All kinds of absurd stories were circulated regarding Karl. He was pictured quite generally as a pale, anæmic, puny, goggle-eyed “freak,” who had missed the delights of childhood and was vastly to be pitied. In reality, he was a happy, joyous youngster, who got as much “fun” out of life as any boy could. This is the unanimous testimony of those who “investigated” the lad for themselves. Thus the archæologist Heyne, in a statement to his friend the famous philosopher and poet Wieland, frankly admitted:
“I allowed myself to be persuaded to examine young Witte, in order to be able to form my own opinion of him. I found the boy in body and mind happy and hale to a greater degree than I had expected. I found, in testing him with Homer and Virgil, that he had sufficient knowledge of words and things to translate readily and strike the right meaning, and that, without exact grammatical and lingual knowledge, he was able to guess correctly the meaning of a passage from its context. What was most remarkable to me was that he read with understanding, feeling, and effect.
“Otherwise I found in him no preponderating faculty. Memory, imagination, reasoning, were about in equilibrium. In other matters besides those that had been inculcated by education, I found him a happy, lusty boy, not even averse from mischief, which was to me a quieting thing.”
At the same time that he was thus instructing Karl in languages and literature, Witte sought to awaken in him a love of art and science. Neither artist nor scientist himself, he none the less believed that if he could only interest his son sufficiently in artistic and scientific subjects, he would study them enthusiastically. To this end he adopted a plan which might well be imitated by all parents.
Whenever he went to Halle, Leipzig, or any other German city, he took Karl with him, and together they visited art galleries, natural history museums, zoölogical and botanical gardens, and manufacturing establishments. Not for a moment, however, did he hint to the boy that he was doing this for educational purposes. When, for example, they visited a factory, he did not say, “I have brought you here to give you a lesson in mechanics.” He allowed the boy to think that he simply wished to entertain him; and in this way, without Karl’s suspecting it, he was able to impart to him much elementary instruction in zoölogy, botany, physics, chemistry, etc.
Similarly he taught Karl geography by the pleasing device of first taking him, on a clear day, to the top of a high tower that happened to be in Lochau, and asking him to mark on a piece of paper, brought to the tower for that purpose, the position of the different villages visible in the surrounding country. This first trip was followed by others, in which the boy expanded and corrected the markings on his paper, putting in rivers, lakes, and forests. Witte then bought for him a set of maps showing, in succession, the part of Germany in which he lived, all Germany, Europe, and the other continents. These father and son studied together, not as a study, but as a game, in which the boy took part with the greatest enthusiasm.
“I never acted,” Witte himself has declared, “as though he had to learn these things. He would have been surprised if told that he had been studying geography, physics, chemistry. I avoided the mention of such terms, so as not to frighten him, and in order not to make him vain.”