Teacher's Interview: Mr Gillig

We have decided that this year, since we have learnt about some of the interest of our students, we should get to know the GISS Staff better.  This week a much loved teacher, Mr Gillig, shared with us what experiences he has had involving books.

Mr Gillig much prefers factual, non- fiction books to those that have been made up.  He told us that he ‘loathes’ novels and has no favourite books, but loves constantly discovering new reads to get involved with. Among those are Thomas Mann‘s books which are highly regarded masterpieces of literature. However, they achieve a total different meaning if you compare them with secondary literature about the author.  For example the autobiography of Katja Mann, Thomas Mann’s wife. Suddenly the reader recognized that the protagonist of “Death in Venice” is nothing else than a camouflaged biography of Thomas Mann himself. The composer Achenbach in “Death in Venice” is a phantasmic biographical psychogram of the author Thomas Mann himself, with the same mannerisms and homoerotic attitudes that haunts Achenbach in the novel. To read both books simultaneously is a unique and rewarding insight into literature.

Another of the ‘books’ that Mr Gillig has reread countless times are the infamous ‘Goebbels Diaries’, a series of documents by Joseph Goebbels.  Goebbels was an influential member of the Nazi Party, which governed Germany between 1933 and 1945 and caused the Second World War, led by Adolf Hitler.  The diaries were originally thought to be private until Goebbels thought of his diary as a source of (manipulated) history to be of published as Part of Nazi propaganda.  Goebbels continued to keep the diaries as he served as propaganda minister and chronicled the rise and fall of the third Reich, ending only weeks before Goebbels death.  They remained hidden until decades after
Goebbels’ death when they were published, giving historians and Mr Gillig alike a rare insight into the inner workings of one of the most influential political parties of all time.

In contrast the first book Mr Gillig remembers reading is ‘Der Struwwelpeter’, a children’s book by Heinrich Hoffmann, a psychiatrist at a Frankfurt asylum, who wrote the collection of short stories when he couldn’t find a suitable Christmas present for his three year old so!  The stories describe characters ‘misbehaving’ and bad things happening as a consequence, with often quite confronting endings.  In the first story, the book’s namesake, Struwwelpeter a boy doesn’t groom himself properly and has no friends because of it.  The book has stayed in Mr Gillig’s memories because he believes that ‘kids have to read things that are not nice’.

So now that we know what Mr Gillig has read in the past, what is he reading now?  Biographies of Australian Prime Ministers past and present:  Paul Keating who was prime minister between 1991 and 1996 and our current one Malcolm Turnbull. 

After that exclusive insight into what one teacher reads, are you curious about others?  
Let us know whether you would be interested in seeing more of these and whether there is
someone in particular you would like to read about. 

Also, since we had such a great response to our origami hearts, we have decided to run additional workshops next week Monday February 15 and Thursday February 18. 
Keep checking the blog to discover what we’ll post next. -Zinnia and Gwendoline