He Simply Laughed His Worries Away
The first African student to attendRUB has passed away
Being an “international” university is not a new discovery, nor is it new to RUB. From its very beginnings, the university has attracted young people from all over the world to Bochum. In 1965, Felix Maxwell Amanor-Boadu of Ghana enrolled in the Fakultät (i.e., academic departments or faculties) of Philology as the first African student ever to attend RUB. He passed away this May at the age of 70.
“A huge and tall iroko [tree] in the forest of truth and sincerity…. A man of fortitude and endurance, who would go to battle with you, stand shoulder to shoulder with you at the front, bind your wounds with his shirt and carry you back home, even as his knees buckled... A forthright man of unusual aplomb and candor who exudes kindness and forgiveness.” This is how a colleague described the German Studies professor Prof. Felix Maxwell Amanor-Boadu in an obituary in the Nigerian Tribune. His German companions remember him most for his warm and generous nature. Max, as his fellow students called him, came from Otoase in southern Ghana. As he was growing up, his home country was making its way toward independence and education was seen as the key to social advancement. Max was one of only a select few to receive a scholarship from the Ghanaian government enabling him to study in Germany. In 1961, he left Ghana to study engineering in southern Germany, as his father, the patriarch of a large Ghanaian clan, had intended.
Two German loves
Max didn’t last long among the engineering students, however. “His true love was using the German language to create works of art that represent reality,” recalls Anne Pannenborg, Max’s other German love and girlfriend of seven years. Despite the scholarship money, Max was still dependent on his father’s financial support. And from his father’s point of view, Bonn, then the capital of Germany, was the only place to pursue a degree in German studies. Max’s father insisted that Max study close enough to Bonn for his uncle, the Ghanaian ambassador at that time, to keep an eye on him. And so Max had to choose between the universities in Bonn, Cologne, and Bochum. Max chose the newly founded RUB – among other reasons, because it was the farthest of the three institutions from Bonn and his uncle.
Max Amanor-Boadu majored in German studies and minored in sociology. Among other courses, he took “Introduction to Modern Literature I: At the Turn of the Century” with fellow student Heinz Menge, who recalls, “We covered the works of the writer Stanislaw Przybyszewski (pronounced ‘pshibbishevskee’). The name always made Max grin because he simply could not manage to pronounce it.”
The way that Max’s different perspective and culture enriched daily life at the university is remembered by another classmate at that time, Ulrich John: “Lots of our everyday problems, big or small, could be eased away with one of Max’s hearty and soothing laughs.” The political and social unrest that was beginning to take shape at and around German universities at that time was quickly put into perspective when Max compared it to the far more serious challenges facing people in Ghana. Pannenborg also has fond memories of his laughter. “Whenever a situation was really hopeless, he’d just sit down and laugh his head off. I’d be shocked and would ask him how he could laugh when things were so bad. And he’d say, ‘Do you think cursing or getting angry helps?’ And, of course, he was right.”
Remembering together
In 1971, Max wrote his master’s thesis on “Emotions and Social Criticism in the Literature of Sentimentalism and Sturm and Drang” (“Gefühl und Sozialkritik in der Literatur der Empfindsamkeit und des Sturm und Drang”) and graduated from RUB. When his father passed away, Max returned to Ghana to be near his family and became the new head of his large clan. Max would return to RUB with a year-long scholarship from the Ghanaian government. He wanted to complete a doctorate in Bochum, but one year turned out to be too little time. Nevertheless, he did become a professor at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria in 1973 – located about 400 km from his home town – and was appointed head of the German department there.
Surrounded by close friends and family, Max succumbed to cancer on May 30, 2011. Even after his death, Max Amanor-Boadu touches the lives of his friends in Bochum. Menge, Pannenborg, John, and two of his other fellow students have reconnected and planned a reunion. Today, Pannenborg realizes: “I owe him an awful lot.”
Tabea Steinhauer; Foto: privat | Themenübersicht