Interesting facts about Jose Rizal and Blumentritt

A. Paulita Roa .

FOR the 157th birth anniversary of our national hero, Jose P. Rizal, here are several very interesting, fascinating and little known facts about him that are excerpts from the papers of two  historians, Ambeth R. Ocampo and Dr. Harry Sichrovsky. These were read respectively on the Annual Rizal Lectures in 1994 and 1983. This prestigious annual lecture is sponsored by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (formerly the National Historical Institute).

From Ocampo’s paper titled, “Rizal Re-discovered,” he wrote that as an adult, Rizal stood around five feet two inches high. His waistline, based on the extant pair of pants on exhibit at Fort Santiago, measured 26 inches with the “kargada” weighing heavily on the right.

As a child, he was quite frail, had a small physique with an abnormally large head. A yaya was assigned to watch him since he was prone to tripping because of the imbalance caused by his big head. Rizal’s left shoulder was lower than his right, that was the reason why in Europe, he was always photographed wearing heavily padded overcoats to hide this defect. His voice was soft and he spoke with a slight lisp. It was due to his small physique that Rizal developed a massive inferiority complex. As a boy, he was “pilyo” and was regularly caned by his schoolmaster. But he already showed promise in school by surpassing his classmates in academics.

Rizal almost did not make it to the Jesuit school the Ateneo Municipal. He wrote in his “Memorias de un estudiante de Manila,” that the Father Director of Admissions “did not want to admit me either because I sought admission outside the term, or because of my rather weak constitution and short stature.”

However, it was in Ateneo that Rizal discovered that he can make up for his physical stature by doing something more positive. He wrote in the Memorias: “I had entered school still a boy, with little knowledge of the Spanish tongue, with an intelligence only partly developed and almost without refinement of my feelings. by dint of studying, of analyzing myself, of reaching our for higher things, and of a thousand corrections, I was transformed little by little…”

He along with nine others in his class graduated with “Sobresaliente” marks showing that he was not the only one that achieved the highest grades as many of us believed.

After Ateneo, Rizal enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas and took up Medicine, Philosophy and Letters. He finished a licentiate in medicine and took up specialization in ophthalmology. He was a physician but academically, he was not a doctor for he failed to take up his final exams for his Doctorate in Medicine. For whatever reasons of his failure to do so, according to Ocampo, technically speaking, if we are strict about this, he cannot use or carry the academic title, “Dr.” Rizal.

Years ago, there used to be a street in Cagayan de Oro known as F. Blumentritt St.. This was later changed to Echem St. to honor a local policeman who was killed while in the line of duty. However, I have always been fascinated about Rizal’s closest friend, Ferdinand Blumentritt. But let me backtrack a little and mention the fact that after our national hero’s studies at the University of Santo Tomas, he traveled alone to Madrid, Spain where he earned a degree of Licentiate in Medicine. He also studied at the University of Paris and at the University of Heidelberg. He traveled very extensively abroad that he became conversant in 22 languages.

Dr. Sichrovsky’s paper, “An Austrian Life for the Philippines,” he wrote in depth about Ferdinand Blumentritt, an Austrian who lived in a small town named Leitmeritz that was a hundred miles away from Prague (now the capital of Czechoslovakia). At that time, the town and the ancient capital, were part of the huge Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Blumentritt’s great grandmother was a descendant of a former governor general of the Philippines by the name of Andres Alcazar. He related that in her home, he began to love the Spanish colonial world. He eventually learned to speak fluently Spanish aside from his native German, then Portuguese, French, Dutch, Italian, English and finally, Tagalog! His home was a virtual Philippine museum. He opened his home to visitors from the islands. His favorite daughter was Dolores who was given a second name, Loleng. He even wanted her to marry her off to a Filipino at that time when interracial unions were quite few.

Then on a fateful day in August 1886, Blumentritt received a letter posted in the German university town of Heidelberg. It was written in German and signed by one J. Rizal. This was to be the start of a deep friendship that was documented in more than 200 letters and it provided priceless information on an important period of Philippine history. And to think that the two men only saw each other personally for three days when Rizal went to Leitmeritz in May1887. Nevertheless, it was a historic meeting for in a small town, foreign visitors were presented to the Mayor and Rizal was made to signed the guest book in the town hall. The local newspaper and even those as far as Prague reported this visit. That three days was like a meeting of two long lost brothers.

In Blumentritt, Rizal found his most loyal friend and supporter, his teacher and adviser, a brother and a father. He received comfort from him in times of difficulties and despair especially when his family in Calamba were cruelly mistreated both by the Spanish colonial authorities and the Dominican friars over the case that involved the Rizal hacienda. He proposed an international campaign to expose the inhumane and barbaric rule under the banner of religion. In one of his letters to Rizal, he wrote, “This cries to heaven for vengeance.” He encouraged Rizal to write his monumental novel, “Noli Me Tangere,” found him a printer in Berlin and helped to publish it. He described “Noli” as the best book ever written by a Malay with the blood of the heart and he told his best friend that “if you continue thus, you will be one of the great men of your nation, who shall have a decisive influence in the development of its spiritual life.”

Near the end of Rizal’s life, when he was arrested on high seas and transported back to the Philippines, Blumentritt vainly tried to save him by securing his release in Singapore. Spain resolved to set a hard stance and an example  by wanting to extradite Blumentritt as the hero’s accomplice. But the Emperor Francis Joseph personally intervened to prevent the extradition.

The day before his execution, Rizal wrote his last letter to his best friend. When Blumentritt received the news of the death of his best friend, he collapsed and shed many tears. When he recovered from his grief, he said, “So strong is the execution of our friend, Rizal that we may say without hesitation from this day onwards, a new era of Philippine history has begun.” And so this prophetic utterance of Professor Ferdinand Blumentritt was fulfilled when exactly 18 months and 13 days after the death of Rizal, the Spanish flag was hauled down in Fort Santiago as a symbol of surrender, thus, ending the 333 years of Spain’s colonial rule in the Philippines.

In his own way, the hero’s best friend continued the fight of freedom of Rizal. Later, his house in Leitmeritz became the unofficial legation of the young Philippine Republic in Europe where he actually issued travel papers and trade permits. He was nominated to be the mediator of the Spanish, Filipino and American conflict, the parties involved even wanted to go to his town for the peace talks. But the Austrian emperor intervened. He did not want his public servant to get involved in the affairs of other foreign states.

Blumentritt  never got to fulfill his wish to visit the Philippines, a country he loved so much like his own. In 1913, Manuel L. Quezon spoke about Blumentritt in a memorial meeting in Manila in the latter’s honor: “He, the accomplished explorer, the able psychologist who knew the Philippines, penetrated the remotest corners of the Filipino soul, could listen to the most secret of our heartbeats… that a foreigner who never set foot on our soil was endowed with a gift of helping us solve our most difficult problems in a masterly way.”