School
Dad's memoirs:
Spring of 1921 brought a milestones my entry into school. As was customary in Prussia in those days, the school year started at Easter. My parents enrolled me in one of the small private schools which by then had already begun to fade out. Since the advent of the Weimar Republic the " Volksschule " ( People's School ) had become the obligatory elementary educational institution. There were only a few private schools left which had the advantage that one could absolve the elementary education in three years versus four years for the public schools. If I remember correctly, mine was the last year that could take advantage of the accelerated course. Public schools were free and provided the mandatory 8 eight years of schooling for the bulk of the population. Private elementary and secondary schools charged tuition, and textbooks had to be purchased at bookstores. [1]
The school I entered was called the Joachimsthal Lyceum, actually a school for girls who in German tradition were provided a limited inferior education which generally did not lead to an academic career. Girls attended a Lyceum or a "Töchterachule" (Daughters' School) which, I believe, offered ten years' of schooling. Afterwards affluent families sent their daughters off to a finishing school or a "Pensionat ", preferably in Switzerland. Sexes were strictly separated in German school. We only caught glimpses of the girl students in our Lyceum usually during breaks or at the beginning and end of the school day, when they made cruelly and conspicuously fun of us little boys. Teachers were women. Fräulein Stabler was the name of my very first teacher to be followed by a Fräulein (or Frau ?) Brunswick. I had very mixed feeling in regard to Stabler who tried to introduce -me into the mysteries of numbers, a rather dismal undertaking in my then considered opinion. I adored Brunswick who stressed literature i.e. reading and writing. There must have been other teachers whose names forgot. I have a vague recollection of our director, Fräulein Joachimsthal, an elderly spinster encased in dark long whalebone-stiffened dresses. She had a sister who did her legwork. It seem that those German spinsters always came in two. My piano teacher later on presented an identical combination, a gaunt spinster in black dress who taught beginners, and a plump sister in charge of advanced students. More of them later I Of course, as the result of the war there were numerous single women around, widows or spinsters.
In German schools classes were numbered in reverse - one started in the 10th grade and worked one's way up. By virtue of my privileged status I skipped the 7th grade and proceeded directly to the " Sexta " (6th grade) of the Realgymnasium, my secondary school. A brief explanatory note concerning German secondary education. Traditionally the institution that prepared youngsters for a University career was the " Humanistische Gymnasium ", which offered Latin and Greek in large doses, little sciences and only optional modern languages. At the other end of the spectrum was the Oberealschule which stressed -sciences and modern languages @ within limits. A Oberrealsehule graduate could not enter the University unless he took some additional course especially Latin. The Realgymnasium provided a compromise: Latin, two modern languages and plenty of sciences. Of course, History, Geography and Art were compulsory subjects in all three schools. In fact, students had no choice but to follow the prescribed curriculum. There were a-few optional courses that we could take after hours - such as additional languages, shorthand etc. My father, a rather practical man, enrolled me in a Realgymnasium where I was accepted after passing a fairly demanding entrance examination at the age of nine years.
This was an important threshold. After the Easter holidays 1924 I became a “gymnasiast", a first step towards higher education. No longer would I share a school with girls, nor would I have women teachers henceforth. Yet I was also somewhat fearful because not only were there many unknowns, but the only and clearly known fact was that once again I would be at the low end of the Totem pole and therefore exposed to the scorn of upper classmen. There was no hazing or other physical abuse, but plenty of vituperative poetry!. The school was located pretty much in the center of town on a side street of a main and very busy thoroughfare. The school took its name from the street "Am Zwinger" [2] which means the fortified space between a town's wall and its moat, Breslau had no walls, not even remnants, but the old moat still existed in parts in the form of a park and promenade. In winter, we skated on it.
The school building was an old grim and grimy brick structure - maybe it was stone - which probably had not been cleaned in decades. [3] It had a small paved courtyard where the students of the lower three forms disported themselves during breaks. The upper six grades spent breaks outside on a sort of island next to the sidewalk in front of the school. We stood around, walked up and down eating our snacks which we had. brought from home in small satchels that hung around our necks. Books were carried in rigid leather knapsacks. In later years the knapsacks were replaced by briefcases, a sign of growing up.
I have few recollections of those first weeks and perhaps not many more of the first years. Everything was well regulated - there were no choices of subjects, locations or desk neighbors, One was assigned to a seat on one of the many one piece desk-bench contraptions with a slanting desk top and ink well at the top of the desk. We wrote with pen and. nib - no pencils allowed except for very specific purposes. Ink tended to cause problems, it was messy unless you watched your step, used fresh nibs for clean copies and bewared of "inkfish", bits of matter that had blown or fallen into the inkwell. Classrooms were lit by gas jets which the school janitor controlled. Classrooms had individual tile stoves heated with coal. There was no central heating. The gas names hissed., the stoves gave off a distinct smell in winter which mingled with the cloth wetness of our outer garments to envelop us in a numbing atmosphere. Of course, this was largely the case in winter, probably from October to March. In summer we had daylight and occasionally were permitted to open the windows and let the street noises in. As I already mentioned, school started after the Easter vacation (8-10 days). Seven weeks later we had Pentecost (Whitsun) vacation, about a week. In early July started the summer break that lasted about 5 weeks. October saw another 8-10 days break, the so-called potato vacations because in rural areas the children helped harvest potatoes, the essential German staple food. Finally there were two weeks of Christmas vacations. We got grades before vacations in October, Christmas and Easter. The latter were most important because it meant promotion to the next higher class or repeating the current grade. In the lower classes quite a few pupils were left behind, maybe 20% of the class of about 30. Of course, after Easter, we inherited the unfortunate repeaters of the next higher class and made up some of our losses. But the classes tended to dwindle as we proceeded and at graduation time there were approximately twenty left. Classes had Latin names. One started out in Sexta, then Quinta, Quarta, Untertertia Obertertia, Untersekunda, Obersekunda, Unterprima, Oberprima. More of that later. Just to round out the description of the physical plant I can truthfully say that we simply had no amenities. I believe that our school was well below the standards of the universally Spartan school system in Breslau. We had no gym, but used the gym of the municipal fire department located a few hundred yards from our school building. Right next to it was the municipal indoor pool which we were allowed to go to in later years when swimming became an elective. Our toilet consisted of a small shed attached. to the schoolyard wall, perhaps the filthiest place of its kind that I have ever encountered. One used the stools only under severe duress because on balance one was less dirty if one shit into one's pants than if one sat on the stool. We learned over the years to suspend ourselves over the seat without touching. To this day it boggles my mind that nobody ever attempted to modify this arrangement, that the health department never interfered or that parents did not vigorously protest. But then you must remember that parents had no input into school affairs. It was totally autonomous, only subject to the State Dept. of Education through its numerous minions. The Land of Prussia regulated all levels of education with some input at lower levels of government. Once or twice a year occurred social functions to which parents were invited and showed their faces if they were so inclined.
Teachers had authority by virtue of their position. It would have never occurred to us to question their standing or treat them in anything but respectful or even deferential fashion. Yet most of them were amenable to arguments provided they were based on facts - not conjecture. They had titles which conferred upon them social standing - "Herr Studienrat, Herr Oberstudienrat etc. " There was one elderly teacher who was addressed as " Professor ", a title dating back to pre- World War I days and obsoletetunder the Republic. Most teachers were "old", i.e. in retrospect I assume that they must have been in their forties or fifties. It came as sort of a surprise to us when later on we had some younger teachers.
*in secondary education
We never gave any thought to the idea that our teachers must have been young once. I suppose that young teachers started out in small towns and were transferred to the lofty heights of a city Gymnasium only after they had attained a certain maturity. In spite of their respected social position teachers were poorly paid. They dressed in shabby suits, often looked like caricatures of German middle class in postwar Germany. Politically they tended to be conservative nationalists with very few exceptions. They had their firm convictions, and very few supported the Nazis. I only remember a few by name, others vaguely by their faces. When I started out, we had some problem in Latin because our assigned teacher was on loan to the University. He was a very distinguished scholar, and later on became a full-fledged University professor. His temporary replacement was a rather young man by the name of Kohn, a Jewish teacher and as such somewhat of an exception. I believe that he was only a " Studienassessor", i.e, on a lower career rung. He was an excellent instructor, and we hated to see him go when Dr. Nehring returned from the University. However he too was excellent although perhaps a little too advanced for us Latin tyros. Latin was next to German the most important subject in those early days. We had both subjects every day. Other subjects were taught two or three times a week they included mathematics, natural sciences such as botany and zoology, chemistry and physics, history, geography, music, art and religion. We had religious instruction twice a week. The class split up according to denominations which met in their respective rooms. In Germany religious institutions were supported by the State, and ministers were in a sense civil servants, although basically state and religion were separate. Somehow we never had the arguments what was and what was not permissible in the religious sphere. It would have never occurred to anyone to introduce prayer into the classroom. There were occasional flurries of opposition around Christmas but children who objected to participation in Christmas plays or in singing songs were readily excused without any fuss. Until my voice broke - and even a little after that - I was a member of the school choir-from soprano to alto and eventually to baritone. This was a very distinguished institution in our school. our music teacher, Herr Aumann, was a well known choral director who had his own women's choir. He was quite demanding, and membership in the choir added many hours to schooltime because of additional practice time. 'We participated in many public performances of choral works which called for children's voices. Our performances of St. Matthew’s Passion was an annual event. We also sang in some operas such as Parsifal and Palestrina. Our full scale performance of Schiller's "Lied von der Glocke Song of the Bell) made local history.
I notice that in my enumeration of subjects I omitted one that was exquisitely traumatic for me - physical education, a twice weekly occurrence which I dreaded. I already mentioned that we used the firemen's gym for phys.ed. whenever the weather did not permit outdoor exercises - which happened much of the time. P.E. in Germany was " Turnen ", i.e. workout on various apparatus such as the horizontal bar, parallel bars, horse etc. I had an abject fear of the horizontal bar and to a lesser extent of the parallel bars. I simply could not hang upside down or swing around it. Fear and clumsiness made me an object of ridicule. I guess that I was somewhat chubby in those days, not fat but a little rotund. I had been a fairly skinny kid until I came down with scarlet fever at the age of eight years. In those days you were confined to bed for many weeks , a salt and meat-free diet, and as a result I ate a lot of pancakes and gruels and gained weight, which I probably did not shed until my later teens. It also seems that my father had always been very fearful for my safety, and I was not permitted to do certain things that entailed a risk. I never learned to ride a bicycle as a child. nor a scooter. Living in the middle of town on a pretty busy street My activities were quite restricted. Coming back to Phys. Ed. it was pure torture for me. For our outdoor exercises we had to cross a very busy intersection to go to the drill square in front of royal palace, a very dusty place without vegetation. There we did some track work and played the German school game, “Schlagball", a form of stickball. I did all right in broad jump and certain track activities - nothing outstanding but acceptable. At the age of eight I earned my swimming certificate. This may sound fine, but it also was a very traumatic event, i.e. my swimming course was anxiety-producing. In swimming instruction was precisely regulated. You started out in a harness suspended from a derrick-like contraption and learnt the basic strokes. Then you graduated to a belt of corks with the instructor holding a line, then belt without line, then line without corks and eventually you were expected to swim without assistance. Somehow I did not trust the water or the swimming movements. Thus when it came to line stage I balked at getting into the water. Eventually, the swimming instructor, a burly ruffian named Herr Schmidt, got fed up, lifted me up and tossed me into the water. The following week I passed the swimming test - 15 minutes "free swimming". But the preceding weeks had been gruesome. On the way to the Municipal Indoor pool I fantasized what horrible tortures Herr Schmidt would have in store for me and tried to predict events by counting paving stones or relying on other omens. Although Herr Schmidt's approach lacked psychological finesse, I must admit that it helped conquer my fear of water. In fact, I have been very fond of water in its various aggregate forms ever since. I enjoyed skating, skiing and rowing. Our maid, Gertrud, taught me skating which I enjoyed immensely. During the long winters in Breslau I skated probably every day weather permitting. We skated mostly on frozen-over tennis courts. But the most enjoyable skating took place on the old city moat which would freeze only after a prolonged cold spell. There you skated over a long stretch, not just round and round as on the tennis courts. Once or twice, in my recollection, the river Oder froze sufficiently to permit skating. One of the nicest aspects of skating was returning home glowing with cold and sitting down in the kitchen with a cup of hot cocoa and a slice of bread toasted on the kitchen oven.
Unfortunately skiing presented problems. There were no adequate slopes nearby, and one had to travel to the mountains which were not too far away but still not easily accessible. The trip was expensive - so it was a rare treat. The "Riesengebirge" (Giant Mountains [4] - highest elevation 1 mile) was heavily forested, and : there were no open slopes to speak of. We did mostly trail-skiing. There were no ski-lifts, and you climbed to the top on skis. After the final examinations in the Gymnasium, i.e. actually between the written and the orals my class went on a ski trip. That was in February 1933. Hitler had come to power on January 30, and the majority of the classmates were Nazis. But somehow our principal teacher had managed an understanding that this trip would be apolitical, a major achievement at the time. Everybody kept faith, and it was a delightful event. Somehow this spirit carried over until a month or so later when we graduated. I guess things were still somewhat unsettled and nobody knew if Hitler would last.
Notes:
In a chapter of a book (Wrocław Schools: History and Architecture) on the education of Jewish children in Breslau from 1918-1943, there is some more detail about this schooling, but no mention of Dad's school. Focuses more on getting a Jewish private school going for the upper grades, it seems. [Also mention of a Dr. Ernst Hamburger, but no sure if that is our relative.]
There is a history of Realgymnasium am Zwinger available online (another chapter of the book on Wroclaw schools). Written by someone younger than Dad, but does detail what happened after the Nazis took over (and after Dad had finished school). An old and highly respected institution it would seem.
There are some photographs of Realgymnasium am Zwinger here (and adjacent pages). Building still exists but long since repurposed.
Now known as Krkonoše mountains.