Like many other people who met him, I have fond memories of the conversations I had with my former professor Joseph Ratzinger. He researched and taught between 1968 and 1976 as a professor of dogmatics at the University of Regensburg. When I first met him in his faculty office as a young student in 1975, I found him to be a friendly and interested person to talk to. Once he stopped me on campus and invited me to lunch. He always invites the foreign students to dinner to make them feel a little more welcome in Regensburg, he said. I gladly accepted, but as a Saarland patriot I was dismayed to be considered a foreigner in Regensburg. He laughed heartily. Over dinner we discussed the theological programs of the time. It was the era of theological awakening in Germany following the Vatican revival movements, a time of intellectual exchange with representatives of atheism and communism.
Joseph Ratzinger’s Theology – Culture
