The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas Read Online Free Page A

was a good example.’ This led to a love for the music of Richard Wagner, whose operas he heard at the Breslau opera house, especially the tetralogy Der Ring der Nibelungen .
    Later, during the war when he learned that the great Wagner was a virulent anti-Semite, a deep conflict was created. Wagner, an extreme radical and revolutionary of his day, was Adolf Hitler’s ideological mentor and the composer’s political writings were his favourite reading. [15] ‘Even though I learned very early on to separate the personality and character of an artist from his work, I could not listen to Wagner during the war. It took me years to go back to him.’
    The German educational system of Gymnasiums demanded high academic requirements in order to move from one class to another. Only those pupils who were selected had a chance of a good education - as long as they kept up and could fulfil the academic requirements year after year. Although Michel excelled in the German language, and was good at sport - especially running, swimming and skiing - he deliberately chose to be average in most subjects. This made him popular. He understood that as a non-German he would have to do better than his peers to be accepted as an equal, but did not want to be identified with Die Streber - the swots. Instead he found that the combination of his independent nature and prowess at athletics was enough to make him accepted as a natural leader.
    On one occasion at school a mischief-maker was asked to own up to a particular misdemeanour. Silence descended on the classroom and no hands were raised. The teacher threatened the entire class with punishment unless the culprit confessed. The silence deepened. At last Michel stood and owned up to the crime. He was not the guilty party, and both his classmates and the teacher knew it, but he took the punishment. The silence had irritated him. ‘I could not stand cowardice. By standing up to cowards I learned by experience what worked, and the knowledge became a tool.’
    His schoolmates saw him as tough and austere, while at home he was preposterously indulged. ‘Somehow I led two lives. At school I was very active in sports and was physically strong, which meant the others looked up to me. Then when I took my friends home they saw me in a different light, with women fussing over me, telling me to keep warm, pressing food on me. I was completely over-mothered. My friends were surprised. My life at home didn’t fit my outside image.
    ‘I was so pampered that eventually I rebelled against it. I threw out the feather mattress and soft pillows and slept on boards. Even in the depths of winter I slept without heating. My uncle insisted on having the door of my room insulated so that the cold did not permeate the rest of the house. I remember waking one morning with thick ice on the inside of the window pane. One of my ears was frost-bitten and I had to be taken to hospital. I would go skiing in shorts and deliberately leave the windows open in the chalet and have to break the ice in the basin to wash. I took cold showers. I adopted a Spartan regime, more German than the Germans. I overdid it!’
    His school friends accepted him as a German, but he did not feel like one. ‘They looked to me as a leader, so I had to be German. Jewishness came up at school - and in sports, and on our trips - yet it never became an issue between me and my friends, and in all my relationships I never made any distinction. I was very close with my German and non-Jewish friends. But in the end I did not feel German - I was not German.’
    His aunt and uncle were conservative Jews with liberal values, and kept a kosher household, but they were not religious and relaxed the rules when they ate out. Idessa mixed easily with all types of people, and her closest friend was Mia Von Waldenburg, a scion of the Hohenzollern family. [16] The style of the house, like that of his mother, was universal and all-embracing. ‘I was taught that if you