I like the sense of adventure and the attitude toward other people that come out in these comments. For me, majoring in German means having a responsive mind about the world. It means having a taste for Rittersport mit Vollnuss chocolate, 325i BMWs, Gummibären, Rothenburg, castles on the Rhein, and the Dahlem Museum. It means coming to terms with the philosophy of the rational and the irrational, with Kant and Nietzsche, with authoritarianism and individualism, classicism and romanticism. It means having a fascination with Goethe's Urpflanze and Heartfield's photomontages, with Schiller's Ästhetische Briefe and Schönberg's twelve-tone system. It means entering the bewildering world of Kafka's Gregor Samsa and the Magic Theater of Hesse's Harry Haller. It means enjoying language for its own sake but also for its cultural and linguistic intertwinings. It means having the pleasure of dropping names like Hermann der Cherusker or Christian Fürchtegott Gellert and enjoying the rhythm of saying, Hamann, Herder, and Klopstock.
It also means confronting the dark worlds that sometimes envelop the German imagination and intimidate us with their gloom. Yet how can I appreciate the melancholy brightness of Hofmannsthal's Rosenkavalier if I have not felt the darkness of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

Two years ago this past August I sat in the Biergarten of a Berlin restaurant having a farewell dinner with colleagues from various universities. We had spent eight weeks together discussing the topic, Berlin and Modernity. In our numbers were about five Germanists, an architectural historian, an art historian, a musicologist, two political historians, and two film historians. Our diverse interests had bonded us during the summer as we each viewed our project through the eyes of the others.

It was early evening, the air had cooled, and the German bees had found our table. They busied themselves on the remains of the plates, crawled in and out of glasses and occasionally drowned themselves. I sat contented with a belly full of German salad and bratwurst. Others sipped their last glass of beer.

"This is why I studied German," Tony Kaes said. "I wanted to move around. I wanted an excuse to travel from the United States to Europe as often as possible. I never wanted to stay home and settle down."

Tony had brought his wife and three children with him to Berlin, and this was the fifth or sixth stay for him in as many years. They had the minds of nomads, and they loved the life of travelling German academics. Others in the group agreed, some German and some American, all of the mindset that cosmopolitanism was better than nationalism, multilingualism better than monolingualism, diversity better than uniformity.

During our eight weeks together, we had listened to each other's presentations, cross-pollinated ideas, shared bibliographies, passed around the latest rare book finds, and reported new book stores and flea markets. We had gone to the Fassbinder film festival, taken walking tours of Alfred Döblin's Berlin, ridden through the history of the S-Bahn, and eaten at the restaurant adjacent to Bertolt Brecht's house. We had gone to the theater and opera and prowled nocturnally through the East Berlin now inhabited by victims of the drug culture.

This mentality of adventure and exploration is typical of students in foreign languages. On my bookcase is a postcard that I received this summer from Rob McFarland in Berlin. It is a photograph of the robot in the film Metropolis that we had discussed at great length last winter term. His note reports that he is busy interviewing Berliners who lived in low-rent housing during the 1920s. Just this week I received a letter from Julie Smith, who was in the same course. She wrote it on the back of a placemat from McDonald's in Holland.

She says,
Many greetings from Hamburg (where I live), Paris (where I just was) and Amsterdam (where I got this lovely McDonald's propaganda leaflet). . . . I thrived in London. I began watercolor painting and now I'm addicted. I have painted my way around England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, and the Netherlands in the last few months. It was especially bad in Paris. I couldn't put my pencil down. I met a French girl who explained her theory to me that Germany has produced such great artists simply because the society is so anti-artistic (i.e. geregelt, steif) that if [a German] wants to be an artist at all, they become a master, simply by virtue of the effort they have to expend to be artistic. I don't know if I agree. If so, however, that doesn't explain French artists very well, because I don't see how I could live in Paris or Amsterdam . . . and resist being an artist.
The university starts on October 7. I'm taking a seminar in Brecht's Exilwerke [and] a seminar in "Modelle der Dynamik sozialer Katastrophen." I'm working on my honors thesis as well. School hasn't even started yet and I'm already totally caught up in it.
For Julie and kindred spirits, travel is a high. Foreign language is a high. New cultural perspectives are a high. Intellectual encounters are a high.

One Sunday afternoon I unexpectedly ran into a two-mile long peace parade on the Ku-Damm. Huge semis with flatbeds hauled speakers the size of bedrooms blaring rock music while teenagers danced in the streets and on top of the Kiosks. I stuffed both hands in my pockets so they wouldn't be picked, and enjoyed the carnival. The irony of that parade against the backdrop of my gospel doctrine lesson two hours earlier both horrified and thrilled me. At least I couldn't go brain dead in the face of such energy.

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Utah, freshly returned from my mission to Austria, I thought I would major in accounting and then go to law school. It would provide me with a marvelous income, I reasoned, enough to support a family, and I could stand doing the work. I was, after all, disciplined.

Looking back on those plans, I realize I knew nothing about accounting or the practice of law, and even less about myself. Fortunately I didn't do well in my first accounting class and had enough presence of mind to switch to a major in German, where I was taking my second literature class. But what was it good for? Could I earn money? Could I major in German and still go to law school?

I made an appointment with Dean Sam Thurman, who had just come to the law school at the University of Utah from Stanford. He bore his shock of white hair precisely parted, wore severe wire-rimmed glasses, a starched white shirt, red tie, and pin-striped navy-blue suit. He welcomed me courteously but without smiling, and listened.

"What I want to know," I explained, "is what major would be a good preparation for law school."

He didn't hesitate. "I don't think it matters much what you major in as long as you learn to read, think, and write. You should take good teachers wherever you can find them, and take a good course in English history. Some people think political science is a good major for law. I don't agree."

"Well," I went on, "how about German?"

"That depends," he said. "If you mean just learning to speak the language well, then no. You have to learn to read, think, and write. You must learn to think abstractly and theoretically. Are you required to read texts and interpret them? Do you have to think? Do you write critical essays?"

"Yes, I believe so," I said. I was in my second literature course, and I was a bit unsure myself.

"Then that's as good a major as any," he said. The interview was over.

I realized that I had been too caught up in concerns about the practicality of my education, too worried about how my courses would lead me to a particular career. Dean Thurman opened up the picture. A broad education that developed my critical thinking and writing skills was more valuable than an education with a vocational focus.

This was confirmed lately when I had lunch with Bill Bracy, my friend of many years. He is now president of Lenox China. Like me, Bill had majored in German at the University of Utah and then went to Harvard for graduate school. After he had completed his course work and general exams and was beginning his dissertation under Professor Karl S. Guthke, Bill realized that the job market for professors was shutting down. It was the early 1970s. I had gotten a job at the University of Minnesota in one of the last good years for beginning faculty. Bill was two years behind me. He jumped out of graduate school and went to Harvard Business School. He has had an enormously successful career with General Mills, Parker Brothers, and Kenner Toys, before moving to Lenox.

"So, William," I said (I call him William for fun), "would you major in German if you had to do it all over again?"

"Absolutely," he said. "Right now I'd take a teaching position in Blanding if I could get one."

Well. I knew he had always had regrets about not becoming a teacher. He loves to talk. He can talk until five in the morning and then get up and do it all over again at breakfast. Still, I was not ready for this answer.

"Really?" I said. "Why not something more practical, like accounting?"

"German is an intellectual preparation," he said. "Accounting is a skill. It's the intellectual preparation that makes the difference between a great executive and a number cruncher."
It is also preparation for contact with other people. It's gregarious. Sometimes having majored in German has meant touching souls with people whose vision of life I might never have shared otherwise. During my last Berlin trip, I went to a birthday party for my former landlord. It was his eightieth. He and his wife have both been physicians and live in one of the gracious Dahlem villas. I was flattered to be invited with their two dozen or so friends, who were all prominent German couples living in the area.

Mid-way through the party I was sitting next to a well-educated woman in her sixties who wanted to know how I had come to learn German. I told her I had been a Mormon missionary in Austria and continued studies afterwards.

"So I assume you are a very committed Mormon," she said.
I nodded.

"I have a love-hate relationship with religion." She spoke in a quiet, wistful tone.
"Tell me what you love," I said.

She said that as a child she had lived in Russia, that she and her mother had been devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. When she was five, the family became refugees and eventually emigrated to Germany. She had recently returned to a mass at St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. It is the fourth largest single-dome cathedral in the world. She and thousands of others had passed candles from hand to hand in the ceremony. Thousands of candles floating from person to person in that great cathedral. "I felt at one with them," she said. "I liked the feelings. I hadn't felt that way since I was a child." She sat silently for a few moments, her hands tightly clasped.

"So what do you hate about religion?" It seemed I had to ask the other question as well.
"I studied religion in philosophy courses in the university. It seems to me it has nothing to offer. What is left for me is arrested in my childhood. I know a few prayers I memorized before I was five. That is all. So now it is something childish to me."

"You should not dismiss your feelings from the Cathedral so quickly," I suggested. "Perhaps they are more than childish sentiments."

"How do you pray?" she asked.

Her question came so suddenly I wasn't sure I had understood her and asked her to repeat it.

"How do you pray? Do you stand?"

"I kneel," I said.

"Where?"

"At my bed."

"How often do you pray?"

"Every day," I said.

"And do you speak memorized prayers?"

"No. I just talk to God." I tried to get back to her story. "You really should accept your spiritual feelings from St. Petersburg," I said. "They are real. They are not childish."
She shook her head.

We were light years apart. For just a few moments we had touched souls, one still a believer, the other pained about the God she had left in childhood.

Looking back, it seems like a peculiar scene. Here I was at the birthday party of an eighty-year-old German doctor whom I had not seen for twenty years. Sitting in his Berlin garden, I had just met a woman with whom I bonded. It had come so unexpectedly, so intensely. It seemed to me that God must be there.

To be a student of German is to find joy in encountering other worlds, other people, other cultures, and ideas. It is a beginning, not an ending. It is not just about Germany; it is about entering and embracing Japan, China, the Middle East, and Africa. It is about understanding Catholicism and Protestantism, Judaism and Islam. It is about reading widely. It is about subscribing to the New Yorker, Harper's, and Atlantic Monthly. It means going to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Zauberflöte in Prague, even if it costs you a hundred dollars.

Two years ago I began keeping a file at work and at home that I labeled "Interesting Stuff." Whenever I ran across a news article or a story or joke that I found interesting, I'd throw it in the files. I opened them recently to see what had attracted my attention. I'd like to read you a list of some of my German stuff to give you a look into the mind of one old Germanist:

Two articles from a Kleines politisches Wörterbuch, published in East Berlin in 1973. One on religion, and one titled, "antifaschistischer Schutzwall," which explains the purpose of the Berlin wall was to keep fascists out, not East Germans in.

An article on Nazi hunters from the New Yorker.

A list of faux pas in English by native speakers of other languages, including, "The management has personally passed the water served here," "Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar," and, from an Austrian ski hotel, "Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension."

A list of dehumanizing aspects of war from a psychology textbook.

A note on the reception of Schindler's List in Germany.

An article on the still vulnerable position of men who deserted the German army in World War II.

A news article with the title, "Few in U.S. doubt Holocaust happened."

And another, "Mozart's Foul Mouth May Have Been Symptom of Disorder,"
There are dozens of other articles in the files that touch on my interests in media study, authority and violence, teaching, gender study, reader-response theory, and particularly the grotesque. I'm not sure here whether that taste evolved because I learned it from German or because I gravitated to German because I had a predisposition for bizarre things. I'll give you just a few examples of newspaper headlines:

"Human Blockhead convicted in killing of stepdad, Lobster Boy"

"Rest in peace? Embalming fluids spark fire in casket after wake"

"Speedy worker takes 66 years to be buried"

"Pub owner bans dog from singing 'My Way'"

"Body emits mystery fumes"

"Woman cited for snoring too loudly"

"Magician's in a stew over cooked rabbit" It seems his wife was angry because he had been away so much, so she cooked up his rabbit "in a marinade of prunes, stewed tea, bacon drippings and red wine." He thought he was eating chicken,

I am suggesting that majoring in German may affect your very essence. Years ago at the December meetings of the Modern Language Association a symposium of nationally recognized Germanists debated the question, "Is reading Kafka dangerous for your mental health?" Professor Jost Hermand at the University of Wisconsin argued persuasively that it did and that he did not assign readings in Kafka to his undergraduate students until they were advanced and emotionally mature.

Still, all good things involve risks. It's probably riskier to be ignorant than to be informed. Knowing German certainly reduces the risks in travel. Years ago I was loaded onto the Trans Alpine Express with other brand new missionaries to travel from Basel to various destinations in Austria. Larry Johnson was supposed to get off in Bludenz, a village in Western Austria. As the train pulled out of Feldkirch, the town before Bludenz, we all hugged Larry good-bye and wished him well. Moments later, we saw the sign for Bludenz streak past our windows. The train didn't stop there. It didn't stop until Innsbruck, four hours later. Not knowing what else to do, Larry climbed off. No one was waiting for him, of course, and he knew not two words of German. There was no MTC with language training in those days.

He told me later that his first urge was to relieve himself, so he looked for a bathroom. He finally found two doors side by side. On the one was "Herren" on the other, "Damen."
"It made perfect sense to me," he said, "that 'Herren' must mean 'hers' and 'Damen' must mean 'da' men." He went into the "Damen" and got his first German lesson.
The lessons I remember best are the lessons I've lived. The lessons learned in risk, even in peril, on the road. Yesterday I was reading the memoir of Bill Bunn, a student in my memoir class. He writes,

I can hardly remember the classes I've had in college let alone what I've learned. I ask my Mom what she remembers about college and she can't remember one dang thing she's learned. I guess the education...pure joy of learning is out. The main reason I'm here is dough. How sad.

Countless times people have said to me, "I studied German once. I can't remember anything but 'Guten Tag.'" They seem to be saying, "Why learn something you won't remember?"

It's the question from a mind devoid of imagination. The pursuit of German, if done right, is impossible to forget. It cries out to be lived, not memorized and regurgitated. I doubt Larry Johnson has forgotten the meanings of "Damen" and "Herren." I doubt Rob McFarland will forget interviewing elderly Germans about their life in the slums. I doubt Julie Smith will forget painting her way through Europe.

No one forgets it who tries occasionally hearing or eating a bit of it. What can be more satisfying and unforgettable than munching a Rittersport "mit Vollnuß" while listening to Pamina and Papageno sing,

Wir wollen uns der Liebe freun,
Wir leben durch die Lieb' allein.