Interview with Klaus Wyrtki
205
about one novel, the second one about the second novel. I saw that it wouldn’t go
very smoothly, and I was sitting in the middle. When he was at the fifth, I interrupted
him. I thought, attack is the best defense, and discussed with him something about
the ethics of the knights, die Ethik der Ritter, because one of the novels was about the
knights. We discussed that for a while, then he took the next student, then he skipped
me and he went on and when we finally got our slips, it said ‘good’, that was fine,
that was my examination. This was a little footnote of my student days. There was of
course a final examination for my Ph.D.
Your university studies were significantly different from today. Today everything is
regulated, more or less. Do you find that your way of taking the university was
somewhat better?
It was a wonderful freedom that we had. You could study, you could not study. You
could do what you wanted. You had to have responsibility. That wasn’t taken away
from you. If you failed, you failed. You were out. Today we are giving remedial
courses. Students shouldn’t get remedial courses, they should be thrown out. That’s
my opinion. That’s not the university opinion.
After I had my Ph.D. I had a very short stint in Hamburg. At that time Dietrich
had a position with the British Navy to oversee German oceanography and to collect
material from the war and to hand it over to the British. Dietrich got a university
appointment at that time. There were six months of salary left in that position which
was under the control of a British admiral Carruthers. I moved to Hamburg for six
months and my room was one floor above B¨ onecke, the director, because I was the
representative of His Majesty, the Queen. From time to time B¨ onecke gave me a call,
“Wyrtki, kommen Sie runter,
4 you have to sign a document on behalf of His Majesty
the Queen”. He was smiling about these things. That is the way things go.
You were asking about salaries. When I was research assistant, I had 300 marks.
That was barely sufficient to get along as a student, and suddenly with my appointment
in Hamburg, I got 800 marks and I felt like a king. I suddenly had everything I
wanted.
What did you do with all the money?
Amazing. At that time you still had to buy clothing, you could go out a little bit. You
could live.
We should compare that with how much you had to pay for a car, for a Volkswagen,
for instance.
A car at that time, about 1500 marks, Volkswagen Beetle. It’s amazing, but that’s it.
After the six months in Hamburg I returned to Kiel and I got a Forschungsauftrag
von der Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaften.
5 That was for the studies of the
4 Here, Wyrtki changed spontaneously into German: “come down”.
5 A research grant from the German Science Foundation.
205
about one novel, the second one about the second novel. I saw that it wouldn’t go
very smoothly, and I was sitting in the middle. When he was at the fifth, I interrupted
him. I thought, attack is the best defense, and discussed with him something about
the ethics of the knights, die Ethik der Ritter, because one of the novels was about the
knights. We discussed that for a while, then he took the next student, then he skipped
me and he went on and when we finally got our slips, it said ‘good’, that was fine,
that was my examination. This was a little footnote of my student days. There was of
course a final examination for my Ph.D.
Your university studies were significantly different from today. Today everything is
regulated, more or less. Do you find that your way of taking the university was
somewhat better?
It was a wonderful freedom that we had. You could study, you could not study. You
could do what you wanted. You had to have responsibility. That wasn’t taken away
from you. If you failed, you failed. You were out. Today we are giving remedial
courses. Students shouldn’t get remedial courses, they should be thrown out. That’s
my opinion. That’s not the university opinion.
After I had my Ph.D. I had a very short stint in Hamburg. At that time Dietrich
had a position with the British Navy to oversee German oceanography and to collect
material from the war and to hand it over to the British. Dietrich got a university
appointment at that time. There were six months of salary left in that position which
was under the control of a British admiral Carruthers. I moved to Hamburg for six
months and my room was one floor above B¨ onecke, the director, because I was the
representative of His Majesty, the Queen. From time to time B¨ onecke gave me a call,
“Wyrtki, kommen Sie runter,
4 you have to sign a document on behalf of His Majesty
the Queen”. He was smiling about these things. That is the way things go.
You were asking about salaries. When I was research assistant, I had 300 marks.
That was barely sufficient to get along as a student, and suddenly with my appointment
in Hamburg, I got 800 marks and I felt like a king. I suddenly had everything I
wanted.
What did you do with all the money?
Amazing. At that time you still had to buy clothing, you could go out a little bit. You
could live.
We should compare that with how much you had to pay for a car, for a Volkswagen,
for instance.
A car at that time, about 1500 marks, Volkswagen Beetle. It’s amazing, but that’s it.
After the six months in Hamburg I returned to Kiel and I got a Forschungsauftrag
von der Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaften.
5 That was for the studies of the
4 Here, Wyrtki changed spontaneously into German: “come down”.
5 A research grant from the German Science Foundation.