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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.

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