Fleeting Footnotes
- The Interhotel Warnow, where the guests stayed, had a sign exhorting (East Germans, I presumed) to learn, work, and live in the spirit of Lenin..
- The evening seminars and receptions proved so interesting that I did not have a chance to attend an opera, a play, or a movie (a Gin a Lollobrigida film around the corner remained unseen).
- My beret brought various inquiries as to my national origin—French, German, Russian, Swedish?
- One can buy in the hotel Swiss (Suchard) and West German (Sarotti) chocolate. No non-Communist newspapers or current books are on sale. I read daily Neues Deutschland (SED) and the Ostsee-Zeitung. I noticed that Pravda was delivered in the morning to the rooms of Soviet guests.
- The mimeographed rosters listed 115 East German and 155 foreign guests. Of the latter, 104 were from Communist countries—33 Soviet, 20 Polish, 17 Hungarian, 12 Czechoslovak, eight Bulgarian, six Yugoslav, three Cuban, three North Vietnamese, and 2 Rumanian. The remaining 51 foreign guests were distributed as follows: 10 Finnish, nine Swedish, four Austrian, four Danish, four British, three Egyptian, two West German, two Swiss, two Colombian, one Australian, one Sudanese, one Belgian, one Dutch, one French, one Indian, one Iraqi, one Syrian, one Japanese, one Argentinian, and one American. There were no representatives from Albania, Communist China, Mongolia, and North Korea.
- The foreign roster began with the Communist countries, the U.S.S.R. leading all the rest. The non-Communist countries were listed alphabetically, from Australien to the Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika. Being last on the list made me conspicuous, as it turned out, since a number of delegates recognized my name when I was introduced. There is a Hebrew proverb, incidentally, that the last is the beloved (Achron achron habib).
- On the main building of the University is the inscription “Doctrina multiplex, Veritas una.” The official motto is “Theoria cum praxi.” I cited to my colleagues “E pluribus unum” and “Leges sine moribut vanae” (motto of the University of Pennsylvania).
- On various public and official occasions during the week, homage was paid to Harry Tisch, the First Secretary of the S.E.D. for the Rostock District. He was frequently present and photographed, but he did not speak.
- Each Ehrengast (guest of honor) was given a new history of the University of Rostock in two volumes. The second deals with the development since 1945 and contains the footnotes and bibliography for the set. I hope to review it in an historical or educational journal. The early centuries are treated rather skimpily, judging from the earlier and substantial Die Universität Rostock im funfzehnten [sic] uni sechzehnten Jahrhunciert ( Rostock : Stiller , 1854 ), by Otto Krabbe. The guests also received a souvenier medallion with the seal of the University, a first-day postal cover, and various publications.
- No one introduced me to the guests from North Vietnam.
- The East German professors from Rostock and elsewhere wore their S.E.D. buttons prominently. One East German professor was able to cut red tape for himself and for me by throwing his titles and my official guest-hood status around in clipped, curt phraseology. He did not wear a monocle. In fact, no one did.
- The jazz played in the hotel and the Kurhaus is at least twenty years old.
- No one is allowed to browse in the supermarket. He must pick up a basket and, presumably, buy something. I bought some fruit. The procedure of payment is the same as the U.S., not the U.S.S.R.—that is to say, by waiting in one line only.
- There are few mini-skirts and fewer hippie-types. No maxi-coats in evidence—yet.
- In the University, in the stores, and on the streets, slogans hailed the 100th birthday (1970) of Lenin and the 20th birthday of the D.D.R. Nowhere did I find a reference or hint of the 30th anniversary of the beginning of World War II.