CHAPTER II.
UNIVERSITY AND MILITARY LIFE.
[1832-1844.]
Göttingen.—The Danish Dog and the Professor.—Duels.—Berlin.—Appointed Examiner.—Anecdotes of his Legal Life.—Bismarck and his Boots.—Meeting with Prince, now King, William.—Helene von Kessel.—Aix la Chapelle.—Greifswald.—Undertaking the Pomeranian Estates.—Kniephof.—“Mad Bismarck.”—His Studies.—Marriage of his Sister.—Letters to her.—Norderney.—Saves his Servant Hildebrand’s Life—“The Golden Dog.”—A Dinner Party at the Blanckenburgs.—Von Blanckenburg.—Major, now General, Von Roon.—Dr. Beutner.
Otto von Bismarck was anxious to enter himself at Heidelberg, but his mother objected to it, because she was afraid that at this University her son would contract the habit, to her detestable, of drinking beer; and she therefore chose, at the advice of a relative—the Geh. Finanzrath Kerl, who was a great authority with her in matters of learning—the University of Göttingen, where Kerl had himself studied. Bismarck agreed to the change; he longed for the joys of academic freedom, the more delightful to him from the strictness with which his education had hitherto been conducted, as well as from his little knowledge of student life. In Berlin student life was somewhat tame, obtruding itself nowhere; and Bismarck had also been withheld from all contact with it. He entered into possession of his new liberty with enthusiasm, not easily comprehensible to the students of the present day. With the entire recklessness of a sturdy constitution he plunged into its every enjoyment.
Even before entering at Göttingen he had fought his first duel at Berlin. His opponent was a brave lad of the Hebrew persuasion, named Wolf. It is true he fought, but, like the ancient Parthians, he fought flying. The arrangements must have been somewhat unscientific, in fact quite out of form, for Bismarck was wounded in the leg, while he cut off his Jewish opponent’s spectacles!
In the didactic epic “Bismarckias,” by Dr. G. Schwetschke, of which several editions have appeared at Halle, containing many a good joke, the following aptly alludes to the present period of the hero’s life:—
From his boot soles now is shaken
All the school dust: higher wavelets