THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
When I had reached the “Tertia” of the gymnasium, fortune favored me again by bringing me into close relations with another admirable instructor, Professor Pütz, who had become distinguished as the compiler of excellent historical text-books. He could not boast of great historical researches made by himself, but he possessed a rare skill in exciting the interest of the pupils in the subjects of instruction, and in pointing out the way to further studies. His method of teaching history was to devote the greater part of the hour to a presentation, in free speech, of the particular period with which he wished to make us familiar. He enlivened his subject by exhibiting it in a variety of lights and by adding sufficient detail to make his lecture not only instructive, but also dramatic and picturesque, and thus easily remembered.
In the next lesson the pupils were expected, whenever called upon, to reproduce, out of themselves, in their own language, what they had learned in the previous lessons, the short recitals of the hand-book serving as a framework to the historical structure. From time to time the professor would deliver a comprehensive discourse, grouping together the events of certain historic periods, and thus giving us bird's-eye views over wide fields. In this way history was impressed upon our memory as well as our understanding, not in the form of tabulated statements or columns of figures, nor merely by means of anecdotes, but in panoramic views and prospects full of life and philosophical light. To me, the class lesson and the study connected with it, for which I had always an especial liking, became, instead of hard, dry labor, a genuine joy which could not repeat itself too often. It was largely owing to these methods of instruction that, when a few years later at my final examination Professor Pütz asked me whether I thought I could from my memory describe the conquests of
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