Читать книгу Westward. Encounters with Swiss American Women онлайн

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Going to school turned out liberating for Ellen. “I devoured books as soon as I was able to read. Emil und die Detektive by Erich Kästner was my first book. Soon I also read newspapers and the Pestalozzi Calendar, which contained pictures and also some cultural items. I was an outsider, hardly had any girlfriends. I had to stay home all the time. My brother says even today that I was too good as a child. I embarrassed him. He always got the spankings that – actually – I deserved.” Becoming a doctor was Ellen’s only dream. “Probably, because I was always sick. My doctor impressed me, and especially our neighbor, Dr. Schnabel, an unmarried woman, who had founded the hospital in Lambarene together with Albert Schweitzer. I had a crush on Albert Schweitzer.”

Ellen’s teacher in primary school realized that this intelligent girl was cut out for the Gymnasium, the college prep school. “He tutored me privately, thus I passed the entrance exam for the Töchterschule, the Gymnasium for girls, on the Hohe Promenade in Zurich. Before the war this was unusual for girls from my social milieu. At the beginning we were about 40 students; at the end it was about a dozen that went all the way to the Matura [the final exam which guarantees entrance to any university]. One became an architect, another a gynecologist. For the last half year before the final exam I had no report card; I was always sick. Out of the six and a half years of the curriculum I probably have report cards for about four years. My classmates knew what would be expected at the final exams; I had not the faintest idea. I simply took the exams without any extra tutorials. But I did pass the finals with Latin, English and Italian.”