I heard the term “concilium abeundi – school expulsion” a few times at that time. The first time it happened was on the Aska. We had started a school newspaper in our class, which was distributed at school. It was called “Der Klassenkurier (Class Courier)”. Our class teacher was still quite young and, therefore, probably still a bit overwhelmed with excessive strictness and high demands on the one hand and the effort to treat us in a buddy-like manner on the other. We got along with him and had nothing against him until…
I don’t know what drove me to do this back then – probably rash arrogance! Our class teacher always wore a white coat with two strikingly large buttons on the back in class. It was simply an invitation, and I cut off the heading of our newspaper, made two holes, and attached a string with loops at each end. As so often, our teacher stood at the blackboard – fully concentrated – and with his back to the class. I managed to sneak up on him and hang the “Class Courier” sign on his buttons. Without realizing, he then ran around the school all morning with it – to the amusement of all the students. It was also bad that his colleagues didn’t say anything for a long time (and grinned). At some point, he noticed it and found out that I was the culprit. I never found out which of my classmates blew the whistle on me. Our teacher came back with the “Revenge of the Little Man”. He didn’t show any emotion but took me away for a separate juicy exam with questions about teaching material that we hadn’t even covered yet. However, he went a little too far. My classmates also noticed that he wanted to wear me down. And then, it was suddenly there, the comradeship. All of them marched together to the headmaster and told him what had happened. He was a correct and reasonable man and called me for a one-on-one conversation. He made it clear to me that I could potentially suffer from the class teacher’s human inadequacy until my graduation day and that he could well mess up my matric (high school diploma). His suggestion was to avoid this and get a placement at another grammar school with his personal help. And that’s how it happened. I didn’t really mind doing my final exams somewhere else.
At the new school, there was a teacher who was a great but somewhat eccentric scientist. He preferred to spend time in the middle of his beloved geography collection and often forgot to start classes on time. And that’s when I had my next crazy idea, … arranging extra free time. War damage was still being repaired at the school, and the large double doors of the auditorium had been unhung for this purpose. They were leaning on the wall next to the door to the geography collection. So I encouraged a classmate, – stupidly the biggest weakling – to help me put one of the hinged doors in front of the door to the geography collection to keep the teacher from getting out. This weakling was unable to hold the side of the door, which then slammed on to the floor. My classmate just ran away, but I didn’t want to drop the door completely. I was now standing behind the door and trying to hold both sides. It didn’t work because those things had too much weight and height. So, they slowly tilted in the direction of the collection room door, which the teacher had just opened because of the noise. Fortunately, the door leaf fell against the wall above the collection due to its size. Our teacher didn’t recognise me, but he recognised the coward running away. The coward then tried to save his skin and promptly blew the whistle on me, which resulted in a “concilium abeunde”. They wanted to throw me out of school right away – even though I had just arrived. However, I was lucky. My father intervened. Presumably, after an initial telephone conversation, he was then greeted by the headmaster in front of the school when he got out of the car. According to later rumours, the school suddenly received much-needed equipment for its physics collection. From then on, I refrained from attracting too much attention. With some academic achievements in tow, I secured my matric.
Many years later, I learned that my father’s company, Permutit, had provided quite a bit of laboratory equipment at the time – what a coincidence!