Max was at the exciting Oktoberfest in Munich.
Written by Noah Fishman ’25
Max Bishop ‘26 is a Junior double-majoring in German and History and double-minoring in communication and music performance at Denison University. Max studied abroad in Heidelberg, Germany, last fall through the American Junior Year at Heidelberg (AJY) program.
While there, Max worked on two research projects. The first was a small writing piece about Karl Heinrich, a book by Wilhelm Meyer-Förster, which then became a play called Old Heidelberg, an operetta called The Student Prince, and a film of the same name. According to Max, there were numerous film adaptations of Försters work, two of which have been permanently lost.
“Trying to put that all together was crazy, this was post-WWI, very early film,” Max said.
His second research project was outlining the history of jazz in the Rhine-Neckar region of Germany, where Heidelberg is situated. Max read through archival newspapers, performing preliminary research so that the Mark Twain Center could craft a proposal and hire a professional researcher to come in and keep digging. In his own search, Max found out that Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald had played at a small local club after touring the US Army barracks in Heidelberg. Max also found proof of jazz groups formed between U.S. service members and German civilians and sizable jazz festivals occurring in Heidelberg. He researched an English newspaper called The Stars and Stripes and wrote his findings in German.
“They had me help run some of their community events. There was one where a former U.S. security advisor came in and gave a talk about the U.S. presence in Europe. It was all in German,” Max said with a grin.
A picture of Heidelberg, taken by Max.
Luckily, language skills were not an issue, as Max has been studying German for years and is the grandchild of German immigrants. Despite that, Max still took the opportunity to brush up on his language comprehension skills.
But it wasn’t all about work! While overseas, Max made the most of his experience by visiting as many places as possible.
“The travel was great. I went cliff diving in Italy, I went to Oktoberfest the first day of the season, Prague was great, and Berlin was probably the greatest because we saw a Fußball game in the Olympic stadium.”