FOR thirty years I have been meaning to pay my tribute to an inspiring teacher, the man to whom I owe my intellectual awakening. Teachers who suffer from the impression that what they say is lost on their pupils may take heart from the fact that, if my old high school teacher were still alive, he would surely be astonished to know the extent to which his teaching has shaped my mind and determined my future. But he is not alive. He died thirty years ago under circumstances that, however sordid superficially, were fundamentally tragic.

I could say that my long-standing intention of writing this tribute has represented my sense of an obligation to be discharged, and this would not be untrue. What really prompted it, however, was my preoccupation with an ethical paradox exemplified by the moral disaster into which my teacher later fell—a disaster into which, indeed, a whole nation fell. His career was like Macbeth's, that of an essentially noble being who takes a wrong turning, and, repenting too late, has no choice but to follow the way on which he has embarked to its fatal end.

As I originally conceived the composition of a memorial tribute, it would have required preliminary research in scattered German archives, as well as in American newspaper files. But there was never a time when it was possible for me to undertake this research myself, and I did not know whom I could get to do it for me. A colleague corresponded with several German archivists on my behalf, only to learn that the documentary material I needed would not be easy to locate. At last I have had to recognize that, unless I write my tribute on the basis of my memory alone, it will never