Education: Learning & Lederhosen

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Late each afternoon, villagers of tiny Beutelsbach (pop. 900), in Germany's Rems valley climb the twisting road to the hedge-bound estate of Landgut Burg. Their hosts, American undergraduates studying at Stanford University's experimental overseas branch, serve coffee and kuchen, talk exuberantly in often sprained, sometimes fractured, German. Last week Beutelsbachers were greeting a new batch of Stanford students, the second to arrive in Germany since the 30-acre campus was opened last summer.

The university's overseas base, twelve miles from Stuttgart, is a rarity—other American colleges and universities let their undergraduates study abroad, but -few have foreign campuses—and Stanford is well pleased with the project. Because classes in such subjects as political science, art history and philosophy are conducted by Stanford professors in English, admission to Landgut Burg is not restricted to language majors and the few other students able to speak German—usually a limitation of the year-abroad programs run by other U.S. institutions.

Liebesfreiheit. All students get intensive language instruction in German from native teachers, and plenty of practice with the amiable Beutelsbachers. The results are impressive, although not perfect —on one dining hall poster, "love of freedom'' (Freiheitsliebe) came out Lie-besfreiheit—free love.

Europe itself is the subject most painstakingly studied. Field trips—to Rome for art and architecture, to Berlin for political science—fill in the outlines of classroom lectures. Three-day weekends during the summer and fall allow long freelance forays. "There was." according to one report, "a definite trend to Lederhosen" Wrote Friedrich W. Strothmann, head of Stanford's modern languages department and, with General Studies Chairman Robert A. Walker, originator of the Landgut Burg school: the students typically "hop on a motorcycle Thursday afternoon and come back Sunday from Venice and Salzburg after having seen a Mozart opera, a puppet play, an Everyman performance, on merely a piece of cheese and a little spaghetti. Faced with the choice between either a good meal or another tankful of gasoline and an opera ticket, they invariably renounce the meal —as they should."

Wandering Scholars. At school, students miss no meals, although they may eat plain Bratwurst or Spätzle. Plainness in food is more than made up for by the low cost of the six months abroad. The university charges only about $1,000—the amount it collects for a boarding semester at Stanford—for plane fare to Germany, board, room and tuition. Thoughtfully, Stanford officials made no provision for return flights to the U.S. Best evidence of Landgut Burg's success: the university is seriously considering a similar outpost in Florence, has in the back of its mind a Stanford-in-France and a Stanford-in-Mexico.