Posted on Mar 3, 2009
Forty years ago this spring, Professor Frederick Klemm, an intrepid traveler with an unflappable manner and a knack for details, led a group of 28 students to Vienna, and launched a signature program that today sends 60 percent of Union students on study-travel programs across the globe.
Inspiration struck Frederick A. Klemm in 1968 in the middle of the Vienna Museum of Art.
Union’s professor of German paused among the Rubens, Rembrandts and Vermeers to announce an idea to his wife, Eleanor. “I would like to bring a group of students here to share this experience.”
Her response: “Why don’t you do something about it?” So was born Frühling in Wien (Springtime in Vienna), which Klemm would later call “Union’s first organized inva- sion into classrooms abroad.”
It wasn’t an easy delivery. When Klemm returned to Schenectady with his proposal, President Harold Martin was lukewarm, mostly out of concern about the budgetary implications of lost tuition revenue, Klemm said. None- theless, the president turned it over to the faculty.
The vote was nearly evenly split, mostly along the lines of humanities and social sciences in favor, science and engineer- ing against, Klemm recalls. The tie-breaker came from a new member of the biology department, Will Roth.
With his narrow victory, Klemm moved ahead, negotiating an all inclusive price of $1,200. All scholarships would apply.
He then set about recruiting students, a task made more difficult since the College had just dropped the language requirement. Students needed an intermediate level of German, good academic standing and the approval of their advisor.
Like Klemm, the students were aware of their pioneering role. “We knew this was kind of an experiment,” said Steve Ciesinski ’70. “We all wanted to make it work.” Said Ira Rutkow ’70: “We were like the Mercury astronauts. We were pioneers. We knew this would change Union College.”
In March of 1969, just a year after he brought up the idea (“Surely a record in the world of academe,” he said.), Klemm, his wife and the students left JFK Airport on an overnight flight to Hamburg, Germany. After an hour layover, they flew to Berlin, the first city on their itinerary.
The group passed Checkpoint Charlie on a drab, cold day. “We were shocked at how poor and desolate and gray East Berlin was,” recalls Ciesinski, adding that tower guards trained their guns on some members of the group who got too close to the wall.” By several accounts of the incident, Klemm was remarkably calm.
A stop in Munich included sampling of art and beer, Klemm recalls, and a stay at a hostel that was a gathering place for a wide cross section of transient young Europeans.
The group arrived in Vienna over the Easter holiday to an orientation that included welcomes from the Austrian Ministry of Education, the deputy mayor of Vienna, and Ambassador Douglas MacArthur, nephew of the general, who briefed the group on conditions in central Europe as seen by U.S. intelligence sources.
After orientation, formal studies began. The academic program resembled Union’s three courses: German language, in which Klemm managed to have all students reach a degree of fluency; an art history course with visits to galleries, museums, churches and palaces; and an independent project modeled after the Union requirement then known as Comprehensive Education.
The latter course, Klemm said, was perhaps the most rewarding for students, and topics covered a wide range. Ciesinski, a double major in German and engineering who would go on to a career as a venture capitalist and chair of the College’s Board of Trustees, studied the Viennese subway system. Rutkow, who became a surgeon, biographer and medical historian, had arranged to assist a Viennese professor with his study of one-celled algae plants in the Alps. (Klemm smuggled some of Rutkow’s samples on the return flight.) Richard Reid ’71, who passed away in 2001, was a professor of political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He studied the Russian-Austrian Peace Treaty of 1955.
Throughout the term, the group took a number of excursions: Budapest, Salzburg, Lower Austria and Burgenland. Many students traveled on weekends to Prague, Zagreb, Rome, Florence, Venice, Innsbruck and Zurich.
Many of the students took solo adventures. Frank Felts ’70, made frequent hitchhiking trips to Prague. On one, with a dearth of cars (and rides) behind the Iron Curtain, he walked for miles before accepting an invitation to join a family bonfire and celebration. “The farmer asked me to stay the night,” he said. “He kicked his wife out of bed. I slept on one side, he slept on the other.”
In Vienna, students took advantage of Stephlätze (places for standees). For the equivalent of a mere 48 cents per ticket, the Union men took in dozens of concerts, operas, plays and movies.
Predictably, perhaps, the most enduring experiences took place out of the classroom. Ciesinski recalls the Gemutlichkeit, the warm intimate discussions that took place in Vienna’s many coffee shops. “It’s ingrained in the culture,” he said. “People were naturally friendly and wanted to have deep discussions.” He also was impressed by the Austrians’ high regard for the experience that comes with age. “They really put their elderly on a pedestal,” he said.
“We came to realize that Vienna is more than just a city,” Klemm wrote in the spring 1970 issue of Union College Symposium. “It is a living being, a spiritual entity that is greater than the sum of its inhabitants.”
The night before the group was to return, Klemm was in the 12th century St. Stephen’s Cathedral listening to an organ concert. Through the darkness, he could recognize his students, there to share the artistic and divine ambience of the Gothic setting. “It gave me a warm feeling of satisfaction to see them there,” he wrote in Symposium. “It made insignificant the petty problems, the annoying logistics, the sometimes seemingly unnecessary hindrances that mark any new undertaking.”
What of the long-range effects of Frühling in Wien? For Ciesinski, who has sought out companies that require international travel, “This was a springboard for those of us who wanted to travel and immerse ourselves in other cultures.”
For Rutkow, who stayed after the term to hitchhike his way through Europe for three months, “It opened up the world to me. It changed my life.” N
Frederick A. Klemm
Frederick A. Klemm, professor emeritus of German, taught at Union from 1947 to 1978. He was director of Terms Abroad from 1970 through 1977.
He also served as chair of Modern Languages, and chair of Humanities Division. When he was director of the Extension Division of evening classes and the GE apprentice program, Klemm got to know a number of rising engineers and Navy officers. One was future President Jimmy Carter, who trained for eight months under the Union-GE program.
As a scholar, Klemm did research on German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, author of the novella The Heretic of Soana. He wrote articles in Germanic Review, the German Quarterly, Modern Language Review, American-German Review and Monatshefte.
He was married to the late Eleanor G. Klemm.
He earned an undergraduate degree from Dickinson College, a master’s degree from Duke University, and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946.
Klemm, 96, lives in Slingerlands, N.Y., a suburb of Albany, and makes occasional visits to campus. He was honored last winter (with Edward Craig ’45, dean of engineering emeritus, and Chris Schmid, former coach of basketball, football and lacrosse) at a tribute dinner for a former student, Stephen J. Ciesinski ’70, outgoing chairman of the Board of Trustees.
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