Chapter 7 gottingen

I arrived in Göttingen from Berlin on October 31, 1935.Originally, I only planned to live there for two years, but I didn’t know that I would live here for ten years. The length of time I lived here made it my second hometown, second only to Jinan and Beijing in my life. Göttingen is a small city with a population of only 100,000, and the number of college students who migrate sometimes reaches 20,000 to 30,000. It is a typical university town.The university has a history of hundreds of years, and many prominent names in German academic history and literary history are related to this university.There are streets named after them.As soon as you enter the city, you will feel the cultural and academic atmosphere of the whole city, as if it is an academic paradise and a pure cultural land.

Göttingen is famous for its beautiful scenery throughout Germany.The mountains and forests in the east are densely covered with green grass all year round.Even if it snows in winter, the green grass is still green as spring under the snow.Here, it is not cold in winter, not hot in summer, and has never encountered strong winds.There are neither fans nor mosquito nets, and flies and mosquitoes have become rare animals.Fleas and bedbugs are unheard of.The streets are so clean that if you lie and roll on the road, you will never get any dust.It has become commonplace for old women to scrub sidewalks with soap.In the center of the city, the houses are all medieval buildings, at least four or five floors.People are in it, as if they have returned to the Middle Ages.The ancient city walls are still preserved, covered with towering oak trees.When I was studying in Tsinghua University, I liked to talk about the poems of the short-lived German lyric poet Hölderlin. He seemed to like oak trees very much, and he often mentioned it in his poems.But I still don't know what an oak tree looks like.I was overjoyed to meet him by accident today.After that, I often went for a walk on the ancient city wall. In the shade of the oak trees, surrounded by silence, I sat alone and meditated.

When I first arrived in Göttingen, people and places were unfamiliar.Mr. Le Sengan, an old senior, picked me up at the station and arranged a house for me.The landlord's surname is Oppel, an old couple with only one son.When my son grew up and went to the outer city to go to college, he rented out his room to me.The male landlord was an engineer from the municipal government, a typical German, too honest to even say a word.The landlady is about fifty years old, she is a typical German housewife, she has a secondary education, can appreciate German literature, likes German classical music, her taste is conservative, and when jazz is mentioned, she has a look of contempt and sneers. .She had all the virtues of a German woman: kind, upright, considerate, sympathetic.But there are also some small shortcomings, for example, she has a best friend, a widow, and the two often see each other.Once, her girlfriend saw a new hat she bought and liked it very much. She wanted to buy another hat, but she was very dissatisfied and told me many things about her dissatisfaction with this girlfriend.It turns out that Western women—and in some respects, men too—absolutely do not allow others to wear the same hats and the same clothes.It is difficult for us Chinese to understand anyway.It can be seen from this that my landlady, a petty bourgeois, has a lot of habits.However, she was one of the nicest women I have ever met, and she was as kind as a mother.

I just lived in such a German family with only an old couple. I got together with the two old people in the morning and evening, and became a member of the family. I lived in it for ten years without moving once.I will first explain the general situation of this family here, and I will talk about the details later. How did I feel when I first arrived in Göttingen?For the sake of authenticity, I will copy a passage from my diary the day after I arrived in Göttingen: Finally came to Göttingen again.After that, there will be a longer period of stable life in the restless wandering life.I usually like to dream, and I also paint my dreams with various colors.At first I dreamed of coming to Germany. Germany is my paradise and my ideal country.I imagine that Germany has golden sunshine, Wahrheit (true) and Schnheit (beautiful).I finally caught my dream and I arrived in Germany.What I got instead was disappointment and emptiness.All my hopes vanished like nothing.However, a new dream immediately surfaced.I dream that I am in Göttingen, and in this relatively long and stable life, I can read some books and read some words that have had glory in ancient times, and this glory will never disappear.Now we are finally in Göttingen again.I don't know if I can catch this dream.In fact, who can know?

It can be seen from this section of the diary that I was still in a state of confusion at the time, and had not yet found the path I wanted to take.