George Anthony Dondero (December 16, 1883 – January 29, 1968) was a

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

member of the U.S. House of Representatives from

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

Background

Dondero was born on a farm in Greenfield Township, Michigan, which has since become part of

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

. His father was an immigrant from

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

and his mother was an immigrant from

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Career

Dondero served as the village clerk of

Royal Oak, Michigan Royal Oak is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. An inner-ring suburb of Detroit, Royal Oak is about north of Detroit's city limits. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 57,236. Royal Oak is located along t ...

, in 1905 and 1906; as town treasurer in 1907 and 1908; and as village assessor in 1909. He graduated from the

Detroit College of Law The Michigan State University College of Law (Michigan State Law or MSU Law) is the law school of Michigan State University, a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan. Established in 1891 as the Detroit College of Law, it was the ...

in 1910, was admitted to the bar, and started a practice in Royal Oak the same year. He was village attorney in 1911 to 1921 and assistant prosecuting attorney for

Oakland County Oakland County is a county in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is part of the metropolitan Detroit area, located northwest of the city. As of the 2020 Census, its population was 1,274,395, making it the second-most populous county in Michigan, b ...

in 1918 and 1919. He was mayor of Royal Oak in 1921 and 1922 and a member of the board of education in 1910 to 1928. In 1932, Dondero was elected as a

to the

73rd United States Congress The 73rd United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1933, ...

and the eleven succeeding Congresses, serving from March 4, 1933, to January 3, 1957. He represented

Michigan's 17th congressional district Michigan's 17th congressional district is an obsolete United States congressional district in Michigan. The first Representative to Congress elected from the 17th district, George Anthony Dondero, took office in 1933, after reapportionment App ...

, which had been newly created by redistricting after the 1930 census. After the 1950 census, most of Dondero's territory became the 18th district. Dondero was elected two more times from that district. Both districts are now obsolete. From 1937, to 1947 Dondero served as

ranking member In United States politics, a ranking member is the most senior member of a congressional or state legislative committee from the minority party. On many committees the ranking minority member, along with the Chair, serve as '' ex officio'' member ...

of the House Committee on Education. He was chairman of the Committee on Public Works in the 80th and 81st Congresses. In 1954, he sponsored the bill creating the

Saint Lawrence Seaway The St. Lawrence Seaway (french: la Voie Maritime du Saint-Laurent) is a system of locks, canals, and channels in Canada and the United States that permits oceangoing vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes of North Ameri ...

, which allowed large ocean-going vessels access to the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lak ...

. Sympathetic to McCarthyism, Dondero claimed that American liberals had been responsible for a "whitewash" over the

Amerasia ''Amerasia'' was a journal of Far Eastern affairs best known for the 1940s "Amerasia Affair" in which several of its staff and their contacts were suspected of espionage and charged with unauthorized possession of government documents. Publicati ...

affair. In 1947, Dondero tried to block the trial of IG Farben executives for war crimes at Nuremberg by withholding funding for the prosecution team before indictments could be handed down. On July 9, 1947, Dondero included Rosenberg when he publicly questioned the "fitness" of

US Secretary of War The secretary of war was a member of the U.S. president's Cabinet, beginning with George Washington's administration. A similar position, called either "Secretary at War" or "Secretary of War", had been appointed to serve the Congress of the ...

Robert P. Patterson Robert Porter Patterson Sr. (February 12, 1891 – January 22, 1952) was an American judge who served as United States Under Secretary of War, Under Secretary of War under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and US Secretary of War, U.S. Secretary of ...

for failing to ferret out communist infiltrators in his department. His cause for concern arose from what Dondero called Patterson's lack of ability to "fathom the wiles of the international Communist conspiracy" and to counteract them with "competent personnel." Dondero cited ten government personnel in the War Department who had communist backgrounds or leanings: * Colonel

Bernard Bernstein Bernard Bernstein (30 November 1908 – 6 February 1990) was an American economist and public official. Background Bernard Bernstein was born on November 30, 1908, in New York City. He had at least one brother and one sister. He receiv ...

* Russel A. Nixon * Abraham L. Pomerantz *

Josiah E. DuBois Jr. Josiah Ellis DuBois Jr. (October 21, 1912 – August 1, 1983) was an American attorney at the U.S. Treasury Department who played a major role in exposing State Department obstruction efforts to provide American visas to Jews trying to escape Nazi ...

* Richard Sasuly * George Shaw Wheeler * Heinz Norden * Max Lowenthal * Allan Rosenberg (member of Lowenthal's staff) Dondero stated, "It is with considerable regret that I am forced to the conclusion the Secretary Patterson falls short of these standards."

Attack on modern art

Dondero was most notable for mounting an attack on modern art, which he claimed to be inspired by communism. He asserted that " Cubism aims to destroy by designed disorder....

Dadaism Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...

aims to destroy by ridicule....

Abstractionism Abstractionism is the theory that the mind obtains some or all of its concepts by abstracting them from concepts it already has, or from experience.Geach, Peter (1957) Mental Acts - Their Contents and Their Objects. Routledge Kegan Paul. One may, ...

aims to destroy by the creation of brainstorms." In 1952, Dondero went on to tell Congress that modern art was a conspiracy by

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

to spread

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a ...

to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. The speech won him the International Fine Arts Council's Gold Medal of Honor for "dedicated service to American Art."Anticommunism and Modern Art
(Accessed June 6, 2008). When the art critic Emily Genauer, who later won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, interviewed Dondero in the mid-1950s, he stated that "modern art is Communistic because it is distorted and ugly, because it does not glorify our beautiful country, our cheerful and smiling people, our material progress. Art which does not glorify our beautiful country in plain simple terms that everyone can understand breeds dissatisfaction. It is therefore opposed to our government and those who promote it are our enemies."John Henry Merryman,

Albert Elsen Albert Edward Elsen, Jr. (October 11, 1927 – February 2, 1995) was an American art historian and educator. A scholar of the work of Auguste Rodin, Elsen was the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. Career Born ...

, ''Law, ethics, and the visual arts'', Kluwer Law International, 2002, p.537. When Genauer pointed out the resemblance between his views and those of the Stalinist communists that he despised, Dondero was so enraged that he arranged to have her fired from her job at the '' New York Herald Tribune''.

Death

Dondero died at the age of 84 in

, and is interred there at Oakview Cemetery.

References

The Political Graveyard
The Detroit News, Sunday, February 8, 1932. Feature-Fiction Section, page 3. Dondero writes of knowing Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd, and daughter-in-law, Mary Harlan. He states that Mary Harlan Lincoln gave him the original letter written to President-elect Abraham Lincoln by 11-year-old Grace Bedell, suggesting that he grow a beard. Dondero further states that, though not a collector of "Lincoln relics," he did "make it a point to get acquainted with Lincoln's relatives, those who knew him, and those writers who have gathered biographical material about him."

Notes

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dondero, George Anthony 1883 births 1968 deaths 20th-century American politicians Mayors of places in Michigan School board members in Michigan American prosecutors American people of German descent American politicians of Italian descent City and town clerks Michigan lawyers McCarthyism Detroit College of Law alumni People from Royal Oak, Michigan Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Michigan Old Right (United States) 20th-century American lawyers American anti-communists American lawyers and judges of Italian descent