Carl Zeidler

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Gravesite cenotaph in Forest Home Cemetery

Carl Frederick Zeidler (January 4, 1908 - December 11, 1942) was the mayor of the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 1940 to 1942. Born in Milwaukee, he graduated from Marquette University (Ph.D., 1929; J.D., 1931).

Serving as an assistant city attorney for Milwaukee (1936-1940), Zeidler stunned the city when he upset six-term Socialist mayor Daniel Hoan to become mayor of Milwaukee in 1940. Hoan had served as mayor for the past 24 years.

His rise to power was orchestrated by Harold Gauer and Robert Bloch (later the author of Psycho), who created elaborate campaign shows--in Bloch's autobiography, Once Around the Bloch, he gives an inside account of the campaign, and the innovations he and Gauer came up with...for instance, the original 'releasing-balloons-from-the-ceiling' shtick. He comments bitterly on how, after Zeidler's election, they were ignored and not even paid their promised salaries.

He ends the story, however, with a wryly philosophical point:

"If Carl Zeidler had not asked Jim Doolittle to manage his campaign, Doolittle would never have contacted me about it. And the only reason Doolittle knew me to begin with was because he read my yarn ("The Cloak") in Unknown.

Rattling this chain of circumstances, one may stretch it a bit further. If I had not written a little vampire story called "The Cloak", Carl Zeidler might never have become mayor of Milwaukee."

Zeidler was starting to distinguish himself on the national political scene when World War II broke out. He believed that he could best help the war effort by enlisting; he resigned his position as mayor and accepted a Naval Reserve commission on April 8, 1942. He asked for the most dangerous job on ship and became officer in charge of a gun battery on board the merchant ship SS La Salle. The ship and all hands were reported missing off the coast of South Africa on December 11, 1942. He was officially presumed dead November 2, 1944. A gravestone cenotaph marks his plot at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.

Carl's brother, Socialist Frank P. Zeidler would later also become mayor of Milwaukee from 1948 to 1960.

Carl Zeidler was known as the "Singing Mayor of Milwaukee" because wherever he went he always had a song for everyone, especially "God Bless America"; he was also called the "Boy Mayor" because of his boyish good looks.