Edward steichen photographer carl sandburg hs

Lilian, like Carl, was the child of immigrants who affectionately called her Paus’l.  She was born in 1883 to parents who came to America from Luxembourg. Lilian and her brother Edward (who later became a world-famous photographer) grew up on a farm in Wisconsin.  Fiercely independent and academically brilliant, Lilian graduated with honors from the University of Chicago in 1903.  An idealist, she was passionate about politics and philosophy and became a member of the Socialist Party.

She had a job translating quotations from Latin and German into English, and then taught English, Latin, drama and elocution at high schools in North Dakota and Princeton, Illinois. 

One cold December day in 1907 at the Socialist Party headquarters in Milwaukee, Lilian was just leaving a meeting about translating German literature into English for distribution.  When she emerged, a thin young man named Carl was in the waiting room.  The two were introdu