At fifteen I was admitted to the Technical High School in Liberec. After graduating from the extremely tough
school in Prague, the entrance examination seemed easy and for a little while, all went well. I liked the new
school because the pupils were treated like adults rather than children. Instead of classes we had lectures,
and we sat around a table rather than at school desks. Also I was staying with a Mrs. Mandello, the mother-in-law
of one of my father's clerks. She charged plenty, but she was very good to me and treated me like her son.
She even urged me to eat whenever she thought that I hadn't had enough.
The first jolt came when, on a questionnaire which we had to fill out at school, I put down Czech as my mother
tongue. Mrs. Mandello pleaded with me for all she was worth. "Richard," she said, "you can remain
in your heart whatever you please, but for your own sake, don't prejudice the staff against you; put down German
instead of Czech." But I stuck stubbornly to my decision.
The next incident occurred about a week later. I spoke to one of my classmates and received no answer.
I tried again, with the same result. It turned out that he was not the only one, other boys whom I addressed
ignored me too. I soon found out that recruiting had begun for the German Students' Association, and that
the first rule taught to new members was never to speak to boys who were not German Aryans. This was in 1896,
and with few exceptions, none of the German boys ever spoke to me again during my four years at school.
One of the boys was a kind of ring leader-his name was Mitter. Once during an art class, when no teacher was
present, he remarked that he might be enjoying himself if it were not for the mixed company. Of course I knew
what he meant and I was furious, but there was nothing I could do or say. A few days later, a professor of whom
all of us were afraid announced that there was going to be a collection in aid of a fund for needy students.
This fund was his pet project and it meant a great deal to him. We were to enquire at home how much we could
contribute.
The following week, he began to call out our names in alphabetical order and asked each boy how much he was
giving to the fund. Everyone gave something, but when my turn came, I said: "Nothing." He reacted
as though he'd been thunder struck. He summoned me to his desk and started questioning me. At first I remained
silent, but finally I quoted Mitter's remark and explained that, under such circumstances, I couldn't contribute
to the fund. Mitter was punished, I forget how. Of course he never spoke to me even after that, but a few months
after we had graduated I got a letter from him asking me for a loan. I didn't reply, so he wrote again,
and then he wrote for the third time asking me to return the previous letters.
Needless to say, I never answered any of them.
[...]
Prof. Fiedler taught Richard in the industrial school in Liberec, Bohemia,
circa 1900. |
My third year at school was a particularly important one, because it was then that we had to choose the subject in
which we wanted to major. I picked chemistry, and that was the way I came to know professor Fiedler.
Actually during that third year, the professor in charge of our laboratory was not Fiedler but a man called Janowsky.
Unlike Fiedler he was a poor, boring lecturer. But he was of Czech extraction and occasionally he would put his
hand on my shoulder and say a few words to me in Czech. That encouraged me. Janowsky was also a forensic expert
and once in a while, he took me to his private laboratory to show me a stomach he was investigating for poison
or some such thing. Obviously, I was terribly interested. But I was much more impressed with Fiedler and at the
end of that year, when each of us again had to choose a subdivision of our main subject for further specialization,
I deliberately picked that branch of chemistry which was taught by Fiedler.
Fiedler was a great pedagogue. He was extremely strict and very particular about fulfilling one's duty,
but he was absolutely fair. One incident has impressed itself particularly on my mind. Our professors all
had private laboratories where they could earn a little extra money by doing odd outside jobs. Fiedler used to
go to his lab first thing in the morning to get things started, and he would therefore be a little late
getting to our laboratory.
Of course we boys soon found out what was the score and we began turning up five, ten or fifteen minutes after
eight. One day Fiedler came to our lab at a quarter past eight, only to find that not a single one of the boys
had turned up. Any other professor would have punished us, but that wasn't Fiedler's style. Instead he gave us
a talk about devotion to duty, and he told us that we had betrayed his trust in us. He made us feel terribly
ashamed of ourselves, and none of us was ever deliberately late again.
He influenced substantially my own ideas on the bringing up of children, and the four of you have felt the
effect of that influence. The reason I was always so strict about your school work was that I wanted you to
realize that was your job, and that you should therefore do it to the best of your ability.
His home life was very unhappy. You know the way things get around in a small town, we all knew that his wife
was an alcoholic. But with Fiedler you never could tell whether or not he had been exposed to any unpleasantness,
or what mood he was in. As far as he was concerned, there was no such thing as differences of nationality or
religion. He was always even-tempered. It was then that I made up my mind that, should I ever find myself in a
position of authority, I would try to be like him. I think I have stuck to that decision - to be fair to my
subordinates and never let them feel the consequences of a change of mood or of some domestic upset.
To the extent that I have been popular with my employees, I believe that it was largely due to Fiedler's example.
I loved him in the truest sense of the word. I imagine I have forgotten some eighty per cent of the chemistry
he taught me. But along with my father and Thomas Masaryk, he was one of the three men who shaped my personality.
It was they who taught me devotion to duty and the desire to do what was right and fair.
Of course it was quite impossible at that time for a teacher to form a friendship with one of his pupils.
I had already taken up photography as a hobby and so I took a picture of his children, but that was as far as
our relationship went. Later, after I had left school, we used to send him any chemical jobs that turned up at
the factory, so that he might earn some extra income.
Many years later, during the first World War, he wrote to me to say that he needed food and could I help him.
He had heard that I had bought a country estate. I replied at once and invited him to
Světlá. When he arrived I hardly recognized him, he was so thin and he was suffering from some sort of rash
caused by malnutrition. Well, from then on he came to Světlá every summer to recuperate. Every day he
carried a glass to the stable and filled it with fresh milk, straight from the cow; he used to say that he
was going to the well. We kept up these visits until he died.
