by a contractor in the amount of $182,000 in Cleveland, Ohio and a copy of Action Comics No. 1, the 1938 debut of Superman that was found in the walls of a Minnesota home during a renovation in Elbow Lake, Minn. That sold for $175,000 last year.

For Scottsbluff residents Gene and Maria Naye, they haven’t found any cold hard cash lurking in their walls, but the Scottsbluff Star-Herald reports (https://bit.ly/1cIQviD ) they have discovered an interesting piece of cultural history in the form of old newspapers and a Sunday periodical.

During the process of renovating the laundry room of his home last year, Gene Naye started to make some improvements by redoing the electrical wiring. He later noticed that the walls seemed to not have any insulation in them, so he began redoing the walls, too. That’s when he found the newspapers.

“I started tearing the little paneling off that was in there and this was in there,” he said. “They must have used it for insulation or something and I was just going to just leave it there and put insulation over it.”

The fragile newsprint that has been tarnished with age, dirt and wet weather over the past seven decades still contains images and stories of years past. They are placed upon the pages in a style of text in slim columns that was the precursor to today’s newspapers.

Gene’s first reaction after finding the newspapers was that he was interested in it and he knew they were printed in the German language just by the lettering style.

“The only thing I could read was the date. I looked through some of it and I saw some of the ads and it was very interesting,” he said. “It was at the height of the war and it gives you a little insight of how things were.”

The mastheads of the newspapers even bear an Old English style of font with the names Deutsche Sonntagspost, a national weekly newspaper that was published in Winona, Minn. in both German and English languages. The Dakota Freie Presse “Dakota Free Press” a weekly newspaper that was printed in South Dakota that was nondenominational and politically neutral. The newspaper’s focus was on Germans from Russia and was printed in both German and English.

In the mix of all the newspapers was a single magazine style print named Der Kirchenbote “The Kirchenbote”, a weekly periodical of the Diocese of Osnabrück that provides essential information from the church, politics and society from the diocese and the world. Gene said he wishes it was in English, but it was an interesting find.

Since the Western Sugar factory resides close to the Naye’s home, the couple said they believe that a German worker must have lived in the home at that time. On a few of the newspapers, the names Mrs. Jacob Ochsner and George Knaub are still barely legible on some the newspapers. Maria said the Knaub name sounds familiar in the community and thought they might have been local business owners, but the newspapers themselves are an awesome find.

“This is more exciting than money, really. If you could know more of the history of the people that put it in there and the very first people that lived here that would be awesome,” Maria said.

The Naye’s estimated that their home was built in the 1920’s. Gene said they weren’t the most elaborate homes back then, but they enjoy the home today that they have lived in for 13 years and have been remodeling it for some time.

The Naye’s have plans to make more remodeling improvements. Gene said he wants to tear out another wall and suspects there may be more behind there too.

“I guess you will never know what you will find in a wall, especially in an old house like this,” Gene said. “It’s too bad it’s not money, but it is interesting to see how much some of the newspapers were, like five cents a paper.”

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Information from: Star-Herald, https://www.starherald.com