Chapter 108 History Lesson
December 7, 1867.
East African Colony, Mlandizi Cultural School.
Today the First Town (Mlandizi) Cultural School welcomed two special "students", Maximiliano I and his wife Queen Carlotta.
Queen Carlotta arrived in East Africa a month ago. At that time, for the safety of her future mother-in-law, Ernst personally arranged for one of his own ships to free up a ship and go to East Africa with the fleet.
Seeing Maximiliano I safe and sound in Tanga, East Africa, Queen Carlotta and Maximilian I cried while embracing each other.
As the person who originally encouraged Maximilian I, after Maximilian I was arrested and imprisoned in Mexico, Queen Carlotta shed tears every day in Europe and suffered greatly.
The disaster in Mexico made Queen Carlotta abandon her dream of becoming a queen. Now she just wants to spend the rest of her life with her beloved.
After Tanga and Maximiliano I had a passionate affair, Queen Carlotta expressed her willingness to live with Maximiliano I in East Africa for some time.
……
Maximilian I visited the First Town (Mlandizi) for the first time, the seat of the central government of East Africa.
As the earliest developed city in East Africa (town, some European cities are very small, they are actually towns), its size is slightly smaller than that of Dar es Salaam, but its planning and The facilities are obviously more complete, and the architecture and culture reflect the style of the German region.
What is slightly different from Europe is the local natural landscape, environmental climate and some East African urban supporting facilities planned by Ernst himself.
Such as street trees and green belts. It is difficult to see this kind of thing in European cities at present. Of course, the green belts in the East African colonies are very simple. They just set aside an earthy open space in the middle or on both sides of the road to let the weeds grow on their own. come out.
The most indispensable thing in the East African colonies is land, so the urban planning is very wild, and the pursuit of big is good everywhere. Although the current road scale and grade cannot be reached, the places that should be reserved have been reserved. , which can be directly used to upgrade urban roads in the future.
Therefore, on both sides of the streets paved with bricks and stones, apart from the green belts, there are still large open spaces, and the houses and buildings on both sides are separated by the roads. This makes the first town (Mlandizi) with a relatively small population ) looks more empty.
The houses on both sides are mainly one-story buildings, and many of them are still civil structures. However, with the open space between the yard and the house being almost 100 square meters, it is also convenient for subsequent renovation and upgrading.
The drainage channel is mainly located behind the house and is currently open-air. A strange law in East Africa stipulates that residents are not allowed to discharge sewage in the public drainage channel behind the house. The drainage channel is mainly used to deal with precipitation in the rainy season.
This is done to prevent the drainage canals from turning into smelly ditches. You must know that the environment in East Africa, especially the coastal plains like First Town, has relatively high temperatures throughout the year. Once the sewage ferments, the rainy season is fine. It can be washed away by rain in time, but in the dry season, when the weather is dry, sewage can only stay in the ditch, breeding various bacteria and attracting flies.
Of course, with the development of the future, it will not matter if the open ditches are paved with cement pipes, but in East Africa in this era, health must be the first priority. Hotbeds of tropical diseases are no joke.
When Maximiliano I and his wife first arrived in the first town, they saw the First Town Cultural School. Because the First Town Wenhua School was built late, it was built on the outskirts of the town.
The couple were both interested in the educational content of the East African colonies. They wanted to know how the content taught in such a backward (compared to Europe) place was different from that in Europe.
In Mexico, Maximiliano I had no time to show his ambitions. The whole country was in chaos and he had no energy to engage in education.
Although the conditions in East Africa are relatively poor, they can still provide compulsory education, which naturally interested the couple, so Maximiliano I took the initiative to experience the schools in East Africa.
The East African colonial government sent someone to arrange for the two of them to visit the First Town Cultural School.
The first-grade classroom of the First Town Cultural School was full of students, and Maximiliano I and his wife were arranged to sit in temporary seats at the back.
There are about thirty or forty students in the class, including children of Chinese immigrants and children of immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Immigrants from Paraguay need a separate Spanish teacher). The teacher is a graduate of the Hechingen Military Academy. . As the seat of the central government of East Africa, the teaching staff of the First Town Cultural School is unparalleled in East Africa.
You must know that the Hechingen Military Academy and other schools run by the Hechingen royal family are actually crash courses, so the level of the students varies.
Many students, by the time they graduate, can only converse in German and master some German words.
But there is a huge shortage of people in East Africa, so even those with poor grades will be sent to teach in the East African colonies.
Those who are smart and learn a lot will be tutored by senior students, and those who are not very smart and learn poorly will be tutored by junior students.
Fortunately, the content of textbooks in colonial schools in East Africa is relatively low-level, and most people only need to read the textbooks according to the text.
This section is a history lesson. Maximiliano I opened the textbook on the East African colonies and read it with interest, and kept whispering to Queen Carlotta.
The teaching Hechingen graduates automatically ignored the little tricks of Maximiliano I and his wife. After all, they all knew that these two were distinguished guests invited by the government.
Because of the current diversity of immigrants in the East African colonies, teachers have to use bilingual teaching in the first grade, and then switch to German teaching from the second grade onwards. Therefore, Chinese children must overcome the language barrier if they want to achieve academic results.
The first chapter, not surprisingly, is a tribute to the Hohenzollern family, emphasizing the Hechingen royal family's status as ruler of the East African land, as well as the long history of the Hechingen royal family and the Hohenzollern family. history.
Of course, these young children didn’t feel awkward watching it, and just listened to it as a story. The history textbooks were actually extracurricular readings, and they didn’t even have exams.
This is also a little trick played by Ernst. When a course requires an exam, there will always be a group of people who will be disgusted with it.
The younger you are when reading extracurricular books (actually non-exam books), the easier it is to become addicted. Just like novels, the more you read, the more addictive you become. However, if you regard novels as exam content, you will be greatly frustrated. Reader motivation.
Maximilian I and Queen Carlotta read the last chapter of the first chapter while suppressing their laughter.
After all, when it comes to history and inheritance, many families in Europe are more prominent than the Hohenzollern family, especially in front of the Habsburg family. The Hohenzollern family still lacks some foundation.
Of course, every noble family in Europe publicizes their family's prominent status and long history, so this is not the reason why Maximiliano I broke the defense. If he was bragging about the Habsburg family, he would definitely It's even more exaggerated than what is written in this book.
What made Maximilian I and Maximilian I feel funny was the final description of the Hechingen royal family, which was almost the same as the savior.
This is not an injustice to Ernst. The final content is the use of religious narrative techniques to mythologize the status of the royal family of Hechingen.
It's just that Ernst was more reserved and didn't explicitly mention any gods, such as the so-called descendants of Amaterasu from the Japanese royal family, the Egyptian pharaoh who called himself the son of the sun god, and the Far Eastern royal family who was enshrined in the Zen of Mount Tai...
Instead, they use words (yes, the kind of Blue Sky Project) to make the Hechingen royal family look very solemn and majestic. The reason for this is to avoid religion.
The immigrants in East Africa now have a variety of beliefs, but without churches and priests, residents, whether they are Catholic or Orthodox, can only rely on ancestral experience to engage in spontaneous prayer and other activities.
But Ernst was aiming at secularization. It was difficult to force these adults to give up their faith, but it was easy to change the minds of these children.
There is no need to go too far, as long as education and sports do not have religious overtones as is currently the case in Europe (many religious schools in Europe).
If they are not learned and repeated, people's memories will slowly fade away. Relying on the East African people to spontaneously inherit those religious traditions will never be as good as the elaboration and dissemination of a professional organization (referring to the church).
(End of this chapter)