University of Vermont - Ariel Yearbook (Burlington, VT)

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THE ARIEL, 1907 27 elements that German gentlemen seldom have. He was a modest, gentle, kindly soul. Rudolf Biach, whom I met at the University of Munich, was a very different person. His father, a merchant prince of Vienna, out of his plenty, allowed his son some forty dollars a month for ex- penses. On this, with characteristic German thrift, he fared well, he dined heartily for a mark or less, he wore good clothes, and his dickey or false bosom fthe Teutonic substitute for a shirtj was always a thing of beauty. I-Ie was at once young, irresponsible, idle and conceited. He knew as few men as Jurgen, but for another reason, a true Austrian, he despised the thick-witted Baeatians, the Bavarians. He seldom went near a lecture-room, conceiving in the pride of his youth that he knew more than many doctors, during the session he was fond of ranging far afield, and I have wandered with him, west to Augsburg, north to Nuremberg, south tothe Tyrol. Finally, he was as clever a boy as I have ever met - a wide reader, with fixed views on all the arts, a brilliant talker and a linguist of surprising gifts. After a few months' training, he spoke English with fatal fluency. At Oxford, where I encountered him a year later, his command of the language, his wonderful self- possession, and his Austrian audacity won for him the suffrages of our littleecolony. Then there was Kuno von Eisenberg, a noble, whose people had been for five hundred years welcome at court, and a fair type of the aristocratic student, who never reads and who has no life outside of his corps. His cap of red, white and blue, and the gay riband that crossed his chest were his distinguishing marks. He had lived in an atmosphere of duels and beer drinkings, until his fat face was seamed with scars, and his body surfeit-swollen. He was always as full of quarrels as an egg of meat. The two proudest moments of his bibulous and bloody existence were the time when his mother led him forth to exhibit his first gashes to less fortunate mammas, and the joyous season when he was fixed or stared at and thus invited to a conflict by some famous swordsman. To a foreigner, who could not and would not fight, his manners were genial, gentle and kindly-in a word, charming. I can recall now, how his heels went together, his elbow curved, and his hat was jerked stiflly to the side when he bowed. In the University of Berlin there were many men like von Eisenberg, for each of the seventy fighting corps and vereins boasts fifteen or twenty members. 1

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26 THE ARIEL, 1907 diploma, attesting in pompous Latinity that, under the auspices and authority of the very august and potent lord, VVilliam H, a most ornate youth has been duly enrolled, etc., etc. The second is a student-card. Great is the power of this. It exempts from arrest, sometimes permits the holder to pass through crowds as one of the elect, and always pro- vides reduced rates at the theatres, where the student may thus see for a triile the greatest plays of Shakspere, Goethe, Schiller and lbsen. The third is the Anmeldebuch, in which each course is entered upon the payment of twenty marks or live dollars, and which each professor signs. The matriculant is now a full-iiedged student, free to come and go at will. Absolutely no restrictions are placed upon him, he may attend all lectures or no lectures. He wears no academic dress, he lives in no dormitory. As a result, he comes in contact with few men outside his own clique, and holds a little corner for himself against all mankind - Philistines, Camels, men of other corps, foreigners. Then too his self-sufficiency is a fearful and wonderful thing. You English can never de Shakspere grammatik understand like wef' declared loftily a bulbous youth after the lecture, and one could only answer that his remark carried its proof. Add Rechthabereif' an insistence upon onels rights at every cost, and a readiness to take offence, attested by many scars, and you have certain ingredients of the German students, class- prejudice, self-sufficiency, assertiveness and undue sensitiveness. Now let me describe three students whom I knew well. Carl Jurgen was no noble, not even well-born, but a man of the people. His clothes were shabby, his coat ill-iitting and with an unnatural gloss, his linen or Celluloid-I am not sure that his collars and cuffs were of linen- seldom above reproach, and his high hat was always brushed the wrong way. And yet he was a painstaking, earnest scholar,-a man present at many lectures--a student of intensive reading who, at the close of his six semesters, would make his doctorate with honor and fill some modest place in the state. He knew few men, to the better class of students he was a Philistine, for he loathed duels and despised the mili- tary. In theory he was a violent social-democrat, yet T have heard him ask of a guardsman some simple question with bated breath. He was not of the world of German gentry 3 but he had in him some of the finer

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28 THE ARIEL, 1907 Now for the German professor! The last generation has seen the passing of the old type that appears in Fliegende Blatter and Jugend, grimly bespectacled, long-haired, absent-minded. He is now usually a capable, practical and responsible man of affairs, whom the dust of the schools has not blinded. He has'made sacrifices for the higher end, for his upward progress has been slow. After his doctor's examination, following three years of advanced work, he decided to forego an oberlehrerls or higher school teacher's position with its seemingly princely salary of thirty-six hundred marks Qnine hundred dollarsj, and to take his place on the lowest rung of the university ladder, as Private- docent, with fees of perhaps eight hundred marks. His undoubted ability and enthusiasm attracted students Qperhaps too much stress is laid on his drawing powerj, and after some two or three years of very lean kine, he became extraordinary or associate professor. In the meantime he scorns delights and lives laborious days. He can take no steps towards soliciting a vacant professorshipg but his opus, on which he has labored so faithfully appears. His name is up from Freiburg to Konigsberg. A call to a chair in a larger university, Berlin or Munich, comes, and he is a made man of social rank and comfortable income. He is, henceforth, an oracle among men, and his fame draws many wandering students to his university. The fields of usefulness of 'the professor are three: His lectures, his personal association with students and his research. As a rule he is not a good lecturer, immeasurably inferior to his compatriot of the Sorbonne, who is nearly always a golden talker, and not approaching the best American or even English standards. There are, of course, many exceptions. Harnack and Willaiiiowitz-Mollendorf drew and still draw large crowds to the publicum or public lectures, and few of us will forget the delight with which we listened to Dessoir discourse for many hours on Fine Arts. But Harnack and VVillamowitz were giants and Dessoir had French blood. I think my statement holds-the lectures are often well planned, but they are too heavily burdened with fact, are poorly delivered and lack inspiration. Mountains of method, a thousand details, but few vistas and little illumination. The German professor is a social being. I remember how one great-hearted, deeply learned scholar affected young men. At the kneipes or feasts of his students