Notes Along the Way 2.4 -- A Semester in Germany

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17. Professor Dunn arranged for me to spend two months of the spring in Tübingen, 1995. What a great privilege that was. He arranged for me to meet with Hermann Lichtenberger while I was there. Later in 2004 I would do a Fulbright sabbatical with Professor Lichtenberger as well. 

In the winter of 1994, my parents came to visit. It was my mother's first time in Europe and my father's first time back since WW2. We would visit most of the places where he had been stationed during the war. 

In England, that was Cheltenham. I can still hear my dad trying to say it with a British accent (and failing). He was in the Ordnance Corps and so helped administrate the supply lines (he ended the war as a Sergeant Major). Thankfully, that meant he was always a step or two behind where the front was.

My dad rented a car, as I recall. We have a picture of my mother in Paris realizing that she had put her jacket on top of her seat belt and then was a bit puzzled at first why she couldn't get up.

That means we must have taken a ferry across with the car. Cliffs of Dover across the channel to Calais. It was a trip I'd take a few times. When I actually went to Germany in January, though, I took the Chunnel, which had only recently opened, as I recall.

18. From Paris we took a train to Mannheim. Unfortunately, we didn't get to stop at Nancy, France, where my dad was stationed when the war ended. Again, his French (like his Spanish frankly) was atrocious. But I recognize that it's harder for me to learn languages now in my late 50s than when I was younger. 

He remembered saying things like, "We need boo-coo tires" (beaucoup). And I think "sin-nee-finee-en" was an attempt to say "Ça ne fait rien." Something like "doesn't matter."

The train from Paris went to Mannheim, where we took a taxi (I think) to visit the plant where he had been stationed just after the war. Not much to see there. 

I was especially struck by the fact that many buildings had one style for the first floor and another style for upper stories. Sometimes there was even one year engraved on the first floor and another year engraved for the upper floors. Quite striking to realize that the upper floors had been bombed to smithereens during the war.

From there we took the train to Stuttgart, then to Tübingen for my first time. I would stay there for two months in the spring of 1995.

We met Frau Ilse Michel, the wife of the Hebrews scholar Otto Michel. I was to stay in her Keller for a small amount. My only house responsibility would be to perform the obligatory Kehrwoche -- the sweeping of the front sidewalk on Saturdays.

19. From there we took a train to Munich, where we spent the night. The next morning we would visit Dachau. What thrilling experiences these were for my parents, and they were experiences my mother had never dreamed of having. I don't think my father had ever been to the east side of Germany either.

He wanted to see Bern, Switzerland. He had spent a memorable weekend there while stationed at Mannheim. So we took a train from Munich to Zurich. Unfortunately, there was a 25 mile stretch that ran through Austria. No stops, mind you, but it crossed the border. Suddenly, we found ourselves having to pay for the train fare through Austria. So much for all my planning.

From Bern up to Basel, back to Paris, back to England, and the trip was done.

20. It was an incredible time in Tübingen for two months. Frau Michel was delightful. I only wish my German had been better.

I had first started learning German with a record I checked out of the Broward County library in Fort Lauderdale while I was in seminary. I took Dr. O'Malley's German for Reading Knowledge. Then I tried to go back through Jannach in preparation for Tübingen.

But alas, speaking a language and reading it are quite different. Given my speaking ability when I went, I must have seemed to know no German at all. Everywhere I went I had my little pocket dictionaries, depending on the country.

Coming to Germany, I first went to Paris, where I spent a day doing my usual blitz of a new city (although I had briefly come through with my parents). Notre Dame. Arc de Triomphe. The Tour Eiffel. I stayed at a hotel in the shadow of Sacre Coeur (Regyn). It would become my usual.

My French was not super and of course eventually would be worse than my German. I remember once trying to book a reservation over the phone with the Hotel Regyn and every time I tried to speak French it came out German. He was much happier to speak with me in English.

21. Christoph Lorenz was great to reconnect with, and I met two of his friends, Reinhold Schmoltz and Gottfried Eberhardt. The rules were that they couldn't speak to me in English until my German completely failed. At the beginning, that was almost instantaneous. When I left, I felt like they knew more about my time in Tübingen than I did.

By the end of my stay, my German had improved significantly, although I was still nowhere near fluent. Lichtenberger inevitably had to speak to me in English during my meetings with him. I drafted a chapter of my dissertation while there on the dualism of Hebrews. I would say most of the scholars who have engaged with that chapter have disagreed with it, and I have even changed my mind on some of it. Let's say my understanding of ancient metaphysics was rather simplistic and stereotypical at the time.

However, despite its lack of popularity, I continue to believe that the New Testament has more metaphysical dualism that some might like to think (Joel Green, Tom Wright). A few years later, Dale Martin's book on The Corinthian Body was very helpful, I thought.

The Theologicum at Tübingen was superb, probably the most useful library I've ever used. Certainly the libraries at Notre Dame and Durham were quite well stocked, but the books I wanted were often checked out by other doctoral students. Perhaps the fact that I was especially keen on English books in Germany helped.

22. I think I've mentioned my conversation with Frau Michel about her sons. All three died during World War II. One was standing next to a propeller. I got the impression that Otto was a bit of a hard task master who was "always right." I wasn't sure if that was sarcasm or sincere.

The radio station I was able to get seemed like all US 50s music. I didn't know a lot of it. Am besten am Neckar. Neckar Radio.

I did a few trips with I think a 5 day train pass. There were of course the two days coming and going. I think I went to Munich and Vienna and back. Walked around the grounds of the former palace. I have never been impressed with the Baroque. Waved at Salzburg. 

I got up one morning and took the earliest 4:30 train to Berlin, then walked from the Fernsehturm all the way back to the Gedächtniskirche in time to catch the last train back. One day pass. 

That was only about 5 years after the Berlin Wall fell, so I was able to grab a piece of it. You could still see how much worse Eastern Berlin looked from West (go capitalism). The Reichstag in a unkempt field. Brandenburger Tor. Victory monument. Englischer Garten. It was quite a walk. It would be much different in 2004 when I visited again with my new family.

23. There was a small church fellowship that met in the building of the organization that had once been run by Loren Stuckenbruck's father. That is the fellowship where I worshipped during my time in Tubingen. We would visit the group again during my Fulbright in 2004. Although, on that stay, we primarily worshipped at the methodistische Gemeinde.

24. Reinhardt and my other German friends were quite hospitable. I ate with them regularly at one of the university cafeterias. We took a drive into the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) and down to the Bodensee. There were plenty of trips to have Currywurst and Bratwurst and Rotwurst. And the Döner Kebaps were superb. Many Döner Kebaps.

I left by way of Hamburg and a ferry to England along the North Sea. I tried to watch a Julia Roberts movie in French. I still don't know what it was about. The ship landed at Harwich, I think.

Frau Michel gave me a copy of Otto Michel's German commentary on Hebrews as a parting gift, for which I was very grateful.

Tübingen - Trips 13

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89. I was able to do a few trips while I was in Germany to finish out the days on my Eurail pass. I drove with someone, I think Reinhard, to the Bodensee for a day (Lake Constance). On the way we passed by the castle Hohenzollern.

Over the years, I have had a hard time getting my head around the way Germany has been structured politically. My main stumbling block was in fact thinking of this region as being "Germany" in the first place. Germany really was not an entity until 1871 when the Hohenzollern family became monarchs, and even then it wasn't exactly the same region as today. Before then, this region was a collection of little territories, little kingdoms of a sort. They were all German, but they weren't Germany.

You see castles all over Germany. These were all domains of various sizes, fiefdoms, all under the Holy Roman Empire, mostly the Hapsburgs in what we would call Austria today. Napoleon's conquest ended the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. These were more independent than the states we have today in the US. So there is a lot of local flavor, especially in those areas like Bavaria that were once their own kingdom.

I'm pretty sure I took a train out to Vienna. Quite a Ken thing to do. Vienna is way on the east side of Austria. I didn't spend the night. I basically rode all day on a train so I could spend just a few hours at the palace in Vienna. Even then, I found the Baroque colors of gaudy yellow and puke green unpleasant. I didn't even get off at Salzburg. It did look pretty from the train.

90. I went to the Black Forest with someone at one time to Bebenhausen, a cloister that had not been bombed in World War II. The region in general in which Tübingen is located is called Swabia. It's actually in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

The Swabians, like the Bavarians to the east, had their own dialect of a sort. Alex Jensen (from Hamburg in the north) used to joke about not being able to understand the Swabians. They might say, "I muss schaffe gange" instead of "Ich muss gehen zum arbeiten."

I had a radio of some sort in the Kellar of the Michelhaus. I learned more fifties and sixties American music there than I had ever learned in the States. "Neckar Altradio" (Neckar is the river that runs across Tübingen).

I'm sure I visited Stuttgart on one or two occasions. There wasn't really much for me to do there other than eat. Nevertheless, it was the passing through point in and out of Tübingen.

91. Another very typical Ken trip was a one day turn around to Berlin. I only had one day to spare on my Eurail pass, so I left on the earliest train to Berlin of the day, around 4am. I arrived in Berlin around 11am. I walked from one end of Berlin to the other in about three hours. Then I ate and hopped on another train back to Tübingen, arriving about 10pm.

I took the subway all the way to the Fernsehturm on the east side and walked all the way back. The Fernsehturm at Alexanderplatz is the television tower in east Berlin that you see in the first Jason Bourne movie. At that time, we were only six years out from the fall of the Berlin wall. Let me say again that the stark difference between bleak east Berlin and vibrant west Berlin was obvious.

I walked to the Bundesreich, which at that time was still not yet in use. Then there was the Brandenberger Tur which stood at the cusp of "no man's land." I had to go a little bit to the north to find a little chunk of the Berlin wall, since most of it had been demolished. On to the Victory Column in the middle of the Tiergarten. Yes, there were nude sunbathers there. [1]

Soon I was back at the Gedächtniskirche, the "church of remembrance." They left the bombed old church standing next to a not so attractive new cube church to remember WW2. This is not a remembrance like Civil War statues in the south seem to be. Civil War statues in the south seem to function as "we were right and shouldn't have lost" memorials. The Gedächtniskirche is a reminder of what happens when you let fascism and hate take over. It's a reminder never to let things like the Holocaust happen again.

Germany only had republican democracy for about fifteen years from 1918-1933, the Weimar Republic. Only after WW2 did representational democracy take hold. At the moment, Germany is one of the most successful democracies in the world. You can never take such things for granted of course. The temptation to protect your perceived herd at the expense of all others is always lying at the door. This herd mentality always threatens to overthrow an egalitarian society.

92. So my two months in Germany in 1995 came to an end. It was Tübingen to Stuttgart to Karlsruhe to Paris with a mess of luggage. A lovely overnight in Paris at the Hôtel Régyn. Eurostar at Gare du Nord to Waterloo Station London, sitting next to the older Russian woman I mentioned earlier. Kings Cross to Durham.

[1] Nude bathing was certainly something different to see in Germany. There was nothing really sensual to the nude sunbathers in Berlin as far as I could tell. Let's just say there weren't any models sunbathing in the park.

Tübingen - Dissertation 12

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86. I believe I wrote the chapter of my dissertation on dualism in Hebrews while I was in Germany. It is not the best chapter. I had a sneaking suspicion that there was a deeper background understanding of the Greco-Roman world that I was missing and that I was being reductionistic.

On the other hand, I often had that feeling when I shouldn't have. In my first few years at IWU I had a chance conversation with Greg Sterling in the stacks of the Notre Dame Hesburgh library. I asked him whether he knew some great resources on this very question. I had read some of the ones he mentioned in my first year in England. I left the conversation feeling like I was more on top of things than I feared.

When I returned to Tübingen on sabbatical in 2004, I would extensively use the Theologicum, the fantastic theological library of the university. I don't remember using it quite as much my first time there. The library of Durham somehow did not seem to have as much, and often when I wanted a book there, it seemed to be checked out.

One of the big questions was whether Hebrews pictured the full removal of the created realm in Hebrews 12:27. I had read something in Thompson's Beginnings that gave me that inkling and it seemed to fit with the overall pattern of dualism I was observing. This was a dualism not so much between matter and non-matter but between that which is created and the heavenly realm that is not created.

However, these were the days before I had really explored the topic of creation ex nihilo. When I later worked on Philo and other projects, I would more fully realize that this idea did not really become solidified in Jewish and Christian thinking until around AD200. [1] I remember that, when I taught for Notre Dame in my early days at IWU, I was thinking that 2 Maccabees 7:28 was the first instance of ex nihilo belief.

But what I came to understand is that I was reading verses like Gen. 1:1-2, 2 Macc. 7:28, and Heb. 11:3 with later theological glasses. The underlying assumption of the ancient world was that existence was not conceived so much in the ontological way of my modern worldview but in the sense of order and functionality. In the ancient worldview, when God created, he took orderless chaos and made things to exist. It is currently the consensus that the Gnostic controversies are what solidified the ex nihilo perspective.

But if creation in Hebrews is the ordering of chaos, not creation ex nihilo, then it would make sense to say that the removal of the creation is not annihilation, but reformation.

I do therefore believe that I was wrong on one of the key ideas in Hebrews for which I am known--the annihilation of the cosmos. I presented a tentative paper to this end at Pepperdine a few years ago in honor of James Thompson. Sometime soon I need to publish the error of my way in a journal somewhere. I saw Thompson in November and he welcomed my submission.

87. My dissertation had two main sections after the introduction. There were two chapters on the setting of Hebrews' story in time and two on the settings of Hebrews in space. By the time I went to Germany, the two chapters on time were drafted. One addressed the overall division of time into old and new covenant. [2] The second looked more at the trajectory of time, the destiny of humanity. Originally I had thought to do the entire narrative substructure of Hebrews, but it was too much.

I'm quite sure I had also produced a draft of the introduction in my first year. The introduction of course either has to be modified after the whole book is written or perhaps even should be written entirely at the end. Almost all dissertations grow and evolve in the process of writing, so you don't entirely know what you are introducing until it is finished.

Of course one almost always writes material that doesn't get in the final piece. I think I wrote a chapter on the structure of Hebrews in my first year. I read through George Guthrie's The Structure of Hebrews, which had just come out.

However, I was also taken with Walter Überlacker's rhetorical approach (Der Hebräerbrief als Appell), which saw the first two chapters of Hebrews as a kind of narratio, with 2:17-18 as the propositio. When I was at the University of Kentucky, I had done a paper on George Kennedy's New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism and was fascinated with the application of insights from ancient rhetoric to the New Testament.

88. I had the opportunity to go to lectures but my German wasn't good enough to get much out of them. I think I did go with Christoph to one in the later part of my stay. It was on Karl Rahner and the idea of "anonymous Christians." Rahner is a Roman Catholic who has argued that there are individuals who have a heart of faith but their head does not know Christ. The lecturer was arguing against the idea.

One application of this concept would deal with individuals who have never heard about Jesus. Picture a Native American in the year 1200. Picture someone in a remote part of South America. If they must confess Christ with their head, they are doomed to hell. They have never heard of Christ. It is simply not possible.

Now some have testified to an appearance to them before they heard the name of Christ. I have found people to be very sympathetic to the idea that, if Jesus appears to someone and they don't know what to call him, they can still be saved by faith even though they do not know his name.

The harder suggestion of Rahner is with a person who, because of where they were born, might think that Christianity is evil. Is it possible for there to be a person who, with their head, thinks that Christianity is evil, and yet has a heart of faith toward God? [3] Can one actually have faith in their heart even though they do not with their head?

I think broader evangelicalism would tend to say no to this question. However, Wesleyans tend to be more pietistic than high Protestantism. I remember growing up with the concept of God judging us according to the light we have, a Quaker idea. I grew up with the idea that God "lightens everyone coming into the world" and that, as Romans 1 puts it, God's divine power is known by all so that they are without excuse (Rom. 1:20).

I thus consider it within the scope of Wesleyan thinking to entertain Rahner's thought as a possibility. Certainly it is in keeping with Wesleyan theology to believe that God does indeed give every human a chance to be saved. Although I am not certain if Wesley took this step, the very idea of prevenient grace is that the Spirit reaches out to everyone and gives them the opportunity to be saved.

By contrast, the idea that God only chooses some--and thus that those who have not heard are just some of those not predestined to be saved--is not in keeping with Wesleyan thought. I cannot answer the problem of suffering and evil if you must have knowledge to be saved. The idea does not cohere with the character of God if we believe that all will face eternity and judgment. [4]

I sit loosely to these ideas, knowing they are controversial. I also know that they could be used to undermine evangelism. My response to this charge developed when I self-published a little booklet, The True Wesleyan. My hypothesis is that there is a threshold of light God gives to all. But a person can have much more light. Is it possible that our prayers, a Christian home, and other opportunities make it even more likely that we will believe?

If so, then our opportunity for faith is not equal but it is fair. Evangelism, unless it is done counterproductively, thus only increases the likelihood of faith.

[1] I think a chapter by David Winston in the Studia Philonica Annual was instrumental here.

[2] When I was working on Understanding the Book of Hebrews (a more general overview of Hebrews from the perspective of story), Carey Newman suggested I look at the story of Hebrews from a more global perspective (he was my publisher at Westminster John Knox). Something like creation-fall-redemption-salvation-consummation. My response was that this was a broader theological perspective on time and that I was interested in the way Hebrews itself conceptualized time.

[3] I say Christianity rather than Jesus, since for example Muslims have a generally positive view of Jesus, although not as God.

[4] If one were an annihilationist rather than believing in eternal punishment, the idea would be more theologically coherent.

Tübingen - Speaking German 11

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80. I remarked as I left my two months in Germany that my German friends knew more about my visit than I did. I considered myself quite fortunate to have Christoph Lorentz as my friend as I came to stay in Tübingen. I arrived in either May or the first of June. Soon I met his close friends Reinhard Schmoltz and Gottfried Eberspeicher.

The rules were that they were not allowed to talk to me in English until I had a total language breakdown. That pretty much took place every sentence at first. I had not trained to speak German. I had studied to read German--biblical studies in German in particular.

It must have seemed to them that I didn't know any German at all. I have sometimes had the impression that some students from Asia I've known must have learned English the way I learned German. Sure, I did some records and tapes. But I learned German and French primarily from a grammatical point of view. I knew some vocabulary. I knew some sentence structure.

But words did not flow from my subconscious. Every sentence was like a homework exercise. Subject... auxiliary verb in the right form... direct object... participle... It was horrible. Christoph and the others were so patient. Reinhard and Gottfried used it as a chance to practice their English.

81. Most people in Western Germany also spoke English. They had a pretty positive, friendly view of the US in those days. It was very typical for people to want to try to practice English with me.

I met Frau Michel's son-in-law once, I believe it was. He was raised in east Germany. While the west Germans learned English as a second language, he had learned Russian as a second language. I remember him saying something like, "Die deutsche Zunge war nicht gemacht, russisch zu tonen." "The German tongue was not made to make the sounds of Russian."

I might add that I was in Germany five years after its reunification and six years after the Berlin War fell. It created quite a financial burden on west Germany. Make no mistakes, the communist economic system was and is a complete failure. I have a German friend whose father committed suicide in the 90s, I believe, because of the financial loss that followed reunification. Unification was the right thing to do, but the capitalism of west Germany had to absorb the economic wasteland of the east.

So the decision had already been made to relocate the German capital in Berlin. The capital of west Germany, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD) had been in Bonn. Berlin had been a divided city, half BRD and half DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik)

82. German gradually moved into my subconscious. I used to view fluency in a language as an all or nothing thing. Either you are fluent or you aren't. I have come to view it as a continuum, a sliding scale.

So I became fluent in certain conversations. I became very good at the "first meeting" conversation. The first minute of a conversation with a new person often goes very much the same. "Ich heisse Ken." "My name is Ken." I'm told my pronunciation was pretty good. So a person might think me fluent for a minute or so.

But I was not fluent in, say, getting a car wash.

We ate at one of the dining courts ("Mensa") on Wilhelmstrasse. There I was introduced to the Kirsch-Banane drink, a cherry-banana drink. Wunderbar!

In the Zentrum, the Marktplatz, the old part of the city, there was the opportunity for Wurst--Bratwurst, Currywurst, and Rotwurst. The Pommes frittes (french fries) with mayonnaise were good too. There was also a chance for Doner kebab. Das schmeckt gut! (that tastes good).

Then I might sit on the stairs of the Stiftskirche (the "pen church") and eat a kebab. Once I did this and Martin Hengel casually and somewhat absentmindedly wandered by. I didn't say anything to him, just smiled.

83. Lichtenberger inevitably had to speak English to me. I got a little better over my time with him but not good enough.

Even when I returned in 2004, my German was still quite lacking. A funny moment in that stay--I'm quite sure--was a paper I gave at a methodische Seminar in Reutlingen. I wrote the paper and tried to translate it into German. I'm sure it was half hilarious and half incomprehensible. I think I titled it something like, "Weltraum und Zeit in Hebräerbrief." I was going for "Space and Time in Hebrews," but Weltraum is more like outer space rather than the kind of space I had in mind.

During my first stay, I remember a man asking me how to get to the train station. I said, "Über die Brücke und geradeaus." My accent must have betrayed me. The man responded in English with a smile, "Over the bridge and straight ahead."

84. I wasn't able to speak much with Frau Michel until near the end. My main responsibility, in addition to rent, was Kehrwoche or Kehrstrasse. On Saturdays, I was expected to sweep the small sidewalk in front of the house. It took about five minutes.

I did meet with her, a young woman who took care of her, and one other person near the end of my stay. I hated that my German was no better than it was. There is so much I could have asked and learned.

In that conversation I learned that she had three sons that died in WW2. One died in a car accident, I believe. One died in battle. The third somehow was killed by a plane propeller.

Of her husband, Otto Michel, she spoke in understatement with a sly grin. I think she said something like, "Es ist manchmal schwierig zu wohnen mit jemandem der immer richtig ist." "It is sometimes difficult to live with someone who is always right." I think her children were somehow part of the comment as well.

At another point the question of Bultmann came up. Perhaps I asked her if she had known him. She said something like, "Er hat einmal in unserem Haus geblieben, aber er war natürlich ganz anders von uns." "He stayed in our house once, but he was of course completely different from us."

She gave me a copy of Michel's commentary on Hebrews as a parting gift. She even signed and dated it. It was quite lovely to stay with her. I think her house was something like Hauffstrasse 14 or 16.

85. For worship, I attended an English speaking fellowship run by Scott Caulley. At that time, he was in charge of the Institut for Christian Studies founded by Loren Stuckenbruck's father. That was a  nice, small worship opportunity in the Disciples of Christ tradition.

Near the end of my stay, Reinhard thought I had become good enough at my German for him to begin to practice his English. It was quite good. When I was on sabbatical in 2004, he was just barely still in town. He was just about to move, as was Christoph. My children called him "reindeer."

Paris to Germany 10

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76. The main reason I am writing these memories is my realization that they will only drift away more and more as I get older. My memories are not important, but it pains me to think of losing them. With every death, a chunk of history is lost, and I am an ideological hoarder.

I was not caught off guard, but it was still sobering to think of the loss of memory that happened when my father died. There are things I could have asked him the week before he died that will never be answered now. Even though they are insignificant, the web allows my memories to live forever.

77. I don't remember all the details of how I ended up going to Germany. I imagine that I got the idea from Christoph and Alex. I had of course heard of Tübingen at least since seminary. It was the place where Julius Wellhausen had developed JEDP. It was the place where F. C. Baur had applied Hegel's dialectic to the evolution of early Christianity. In fact Hegel himself had studied there.

I must have inquired with Dunn, and in typical form he made things happen. He arranged for me to meet with Hermann Lichtenberger while I was there. Then perhaps Lichtenberger arranged for me to stay with Frau Michel, whose husband had just passed in 1993. [1]

I stayed in Tübingen in June and July of 1995. I believe my parents came over just before to spy out the land. My dad had not been to England or Europe since World War II, and my mother had never been. We drove to Cheltenham, where he had been stationed when he first shipped to Europe. Perhaps we drove to Paris. [2] My dad had gone on leave at least once to Paris during the war, of course after it was liberated.

When we heard there was going to be a strike, we left early on a Sunday morning from Gare de l'Est. I wish I could remember our precise path. I know we took a train from Paris to Germany. It makes sense that we would go first to Mannheim, where my dad was stationed just after the war ended. On the way, the train passed Nancy, France, where my dad was I believe when the war ended. The factory in Mannheim where he had been stationed was now a Mercedes plant, I believe. [3]

I will say that in Germany there was a tinge of my Dad having to adjust his thinking from fifty years earlier. When he had been there before, the Americans were in charge. Now the Germans were equals. Another interesting thing I noticed in Germany were buildings with one year for the first floor and another year and style for the upper floors. Clearly most of Germany had been blasted to bits during the war.

It makes sense that we would go to Tübingen next to meet Frau Michel. I would live in her basement for two months (Keller). Some other scholar had just left, maybe Robert Jewett.

I believe we then continued on to Munich for the night. We visited Dachau the next day. From Munich we went to Zurich and on to Bern. We had something like a three country pass in five days, so our intention was to do France, Germany, and Switzerland. In typical Ken fashion, I did not anticipate that the train went very briefly through Austria. It was something like 20 miles or so. My dad had to cough up train fare through Austria for three people.

My dad had taken leave in Bern once while he was stationed in Mannheim. That was the attraction to go there. I believe it was not entirely different from what he remembered. Then it was back to Paris, back to London, and my parents returned home.

78. I think I stayed in Paris three more times that summer. It's hard to believe that I would go back to England in the middle of my stay in Germany but it seems like I did for some reason. Here are the fragments of my memory.

There was no internet in those days, no Google, so I made my plans by way of travel books. [4]  That's how I found hotels. My front weapons were thus a small French or German pocket dictionary and a travel book for either Britain, France, or Germany.

Back in my room were books on conversational French and German. I always tried to prepare myself in advance for such trips. I always wanted to speak the language. The idea of using English was anathema to me. I have never understood the presumptuousness of Americans who expect everyone else to speak English when you're in their country. I find this quite angering, to be honest.

When I first headed for Tübingen, I stayed in a hotel I found in a book in Montmarte. I believe it was called the Hôtel Régyn, just outside the Abbesses stop on the Métro. It is in Montmarte, just south of Sacré Coeur. There was also a small place to eat just across the street, I think Le Saint Jean.

I believe I took a Hovercraft across the channel the first time. It was the usual struggle with a box full of books and my rucksack full enough to break my back. I arrived in Paris with just barely enough time to get to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa. I was never able to get back. It was always closed by the time I arrived in Paris.

I had arranged though to have a day to look around. I saw Notre Dame and the Champs-Élysées. I did not go up the Tour Eiffel, but I went to see it. I went out to Versailles. I actually found the city quite sewery in general, but I have good memories of it.

Then it was from Gare du Nord to Stuttgart, Stuttgart to Tübingen. Train station to Frau Michel's house.

79. I'll mention my intermittent trip here now. I wanted to get to Hamburg, where Alex was from, so I took a ferry back to Durham from Hamburg to somewhere like Hull. When I returned to Tübingen, I took the Eurostar from London to Paris through the chunnel. I booked a round trip ticket for my final return in July. I've already mentioned that I sat next to someone who had seen Anastasia before she was executed.

When I called the Hôtel Régyn for my final stay, I tried to speak to the hotel in French. But by that time, every time I tried to speak French, it came out German. The hotel person was not amused. He did not speak German. Finally, I spoke English and he was fine again.

[1] It is fascinating how easy it is for me to find out such things now that Google exists. I did not realize how recently Otto Michel had passed when I was there. I certainly knew nothing of his past with the SA and such. No one really did at that time.

[2] We must have driven at some point in Paris because we have a picture of my mother stuck in the car in Paris. She had put her coat on in the car after her seat belt and so found herself initially unable to get out of the car.

[3] Every time we drove south of Gainesville, Florida on 1-95 in Florida my dad would mention coming down to the plains of Westphalia into Germany from France. That's a bit north of where we were. I remember my dad saying that there had been a sniper in the plant when it had been cleared out, not long before he arrived in Mannheim.

[4] Durham had just gotten email. My mother, who hardly ever had received a letter from me, now could expect to hear from me more regularly.

Radio, Relativity, the Quantum

The last book I bought on my way out of Germany a year ago was one called, The German Genius.  It's an attempt to address the fact that all anyone seems to know about Germany these days is the Nazis.  I jumped in the middle this week and read chapter 25, "The Discovery of Radio, Relativity, and the Quantum," a chapter about end of the century Germany in science.

Germany was clearly the world leader in physics at the end of the 1800s/beginning of the 1900s.  In fact, I have to believe that the world would look a lot different in terms of science and technology if that idiot of all idiots Hitler had not driven many of the brightest German minds in physics out of the country because they were Jews (Einstein, for example).  Perhaps the Germans would have been the first to the moon, for example.

Here are some of the highlights of this chapter:

• In 1888 Hertz invented a device that could send electromagnetic waves across a room.  He thought the discovery was "of no use whatsoever," but he had produced radio waves that we now use in all our communication, remote controls, etc.
• In 1895 Röntgen discovered x-rays
• In 1900, Max Planck gave birth to quantum physics by suggesting that energy increased and decreased in discrete packages called quanta.
• 1905 was the "annus mirabilis" of science (wonderful year).  Einstein published three papers, the third one gave birth to he special theory of relativity. It argued that time moves faster or slower depending on the speed something is traveling.
• Richard Dedekind defined continuity in math not in terms of "nothing between" but in terms of numbers connecting both to what comes before and after.
• Georg Cantor invented set theory and argued that some infinite sets are bigger than others.  Yet he also proved that the number of points on a line segment is equal to the number of points on a plane figure.
• Frege and Husserl are mentioned in relation to the philosophy of number but their contributions are not completely clear to me.  I have taken from Frege myself the parable of "sense and reference" in the meaning of words.  Wittgenstein undermines this model significantly, but I still find it useful in many circumstances.  It's the idea that a word has both a sense and a reference.  The reference is what it points to in the real world.
  
  I have little interest in Husserl.  I feel sorry for him and the way his life ended.  He thankfully passed before Hitler rounded him up but Heidegger apparently left him out to dry after he lost his post at Freiburg.  In general, though, I have little interest in the phenomenological school of philosophy, which seems to reign supreme across the map of my philosophical world right now.  

• Finally there's Hilbert.  He and Einstein developed the notion of "infinite dimension Euclidean space" or, as it is called, "Hilbert space."  He and Einstein developed general (rather than special) relativity.

In the News...

A number of things in the news of some significance.

First, a German court ruled that parents could not circumcise their children because of the potential bodily harm without the consent of the child. It is unclear to me what real effect this ruling actually will have in the German legal system, but it reflects the perennial struggle between religious freedom and government as an arbiter of individual rights. Do Jewish and Muslim parents have the right to have their children circumcised when a child is too young to have a say in the decision?  The potential religious consequences of this discussion are staggering.

It reminds us of recent debates over whether a public catholic institution must provide insurance to its employees that involves contraception or previous decisions about providing life-saving intravenous blood transfusions to children of Seventh Day Adventists.  Or can a photographer refuse to shoot a gay wedding on the basis of religious principle?  I do suspect that we will do better in the future if we focus on rights to follow our own religious beliefs rather than expending our energies trying to force the rest of America to follow our religious beliefs.

Second, there was the recent decision of the Obama administration not to deport individuals who would otherwise have been able to stay in the country if the Dream Act had passed.  It's clearly a political move on Obama's part in light of the coming election, but it is also clearly something he believes in and tried to get passed earlier.

Finally, there were the Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare today.  I am not expert enough to know whether the health care law will be beneficial or not.  One thing is sure, there is no such thing as complete objectivity. I would like to think that Supreme Court justices are more objective than the vast majority of people.   But they regularly disappoint what "both sides" think is objective. ;-)