Salzburg Visit Shows Values Of Enterprise

The Harvard Group and the International Student Service agreed on a seminar during the summer and a rest home during the winter at Salzburg as a means of getting America across to Europeans.

Heller and his two associates, Richard D. Campbell, Jr. '48 and Scott Elledge, former instructor in English, with the backing of the Student Council, then began the job of raising the money and organizing the faculty while ISS made arrangements in Salzburg for housing and food.

The money came slowly--$4000 from the food relief drive, $1000 from the Student Council, $5000 from the World Student Service Fund, and then $10,000 from anonymous private donors. The job of providing the faculty was as big, but after Professor Matthiessen had taken the lead, others joined eagerly.

Interview Students

By the time a faculty had been set up and the army's reluctance to issue military permits for Austria had been conquered, it was time to choose the students. ISS sent out preliminary notices throughout Europe, but Heller and Elledge themselves travelled about the Continent interviewing applicants after June 1.

When the staff arrived in Salzburg at the end of June, all but the physical details were in hand. They found their home windowless because of a near miss by an Allied bomb, plaster crumbling, plumbing insufficient. With Levin H. Campbell, III '48 and Kingsley Ervin, Jr. '45 and Jean Andrey from ISS as aides to the original trio, the staff set out to conquer the terrain.

Bohemian Glass

Window glass came from Czechoslovakia; the Austrian government provided enough cots for the school's dormitories. One staff group signed food contracts and arranged financial affairs in Switzerland. Later a squad drove to Prague and persuaded the Czech government to ship the first meat exports in its history to Leopoldskron. And most important, the administrators carried on a constant long-distance struggle with many European officials to obtain visas for would-be students.

What is taking place at Salzburg after all this effort is more than learning from books. People are learning about people, and in that the Americans are as much as anyone else. They are finding out that the national barriers they had feared might be prohibitive are indeed surmountable in this castle, where a higher mutual interest holds all together.

Faculty Works Hard

The faculty members are finding it just as much of an experience as the younger Americans. As one of the most renowned has said, "I am dealing here with a subject of which I have felt a part for many years, but I have been forced to present it in an entirely new way. As a result I have been working harder here than I ever expected to, but the effort has been incomparably rewarding."

Others besides occasional visitors have been impressed by the standards and achievements of the Seminar. American educational authorities studying European conditions have come to Salzburg to observe and have left impressed both by the administrative achievements of the sturdy few who carried the load and by the kind of education being offered here. UNESCO has just appointed an official observer for the Seminar.

All that makes the future of the Salzburg Seminar look bright. What the original planners had in mind as far as permanence goes is anybody's guess, but right now they are hoping to make Leopoldskron a fixture--a center for American studies in Europe. To achieve this newest goal they will need money--and their next job will be to convince some of the larger foundations in the United States of their worthiness. If the heads of those foundations would come here and feel for only a few days the spirit of this seminar, convincing would not be necessary.