Wellesley wegweiser

In a sense, I met Barbara Salditt too late. For years I had known that a retired member of our department lived nearby in Holliston, but she was really only known to me by her penciled signature in books from our departmental library. When Magdalene Schindelin died last spring however, I realized that Barbara Salditt was a last link to that generation. She had left Germany in the mid-1920s, escaping the poverty and depression that followed World War I. She received her B.A. from Rockford College in 1929 and her Ph.D from the University of Chicago in 1930. She came to Wellesley in 1932, retiring 36 years later in 1968. She had been

confined to bed a few months before my first visit. Although nearly blind, she was full of spirit and mental energy, desiring to speak and hear her beloved mother tongue. She told me stories of Wellesley's German Department, of how she and Professor Nathalie Wipplinger (her great mentor) would spend their pay checks on CARE packages for German relatives which they would lug on foot to the town post-office. On the day she retired, she took President Ruth Adams aside and pressed into her hand a five dollar gold piece she had gotten from the bank when she cashed her first Wellesley pay check. She told President Adams, "I wish Wellesley always to remain on the educational gold standard." The coin is now deposited in the archives.... Few today can imagine what it must have been like for her to teach her native Language and Culture in the 1930's and 40's. She loved nature and solitude and would sometimes drive to the sea-shore and walk along the beaches. She must have mentioned such outings because one day a concerned student told her of a rumor that she was believed to be contacting German submarines!... I spent many hours reading aloud to her at her bedside. In one of the books I took from the shelf I found a note written to Miss Salditt by Brooke Bryan (Farkas) of the class of 1959. I knew why the paper had been saved when I read the text: "Ich möchte das Unmögliche versuchen, d.h. Ihnen für alles danken, was ich von Ihnen gelernt habe! Es hat mich sehr erfreut, Ihre Studentin zu sein." It gave her great joy to encounter this short document again. Teachers frequently wonder, "Was it any use?" Failures are easily discerned, but harder to calcu­late are the achievements. This short testimony of a grateful student--who later became a teacher herself--was an eloquent reminder of such achievement.

Thomas S. Hansen