shillings a month, and in addition Mr. Peck would continue my piano lessons. Mr. Peck could play some dances on the piano. His school salary was meager. By playing the piano and the violin at the nearby inn he earned the major part of his income. He asked me to play something and I responded with the not overly-difficult “Sonata in G Minor” by Beethoven. Mr. Peck was astonished. He rushed to my mother. “The boy plays the piano better than I do!” Mother was pleased. She had one of her typically glorious ideas: “Everything the boy learns will be of advantage in his future years.” She bought a cheap violin, and Mr. Peck started to teach me. I was rough on the poor man because I had no sense of pitch. The noise I made on the fiddle was nerve-wracking. But I made rapid progress. Subsequently, as a medical student, I played the violin in an amateur orchestra; later I learned to play the viola and participated in a string quartet. I am grateful to my mother for the many pleasurable hours my training in music has afforded me.
At the piano I first attempted the most difficult pieces, and neglected the bass. “You are climbing the rungs of the ladder too quickly.” It did not matter; I learned to improvise and this ability helped me over many hours which otherwise would have been arduous. I regret that I did not learn harmony and counterpoint, but once I began improvising on the piano, my inventive power seemed inexhaustible. I learned everything by myself. Had I possessed a trustworthy sense of pitch, I would have become a musician. I believe that the artistic gift is not one-sided. A creative mind can express itself in any branch of art. I also tried to draw, but I could go no further than the infantile beginnings. My son, by the way, is a distinguished composer and has a perfect sense of pitch; my daughter is an able painter.
THE HIGH SCHOOL
In the small town of Czernowitz there was only a German high school and a German university. The inhabitants of the town were of four nationalities: Rumanian, Polish, Ukrainian, and German. German was the colloquial language. Jews were considered as Germans, and we Jews felt that we were Germans. It never occurred to me that I was not a German. The word “anti-Semitism” was unknown in Czernowitz. In our class the students felt like brothers; the spirit of solidarity was so strong that it was impossible for the teachers to find a telltale if one of us misbehaved. There were many gifted boys of diverse nationalities. We founded a poetry club, met every Saturday night, and even arranged a poetry writing competition. The German teacher was the judge. Once I received the first prize for lyric and epic verses.
At school we were up to all kinds of pranks; we got together to drink beer and to joke and sing. We often frolicked until late at night. Then, on the following morning, Mother would come to breakfast with her head wrapped in a woolen scarf and complain of migraine. She would pretend that she had been unable to sleep until she heard me arrive. She gave me an unctuous sermon about the dangers of vice. I would reply with a laconical display of erudition: “Mother, two thousand years ago Socrates delivered the same lecture.” Once Mother changed the sermon, “You must understand me, I am not narrow-minded, but if an artist sees how the growing work of art is going to seed, he must try to prevent it from deteriorating completely.”
My fellow students were going to dancing school, but Mother refused to permit me to join them. I pretended that I had to visit a student to help him prepare for the next day’s school work. But I headed directly for the dancing school where I quickly became a good dancer. Prior to taking dancing lessons I often played at the dancing school when my sister, her friends, and other young people held impromptu dances.
The bond among the students in my class was so strong that the principal tried to keep us in check by assigning the strictest master to us. This schoolmaster endured much, but after six months he gave up. If we liked a teacher, we could be extremely well-mannered. There was, for example, Professor F., in the chair of mathematics. The students were fond of him because he was just and witty. Five minutes before he appeared in the classroom, we were quietly seated at our desks with our work well-prepared. F. would stroke his beard and smile—he was at a loss to understand our bad reputation. We had a wonderful time with him. We loved especially the Tyrolian teacher, Passler, who taught German and history. Each of his lectures was splendidly prepared, each address a remarkable experience—we looked forward to every lesson we had with him. These two examples prove that the behavior of pupils depends, in a large measure, upon the teachers. Our Latin and Greek teacher, whom we had from the first to the eighth class, was esteemed because he was just and human; he never complained about our conduct. However, let us draw the veil over the other schoolmasters—the dry perfectionists to whom historical dates were more important than real wisdom and to whom a wrong Greek aorist was sufficient cause to compel a pupil to repeat an entire year’s work and thus burden a family with doubt and embarrassment. I do not exaggerate when I say that the fate of humanity lies in the hands of teachers. I consider it to be the foremost duty of the state to take care of its teachers to the extent that they do not become embittered, that they maintain their joy of life and share it with their pupils. It is a duty of both the family and the school to bring up happy and independent people. It is regrettable that governments which have huge sums for armaments and wars are so miserly in budgeting their educational programs. In my opinion, education should be the most respected and rewarded item in the budgets of the governments of the world.
Fifty years after our class matriculated, we had a reunion. More than twenty of us gathered together for this celebration. What an assembly of old ghosts we were! The American author, Washington Irving, would have regarded his amusing and enlightening Rip van Winkle as a prosaic fellow, indeed, had he seen us. We tried futilely to rekindle the fire of our former enthusiasm. We found that we were indifferent to each other. We were strangers who tried to behave as though we were friends. Fifty years before we had vanished from each other’s lives. Now we were back. But physical proximity could not restore our warmth. The reunion was a dismal failure!
FIRST LOVE
Which of our emotions is lasting? I mentioned that I wrote poems, mostly about nature, and some humorous ones. Then came the event that made me feel like a true poet. As I was walking along the usual promenade, an extremely pretty girl, Bertha, looked at me. It came like a lightning flash—love at first sight. I ran to my friends and declared, “I am very happy because I am unhappily in love.” Now a regular stream of poems flowed. I made eyes at Bertha on every occasion, usually from a distance. When she sent me a message telling me not to stare at her, I continued to gaze at her, but from a longer distance. I was happy in the unhappiness that provided the inspiration for new poems. For a long time I could not understand why I loved her at first sight. Then I noticed that my mother had the same slanting look and the same eyes. Love at first sight is a revival of an infantile impression. The first love object reappears in a different disguise. The crystallization of such an ideal usually originates in early childhood; the ideal in reality represents the past projected into the future. I kept my ideal apart from my carnal experiences.
BETWEEN MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM
The mixture of idealism and materialism was evident at this period of my life. While I had dreams of becoming a great poet, I tried to build my physical strength by exercise and continence. I spent all available free time at the gymnasium or on long hikes with my friends. I also set some of my own poems to music. At first, my friends laughed at my efforts. Later I was more clever and disguised my compositions as songs by Schubert—then the poems were enthusiastically applauded. Years later I heard one of my songs in a students’ fraternity; it had found its way to the public. Many students learned my songs, and the songs were passed on from person to person. They were accepted only when they were believed to be compositions by Schubert or Schumann.
Years passed. School was like play for me; in the afternoon I gave lessons, but I had enough time for reading and music. However, the day I left high school (Gymnasium) was one of the happiest of my life. The freedom which
