Page 105 - The Diary of A. H. W. Behrens

47
1875
Otto Hohls and Georg Moe were picked up by relatives
and I did not see them again in Germany. I travelled to Hermannsburg and moved into the Old Mission House as pupil. The other 21 had already been ceremoniously admitted
a few weeks earlier. I stayed there for 5 years until we had finished and had been ordained and I went back to South Africa in 1880 as a missionary. That is what I want to talk about now.
We lived in the Mission House in the first and second floors. In the room allocation and in the seating arrangements and in the lessons we were sorted alphabetically. Thus, I was always the first: Behrens, then Bock, then Burmeister, then Deppe, Dierks, Kohlmeyer, Lüchow, Meyer, Meyer, Ramme, Rodewald, Schlager, Schröder, Stielau etc. Bock and I shared a room, across the passage were Burmeister and Deppe in a room,
the four of us shared a living room between the two rooms.
All four of us were non-smokers. Bock, a linen weaver by profession, was a funny guy, this Bock and I often quarrelled in those five years, I just experienced so much with him, after his ordination he went to America. Deppe, a short guy, was a bricklayer, Burmeister, a book binder had an open leg with an unpleasant smell that never healed. Why he was admitted, I failed to understand. All three were otherwise good people, had some prior training, good manners etc. I had to live together with them for five years. Most of the others had been servants, Stielau a blacksmith, Dierks a sergeant.