By Jacob Porter
The Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Sitting perched on a leather armchair, holding his copy of Theories of Adolescence, the now 94-year-old professor tells his story that begins as a teen in the German Air Force, a young adult in the Rheinwiesenlager prison camp and later years as a doctor of psychology at Goucher College.
Rolf Muuss has seen a great deal and vividly remembers much of it.
Born in the very North of Germany, near the border of Denmark, in 1924, Muuss said his father was a pastor. But at 17 years old, Muuss took up arms and enlisted in the German Air Force during the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He said he was in training for two years, after which he was stationed at various German airbases.
“The training was continuously interrupted,” Muuss said. “The Americans repeatedly bombed gasoline factories, and all remaining oil fields.”
Muuss earned a pilot’s license and was then transferred to Nazi-occupied Prague in 1944. Here too the German efforts were interrupted by Allied bombings for many weeks at a time. He said the bombings prevented him from flying or ever seeing combat, although he enjoyed the training.
“Training in an open pit airplane was a lot of fun,” Muuss said.
Following Germany’s fall in 1945, Muuss said he became an Allied prisoner of war and was held for three months in one of the prison fields along the German side of the Rhine River.
The U.S. Army built the Rheinwiesenlager, or Rhine meadow camps, in the Allied occupied part of Germany. There were 19 camps that held captured German soldiers at the close of World War II. The Rheinwiesenlager was officially named Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosures.
“It was not a very pleasant experience,” Muuss said. “Americans held over 2 million German soldiers, and they were unprepared for that number and didn’t have food and didn’t have facilities so we were sleeping in the open fields.”
Muuss described how he slept without any coverage from the elements, but acknowledged that he was one of the fortunate ones because his time in the Rhine fields was shorter than most. Eventually, Muuss met a farmer from his father’s congregation while in the camp. The farmer hired Muuss as a farmhand so the soldier was permitted to leave the camp. Again Muuss was spared because most of the other soldiers were transferred to France for heavy labor for a year.
“I was a farmhand for a short time because I became a lay teacher, despite no training at all,” said Muuss, explaining that after the war a majority of German teachers were actual Nazis or otherwise associated with the Nazi Party, known as the National Socialists.
Germany was then subjected to denazification from January 1946 to around 1951. The Allied nations used this process in an attempt to rid Germany and Austria from all levels of Nazism.
“I was denazified very quickly and I got a job for a teaching position,” Muuss said.
Muuss, who had only a 10th grade education, taught every subject in 1st through 3rd grade. The experience sparked in him a desire to continue his education. He said it was difficult to get into German schools given his limited education but exclaimed, “Third time around, I got in.”
After he was admitted into a special program for former soldiers in Flensburg, Germany, Muuss completed his high school education and then worked in Sweden for a year at the People’s High School, a Scandinavian institution.
“It was one of the most formative years that I can imagine,” Muuss said explaining that the Scandinavian school consists of adults around 18 who focus on self-development and strive to give youth the freedom to explore without overbearing exams. “It is more for the sake of learning.”
When Muuss returned to Germany, he completed his degree in two years at the Teacher’s College in Flensburg, and was hired to teach 5th grade boys in Hamburg in 1951. He was invited by the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C., to work in America as a teacher in training.
“The idea was to give German teachers an idea of American education, American democracy, and the American way of life,” said Muuss, who was sent to a small college in Missouri and eventually landed at Columbia University in New York City to study psychology.
“I found it a lot easier to get A’s, where in Germany I was getting D’s,” Muus said. “I think my experience in Sweden inspired me.”
Before establishing himself in Towson, Muuss worked briefly back in Germany as an assistant principal. After he emigrated to the United States, he worked as a house parent at a facility for emotionally disturbed children. He earned a master’s degree at the University of Maryland in 1953, not even 10 years after his Rhine field experience. Eventually, he earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois.
During a two-year stay at the University of Iowa, Muuss studied preventive psychiatry, which focused on testing children dealing with problems before they arise. When Muuss traveled back to Maryland, Goucher College reached out to him.
“I really was not unhappy with my job, and not looked for another job, but I thought why not go for an interview,” he said.
Attracted by Goucher’s small campus, and comforting atmosphere, Muuss shrewdly negotiated a contract that promoted him to associate professor, and by 1964, he became a full professor. During his tenure, Muuss created Theories of Adolescence, a text that focuses on the adolescent mind, a field of psychology that had limited work done.
Muuss wrote the text, was paid $400 to publish it and sold 50,000 copies as it became a best seller in the Random House Series. Today, Muuss is working on his memoirs but takes out time each day to swim at the pool at the Edenwald Retirement Community, where he moved in 2009.
The 94-year-old said he still enjoys life and recently was able to pilot a plane once again.
Alan Shecter, a friend of Muuss at the retirement community, invited the former German soldier along for a flight with a friend who owns and pilots his own private plane. After takeoff, Muuss was able to fly the plane one more time.
“Dr. Muuss was thrilled, he had such a good time,” Shecter said.
Courtney Wells, a supervisor in the Edenwald Dining Department who sees Muuss almost daily, described him as “a nice, genuine, and kindhearted man.”