# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1911_S142
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

142 Proceedings of the 28th General or

...to urge such a meeting again later, since, despite thorough deliberation on the Milwaukee proposals and the Milwaukee opinions and reports, insofar as they were presented to us (for we were given no insight into everything they had written and printed), and after consulting eminent legal specialists, we could not be convinced that the existence of our Synod in a legal sense, or the legal qualifications of our Synod to assert its right of ownership over all real estate belonging to it, is threatened by the danger our brothers in Milwaukee fear.¹)

Even had we been inclined, in the interest of possibly greater security, to yield to the Milwaukee committee and recommend a new incorporation of the Synod in Wisconsin, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that such a new incorporation of the Synod in the State of Wisconsin could secure us only in that one state against the dangers the other brothers of the committee now foresee. For if we are not now fully and completely under the protection of the law, then a new incorporation under some special act of the Wisconsin laws would protect us and our property rights only in the State of Wisconsin, and not in other states, which — by the Milwaukee committee's own conviction — would have to regard such an incorporation as unconstitutional.

If we, as a company incorporated in Missouri, are not now covered by the law, as the Milwaukee committee believes, then we would be even less so in Missouri and all other states if we sought to place ourselves under the protection of a "special act" of Wisconsin. Or we would have to resign ourselves to selling all our real estate in all other states — in New York, in Fort Wahne, in Seward, in Addison — and, insofar as our institutions are concerned, moving them entirely to Wisconsin at enormous expense.

The St. Louis committee, after repeated deliberation with its attorneys, is of the opinion that the matter can quietly be dropped, or that the Synod should adopt the recommendation of attorneys Ferriss and Zumbalen, which reads as follows:

¹) As early as 1908 (see the Petitions of the Delegate Synod 1908, p. 109), Judge Lübke gave the positive opinion, in response to a direct question, that our incorporation faces no danger from the government. Judge Franklin Ferriss and the firm of Rowell & Zumbalen concur in this opinion. The latter firm writes explicitly, in an opinion also quoted by Milwaukee, at its close, as follows: "In conclusion we beg to say that we do
not wish to be understood as intimating that it is necessary that the
charter of the Synod be amended. The Synod is now a corporation. Its
charter can be attacked only by the state through its attorney-general,
in a direct proceeding. It is not subject to collateral attack; and we do
not think it in the least probable that the state will ever raise the question.

"ROWELL & ZUMBALEN."