A report of the examinations for the semester ending in May of 1908 showed the Columbia College admissions officials that the hardworking boy from Missouri was an excellent student, posting four A’s and three B’s. Alexander was given two years of undergraduate credit and so was considered an undergraduate with junior class standing. At this point he applied and received a year’s leave of absence to spend the 1908-1909 school year teaching overseas and studying German at the University of Jena with Professor Wilhelm Rein. He had obtained employment teaching science at Robert College, a boy’s school in Constantinople, Turkey. The school was founded in 1863 by two Americans, philanthropist Christopher Rhinelander Robert and Cyrus Hamlin, to offer an "American-style" education under the Ottoman Empire.
It is likely he was helped in obtaining that position by Dr. Paul Monroe, a professor at Columbia with a solid international reputation (Monroe was also the professor he would register with at Teachers College as a doctoral candidate in education in 1910). Monroe later became President of Robert College in 1932, the same year New College began. On June 2, 1908, he applied for a United States passport using the name Thomas Alexander, again forsaking his real first name, and a week later journeyed to the Turkish Consulate in Chicago to obtain a visa.
He wrote his mother on August 29, 1908, from Cuxhaven, Germany (near Hamburg) that he had arrived safely. Alexander’s great European adventure was going to begin. He had already decided that his major was going to be German and so he figured that to truly be fluent in both the language and culture he had to immerse himself in both. Although his job in Constantinople was not in the heart of Germany, it gave him a source of income and a starting point to be on his own, wander, and explore, something he was already very adept at doing from his days on the chautauqua circuit.
The fall passed quickly and Alexander found himself adjusting to a routine centered on the international and American community of the college. A highlight of the year for Alexander was winning the school championship with a basketball team he coached, however, this was overshadowed by the uneasiness Alexander felt while at Robert College. A little less than a year earlier, a bloodless military coup in June 1908, led by the “Young Turks”, had stripped Sultan Abdul Hamid II of his power, but if Alexander was concerned he did not convey this to his mother. Instead in February he wrote of low morale and that three of the American teachers had resigned, leaving him the senior American teacher next year (at the ripe old age of 22). Finding the “situation anything but satisfactory and far from pleasant” Alexander decried the “old story of a lack of a strong spirit of discipline and a woeful lack of cooperation.” He found the absence of any type of community or collaboration between teachers as a seemingly easy way to do things but instinctively not the right way to do things. Unhappy, he wrote his mother if he stayed, it will only be to get a summer in Europe.
It is likely he was helped in obtaining that position by Dr. Paul Monroe, a professor at Columbia with a solid international reputation (Monroe was also the professor he would register with at Teachers College as a doctoral candidate in education in 1910). Monroe later became President of Robert College in 1932, the same year New College began. On June 2, 1908, he applied for a United States passport using the name Thomas Alexander, again forsaking his real first name, and a week later journeyed to the Turkish Consulate in Chicago to obtain a visa.
He wrote his mother on August 29, 1908, from Cuxhaven, Germany (near Hamburg) that he had arrived safely. Alexander’s great European adventure was going to begin. He had already decided that his major was going to be German and so he figured that to truly be fluent in both the language and culture he had to immerse himself in both. Although his job in Constantinople was not in the heart of Germany, it gave him a source of income and a starting point to be on his own, wander, and explore, something he was already very adept at doing from his days on the chautauqua circuit.
The fall passed quickly and Alexander found himself adjusting to a routine centered on the international and American community of the college. A highlight of the year for Alexander was winning the school championship with a basketball team he coached, however, this was overshadowed by the uneasiness Alexander felt while at Robert College. A little less than a year earlier, a bloodless military coup in June 1908, led by the “Young Turks”, had stripped Sultan Abdul Hamid II of his power, but if Alexander was concerned he did not convey this to his mother. Instead in February he wrote of low morale and that three of the American teachers had resigned, leaving him the senior American teacher next year (at the ripe old age of 22). Finding the “situation anything but satisfactory and far from pleasant” Alexander decried the “old story of a lack of a strong spirit of discipline and a woeful lack of cooperation.” He found the absence of any type of community or collaboration between teachers as a seemingly easy way to do things but instinctively not the right way to do things. Unhappy, he wrote his mother if he stayed, it will only be to get a summer in Europe.
Adana, Turkey, Christian Quarter, June 1909
February rolled into a tedious March which was only made exciting because some of the students had contracted measles. Alexander made plans to go traveling in Italy, Switzerland and Germany, with a fellow teacher named Weiffenbach, unless they decided to join the others and quit to come home earlier. The long monotonous days of March that Alexander complained about in earlier letters home made a serious and deadly turn in April. In a bid to return power to the sultanate, on April 13, 1909, a military revolt directed against the Committee of Union and Progress (the Young Turks) seized Istanbul. When this news reached the city of Adana, speculation circulated among the Muslim population of an imminent Armenian insurrection. On April 14, the Armenian quarter was attacked by a mob.
Within two days of rioting, more than 2,000 Armenians had been massacred, including two American missionaries, who were shot in the crossfire between the two armed factions while trying to put out the flames of a burning girls school. Missionaries D. M. Rogers and Henry Maurer were killed April 15, 1909, in Adana, Turkey. Alexander wrote home to assure his mother of his safety and to describe the conditions in Constantinople. He tells her that martial law had been declared and mentions the massacres in the interior. He also tells of the two slain missionaries. The political situation quieted down the next few months, but for all intents and purposes Alexander had made up his mind to leave.
Alexander decided to journey to the University of Jena, in Thuringia, Germany via a route that took him through Romania, Hungary and Austria. Sometime around June 22, 1909, Alexander resigned from Robert College because it was of no “sufficient value” for him to stay and he had made enough money tutoring on the side to keep him solvent through the summer. Late June found Alexander touring Bucharest and Budapest arriving in Venice around July 1, 1909. From there he writes his mother that Hungary was the prettiest place he had seen thus far and that “there are a lot of pretty churches and cathedrals in Vienna, and some of the best galleries in Europe, but I don’t care for such “dope” (1900’s slang for unspecified and wide ranging stuff varying as to context), people are the only interesting thing to me.”
From a rural community, Alexander saw the value of cooperative behavior and the advantages of collaboration among people. This interesting insight in human relationships may explain how the lack of cooperation among his fellow educators at Robert College may have affected Alexander more than others and left a lasting impression upon him as to what a good practice in staff relationships and development would be. To accentuate that interest in people, the observant Alexander wrote his mother, “of all the hard looking people I ever saw, (those in) the Romanian mountains take the cake.”
On July 10, 1909 Alexander arrived in Jena to study German for the summer with Professor Rein. At the time, the 350-year-old University of Jena was one of the most politically radical universities in Germany, akin to a late 1960’s University of California Berkeley. The biologist Ernst Haeckel, the most important evolutionary theorist after Charles Darwin, taught in Jena. In the years 1907-09, artist Ferdinand Hodler created the famous monumental painting "German students setting out for the War of Liberation of 1813," for the new university lecture hall. Alexander found a progressive and libertarian atmosphere to study in and it suited him.
Alexander decided to journey to the University of Jena, in Thuringia, Germany via a route that took him through Romania, Hungary and Austria. Sometime around June 22, 1909, Alexander resigned from Robert College because it was of no “sufficient value” for him to stay and he had made enough money tutoring on the side to keep him solvent through the summer. Late June found Alexander touring Bucharest and Budapest arriving in Venice around July 1, 1909. From there he writes his mother that Hungary was the prettiest place he had seen thus far and that “there are a lot of pretty churches and cathedrals in Vienna, and some of the best galleries in Europe, but I don’t care for such “dope” (1900’s slang for unspecified and wide ranging stuff varying as to context), people are the only interesting thing to me.”
From a rural community, Alexander saw the value of cooperative behavior and the advantages of collaboration among people. This interesting insight in human relationships may explain how the lack of cooperation among his fellow educators at Robert College may have affected Alexander more than others and left a lasting impression upon him as to what a good practice in staff relationships and development would be. To accentuate that interest in people, the observant Alexander wrote his mother, “of all the hard looking people I ever saw, (those in) the Romanian mountains take the cake.”
On July 10, 1909 Alexander arrived in Jena to study German for the summer with Professor Rein. At the time, the 350-year-old University of Jena was one of the most politically radical universities in Germany, akin to a late 1960’s University of California Berkeley. The biologist Ernst Haeckel, the most important evolutionary theorist after Charles Darwin, taught in Jena. In the years 1907-09, artist Ferdinand Hodler created the famous monumental painting "German students setting out for the War of Liberation of 1813," for the new university lecture hall. Alexander found a progressive and libertarian atmosphere to study in and it suited him.
