Alfred Grewe Papers

2.52 linear feet

The Alfred Grewe Papers consists of approximately 6,200 photographic 35 mm color slides (with scanned copies) depicting St. Cloud State University classroom and field studies from the 1960s to the 1990s. The slides were scanned by Grewe's former student Mary Stefanski.

In addition to several sets of classroom lectures on key subject matter of his SCSU courses, the image collection includes a significant component of Grewe's’s research with bald eagles. He was one of the first to document the status and habits of eagles prior to their endangered species listing in 1967. As part of this work, Grewe was one of the first to suggest that chemicals in the environment were likely responsible for the critical thinning of eagle egg shells, a major cause of the inability of these birds to reproduce at a rate sufficient to sustain an already much diminished population.

Grewe was also a preeminent authority on American white pelicans, initiating and leading the world’s longest running pelican banding study at Marsh Lake in Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area near Appleton, Minnesota. Here he documented the breeding colony’s rise from two pairs to over 20,000, the largest American white pelican colony in the world for many years.

Other topics documented by the images here include sandhill cranes, owls of various species, great blue herons and other colonial nesting waterbirds, etc. Many wildlife species are depicted, including from his many graduate students' research / theses topics. Images portray Grewe or his students conducting “wildlife work” such as capturing and banding birds, working hunter check stations, conducting radio telemetry, etc. and overviews of habitat restoration practices from Federal wildlife refuges and State wildlife management areas. Several of the previous Grewe students shown in the collection became prominent names in the wildlife arena in future years, something Grewe gave him more pride than anything else he had accomplished.

Original text written on the slides was primarily from Grewe himself. However, many (if not most) of the slides have no written information on them.

The digital scans are organized and named as such (as written by Mary Stefanski):

The image file names include the following format: Group, Slide Number, and any Information written on the slide. Any dates, names, etc. within ( ) were not written on the original slide and were added for clarification from the date printed or embossed on the slide when it was developed. For example: Crex Birds IMAG0065 Injured Cooper Hawk (Owen Schmidt 1971). The original slide can be found within the larger collection in the Crex Meadows Birds folder in slot 65 and contains the writing “Injured Cooper Hawk.” (Owen Schmidt 1971) was added to the electronic file name based on the identification of Owen and the date, 1971, stamped on the cardboard slide holder.

The slides were mostly organized by topic by Grewe himself and in alphabetical order. Mary Stefanski did combine random slides and organized by topic.

Records are located at 28A.7a-e.

There are no access restrictions.

Currently the scans created from the slides are only available in University Archives and are not online. Additional digital material was filed in the digital accessions folder, which includes the scans of the slides, in A24-011.

Permission to publish, quote, and reproduce must be secured from the copyright holder.

Since Grewe never married and had no children, his niece Holly Orth signed over copyright to St. Cloud State in March 2024. See the Statement of Gift form (A24-011), which was also signed by Michael Lee.

After the death of Grewe in 2001, his sister Wanda moved into his home. The slides remained in the home until February 2019 when Wanda gave them to Michael Lee. While in Lee's possession, Mary Stefanski scanned the slides and placed the slides in archival slide protectors stored in nine binders. In March 2024, the slides were donated to the St. Cloud State University Archives.

Much of the scope and content note, as well as Grewe's biography in the authority record, were based on text written by Michael Lee and Mary Stefanski.

Processed by Tom Steman in September 2024