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The sentence of the Roman philosopher Seneca that we learn for school and not for life ("non vitae sed scholae discimus") is now generally perceived in the wrong order. As "proof" it should be mentioned that poor school performance or non-performance does not necessarily have to be a career hinderer. It is also not surprising that mischievous pranks - especially in boarding schools - are often an integral part of young people's lives. A look at the lives of well-known researchers and scientists shows the openness with which their time at school and boarding school is reported, often in autobiographies.
Theodor Billroth (1829 to 1894), born in 1829 in Bergen auf Rügen, Germany, became full professor at the Second Surgical University Clinic at the University of Vienna in 1867. His medical successes are undisputed, such as the first successful removal of an esophagus in 1871, then the first successful removal of the larynx in 1873, which was followed by the surgical removal of a diseased stomach in 1881. Billroth's career was overshadowed by his anti-Semitic attitude, which Felicitas Seebacher summarized.
In his handwritten autobiography, which he wrote in 1880 at the age of 51, he speaks with great openness about his school days. The fact that he writes ("B.") in the third person may be irritating, but it does not diminish the authenticity of the easily readable lines. "At high school, B. showed little interest in school science, little talent for languages, and no talent at all for mathematics. History, especially literary history, and the old poets alone were able to captivate him; but he did not achieve anything special in this either due to a lack of stamina. He was a middle school student. - Above all, a great love of music drew him away from his school work." The reason for this lay in his family, as he states in the next sentence: "Parents and grandparents on both sides were outstandingly musical." The fact that he did not become a musician but a doctor is due to his mother, who was widowed at an early age: "It was only his mother's energetic resistance and serious upbringing that prevented B. from devoting himself exclusively to music, for which he was later particularly grateful to her."
He also admitted his academic deficits in his letter to the "highly laudable Royal Abitur Examination Commission" on July 1, 1848 in Greifswald, Germany, to which he requested admission to the Abitur. Here he confesses, among other things: "Unfortunately, I did not use the two years in Tertia to the extent that I could and should have used them, although in this class we were given the excellent opportunity to firmly memorize the Latin and Greek formal theory." What followed back then is what we know today: tutoring. "That's why I took private lessons with Dr. Scheele."
Billroth's academic achievements were obviously no secret in his time. You will find in a poem that the surgeon Anton Freiherr von Eiselsberg (1860 to 1939) and assistant to Billroth wrote on his 60th birthday in April 1889:
“With very little effort and a bit of effort, at the end of high school, the Matura. Our Billroth now shows the most fun, the most skill, just for the music.”
His love of music led to friendship with the composer Johannes Brahms (1833 to 1897) and the music critic Eduard Hanslick (1825 to 1904). Billroth himself also practiced as a composer. The question remains unanswered: Would Billroth, who achieved great honors as a surgeon, also have become equally famous as a musician - assuming he had pursued this career intensively?
Before Anton von Eiselsberg, born in 1860 in Steinhaus, Upper Austria, received his doctorate in medicine at the University of Vienna on February 13, 1884, where he became a "regular surgical student" at the Billroth clinic in the fall, he had attended high school in the Benedictine monastery in Kremsmünster. His memories of this are entirely positive: "Being with boys of the same age at school and in the boarding house certainly had many advantages. Ambition was awakened, friendships were made that lasted for life." Eiselsberg, who comes from a noble family, concludes: "Educating boys in public schools seems better to me than studying privately."
Day-to-day school life wasn't particularly spectacular - "We didn't experience much, and that only helped with learning!" – and so the young boys left no stone unturned to indulge in the forbidden consumption of tobacco and alcohol in their free time.
Eiselsberg's high school years with the Benedictine fathers were not entirely unexciting: "Since the forbidden fruits are known to taste best, the ban on smoking and visiting any inn was often circumvented in the lower high school and no effort was spared in doing so." In the fourth grade, a weekly visit to “a lonely inn” was on the pupils’ agenda. The innkeeper shows himself to be an ally and brought the “completely indispensable beer” to the high school students in a room in the attic. Eiselsberg looking back: “People smoked from large pipes and sang along.” In order not to get caught, one of them had to keep watch in order to warn in good time about any members of the Konvikt passing by.
In the upper grades (7th and 8th grades), students were allowed to visit the monastery tavern. Here they not only sang, especially commercial songs, “but also diligently practiced drinking.” The supervision probably wasn't too strict: "Our teachers did take a stand against drinking, but not always with the necessary emphasis."
The geologist and Reichsrat member Eduard Suess (1831 to 1914) had nine siblings and was the father of five sons (Adolf, Hermann, Franz Eduard, Otto and Erhard) and two daughters (Paula and Sabine). Suess was busy, often on the move and had little time for the family. He saw himself and his own career as a role model and wanted to give his children a good education. Meanwhile, his wife Hermine bore the burden of everyday life and raising children.
When he traveled to Egypt in the fall of 1869 for the opening of the Suez Canal, he was in constant correspondence with his wife Hermine; Worries about his family accompany him even from far away. On November 6th he wrote from Trieste (Italy): "If only my good Adolf pulls himself together; tell him that I owe everything that I enjoy about this trip, the trip itself, as well as all the inspiration and all the understanding, only to the diligent study." On November 16th, when he was now in Port Said (Egypt), Adolf was the topic again: "The thought that comes to mind most often is whether my dear Adolf will keep the promise he made when I left and whether he is diligent and obedient. Tell him that, like all the dear children, I greet him many times and kiss him, but that he should not forget that only those who study diligently at school can enjoy the full joy of life and become a capable and useful man."
His wife's reply from Vienna probably did not reassure him regarding Adolf. In any case, this is how his lines from November 20th from Cairo should be understood: "What you write about my good Adolf worries me very much; I thank you very much for the many, many efforts you are making with him and I still hope that the seriousness, the ambition and the hard work will bring him forward. Read this letter to him too and explain some of it to him so that he can see how much joy one can experience in knowledge and research. & tell him that an ignorant man is almost as pitiable as a blind man."
Regardless of the weaknesses in the academic area, the said Adolf (1859 to 1916), the eldest of the Suess children, would later become director of the Witkowitz cement factory Adolf Süss & Company in Moravia (Czech Republic) is successful.
The youngest son, Erhard (1871 to 1937), attended high school in Horn (Lower Austria) and lived in the Konvikt there. His experiences show parallels with those of Eiselsberg in Kremsmünster, Upper Austria.
First on the topic: "Friendships were made that lasted for life." Erhard, who later became a doctor (1920: Primarius at the Wilhelminenspital in Vienna; today: Ottakring Clinic) and accompanied his father during his last days, shared a room with Stefan Meyer (1872 to 1949) in the Horner Konvikt. He then studied physics, became an assistant to Ludwig Boltzmann and from 1910 headed the Institute for Radium Research at the Academy of Sciences. Today it is referred to as SMI, Stefan Meyer Institute (English), in honor of Stefan Meyer. Suess and Meyer became lifelong friends in Horn and also published together.
Back to Horn in the 1890s. On May 12, 1891, a few days before the written high school diploma, Erhard wrote to his father about a nighttime adventure. "Tuesday May 5th was one of the first beautiful warm days of this year and four Convictists, of whom I also joined, decided to go out that night. [...] These, with the exception of Meyer, who lived downstairs, climbed on a rope ladder, which Prof. Fritz knows nothing about and which I am of course not willing to report, from the first floor into the courtyard, where they met Meyer and me, who had climbed through the back window of the toilet. We now went into the Hopfengarten, sat down there for a short time and after an hour returned to the Convict, where we found the window through which we had climbed locked, so that we were forced to climb to the first floor in order to have the servant there open the door leading down to us. The next day, since we already knew that our absence had been noticed, Prof. Fritz dictated the specified punishment The grade on my high school certificate was not distracted by this.
In fact, Erhard Suess was declared "mature" in Horn after passing his high school diploma; Meyer was “mature with distinction.” (Thomas Hofmann, September 19, 2024)