A native of the German-speaking Ehnen-sur-Moselle, Luxembourg, Brother Agnel Charles Frieden FSC., entered the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools at the junior novitiate in Bettange on January 10, 1909. Transferred to the one in Lembecq in October where his first task was to learn French, he received the Brother's garb there on August 30, 1910. Starting his two years of study in the scholasticate, he studied Spanish and English so intensely that by the time he finished he was fluent in four languages at age 19. Sent to Mexico in 1913 and assigned to the school for the poor in Mixcoac, before the school year was over the General Venustiano Carranza revolution forced all foreign religious and priests out of the country in August 1914. Brother Agnel was among some 65 of the 175 French Brothers in Mexico who accepted the offer to go to the United States. Assigned to the District of New York, where he spent two months perfecting his English in the scholasticate at Pocantico Hills and was then sent to the protectory in Utica, New York, to supervise students in the shops. In 1916 he was sent to the Manhattan College community in New York and assigned to teach in the Melrose primary school for the poor, which had many German-speaking immigrant children. Sent to Louisiana in 1919 in order to rejoin his French confrères in the founding community at Cathedral High School in Lafayette, he stayed until 1925. His former pupils there remember him as the "Brother with the big smile", in 1925 he was assigned to the founding community at Cathedral High School in El Paso, Texas. Given the year off for special studies at the Brothers' international motherhouse in Lembecq, in community with the Brothers and in visits with family and friends he spoke so enthusiastically about his 15 years in "the States" that they nicknamed him "the States". However, by year's end they had convinced him to stay in Europe. Passing away of abdominal and liver cancer at the Brothers' retirement home in Athis-Mons near Paris, he had a happy and fruitful life in many teaching assignments and leadership positions.