Abitur Vorbereitung

(HP Baer: Dieser Artikel war fuer meine Kinder gedacht - daher auf englisch...)

The "ABITUR" is the ticket to higher education in Germany. It is the final highschool examination and diploma (high school used to be called "Gymnasium" - an old term not relating to physical education but mental gymnastics...). The Abitur diploma was the minimal requirement for entry into university. This exam, involving both oral and written performances, is the culmination of 9 years of advanced schooling. Or the final revelation of 9 years of anxiety and doomsday nightmares which, in fact, never are erased form your brain: Even today I sometimes have dreams where I imagine myself facing yet another "Abitur" exam, realizing that I have forgotten all of my skills and knowledge in Latin, math, or what have you. One thought which sustained me throughout those 9 years of gymnasium schooling was the gut feeling that in the end I should be able to pass - considering the many previous graduates walking the streets of town who, I felt, could not possibly be any better than me. Still, how could I be sure?

One way to be sure is to know, or at least have a general idea about, the questions and tasks you would have to face in the exam. Who has not cheated once or twice in the course of his/her education? Trouble was, if you were caught cheating in the Abitur exam you were finished. No recourse. (A good friend of mine, Alfred L., with whom I did much climbing in the Alps, met this fate: he did night school and was caught cheating during the finals, barring his access to university and other educational opportunities for life!). I was not prepared to take this risk. But, as the following revelations will show you, there are other ways in which higher intelligence can be applied to the problem at hand. Now you will be the judge whether the 1957 Abitur Caper at the Gymnasium Michelstadt represents a case of fraud or of higher intelligence and whether your dad should be stripped of all his titles, diplomas and professional honors....

To begin with, a few introductory comments. When entering "Gymnasium" in 1948 or 49, i.e. after passing the entrance examination (myself being the only candidate from the village of Weiten-Gesaess), enough students were admitted to fill three parallel classes. Some came directly from the town of Michelstadt, others came on foot (like myself) or by bike from the surrounding villages, and a large number of students came by train from as far away as Sandbach in one direction and Hetzbach in the other. The Michelstadt students were largely kept in one class, and I ended up in a class with commuter students. Halfway through those 9 years of Gymnasium, some students had dropped out and two parallel classes were formed. I ended up in the "Michelstadt" class. This class had a bad reputation: Michelstadt was the economic center of the Odenwald, thus a good number of the students came from well-to-do if not wealthy families whose lifestyles differed from those of the working class and farmer people who sent their children from the villages. Some of these habits conflicted with the necessary commitment to hard work in class and during homework. A few of the teachers may have had a hard time accepting this, realizing that some of their students were economically better of then they themselves (a few students even managed or were allowed to use their parent's cars - and in those days this was something special - most teachers did not own a car or even a house or what have you), and some may have tried to take sweet revenge in playing their own power game - such as during examinations. One teacher who had problems with this was the Principal himself: He was a "foreigner", i.e. not a Hessian, speaking with a northern accent, and he was overweight and lazy according to the still vivid memory of our home room teacher Jakob Dingeldey at his tender age of 86 (in 1994). He came from somewhere up north, uprooted by the war, and he did not integrate well with the community. A rumor had it that he served as a circus director in the early post war years. Of course, sometimes he was under pressure from local parents to overlook some of the troublemakers in class, and he resented this. Our class came to be known as the "Magnatenklasse" - a class with (kids of) managers. He was not our friend, despite the fact that he taught religion and thus could have been a bit more "compassionate" and forgiving. And it was to be expected that he would take his ultimate revenge at the Abitur, making sure we received the marks we deserved in his mind and perhaps preventing some of us from graduating.

 The pressure clearly mounted in the last few weeks before the big exam. I always thought that we would have to march into this exam cold - first the written part in main subjects like German, English, Math and Latin, then the oral examinations - each student in about two subjects, in front of the whole collegiate of teacher's, the big, fat Principal conducting his final circus! It was the oral exams where we expected the Principal to do his best to do us in.

 Then something interesting happened which I did not expect: Apparently the teachers also were under pressure, because they would have to parade their students in front of all other teachers! Clearly, if we performed badly, they were going to be seen as performing badly, too. They as much as we, the candidates, were interested in us doing well in the exam! This became evident to me when, a few weeks before the exam, individual teachers began to talk to students in class or in the hallways, asking us to submit preferred topics in their respective subjects or handing the one or the other of us a special assignment.

I remember my English teacher (Kratz): He requested that each of us submit a topic (a Shakespeare play, some other area of English culture, a book title etc.) of our choice. I had just read an interesting book with short stories (in German) from American black authors. I was fascinated with the book and studied the introductory comments on these authors and, for the first time, really took an interest in something to do with literature. I listed this topic ("Contemporary Black US Authors"). Katz cornered me in the hallways a few days later and wanted to know how in hell I had come up with such an unusual topic. I told him, and he then asked me to drop this idea and give him something else. This was an interesting lesson: you never can study something your teacher does not understand - he did not know the book, knew nothing of contemporary US authors and was not going to make a joke of himself examining a student on a subject he did not know anything about. I felt a bit duped because I thought that I really had come up with something that interested me - I do not remember whether I ever came up with another topic. Certainly I was not going to submit something on Shakespeare whose writings have left me left me cold until this very day.

The next thing was that Katz as well as other teachers began talking to a few select students more often - encouraging them to work on their topic, asking them questions in class, having them make little presentations etc. The case was clear: those student were likely to be examined in those subjects! The teachers never said so - but it became very clear that this was the way it was going to be. And slowly some of us came up with an idea: What we needed to do was to draw up a list, with input from everybody in class, making best guesses and estimates on who was going to be examined by whom and in which subjects. We were going to beat the system and give the Principal the run for his money!

We formed a committee devoted to collect and collate the necessary intelligence on the examination plans. I do not remember all details - but the members included myself, HP Muehlhauser, Volker Bluehm, Fred Rosenberg, Adolf Weimar, Hildegard Feigk... and Almuth Roeder as well as Hubert Rodemich (and I apologize if there was someone else who I forgot...). Our headquarter was at V. Bluehm's place.

Our intelligence was collected as follows: First we asked everyone about which teacher was giving him or her hints of various sorts (special assignments, a few comments in the hallways, anything of the unusual), allowing a preliminary conclusion on whether the student was on in a certain subject. Next, we knew that everyone could only be tested in 2 subjects at the most and that a likely subject was the one where his or her mark was not so certain or critical: For example, someone on the brink of a fail in a subject was going to be given a chance to salvage himself in the exam - or was going to be pushed over the brink by our dedicated Principal! If two or three indicators pointed in the same direction, the probability was high that we could consider the respective subject to become the student's exam subject.

Some students had made outright efforts to ask teachers at opportune moments on whether they would be examined or not. Of course, the teacher was not allowed to release any information - but sometimes clear conclusions were possible: While teachers might not want to confirm outright that a student was going to be examined in a certain subject, they often were inclined to assure a student that he need not worry - clearly, such negative information was just as valuable as any positive answer or guess.

Our list was growing - already a few students knew the subjects they were most likely to examined in. Of course, it also was clear that a given teacher would not be able or allowed to examine an unusually large number of students in his subject, and this was used in narrowing down the list.

Now we proceeded to the next level of intelligence gathering: We targeted those teachers likely to be most vulnerable. Favored students were put hot on their trail, particularly some of the girls of course were able to "wrap around their fingers" certain teachers and "interview" them as best they could. Would they be examined, more importantly would someone else be examined - here teachers were likely to divulge a bit more information, perhaps. A lot of detail could be collected in this way, false ideas eliminated, new information added: Our list kept growing beautifully.

As exam time drew close, we redoubled our efforts. Teams of two girls beleaguered some teachers even more, pleading despair. Bit by bit we were able to come up with a near-complete list for our oral examination - and students began cramming in those subjects the committee had concluded were the critical ones for everyone. I myself knew one subject of mine for sure: Teacher Rehberg had assigned to me a history subject - the Russian Revolution around the turn of the century, even giving me a special publication of some 5-6 pages detailing many events of this time period.

History was one of my weak subjects - my standing was a “4", worse than a C, and the question was, would my Abitur record show a C or a D (3 or 4 according to the German system, where “1" is the top mark and “6' a full fail). Split grades were not allowed. So, it was logical to expect a decision on the basis of my exam oral performance - and being given those special notes and encouraging remarks by the teacher made it clear to me

that History was on! (I forgot whether I was examined in a second subject or not - but during my history exam I gave answers before they were asked. My PE teacher (Busch - see below) told me afterwards that I went through it like a 110 m hurdle race, not dropping a single one. Apparently, I cited one incorrect year once - but the Principal seemed to not notice and the teachers all kept their mouth shut (they as much as we knew that the Mr. Principal was out for the kill and they did not necessarily support him in this!). I remember that during the 10-15 min exam preparation (after being handed the final assignment on the day of the exam) I did not even deal with my own preparation but translated a passage of Latin for one of my friends who was being examined in this subject.

But just two or three days before the exam date we ran into a problem with our committee: Every student knew pretty well his or her two exam subjects except one: Klaus Messer! We just could not figure out what his second subject was going to be, drawing a blank on account of all our approaches. And he certainly was of no help; instead, he became obnoxious: He demanded that he, too, should be told where he stood and demanded action or information, otherwise he would give us trouble!

There was one last possibility. The father of one of our classmates, Dietrich Busch, was our PE teacher. Actually, the final decisions regarding the exam schedule were made in a teacher's meeting just two or three days prior to the exam date. Our list of examinations was nothing but a high probability listing, and in some cases not even the teachers themselves could be sure - but following the teacher's meeting, all would be clear and decided. Dietrich already had filled in some of our voids by negative elimination, after pressuring his father to help us a bit. We needed to pressure him just a little more!

So Heinz-Peter Muehlhauser and myself decided to take some action - there was only one day left, we had to hurry. At night we went to Busch's  house in the Goethestrasse in Michelstadt, around 11 o'clock at night - all was dark and asleep at their place. We could not call out to Dietrich's room because his parents would have heard us. He lived upstairs, and throwing little rocks was risky and also too noisy. So we went into the neighboring building which was  under construction and managed to find a ladder inside. We dragged it across to the Busch's garden, stood it up under Dietrich's window and climbed up, managing to then wake him up and tell him our problem: He had to do his utmost during breakfast to try and find out from his father in which subject Messer was going to be examined! He promised to try. Heinz-Peter and I managed to retreat without dropping the ladder or being noticed. The next morning in class Dietrich came up with the needed intelligence: We now knew Messer’s second exam subject for sure and he was satisfied. I have no idea whether this information was any good to him just one day before the exam - but at least we could be sure now that he was not going to cause any trouble.

Had anyone known of the existence of our committee, outside of our class, this would have had most severe repercussions. At the least, the Principal would have changed the entire exam schedule from on day to the other, or maybe we would have been subject to some other punitive action. We all pledged absolute silence, and even at subsequent class meetings or getogethers, this incidence and the committee's action as never discussed. (I sent this write-up to one of my old friends, never to hear a comment or receive some editorial input...).

It may well be that other classes had done similar things, but I am sure their organization was not on the high level of organization as that of the Magnaten-Klasse and did not include last minute burglary tactics like HP's and mine at the Busch's house. Overall the exam went well. Our class was academically behind the parallel class, but so what. Everyone passed, even the most troubled case of “Moppel” who almost had a nervous breakdown during the last weeks before the exam. He was the son of a reputable Erbach family, he was overweight and a high blood pressure case and academically had had his problems. But we all stood by him, being exhilarated about his ultimate success of passing just as if it had happened to ourselves. Unfortunately he gave us cause for our first post-exam getogether - namely, at his funeral.  It was touching how much his parents actually showed their gratitude to all of us classmates - at the time of the exam and beyond - for having accepted and supported him. And it was a nice feelings for many of us to show compassion and support to a less privileged classmate.

As I said above, the Abitur is an important and potentially traumatic experience in the life of a German highschool student. The pressure is on, even for the best in class - and if anyone is telling you that many years afterwards he or she does not have the occasional nightmare years after the event, then than that's a lie!

THE END