Bader lends his name to school
Hillel Academy, Hillel High to honor philanthropist
Alfred Bader, 91, wants to make one thing perfectly clear: He is not retired.
The chemist, philanthropist and art collector and dealer is still on the hunt in search of the big catches, old master paintings.
Yet Bader, who co-founded Aldrich Chemical Co. in 1951 in Milwaukee, long ago reached that stage where others honored him for a career of accomplishment. He has received 12 honorary degrees and more than two dozen top prizes.
On Monday, Bader will be given an honor that is intensely personal when Hillel Academy and Hillel High School announce the schools will be renamed after him. It’s the first time that Bader has lent his name to an institution in Milwaukee.
The new school names of Bader Hillel Academy and Bader Hillel High, to be used beginning with the next academic year, will be unveiled during a community concert at Vogel Hall at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts.
The schools are operated by the ChabadLubavitch of Wisconsin, a Jewish group. The schools are not restricted to Lubavitch children.
Bader was among those who helped found Hillel Academy in 1960. Bader’s two sons attended the school. In more recent years, the school struggled until it was taken over by the Lubavitch group, which has been sup-
ported by Bader.
“I’ve been badgering him to allow us to name the school the Bader Hillel Academy for years,” said Lubavitch executive vice president Rabbi Mendel Shmotkin said. “He’s a very close friend. He is a major supporter of Lubavitch of Wisconsin. And he has said, ‘I don’t believe in naming things, never wanted to.’ And finally, after literally years of badgering, he acquiesced.”
With a shrug, Bader explained why he long sidestepped such a move, using a Yiddish phrase about not chasing after an honor.
“If the school feels it would be good for the school, I guess I don’t mind, provided Isabel doesn’t mind,” Bader said during an interview.
“Isabel is the world’s best wife,” he added.
Although he suffered a stroke in 2010, Bader remains deeply involved in his philanthropic work. Bader and his wife have given tens of millions of dollars and three prized Rembrandt paintings to his alma mater, Queen’s University in Canada.
“There are only six Rembrandts in Canada,” Bader said. “And Queen’s has three. They also have the best. The school was very good to me when I came out of the internment camp.”
Bader said his art collection will eventually go to the school.
Bader’s life story is a remarkable journey from preWorld War II Vienna, where he was born, to Great Britain, Canada and finally, the United States.
Bader was just 2 weeks old when his father, who was Jewish, died. His mother was the daughter of a CatholicHungarian count. His father’s sister adopted him and raised him as a Jew. She later died in a concentration camp.
Bader was part of what became known as the Kindertransport. Just 14, with a small suitcase, a five-pound British note and his stamp collection, he left Vienna. He was among 10,000 mainly Jewish youths allowed into Britain after the Nazis’ 1938 Kristallnacht attack of Jewish-owned businesses, buildings and synagogues across Germany.
In 1940, Bader and other German-speaking refugees were rounded up by the British as enemy aliens. He was sent to an internment camp in Canada, where he stayed for 1 years.
“I didn’t know it at the time but it was a useful time. I got a very good education. No girls to distract me,” he said of his life in the camp.
Bright and well-read, Bader was ready for college.
“McGill (University) wouldn’t accept me. They had a Jewish quota,” he said. The University of Toronto was doing sensitive research and didn’t want enemy aliens, Bader recalled, adding: “That’s foolish; I’m not an enemy alien.”
Queen’s University in Ontario accepted him, creating a lifelong bond. He studied chemistry and history there, and later went to Harvard University, where he earned a PhD in organic chemistry.
As a young research chemist at Pittsburgh Plate Glass, he was given an assignment in research in Milwaukee. With a partner, he created Aldrich Chemical Co., a manufacturer of fine chemicals. The firm later merged to become Sigma-Aldrich Corp. Bader, who was the firm’s chairman emeritus, left the board in 1992.
Bader said he enjoyed running a large company.
“Because it was chemistry and I’m a chemist,” he said. “And I knew a great many chemists around the world. Isabel and I traveled all over Europe, visiting chemists and asking for ideas.”
Bader said his strength as a businessman was “paying attention to detail.”
Isabel Bader said her husband is “passionately interested in what he’s interested in,” art, chemistry and philanthropy.
Bader’s largess will reach future generations through Bader Philanthropies Inc., which last year brought together the philanthropic interests of Bader and his wife, with those of his first wife, the late Helen Bader. The foundation is led by Bader’s son, Daniel.
But it’s clear that art, which first captured Bader’s eye when he was 10, continues to be a driving force in his life. He still pores over auction catalogs.
“Why did he like it? Why did some kids like this, that and the other? It just is,” said Isabel Bader.
“There were paintings all around the house” where Bader grew up in Vienna, she said. “He liked looking in the shop windows in Vienna, and they were filled with paintings. And he knew which paintings he liked.”
Bader collects Dutch 17thcentury paintings, with some Italian and Flemish works.
“When I started buying paintings, they were very inexpensive,” Bader said.
Asked if stamp collecting prepared him for art collecting, he said with a smile, “Well, paintings are so much more interesting than stamps.”