The First Class of Fulbrighters - Fulbright-Kommission
The First Class of Fulbrighters - Fulbright-Kommission
The First Class of Fulbrighters - Fulbright-Kommission
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German lessons in the garden in Bad Honnef. <strong>The</strong> lessons were part <strong>of</strong> the routine during orientation.<br />
Understanding lectures at the university, which I<br />
attended faithfully, was another matter. I include myself<br />
among the large number <strong>of</strong> <strong><strong>Fulbright</strong>ers</strong>, who had difficulty<br />
comprehending lectures during the first semester. But<br />
persistence paid <strong>of</strong>f. In the second semester I could usually<br />
follow the lectures <strong>of</strong> my pr<strong>of</strong>essors in German history and<br />
political science. My favorites were Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Hans Rothfels,<br />
who lectured on Bismarck with authority, and<br />
<strong>The</strong>odor Eschenburg, who could entertain his attentive<br />
audience with digressions on the follies <strong>of</strong> politicians in<br />
Central and Eastern Europe. I even ventured to take a seminar<br />
on the <strong>First</strong> World War and to write an extensive<br />
paper in German.<br />
THE CONTRAST between a highly cultured Germany<br />
and its National Socialist past was still in the back <strong>of</strong> my<br />
mind. I had been conscious <strong>of</strong> this contrast ever since my<br />
father had served as a Protestant chaplain to German war<br />
1) Now Fort Drum<br />
28 29<br />
prisoners at Pine Camp 1 in northern New York State in<br />
1944-45. As it developed, my research interest centered<br />
around the interaction <strong>of</strong> religion and politics. Eventually,<br />
in 1984, I published a book, <strong>The</strong> Old Prussian Church and<br />
the Weimar Republic, that explored this theme by focusing<br />
on the largest <strong>of</strong> the German Protestant Landeskirchen. Here<br />
I could explain why the Weimar Republic failed to elicit<br />
respect. But the book did not proceed chronologically to<br />
explain why Nazism prevailed among many respectable<br />
church people, at least during the first years <strong>of</strong> the Third<br />
Reich. That question still boggles my mind.<br />
My <strong>Fulbright</strong> year drew to a close as the U.S. Army<br />
beckoned and as my stipend gave out in the summer <strong>of</strong><br />
1954. <strong>The</strong> year had turned out to be the grand adventure<br />
that I had anticipated. I bade farewell to friends in Tübingen,<br />
traveled south to Gibraltar, and boarded a waiting ocean<br />
liner for home and family.