It may have contributed not a little to the reputation of Göttingen and Heidelberg with foreigners, that a good and clear German is spoken in both places by the professors. In Tübingen, on the contrary, even in Munich, to a great extent, the local dialect prevails to such a degree, that students from Northern Germany, many of whom frequent these cities in the summer session, find it difficult, nay, almost impossible, to understand at first, especially the broad Suabian of Tübingen. Here, however, as the system of dictation prevails, the slowness of utterance compensates in a measure for its indistinctness and incorrectness.
In some places, where academic freedom, as the students style it, exists to a high degree, a general scraping of the feet admonishes the lecturer to repeat his words or be more distinct and clear in his enunciation. This pedal language, though often disregarded, still does not fail in the end in producing the desired effect.
With such characteristics, it cannot be a matter of wonder, if some time be required to be spent in hearing lectures daily before the full benefit can be fairly appreciated. Many will appear slow in the extreme; and the constant recourse to notes, and the tedious manner, will create a feeling of weariness hard to overcome. However, these peculiarities are soon forgotten in the excellence of the matter, and their disagreeableness is scarcely noticed after a few weeks, except in extreme cases. The mannerism fades away, and the hearer learns to follow from thought to thought under the guidance of an experienced leader, whose living words he hears, whose thought he feels as it is communicated directly to him.
Not so much from the actual things heard, the actual facts mastered, is the lecture-system valuable to the student, as for the method of study which he derives from it. He is no longer like an automaton, a school-boy guided by his teacher and text-book, but is spoken to as an independent thinker. Authorities are quoted, which he may consult at his leisure. No subject is exhausted,it is only touched upon. He learns to teach himself.
Far different is the mental training thus acquired from that gained in the same amount of time spent in mere reading. Thought is stimulated to a far greater degree. The lecture-room becomes a laboratory, where the mind of the hearer, in immediate contact with that of a man mature in the ways of study, of one whose whole life seems to have prepared him for the present hour, assimilates to itself more than knowledge. The lecturer gives what no books can give, his own force to impel his own words. His mind is ever active while he speaks. The hearer feels its workings, and his own is stirred into action by the contact. It is not given to all to enjoy the conversation and intercourse of the master-minds of the age: in the lecture-room they speak to us immediately; we feel the current of their life-blood; it pulsates through all they say.
That seeming exceptions may occur, as in the case of professors who year after year deliver the same written course, can have no weight against the system. The tone and gesture, the very look, must animate the whole;and these very written lectures, read and delivered so often, are no dead stalk, but a living stem, which puts forth new leaves and blossoms every spring.
Nor is the hearer himself without his corresponding influence. His attention and eager desire for knowledge stimulate new thought in the speaker day by day, hour by hour; and many a German scholar must have felt with Friedrich August Wolf, when he says,"I am one who has been long accustomed to the gentle charm which lies in the momentaneous unfolding of thought in the presence of attentive hearers, to that living reaction softly felt by the teacher, whereby a perennial mental harmony is awakened in his soul, which far surpasses the labors in the study, before blank walls and the feelingless paper."
THE STUDIES
The first entrance into a German auditorium or Hörsaal, as the lecture-rooms in the universities are called, will show much that is characteristic. But little care is bestowed on the decoration of the apartment. Whatever aesthetic culture the nation may have, it finds little manifestation in the things of daily life, and elegance seems little less than banished from the precincts of the learned world. The academic halls present to the view nothing but dingy walls, rough floors coated with the dust and mud of days or weeks, and, winter and summer, the huge porcelain stove in one corner,that immovable article of cheerless German furniture, where wood is put in by the pound, and no bright glow ever discloses the presence of that warmest friend of man, a good fire. For the students there are coarse, long wooden desks and benches, with places all numbered, cut up and disfigured to an extent which will soon convince one that whittling is not a trait of American destructiveness exclusively. Here are carved names and intertwined lettering, arabesque masterpieces of penknife-ingenuity, with a general preponderance of feminine appellatives, bold incisures, at times, of some worthy professor in profile,the whole besmutched with ink, and dotted with countless punctures, the result of the sharp spike with which every student's ink-horn is armed, that he may steady it upon the slanting board. The preceding lecture ended when the university-clock struck the hour; the next should begin within ten or fifteen minutes. One by one the students drop in and take their places,high and low, rich and poor, all on the same straight-backed pine benches. The days fire over, even in title-loving Germany, though not long since, when the young counts and barons sat foremost, on a privileged, raised, and cushioned seat, and were addressed by their title.
As the hearers thus assemble, they present a motley appearance,being, in the larger cities especially, from all lands, all ranks of society, and of every age. Side by side with the young freshman in his first semester, the Fat Fox, as he is called, who has just made a leap from the strict discipline of the gymnasium to the unbounded freedom of the university, will be a gray-haired man, to whom the academic title of Juvenis Studiosus will no longer apply. Here sits, with his gaudy watch-guard, the colors of his corps, one of those students by profession who have been inscribed year after year so long that they have acquired the name of Bemossed Heads. Were his scientific attainments measured by his capacities for beer-drinking and sword-slashing, he would long ago have been dubbed a Doctor in all the faculties. He hears a lecture now and then for form's sake, though it is rather an unusual thing for him. By his side, but retiring and earnest, may be one of the younger professors, who the hour before stood as a teacher, and now sits among some of his former hearers to profit by the experience of his older professional brother. Where the court resides and many officers are garrisoned, the hall presents a spangled appearance of bright epaulettes and glittering uniforms. It is no unusual thing for young men during their years of service to attend the courses regularly. The uncomfortable sword is laid on the knee, where it may not dangle and clink with every motion of the wearer,no easy task in the very narrow space left between desk and desk. In the last century, it was a universal custom for all students to wear the sword; but this academic privilege, as it was considered, leading to numerous abuses, laws were enacted against it, as well as other eccentricities in dress.
The regular students are provided with portfolios, or rather, soft leathern pouches, which they can fold and pocket, containing the heft or quire of paper on which the lecture is transcribed by them wholly or in part. These hefts are often the object of much care and labor. Each plants his ink-horn firmly in front of him. As the time approaches, and all are in readiness with pen in hand, there is a universal buzz throughout the room. Though, when the auditory is large, many nations are represented, as well as the various provinces of the Confederation, still the language heard is predominantly that of the country. Though Poles and Greeks, English and Russians, may be in abundance, still they rarely congregate in nationalities,save the Poles, who speak their own language at all times and places, and cling the more fondly to their own idiom since they have been robbed of everything else. After some fifteen minutes of expectation the professor enters. All is still in an instant. He advances with hasty strides and bent-down head to his rostrum, an elevated platform, on which stands a plain, high, pine desk. He unfolds his notes, looks over the rim of his spectacles at the attentive hearers, who sit ready to write down the words of wisdom he is about to utter, and begins with the short address, "Meine Herren." There is then an uninterrupted gliding of pens for three-quarters of an hour, until, above the monotony, rarely the eloquence, of the speaker, the great clock in the centre of the building gives the significant sound of relief to busy fingers and rest to ear and brain unaccustomed to such slow, entangled, lisping, laborious, in rare instances manly delivery. The lecture is at an end, and each prepares to enter another auditorium, or wends his way home, to study out the notes taken, consult the authorities quoted, complete or even copy his work anew. In the study of these hefts consists the main preparation for future examinations, as text-books are rarely used, save in Austria, and the examiners are the professors themselves, who will not ask the candidate much beyond what they have embraced in their own lesson.
The regular students are provided with portfolios, or rather, soft leathern pouches, which they can fold and pocket, containing the heft or quire of paper on which the lecture is transcribed by them wholly or in part. These hefts are often the object of much care and labor. Each plants his ink-horn firmly in front of him. As the time approaches, and all are in readiness with pen in hand, there is a universal buzz throughout the room. Though, when the auditory is large, many nations are represented, as well as the various provinces of the Confederation, still the language heard is predominantly that of the country. Though Poles and Greeks, English and Russians, may be in abundance, still they rarely congregate in nationalities,save the Poles, who speak their own language at all times and places, and cling the more fondly to their own idiom since they have been robbed of everything else. After some fifteen minutes of expectation the professor enters. All is still in an instant. He advances with hasty strides and bent-down head to his rostrum, an elevated platform, on which stands a plain, high, pine desk. He unfolds his notes, looks over the rim of his spectacles at the attentive hearers, who sit ready to write down the words of wisdom he is about to utter, and begins with the short address, "Meine Herren." There is then an uninterrupted gliding of pens for three-quarters of an hour, until, above the monotony, rarely the eloquence, of the speaker, the great clock in the centre of the building gives the significant sound of relief to busy fingers and rest to ear and brain unaccustomed to such slow, entangled, lisping, laborious, in rare instances manly delivery. The lecture is at an end, and each prepares to enter another auditorium, or wends his way home, to study out the notes taken, consult the authorities quoted, complete or even copy his work anew. In the study of these hefts consists the main preparation for future examinations, as text-books are rarely used, save in Austria, and the examiners are the professors themselves, who will not ask the candidate much beyond what they have embraced in their own lesson.
With a remarkable degree of skill, the practised German student can take down, even when the delivery is by no means slow, the pith and essence of a whole lecture. Yet there is much abuse in this; and it has called forth, ever since the invention of printing has made the multiplication of books by transcription unnecessary, much just, though at times unjust criticism. A German writer has said, that the man of genius takes his notes on a slip of paper, he of good abilities on a half-page, while the dunce must fill a whole sheet. Now the reverse would be quite as true in many cases. For though thoughtless writing may be little more than wasted labor, yet there is nothing that can fix more steadily thoughts and facts in the mind than the precision and constant attention required in following a lecture with the pen, especially when the words of the professor are not taken down with slavish exactitude, but when, as is most generally the case, merely the thoughts are noted in the hearer's own language. The ideas thus gained have been assimilated and become the listener's own property. There is thus generated a steady transfusion, the surest remedy against flagging mental activity. Many a foreigner writes down the lecture in his own tongue, and values highly this training of constant translation, though, before many months, the mere transposition from one language into the other must become purely mechanical. It is amusing to see the puzzled expression of countenance of some Swiss student who takes his notes in French, when one of those long German compounds, involving some bold figure of speech, is uttered. What circumlocutions must he not use, if he wish to give the full force of the idea!
A real abuse, however, is the perpetual dictation-system still used by some. For these, the three worthies in profile on the title-page of old Elzevir editions are as if they had never existed; they teach as they have been taught, perpetuating the methods in use in the days of Abelard, when books were dearer than time. All that has been said and written against the custom will do less towards abolishing it than the recent introduction of lessons in phonography, or stenography rather, which is now taught in several universities. The question is agitated of introducing this study into the preparatory schools. The system is different from the English or American, being based on the etymological nature of the language. It is fast coming into use, though as yet not general. The old slow delivery seems little better than spelling to those that have mastered it. The students have usually special abbreviations of their own, and so find no difficulty in taking down all the important points, even when the utterance is rapid.
Not all, by any means, go through this labor of transcription. Many of the wealthier and high-titled attend but irregularly, and when they do, are impatient listeners. In Berlin may be seen many a youth who, from the exquisite fit and finish of his dress, if he be not an American just from Paris, must at least be a German count The young Graf plays with his lips on the ivory head of his bamboo, as he holds it with his kid-gloved hand, sitting carefully the while, lest the elbow of his French coat should be soiled by contact with a desk ignorant of duster for many a month. He is condemned, however, to hear, day by day, over and over, many a truth that will scarcely flatter his noble ears. The heft and the toil of writing down a lecture are unknown to him. He pays a reasonable sum to some poor scholar who sits behind and copies it all afterwards, while he takes his afternoon-ride towards Charlottenburg, or saunters along Unter-den-Linden, ogling the pretty English girls, and spying every chance of saluting, whenever a royal equipage, preceded by a monkey-looking lackey, rolls by. These are, of course, exceptions, rarer in the present than formerly. In Padua, in the sixteenth century, it became notorious that the richer students never attended in person, but always sent one of their servants who wrote a good hand. Laws were enacted to prevent the evil, yet long after this there were still many promotions of these paper-doctors.
Many, in taking their notes, abandon the German script as too illegible, and make use of the Latin letters. A word or two on this subject, as connected with general education. The German script, which any one may learn in a few hours, is a constant source of vexation to a foreigner. To write, and write fast, too, is easy enough; but then to read one's own handwriting, not to mention the crumpled notices of the professors tacked on the blackboard in the Aula, is almost impossible without much practice. Why the Germans should have kept their Gothic lettering and peculiar script, when all other European nations, save the Russian, have adopted the Roman, it is difficult to say, unless it be with them a matter of national pride. And they have been unnational in so many things! That the Russians should have their own alphabet is natural enough; they have sounds and letters and combinationswhich neither the Germanic nor the Romanic group of languages possess. And yet both in Polish and Zechish, where the same sounds exist to a great extent, the deficiencies are made up by accented and dotted letters. So, though we have a universal standard of spelling for names and places on the Continent, we find in our most popular histories and geographies a divergence in the lesser known Russian names, not far removed from that we daily meet in the nomenclature of the gods of Hindoo mythology.
The like plea of necessity cannot be urged in regard to the Teutonic or Scandinavian languages. Within the last quarter of a century, the chief scientific works issued in Northern Germany, and many even in Southern, have been printed in the Roman character. Were there no other argument in favor of its universal adoption, it has been found less trying to the eyes. It can be read by all nations; and the other is at best but an additional difficulty for the learner, even in the case of native children, who are plagued with two alphabets and two diametrically opposite systems of penmanship in their earliest years. The result is evident: a good hand is a rare thing In Germany. It is a good sign, that of late years public acts and records, works of learning, all the higher literature, in fact, not purely national, as poetry and romance, are all printed in the Roman character. Nor will any look upon this as a servile imitation. Some of the most national of German writers and scholars, as the brothers Grimm, have pronounced themselves loudly in favor of the change. The tendency of the age is towards universality. It will occur to none to talk of French imitation because chemists make use of the excellent and universally applicable system of the decimal French weights and measures.