GERMANY
New York Times
By MELISSA EDDY
FEB. 6, 2016
REGENSBURG, Germany — Udo Kaiser was 8 years old, brimming with energy and a bell-clear soprano voice when he arrived at the boarding school of the famed boys choir that bears this city’s name. Before his first day ended, he had been struck by a teacher.
The months that followed brought twisted ears or slaps for disrupting the silence demanded in the classrooms, corridors and dining hall. Singing the wrong note earned a beating with a conductor’s baton. Fingers that missed notes at the piano were slammed with the fallboard.
But it was the night he was caught playing with marbles in his dormitory, and was called to the prefect’s room for punishment, that would later send him into years of depression and cause him to lose his voice.
There, a priest whom the boys called “the pickle” because of his long nose, ordered him to pull down his pajama bottoms and kneel. The priest, whom Mr. Kaiser declined to name but said had since died, then placed the boy’s head between his legs and took up his rod.
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