The Path of the Stolen Lexikon
This week, I had a life-changing consultation with my orthopedist – life-changing neither because of a serious ailment nor because he learned (no doubt from his cats) that kind of neck grip that makes kitten and human alike to instantly relax and purr. Nothing of that kind. It was all about stealing books.
Imagine a well-groomed, sophisticated, and friendly doctor in his early forties. He looks like tennis, squash and snowboarding, apples and milk, and as if he would hug his mom in public. Two of his assistants and I were lounging on the chairs in his office awaiting his medical judgment regarding my neck, when he, upon learning that I had worked as an anthropologist, got misty eyes and told us the following story: Coming from a large family of a mixed cultural background he had relatives in various countries. As a boy of thirteen, he was deeply fascinated by all those cultures that were part of him. And he was  determined to become an anthropologist in order to study them. But his family would not let him even think about it! Thus, what to do? What to do? Well: he went to the village library and stole a three-volume anthropological encyclopedia to have it close at hand at all times. And what is more, he STILL HAS IT to this day!!! And the way he told the story, I could detect not a trace of remorse in it, whatsoever. His eyes were shining as if he was talking about a hidden pirate’s booty.
Well, he never studied anthropology, but became an orthopedist and I am grateful to his parents that he did (see neck grip!). But meeting the gaze of those shining eyes, the realization that I would never have stolen those books came to me in a flash. And I am not talking about any moral superiority of little girl Anja (there were those stickers in a toothpaste package…). I would not have stolen those books, because I never felt that deep desire to have them so close to me, to make them part of my heart’s treasure. Don’t get me wrong; my anthropological work is dear to me and part of me and important to me, but the fact remains that I would not have taken those books.
That afternoon, I turned a very substantial research project that I wanted to do in addition to my seminary studies into a very small project that is worth pursuing, but will not keep me from doing what I would steal a library book for. (Oh dear, the logic of this story leads me to say pretty weird things, doesn’t it! Please think: Anja is neither wanting to nor actually going to steal from the theology library, but she feels as though she would want to steal those books desperately, if that was the only way to study them, and therefore she knows what she actually really wants to do with her life. [And please pray that things work out for me, so that I will not find myself weakened by temptation and in the position of grabbing someone’s neck to make her relax like a kitten while telling the story of how difficult it was to carry the 36 volumes of the “Theologische Realenzyklopaedie” hidden under my sweater out of the side entrance of the library without dropping a volume that, if falling on my toe, would have broken it.])
Anyway … So, I was inspired enough by the orthopedist to wonder what my fellow students were actually stealing from the theology library. Upon inquiry, the librarian told me that indeed lots of books get stolen and most of them disappear from the sections on church history and worship practice. Thus, you see that at least some of my fellow students are deeply engaged in their studies (I can’t believe that I just said that! What is this story doing?)
Well, maybe this is the opportunity to change the topic and to tell you a little more about my studies. Currently, I am taking classes at the Kirchliche Hochschule in Wuppertal (Seminary) that evolved from the Barmen Declaration, and the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, a university of some 38,000 students built in the 60s/70s for the workers’ children who increasingly received a higher education and made their way to the universities during that time. The first is an idyllic place of concentrated study in the company of future pastors from Frisia, the Rhineland, and Westphalia; the other a much more hectic, diverse, and cosmopolitan place where people wear blue jeans and black jackets, smoke a lot and go to watch theater performances or independent movies. Most of the theology students in Bochum are going to be teachers.
During the summer, I graduated from an intensive Hebrew course in Wuppertal and am now thrilled to be able to read (with some help) the old texts. Therefore, I am taking three courses on the Old Testament. I also study Greek, follow a course on Luther and Melanchton’s Confessio Augustana, hear lectures on Protestant ethics in the 19th and 20th century, on worship, and lectures that give an overview of the Old Testament.
I am especially fascinated by the three Old Testament courses, though: An overview lecture, a course in exegetical methods using the Joshua Book, and a course on 2nd Isajah. It is like an entire cosmos opening up before me - the breadth and depth of its knowledge I have not even begun to measure. Those courses are taught (coincidentally) by two professors who started their career in the GDR. Not being able to finish the State high school because of their church affiliation, they had to do their studies more or less under cover and against great obstacles. But, as Prof. Thiel said, it was the only way to study in freedom. Prof. Winfried Thiel is a well-known exegetical scholar, now an emeritus at the University in Bochum, who seems to know by heart and to have deeply thought about every line and curve of every single letter of the Old Testament, its history, beauty and meaning. He really is the epitome of profundity – and in addition he is very kind and witty. We are a very small class, which makes it all the better.
Prof. Dieter Vieweger at the Seminary in Wuppertal is one of those dynamic and energetic people you would think need at least three lives to do what he does in but a year. Having been the pastor of the Thomaner Choir and received his Ph.D. in Theology, he became impatient with the mostly textual exegesis of the Old Testament and decided to study Archeology. He graduated with a Ph.D. also in that discipline and is now the director of the buzzing German Archeological Institute in Israel working with the newest technology and experimental methods for six months each year. The rest of the time, he teaches at the Private University for Medicine in Witten-Herdecke and at the Seminary in Wuppertal, such as my course on exegetical methods.
Studying with people like that, I am feeling simultaneously very small and expanding. It really is exciting; I have never before learned with that much joy and headache. And I am happy to inform those of you who may have started to worry about the state of my soul that even if I were tempted by all this excitement to steal those wonderful books that we are working with, I still find it much more fun to read them in the library overlooking the forested hills of Wuppertal or the Valleys of the Ruhr. And I still have not figured out how to leave that story - maybe that’s how it is with those life-changing events – and what’s worse, I don’t even really want to. So, what kind of book would you steal (though, of course, you wouldn’t)?

Print This

Email This