Off to Munich

We had a wonderful send-off from Barnard. 1974 was not a time when students set much store by tradition, but Barnard, like a wise mother, did. May 15th, a Wednesday, was Commencement Day, but on the Sunday beforehand, we went to the Baccalaureate Service with Columbia College, held in St. Paul’s Chapel on the Columbia campus. We processed in in caps and gowns of the light grayish-blue Columbia color, the king’s crown emblem embroidered on black tabs at the chest. The interior of the magnificent chapel glowed in candlelight. The Barnard-Columbia Chorus, placed in the opposing galleries, as in St. Mark’s in Venice, sang Renaissance sacred music. Psalms and poems were offered by various campus ministers and a sermon-like address was given. I think we actually sang the Columbia alma mater. We experienced very few moments of college traditions in our four years, but at the Baccalaureate Service, we saw the good of tradition before us.

On Wednesday, the great day came. Barnard College held its diploma ceremony on its campus in the early afternoon—Margaret Mead, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of her graduation, was the speaker. We then processed across the street to the Columbia campus while the New York police stopped traffic on Broadway. All the prospective graduates of Columbia-affiliated colleges and schools gathered on the terrace in front of Low Library, all the pageantry and colors of a commencement were present, and we made up the veritable sea of Columbia blue.

The days between the Baccalaureate Service and Commencement were among the happiest of my life. Everything came together—requirements fulfilled, courses completed, recital played—all with joy. On Tuesday, my parents arrived, and we went to the Central Park Zoo. Why not? My prospects looked bright: I would take up my DAAD, my German Academic Exchange Grant, to the University of Munich for the academic year, 1974-75. It was the perfect present for work well done.

I found that although I had left Barnard, it hadn’t left me. My connection to it, in fact, seemed stronger. All that I learned and experienced there was with me, a guide, a muse when I needed one--a Nicklausse to my Hoffmann, perhaps? When I arrived in Munich, I felt as if I knew the city already. How wonderful it was to see Prinzregentenstrasse! Its buildings looked so stately—and suitably upper-bourgeois for Inez Rodde, the character in Doctor Faustus who chose her husband and her home for their social status.

My first expedition was to go to Thomas-Mann-Allée, the leafy path along the Isar River where the writer used to take his morning constitutional with his dog, Baschan. (the source of the short story, “A Man and His Dog.”) I took the tram to Mauerkircherstrasse in Bogenhausen, the district where Mann had lived, and found the Allée. It turned out to be a quiet spot, romantic-looking in a nineteenth-century sort of way, slightly wild compared to the tidy streets nearby and a little bit secluded. In reality, Thomas-Mann-Allée was only one little path in a large and varied city, but in that moment it was a foothold for me. It captured my imagination, and I took a small apartment nearby.

Explorations over time included the English Garden and the North Cemetery. That was a long walk that Gustav von Aschenbach took in Death in Venice! No wonder he was exhausted. As I got to know the city better and the Schwabing district where the university was, I went to some of the places—Feilitzschstrasse, Ungererstrasse, Giselastrasse--where Mann lived as a student. I passed by Rambergstrasse as well where his mother had her apartment and gathered her salon, described in Doctor Faustus. Even if only for the names, the streets had meaning for me, and the districts took shape in my mind as I walked or rode on the tram through them.

Finding Thomas Mann was not my only endeavor in Munich. There were other pursuits that had been launched at Barnard and were guiding me now. Following concert schedules in grand and small spaces, indoors and out, was one. Seeking out what I’d learned in art history was another. This came about when, farther along in my stay, I visited the Alte Pinakothek, the museum devoted to the Old Masters. Totally by accident, in my first college year, I had the extraordinary good luck of taking the survey of European painting given by Julius Held. He was the foremost scholar of Rubens and Rembrandt, and this was his last semester of teaching at Barnard. He was also an émigré from Germany and knew the country before and at the rise of the Nazis. He told us a story one day of a man who came into a museum in Berlin and threw acid on a very famous painting. We should take note of such an action: it was a portent of things to come. When I went to the Alte Pinakothek, I felt as if this were an artistic home. I saw one Rubens after another that we’d studied in class. Then, in a kind of nook, I found the sketches to Rubens’s Maria de’ Medici cycle. It was wonderful. We’d studied these, and I remembered Professor Held telling us how important sketches were and how fascinating they could be to study. Years later, I paid a visit to this distinguished teacher at his home in Bennington, Vermont. I was teaching a course in music and art history and needed a little guidance. His two cardinal rules were: see the painting in the original, as much as possible, and what is in the picture?

My picture became filled with more and more experiences as the year progressed. I hardly gave Nicklausse the trouble that Hoffmann did, but the Muse stayed with me, a happy companion and guardian, more present than I might know.