Carl W. Ackerman, the famous war correspondent,, is twenty-nine years old and a native of Richmond. He graduated from high school and from 1907 to 1911 was a student in Earlham College. While in college he started the Press Club, the college paper, and successfully managed it. Earlham conferred upon him an honorary degree in June, 1917, at the same time that Orville Wright of Dayton was similarly honored. After graduating Carl Ackerman went to work for the SidnerVan Riper Advertising Company of Indianapolis, serving nine months as a stenographer. About that time he heard Talcott Williams of the Columbia University School of Journalism talk, and nothing would satisfy him short of a course in that newly established branch of Columbia.

 He entered in 1912, and after nine months graduated as a member of the first class of twelve. He soon received an assignment with the United Press as a detail and office man, and had two important assignments which tested his mettle as a correspondent and reporter. One of these was an interview with President Wilson. When the famous Captain Becker of the New York police scandal was convicted, and sent to Sing Sing, Carl Ackerman secured an interview while Becker was on his way to prison and brought out many facts not before made public concerning that remarkable conspiracy.

 After three months in New York Carl Ackerman was given charge of the Philadelphia office of the United Press, was legislative reporter at Albany, New York, in the 1913 session, and was then sent to Washington to interview all foreign embassies, remaining there until February, 1915. He was then given the coveted honor of Berlin correspondent for the United Press, and remained in Germany all through the early years of the war, finally coming out with Mr. Gerard, the United States ambassador, when America became involved.

 Carl Ackerman’s reports on conditions in Germany have generally been accepted as the clearest and most accurate in all the great mass of correspondence that burdened the cables during the early years of the war. Several of his most widely read articles were published in the Saturday Evening Post, and after his return from Germany the Post sent him to Mexico and later to Switzerland, and he reviewed conditions in both countries. He is author of two widely read hooks, “Germany the Next Republic,” and “The Mexican Dilemma,” both published by the George H. Doran Company.

 More recently the New York Times sent him as eastern correspondent to Japan, Siberia and China, and he gave the first authentic account for American newspapers concerning the murder of the ex-Czar and family at Eketerinburg in Siberia by the Bolshevists. Carl Ackerman now has his home at New Hope, Pennsylvania. In recent months he has appeared before audiences all over the United States lecturing on his war experiences and particularly on the subject “The Menace of Bolshevism.” He married Mabel Van der Hoff of New York City in May, 1913. They have a son, Robert Van der Hoff Ackerman, born in 1914 in Germany, six months after his parents had gone to Berlin. Carl Ackerman is independent in politics. He is a member of the Lotus Club of New York, and an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Richmond. He is also a member of the Washington Press Club. Source: Indiana and Indianans; Vol. 4; 1919.

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