[HN Gopher] Germany. University life seen through American eyes....
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Germany. University life seen through American eyes. Tupper,
1900-1901
Author : Michelangelo11
Score : 53 points
Date : 2023-02-24 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.irwincollier.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.irwincollier.com)
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| I enjoyed reading this as someone that years ago had the
| experience of being a student in Germany from another Western
| country. One technical problem is that whatever web CMS was used
| for this page has trouble with anything non-ASCII and simply
| omits it, which affects not just the expected umlauts but also
| quotes and M-dashes and quotes.
|
| The result makes reading this piece more laborious than
| necessary, but then the linked article does link at the end to
| the original:
| http://cdi.uvm.edu/book/uvmcdi-21528#page/29/mode/1up
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| I'm curious, how did your experience compare to this?
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "His clothes were shabby, his coat ill-fitting and with an
| unnatural gloss, his linen or celluloid-- I am not sure that his
| collars and cuffs were of linen-- seldom above reproach, and his
| high hat was always brushed the wrong way."_
|
| A random aside... I enjoyed this description as a bit of a puzzle
| because it's entirely based on fashion cues that happen to be
| obsolete. What kind of unnatural gloss? What does a celluloid
| shirt look like? Or a high hat brushed the wrong way?
|
| When reading a story, my mind needs to create little actors to
| place in scenery. Building up these mental characters is easy and
| automatic with fiction's usual introduction formula (which is
| also used by long form journalism in the New Yorker style where
| the editor makes sure that a person's shirt color and posture is
| described to satisfy readers like myself).
|
| But this German student broke my automatic actor-builder process
| and forced me to make conscious decisions about what his clothing
| looks like in my mind. Seems like this doesn't happen very often,
| probably because usually there are enough cues to get a picture
| without fully processing everything.
| floren wrote:
| His shirt wasn't made of celluloid, just his collars and cuffs.
| At one time, it was common for shirt collars and cuffs to be
| purchased separately and attached to your (collar-less, cuff-
| less) shirts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detachable_collar
|
| As for the hat, remember that hats were made of felted beaver
| fur. To make a hat shiny, you'd brush it -- but if you brush it
| the wrong way, it'll look rough and weird.
| Tarsul wrote:
| this is a little uncanny in that it reads a lot like it could be
| today as well (saying this as a German who studied in Germany in
| the 2000s/2010s).
|
| "the matriculant is now a full-fledged student, free to come and
| go at will. Absolutely no restrictions are placed upon him, he
| may attend all lectures or no lectures. He wears no academic
| dress, he lives in no dormitory." -------- This was true mostly
| all the way up until the bachelor reforms in the 2000s. Nowadays,
| there are quite a lot of classes that you have to sit in (depends
| a lot on the university and courses)
|
| " But every German class-hour has its "academisches viertel" or
| quarter-hour of grace." -------- We basically still "have" this
| in a way but it basically only means that many courses start at
| quarter past x (e.g. 8:15).
|
| "Then the professor enters in haste. Before he has even reached
| his desk, he begins, "Meine Herren und Damen!" (the order is
| significant)" -------- Nowadays, it's the other way around
| ("Meine Damen und Herren").
|
| "Occasionally scraping of feet, "Scharren," a well-known signal,
| warns the lecturer that his words are not heard at the rear of
| the room, and he raises his voice, until the shuffling ceases."
| -------- This is not common anymore, as far as I know. A shame
| (well, we are allowed to raise our voices and tell the prof to
| talk louder, which works as well).
| ginko wrote:
| >the matriculant is now a full-fledged student, free to come
| and go at will. Absolutely no restrictions are placed upon him,
| he may attend all lectures or no lectures. He wears no academic
| dress, he lives in no dormitory.
|
| That's just normal university life, though.
| westernpopular wrote:
| I wonder if they already did the knocking on tables instead of
| clapping at the end of a lecture thing back then
| kleiba wrote:
| Most likely. Although the exact origins of this tradition are
| unclear, there's evidence that this practice reaches as far
| back as the 18th century.
| zwieback wrote:
| As someone who went to University in Germany but left for the US
| right after I found this very interesting. My daughters are going
| to (state) universities in the US and there are profound
| differences between the systems, some of them appear to have a
| very long history, judging by this account.
|
| My biggest complaints about the US system: sports and other non-
| academic activities as well as administration consumes way too
| much money. On the other hand, German universities are still much
| more selective so class hierarchies are reflected in the trade-
| school/vocational school/university hierarchy. Whether that's a
| good thing or not is a different question.
| F-W-M wrote:
| The Corps still exists. Less of them, with less members, and less
| fighting. But we still get fat from drinking too much beer.
| sophacles wrote:
| I don't know what the 'The Corps' mean in this context. Do you
| mind explaining?
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| German _Studentenverbindungen_
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Student_Corps), the
| crazier kind, some of them _schlagend_
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_fencing).
| dewey wrote:
| That's what we call some student organizations in Germany /
| Austria.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burschenschaft
| ginko wrote:
| And they're almost all far-right.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Huh. At a first glance at the photo on top of the article, I
| thought: Is this Munich's University with a different yard layout
| and statues? (Would not be surprising with WW2 in between, you
| can still see some of the shrapnel damage on one of the walls.)
|
| But no, turns out, it's Berlin's Humboldt University.
|
| Unfortunately, I can absolutely cannot find a picture of LMU's
| building taken from a similar angle, but while it turns out some
| details are very different, the resemblance in the layout and the
| overall style is striking.
|
| Wonder whether that's on purpose. Munich University's main
| building is actually pretty young, having been erected in 1835,
| even though the university itself is over 500 years old.
| est31 wrote:
| The Humboldt University's palace was originally not meant as a
| university building but instead was built in 1748-1753 for one
| of Friedrich II's brothers prince Heinrich, who was as his
| brother, gay. In fact the building was designed to have
| separate rooms, entrances and staircases for Heinrich and his
| wife, so that they wouldn't have to see each other. The
| university moved into that building in 1809 upon its founding
| by the new king Friedrich Wilhelm III. This was 7 years after
| Heinrich's death.
|
| The LMU on the other hand is way older, but the building is
| _younger_ than the one of the HU Berlin: it was built in 1835.
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptgeb%C3%A4ude_der_Ludwig-M...
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_von_Preu%C3%9Fen_(172...
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_des_Prinzen_Heinrich
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(page generated 2023-02-24 23:00 UTC)