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Guest Lecturer at the Leucorea
A SIOUX INDIAN AT LUTHER'S STRONGHOLD
How Leonard Bruguier from South Dakota came to Wittenberg and why he already has fans.

From our editor Markus Decker

Wittenberg/MZ. A few days ago people at the Leucorea knew almost nothing yet. They didn't know what he would talk about, they didn't even know if he were coming.

Sunday a plane crossed the ocean and spit him out at Berlin Tegel: Leonard Bruguier, Indian from the Sioux tribe. Monday the 53-year-old already stepped in front of a group of teachers from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He told them about the Native American inhabitants. A highlight.

Leonard R. Bruguier of course doesn't only talk in front of teachers. Very quickly a few youthful fans have mingled with the older listeners. And that has to do with the man who will entice Wittenberg with his foreign charm for a week and whom they will maybe talk about already by tomorrow: "Did you hear already? There is an Indian at the Leucorea."

For one thing Bruguier is "very much living in the present." That's what Jessica Gienow-Hecht from the Center of US Studies observed. She was the one who received the guest in Wittenberg. Due to the "present" she concluded it was almost impossible to make appointments. The man is obviously living in a place where millions of people are only dreaming of: in the Here and Now.

The 53-year-old is wearing jeans, his skin is brown and a bit leathery. His long jet-black hair is tied into a braid. The Marlboro-smoker lectures in a conversational tone sipping on his coffee cup off and on. Occasionally his gaze roams into the distance, lost in meditation. Then phrases like "Vietnam had a big sky" match. Leonard R. Bruguier is not only an Indian. He is a type that is well suitable for projections.

The story of his arrival is beautiful. By Sunday Bruguier hasn't slept for 48 hours Jessica Gienow-Hecht remembers. They chatted. In the evening the guest didn't want to rest. The professor chose to have a drink at the Rock-Café. At the Wittenberg student pub he got stuck for six hours. The next day half of those patrons sat at the Leucorea - with enthusiasm. A small academic foray.

Yesterday afternoon Bruguier was standing at the courtyard of the Leucorea with a young woman and a youthful looking man. They, who obviously are looking for information, listen to every single word he is saying. The young man complains a bit about capitalism and the Western part of Germany. It seems as if the three are on the same wavelength. That may be so as the teacher sees himself as student.

The fascination that is spreading has to do first and foremost with Leonard R. Bruguier's history.

The Sioux Indian was born in South Dakota. The first seven years of his life he lived on a reservation with his parents. Only after that did he learn the English language.

He studied philosophy and American history. Later he insisted on joining the military. Bruguier served in Vietnam. That the war was not okay he found out only when he noticed that the victims were many Vietnamese peasants - peasants like his parents. Then he felt like a "suppressor." After 15 months he was done with Vietnam.

Later he discovered that he liked to read and liked to talk. (The latter has been proven.) Therefore he became a college professor. And as things turned out in this land whose fascination is borne out of the tension between the possible and the impossible: Leonard R. Bruguier entered the White American establishment. He has been lecturing since 1980. Meanwhile, he became Director of the Institute of American Indian Studies. That resembles strongly the career of the famous dish washer. Besides it explains a bit the character of the man from America that is split as Jessica Gienow-Hecht has noticed.

There is the director of an Institute that has a homepage on the internet. On that homepage the boss appears a lot more serious than in real life. Bruguier is known in the United States. He won't take his Indian heritage more seriously than absolutely necessary. "Roots are important if one makes them important. "To be a Sioux says the Sioux means most of all to believe in the necessity of communal life. "We are all related," Bruguier says. In a sense it means "we are depending on one another." That is the one side.

The other side is that the guest from South Dakota represents a population group that to this day lives at the fringe of American society; partly on reservations; often alcoholic; often without a job. There are 1.2 million Indians living in the United States. The proximity to the underdogs might explain why Bruguier gets along with the people at the Rock-Café so well.

But they won't have the pleasure to have Bruguier around very much longer. Tomorrow he'll get on the plane and cross the ocean. Monday he'll be in front of his students in South Dakota again. These will ask about Europe. He will talk about Wittenberg. That is all he has seen of Europe.

So this multicultural star will go down above the small town of Sachsen-Anhalt. People here will now know what an Indian is.

[Newspaper article translated by Ursula Kennedy: Leonard Bruguier's visit in Wittenberg.]

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5 November 1998, lrb