View a eulogy for William Fredrick Hecker, USMA '91, who passed away on January 5, 2006.
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William Fredrick Hecker
West Point, 1991
Be Thou At Peace
Posted by Wolfgang Hochbruck on July 4, 2013:
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Maj. Hecker was a descendant of the famous German Forty-Eighter freedom fighter Friedrich Hecker, who had to flee to the US in 1848, settled in Illinois, and during the Civil War rose from private in the all-German 3rd MO Vol. Inf. (US) to command the 82nd Illinois. He was wounded at Chancellorsville. I met William Hecker at one point during the 150th anniversary celebrations of the failed revolutions of 1848/49, which I taught my students about at the time. We talked about his ancestor, and also about Poe and Twain. I only learned about his death today from a brief article in the German weekly DIE ZEIT. While I still believe that the whole Iraq campaign was a grievous mistake, I want to honor Major Hecker's courage, and the memory of a good man and an esteemed colleague. I wish we could invite him over here as a guest professor, and share more stories about Poe - WH Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hochbruck Dept. of English Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg / Germany |
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