FLACHMEIER, WILLIAM AUGUST (1900-1979). William August Flachmeier, Lutheran minister, was born in Pflugerville, Texas, on August 20, 1900, the son of Wilhelm Heinrich Gottlob and Emilie (Pautz) Flachmeier. He received a B.D. degree from the Wartburg Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa, in the spring of 1923 and was ordained by his father in Fredericksburg, Texas, in July of that year. With the Columbus Mission parish he worked in small communities in Colorado and Austin counties from 1923 to 1942. He married Jeanette Hastedt of Columbus on December 2, 1933, and they had a daughter. During World War II Flachmeier served in the Pacific Theater as a chaplain in the United States Army. After the war he moved to a ministry in La Marque, but after discovering that the climate was bad for his wife's health he requested another assignment. He went back to school and earned an M.A. from the University of Texas in 1948 and a Ph.D. in 1955. Flachmeier served as director of parish education for the Texas District of the American Lutheran Church from 1948 to 1961. In the 1960s and 1970s he wrote a column on the church's audiovisual collection and a column entitled "Into All the World" for the Southern Lutheran. In the early 1970s church officials asked him to write a history of Lutherans in Texas; the result was Lutherans of Texas in Confluence (1972). Flachmeier died in Austin on December 21, 1979, and was buried at the Odd Fellows Rest Cemetery in Columbus.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Flachmeier Family Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Vertical Files, Austin History Center. Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.
