After sixty years, German alumni are back in Leiden: ‘I presided over the meeting with a revolver’
They first entered the Academy Building fifty to sixty years ago. On 28 March, they were back for an afternoon: the members of the Dr Pfiffikus debating society of the German Studies programme. Former chair Hans van der Veen looks back on his student days.
Van der Veen came very close to studying English instead of German. ‘I was still hesitating between the two during the final exams,’ he says. 'English might even have been my preference, but at an oral, I think it was history, one of the examiners said: ’Why don't you do German? That's the more distinct of the two.’ Then, in the nick of time, I enrolled in that programme.'
Lectures and parties
In September 1965, Van der Veen started his first year with five other students. ‘A couple of them dropped out fairly quickly,’ he recalls. 'Mostly, the four of us who were left had lectures, often at Rapenburg 109 or in the Academy Building: Jan, Jorica, Marianne and I, but Jan lived a long way away and Marianne was regularly still sleeping when we had lectures early. Occasionally I was on my own, which meant I had a private lesson, especially shortly after 3 October.'
Outside lectures, many students were members of the Dr Pfiffikus debating society, which now has a reunion for the 1965 to 1975 students. ‘Initially, we even had two debating groups,’ Van der Veen recalls. ‘Fellow members of the Galgenbrüder society played a mean trick on me. They got me to prepare a whole speech for the interviews to try and get a room, but nobody at all listened to it! I was still chair of Dr Pfiffikus. I even chaired another meeting where I wielded a revolver instead of a gavel. Professor Cornelis Soeteman, who would later become rector magnificus, even wrote in his memoirs that I fired a shot into Augustine's ceiling with it. That is absolutely not the case, I didn’t even have any bullets. Eventually, the dispute became defunct shortly after my time, but I still see a number of people with some regularity all these years later.'
Gap year in Munich
After four years, Van der Veen passed his bachelor’s exam, after which he left for Munich for a gap year. ‘Der Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst’ offered a scholarship of 600 Marks a month at the time, with an additional 600 given in advance to look for a room. It was a huge sum; I had never been so rich.'
However, Munich student life did not immediately go smoothly. 'It was 1968/1969 and I had a blue blazer and a tie. Well, it wasn’t long before they stayed firmly in my bag. Munich students were very different from Leiden ones. They even chalked on the pavement: “When the rector magnificus passes wind, all the lecturers take a deep breath.” In the lecture rooms, the teachers sometimes had to command the students to be quiet.
Typing letters
Once he was back in Leiden he applied for an assistant position with Professor Cornelis Soeteman. ‘I had to type letters for him, but I was hopeless at it. I got through whole boxes of Typex! Then he received the Federal Service Medal and I had to type the thank-you letter. I was sweating buckets, but in the end Soeteman was able to put the letter in the envelope. And I was allowed to post it myself.’
Van der Veen proved to be more useful with hedgehogs. ‘One time, when I was with Soetemen in his study, his wife rushed in in a panic. A hedgehog was caught up in a strawberry net, and would I come and help? After a lot of fiddly unravelling, I managed to free it.’
Rapping strong verbs
After graduating, Van der Veen became a teacher of German at the Louise de Coligny School Community in Leiden, which would later be renamed the Da Vinci College. ‘It’s a stupid name, but I was always very happy teaching there. I had a rap to teach my students when the ‘a’ in strong verbs changes to an ‘ä’. I believe I’m shortly going to let the other alumni hear how that went.’