(Following is the biography of Father Josef Baumgartner, SVD, Father and Founder of the USC Library, in whose memory the new USC Learning Resource Center that houses the University’s central library was named, in fitting ceremonies  on Thursday, 8 March 2012, at Talamban Campus.) 

The human enterprise that endures lays a foundation savoring of the truly human, develops skills from highest to the mundane to shape its structure, and puts in place a dedication ensuring its heritage would perdure.  At the University of San Carlos, the fruits of this venture ripened in June 1949 with the arrival from China of Joseph Baumgartner, SVD. 

As the University Chief Librarian (today’s Director of Libraries), and with characteristic thoroughness, he worked to expand the physical area and the post-war library holdings Fr. Lawrence Bunzel, SVD, his predecessor, had nurtured.  Soon, the library occupied the second floor and, as well, the entire centre cross section beneath the University Chapel at the Main Building on P. del Rosario Street. With a sense of things historical, he established the library’s Filipiniana Section where he gathered Filipino literary and cultural materials, including rare publications, he would collect and exchange with other libraries in Metro Manila. This effort also lent spark to the idea of an exclusive Cebuano Section that, in time, and with the support of Fr. Joseph Görtz, SVD, and its first Director, Dr, Resil Mojares, became the nationally recognized Cebuano Studies Center, a specialized library dedicated to preservation of Visayan culture and folklore, bibliographic aids and oral history.

In supporting this vision, he trained talented working students, gave them the opportunity for undergraduate library science, recommending the promising for graduate degrees. His girl-Friday Nenita Sy matriculated at Holy Rosary College in Chicago in 1965 earning a Master in Library Science. Upon her return, she took over the day-to-day management of the library and, in turn, developed through Fr. Baumgartner’s support capable library staff and an enhanced library science program, later making the University a recognized centre for library science education in the Philippines under the Fund for Assistance for Private Education (FAPE).  

Recognizing the foresight of former Fr. Ernest Brandewie, SVD, and Fr. President Rudolf Rahmann, SVD, and with his own withdrawal from direct administration of the Library System, Father Baum supported, and in the end became Editor-in-Chief of, The Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society and, shortly after in 1974,  Managing Director of San Carlos Publications.  The Quarterly—albeit an eclectic journal of culture and society—became known for its timely release of issues, maintenance of contacts with a broad range of scholars both nationally and abroad and a style of editorials that spoke substantively of the significance of its scholarly contributions in fluent, idiomatic English.

But this harvest rests on an earlier seeding of post-theological studies and   experience in editing.  This took place in China, which he reached—Italy had now entered World War II—by land route through Russia.  His destination: the Vicariate of Tsaochowfu in the Western part of the Province of Shantung where he spent a year of language study with veteran China missionary Fr. Theodore Mittler, SVD.  In 1941, Fr. Baumgartner began working at the mission station of Chüantscheng where he studied modern and classical Chinese at the language school of the Franciscans; he then took up Chinese and Mongolian history and language at the Fu Jen Catholic University, Beijing, where he graduated with a Master of Arts in Chinese and Mongol History in 1948.  A humorous but portentous anecdote he told of himself:  the Rector Magnificus chided him for delaying his studies—he was reading the great classics in the English language!  But also with the blessings of the same Rector he was asked to edit the Chinese missiological journal Monumenta Serica.

                Regrettably, this mission was cut short by the Maoist Communists occupation of Beijing in 1949, Father Baum taking refuge in Hong Kong. He arrived in the Philippines the same year, first missioned to the Colegio de la Immaculada Conception in Vigan, Ilocos Sur and then shortly after to the University of San Carlos in Cebu - but that is where the story began…

Fr. Baumgartner hailed from Rammersweier near Offenburg, Diocese of Freiburg, Germany, son of Karl Baumgartner and Theresa nee Bohnert, on March 13, 1913.  With his desire to become a priest, he received his first lessons in Latin from the local pastor.  Attending Secondary School in Sassenbach, he graduated in 1933 head of his class, obtaining university qualification—the Abitur.

                A former classmate and, later confrere, Fr. Arthur Lang, SVD, made him aware of Divine Word Missionaries. Together, they began the Novitiate at St. Augustin, Siegburg, in 1933. After finishing philosophy, he moved to Rome for theological studies at the Gregorian University, took Final Vows on March 1939 and was ordained at the Church of Sant’Ignazio in the same year. During this time he exhibited an aptitude for learning languages—mastering Latin grammar and being comfortable in Greek, moving on to become proficient in translating Spanish to English.

In 1995, he returned to Germany and decided, because of medical problems to remain there; he spent some time at the Mission Seminary in St. Augustin and then moved to the Mission House of St. Wendel in 1997.  After an active life, Fr. Baumgartner, mentally alert and outgoing, continued to monitor the events of the Church and the worldwide SVD. After a lingering illness, he died on March 20, 2011, at 97, the oldest member of the SVD Province.  The St. Wendel community celebrated the Requiem Mass for him and escorted his remains to their final resting place in the SVD cemetery.

And so the University of San Carlos cherishes the legacy of Joseph Baumgartner, SVD:  a savoring of the truly human in artifact and value, a lifetime of self-education in learning and the skills of librarianship, an unrelenting commitment to see that a rich heritage of knowledge and scholarship endures at the University.  Proudly, we enshrine this legacy in the aulas of an enviously large new library construction, whose function will be tested in the coming months and years, but whose form—both aesthetics and architectural consonance with other structures on the Talamban Campus—will be adjudged in time and good taste.