Page 8
University Daily Kansan Tuesday, April 27, 1963
Pringsheim Travels Long Road up
By Harihar Krishnan
When Klaus Pringsheim, acting assistant professor of political science, completes his doctoral dissertation on the Chinese youth movement this fall, he will have accomplished a feat which very few taxi drivers can ever hope to achieve in their lives.
"It certainly was a long climb from the profession of a taxi driver to that of a professor." Pringsheism remarked, speaking of his rise in this country since his arrival in 1946.
Recounting the past in his characteristic German accent, he said, "I came to this country with the intention of becoming a language teacher. I thought my long experience in Japan and in other parts of the Far East would stand me in good stead in America."
BUT THE LACK of formal college education that had not given Pringsheim the two letters after his name stood as a strong barrier in his attempts to get into the prosperous world of America.
Gesticulating vigorously with his hands in the air, Pringsheim continued. "I travelled the lengths and breadths of this country trying to prove what I was capable of, but every door I knocked was shut on my face. Nobody cared for what I
had to say. All they wanted was a college degree and I didn't have it at that time."
He began his long sojourn by going to England to enter a boarding school. His father later left for Japan.
★ ★ ★ ★
"My father did not want me to grow up in Nazi Germany. He loathed the militaristic and the inhuman attitude of the Nazis. I left Germany in January 1933, the year Hitler came into power."
BY THE TIME Pringsheim was nine years old, events in Germany had grown from bad to worse.
"To stay in Germany would have meant getting drafted into the youth army. I wanted no part in the mechanism that had been created for the destruction of humanity. I had to flee this country if I wanted to remain free." Pringsheim said. He joined his father in Japan, where the elder Pringsheim was director of the Imperial Academy of Music in Tokyo.
Pringsheim was born in Berlin on May 23, 1923, a time when Germany had still not recovered from the aftermath of the first World War. The process of adjustment was still going on; an adjustment that was later to herald the coming into power of Adolf Hitler.
Pringsheim Warns
Chinese Inaction Not Sign of 'Paper Tiger'
- TO WAIT, on Mao Tse-tung's assumption the U.S. will tire of the Vietnamese war and go home.
Prof. Pringsheim, who has lived and studied extensively in the Far East, listed four main alternatives as a Chinese Communist response to the American pattern of escalation:
After two months of steady American escalation in Viet Nam Communist China has yet to go beyond threats of counter-escalation and punishment. But to say the Chinese Communist government is a "paper dragon" when it comes to fighting the U.S. is to ignore what happened in Korea, says Klaus Pringsheim, acting assistant professor of political science, in the April "Your Government" bulletin of the KU Governmental Research Center.
- To send volunteers to protect North Viet Nam and stage massive infantry assaults on South Vietnamese territory.
- Stage retaliatory air raids on South Vietnamese cities.
- Militarily take over Laos and Cambodia and further infiltrate South Viet Nam.
"Indications are that China will not risk its military potential when other internal and border problems
threaten, and the Soviet Union apparently is not giving any encouragement to positive Chinese action," Prof. Pringsheim observed.
"But China could be forced by excessive U.S. actions against North Viet Nam to intervene on behalf of her hard-pressed neighbor. One can only hope that the Johnson administration will find a way to sense how far the Chinese will tolerate U.S. actions against North Viet Nam."
Prof. Pringsheim said the real escalation was related not to the November election so much as to the "belated realization in Washington that the South Vietnamese government was close to total collapse."
Now, he continued, American policy is not so much one of defending freedom and helping a friendly government, as it is a desire to preserve American prestige and promises, and to prove that our armed forces are capable of dealing with primitive Viet Cong guerrillas.
"Although our limited escalation of the war in Viet Nam has so far gone unpunished, there is no reason to believe that what we have done will either defeat the Viet Cong or save the South Vietnamese government," Dr. Pringsheim concluded.
After two years of study at a college that taught Japanese culture and oriental languages, he found himself as a tutor teaching German, English and Japanese to the children of the foreigners in Tokyo.
THE POLITICAL maturity at an early age that had awakened him to the cruelties of the Nazi regime in Germany, was soon to find its expression amidst his surroundings.
The German embassy in Tokyo discovered Pringsheim was making very strong anti-Nazi statements, and sought repatriation by Japan of "deserter" Pringsheim.
MAUPINTOUR Travel Hour
The influence of his father with the Imperial Majesty helped Pringsheim in getting a political asylum in Japan. A military tribunal in Germany then tried him in absentia and pronounced the death sentence on him, not to be taken off until the end of the war.
His release from prison at war's end began the third chapter of his life.
BUT PRINGSHEIM'S contacts with the American officials in Japan made him a suspect in the eyes of the war-mongering Japanese who consequently declared him as an American spy, and placed him in prison.
Free Admission
AT THE
Little Banquet Restaurant ON THE MALLS SHOPPING CENTER (West 23rd Street) Informal Showings of Exciting Color Movies on Vacation Spots Throughout the World. This Week's Feature New York World's Fair and India
Every Tuesday — 3:00 to 4:00
By the middle of 1946, Klaus Pringsheim was 24 years old. He wanted to go to America, where he felt he could become a teacher. He thought his knowledge of the Far East would put him in great demand in the United States.
October of 1946 found Pringsheim on the shores of California. Events seemed to have conspired against him; six months had elapsed since his landing in America and still no job. He began discovering to his great disappointment that America did not want a young man who had no college degree.
FRUSTRATION BEGAN mounting up in his mind. "I did not know what to do. I had no special skills. Nobody was prepared to give me a job as a language teacher since I did not have a college degree.
He got out of Columbia in 1961 but by this time he had once again become possessed with the desire to go to the Far East. The Far East was waiting for him to give him a pleasant surprise—a wife.
"I SPENT MY entire stay of five years at Columbia as a fellow of the Ford Foundation in Foreign Area Training Program."
In 1956, with a B.A. (Hons.) in Political Science and a straight A grade sheet, he entered Columbia University for his doctoral program.
So in 1954, at the age of 31, Pringsheim entered the University of California at Los Angeles as a freshman.
Mrs. Hstuping Pringsheim, when asked how she felt about her stay in America, replied, "I have been here for three years and I like it very much. But I hope to go back to my home one day with my husband."
"I at last decided to become a taxi driver and began driving one. I did this for one and a half years. I got disgusted with this also and so I quit taxi business."
"I decided to go to Washington to try my luck in one of government organizations like the CIA, the U.S.I.S. Here again I got the same reply as I had been getting. Then I went to New York. I got a job as an export clerk in one of the exporting firms. I grew tired of counting invoices here and so I quit after six months.
"I travelled all around but every time the reply was the same. At one point I became a salesman selling vacuum cleaners. I found out that selling line was even tougher than music. I decided to go back to California."
Eight years had passed since his arrival in America and nothing achieved so far.
PRINGSHEM FELT the armed forces was an opportunity to return to Japan. But after the training period, he was sent to the Armed Forces Language School at Monterey, Calif. His service here lasted for three and a half years, after which he was discharged.
A catalogue of the artists, titles of the paintings, and price listings will be given to the viewers as they arrive at the festival.
Art work in paintings, prints, ceramics, textiles, silversmithing, sculpture, and theatrical scenes will be included in the show.
Art Guild to Hold Festival on May 9
Sponsored by the Lawrence Art Guild and the Lawrence Recreation Commission, the fourth annual art festival will be Sunday, May 9, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the South Park Recreation Center.
Any artist in the Lawrence area, either professional or amateur, is invited to exhibit.
A $2 entry fee is required and a maximum of four works may be shown by one artist. If the art work is for sale, and is purchased, the entire purchase price will go to the artist.
Entry forms are available at the Recreation Commission office in the Community Building or from Mrs. Paul Beauchamp, chairman of the festival.
Patronize Your Kanson Advertisers
928 Mass.
VI 3-8500