During his time in Uppsala Freund undertook teaching on Mondays, Tuesday and Saturdays, mostly in robust language skills; he led “practical exercises” in German for beginners as well as “more advanced” students, gave lectures on Goethe and led individual exercises in oral and written translation into German. Weinberg’s military service was extended from one year to one and a half, and Freund thus also maintained his teaching during the autumn semester of 1897, but it must have been clear to the young academic that his time in Uppsala was beginning to run out. In other words, he was obliged to find a new livelihood.
On 15 September 1897 the lecturer in German language at Lund University, Edvard Teodor Walter, applied for “release from lecturing duties”. The humanities division of the Department of Philosophy, which was tasked with pronouncing on lecturer Walter’s application, noted at its meeting of 19 October that it certainly seemed as if Walter “intended in his application to obtain a leave of absence”, but decided anyway to “accept his resignation, so that the division may find the occasion to take measures to ensure the lecturer position in question be definitively filled.”
What the misunderstood former lecturer thought of this hair-splitting academic exercise of public authority is not revealed in the documents, but at the same meeting the professor of Germanic languages, Edvard Lidforss, reported that a certain “Candidate for the higher teaching post” (Kandidat des höheren Lehramts) Julius Freund” had requested “to be considered” for the post. This rapid solution appeared to appeal to the division, and Lidforss was tasked with obtaining references concerning Freund’s teaching in Uppsala before the next meeting. Lidforss completed this task, and since the dean Henrik Schück had also testified in favour of Freund, the division decided to solicit the chancellor of the university to permit Freund to be appointed as lecturer in German at Lund, something which then came to pass on 7 December 1897.
In Lund, Freund moved first into Biskopsgatan before moving from autumn semester 1901 – via Tomegapsgatan and Klemensgatan (now the eastern part of Lilla Fiskaregatan) – to what was then a block of flats but is now Kulturen museum’s main building on Tegnérsplatsen. From there he went to teach university students in broadly the same subjects as he had in Uppsala; in Lund too, Freund’s teaching was focused on robust teaching of German language skills, with practical exercises and lectures on authors and their works. However, it is possible to discern certain attempts by the young lecturer to broaden his educational horizons; among other things, he led courses in essay-writing for Bachelor’s degrees as well as courses in German phonetics. Furthermore, during his final semester at Lund – the autumn semester of 1902 – he moved away from teacher-centred education to hold conversation courses for students in small groups.
Aside from academic teaching, Freund also worked on what we today would have deemed “external engagement activities”, that is, teaching activities targeting wider society (although in Freund’s case it could be assumed that it was rather a way of supplementing his lecturer’s salary). He held lectures at the girls’ secondary grammar in Lund and the Malmö lecture association, gave courses in German for postal service workers and secondary grammar school teachers in Malmö and occasionally took his lecturing activities as far afield as Västervik.
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