H. Adler - Panorama

In the school not all teachers enjoy as much respect as Head Teacher Scheck or Dr. Wagenseil, who is the student adviser. There is also Professor Gelbke, who often cannot seem to prevent chaos from breaking out in his class, the pupils competing in odd races in which they use the benches that are not attached to the floor, each row scraping forward more and more, the first row reaching the podium the one that wins, at which Professor Gelbke notices for the first time, though he still doesn’t understand what has just happened. Once they locked Professor Wolkraut out of his room by placing a bench against the door, so that he could barely open the door and couldn’t move a step farther because he couldn’t shove the bench away, he cursing and hissing as always, and then he ran off to get Director Winkler, who was standing in for The Bull, who was ill, but as soon as Winkler arrived with the sick Bull there was nothing blocking the door, Winkler puzzled as he threw a questioning look toward Wolkraut, who could do nothing but look dumbfounded. Meanwhile Lampe taught French, there always being lots of noise in his class, everyone saying whatever he wanted to, but even though he didn’t get much respect he wasn’t afraid to smack a few heads, for whoever didn’t speak French got his ear pinched by Lampe, which could certainly hurt, even though he was quite old. Lampe complains that hardly anyone has a good French accent, he having explained a thousand times the difference between saying ils ont and ils sont , though it always gets mixed up nonetheless, even when he stamps his foot and says, “The ‘s’ in ils ont is like that in ‘soap,’ and in ils sont it’s like that in ‘zephyr.’ ” Nonetheless it’s said wrong again, and Lampe takes his grade book and slaps everyone on the ear who doesn’t get it right.

The most remarkable of all is Professor Felger, the old man who teaches German and botany. He has beautiful white hair and yellow hornrimmed glasses, which he constantly takes off and puts on again, often looking stern and yet sympathetic as he gazes out over them. In his class it’s quiet as a mouse, no one daring to make a peep, nor had he ever had to give anyone a crack on the head, as during the period he hardly ever gets up from his seat, his skin white and delicate and full of wrinkles, his hands bony. Josef had been in his German class, where he talked about poems and demonstrated how they should be said in order to recognize their meter, Felger saying them slowly and clearly, drawing out each stressed syllable to its fullest, saying whoever rides through night and wind , his head nodding to the beat and beating time on his desk with a pencil, after which he lifts his head and looks out at the class. Professor Felger is not happy with the state of things these days, especially at The Box, he often saying that everything today is rotten, the old ways are gone, and thus the war had been lost, though he still remembers how it was in 1870, when there was unity under Bismarck, but now all governments are a mess, no one can just go about his business, for the neighboring countries never will allow it, and the miserable German language is full of nonsense, everyone having spoken flawlessly when Goethe and Schiller were around, as well as having made sure to protect the language from corruption, while whoever cannot speak or write the language correctly has allowed his soul to be corrupted.

When Professor Felger was young, about as old as those in Josef’s class, Uhland died, he having, after Goethe and Schiller, composed the best German ballads, though now there are no longer any good poets who have the power to write a good ballad, perhaps the last being Baron von Strachwitz, who wrote “A Savage Song,” though it’s not really a ballad but rather a pronouncement on our times:

Come, O roar of battle, screaming thunder ,

Wounds gaping amid death ,

The people’s anger, the people’s murder ,

Our dawn will come still yet!

Such verse can no longer be written today, for the language has been corrupted, it being good enough only for bad novels that one shouldn’t read, since their style is ruinous, and no new book ever touches the heart. Professor Felger loves to talk about his villa outside the city, there he tolerates no new-fangled contraptions and no silly luxuries, instead wanting nothing but simple nourishment, for elderberry soup was healthy, while Uhland had written such a lovely poem about how the poet had stopped for a bite at a wonderful inn, that being The Apple Tree, the best inn of all, nothing tastes better than a fresh apple, from which you can press apple cider, no need for any nasty-smelling beer. In fact, when his mother wanted to buy something special for the children there had been pineapple or numerous sweets, which only rotted your teeth, but the mother had roasted apples that came sizzling out of the oven, after which she read fairy tales aloud, which Ludwig Richter had illustrated so beautifully, it being the kind of simple life that everyone needed to return to. Professor Felger hopes that it’s not already too late, though he knows he’s an old man, which is why he changes nothing in his house or garden, where there is also a pump that has long been out of service, it having a tin roof over it, under which singing birds build their nests. Yet the pump is falling apart, its brittle handiwork having collapsed during a late-winter storm, though Professor Felger couldn’t bring himself to clear it all away and throw it out, the rest of the pump still standing there today, reminding him of the birds that had raised their broods there. What has happened to the pump is the same as what happens to people, they are brought down by a storm, which is why it’s good for children to revere their parents and be grateful to them, after which Professor Felger says something about his fallen son, though not much, the students laughing after the class is over, since they didn’t dare do so during it, for if one so much as cracks the slightest smile at the corner of his mouth the professor looks at him so earnestly over his glasses that all laughter disappears.

Professor Felger also talks about the blossoming of cars and soccer, as they were blossoms that really grew on their own. Cars have blossomed most of all, creating dust and an awful lot of noise that rattles the window-panes, it also being a blossom that stinks and is nurtured with gasoline instead of water, its flower not the rose but a blaring horn that scares both people and animals and causes them to run, especially the poor dogs and geese and chickens, which don’t notice the cars blossoming everywhere that run over them, as well as swallowing up children at play, though people love the blossoming cars, because they speed along, such that no one has to remain stuck on a farm or in a pasture, while whoosh! whoosh! everything races by, no one thinking about the sanctity of nature. The blossoming of soccer, however, is even worse, for it infects children as well and holds them in thrall, twenty-two men running after the soccer blossom in order to try to press it into the goal, but it is the people who press against one another and become brutal, because soccer is not an innocent game that encourages good manners or simply passes the time, instead it represents at its core the ruin of Germany, and in addition one has to inflate the soccer blossom just like the egos of those that run after it, though there is nothing worse than the countless idiots who show up to watch twenty-two clowns scramble around the soccer patch. Having finished, Profesor Felger looks earnestly at the class, for he knows that the pupils have their own soccer patch growing in the courtyard of The Box, though he doesn’t say another word about it.