BERLIN UNIVERSITY
In the early nineties it was easier for foreigners to get into the
Berlin University than it is now. To-day, I am told, certificates and
diplomas from other institutions must be shown before the student can
matriculate. In 1890, my matriculating year, all that was necessary to
become enrolled as a student in good standing, was to have a twenty-mark
piece in your pocket to pay the matriculation fee, and perhaps fifty
marks more to pay for your first semester's lectures. Nothing was asked
about your former studies or academic training. The university was open
to all male foreigners over seventeen years of age. Germans had to show
a _Gymnasium_ certificate, but foreigners were accepted on their face
value.
I can hardly suppress a smile now when I think of my entrance into this
famous university. To be sure, I had the necessary amount of money and
had long since passed the required age limit, but I am afraid that a
stock-taking of my other qualifications would have left me woefully in
the lurch had the other qualifications not been taken for granted. There
were two years at an American college to my credit, it is true, and I
had perhaps done more _general_ reading than even the average German
student. But what else was there to entitle me to matriculation?
Nothing, I fear, unless it was my mother's earnest wish that this take
place.
On my return from England I was determined to let her suggest what was
best for me to do, having made such a fiasco of the English venture, a
suggestion and enterprise of my own. The university and its professors
loomed up large in my mother's eyes. If she could only see me once
started on such a career, she said, she thought that her cup of
happiness would be full, indeed. She was set on having at least one
academic child in the family, and my presence in Berlin and willingness
to behave, renewed her hopes that this ambition was to be realized.
Fortunate it was for her ambition and my sensibilities that the
matriculation ceremonies were so simple. My German at the time had been
selected principally from the coal-passers' vocabulary, but I was quick
in overhauling it, and when ready to matriculate, knew as much of the
language probably as does the average American student on first entering
the university. On receiving my matriculation certificate from the
rector--a very formidable document it was, written in Latin, which I had
long since forgotten--shaking hands with him and receiving the faculty's
welcome into the institution, I asked that my faulty German be pardoned.
"Certainly, Herr Studiosus, certainly," the rector assured me. "You are
here to learn; we all are. So excuses are not necessary."
This was all the formality that was attached to the entrance ceremony.
In five minutes, thanks to the rector, I had changed from a quondam coal
passer to a would-be Doctor of Philosophy in the great Friedrich Wilhelm
Universitat, a royal institution. The importance of the royal
protectorate over the university and the students never impressed me
greatly, until a friend of mine had a wordy difference with one of the
officials at the Royal Library. My friend was lame, having to use
crutches. One day, when entering the room where borrowed books are
returned, he proceeded to the desk with his hat on, being unable to
remove it until freed of his armful of books. The officious clerk called
his attention to the excusable breach of etiquette in none too polite
language, adding: "You must remember that I am an Imperial official."
"And do you remember," demanded my doughty Greek friend, "that I am an
Imperial student."
I never had occasion to call attention to my "Imperialism" while in the
university, but it was a kind of little joke that I was already to play
if opportunity offered.
To take a Ph. D. at Berlin in my day at least one major study was
required, and also two minors. Six semesters was the time necessary for
preparation before one could _promoviren_, and an acceptable "Thesis"
was absolutely necessary before examination was permissible. As a rule,
a man with a well-written thesis and a fair mastery of his _major_
subject succeeded in getting a degree. There were no examinations until
the candidates for degrees were ready to _promoviren_, to try for their
Doctor's degree. At the end of three years, six semesters, such
candidates were called before their professors and made to tell what
they knew both in their _major_ and _minor_ studies. The examination was
oral and alleged to be pretty minute, but I have been told by a
Japanese, with a Ph. D. degree from Johns Hopkins University and
preliminary study in German institutions, that, in his case, he would
have preferred to take his chances in a bout with the Berlin examiners.
The significance of the title was by no means clear to me on
matriculating in Berlin. In an indefinite sort of way I knew that it
stood for certain learned acquirements, but what these amounted to
puzzled me much at the time, and they do yet. Occasionally some visiting
clergyman would preach for our local pastor in the American church, and
I noticed that when a Ph. D. was a part of his title it was thought
extremely good form to pay extra attention to his discourse.
I think this extra attention was partly due to the significance which
our pastor gave to such decorations. He put much stress on learned
institutions, their doctrines and teachings, and his discourses--many of
them at least--might have been delivered in the university, so far as
they patched up the spiritual wear and tear of his hearers. He was much
given to quoting the professors of his university days, and, at his
evening home-lectures, he could make himself very interesting telling us
about the Germany of his youth and early manhood. One professor whose
name he was continually mentioning was Tollock, or Toccoch, or
something similar. I believe this gentleman had been noted as a
theologian, but what I admired more than anything else was to hear our
pastor roll out the name. His pronunciation of it seemed to me to
incorporate the whole German language in one mouthful. With words,
English or German, ending with a "d," the pastor had difficulty. In his
prayers, for example, "Lord God" became "Lorn Gone," and I am afraid
that some of us called the good man "Lorn Gone." He staid with us twenty
years or more, I think, and he and his wife did much to get the money to
build the present American Church. He very kindly took an interest in my
selection of lectures at the university. For the life of me I cannot
recall now why he or I chose Political Economy for my _major_. It may
have been because my father had been much interested in this subject and
had possessed a fine library on economic questions. It may also be
accounted for by my cursory look into John Stuart Mill's book previous
to leaving for Liverpool. Still, again, it may have been one of those
haphazard selections which are resorted to in cases like mine; the
subject was safe at least, and perhaps the good Doctor thought that
studying might inculcate good principles in me about personal economy.
Whatever the cause may have been, I was enrolled in _der philosophischen
Facultät_, as an earnest delver into _Theoretische und praktische
national-ekonomic_. I took two _privatim_ twenty-mark lectures in my
major, each semester that I was in the university. Professors Wagner and
Schmoller were my instructors in these courses. With Professor Wagner I
never became well acquainted, but an interview that I once had with
Professor Schmoller has always remained memorable. I had spent twenty
marks semester after semester on his lectures and it did not seem to me
that I was getting on very fast in my subject. Being a near neighbor of
ours, I resolved one day to call on him in his villa and find out
whether the trouble was on his side or mine. I had other uses for the
semester twenty marks, unless he absolutely needed them. He asked me
point blank what my preparation for university work had been previous to
matriculating at Berlin, and how it had come about that Political
Economy had been selected as my major. I told him the truth, even
resorting to anecdotes about riding freight cars, to make myself clear.
He laughed.
"And what have you in mind as a topic for a thesis?" he asked me. I had
been four semesters in the university, and it was time for me to begin
to think seriously about a thesis if I intended to _promoviren_. My
thoughts were very scattered on this point, but I finally managed to
tell the professor that vagrancy and geography seemed to have
considerable in common, and that I contemplated a thesis which would
consolidate my learning on these subjects. Again the professor laughed.
He finally delivered himself of this dictum: "Vagrancy and geography
don't combine the way you infer at any German university. Geography and
Political Economy, however, make excellent mates, and are well worth
studying together. Perhaps you might find it easier to get your degree
at one of the South German universities."
The insinuating suggestion at the last piqued me somewhat, but I
continued to listen to Professor Schmoller for another long semester.
My minors--I hardly recall now what they were. One major and two or
three minors were required, I believe, and one of the minors had to be
the History of Philosophy. One semester in this subject was usually
considered sufficient. So I must have listened to lectures on this
subject, and I recall other courses in German Literature. But I am
afraid that my professors at the time would be hard put to it, in
looking over to-day the selected courses in my _Anmelde-Buch_, to make
out what I was driving at. But in spite of all this confusion and
floundering about, I was busy, after all, on my own private ends. I may
not have got much from the lectures, but I came in contact with such men
as Virchow, the pathologist; Kiepert, the geographer; Curtius, the Greek
historian; Pfleiderer, the theologian; Helmholtz, the chemist, and I got
glimpses of Mommsen. He was not reading in the university during my stay
in Berlin, but he lived not far from my mother's home, and I used to see
him in the street cars. He was a very much shriveled-up looking
individual, and when sitting down looked very diminutive. He wore
immense glasses, which gave his eyes an owlish appearance; I saw him to
the best advantage one afternoon when we were riding alone in a street
car through the Thiergarten. He had a corner in the front, and I had
taken one in the rear. I hardly noticed him at first, and had opened a
book to read, when suddenly the old gentleman began to mumble to himself
and gesture. "Ya, ya, so ist es," I could hear him say. "So muss es
sein," and he flourished his right hand about as if he were speaking to
a collection of Roman senators. What it was that was "so," and why it
had to be "so," I could not find out. Perhaps he was arguing a deep
polemical point with an imaginary adversary, and perhaps he was merely
having a little tiff with the police. He was the proud father of twelve
children, more or less, and no Berlin landlord, so the story runs, would
rent him a flat. He consequently lived in Charlottenburg, where, I have
heard, that he told the police what he thought of them and their
regulations.
The most interesting interview that I had with any of my professors was
with Virchow. At the time of the interview I was corresponding for a New
York newspaper intermittently, and, one day, word came from the editor
that a "chat" with Virchow on the political situation would be
"available." (This word available formerly troubled me a great deal in
my encounters with editors, but I have at last come to terms with it.
When an editor uses it, it pays to look into a good dictionary and see
how many different applications it has. Its editorial significance is
most elastic.) Virchow kindly granted me an interview and told me some
interesting things about his fight for Liberal ideas. But he was most
entertaining when talking "science." Our political chat finished, he
asked me whether I was interested in Anthropology, advising me that the
local Anthropological Society was to have a meeting that same evening,
and that I would be welcome. I told him that I was interested in
Anthropology in so far as it threw light on Criminology. The old
gentleman must have mistaken my meaning, or I did not know myself what I
was trying to say, for my reply startled him into what seemed to me
unwonted nervous activity. During the political chat he had been very
quiet and calm, talking even about Bismarck in a rather subdued voice.
But when I ventured to connect Anthropology and Criminology, barely
mentioning Lombroso's name, it was as if some one had thrown a stone
through the window. Virchow jumped up from his chair, and cried: "There
you are on false ground. Let me give you a pamphlet of mine that will
put you right," and he rushed into his adjoining study for a paper that
had something to do with cells, etc. I might understand it to-day, but
it read like Sanscrit at the time. "There," said the little man, handing
me the brochure. "That will give you my ideas on that subject." In other
men this proceeding might have indicated conceit. With Virchow it was
merely a friendly desire to set me right on a matter which he had
thought a million times more about than I possibly could have. He seemed
literally to feel aggrieved that anyone should be in the dark about a
matter on which he had tried to shed light.
Later, when showing him a written copy of our political interview, I had
to look him up in his famous den, in the Pathological Institute, I think
it was. The room was so full of skulls, bones and "pickled" things that
it was all one could do not to knock something over when moving about. I
had to leave the manuscript with him for correction. He sent it to me a
few days afterward with neatly written marginal notes in his own
handwriting. Of all the men I met at the university, he was distinctly
the most famous and affable.
His famous political antagonist, Bismarck, a man that Virchow seemed to
hate, judging by his manner when discussing him, I saw but once. It was
not long before his dismissal from office, and he was returning from the
Emperor's palace, where he had gone to give him birthday
congratulations. I was standing in front of the Café Bauer on the Unter
den Linden just as Bismarck's carriage came by. I shall always remember
his strong face and remarkable big eyes, but this was about all that I
saw. A woman recognized Bismarck just as I did, and ran toward his
carriage, crying: "Oh, Prince Bismarck! Prince Bismarck!" There was
something in her manner which made one think that she wanted to ask some
favor of the great man, and had been waiting for his appearance. The
mournful note in her voice might have meant anything--a son in prison, a
dying soldier husband, a mere request for bread. The driver of the
horses was taking no chances, however, and the great chancellor was
whisked away toward Wilhelm Strasse.
The diminutive and modest Virchow could reconstruct our notions about
pathology and medicine and at the same time be a great Liberal, but he
could not tolerate Bismarck. The monstrous chancellor could reunite
Germany, dictate her foreign policy for years, and hold his own, in and
out of parliament, as a master mind, but he could not associate with
Virchow. Two great Germans, both iconoclasts and builders, both dwellers
in the same city, and both much admired and criticised--but they needed
separate sides of the street when abroad--a fact, by the way, which goes
much to help out the other fact demonstrating German _Kleinlich
Kelt_--smallness.
When all is said and done about my university career I think that the
good it did me was accomplished mainly in the Royal Library and in the
Thiergarten--a natural park in the center of the city, where I could
invite my soul comfortably in the winter, say at ten degrees above zero,
and in summer at about seventy degrees of heat--all this--_a la_
Fahrenheit, by the way, who has no following in Germany, either
zero-wards or otherwise. The library advanced me ten books at a draw in
any language I felt equal to, and the Thiergarten helped me to ponder
over what I had read and did not understand. Certainly no professor ever
felt more learned than I did when I tramped through the park to my home,
with the ten books slung over my shoulder. My mother used to love to see
me come into the house after this fashion, and even my fox-terrier,
Spicer, put on a learned look peculiarly her own when she deigned to
observe my studious tendencies. More anon about this almost human little
creature, but I must say right here that, in her early days, she did not
take kindly to my "shortening-up" habits. She believed in beer, much
food and exercise, Uferlos pow-wowing.
What it was, in the Library or Thiergarten, that switched me, when
reading, from Political Economy to Africa, Livingstone, Burton, Speke
and Stanley, it is a little difficult to explain. In the final analysis
I suppose it was mere temperament. By my third semester I knew ten times
more about Africa than I knew about my own country, and an unfathomable
number of times more than I ever will know about Political Economy.
Burton was the man I particularly took to, and to this day he remains on
a very high pinnacle in my estimation of men.
This kind of reading naturally did not bring me any nearer my Ph. D. But
it taught me to keep quiet, dodge _Die Ferne_, and to take an interest
in what other men had done--to remember that all the traveling in the
world was never intended to be done by me. Of course, I had dreams of
becoming an explorer, but they were harmless arm-chair efforts, that
gave my mother no anxiety, and were profitable in so far as I seriously
studied geography. Possibly, had a berth in an exploring expedition been
offered me, I should have been tempted to take it; but no such
opportunity came to hand.
My companions in the university were nearly all _Streber_, young men who
were determined to _promoviren_. A more mixed collection of friends I
have never had. My most intimate "pal" was a Japanese, the others next
intimate were a Greek, a German-American, a British-American, some
_bona fide_ Teutons, and my dog Spicer--the latter being in the
university by proxy, so to speak. In the early semesters we did pretty
much what all students at German universities do. Here in the United
States there are minute observers of college morals who would have said
that we were all bound devil-wards. We attended _Kneipen_, spent our
Sundays in the Gruhewald, and would _schwänzen_--omit attendance at
lectures, when convenient. But all of my friends except one have done
well. The unfortunate exception was probably the most strenuous
_streber_ in the company. He took his degree with all sails set for a
promised professorship at home, went home, was disappointed in what he
had been led to think he was to teach, became discouraged and
despondent, and finally tossed himself in front of a train. Poor "Zink"!
He had studied History and wanted to give lectures about it. The western
college trustees, who had promised him a chair in History, insisted on
his teaching Grammar also, or some other subject that he had paid no
attention to since college days, and his sense of the fitness of things
revolted. He had specialized honestly and fearlessly, and he desired to
continue as a specialist. The college trustees wanted a complete faculty
in one or two men, and "Zink" would not submit. If any man deserved
fairer treatment, this old university friend did.
I believe that Spicer, my fox-terrier, is the only other member of the
class that has quit the game completely. She stayed with my family for
nine years, never comprehending the Germans as a people--she was
English--and apparently never wanting to. Pilsner beer was the only
German product she would succumb to. Three saucerfuls after each
afternoon tramp constituted her portion. As she never staggered, and
never misbehaved herself otherwise under the Pilsner influence, I think
it agreed with her. In saying that she succumbed to the three
saucerfuls, I merely mean that she knew when she had had enough.
If I could tell what "Pizey," as she was called later, meant to my
family in ways that are dear and affectionate, and what she stood for in
the "Colony," a great dog book would be the result. She came to us in a
basket, after a serious tossing in the North Sea--a fat, pudgy little
thing, full of John Bullism and herself. My mother and younger sister
brought her to Berlin, and mother presented her to me, in the same
language as in former days when she had given me "Major"--"Josiah, I've
brought you a dog!" I rejoiced at twenty-two over such a gift as much as
I did in my early teens. Little did I reckon then what it means to train
a pup in a Berlin flat. With "Pizey" I would gladly go through the whole
business again, but it is a task I feel that I must save my countrymen
against. Even in Oskaloosa there are trying months ahead of him who
rears a pup three flights up. (Fire escapes don't help a bit.)
"Pizey's" main interests were her own short tail and her long-tailed
pups. When mother had nothing better to offer her guests by way of
entertainment, "Pizey" was requisitioned, called into the parlor and
made to chase her stub of a tail. If her guests were looking for other
amusement they were disappointed, but "Pizey" wasn't, and I think that
mother enjoyed the fracas. She once told the family physician that under
no circumstances, no matter whether "Pizey" committed _lesé majesté_,
would she destroy "Pizey," because she reminded her of Josiah, "when he
was away from home."
"Pizey's" distinction as a member of the "Colony" lay almost entirely in
her disregard of the Malthusian dream. She increased the Anglo-German
_entente_ by at least forty-seven little "Pizeys." Some of her progeny
found their way into American homes and are trying to do right--perhaps
a half-dozen. The remaining forty-one are _auf der Wanderschaft_.
"Pizey's" death was mysterious. I had long since left Berlin, and heard
only infrequently about her. Finally the entire family moved away, and
the dog was left in the old home, but under a new régime; she absolutely
refused to emigrate. They say that she was stricken with asthma, and had
to be put out of the way. I only hope that she was put out of the way in
a square deal. The German scientists are very much given to dissecting
dogs like "Pizey" while they are yet alive. If any German scientist
perpetrated such an outrage on Spicer, I trust that his science will
fall to pieces--certainly those parts of it based on "Pizey's" evidence.