Otto Liedke
German
His German classes were my favorite. He was energetic, in touch with his feelings and those of the students, and really cared about what he was teaching and how much we were receiving. Our focus on Kafka's Metamorphosis really inspired me and I know contributed to my writing poetry and a year later starting to paint.
— Grif Bates '57
Dr. Leidke made the study of German, when at the elementary level, a pleasure. He was an animated instructor who involved the students in his classes fully in the learning process. His advanced courses in German literature were taught with insight and sensitivity. He was one of the best professors I had at Hamilton, even though I was a science major.
— Charles Paganelli '50
I met my advisor for the first time in mid-September 1955 - and only then finally, finally, began to feel grounded, understood, and appreciated for my individual personality, academic record and potential. He was Otto Liedke, Assistant Professor of German Language and Literature, and I will ever honor, praise and love him for his patience, good humor, sage advice, generosity and genuine friendship. I do not know how he and I came to be assigned to each other - I like to think it was a considered decision by the college, and not mere serendipity - but a more perfectly functional pairing would be hard to imagine. Both my parents had grown up in rural, German-speaking families in Texas, and German was heard around our home fairly often (especially around Christmas-time!) Because I wanted to be able to infiltrate my parents' secret conversations I had taken two full years of German in high school, and equally important, I was (and am) very proud of my pure German roots. He asked what I wanted to do at Hamilton, and I allowed, rather diffidently, that I might like to become a physician. "Vell!" he instantly came back, "you must begin immediately to prepare for that possibility! You vill need three years of chemistry, four of biology and one of physics; there is no way to take more than two laboratory courses at a time, so you cannot delay. Ve vill place you in the basic courses in biology and chemistry sofort." He also gave me a fighting chance to take HamiltonÕs third-year-level course in conversational German, with the option to drop back without prejudice if the work was too difficult. (I survived.) Finally, English 13-14 required my presence at seminars from 11 to noon six days a week, Monday through Saturday! In my junior year Herr Liedke asked our class in 19th century German poetry to be prepared to recite a poem from memory at the next session - on a Monday morning following a choir trip, I believe. There were about eight of us in the class - no place to hideÉ Sure enough, I forgot all about the assignment, and waltzed into the class at 8 a.m. with nothing prepared. About five minutes into the hour, Herr Liedke abruptly asked me to stand and recite. "Ahh, Sir?" I responded bleakly, still sitting. "Herr Wieting, you are today to recite a poem - however short - from memory, are you not?" he reminded me rather sternly yet looking slightly amused, withal. Slowly I stood up, silently wondering, 'what the h ... ?' Professor Liedke had been known to ask delinquent students to leave the class... And then inspiration struck. For Christmas, my sister had given me an LP of the Robert Shaw menÕs chorale singing Schubert songs for male chorus. I had been listening to it practically nonstop for the four or five weeks I had owned it, and suddenly I realized that most of the words were in my head! So I started with "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt" and carefully sang the song silently in my head whilst very carefully emitting the words audibly as they arrived in the mental music. I had to speak the words softly, so as not to drown out my silent music, and in the rhythm they were set in the music. It was an effort not to repeat phrases that Schubert reiterated for musical emphasis, and in their place ensued even longer pauses. But the effect was not only strange and odd, but oddly touching, or so I was told afterward. Herr Liedke asked if I had another, and indeed I did - three or four more, in fact. All of them came out in the same slow, cautious, strangely cadenced, very dramatic fashion. At the end of the hour, I was summoned up to the professorÕs desk: "Herr Wieting, tell me, were you prepared for today?" I confessed the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. My penalty was to have to sing the first lines of "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt" as an impromptu, a cappella solo then and there. He gave me an A for the day, and neither of us ever forgot it. Both of us were equally gratified, naturally
— Bill Wieting '59
