Reiner Rohr met with Jonathan Franzen at the American Academy on May 6, 2009 in Berlin. Jonathan Franzen has received a Fulbright grant in the University Student category for program year 1981-82 to study German Literature at the Freie Universität  Berlin.

Why Fulbright

RR: Why did you apply for a Fulbright 1981 when spending a year in Munich?

JF: I had liked it being in Europe, and I wanted to go back. I was also very enthusiastic about German literature and knew I wouldn’t mind an opportunity to read and study some more of it.  I already knew what I wanted to do with my life, but I didn’t want to tell my parents what it was, and the Fulbright was a good way to buy a year.  I knew that they would be impressed if I got a Fulbright, and that if I have a free year to work on becoming a writer I would be in that much stronger position to let them know that I was planning to do that with my life.

Diversity

RR: Let me switch gears with you a little bit, before I ask on the impact. We do have new programs for students with minority backgrounds. Interestingly enough, in your own report from 1982, you remarked that Americans have learned to live with Blacks and Latinos and the Germans have never learned to live with their Gastarbeiter.  And why don’t we look into that.

JF: What a very unfriendly thing for me to have written.

RR: No, but you just anticipated what was beginning to happen 25 years later. So finally Fulbright also engaged in this issue and we’re trying to sponsor young Americans and young Germans with immigrant backgrounds to help them overcome prejudice of the other culture. We have a couple of programs. In fact, I’m just coming from Potsdam where one of these programs will start next month. My question is: in order to overcome prejudices with people of a diverse or immigrant background, do you have any ideas of how the Fulbright program could become more engaged?

JF: These would be minority students in both the US and in Germany?

RR: In Germany, let’s say Germans with a Turkish background or Asian or whatever.

JF: Well I confess to being not terribly familiar with what the Fulbright people do with German students. I only know the American side, and I didn’t experience or witness any particular prejudice on the part of the Fulbright people for the American students with a minority background. I think ethnic diversity is naturally increasing. I imagine you're seeing it in your applicant pool, simply because the white majority in the US is on its way to not being majority, just a plurality. Which brings me to a large and perhaps a more urgent question in the US, which is how to continue to interest students at the college and high school level in modern European languages-- especially ones other than Spanish.

Exchange philosophy

RR:  You know about the Fulbright program, Senator Fulbright’s ideas, to bring people together without too much academic pressure, of course academic excellence is an issue, but the experience of the individual is equally important.  Over the last 28 years or something like that, we have seen a changing environment.  If you had a chance to renovate or reinvent the Fulbright program, would anything come to mind that you would like to see in an exchange program, whether or not Fulbright specifically were involved with that?

JF: As I've said before, I think your German program was well conceived in that it essentially trusted that, if you take bright kids and let them loose in a foreign country for a year, a certain percentage of them will have good experiences, and will find their way to positions of leadership in which those experiences will have mattered.  I must say that I was very relieved that I did not go to a place like Tübingen or Göttingen.  Not that those aren’t lovely towns to be students in, but if we're talking cultural ambassadorship or the engagement of two different nationalities, larger cities have a lot more to offer.  That is, when I visited my college friend John Berck in Tübingen, where he was doing Philosophy with a Fulbright, the environment didn’t seem all that different from our own college in America.  To live in a Turkish neighbourhood in Schöneberg, on the other hand, felt a long way from where I had gone to college. That was part of the excitement for me. I don’t know how workable it is, but I would certainly have a prejudice toward sending as many people as possible to cities, on the theory that farm towns are a lot like farm towns everywhere.  University towns are too.

With regard to Berlin  I would also note that, among Americans, Berlin has a very strong reputation as the European city to go to.  It's widely considered a very exciting and culturally happening place right now. You don’t want to insult the other cities of Germany, but you might want to be aware that Berlin is a very strong calling card right now for young people.

New Dialogue between U.S. and Germany

RR: Well maybe one last area: German and American dialogue.  Now, with a new American president in the United States, we all feel there is a new chance for dialogue. Do you think a program like Fulbright could help support that?

JF: Well certainly.  I don’t know what kind of resources you have, compared to, say, the American Academy, which is set up substantially with that kind of dialogue in mind, and which I think does a very nice job of exposing visiting Americans to German culture and contemporary politics.  But you might want to look into something like the new Festival of International Writing in New Your City, which happens every year now in late April.  The Festival brings in about 150 writers from around the world each year. There are always German writers there.  It could be that the Festival would be happy if someone would chip in $500 to help sponsor an event, and that thiswould be an opportunity to enhance the Fulbright profile.  Things like that.

Impact of Fulbright year

RR: The last question is a result of the previous talks: the impact on you, on your career, on your life, on your attitudes from staying in Germany.

JF: It made me very self-important intellectually.

RR: I like your sense of humour.

JF: I think nowadays, more than ever, when kids are more tightly tied to their parents than they were in my youth, it’s important to get far away.  Having that ocean between me and my family was incredibly helpful in defining myself as an individual who is rather different from his parents. That now seems to me the biggest thing.  I also picked up a cigarette habit which lasted for 20 years.  We’ll see what the true long-term impact of that habit is. I’m no longer smoking, but I did for a long time, and that was a German habit.

In general, I think it’s good for Americans, it was good for me, to come to a place where ideas are generally taken more seriously in public discourse than they are in the US.  Everything over there is about image and fun, and as somebody whose intellectual ambitions were encouraged in Germany, I felt frustrated and confused for many years in the US. I think I came back with expectations of a kind of intellectual engagement which is really just not possible over there.

Finally, I think that simply speaking in a foreign language can’t be underestimated as a major benefit in spending those years in Germany. You can no longer feel as patriotically isolated once you’ve done that.  Learning German laid down a foundation for what has become, for me, a very fond and satisfying relationship with the country.  I'm happy that I can now come over and do an entire evening's program here in German and not be afraid of the country (because it can be a rather scary country). That was just my great good fortune.  But I think that’s true for a lot of Fulbright people. At some point in your life, although it may take a while, you'll have reason to come back to a German-speaking country. I didn’t make any lasting personal connections as a Fulbrighter, but I had a more general sense of connection which I continue to enjoy. Those are the main points. 

Anecdote on Orientation Meeting in Bremen 1981

RR: Do you remember your orientation meeting in Bremen?

JF: Yes, at one point, you called my name when you were going down a checklist in Bremen.  I don’t know if I told you this, but I was very embarrassed because you were calling out names and you couldn’t find me and I was standing right behind you and I said “hinter dir.”  I panicked at having used the familiar form of address without getting your permission.  I think it was because you were young yourself, you just seemed like a student, and I was used to calling fellow students Du.

RR: No I do this with all the young students and I offer the “du” because we are all one family now, the competition is over.  It’s nice that we have a couple of common recollections. Thanks for joining us.