Ein Deutsches Abenteuer~A German Adventure

New York City, June 17, 1910: New York was “gay with flags and things to welcome Teddy.” American flags were waving all over the city and patriotic decorations adorned buildings everywhere the eye could see in anticipation of Theodore Roosevelt's return to the United States after a fifteen-month tour abroad. Twenty-five year old Alice Merrill had made her way into this festive atmosphere from her childhood home in the hill towns of western Massachusetts. Having graduated the year before from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, Alice had been teaching German at the Mt. Ida School for Girls in Newton, just outside of Boston, for the previous year and planned to take the summer break to increase her proficiency in the German language and culture. She and her college friend Esther arrived together in Manhattan that Friday afternoon at Grand Central Station and found lodging nearby for seventy-five cents for one night before sailing to England on their way to Marburg, Germany.

 

Alice Frances Merrill

The next day, Alice and Esther boarded the ship, friends Helena and Mr. Smith accompanied them to the ship to see them off. After settling into the comfortable cabin that she shared with Esther, a Vassar girl, and “another nice girl,” Alice took in all the ship's activities. Even on board, the friends found ways to keep up their language skills by taking their rugs up to the hurricane deck and speaking German together. Alice sought out conversation with those she met and found an old German man particularly interesting. “He is from Hanover and told me lots of interesting things…He was overjoyed when I talked German to him.” They exchanged addresses and she promised to write of her summer adventures. The plan after disembarking at Holyhead was to go to Oxford, then London, Brussels, Cablenz, Cologne, Mainz, and finally to Marburg where they planned to stay with the Müller-Wægner family and Alice would take two courses.

Language study is never limited to the academic atmosphere alone, and Alice’s language studies in Marburg proved to be social as well as academic. She writes of the “älteste” of the family, a university student” in particular. Her interactions with him in German, she writes home that “he thinks he knows everything from a-z. I egg him on and ask the most innocent questions, as if I had never heard of the marvelous pearls of wisdom that drop from his lips.” (19 July 1910) That is the greatest thing about communicating in a foreign language, one can often feel more comfortable behaving in a way they might not usually behave in. Although, I suspect Alice had more than a little mischievousness to her.

Much of Alice’s social activities in Europe included attending theater performances, including a play about Goethe as a child, Iphigénie played outdoors, a play by Grillparzer that was “killingly funny,” and the Passion Play at Oberammergau. After seeing a theater performance in Berlin, she wrote home that it was “the rottenest thing I have ever seen anywhere and the vilest parts the applause was the loudest—and an apparently well-bred class were there. Deliver me from the German stage humor!!” (31 July 1910) One thing about fully learning and expressing oneself in a foreign language is that a full understanding of the target culture is needed. New England born and bred, Alice was getting her fill for sure.

Axenstrasse, near Altdorf, Switzerland,
Alice Merrill (right) with Friend Isabel (left)

The summer social and cultural agenda also included local travel around Germany and neighboring Switzerland. Alice and Esther visited the German museum in Nürnberg, originally a cloister built in the 15th century. After staying overnight there at the Christliches Hospiz (equivalent to the American YWCA), waking up to the nuns singing in the distance, the young women had breakfast and secured sandwiches for the train ride for seventy-five cents. They traveled on to Cologne, then to Berlin, and to Jena, “Everywhere now we are meeting Smith girls…To-day we noticed a girl whom we both picked out for a Smith girl tho neither of us knew her. While we were talking about it she came up and said, ‘I think you must be Smith girls.’” (31 July 1910) Even in 1910, American tourists were spread out across Europe, making total cultural and linguistic assimilation more difficult for Alice and friends.

Back in Marburg in August of 1910, Alice enjoyed the culture of her host family, who also happened to be hosting other international visitors. College friend Esther had departed at the beginning of August and Alice was somewhat relieved to focus on what she liked to do. “Esther is fine to travel with, but never has time to do the nice quiet things I love. She is the typical American hustler.” Also staying with the host family were two young men from China (“very nice and thorough gentlemen”) and a Harvard man, “the living incarnation of the man from home.” Both of the Chinese men had been highly educated by the Chinese government, one a “typical aristocrat…gallant to the last degree,” the other, an engineer, “full of fun and very good company.” The aristocrat was preparing himself to be a diplomat and had lived in Japan, working as a lawyer, and in England and Scotland for five years as a medical and zoology student. “I wish father could hear their interesting tales of China and their views on the future of that great nation.” She and her American friends enjoyed showing their German family and friends what an American picnic was like, but hadn’t anticipated the cultural differences in accomplishing their outing. “Germans don’t take things around in their hands like we do—they have a servant carry them! But we to their extreme horror had a dreadful foil and a suitcase!!” The picnic ended with them all singing around a campfire, both American and German songs. Alice lamented that she nearly got “into trouble not realizing the customs are so strict here but I generally try to conform to everything except drinking beer and going without water. For that the family will never forgive me.”

The Müller-Wægner Family with
Alice (far left) and Other Summer Guests

Of course Alice’s summer did in fact include language study in addition to her cultural immersion. She took private German lessons with the daughter of her host family and also with phonetician Frau von Blanckensee (whom older brother Arthur had known well when he studied there in 1895) in preparation for an examination with the world-famous German phonetician Professor Wilhem Vietor. It was a difficult exam to pass, but Alice felt that there was no risk in failing and if she passed with a good score she could “get anywhere for my pronunciation.” There is no indication about whether she passed or failed, but we do know that Alice continued as the German teacher at the Mt. Ida School for Girls for the following two years, then took a similar position nearer to home at Northampton High School from 1912-1915.

Traveling from Marburg to Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Berlin, and to Hamburg at the end of August and into September, Alice finally began her journey home on September 8, 1910 on the ship Cincinnati, arriving in New York City to quarantine orders due to a cholera outbreak in Berlin. (Although there were no cases reported onboard the ship.) She had thoroughly immersed herself in German culture and focused on learning the language as best she could. When I think back on the influence Alice, my grandmother, had in my life, it was to a large degree her permission to make sure to travel and experience foreign culture when young that made the biggest impression. I too studied abroad after college and also became a foreign language teacher. Alice Francis Merrill Ware died in 1969, when I was three years old, but left hundreds of letters, many from her time abroad, for me to get to know her better. I think we would have been great friends, but I wish I could ask her even more about her adventures abroad and her experiences learning German.