Last month, the Winnebago County Historical Society held an event on the history of Oshkosh during Prohibition.

Lee Rieherzer, beer historian and author, spoke at the event and told the room of over a hundred about the main players in Oshkosh from the era, most of whom were immigrants and had families.

Rieherzer told the story of August “Fuddy” Witzke, who was an immigrant from Germany that refused to shut down his bar.

“He was arrested three times during Prohibition for violating the dry law,” Rieherzer said. “Even after coming back from jail, he went right back to the bar and kept reopening.”

Two families, the Needle and Miller families, were united by marriage, commerce, and vocation, as well as the alcohol business.

“The Needle family had a saloon and grocery store at the corner of Ninth (Avenue),” Rieherzer said. “And the Miller family had a saloon and butcher shop.”

Rieherzer then displayed a photo of the two families, which was 21 members total.

“Of these 21 people, at least nine of them are known to have been involved with bootlegging,” Rieherzer said. “This is the face of Prohibition in Oshkosh.”

In the case of the Rauber family brewery, the bootlegging business bonded not just families, but nearly a whole neighborhood too.

“After the brewery launched at the end of Rauber Avenue, a whole neighborhood developed,” Rieherzer said. “And most of the people in that neighborhood worked at the brewery.”

The brewery’s co-owner during Prohibition, Blanche Rauber, got her start at the brewery at age 13 as a bookkeeper.

Blanche Rauber helped keep the brewery afloat during Prohibition, producing drinks like soda and non-alcoholic beer.

“They were making a little more money than other breweries apparently,” Rieherzer said. “Because they were the only brewery in town that didn’t lay off its workers during Prohibition.”

Similar to many stories from Prohibition, Rieherzer said there’s a theory as to whether the brewery was being entirely truthful about what they really sold.

“There were always persistent rumors that a good percentage of their non-alcoholic beer actually had alcohol in it,” Rieherzer said. “They were never charged with any dry laws, so we don’t know if that’s true or not.”

Oshkosh was like that city-wide during Prohibition: pretending to play by the rules on the surface, only to keep up business as usual.

“The day before Prohibition began in Oshkosh, there were about 100 saloons in the city,” Rieherzer said. “The day after Prohibition began, there were about 100 speakeasies in Oshkosh.”

And until the 18th Amendment was repealed, bar owners wouldn’t change their tune.

“(The bar owners) saw this as an attack on their way of life,” Rieherzer said. “And they certainly weren’t going to submit to it.”

The Winnebago County Historical Society’s next meeting is on June 8 at the Morgan House Museum.