Mark Twain Found Inspiration in Germany (Though Not German)

Every writer at the Times and every other newspaper, journal, and quarterly should emulate Mr. Crair's strategy. He doesn't use the first person pronoun until more than halfway through the article. This is a new form of what in rhetoric is called "accommodation." By then, we are so taken with his evocation of Twain and his time in Heidelberg we welcome a personal story. Too many writers begin with the personal before they do the real work of reporting. I, I, I, I, I, leaps off the first few paragraphs of too many articles like needles in the eyes and make this reader blind with rage at the writer's narcissism and abject dereliction of duty, as if ze is the real story and not what ze claims to be reporting. The influence of gonzo journalism at its worst. What are they thinking? Their bosses should ask, Are you taught this in the joke we call Journalism School, scarcely less reputable than Communications departments, which, other than those who study speech therapy and phonetics, send out into the world majors dumber than duffel bags stuffed with sledgehammers? Thank you, Mr. Crair, a writer whose name is now on a fairly short list of reporters who report first and keep themselves out of the story as long as possible. This reader looks forward to reading more of your articles. New York Times, pay his freight to every corner of the world.

I was fortunate to travel to Heidelberg for a day not long ago. The city is truly beautiful and inviting. On a table before a small bookstore I came across a copy of Twain's "Die Schrecken der deutschen Sprache" - the horrors of the German language. Printed in both German and English, it was hilarious. But Twain doesn't simply author a putdown of German and his struggles to learn it, rather he also concludes how the German language is much better at describing beauty and love than English. I enjoyed both the book and the limited time I spent in Germany - especially Heidelberg.

Twain's essay "The Awful German Language" is Appendix D of "A Tramp Abroad." Twain was unhappy about the lack of unity between grammatical gender and physical gender. He was upset with the complexities of noun declension. I wonder what he might have written about Russian or Latin.
Perhaps his favorite language would have been Chinese. It has no gender, no verb conjugations and no noun declensions. Nevertheless, it is not easy to learn.

Ah, Heidelberg. This article, and the premiere of the film "Morris from America," completes my summer on the highest note. Although older, I was privileged to view Heidelberg from a lens similar to Morris'. The city itself was the perfect tonic for a stranger in a strange land. To lose yourself in the history of the region is grounding. Almost nothing, from 1878 until this day has changed, yet within that consistency, everyday is still refreshingly new. And also like Morris, and unlike Twain, I was inspired by language. I've been back physically many times, but the language keeps me permanently there.

An amazing article reflecting a beautiful, civilized place is a (reflection) of its people. Now compare and contrast with a place called (Brasil). One is light day, one is dark night. Where would you want to be.?

A lovely piece, with the serendipitous bonus of good advice for conquering writer's block! Thank you.

Having been an exchange student at another university on the Neckar, Tubingen, I really enjoyed reading this. I'm just curious why Twain chose Germany and/or Heidelberg?

This article brought back some very happy memories of times in the late 70s, early 80s, that my late wife and I and our children spent in Heidelberg. It was everything the article mentions. Thank you for bringing back these memories that, unfortunately, were starting to dim a bit.

I found the monumental Church of the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeistkirche) refreshingly different from other cathedrals in that its interior is so bright! Apparently all the stained glass windows were either blown out or removed for safety in WWII and were never reinstalled but were replaced by clear glass, making for a much less somber church experience.

I spent quite a bit of time, off and on, in Heidelberg in the 80s and 90s when the University of Maryland's European Division was headquartered there. It's a great place.

Rumour had it that the reason that Heidelberg had emerged from the war relatively unscathed was that the US Army had made a decision to establish its headquarters there at the end of the war and thus wanted the city pretty much intact for the anticipated occupation.

p.

A few other commenters also lived in Heidelberg when the US Army HQ were in the area - it was my home for five years and then a destination to visit my mother for another twenty-five. This article and the upcoming movie "Morris from America" depict the lovely river and castle views, and also the diversity of the university, the Max Plank Institute and the headquarters of Heidelberg Printing. It was also an inspiring location for Erica Jong in her book "The Fear of Flying". Inspiration abounds in Heidelberg!

Reading this article brought me both acute pleasure and somewhat biting nostalgia. I grew up in Heidelberg, where my late father was stationed with the US Army ('92-'08). I have been all the places mentioned in the article, many times. While Twain's time in Heidelberg definitely looms large, the city is itself literary for many other reasons: it was a favorite haunt of the German Romantics (Goethe and Hölderlin among them). Another travelogue is worth mentioning, too: in Victor Hugo's "Le Rhin", which predates Twain's work, the Frenchman has an amusing time on a quick jaunt to Heidelberg up the Neckar from Mannheim (where the Neckar flows into the Rhine). I personally, as an American, think of Heidelberg and the environs as my home, though the US Army Garrison closed in 2013. I actually returned last year, and was shocked to find that Patrick Henry Village (a large military housing installation that is out in a supremely bucolic setting in the fields between Heidelberg and Schwetzingen) was being partially used as a camp for Syrian refugees. This experience must be the same for all the other American military dependents who, like myself, grew up in communities that have long since closed, like in Frankfurt or Munich. To return "home" and find that where you're from no longer exists.

I lived in Heidelberg for several years as a young man in the early 1970's.
I was a regular at Zum Seppl. My initials are there for all to see.
Ich habe mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren - more than once.
I return whenever I can. It would a fine beginning of any leisure travel in Germany, followed by Munich and Berlin.

The river is certainly an excellent place to view interesting scenery in and around Heidelberg. The town and its surrounds can also be a place to really cavort! On the south side of the river, take the cog rail train to the top of the Koenigs Stuhl (King's Chair) for spectacular views up and down the river. On the north side of the river lies Philosopher's Walk, a meandering pathway evidently used by the University's Professors for contemplation and discussion. At the top of the hill (Heiligenberg), are a restaurant, an old Nazi amphitheater and a series of ruins.
If you have kids, this is a great site to let them explore. What a great place this city is. It helped define my youth.

I am a 1976 graduate of the former Heidelberg American High School, which was located in the former Mark Teain Village American housing area when the HQ of US Army Europe was in Heidelberg. Lived there from 1973-1977. Beautiful city. Loved the people and my time there.

The town and mountaintop castle of Frankenstein. Nice day trip from Heidelberg.

Germany, here I come next year sure..

Beautiful phrases in this piece.

I was ejected from the Yale library as a freshman decades ago because I was laughing uncontrollably while reading "The Awful German Language," part of "A Tramp Abroad."

i love twain's quip about a literary german diving into a sentence and coming up on the other side of the atlantic with the verb in his mouth. and the spells hurled by merlin in the connecticut yankee, which grow ever larger in font size, are hysterical.

Heidelberg is a beautiful experience, I've been there, it is the kind of place you never forget. It is good that it survived the war relatively intact. As far as Twains remarks about the language, the writer was a little full of himself, that was how he was described by the women closest to him.

The academic fencing ("Mensur") Mark Twain described exists to this day. See the article on academic fencing in the English Wikipedia and on Mensur in the German one.

"I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective."

"The Awful German Language"
from Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad (1880)

It's a lovely area. I've been there. Oddly, I did not feel entranced by the image of a tower that surely (in one's fantasy) imprisoned a princess.

Substitute anyone, just anyone. What a lovely image--an African-American man grasping the bars to stare at the world he'll never set foot in again. A Jew imprisoned by Nazis who'd appropriated the castle. A gay guy locked up there to protect the world from him.

Over the top? Not if one can identify with *any* unfairly imprisoned individual. The thought of a girl locked away gives me the wrong kind of shivers. Yes, it's the stuff of legends and fairy tales; maybe they need to be reconsidered.

From San Francisco, but living in Switzerland now for 27 years. The beauty is here in Switzerland, believe me, but the plus points are having Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy to the south and Austria & Liechtenstein to the east. The size of West Virginia (also used to live there, but let`s leave that one). Got in the car with my son last year and drove quickly up to Heidelberg for 2 days. Wonderful, Julian with his skateboard cruisin around, and the castle and the hotel and then the next day back down to Europa Park (Disney Land if you will) and then back to Switzerland at the snap of a finger. Awesome! My wife comes from Leipzig (old East German girl) and know it too, and Dresden, Munich, Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and Usedome up on the beaches close to the Polish border. All good, especially Switzerland and heading out from here.

I had the happy fortune of attending a scientific conference in Heidelberg in June 1989. My snapshots of the riverboat and the main square correspond almost exactly to those shown in the article, with the exception that the people in my pictures are all colleagues.

Heidelberg is a lovely town and the Neckar valley is a gem.

In the appendix of A Tramp Abroad is Twain's hilarious take (at least for those who have grappled with the language) on "The Awful German Language." He had a great ear for the language as is demonstrated by his translation of Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter. To someone raised on the original German version, Twain's translation comes closer than other English versions.

This will thrill my German students . . . Max Meyerfeld, back in 1899, had young Germans almost convinced that Oscar Wilde was almost German. Now Mark Twain is almost German.
http://www.thecriticalmom.blogspot.com

I passed through Heidelberg 3 years ago on a bicycle tour which included the cathedral cities of Worms and Speyer. It was a great little tour and excellent value for money. There are several companies in Germany and Austria offering package deals for bicycle touring.

I have relatives in that part of Germany and even lived in the area after high school for a year - it's a charming region and charming city. I had no idea Twain spent time there, but could see that it would have had an effect on him. If you go, it is a good place to try and understand the Germans from their perspective - yes some of the cliches apply, but there's far more than that if you look and lose the pre-concieved notions that Hollywood has filled us with.

Heidelberg is a survivor of occupations, invasions and political change -- some of it hostile, some peaceful. It was completely destroyed (by the French) in the 1690s and is therefore a baroque, not a medieval city. It has been a tourist dstination for about 200 years and a university town for over 600 years. There is much to explore beyond what Twain saw. It is a culturally diverse open minded place which hosted one of the largest U.S. army bases in Europe and now serves as a way station for tens of thousands of refugees every year. Amidst all of this, the town and its citizens have retained their easygoing friendly ways.

Twain's travelogues are as entertaining today as they probably were in 19th Century. When stationed in Germany (1980-84), I used them to tour Germany. Many of his observations were relevant 100 years later and are probably still spot on.

As German-American travel writer (dual national) and member of the Heidelberg Club International, I can only add here that, if you want to understand Germany and the Germans, or if you simply want to enjoy both the architectural and natural beauty of Central Europe, you could do no better than to start in Heidelberg. I first visited the city when I was sixteen, and I come back regularly to see what first made me love it and, inevitably, to find something both unexpected and arresting.

Please keep this in mind: Germany is a country with a history, in literature, the visual arts and music, of romanticism without sentimentality. If that sounds like a contradiction, go to the university city of Heidelberg, sit down at any student bar or cafe and introduce yourself to the people at the next table. A new understanding of what is unique and intriguing about Germany will start right there.

And you dd not have a glass of riesling there? Less auster than the mosel ones. Burg Homberg has a great restsurant too.

I was just thinking of this today:

Though I've been to places more strikingly beautiful (Alaska, for example), the most magical and romantic place I think I've been to was the Mosel River Valley in Germany, in summer. Cool breezes, long late afternoon shadows, lazy river, bottle of great (dirt cheap!) local Riesling, steep vine covered hills, no touristy stuff. How nice.

Yes, it is beautiful. Go if you wish, but go as a traveler, not a "tourist". There are a lot of tourists there. Dress like the locals, not in shorts and t-shirts and try to blend in. Explore the side and back streets and wander away from the Altstadt, too. Try to fit in and you will be richly rewarded.

There in '87. "Last possibility of the beautiful" - I don't even know what that means - but it was beautiful, timeless and charming. Go.