The First Class of Fulbrighters - Fulbright-Kommission

Everywhere I Turn,
a New Experience is Waiting
by Richard H. Hillsley
I LIVED WITH GERMAN FAMILIES in the summer
of 1950 in Soest, Westphalia, under the Experiment in
International Living—with the family of Heinz Enneman
for the first half of the summer and in the second half with
the von Bardelebens.
We lived in the half of the von Bardelebens’ beautiful
house that had not been destroyed. They gave me a taste of
Goldwasser, schnapps with the golden flakes. We played ping
pong at the local school and I helped harvest wheat in their
field just outside the city wall, tying the shocks by hand
using some of the wheat as a tie. The family said that after
the war, they had to guard the potatoes in the field because
people were so hungry; some people got potatoes anyway.
We walked on the city wall in the moonlight. We danced
the Vienese waltz. Unfortunately, I got worms from eating
cherries out of their tree at night and had to be wormed like
a puppy. We visited a storage battery factory just after its
Wiederaufbau. 1 Mr. von Bardeleben was a mining engineer;
once he took me in a bucket on an Eimerfahrt 2 to the bottom
of his mine.
Walter Gaup was the local teacher in charge of the
Experiment group. He took us to visit the local school in
session, where the students kidded me by saying, “Dick ist
dick.” 3 We competed in a swim meet and went on a bicycle
trip along the Romantische Highway. We stayed in Rothenburg
and Dinkelsbühl in hostels and attended the 1950 Passion
Play in Oberammergau. I had one bicycle collision, but
that was only hard on the bike. Some of the students rode
up the hills by hanging onto the rear of trucks. The coast
down into Salzburg was fun and fast. We saw the water
fountains and jokes (guest seats, which put water under the
guests) of the king. We saw a puppet show to Eine kleine
Nachtmusik. We toured Mad Ludwig’s Castle
(Neuschwanstein), saw beautiful Barock churches and
climbed to the castle at the mouth of the Neckar. The group
never passed up a Konditorei. 4
I LIVED in the Wohnheimsiedlung Massmannplatz in
Munich with a wonderful group of German students during
my Fulbright year. The meals were Eintopf—I learned to
spoon quickly.
I took courses in statistics and mechanics. One of my
professors was Herr Dr. Foppl, it was his last year. The students
in the giant lecture room used to give him a loud foot
stomp when he arrived for class. During the time I was at
the Technische Hochschule the number of class rooms was
doubled in the Wiederaufbau, but in the beginning, I had to
run to get a place to sit. Many of the students could not buy
the texts so the professor wrote much of it on the blackboard.
There were two boards and he raised one when he
wrote on the other. We had to write quickly and much was
written in German script; I tried to sit beside friends, who
would tell me some of the words. Some of the students used
opera glasses to see the blackboard.
Since the classes were a little impersonal, I joined an
institute at the TH which did experimental stress analysis.
Their specialty was Spannungsoptik, i.e. making a three
dimensional model, stressing it, freezing the stresses in the
model, and examining the slices with polarized light to
study the stress concentration. My project was a model for
the aluminum diving tower to be installed in Nordbad in
Munich.
The institute invited me on weekend hikes in the mountains.
We saw the Adlerhof and went skiing at Oberammergau.
Unfortunately I fell down in wet snow and had to dry
everything in front in front of a Kachelofen. 5
I joined the Müncherlbach Choir under director Richter
and sang the Bach’s mass in H moll 6 in Munich.
Once a week the group I lived with had a Kegelabend ; 7
my wooden ball had a swastika on it. My friends once got
great pleasure out of getting me to drink beer out of a
boot—I got all wet.
IN THOSE DAYS, unsold opera tickets were sold to
students for two marks (50 cents) an hour before the performance.
Once I got a seat in the Königsloge. 8 If you could
not wait in line, the last row in the orchestra was reserved
for students and you could buy tickets at the cafeteria. I
went twice a week and always bought the libretto. I saw the
entire Ring and loved Tannhäuser and Der Fliegende
Holländer, but the march of the Meistersänger was the most
memorable. 9 The main opera house in Munich was not
rebuilt, but they sang at a beautiful opera house on the
main street of Munich. Always, I enjoyed seeing all the
people promenading during the intermissions.
The group I lived with went dancing frequently in
Schwabing 10 in some wonderful little places where we danced
the Viennese waltz and when possible had an Eierlikör or
Leberknödelsuppe or Glühwein. 11 We always stayed until after
the street cars stopped running. We had a long walk home,
but it was fun going down the center of the streets with
locked arms and singing at the top of our voices.
My roommate was Ernst Windsheimer, a German student
from Nürnberg. He invited me to his home. I enjoyed
the city wall at night, the Albrecht Dürer house, and the
city hall.
The group I lived with went to Fasching 12 together. They
insisted on a little “liquid preparation” in the dormitory
before the event. I had no costume so I cut holes in a burlap
bag and went as a slave with sandals. It seemed like we
danced everywhere.