The First Class of Fulbrighters - Fulbright-Kommission

others had deserted the course, and the
downcast speaker, unable to address me,
his lone auditor with the standard
“Meine Damen und Herren,” 3 came up
with the designation “der einzige Treue.” 4
And what a contrast it was to wrestle
with the incomprehensible Bavarian
dialect on the streets after basking
in eloquent high German in the Aula!
Then, there were the literary colloquia
in the evenings with authors such as
Leonard Franck reading from their
latest works, not to mention the solo
recitals with such living legends as
Wilhelm Kempff or the concerts of the
dynamic Eugen Jochem and the Bavarian
State Orchestra.
Literally every evening was spent
at either some musical event or at the
theater, with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf,
for instance, singing the role of the
Marschallin in Rosenkavalier at the
Prinzregenten or at the Kleine
Komödie, where the German premiere
of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was being
performed. And we enjoyed all of this
at student prices—three Marks or so for
very good seats purchased at the very
last minute (the exchange rate at the
time being 4.20 DM to the dollar!).
What treasures were housed at the
Haus der Kunst or at the Alte
Pinakothek. Never before or since have
my days been so replete with cultural
icons. Of course, there were also the
less highbrow, yet unforgettable,
evenings at a Schwabing Bierstube 5 or
the hours spent strolling along the
Isar, down Ludwigstrasse, around the
Königsplatz, or through the English
Garden. The atmosphere in Munich
was saturated with art and culture, and
I was the sponge that never ceased to
soak it all up.
To be sure, there were moments of
personal disappointment, such as the
day when I was seated in a large lecture
hall and a student approached me
and asked: “Ist der Platz neben Ihnen
frei?” I nodded and replied with a single
word: “Ja,” to which he responded—much
to my dismay—“Oh, Sie
sind Amerikaner.” 6 My as yet unpolished
German had been exposed by a
single monosyllable, and over the years
I have pondered exactly how this happened,
but no definitive answer was
forthcoming. Was the “a” in “Ja” perhaps
too short or too Anglicized?
John Fetzer in 1953
John Fetzer’s twenty-eight-year career
at UC Davis (1965-93) consisted of
two stints as Chairman of the Department,
two visiting professorships
(Dartmouth in 1976, the University
of Exeter, England ,1990-91), the
Directorship of a Summer Institute for
German Language and Culture in
Santa Barbara (1987-92), as well as
a plethora of graduate and undergraduate
courses in German culture, literature,
and music. Fetzer is also the
author of two books on Clemens
Brentano and two on Thomas Mann,
as well as approximately fifty articles
and essays (his colleagues honored him
with a Festschrift in 1996). In addition
to several research grants from the
university, Fetzer also received fellowships
from the American Philosophical
Society, the Guggenheim Foundation,
and then, “squaring the circle,” as it
were, two more Fulbright awards: a
summer seminar in Bonn-Berlin and a
travel grant in conjunction with the
Exeter visiting professorship.
On the other hand, tourist high
points of the year consisted of day trips
such as an excursion to the Drachenfels,
where we had a panoramic view overlooking
the sun-drenched Rhine, while
sipping wine at a picturesque locale; an
ASTA-sponsored, whirlwind tour of
Italy and Sicily on a shoestring budget,
or, on a grand scale, the Fulbrightsponsored
journey to the not yet
walled-in, but nevertheless sporadically
barb-wired, East Berlin, where a short
time before, on June 17, 1953, the
workers had shown their disdain for
conditions under the current regime, a
precursor of trends which, a generation
later would, with unbelievable dispatch,
culminate in sweeping reforms.
Returning to the U.S. in 1954 gave
me somewhat of a reverse cultural
shock, but I was now bent on becoming
a dyed-in-the-wool Germanist.
Graduate studies at Columbia were relatively
easy given my comprehensive
Munich background and intensive
course load. In the midst of an M.A.
program, however, the military draft
intervened, and even though I pleaded
with the Army to be sent to Germany,
I had to settle for two years in Georgia.
However, my experience at Columbia
as a teaching assistant made it possible
for me to become an instructor of German
in the evening extension division
of the University of Georgia in Augusta.
During this time I also completed
my master’s thesis, writing in the barracks
at night and on the weekends, all
the while ignoring the teasing comments
from my buddies, who had little
interest in such an esoteric enterprise.
Then, with my M.A. in hand and
the military service behind me, it was
off to the University of California,
Berkeley for the Ph.D. program (1958-
62). Here, among other things, I won
the heart of my future bride by tutoring
this native German speaker in the
rudiments of grammar. Barely escaping
the student uprisings of the turbulent
1960s, my wife and I moved on to
Northwestern University near Chicago
for my first real teaching job (1962-
65). However, when the severity of the
interminable Lake Michigan winters
and the weltering Chicago summers
became too much for my wife, who
initially had wanted to “experience the
seasons again,” we