1.
By swaying a few inches to the right or left, he could make the trees seem to move: imperfections in the glass window transformed sturdy branches into breathing diaphragms. Behind him a murmur welled up.
Bernhard Moll turned to face his students. He often paused in this manner, having learned that imparting facts alone was not enough to inspire understanding. Repose was necessary, the depth of silence; this alone allowed knowledge to grow. A lesson is like an infusion of black tea, leaf fragments swirling excitedly about. It must be allowed to sit a while until the leaves coalesce, in the bottom of the pot, into images and ideas.
There were girls who had tears in their eyes when they saw their teacher standing like this. For them, these were not moments to process what they had heard, but their only opportunity to catch a glimpse behind the outer façade of this man, who often seemed far too mature.
“Good, then let’s summarize. Which factors contributed to the breakdown of the Weimar Republic?” He looked around at their pale faces.
“Yes?” He pointed to a young man in the last row.
“The fear of a revolution.”
“Right. What else?”
“Inflation.”
“Good. Germany was suffering under enormous inflation: one dollar to four billion Marks. What else?” Bernhard Moll slowly went up to the board.
“Extreme unemployment rates. In 1930 it was more than 20 percent, with 30.000 bankruptcy proceedings on top of that.”
“Exactly, and what else—very important!” He raised his index finger above his head, a caricature of himself: tall and thin, with a slight kink in his neck, like a bendable straw. Sometimes it seemed as if he would just break down, but he never did, at least not in school.
“Racist paramilitary groups and the influence of the growing national socialist party, whose member lists grew proportionally with the rise in unemployment.”
It made the faculty uncomfortable that students learned more in Bernhard Moll’s class than from any of his colleagues. It couldn’t be because of his appearance, the conspirators all agreed on that. What was attractive about a man in his mid-thirties who still dressed, in the 90s, th
