Lost Son. Hermann Broch

       2.

      ARMAND TO HERMANN

       Collège de Normandie

      19 Janvier 1925

       Dear Papa!

       Many thanks for your nice letter, which did cheer me up somewhat. But I am still quite sad—the days went past as if in a dream. At first I could hardly believe that once again I am away from you all and this time for so long. The holidays were really too wonderful and I really think we have never had such a nice time together before. But it is hard to understand how time can go by so fast [when I am there] while here I don’t know how these eight weeks (fifty-eight days) will pass. So I was all the more sorry to have left you under such circumstances. But you should take into consideration that I am only fifteen years old after all, and that you could hardly have asked anyone else [that age] to travel to Paris all by himself. And I was very upset, so that this sorry scene was not just my fault. In any case, it naturally affected me a great deal, since I have always had a very hard time when I have to go away. Of course I wrote my grandparents immediately. And I hope you, too, are not mad at me anymore. I still have not adjusted to this place at all, since I am thinking of you all constantly, imagining what I would be doing now if I were with you. Everything in the past seems more attractive, so that our visits to the movies together, the evenings up in your office, all seems more special and more wonderful than they all really were.

       Here everything goes along at the same old pace, the weather is disgustingly cold, and there is much to do. In math we are doing descriptive geometry, which is very nice, and I get it more or less, but Leroux spoils it all with his memorizing of theorems, which takes all the fun away. I enclose some of the homework problems. Moreover he remains as nasty to me as ever, and I am sorry that I didn’t bring my albums with me. We have quite good movies here. Make sure especially to go and see Buster Keaton as “Sherlock Holmes, junior,” even if you have to go out of town. I think you will laugh a lot; it is one of the best comic films I have ever seen. I got the stamps. But he sent me so many that I will hardly be able to mount them all. And I already have 120 of them from the French colonies, France and Belgium.

       I think of you a lot so please don’t forget me completely. First and foremost, write me often. Hopefully you are well; especially I beg you to go easy on yourself, and do go off somewhere on a trip, all by yourself, if you are feeling out of sorts. Give my best to Grandmother and Grandfather.

       Fondest greetings from your son

       Hermann.

      COLLÈGE DE NORMANDIE: Founded in 1902, the school was in Clères, a small town in Normandy, not far from Rouen, the seat of government for the Département Seine-Maritime and the capital of the region of Haute-Normandie. The idea was to school students in the country rather than a big city, to combine French and English educational ideals, and to give equal emphasis to philosophy and sports. The founding director of the school was the Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Joseph Duhamel. Athletics played an important role in the educative process, especially after Louis Dedet took over in 1907. In 1911 the largest and most modern swimming pool in all of France at that time was built for the Collège, and when it was expanded in 1925 the school was pleased once again to have it ranked as the largest in the country. Students could swim, fence, ride, play all kinds of ball games—even American football—golf and, in particular, tennis (the school had six courts). Like Dedet, a large number of former students had been in the First World War, one hundred in all, of whom thirty-three were killed. Every student had a room of his or her own. Originally the school was meant for male youth alone, but since the time of the First World War, girls were also admitted, though they were a minority. The students came from rich families of the upper bourgeoisie or the nobility, mostly from France (most of those from Paris, and most of those from the wealthy sixteenth and seventeenth arrondissements), or from Holland, Belgium, England, occasionally from the United States, Argentina and Brazil, India, Indochina, but rarely from Austria and never from Germany. The students were prepared for the French finishing exam, the baccalauréat. Many students spent their entire schooling period from age nine to eighteen there; others—like Armand—attended for a shorter time. After graduation, most of the French students enrolled in one of the grandes écoles, the highest-ranking, competitive-admissions institutions of higher learning, in Paris, and would typically find careers in industry or banking, high government administrative positions, the army, or the diplomatic service. Tuition then in the middle of the 1920s was relatively high, 12,000 francs (it had been 3,000 when the school was founded in 1902). The students were literally treated like royalty, which was apparent in the fact that every student had a servant. While there were only seven students in 1902, by 1926/27 there were 110. After fifty years the school closed, in 1952, because other European prep schools with a comparable clientele—in Switzerland especially—had overtaken the Collège de Normandie in prestige and rank. Altogether the school matriculated 2,000 students in those fifty years. It still has an alumni association.

      FIFTEEN YEARS OLD: Armand was then fourteen years and three months old.

      I ENCLOSE: Armand sent many of the math homework problems he didn’t understand home to his father to be solved.

      MY ALBUMS: One of Armand’s hobbies was collecting pictures of new cars. One could buy albums for mounting collectible pictures of these cars. He drew pictures himself of his favorite models. Broch’s letter of January 17, 1925 is covered front and back with thirteen sketches of passenger cars, sports cars, and race cars. Two other sketches can be seen on the reverse of the letters of February 27 and 28.

      KEATON: Buster Keaton (1895–1966), comic actor and master director of American silent and sound films. In his 1924 Sherlock Jr., he plays a film projectionist who is reading a book on How to Become a Detective. He falls in love with a young woman, and when he proposes to her, his rival steals her father’s watch and successfully puts the blame on the projectionist. The crestfallen Keaton returns to his job as a projectionist, falls asleep, and dreams that he steps through the screen into the movie, as “Sherlock, Jr., the world’s greatest detective,” who is also looking for stolen pearls.

      STAMPS: Armand collected stamps.