ADA KLETT BISTER
1897 - 1965
Ada Klett Bister, Professor Emeritus of German, died on
November 21, 1965 after a long and lingering illness,
less than five months after the sudden death of her
beloved husband, Andreas. To the Vassar comunity the
departure of the Bisters for their native Germany in l96O
signified in many respects the end of an era. For twelve
years their apartment in Kendrick was a place of warm and
generous hospitality, beautiful music, discussions on
literature and art with books of every description, wild-
life at the windowsill, and an ever sympathetic ear for
students and colleagues alike. One sensed in their company
the fullness and excitement of life and, what the German
calls "Gemfltlichkeit" which is such a rare thing today. To
both Ada and Andreas Bister we pay tribute, for indeed dur-
ing the years of their marriage they were one in spirit and
one in the hearts of their friends.
Mrs. Bister came to the United States from Berlin in l923.
She received her M.A. from the University of Nebraska in
1928 and her Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin in l936.
In 1937 she came to Vassar on a one year appointment as an
Exchange Assistant Professor of German from Scripps College.
She then returned a year later to begin a long and fruitful
career as a member of the Department and as Chairman for
her last two years before failing health required her early
retirement in 1960. These are but the bare facts of her
academic training and professional status. Behind these
facts sparkles Ada Bister's ever ready smile, her boundless
enthusiasm for her work, her delightful, slightly roguish
sense of humor, and her unparalleled valor and good spirits
in the face of years of constant pain from which she could
find no relief. She was able to forget and rise above her
infirmities because of her varied interests and her deep
sense that every moment is important and should be savored
fully. Those of us who visited the Bisters in Germany found
that she still had in her last months this undaunted spirit
even though her health was completely deteriorating. Her
letters too were filled with coments about books just read,
the pleasures of visits from friends and relatives and the
enjoyment of her lovely home and garden in Eutin, Holstein
near the Danish border. To have known Ada Bister is to have
ADA KLETT BISTER (continued)
known a vital and courageous woman.
Teaching was Mrs. Bister's first love. Colleagues and stu-
dents can attest to her tireless, joyous pursuit of this,
her profession. She was never too busy to help a beginner
whom most others would have sent to a tutor and never too
preoccupied with her own projects that she would not share
her knowledge and insight with an advanced student seeking
inspiration or guidance. We will always remember Mrs. Bister
for her delight in talking and those of us who knew her were
well aware that behind what often seemed to be chit chat
rolling from her nimble tongue was a genuine concern for
ideas and causes. Her teaching was by no means limited to
the classroom. In her office, in the German Club meetings
and in her apartment she gave of herself and eagerly received
stimulation from the young. For years she directed the German
Christmas Play in the Chapel, having compiled it herself from
several German medieval nativity plays. Students who took
part in it under her direction gained a new sense of the
real meaning of Christmas.
Though her interest in German literature and culture was
varied,she was first and foremost a passionate Goethe scholar.
Out of her dissertation came her major publication, an anno-
tated bibliography of Goethe's Faust, Part II, published in
1939 under the title DER STREIT UM FAUST II SEIT 1900 with the
aid of Vassar's Salmon Fund. In a newspaper article of
August, 1949 upon the occasion of Goethe's bicentennial,
Mrs. Bister mentioned the influence the poet had had on Albert
Schweitzer who had gone to Aspen, Colorado as one of the
guest speakers for the event, and there she quoted Goethe,
saying that Schweitzer might well have had these lines in
mind whenever he explained what Goethe had meant to him.
We give them here, believing that they not only express
the philosophy of life of Goethe and Schweitzer, whom Mrs.
Bister admired so much, but also her own:
God in the hidden law, that fools call chance,
God in the star, the flower, the moondrawn wave,
God in the snake, the bird, and the wild beast,
God in the long ascension from the dark,
God in the body and the soul of man,
God uttering life, and God receiving death.
Ruth Hofrichter
Elizabeth Zorb
Mary Hillis
Mary B. Corcoran