Humorous Reminiscences from My Academic Life, Second Volume

Kobbe, Theodor von, 1798-1845Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.2
Word count
220K words
Chapters
22

Tags

Foreign Language Books General Biography Campus LifePortrait GalleryGrowing UpLight ReadingHumorous MemoirHumor ReliefCollege Life

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Humoristische Erinnerungen aus meinem academischen Leben, Zweites Bändchen by KobbeAuthor: Kobbe, Theodor von, 1798-1845,Language: German, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: Sep 16, 2016

Editor's review

This is the second volume of Theodor von Kobbe's Humorous Recollections of My Academic Life, a work of semi-autobiographical humorous sketches within the German literary tradition. Continuing the narrative thread of the first volume, it looks back on university days from the perspective of one who has been through it all, rendering everyday trifles, friendships with fellow students, and the high spirits of youth in an easy, readable style. Its value lies not in documentary campus history but in the relaxed, self-deprecating tone characteristic of nineteenth-century German prose, allowing readers to smile in recognition while absorbing the atmosphere of old-style university life. The language carries a period flavor, and reading the German original requires intermediate proficiency or above. It suits language learners as extensive reading material or as light supplementary reading for those exploring nineteenth-century German prose; readers seeking a systematic history of university life or a continuous plot may find it loose.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the first volume before this one to grasp the continuity of characters and narration
  2. Read one or two chapters at a time; skip unfamiliar archaic words and revisit them after finishing the passage
  3. Keep brief notes on humorous devices and period expressions to build a feel for the language
  4. Don't aim for sentence-by-sentence close reading; treat it as light bedtime or commute reading

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22

FAQ

What level of German is needed to read this book? The original is nineteenth-century German, with sentence structures and vocabulary at some distance from contemporary usage; intermediate reading ability or above is recommended, with a dictionary for long sentences. Beginners might start with a translation or bilingual materials before attempting the original.
Must I read the first volume before the second? The two volumes belong to one set of recollections, with continuity of thread and characters, so reading the first volume first is smoother. But the chapters are relatively independent; starting directly with the second volume still conveys the flavor of the humorous sketches, only with fewer cross-references.
Is it suitable for learning about nineteenth-century university life? It can be read as impressionistic material, conveying the atmosphere of campus life and the mindset of youth at the time. But it consists mainly of humorous recollections, not systematic historical sources; for research, other documents should be consulted.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Kobbe, Theodor von, 1798-1845 Author · German · 1798–1845

Kobbe, Theodor von (1798–1845) was a German writer known for travelogues, historical tales, and reading material for young people. Public information about his life is limited; what is known is that he worked across several popular genres, writing for general readers and younger audiences with an emphasis on readability and informative content. Two of his works are held in this collection, both belonging to the series Humoristische Erinnerungen aus meinem academischen Leben (Humorous Recollections from My Academic Life), issued as a first and a second volume, which recall university days and experiences in a humorous tone. These semi-autobiographical recollections display his light, witty style and provided material for his later travel and historical writing. Overall, he was a prolific author in the field of German popular literature in the first half of the nineteenth century, and his works remain useful references for understanding student life of that era.