Chapter 30 my teachers

While deeply missing my two mothers who are not in front of me, the German teachers in front of me are even more cordial and lovely. Among the German teachers, the one who has the closest relationship with me is of course my Doktor Vater (Dr. father) Professor Waldschmidt.The scene of my first meeting with him has already been described a little above.My first impression of him was that he was very young.His age is indeed not too old. When he met me, he was probably less than forty years old.He wore a heavy suit and had a childlike face.Personally, I think he treats people with respect.Most German professors are a bit professorial, which is determined by their social and economic status, and is independent of human will.I heard later that his students after me thought he was very strict.It is said that a lady handed him her doctoral dissertation. He flipped through it for a while, threw the dissertation to the ground, and said angrily: "Dasistaberalles Mist! (This is all rubbish, all nonsense!)" Since then, the lady has been brooding, and finally left Göttingen.

I have studied with him for ten years, and it should be said that he has never lost his temper with me.He is very patient in teaching, and his Sanskrit grammar is very detailed.It is impossible not to do this, because a word has one more letter or one less letter, and the meaning is often very different.I will teach students by myself in the future, and I will also follow his example, and I will stick to grammar.His teaching method is typically German.I remember that Ewald, a great oriental linguist in Germany in the 19th century, said: "Teaching a language is like teaching swimming. If you take a student to the swimming pool and push him into the water, you will either learn to swim or drown." death, the latter is very unlikely." Waldschmidt used this teaching method.In the first two classes, read the alphabet.From the third class onwards, I will study and practice, and I have to learn the grammar by myself.I was not used to it at first, and it often took a day to prepare a class.However, after more than 40 classes in one semester, I finished reading the textbooks of the German Sanskrit writer Stenzler, learned all the extremely complicated Sanskrit grammar, and read a lot of exercises selected from the original Sanskrit texts.This method has been very successful.

Professor Waldschmidt's family should be said to be very happy at first.The couple, a teenage son in middle school.For a while, I helped him translate Buddhist scriptures in Chinese, often went to his house, had dinner with his family, and then worked until late at night.No one talked much at the dinner table, it was quiet.Once he smiled and said to his son: "A Chinese guest came to the house, you probably want to brag about it at school tomorrow?" It seems that the atmosphere in his house is more than serious and not lively enough.His wife is also not very talkative. Later, when the Great War broke out, he himself was conscripted into the army, what kind of officer he was.Soon, his son also enlisted in the army.Not too long later, starting from the winter of 1941, the Eastern Front was stalemate and stalemate, but the fighting was extremely fierce.Their son was killed in action in a Nordic country.I have now forgotten how the couple reacted to the sad news.It stands to reason that their only child died in battle when they were young, and their sadness can be imagined.But Professor Waldschmidt is a very strong person. He never showed sadness in front of me, and the couple never talked about it with me.However, the lack of liveliness in the family atmosphere has since added an element of loneliness and desolation, which is completely conceivable.

In the first winter after Waldschmidt was conscripted into the army, the winter performance tickets he booked at the Grand Theater were not refunded.He couldn't go to the show himself, so he sent me to accompany his wife to watch it once a week.After dinner, I went to pick up my wife and accompany her to the theater.The performances include operas, concerts, piano solos, violin solos, etc. The actors are all from other places or abroad, and they are all well-known figures.The lights in the theater are as bright as day; the men's clothes are neat and the women's jewels are full of jewels, and the atmosphere is peaceful and peaceful.I don't recall encountering an air raid during the show, so I don't know what was going on in the arena when the enemy planes flew over.But as soon as we walked out of the gate after the show, there was a completely different world outside, the sky was dark, and due to the blackout, there was no ray of light.In the darkness where I can't see anything, I want to send my teacher's wife groping the long way down the mountain to her home.When a person returns home late at night, everything is silent, walking on the quiet long street, only hearing the sound of his own footsteps, he feels happy.But this is the time when nostalgia is at its strongest.

The second teacher that comes to mind is Professor Sieg. I don't know his family background.When I went to his house, I saw only his wife, a thin and small kind old man.I have never seen my children or relatives.It seems to be a very lonely and cold family, although the old couple are very affectionate and depend on each other for life.When I saw him, he was already past his seventies.He is the teacher who loves me the most, has the deepest affection, and has the greatest expectations among the teachers from all over the world that I have met in my life.To this day, whenever I think of him, my heart beats violently immediately, and old tears immediately flow all over my face.The situation of his imparting knowledge to me has already been mentioned above, and I will talk about it below.Here I will only talk about some of the deep feelings between our master and apprentice.For the sake of authenticity, I still copy some of my diaries at that time, verbatim:

October 13, 1940 Yesterday I bought a Prof. Sieg's photo, on the table, facing himself.I really don't know how to thank this old gentleman.He is almost as kind as a father or a grandfather.As soon as I saw his photo, I felt infinite courage in my heart, and felt that I should study Sanskrit as hard as I could, otherwise I would feel sorry for him. February 1, 1941 Come out at 5:30 and go to Prof. Sieg's home.He wanted to negotiate a salary increase for me, and the dean agreed.It was a surprise.I really don't know how to thank this old man, he is so kind to me, I will never forget it!

It turned out that he found that my life was too poor, so he personally approached the dean of literature and asked for an increase in my salary.In fact, my salary is enough, but because I buy books out of pocket, I feel poor. In 1941, I tried to leave Germany and return home.I wrote in my diary on October 29th: At 11:30, Prof. Sieg goes to class.After class, I talked to him about my leaving Germany, and he immediately became excited, his face turned red, and his speech trembled a little.He said that he planned to find a fixed position for me in the future so that I could continue to live in Germany, but he never expected that I would want to leave.He advised me not to leave no matter what, he would try to talk to Rektor (principal of the university) for me, so that I could get a stipend so that I could go out and recuperate.He looked like he was on the verge of tears.I was still a little hesitant in my heart, but now I am shaken again.Once I leave Germany, who knows what year I will be able to come back, and whether I will be able to come back? This old man, Nineteen, who worried about him like his own father, will never see him again.I would have been easily emotional.Now I can't control myself anymore, I really want to cry.

In cases like this, there are still some in the diary, which I will not transcribe anymore.Just these three, I think, can fully show the relationship between us.There are still some situations that I will talk about later when I talk about Huo Luowen's study, so I will stop here for now. The third teacher that comes to mind is Braun, professor of Slavic linguistics.His father served as a professor of Slavic linguistics at the University of Leipzig during his lifetime. He can be said to have a family background and can speak many Slavic languages ​​fluently.When I met him, he was still young, not yet a chair professor.Due to his age, he was also drafted into the army.But he never went to the front line at all, he just acted as an interpreter, the most advanced interpreter.Some senior Soviet generals were captured by the German army. Hitler and other fascist leaders wanted to interrogate them in person, hoping to dig super secrets from them.The translator is Professor Braun, and one can imagine the importance of his task.Whenever he came home on vacation, he was always happy to chat with me about some tidbits about his time as an interpreter, many of which were the real situation of the top leadership within the German and Soviet armies.He told me several times that the cannons of the Soviet Army were particularly powerful, and that Germany was hard to come by.This is an extreme secret that the German side has never disclosed, which left a deep impression on me.

His family is very harmonious.He had a young wife and two boys, the elder named Andreas, about five or six years old, and the younger named Stephen, only two or three years old.Stephen was very friendly to me. As soon as I arrived at his house, he flew over from afar and threw himself into my arms.His mother taught me: "At this time, you should hold the child and turn it around two or three times. Children like this thing most!" Professor Braun's house is very close to where I live, and I can walk there in two or three minutes.Therefore, I often go to his house to play.He has an ancient Chinese embroidery on which are embroidered with five big characters: sometimes there are streams and mountains.He asked me to translate it.From then on, he became interested in Chinese, bought a Chinese-German dictionary, and read Tang poetry.He looked up every word, and he was able to tell some meanings.I corrected him and told him some grammar common sense.Regarding the grammatical structure of Chinese, he found it both extremely strange and very reasonable, which was quite different from the Indo-European languages ​​he was familiar with.He believes that the absence of morphological changes in Chinese may also be an advantage. It can give readers great freedom of association, unlike Indo-European languages ​​that are tightly bound by morphological changes.

He is a man of many talents and is good at oil painting.One day, he suddenly suggested to make a portrait of me.I naturally agreed, so for a relatively long period of time, I went to his house every day and sat there upright, acting as a model.After the painting was finished, he asked me for my opinion.I am not an expert in painting, but I feel that the painting is very similar to me, so I am very satisfied.In scientific research, he also showed his talent.His articles and monographs are not too many, and he does not engage in what the German school is good at: the study of linguistic textual criticism.In Chinese terms, he is good at giri.He has a book on Tsarist Russian literature in the 19th century, which focuses exclusively on the meaning, and lists Leo Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky as two peaks, and discusses it with unique insights and thoughts. Profound and meticulously observed, this is a rare work.Too bad it didn't seem to get much attention.I feel lonely and desolate.

In short, Professor Braun was quite unsuccessful at the University of Göttingen.Full professors have no role, and academicians of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen even less.At one point, he told me that there was a vacancy for a full professor at the University of Strasbourg, and he wanted to go, and he took me along.Later, for unknown reasons, it did not materialize.It was not until I went to see him when I revisited West Germany more than forty years later that he told me that he finally got a full professor's lecture at the University of Göttingen, which he thought was satisfactory.However, he is already old, and he is no longer handsome and unrestrained when he was young.As soon as I walked in, the first thing he said was: "You are a little late, she passed away a month ago!" I knew who he was referring to, and I felt very sad.Andreas and Stephen are both grown up and not around.The old man also seemed deserted and lonely.In Western society, most of the elderly who have lost their practical value are like this.I am speechless.Last year, I heard from a person from Germany that he had passed away. I would like to offer my heart to wish him rest in peace forever! The fourth German teacher that comes to mind is Dr. von Crimm.It is said that he is a German from Russia, and Russian is his mother tongue.At the university, he was a lecturer in Russian.Probably because he has never published any academic papers, so he doesn't even have the title of associate professor.In Germany, no matter how proficient you are in foreign languages, you cannot become a professor as long as you have no academic works.With long working years, the salary may be high, but the status cannot be changed.This is very different from China.The devaluation of Chinese professors and the expansion of professors have a long history.This can be regarded as a "characteristic" of China.Anyway, von Greene was always just a lecturer.He was already gray-haired when he taught me Russian, and he always seemed to be angry and depressed all day long.He has only one wife, and they live on the third floor of the Gauss-Weber building.The house is extremely simple.The old lady seems to be sick all the year round, so she rarely goes downstairs.But the mind is very good. Hearing that I suffer from neurasthenia and sweating at night, I specially gave me an egg to nourish my body.You know, at that time, an egg was worth an ingot. When you were hungry, you could eat eggs, but ingots could not.I am very grateful for this kindness.Dr. von Green also personally approached Professor Wolf, the chief of internal medicine at the University Hospital, and asked him to examine me.When I arrived at the hospital, Professor Wolfe, after a careful examination, told me that it was just a nervous breakdown and had nothing to do with tuberculosis.This suddenly eliminated a piece of my heart disease, and I was reborn.This increased my gratitude to these two lonely old men.After leaving Germany, I couldn't see them again. I thought they had passed away long ago, but they will always live in my heart. The teachers I recall are of course not limited to the above four, such as Arabic professor von Soden, English professors Roeder and Wilde, philosophy professor Heyse, art history professor The Marquis of Fitztum, the German professor May, the Iranian professor Hinz, etc., I have all attended lectures or had contacts with them, and they treated me kindly and kindly, and I would never forget.I will not describe them one by one here.