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Brandes, Georg Morris Cohen, 1842-1927

"Recollections of My Childhood and Youth"


In the old Students' Union in Boldhusgade, the only meeting-place at
that time for students, which was always regarded in a poetic light, I
had not found what I wanted. There was no life in it, and at the
convivial meetings on Saturday night the punch was bad, the speeches
were generally bad, and the songs were good only once in a way.
I had just joined one new society, but I never rejected any prospect of
acquaintances from whom I could learn anything, and nothing was too much
for me. So I willingly agreed, and one evening late in November I was
introduced to the society so extolled by Groenbeck, which called itself
neither "literary" nor "scientific," had no other object than
sociability, and met at Ehlers' College, in the rooms of a young
philological student, Frederik Nutzhorn.
Expecting as I did something out of the ordinary, I was very much
disappointed. The society proved to be quite vague and indefinite. Those
present, the host, a certain Jens Paludan-Mueller, son of the historian,
a certain Julius Lange, son of the Professor of Pedagogy, and a few
others, received me as though they had been waiting for me to put the
society on its legs; they talked as if I were going to do everything to
entertain them, and as if they themselves cared to do nothing; they
seemed to be indolent, almost sluggish.


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