Losing FDR

I just learned that FDR died.

She was the director of our Junior Year in Munich program, Frau Doktor Riegler, who was in charge of our program since around the time of the original FDR.

We arrived in Munich in late summer 1991, several dozen American college students who were committed to stay for a year, hone our German skills, attend the University, and continue our crazy college student ways.

Most of us arrived on the same airplane, and we chatted with each other on the trip from JFK airport, excited about the adventure that lay before us. Once we arrived in the Munich Airport, we were greeted by a very unusual woman.

"Is that the school nurse?" asked my new friend M., who had focused on her big white clogs and white polyester stirrup pants.

"Do you know what she's saying?"

She had light grey hair pulled back from her head in an impressive high, conical shape. She was maybe old, maybe not-so-old, but definitely inscrutible.

Maybe she was speaking in German, or maybe her English was just a little hard to understand, but none of us understood a word she said as she greeted us to the city of Munich.

Soon we were curtly informed by her assistant that she was the DIRECTOR of the program and we were to be quiet while she spoke.

The JYM program was on the brink of a lot of change, as was Munich and all of Germany in the summer of 1991. The wall hadn't been down more than two years and the shape of Europe was shifting in many ways. We paid for everything in Deutschmarks that were wired from our parents. There was no e-mail. There were still American military outposts in Munich left over from World War II.

It also seemed that a lot of our academic program was a holdover from the days following WWII as well. We went through an orientation that had been developed for students taking the boat over from New York, not a plane. I was quickly plopped into the lowest language German group, and we called ourselves the "Gemuese," meaning "vegetables." Our fellow students had arrived actually prepared for a year abroad at a foreign university. We Gemuese were flying by the seat of our pants.

But for some reason, despite my bratty attitude and lack of German skills, FDR took a shine to me. I was scared of her. She was mysterious and I never understood more than 25% of what she communicated to me. She had a dog named Poldi, who predeceased her, and out of respect for the dead, I won't tell you what a numbskull this dog was. I'll just say he died from eating an entire bag of dog food at one go.

But FDR seemed to like me, and this surprised my classmates who were just as intimidated by her. When she gave speeches on various topics, she tended to repeat herself over and over, so that I can't remember any of the content of the speeches, but the Leitmotiv is etched into my skull. I think her favorite speech was the "Mauer im Kopf" (Wall in Head) speech. I think it was about how the reunification of Germany was nowhere near complete, but I couldn't tell you. But the expression "Mauer im Kopf" goes through my brain about twice a day. "Mauer im Kopf! MAUER IM KOPF! Maaauuuer immmmm KOPF!"

At Christmastime, she had arranged a party for us with a Munich-based German military group. Why? I don't know, but I recall it being required. She pulled me aside and asked me to be the Christmas angel. I agreed nervously. What was I supposed to do? She was explaining it to me, maybe in German, possibly in English, but I had NO CLUE what she was saying.

She pulled a costume out of a bag in a back room at the party, and plunked it over my head. She put the wings on me (upside-down, but whatever), and a halo on my head. She praised my golden hair as being perfect for the part as she reached into her handbag (white, naturally) and pulled out a tube of lipstick. She uncapped the lipstick and drew massive circles on each of my cheeks and set me loose into the party room.

That's when I was greeted by the Grumpus, who is kind of a Christmas "bad guy" in Germany. As far as I understood it, he was a kind of pervy Grinch with coal marks on his face. And he proceeded to chase me around the room, through all of the tables of the merrymakers -- American students and German soldiers. I was supposed to ring a bell over my head while the Grumpus followed me and tried to molest me.

Maybe that's not a German tradition, now that I think of it, maybe it was just a one-time drunken Grumpus, but it was damn funny anyway. Who knew what cultural tradition we were trying to uphold?

But it made FDR happy, she scolded the Grumpus, but told me she thought I was a PERFECT Christmas angel. So there.

Throughout the year, she chided me for my poor academic performance, but gave me little tasks around the office, such as typing jobs for the old professors who were unaccustomed to life without a secretary. I was allowed to sit in her office, typing away, while she elegantly smoked thin cigarettes and chatted with the teachers.

The JYM program was HARD. It was somewhat arbitrarily so, and FDR kept it that way proudly. Some of the classes would have been effective for me, if I found more time to study, or if I honed my German skills anywhere but the Biergarten. But many of the classes were just... crazy. (If any JYM alumni reads this and doubts me, I refer you to the work of the nutty and flirtatious Herr Doktor Pilz.)

It drove us JYM students BONKERS whenever we met people on any other study abroad program, and we especially reviled the ones who were studying in Spain. Because compared to our academically rigorous program (picture me, eyes crossed with concentration, in a graduate-level Psychology class, trying to take notes and understanding only 10% of what was said, then having to write numerous essays on it, using sources that were only available at the University library, where they had, long ago, destroyed Dewey Decimal and turned him into Sauerbraten), the other students had it incredibly easy. They told us stories of having NO HOMEWORK EVER. And that their classes were "a joke."

Unlike every other study abroad director in Europe, FDR held us to incredibly high or impossible standards. I rarely understood the assignment, let alone the papers I turned in. In order to type out my assignments, I had to rent a laptop and printer from a local computer rental place. Otherwise, it would be handwritten assignments, and I would have had to write and rewrite my 16-page assignments. Hearing the words "Schriftliche Hausarbeit" (homework) now makes me break out in hives.

I hear there have been a lot of changes in the JYM program since the new director took over. I'm going to guess that things are a little more "modernized" and maybe we've finally recovered from our Mauers im Kopf. I hear that their offices are big and airy and do not reek of smoke and dog. I consider this a shame -- students are missing out on all the great character-building traumas we endured and leaving Germany fully unscathed. I hope that someone's still getting chased by the Grumpus.

Upon hearing of her death, I tried to encapsulate who she was, so that I might explain to my husband why I am sad, and why I want to donate yet again to the scholarship fund in her name. She was a... character? No, that's belittling. Well, one thing is certain, she was NOT the school nurse. She was a force to be reckoned with, and I had no idea the day we got off that plane in Germany, and even on the day that I got back on the plane home, how much I'd become attached to the inimitable Frau Doktor Riegler.