Goethe recalled fondly by some

To Gennie Smith, 64, Charles M. Goethe was not a racist but a kind man who took neighborhood children for walks around the block.

Lilla Burrows, 55, said "Mr. Goethe" -- as the kids called him -- plied them with stamps and coins from his world travels.

"He gave me $200 worth of buffalo nickels," said Norman Sanchez', 69. "He said you need to collect things of our times so you can look back and reflect."

While some Sacramento residents reflected on Goethe -- who died in 1966 -- with fondness, a broader examination has spurred C.M. Goethe Middle School in Sacramento to rethink its ties to the wealthy businessman and philanthropist.

The Sacramento City Unified School District board voted Thursday to form a citizens committee to brainstorm new names for the Meadowview school after officials learned of Goethe's lesser-known, dark side as a national leader in the eugenics movement.

"It's healthy for a society to periodically review the names of key institutions ... when information is uncovered or brought forward," said board President Manny Hernandez. "We want to have a name that we can honor."

Goethe led a prominent life in Sacramento. His grandfather Matthias Goethe founded St. John's Lutheran Church, now on L Street, in the 1860s. His father, Henry, was a banker. Goethe married into the even wealthier Glide family and become a successful home builder.

He started the Capital City Wheelmen bicycle club and the Del Paso County Club. He built playgrounds and was best known in his later years for donating land to preserve redwood forests and supporting the state and national park systems.

But he also saw things through a different lens. Historians say his civic interests were motivated by eugenics, a popular pseudoscience of the 1920s and '30s that called for breeding "worthy" Anglo-Saxon humans and sterilizing "socially unfit" ones: racial, religious and ethnic minorities, prisoners and mentally disabled people.

He gained an interest in the early science of genetics, tying his interest in preserving endangered plants to preserving what he saw as an endangered Nordic race.

"What he had was a very broad view of species selection that moved across plants, people, animals," said Alexandra Stern, a University of Michigan professor who has written about the eugenics movement.

"It's clashing against my childhood memories," said Smith, who disagrees with portrayals of Goethe as a Nazi sympathizer.

She is a distant cousin who grew up on S Street, behind his T Street mansion, now called the Julia Morgan House. "I'm not blonde-haired, blue-eyed," she said.

Goethe was a great-uncle to Norman Sanchez', who said he often saw Goethe dining with politicians and prominent business leaders in his mansion. With so many people sitting at Goethe's feet, "he couldn't have been too much of a rebel," said Sanchez', who puts an accent mark after his surname to signal European -- not Mexican -- ancestry.

Councilman Kevin McCarty still finds the Goethe story unsettling. "I didn't even know what eugenics meant until a month ago," he said.

McCarty bought a house in January next to the old mansion and wants a fuller review of Goethe's life. A county park also is named for Goethe.

He disagrees that Goethe was simply a man of his times, or that this issue is political correctness run amok.

"This guy lived in the house next door to me 40 years ago," McCarty said. "This isn't generations ago; this is our own Sacramento guy."

About the writer:

• The Bee's Eric Stern can be reached at (916) 321-1048 or estern@sacbee.com.